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Student loan forgiveness chances lost to those who refinance: CFPB

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Ivan Pantic | E+ | Getty Images

With the Federal Reserve’s recent moves to lower interest rates — and further cuts on the horizon — some federal student loan borrowers are wondering if now is a good time to refinance.

“We are already seeing more borrowers tempted to refinance their federal loans,” said Betsy Mayotte, president of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors.

Refinancing your federal student loans turns them into a private student loan and transfers the debt from the government to a private company. Borrowers usually refinance in search of a lower interest rate.

But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has new warnings about refinancing student debt.

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In a report published Monday, the CFPB said that private lenders use “deceptive” practices in their marketing and disclosure materials, misleading student borrowers about a key pitfall of refinancing: Those who do so lose access to federal student loan forgiveness options.

“Companies break the law when they mislead student borrowers about their protections or deny borrowers their rightful benefits,” said CFPB Director Rohit Chopra. “Student loan companies should not profit by violating the law.”

Federal forgiveness chances dashed with refinancing

Some private lenders give the wrong impression “that refinancing federal loans might not result in forfeiting access to federal forgiveness programs, when, in fact, it was a certainty,” the CFPB report says.

The federal government offers a range of student debt forgiveness programs, including Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Teacher Loan Forgiveness.

PSLF allows certain not-for-profit and government employees to have their federal student loans cleared after 10 years of on-time payments. Under TLF, those who teach full-time for five consecutive academic years in a low-income school or educational service agency can be eligible for loan forgiveness of up to $17,500. These options are not available to private student loan borrowers.

Borrowers refinancing would also not be eligible for one-off forgiveness efforts like President Joe Biden’s Plan B.

Private student loan borrowers who are struggling to pay their bills don’t have a right to an income-driven repayment plan, either.

IDR plans allow federal student borrowers to pay just a share of their discretionary income toward their debt each month. The plans also lead to debt forgiveness after a certain period.

Borrowers who refinance their student loans lose access to these federal relief options, the CFPB said.

And this has cost borrowers.

“The lenders profited from borrowers paying the full amount of their loans, when the borrowers otherwise potentially could have had some or all of those loans forgiven,” the bureau wrote in its report.

Lenders do inform borrowers of what benefits they may give up by making moves like refinancing, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, a trade group for student loan servicers.

Buchanan said the government’s changing promises around student loan forgiveness has led to a lack of clarity. (Republican-led legal challenges have stymied the Biden administration’s efforts to deliver wide-scale student loan forgiveness to borrowers.)

“That volatility and confusion is something the Bureau needs to take up with the Department of Education,” Buchanan said.

But the federal government’s long-standing student loan forgiveness programs and other relief measures are reasons alone to think twice before refinancing, Mayotte said.

“We almost always very strongly recommend against it,” she said.

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Republicans more likely to use it

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota), from left, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) and Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) exit the West Wing of the White House on June 4, 2025. The Senate has begun deliberations over President Donald Trump’s massive “Big Beautiful Bill” that narrowly passed the House on May 22, with several Republican senators expressing concerns over its cost as well as cuts to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Republicans on Capitol Hill are weighing legislation that’s estimated to cut billions of dollars of funding for the Affordable Care Act and cause millions of people to lose their health insurance. Many of their constituents may not be happy about it, polling suggests.

Nearly half, 45%, of adults enrolled in a health plan offered through the ACA insurance marketplace identify as Republicans, according to a new survey by KFF, a nonpartisan group that conducts health policy research.

(More than three-quarters of those Republican ACA users identify as “MAGA” Republicans. Those MAGA Republicans represent 31% of ACA purchasers overall.)

Meanwhile, 35% of Democrats get their health insurance through the ACA, KFF found.

Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a multitrillion-dollar tax and spending package in May estimated to cut about $900 billion from health programs like Medicaid and the ACA, which is also known as Obamacare.

Senate Republicans are now considering the measure, which contains many of President Donald Trump’s domestic policy priorities. Republicans are trying to pass the megabill by the Fourth of July.

