You're listening to life kit from NPR.
Hey, everybody, it's Marielle Seguera.
The Supreme Court has decided to overturn the biden administration's student debt relief plan, which would have erased at least 10,000 and sometimes up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for tens of millions of people.
So if you have federal student loans, you might be wondering what the hell to do.
Now, NPR education correspondent Corey Corey Turner has been following this topic closely for years.
And on this episode of Life Kit, he shares some context and advice.
Hey, Corey.
Hey, Marielle.
All right, so we are recording this on Friday, the day that the Supreme Court decision on student loans came out.
Can you just explain what happened?
Yeah.
So basically this, this case, it's really two cases, all boil down to a sort of fundamental political argument about whether the executive branch, the president and his education secretary, by extension, have the power to essentially erase more than $400 billion in federal student loans.
And it's a debate because constitutionally, it's always been Congress that has the power of the purse.
That plan came directly from the president and his ed secretary.
And they argued that the authority they had to justify it came from this old law.
It was passed in the, of the 911 attacks, was called the Heroes act.
And in that law, they said the ed secretary was given pretty broad authority to waive or modify.
Those are the verbs, weird verbs, which is part of the problem here.
Waive or modify rules and provisions in the student loan program.
And in times of crisis.