Tell us: how you have been impacted by the change to US student loan repayments?
Applications for IDRs, which cap what borrowers must pay each month at a percent of their earnings, are unavailable on the US Department of Education website.
The quiet removal came after a federal appeals court decision earlier this week that continued a pause on Joe Biden's Save program, an income-driven plan for loan forgiveness that would have forgiven debts after as few as 10 years of payments.
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The Independent
9 minutes ago
- The Independent
Donald Trump's latest Liberation Day means another dark day for America
Precisely what poor, benighted Syria and prosperous, neutral Switzerland have done to deserve US tariffs of 41 per cent and 39 per cent respectively is hard to discern. Neither is the kind of industrial superpower that represents a threat to America's economic hegemony, and both would, in their different ways, prefer to stay on reasonably good terms with the Trump White House. It is, sadly, easier to see why Canada got whacked with a 35 per cent levy on some of its exports – and Donald Trump's tariff tactics do have a hint of the mob about them. Mr Trump suggested that Canada's decision to recognise the state of Palestine as a sovereign nation would make it harder to achieve a trade deal, and he also mentioned the scourge of fentanyl. But then again, Mexico, which has also recognised Palestine and is by far the more important source of the drug, has been granted a 90-day tariff reprieve. Ever since the opening salvo in the Trump tariff war on 2 April – so-called Liberation Day – the shifting schedules and random pauses have lacked both rhyme and reason. Even at the time, their supposed 'reciprocity' was ridiculed. They have generated huge uncertainty, and, for a time, did so much damage to the dollar and US Treasuries on the capital markets that even Mr Trump had to make a tactical retreat. In fact, the US president's observed tendency to cave in whenever a trading 'partner' showed any sign of resistance led to the unwelcome 'Taco' sobriquet – 'Trump Always Chickens Out'. Some countries, such as the UK, Japan and the EU member states, have breathed a sigh of relief that they have escaped the worst, while others – often impoverished ones with no diplomatic leverage, such as Bangladesh and Lesotho – will find it difficult to cope with tariffs that are now considered moderate, but would have seemed shocking even a few years ago. Yet the game, even now, is not over. China – the second-largest economy in the world, and America's most formidable rival – has been left out of this supposedly final list of tariff increases. The trade talks between the two economic giants in Stockholm are dragging on, the prohibitive mutual tariffs having been abandoned, and they may well be extended past the next deadline of 12 August. President Trump met his match in Xi Jinping, and will not be imposing any further punitive trade sanctions on China for fear of another tit-for-tat escalation. Thus far, the markets have received the latest news of tariffs with some equanimity, but a collapse in trade between the world's two greatest economies would generate the kind of turmoil Mr Trump doesn't need right now. Even assuming that the eventual trade truce with China avoids disaster, these US tariffs are, in broad terms, the highest since 1934 and the era of the notorious Smoot-Hawley Act, which helped to strangle world trade and exacerbated the Great Depression. The Trump tariffs are no less damaging to world trade, and thus to economic growth, including that of the United States. But these restrictions on trade are what Mr Trump's Maga 'base' voted for, the folk memory of the previous disastrous experiment with tariffs having faded. The president's winning slogan was 'America First', epitomising a zero-sum, nationalistic view of the world, and unfortunately, he has proved as good as his word on inauguration day: 'Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.' Words that were both misguided and economically illiterate, naturally – but a promise kept. Many of the worst fears of America's friends and allies are coming true in these early months of Mr Trump's second term. With far more preparation than took place prior to his first term (which followed an election that, reputedly, he never expected to win), the US president has pressed on with his protectionist, isolationist, natalist agenda with speed and determination, surrounded by mostly underqualified, grotesquely sycophantic cronies. The judiciary is increasingly cowed, and Congress is listless in defending the constitution. The tendency to Caesarism is apparent in everything from the theatrical executive orders to the grandiose golden remodelling of the White House, and the contempt for the chair of the US Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell – a 'moron', apparently. Mr Trump thinks he can, with a stroke of a Sharpie, abolish the birthright to citizenship enshrined in the 14th amendment, passed in 1868. His conception of 'America First' is more America Alone, yet everything he does weakens American power and prosperity. It is an inward-looking, selfish, exclusionary approach. Undoubtedly it enjoys a political constituency, but ultimately it will prove self-defeating.
