The Ladder Pulled Up: How Trump Ended the American Promise of College
In one summer, the administration eliminated the most affordable student loan plan in U.S. history, gutted income-driven repayment, capped federal borrowing, and slashed food, housing and health aid for the working poor — all while a war of choice with Iran and unlawful tariffs punished the same families at the pump, in the grocery aisle, and in the doctor’s office.
For sixty years, the federal government told poor and working-class Americans a simple thing: work hard, borrow if you have to, and college will pay you back. That promise — the ladder that lifted a generation of first-in-family students into the middle class — has now been dismantled with an efficiency that would be impressive if it were not so cruel. In a span of thirteen months, President Trump signed a law eliminating the most affordable student loan repayment plan in American history, capped federal borrowing so tightly that graduate and professional education is being priced out of reach for anyone without family money, ordered millions of struggling borrowers off pause and back into forbearance-turned-interest, and — while he did it — pushed a war of choice with Iran, imposed tariffs the Supreme Court has since ruled illegal, and gutted the food, housing and health programs the same families rely on to survive the affordability crisis he keeps making worse.
This is not a story about one policy. It is a story about a governing philosophy — one that treats the poor as a nuisance to be managed and the young as debtors to be disciplined, while enriching the president’s political allies and pursuing personal grievances abroad. It is a story that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rep. Jamie Raskin, and the House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries have described in increasingly stark constitutional terms. And it is a story that ends, unavoidably, at the question the Framers wrote the 25th Amendment to answer: what does a republic do when the person occupying the presidency is manifestly no longer capable of executing its duties?
I. The End of Affordable Repayment
The Saving on a Valuable Education plan — SAVE — was the most generous income-driven repayment plan the Department of Education had ever built. Enacted by the Biden administration in 2023, it capped monthly payments for the working poor at a level that reduced 4.6 million of its 7 million-plus enrollees’ bills to $0 a month, and shortened the timeline to forgiveness for borrowers who paid faithfully for decades. It was blocked in court in the summer of 2024 by a coalition of Republican-led states led by Missouri. It has been in litigation, and its borrowers in forbearance, ever since.
In September 2025, the Trump Department of Education announced a proposed settlement with Missouri that would terminate SAVE outright, deny all pending applications, and move every enrolled borrower into a more expensive plan. Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent described the settlement as a corrective to a program that had “unfairly shifted student loan debt onto American taxpayers.” A federal judge rejected that accelerated settlement in February 2026, but the reprieve was temporary: on March 30, the department announced that borrowers have 90 days beginning July 1, 2026 to leave SAVE and select another repayment plan. Interest, which had been paused, resumed accruing in August 2025.
The larger dismantling was written into the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) that Trump signed on July 4, 2025. Beginning July 1, 2026, most existing income-driven repayment plans — SAVE, PAYE, and Income-Contingent Repayment — are phased out entirely. New borrowers get exactly two choices: a modified Standard plan or a new “Repayment Assistance Plan” that stretches to 360 monthly payments — thirty years. Grad PLUS loans are eliminated for new graduate borrowers. Parent PLUS loans lose access to income-driven repayment. Federal borrowing itself is now capped so tightly — $20,500 a year and $100,000 lifetime for graduate students — that medical school, law school, and most doctoral programs will now depend on the private lending market for the shortfall.
OBBBA also does something almost invisible but deeply cruel: after December 31, 2025, any student loan debt that is forgiven becomes taxable income. The teacher who spent ten years grinding through Public Service Loan Forgiveness, the disabled borrower whose loan is discharged, the borrower who reaches the end of a thirty-year repayment — every one of them will now receive a tax bill for their “forgiven” debt, potentially in the tens of thousands of dollars.
SAVE Borrowers Affected
Americans enrolled in SAVE will be forced out of the plan by the 90-day window starting July 1, 2026, per the Education Department’s own guidance.
Zero-Dollar Payments Lost
Enrollees whose monthly bill was reduced to $0 will now face payments under a more expensive plan, according to Protect Borrowers.
