People Are Losing Their Minds After The Trump Admin Said They'll Garnish Wages Over Defaulted Student Loans
In a press conference, the White House confirmed it will collect money from people who have defaulted on their student loans by withholding tax refunds, federal pensions, and wages.
BREAKING: Trump's Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt just said: 'The government can and will collect defaulted federal student loan debt by withholding tax refunds, federal pensions, and even their wages.' pic.twitter.com/RebofaQiy0
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) April 22, 2025
ABC / Via Twitter: @MorePerfectUS
The Biden Administration stopped doing this temporarily during the pandemic. A federal student loan goes into default after 270 days have passed without payment. More than five million student loan borrowers are currently in default, according to the Department of Education.
"If you take out a loan, you have to pay it back. It's very simple. President Trump will not kick the can down the road anymore," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
And the internet is livid. Many people pointed out what they see as hypocrisy. "97% of PPP loans during COVID were forgiven, totaling close to $800 billion. Regular people?: garnished wages. I hate it here," one person said.
"Garnishing wages for student loans, for up to 5.3 million people, during a housing affordability and homelessness crisis," this person pointed out.
"The Biden administration didn't need to collect student loans. The Trump administration doesn't need to either. Student debt isn't keeping the lights on at the federal government. This is just cruel and doesn't have to happen," this organization asserted.
Senator Elizabeth Warren even jumped into the conversation, saying, "This decision is all about punishing student loan borrowers. Instead of lowering costs, Donald Trump wants to take money out of your grandma's Social Security check."
"Conservatives are about to 'own the libs' so hard they are going to crash the consumer economy overnight," this person joked.
And most people were just plain pissed. "I don't want to hear any Gen Z whining. Y'all coulda voted for Kamala," this person said.
"Dear Protest Voters: They. Are. Going. To. Garnish. Your. Wages. And they have further pushed this war, costing lives. Let this serve to teach us all, protest voting DOES NOT SERVE ANYONE," this person declared.
"I have no loans but everyone needs to make a ton of fucking noise about this so they reverse it and say oops again. Like fr this will tank the economy so bad," this person pointed out.
In a statement, US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon declared, 'American taxpayers will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for irresponsible student loan policies,' she said. 'The Biden Administration misled borrowers: the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear.'
She claimed getting student loan borrowers back to repayment is what's best for their own financial health, and 'our nation's economic outlook.'
What do you think about the Trump Administration's decision? Let us know in the comments.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


New York Times
28 minutes ago
- New York Times
China's Biotech Is Cheaper and Faster
Just outside of Shanghai, in the city of Wuxi, China is building its future of medicine — a booming biotechnology hub of factories and laboratories where global pharmaceutical companies can develop and manufacture drugs faster and cheaper than anywhere else. Amid the Trump administration's tariffs on China, I figured manufacturing hubs like this one would be wracked with anxiety. But when I visited Wuxi in April, government officials insisted that its research hub was flourishing. They were proud to tell me about their superstar labs and companies that are continuing to thrive. The fact that Chinese biotechnology stocks have surged over 60 percent since January seems to bolster this claim. The city's researchers certainly seemed positioned to be busy for decades. In its quest to dethrone American dominance in biotech, China isn't necessarily trying to beat America at its own game. While the U.S. biotech industry is known for incubating cutting-edge treatments and cures, China's approach to innovation is mostly focused on speeding up manufacturing and slashing costs. The idea isn't to advance, say, breakthroughs in the gene-editing technology CRISPR; it's to make the country's research, development, testing and production of drugs and medical products hyperefficient and cheaper. As a result, China's biotech sector can deliver drugs and other medical products to customers at much cheaper prices, including inexpensive generics. These may not be world-changing cures, but they are treatments that millions of people around the world rely on every day. And as China's reach expands, the world will soon have to reckon with a new leader in biotech and decide how it wants to respond. One such company that embodies the Chinese approach to biotech is Wuxi AppTec. It's a one-stop shop for pharmaceutical research and development, streamlining everything from early-stage drug discovery to young scientist recruitment and medication production. The company, whose clients have included Chinese firms like Innovent and Jiangsu Hengrui, as well as American and European drugmakers like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca, was involved in, by one estimate, a quarter of the drugs used in the United States, including blockbuster cancer drugs. Though the Chinese government bargains hard with both foreign and domestic pharmaceutical companies to provide products at the right price in exchange for market access, the low prices that Chinese consumers pay are ultimately the result of Chinese biotech companies' ability to test and manufacture drugs at a pace far faster than their American counterparts. So far, American biotech giants don't seem to mind the competition, since their own use of companies like Wuxi AppTec allows them to dedicate more of their money to breakthrough research. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.


New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Ukrainian sniper breaks world record with 13,000-foot kill shot against Russian forces: report
A Ukrainian sniper unit on Thursday reportedly broke the world record for the longest confirmed sniper kill, eliminating Russian troops from a distance of more than 13,000 feet. The shot, fired by a Ukrainian-produced rifle and aided by artificial intelligence and drone guidance, left two Russian soldiers dead in the area of Pokrovsk, Ukraine, the Kyiv Post reported. 'The record-breaking shot was made on Aug. 14, 2025, using artificial intelligence under the guidance of [an unmanned aerial vehicle] complex with a 14.5 mm alligator rifle,' said military journalist Yuri Butusov, according to the Kyiv Post. The shooting took place amid increased Russian attacks in the area surrounding Pokrovsk, which was once a city with more than 60,000 residents, the Post reported. The previous world record belonged to a 58-year-old Ukrainian sniper who eliminated a target from a distance of around 12,400 feet, the outlet added. The record-breaking shot reportedly took place a day before President Donald Trump's closely-watched summit Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 3 A Ukrainian soldier in the sniper unit of the 108th Territorial Defense Brigade readies a rifle during training on Nov. 4, 2023. Anadolu via Getty Images 3 The previous world record was held by another Ukrainian sniper who took out a Russian soldier from nearly 2½ miles away with a high-tech rifle known as 'Horizon's Lord.' SBU 3 Ukrainian soldiers take part in a sniper shooting exercise at a training facility outside Kyiv on Nov. 21, 2023. AFP via Getty Images Putin, who spoke first in a joint press conference held by the two world leaders, described the talks as a 'constructive atmosphere of mutual respect.' Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is scheduled to meet with Trump in Washington, DC, Monday. Zelensky said in a post on X that he and Trump will 'discuss all of the details regarding ending the killing and the war.'


