The U.S. economy may be holding up better than expected, but Americans are growing more pessimistic about their personal finances.
Roughly 48% of Americans said their financial situation was worse in May than a year ago, the highest share since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Survey of Consumer Expectations.
Consumers are also less optimistic about the future. The share of households expecting their finances to improve over the next year, relative to those expecting them to worsen, fell to its lowest level since October 2022, the New York Fed said.
The findings come amid an inflation spike driven by the Iran war,
which has sent oil and gas prices soaring. The May Consumer Price
Index, set to be released on Wednesday, is expected to show that the
annual pace of inflation accelerated to 4.2% last month, according to
financial data firm FactSet. That would mark the highest level in three
years.
The survey also found growing public anxiety about the state of the labor market. About 15% of Americans said they believe they could lose their jobs within the next year, 0.5 percentage points above the series' 12-month average. Meanwhile, confidence in finding a new job fell to its lowest level since December 2025.
Americans are sick of this economy, this Chump economy, one he created with his tariffs and his war of choice. Alicia Wallace (CNN) notes:
The share of Americans who said their financial situation in May was “somewhat worse off” or “much worse off” than a year ago was the largest since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s latest monthly survey of US consumers, a closely watched gauge of economic perceptions and expectations.
The May Survey of Consumer Expectations also showed that the share of Americans who thought their finances would be “somewhat better off” or “much better off” shrank for the fifth month in a row to hit a level not seen since October 2022.
The
monthly New York Fed surveys don’t include details or commentary behind
the data; however, the downbeat household finance perceptions come at a
time when a US-Israeli war against Iran is driving up costs –
particularly for gas and some food – and exacerbating affordability
concerns while driving overall sentiment to a record low.
The May survey also showed that Americans’ year-ahead inflation expectations remained elevated at 3.5% but had eased from the one-year high of 3.6% hit in April.
Sharply rising gas prices have sent inflation considerably higher in recent months. The Consumer Price Index, the most widely used inflation gauge, started the year at 2.4% and has risen to 3.8% as of April, erasing wage gains in the process.
And businesses can't handle it any more than the consumers can. Jessica Wong (MONEYWISE) points out:
Texas BBQ joints are getting smoked by skyrocketing beef prices, with some saying the iconic Texas brisket boom could be headed for a painful bust — forcing owners to consider raising prices, changing menus or even shutting down.
“This is as bad as it gets,” Houston pitmaster Russell Roegels told The Washington Post. (1)“Everybody’s at risk these days. You’re one bad week from closing.”
Roegels, owner of Roegels Barbecue Co., says in the past year, the wholesale price he pays for brisket has shot up by 28% to $5.56 per pound. He recently raised his menu prices for brisket by 6% to $35 per pound, but fears that could drive customers away.
And he’s not the only one who is worried. The meat-price crisis has already pushed several Texas barbecue spots out of business, including Brett’s BBQ Shop, Kirby’s BBQ, Sabar BBQ and Wright on Taco & BBQ.
In the face of all of this, Chump and his administration continue to lie about the economy. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent tried lying to the Senate Finance Committee yesterday. Jing Pan (MONEYWISE) reports:
During a tense exchange at a Senate Finance Committee hearing (1), Sen. Maggie Hassan asked Bessent whether he thinks about the financial situation of ordinary Americans, after President Donald Trump previously said (2), “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.”
Bessent pushed back, saying the president’s remarks had been taken out of context and insisting that the administration thinks about household costs “every day.”
But when Hassan pressed him on the rising gas, grocery and utility bills Americans are paying, Bessent made a claim that immediately drew scrutiny.
“Well, Senator, I’m going to have to disagree with you on some of that, because groceries are going down,” Bessent said. He then held up a printout of a Trump social media post (3) touting the claim that “TRUMP’S MAKING FOOD AFFORDABLE,” which included select grocery items that had not soared in price.
Hassan’s response was blunt.
“When’s the last time you were in a grocery store?” she asked. “Because my husband and I were just in one. The average Granite Stater has paid $3,000 more since Donald Trump took office for basic goods and services.”
Bessent tried to downplay the inflation concern, saying he believes it will be a “short-term blip.”
Hassan wasn’t buying it.