Grad PLUS Eliminated
New lifetime borrowing cap for graduate students, with Grad PLUS phased out entirely July 1, 2026.
Forgiveness Now Taxable
All federal student loan forgiveness becomes fully taxable after Dec. 31, 2025, under OBBBA — turning relief into a tax bill.
“This decision formally ends the SAVE injunction that has forced over 7 million SAVE borrowers into economic limbo — pushing meaningful debt relief and affordable monthly payments out of reach.”
— Sens. Whitehouse, Warren, Kaine, Merkley & colleagues, letter to Sec. McMahon, March 4, 2026
II. The Assault on Access — Pell, TRIO, Work-Study
SAVE is only the most visible piece. Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget proposed a 15.3 percent cut to the Department of Education as part of what Secretary Linda McMahon openly called an agency “responsibly winding down.” Buried in those numbers was a proposal to reduce the maximum Pell Grant award by 23 percent — from $7,395 to $5,710 — and to slash Federal Work-Study by 80 percent, requiring employers to cover 75 percent of student wages themselves. The administration also proposed eliminating TRIO, GEAR UP, and the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant — three of the oldest programs in the federal aid system, together serving 1.45 million low-income students from middle school through college.
Congress rejected most of those cuts, opting instead to hold Pell at $7,395 through 2026-27 and to keep TRIO, FSEOG, and GEAR UP funded. But the administration promptly returned with a fiscal 2027 budget proposing to cut the department by another 3 percent and to defund every grant program that supports minority-serving institutions, on the theory — extraordinary to hear from a federal government — that such programs are “unconstitutional.” The Office for Civil Rights, which enforces disability access and anti-discrimination law in the nation’s schools, would see its budget cut by 35 percent and its staff halved.
The direction is what matters. Every year, the president submits a budget request that names, in dollar terms, what he believes the government should stop doing. Every year, this president submits a budget that would eliminate the machinery by which the poor go to college.
III. The Crisis Behind the Crisis — War, Tariffs, and Inflation
To understand why the timing of these cuts is so morally indefensible, one has to name what else is happening to the same families. On February 28, 2026, without consulting Congress and without an imminent threat to the United States, Trump joined Israel in a “massive and ongoing” military operation against Iran. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the strikes what they were — an act of war launched without the congressional authorization the Constitution demands. Sen. Adam Schiff called the strike “unconstitutional.” The Brennan Center wrote that Trump had acted “unilaterally and lawlessly — without congressional authorization and absent any imminent threat.” Michael Glennon, a professor of constitutional and international law at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, told NBC News that Trump’s War Powers argument “is a stretch.”
The war closed the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude briefly spiked to $119.50 per barrel — the highest since Russia invaded Ukraine — and gasoline in the United States rose 22 percent in a month. Sen. Jack Reed’s office cited Brown University research estimating that Trump’s war has cost American consumers $25.7 billion in extra energy burden. National average gas prices in mid-2026 have been running around $4.11 per gallon, roughly sixty cents higher than they were when Trump took office and promised to lower them. Household electricity prices in the first five months of 2026 ran about 12 percent higher than the same period in 2024.
The tariff campaign has been just as costly and, as the courts have now ruled, illegal. On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court in Learning Resources v. Trump held 6-3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to impose tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Framers “gave Congress alone… access to the pockets of the people.” The Tax Foundation calculated that Trump’s tariffs constituted the largest U.S. tax increase as a percentage of GDP in more than 30 years, amounting to roughly $1,300 per household in 2026 alone. The Joint Economic Committee found that following the steel and copper tariffs, copper products rose 25 percent and steel mill products 21 percent in a single year — a direct, measurable pressure on housing affordability.