The Hill
an hour ago
- The Hill
Bolivia heads to the polls as its right-wing opposition eyes first victory in decades
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Bolivians headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in presidential and congressional elections that could spell the end of the Andean nation's long-dominant leftist party and see a right-wing government elected for the first time in over two decades. The election on Sunday is one of the most consequential for Bolivia in recent times — and one of the most unpredictable. Even at this late stage, a remarkable 30% or so of voters remain undecided. Polls show the two leading right-wing candidates, multimillionaire business owner Samuel Doria Medina and former President Jorge Fernando 'Tuto' Quiroga, locked in a virtual dead heat. Many undecided voters But a right-wing victory isn't assured. Many longtime voters for the governing Movement Toward Socialism, or MAS, party, now shattered by infighting, live in rural areas and tend to be undercounted in polling. With the nation's worst economic crisis in four decades leaving Bolivians waiting for hours in fuel lines, struggling to find subsidized bread and squeezed by double-digit inflation, the opposition candidates are billing the race as a chance to alter the country's destiny. 'I have rarely, if ever, seen a situational tinderbox with as many sparks ready to ignite,' Daniel Lansberg-Rodriguez, founding partner of Aurora Macro Strategies, a New York-based advisory firm, writes in a memo. Breaking the MAS party's monopoly on political power, he adds, pushes 'the country into uncharted political waters amid rising polarization, severe economic fragility and a widening rural–urban divide.' Bolivia could follow rightward trend The outcome will determine whether Bolivia — a nation of about 12 million people with the largest lithium reserves on Earth and crucial deposits of rare earth minerals — follows a growing trend in Latin America, where right-wing leaders like Argentina's libertarian Javier Milei, Ecuador's strongman Daniel Noboa and El Salvador's conservative populist Nayib Bukele have surged in popularity. A right-wing government in Bolivia could trigger a major geopolitical realignment for a country now allied with Venezuela's socialist-inspired government and world powers such as China, Russia and Iran. Conservative candidates vow to restore US relations Doria Medina and Quiroga have praised the Trump administration and vowed to restore ties with the United States — ruptured in 2008 when charismatic, long-serving former President Evo Morales expelled the American ambassador. The right-wing front-runners also have expressed interest in doing business with Israel, which has no diplomatic relations with Bolivia, and called for foreign private companies to invest in the country and develop its rich natural resources. After storming to office in 2006 at the start of the commodities boom, Morales, Bolivia's first Indigenous president, nationalized the nation's oil and gas industry, using the lush profits to reduce poverty, expand infrastructure and improve the lives of the rural poor. After three consecutive presidential terms, as well as a contentious bid for an unprecedented fourth in 2019 that set off popular unrest and led to his ouster, Morales has been barred from this race by Bolivia's constitutional court. His ally-turned-rival, President Luis Arce, withdrew his candidacy for the MAS on account of his plummeting popularity and nominated his senior minister, Eduardo del Castillo. As the party splintered, Andrónico Rodríguez, the 36-year-old president of the senate who hails from the same union of coca farmers as Morales, launched his bid. Ex-president Morales urges supports to deface ballots Rather than back the candidate widely considered his heir, Morales, holed up in his tropical stronghold and evading an arrest warrant on charges related to his relationship with a 15-year-old girl, has urged his supporters to deface their ballots or leave them blank. Voting is mandatory in Bolivia, where some 7.9 million Bolivians are eligible to vote. Doria Medina and Quiroga, familiar faces in Bolivian politics who both served in past neoliberal governments and have run for president three times before, have struggled to stir up interest as voter angst runs high. 'There's enthusiasm for change but no enthusiasm for the candidates,' said Eddy Abasto, 44, a Tupperware vendor in Bolivia's capital of La Paz torn between voting for Doria Medina and Quiroga. 'It's always the same, those in power live happily spending the country's money, and we suffer.' Conservative candidates say austerity needed Doria Medina and Quiroga have warned of the need for a painful fiscal adjustment, including the elimination of Bolivia's generous food and fuel subsidies, to save the nation from insolvency. Some analysts caution this risks sparking social unrest. 'A victory for either right-wing candidate could have grave repercussions for Bolivia's Indigenous and impoverished communities,' said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network, a Bolivian research group. 'Both candidates could bolster security forces and right-wing para-state groups, paving the way for violent crackdowns on protests expected to erupt over the foreign exploitation of lithium and drastic austerity measures.' All 130 seats in Bolivia's Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Parliament, are up for grabs, along with 36 in the Senate, the upper house. If, as is widely expected, no one receives more than 50% of the vote, or 40% of the vote with a lead of 10 percentage points, the top two candidates will compete in a runoff on Oct. 19 for the first time since Bolivia's 1982 return to democracy.