Reuters
9 minutes ago
- Reuters
Court upholds Biden-era EPA rule phasing out climate-damaging refrigerant
Aug 1 (Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Friday rejected challenges by refrigerant manufacturers to a rule adopted during Democratic President Joe Biden's administration to curtail the use of a potent climate-warming gas used in refrigerators and air conditioners. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected, opens new tab arguments that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's rule governing hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) was invalid and that the agency unconstitutionally exercised legislative power by adopting it. Zhonette Brown, a lawyer for Georgia-based Choice Refrigerants at the conservative New Civil Liberties Alliance, said her client was evaluating next steps, saying the court's ruling was not consistent with the text and history of the statute at issue. A lawyer for the other company that challenged the rule, Florida-based IGas, which is partly owned by China-based Zhejiang Juhua ( opens new tab, did not respond to a request for comment. The EPA said it is reviewing the ruling. The agency in February sought unsuccessfully to have the case put on hold, citing the need for new agency leadership under Republican President Donald Trump to review the regulation. The rule was finalized in July 2023 in order to implement a provision of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, a 2020 law that calls for reducing the production and consumption of climate-damaging HFCs by 85% by 2036. To implement the law, the EPA began setting annual 'allocations' for each HFC producer and importer based on estimates of their historical market share that gradually would decline over time. Lawyers for Choice Refrigerants argued that Congress had unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the EPA to set the allowances. But U.S. Circuit Judge Florence Pan, a Biden appointee, wrote that the AIM Act does not unconstitutionally delegate legislative power to the EPA because it sufficiently constrained the agency's discretion to allocate HFC allowances. "Congress provided ample direction to guide the EPA's exercise of discretion: The Act's text, structure, and history demonstrate that Congress intended for the EPA to model its cap-and-trade program on similar programs established under the Clean Air Act, and those programs allocated allowances to market participants according to their market share," Pan wrote. The 2023 rule built on an earlier one finalized in 2021 that implemented a 10% phase-down for 2022 and 2023 and called for a further 40% reduction in the use of HFCs from 2024 to 2028. For both rules, the EPA calculated market share based on an average of a company's three highest years of HFC import data from 2011 and 2019. It opted in 2023 against including 2020 and 2021 data, saying that data might have been overly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and stockpiling of HFCs by companies anticipating the regulatory phasedown. Lawyers for IGas had argued that excluding the 2020 data was arbitrary and capricious, requiring the rule to be deemed unlawful under the Administrative Procedure Act. But the three-judge panel said the EPA reasonably concluded that the 2020 data was unrepresentative of market share and that its inclusion would disrupt the market. The case is IGas Holdings, Inc., et al v. EPA, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, No. 23-1261. For IGas: JoAnn Sandifer of Husch Blackwell For Choice Refrigerants: Zhonette Brown of New Civil Liberties Alliance For the EPA: Sarah Buckley of the U.S. Department of Justice For Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute: Elizabeth Dawson of Crowell & Moring Read more: Court skeptical of challenge to EPA phase out of climate-damaging refrigerant
The Independent
39 minutes ago
- The Independent
Musk funneled $15 million to Trump and Republicans even as they were dragging each other through the mud in online feud
Even as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk escalated their bitter feud, the Tesla billionaire funneled $15 million to Republican-affiliated political action committees, according to a new report from Politico. Federal Election Commission reports show that Musk donated $5 million to the MAGA Inc., a Trump-affiliated super PAC, a type of PAC wherein donors can give unlimited amounts of money as long as it does not officially coordinate with a campaign. Musk also contributed $5 million apiece to the Senate Leadership Fund and the Congressional Leadership Fund, super PACs affiliated by Senate and House Republican leadership, respectively. The SpaceX CEO, who also purchased Twitter and renamed it X, made the contributions on June 27, 2025, which came after Musk left the White House, where he led the Department of Government Efficiency. Initially, the two seemed to part on amicable terms. Musk spent hundreds of millions of dollars through multiple super PACs to elect Trump in the 2024 presidential election. He billed himself as the 'first buddy.' But upon his exit Musk would later go nuclear, and called Trump's 'One Big, Beautiful Bill' an ' outrageous, pork-filled ' bill. Musk would then drop an even bigger bomb, when he said 'is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!' Musk would apologize, saying he ' went too far.' Two weeks later, Musk would cut his checks to the three PACs. That did not stop Musk from continuing his attacks on the GOP. On June 30, a few days after Musk cut his checks, he threatened that any Republican who voted for the bill 'will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.' Every campaign committee, super PAC and political action commission has to file reports with the FEC to disclose how much money they raised. The three super PACs released their mid-year reports last month. It is not clear if Musk made any other contributions to other Republican PACs. Musk proposed creating a third political party in the United States with his 'America Party,' saying 'the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.' But so far, the America Party has failed to get off the ground and Musk has not yet filed paperwork to create it. Trump's election was not the only election Musk inserted himself into. He poured millions into Wisconsin's supreme court race earlier this year, wherein he cut $1 million checks to voters the weekend before the election. In the end, liberal candidate Susan Crawford would win the race overwhelmingly.