And still, the same law that stripped SAVE from working-class borrowers stripped much else besides. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that OBBBA will cut federal Medicaid and CHIP spending by $1.02 trillion and eliminate at least 10.5 million people from those programs by 2034. The American Medical Association estimated 11.8 million losing health coverage overall. Between February 2025 and February 2026, more than 4 million Americans lost SNAP benefits. Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget also proposed a 44 percent cut to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including a 43 percent cut to federal rental assistance upon which more than 10 million Americans — the vast majority seniors, people with disabilities, and children — rely.
Thirteen Months, One Direction
Trump signs One Big Beautiful Bill Act — the largest cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and federal student aid in a generation.
Interest resumes accruing for the 7.5 million borrowers stuck in SAVE forbearance — while the plan remains formally blocked in court.
Supreme Court rules Trump’s IEEPA tariffs unlawful in Learning Resources v. Trump, 6-3.
Trump joins Israel in bombing Iran without congressional authorization. Strait of Hormuz closes; oil hits $119.50.
Education Department announces the 90-day window to leave SAVE, beginning July 1, 2026.
Rep. Jamie Raskin demands White House physician conduct a comprehensive cognitive evaluation of the president.
Raskin introduces the 25th Amendment Commission bill with 50 Democratic co-sponsors.
Grad PLUS eliminated; IDR plans begin phasing out; new federal borrowing caps take effect for new loans.
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IV. What Congress and the Courts Have Actually Done
The picture is uneven. In one arena — the courts — the checks have partially held. Federal judges in the Court of International Trade, the U.S. District Court for D.C., and the Federal Circuit each ruled Trump’s IEEPA tariffs unlawful; the Supreme Court affirmed. New York Attorney General Letitia James, who led a coalition of twelve state attorneys general in the tariff challenge, called the ruling “a critical victory for the rule of law.” In the SAVE litigation, the district court refused to sign off on Trump’s accelerated settlement to end the plan.
In Congress, the record is starker. Republicans control both chambers. They passed OBBBA on a near party-line vote. They have not scheduled a vote to invoke the War Powers Resolution and end the Iran conflict, despite the fact that Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie — a Democrat and a Republican — filed a War Powers Resolution demanding it. When the annual appropriations process came around, Republican appropriators broke with the White House on the most extreme cuts, restoring Pell to $7,395 and rejecting the 44 percent HUD cut. But this is grading a hurricane on the fact that some houses survived.
Democrats have introduced the countervailing agenda. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal have long championed the College for All Act. Sen. Warren has pushed for expanded, not eliminated, income-driven repayment. Reps. Bobby Scott and members of the House Education and Workforce Committee have offered legislation to double the Pell Grant. Every one of those bills is stalled in a Republican-controlled Congress that has decided, as its governing act of the term, to eliminate the very programs those bills would expand.
“For four years, the Biden Administration sought to unlawfully shift student loan debt onto American taxpayers… The Trump Administration is righting this wrong.”
— Nicholas Kent, Trump Undersecretary of Education, announcing the elimination of SAVE
V. Which Party Believes in Education, and Which Does Not
It is fashionable, in polite political commentary, to insist that “both parties” bear responsibility for whatever crisis is currently on the front page. On this issue, that framing is a lie by omission. The record is not ambiguous. It was the Biden administration that built SAVE. It was the Trump administration that destroyed it. It was Democrats — Sanders, Jayapal, Scott, Warren — who introduced legislation to double the Pell Grant and make community college tuition-free. It was Trump who proposed cutting Pell by 23 percent, and Republican leadership of the House Education and Workforce Committee that described his budget as a “blueprint” they were eager to work with.
It was Democrats — Whitehouse, Warren, Kaine, Merkley — who wrote to Secretary McMahon demanding the SAVE benefits and cancellation the courts have said borrowers are legally entitled to. It was Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi who demanded USDA reinstate the Household Food Security Report after the Trump administration cancelled it — an act of erasure that ensured no one could measure the hunger the administration’s SNAP cuts were causing. It was Rep. Dan Goldman who convened community groups in New York to highlight what tariffs, SNAP cuts, and childcare cuts were doing to working families.