“What is very clear to me is that neither you nor the president nor this administration are willing to acknowledge how much more people are paying at the gas pump, at the grocery store, in utilities, for healthcare — for all aspects of American life,” she said.
President Donald Trump’s net approval rating on the economy has dipped to the lowest it’s ever been in either of his terms, a new poll from YouGov/The Economist shows on Tuesday.
Recent nationwide polling indicates that public confidence in Trump’s handling of the economy has fallen. According to the poll, only 29 percent of Americans say they strongly or somewhat approve of Trump’s management of the economy, while 63 percent disapprove.
This results in a net approval rating of -34 percent, the lowest recorded for Trump across both his first and second terms, YouGov’s Allen Houston said in a release sent to Newsweek on Tuesday in part. The figure combines polls that asked respondents about Trump’s handling of the economy broadly, as well as those that focused specifically on “jobs and the economy.”
People know what they see around them. You can't lie to them about reality and hope to be believed. Now some people will knowingly fool themselves. But not most people and especially not when it comes to their own pocket book. From yesterday's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED (NPR):
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline has been falling for the last few weeks. AAA says that average is about $4.16. But that is still more than a dollar more than it was before the U.S. and Israel started a war with Iran. Housing, food and utilities are not cheap either. NPR's Jennifer Ludden checks in on the trade-offs that people are making.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: Middle school music teacher Matt Keasal started a new job last year with a good pay raise. But then the cost of his hour-long commute from Mansfield, Ohio, doubled.
MATT KEASAL: Spending about $125 a week just in gas to get to work and back.
LUDDEN: He delivered pizza for a bit to make extra money, and he's ramped up his long-time side business - deep-cleaning cars.
KEASAL: Usually for - if I was saving for something or if I wanted to go on a trip or if I wanted to do, you know, X, Y or Z. But recently, it's been, well, OK. Now I need to do this so that I can pay bills (laughter). So...
LUDDEN: Keasal is glad summer break also means a financial break on the commute, and he's trying to get creative about cutting costs for next school year. He has siblings in Columbus, where his job is, and could stay over a night or two a week with them.
KEASAL: But then again, I'm away from my family and I'm away from my kids and my partner, and I don't want to have to do that.
LUDDEN: He's also looking to swap out his SUV for an old hatchback with better gas mileage because he's not counting on prices coming down anytime soon.
KEASAL: You're like, oh, 3.79? I better fill up, you know? And then you think, wait a second (laughter). Three or four months ago, you would have been, you know, laughing your way out of the gas station.
LUDDEN: For some people, gas prices are making it hard to get to work at all.
ALEM BESHIR: Good morning. Thanks for calling 211. This is Alem. How can I help you?
LUDDEN: Alem Beshir takes calls at the United Way helpline in Baltimore.
BESHIR: It's rough out there. A lot of people are not working. The people that are working, they're not making enough money.
LUDDEN: In February, there was a one-time grant for people behind on their utility bills.
BESHIR: The day that that program went out, our system crashed because of how many people called us at the same time.
All this as Matt Spetalnick and Nandita Bose (REUTERS) observe, "U.S. President Donald Trump is trying to project political strength as he turns 80, but setbacks at home and abroad are exposing the limits of his power and pushing him toward the kind of lame-duck status he has told aides he is determined to avoid."
On July 17, 2025, at around 6 o’clock in the evening, President Trump’s top officials filed into the White House Situation Room — the secure bunker where classified and high-stakes national security matters are discussed and decided. This was where President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the president’s national security team, watched the raid that ended with the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Now, however, Trump’s most senior advisers had gathered — without him — to figure out how to gain some measure of control over a very different kind of crisis threatening to engulf the presidency: the Epstein files.
Ten days earlier, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. had jointly released a memo that bluntly stated that their review had found no “client list” of powerful men for whom the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had allegedly procured underage girls and young women. Intended to put to rest years of speculation and end the pressure campaign to release the voluminous material in the department’s possession, the memo instead had the opposite effect, setting off a backlash that was notably loud among the MAGA base.
And it was about to get worse: The Wall Street Journal was preparing a damaging article about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. The president’s desperate attempts to kill the story had failed. His team now had to get everyone onto the same page about how to counter the growing swarm of attention. They needed a gesture of transparency to appease an increasingly angry base, but also a way to convey the message that the president was sympathetic to his supporters’ concerns. Which itself was a problem, because he clearly wasn’t.