If the GOP enacts the legislation as written and doesn’t extend tax credits that lower monthly ACA health premiums, about 15 million people would lose health insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“A large constituency of Republicans using the programs are potentially facing cuts,” said Audrey Kearney, a senior survey analyst for KFF’s public opinion and survey research program.

The survey was conducted May 5 to 26 among a nationally representative sample of 2,539 U.S. adults, including 247 who have purchased their own health coverage.

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Many red-leaning states didn’t expand Medicaid

The Affordable Care Act also expanded Medicaid coverage to more households.

However, 10 states haven’t adopted the expansion: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. All voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Republicans are “more likely to live in nonexpansion states,” John Graves, a professor of health policy and medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, wrote in an e-mail.

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Here’s why this matters for ACA enrollment: “In the non-expansion states, there’s a wider population eligible for the tax credits,” said Carolyn McClanahan, a physician and certified financial planner based in Jacksonville, Florida. She’s a member of the CNBC Financial Advisor Council.

In states that expanded Medicaid, nearly all adults with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line (about $22,000 for a one-person household in 2025) are eligible for Medicaid.

In states that didn’t expand Medicaid, a broader population is eligible for subsidies to make ACA health plans less expensive, Graves said. The subsidized exchanges are available for people between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty line, among others.

“Given the heavy subsidies in that income range, and large amount of otherwise uninsured people, that would suggest more GOP-identifying people with low incomes would go the (subsidized) exchange route,” Graves wrote.

The Affordable Care Act has been vilified by Republicans since passage during President Barack Obama’s tenure. However, provisions within the law — such as creation of the ACA marketplaces, coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and the ability to stay on parents’ health plan until age 26 — have broad appeal, said KFF’s Kearney.

As of 2023, nearly 1 in 7 U.S. residents had enrolled in an ACA marketplace plan at some point since 2014, the year in which states rolled out marketplace plans, according to a 2024 report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

“Our polling going back years has shown that when you ask about favorability of the ACA itself, Republicans view it as pretty unfavorable,” she said. “However, the actual provisions in it are very popular, and are popular among Republicans.”

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What Trump, Harvard battle over international student visas may cost

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Rep. Khanna on foreign student ban: International students contribute $44B to the American economy

The escalating battle between the Trump administration and Harvard University over international student visas could come at a high economic cost.

Altogether, international students who studied in the U.S. contributed $43.8 billion to the U.S. economy in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the most recent data by NAFSA: Association of International Educators. In Massachusetts, alone, international students contributed nearly $4 billion and supported more than 35,000 jobs.

At Harvard, the share of international students is disproportionately high compared to most other colleges and universities. International students accounted for 27% of Harvard’s total enrollment in the 2024-25 academic year, up from 22.5% a decade earlier.

With more than 6,000 international students, Harvard supports over 1,125 local jobs and contributes $180 million to the greater Boston economy, largely through student spending, according to a new analysis by Implan, an economic software and analysis company.

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A ban on international enrollment could destabilize a vital revenue stream, said Bjorn Markeson, an economist at Implan.

“Because Harvard has a very high international student population, it’s going to have more of that impact,” Markeson said. “The economy is a network structure, so dollars flow through. They don’t just stay in one place — and when something hits Boston, it affects New England as a whole.”

A Harvard University student walks through Harvard’s campus. 

Erin Clark | Boston Globe | Getty Images

Schools have increasingly sought out international students “because they compliment the student body, and that benefits all students,” said Robert Franek, The Princeton Review’s editor-in-chief.

But foreign students also typically pay full tuition, which makes international enrollment an important source of revenue for Harvard and many colleges and universities in the U.S., according to Franek. 

Where the Trump, Harvard battle stands

For now, the fate of international enrollment at Harvard and elsewhere is still up in the air.

Tensions between the federal government and the Ivy League university have continued to escalate after Harvard in April refused to meet a set of demands issued by the Trump administration’s Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

In May, President Donald Trump attempted to ban Harvard from enrolling international students, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order on Friday “to maintain the status quo.”