The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators — a professional organization, not a partisan one — noted in response to Trump’s budget that the Pell Grant “has historically seen broad bipartisan support” through “politically polarizing times.” The administration’s proposed elimination of Pell’s “complementary programs” would, NASFAA wrote, “undo decades of commitment to the promise of the Higher Education Act.” That is the actual record. One party defends the ladder. One party is sawing through it.
VI. What the Poor Can Expect Next
The near-term forecast for the working poor and lower middle class is bleak, and it is bleak by design. Borrowers currently in SAVE forbearance will begin owing again, on plans that are more expensive, in an economy where food prices are up, gas prices are up, and rents are pressured by tariff-inflated building material costs. Roughly 4.3 million people have already lost SNAP; more are set to lose it as states implement OBBBA’s stricter work requirements. The Congressional Budget Office projects 11.8 million losing Medicaid over the decade. HUD estimates its Continuum of Care changes could take housing assistance from more than 170,000 formerly homeless people in 2026 alone.
Students entering college in fall 2026 will confront a federal aid system in which Grad PLUS has ended, federal borrowing is hard-capped below the cost of most professional programs, income-driven repayment options have been reduced to two, and any future forgiveness they earn will arrive with a tax bill. First-in-family students — the exact population TRIO and GEAR UP were designed to reach — will face an administration that has repeatedly tried to defund the programs that recruit and support them.
And on the macro side: the war continues. The Strait of Hormuz remains contested. The Supreme Court has struck down the IEEPA tariffs, but the Trump administration has already begun looking for alternate legal theories, including keeping some tariffs in place while it litigates. Egg prices have come down; grocery prices overall have not. In August 2026, more than half of Americans cited grocery costs as a major source of stress. This is the economy the president promised to fix, delivered instead as an engineered squeeze on everyone who works for a living.
The 25th Amendment Was Written for Moments Exactly Like This One
Section 4 of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, ratified in 1967, provides that when “the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide” transmit to Congress that the President “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office,” the Vice President immediately assumes those powers as Acting President. It was written by lawmakers who had lived through the Kennedy assassination and understood, plainly, that the nation cannot afford a period in which the presidency is occupied but not functioning.
The mechanism the Framers of the amendment envisioned has never been fully constituted. Congress has never established the “other body” the amendment contemplates — until now. On April 14, 2026, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, introduced legislation with fifty Democratic co-sponsors to establish a Commission on Presidential Capacity to Discharge the Powers and Duties of Office: seventeen members, including physicians, psychiatrists, and former executive branch officials, empowered to conduct a formal medical examination and report to Congress. Four days earlier, Raskin had written to White House Physician Capt. Sean Barbabella demanding a comprehensive cognitive and neurological evaluation of the president and full public disclosure of the findings.
The legal argument is not a partisan one. The Constitution vests Congress with the authority to create a body that guarantees the continuity of government by responding to presidential incapacity. Raskin has cited, as evidence of urgency, the president’s recent public statements — including social media posts about Iran that experts have described as “consistent with dementia and cognitive decline” — as well as the initiation of a war without congressional authorization, the wholesale attacks on NATO allies including Denmark and Canada, and the pursuit of tariffs the Supreme Court has now ruled unlawful.
The Named Lawmakers Making the Case
The push is not confined to Raskin. Sen. Adam Schiff called the Iran strikes “unconstitutional.” Leader Jeffries demanded the administration “explain itself to the American people.” More than seventy House Democrats have called for the president’s removal following his April threat that a “whole civilization will die” if Iran did not accept his terms. Sens. Whitehouse, Warren, Kaine, and Merkley have led the demand for accountability on the SAVE cancellation.
The Practical Barriers — and Why They Don’t Negate the Case
Invoking Section 4 requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet, or the body Congress establishes, to act. Vice President Vance has shown no intention of doing so. Republican leadership will not schedule the Raskin bill for a vote. As Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) put it, in his party’s characteristic register, “The TRUE madness is calling for the 25th to be used.” The path is closed for now.