Vice President JD Vance took a seat at the head of the table in the John F. Kennedy Conference Room of the Situation Room complex. “This is a huge problem,” he told the group. Arrayed around him were the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles; the White House counsel, David Warrington; the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt; the deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich; the communications director, Steven Cheung; the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche; the associate attorney general, Stanley Woodward Jr.; and the deputy chief of staff James Blair. Attorney General Pam Bondi and the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, joined on speakerphone.
The vice president appeared panicked to others in the room about the way the subject of Epstein was already dividing the MAGA coalition. Some senior officials had the impression that Vance had bought into the darkest theories about Epstein and a cabal of predators hidden within the country’s ruling class. Wiles would tell others that the vice president had proved himself to be a major conspiracy theorist. Another top official said later that Vance had been pounding on the Epstein issue since the release of the memo. He was privately pressing for the administration to release all the Epstein files, everything in the Justice Department’s possession, even encouraging a congressional investigation.
Vance had also floated to colleagues an extraordinary P.R. gambit — that the White House enlist Tucker Carlson to interview Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, in prison. It might help the president if Maxwell was willing to state that Trump had not been part of any wrongdoing with Epstein.
Vance told the group he believed all the files should be released as soon as possible. He argued that Congress was going to force the release of the files eventually. It was already clear that a bipartisan coalition in favor of such action was forming on Capitol Hill, and the momentum was going in one direction. If the administration got out ahead of this and released everything voluntarily — including whatever material existed about the president — it would at least get credit for transparency. The alternative was to let the story drag on for months as information dripped out, each new revelation renewing the cycle of suspicion and fury. Better to rip the bandage off and move on.
Suddenly, one of the officials in the Situation Room raised the subject of a disturbing but uncorroborated accusation against Trump that had come to light in unsealed filings from a 2015 defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell, which had been settled two years later. The secondhand accusation, alleging a specific type of sexual abuse, was the perfect example of something that would show up on the public website and put the spotlight on Trump, whether it was true or not.
Giuffre, who had met Epstein when she was a teenage spa attendant at Trump’s club, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Fla., became one of the sex offender’s most outspoken victims. Giuffre stated in late 2016 that, to her knowledge, Trump had done nothing improper. She died by suicide in April 2025, three months after Trump returned to power. The old Giuffre case file included emails sent to a journalist by another Epstein victim, Sarah Ransome, who later sued Epstein and Maxwell. Epstein had also settled that case.
In the emails, Ransome claimed that she knew a girl in Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring named Jen, who said she had sex with Trump. Ransome also claimed that Jen had told her that Trump had a predilection for nipples and that he had aggressively flicked and sucked hers. Ransome wrote that she had seen evidence when she shared a bathroom with Jen. “They looked incredibly painful as they were red and swollen and I remember wincing when I looked at them,” she wrote.
Ransome’s credibility was not uncomplicated; she had made another claim that she possessed video footage of prominent men having sex with young girls in Epstein’s entourage. She later retracted the claims, saying she feared for herself and her family if she proceeded. But after a federal judge ordered the unsealing of some of the Giuffre case files in 2023, the document that connected Trump to the claim about abused nipples was among the material that came out. It was an unconfirmed allegation and had not been made publicly, but the disclosure led to some articles that were quickly lost in the swirl of election-year news.
Some of Trump’s advisers in the Situation Room had never heard of the nipple claim; those who had seemed to have only a passing familiarity with it. Many in the room thought this was all just discredited nonsense. But it might not matter. The Ransome emails could get new attention if they were included in a “public-facing and searchable” Epstein library that carried the branding of the Justice Department. An administration official had already searched for Trump-related materials on the still-private test version of the website, and the nipple material was among the first items to show up. None of the credibility issues would come into consideration if a government-endorsed database gave Ransome’s claim about Trump a stamp of validity.
“This is out there,” one of the officials told the group in the Situation Room. “They’re going to make a huge scene of this, even though it’s not true and everybody knows it.”