U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said the restraining order would remain in effect until June 20. Meanwhile, Harvard President Alan Garber said that “contingency plans are being developed to ensure that international students and scholars can continue to pursue their work at Harvard this summer and through the coming academic year.”

In an interview with NBC News on Friday, U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said Harvard needs to do more to combat antisemitism on campus and screen admissions of foreign students.

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Supreme Court gives DOGE access to personal Social Security data

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A sign in front of the entrance of the Security Administration’s main campus on March 19, 2025 in Woodlawn, Maryland. 

Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Department of Government Efficiency access to Social Security Administration data that includes sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.

The decision comes as the federal government sought a stay, or temporary suspension, after a federal judge blocked DOGE’s access to that data in April. The nation’s highest court granted an emergency application from the Trump administration to lift that injunction; the case is expected to proceed in lower courts.

In its decision, the Supreme Court concluded the Social Security Administration may give DOGE access to agency records while the case plays out “in order for those members to do their work.”

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Both the White House and the Social Security Administration called the Supreme Court decision a victory. In a statement, White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston said it will allow the Trump administration to “carry out commonsense efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and modernize government information systems.”

Likewise, Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano in a statement said the agency “will continue driving forward modernization efforts, streamlining government systems, and ensuring improved service and outcomes for our beneficiaries.”

Yet others expressed grave concern in reaction to the decision, including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, advocacy groups and plaintiffs in the case against DOGE and the Social Security Administration.

“This is a sad day for our democracy and a scary day for millions of people,” said the coalition of plaintiffs including American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; the American Federation of Teachers; and the Alliance for Retired Americans, who are represented by Democracy Forward.

“This ruling will enable President Trump and DOGE’s affiliates to steal Americans’ private and personal data,” they said, while vowing to “use every legal tool at our disposal” to prevent the misuse of public data as the case moves forward.

Millions of Americans’ sensitive data at stake 

The dispute focuses on how much access DOGE should have to Americans’ personal data.

The plaintiffs filed an initial complaint in early March, stating the Social Security Administration had “abandoned its commitment to maintaining the privacy” of the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans under DOGE’s influence.

The Social Security Administration collects and stores some of the “most sensitive” personally identifiable information of millions of Americans, ranging from seniors to adults to children, the complaint notes.

When applying for a Social Security number, the agency requires the disclosure of place and date of birth, citizenship, ethnicity, race, sex, phone number and mailing address. It also requires parents’ names and Social Security numbers.

But the agency is also privy to other personal data, including personal health information, the complaint notes. That includes:

  • driver’s license and identification information
  • bank and credit cards
  • birth and marriage certificates
  • pension information
  • home and work addresses
  • school records
  • immigration and naturalization records
  • family court records
  • employment and employer records
  • psychological and psychiatric health records
  • hospitalization records
  • addiction treatment records
  • records for HIV/AIDS tests

The Social Security Administration also collects tax information, including total earnings, Social Security and Medicare wages and annual employee withholdings.

What you need to know about Social Security

DOGE has not only accessed the agency’s sensitive and protected information; it has also publicly shared it, according to the complaint. The actions of the defendants, including the Social Security Administration, DOGE and leaders including former head Elon Musk, have deprived Americans of privacy protections guaranteed by federal law and made their personal information vulnerable, the complaint alleges.

In her dissent, Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, notes that records show “DOGE received far broader data access” than the Social Security Administration usually allows in fraud, waste and abuse investigations. Typically, those investigations start with high level, anonymized data, with more access to more detailed information only granted as necessary.

Justice Elena Kagan also dissented in the 6-3 decision.

“The government wants to give DOGE unfettered access to this personal, non-anonymized information right now – before the courts have time to assess whether DOGE’s access is lawful,” Justice Jackson wrote.

While litigation is pending, the government has asked to temporarily suspend the lower court’s temporary limitations on DOGE’s access to Social Security data, she noted.

“But the government fails to substantiate its stay request by showing that it or the public will suffer irreparable harm absent the court’s intervention,” Justice Jackson wrote.

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