But the constitutional case does not depend on political feasibility. The 25th Amendment exists precisely to be available when the political system is too paralyzed to protect the country from a president incapable of protecting it. Congress has a duty — a “solemn duty,” in Raskin’s phrase — to at minimum stand up the body the amendment contemplates, so that when the moment comes, the Republic is not scrambling to build a mechanism it should have built decades ago. The initiation of a war without authorization, the tariffs ruled unlawful by six Supreme Court justices, the erratic public rhetoric, and the systematic destruction of programs on which tens of millions of Americans depend — these are not the acts of a presidency operating within any recognizable understanding of the office. They are the reasons the amendment was written.
Editorial Conclusion
The story of the last year is not that Donald Trump made a series of policy choices with which reasonable people can disagree. It is that a presidency operating outside of constitutional authorization has, in one continuous motion, waged an unauthorized war, imposed unlawful tariffs, dismantled the affordability programs the working poor depend upon, and pulled up the ladder of higher education behind him.
The dismantling of SAVE is not a technical adjustment to a repayment plan. It is a moral statement — that this administration believes college access for the poor was a mistake, and that the correction is to make repayment more expensive, borrowing more constrained, forgiveness more taxable, and the entire architecture of opportunity smaller. That belief is inseparable from every other choice this president has made.
There is a constitutional answer to a presidency that no longer functions within the law. Congress must at minimum stand up the body the 25th Amendment contemplates. The courts must continue to hold. And the American public, in the midterms and after, must speak with a clarity the Framers would recognize: a republic does not survive by pretending that lawlessness is normal. It survives by naming it.
Sources & References
- CNBC — More than 7 million student loan borrowers face deadline to leave SAVE plan (March 30, 2026)
- NBC News — Trump administration announces deal to end SAVE
- CBS News — Trump administration moves to end SAVE plan for millions of borrowers
- Sen. Whitehouse — Whitehouse, Warren, Kaine, Merkley demand answers on SAVE termination
- Sen. Merkley — Senate letter to Secretary McMahon on SAVE (March 4, 2026)
- NerdWallet — Trump and student loans: what’s happening with SAVE, loan limits & new repayment plans
- Yahoo Finance — 10 ways the One Big Beautiful Bill Act affects student loans
- Hunton — The Big Beautiful Bill and Higher Education
- Higher Ed Dive — Trump’s FY26 budget plan slashes Education Department programs
- Higher Ed Dive — Congress moves to reject Trump plan to slash Education Department funding
- Daily Pennsylvanian — Trump Education Department financial aid cuts detailed
- Inside Higher Ed — 5 things to know about Trump’s latest budget proposal
- NBC News — Supreme Court strikes down most of Trump’s tariffs
- Tax Foundation — Supreme Court Trump Tariffs Ruling: Analysis
- Brennan Center — Trump’s Iran strikes are unconstitutional
- Sen. Schiff — Statement on Trump’s unconstitutional decision to attack Iran
- Rep. Jeffries — Leader Jeffries statement on Trump administration strikes on Iran
- Rep. Raskin — Raskin introduces 25th Amendment Commission legislation
- Rep. Raskin — Raskin demands cognitive evaluation of the president
- Common Dreams — Raskin bill would create commission to examine president’s fitness
- Sen. Reed — Studies show Trump policies causing gas prices to surge
- Center for American Progress — How the Trump administration could lower energy prices — and what it is doing instead
- JEC Democrats — Trump tariffs and economic uncertainty exacerbate U.S. housing crisis
- Stateline — More Americans are hungry in the face of federal cuts
- Center for American Progress — The truth about the OBBBA’s cuts to Medicaid and Medicare
- NLIHC — Trump administration’s budget foreshadows massive HUD cuts
- Rep. Krishnamoorthi — Krishnamoorthi demands USDA reinstate Household Food Security Report
- Atlantic Council — Trump’s quest for Greenland could be NATO’s darkest hour
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