Blanche argued that in context, the Ransome document — and Ransome’s disavowal of some of her other claims — would make clear why the allegations related to Trump had never been pursued for prosecution. Besides, these allegations were already available online because of what had been unsealed, so there was no reason to leave them off the Justice Department website.
The vice president said he thought the president would be OK with releasing the nipple-related documents, arguing that Trump had been accused of worse. “I think we should put it out,” he said. “It would cause people to say we’re going further than we need to.” Wiles quickly responded that the president would not, in fact, be OK with it. It was a point no one wanted to continue debating.
One official would later describe it as a “surreal” experience to be discussing nipples in the White House Situation Room
Lesley Groff underwent several hours of questioning behind closed doors on Capitol Hill Tuesday. Sources told CNN that Groff described Epstein as a master manipulator who believed the massage appointments she arranged for him with young women and girls were actual massage therapists.
House Oversight Committee member Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) told CNN’s Boris Sanchez that she found Groff’s testimony “very difficult to believe.”
“I mean, we’ve been asking her very tough questions over the course of many hours. The transcribed interview is still ongoing, and while she repeats herself over and over again, I think what is so difficult to believe is somebody who was so intimately involved as an executive assistant to somebody for 18 years…before and for 10 years after he was first convicted in 2008 and got his sweetheart plea deal. That is what is really challenging for me to believe,” Ansari said.
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), along with Representatives Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and André Carson (D-Ind.), led 62 members of Congress in pressing the Department of Education (ED) to immediately address the largest student loan default and delinquency crisis on record, which has been made worse by the Trump administration’s policies.
“(I)nstead of pursuing solutions that protect borrowers, the Trump administration has deflected blame, punted responsibility for the default crisis to another agency, and raised costs for borrowers at every turn. We urge you to provide meaningful support to borrowers,” said the lawmakers.
A February 2026 analysis by The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers revealed that close to 9 million student loan borrowers are now in default, up from 5 million last summer. 3.6 million borrowers defaulted during the first year of the Trump administration alone. 75 percent of borrowers who moved from delinquency to default on a student loan under the Trump administration had never previously defaulted.
“The Trump administration’s actions have fueled this default and delinquency crisis,” wrote the lawmakers, highlighting the administration’s decision to block borrowers from accessing lower student loan payments and reduced access to debt relief.
Making matters worse, millions of borrowers will soon face an increased risk of delinquency and default due to the Trump administration’s decision to end the affordable SAVE income-drive repayment (IDR) plan. Instead of helping those vulnerable borrowers, the Trump administration will automatically enroll them in more expensive loan repayment plans if they do not apply for an IDR plan within 90 days.
The rise in delinquencies and defaults will have devastating economic effects and raise costs for American families. The Trump administration has threatened to restart forcibly collecting wages, Social Security, and tax refunds for defaulted borrowers, meaning that more than $30 billion could be seized from Americans’ incomes by the end of next year. Around 2 million borrowers saw their credit score drop by an average of 100 points over the course of 2025, which can restrict access to credit or loans that help them afford everything from housing to medical bills. According to Moody’s Analytics, a 1% increase in the student loan delinquency rate is associated with a statistically significant decline in home ownership.
The lawmakers urged ED to immediately take the following steps to address the default cliff:
- Cancel student debt for qualified borrowers under existing debt cancellation programs, including IDR debt cancellation, Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) discharge, closed school discharge, borrower defense to repayment, and Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF);
- Adequately staff ED to conduct outreach to borrowers and oversight of servicers;
- Clear the more than 550,000 application backlog of income-driven repayment applications;
- Enroll all 7.5 million borrowers currently enrolled in SAVE in the lowest cost repayment plan available; and
- Continue the pause on forced collections, end the interagency agreement tasking the Treasury Department with default collections, and create an interest-free temporary default prevention forbearance.
The coalition requested that ED commit to clearing the backlog of applications for loan debt relief and create a new form of forbearance to support borrowers by June 22, 2026.
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, along with Senators Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) joined in signing.
Representatives Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), Julia Brownley (D-Calif.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Judy Chu (D-Calif.), Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Lou Correa (D-Calif.), Danny Davis (D-Ill.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Dwight Evans (D-Pa.), Cleo Fields (D-La.), Shomari Figures (D-Ala.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Chuy Garcia (D-Ill.), Sylvia Garcia (D-Texas), Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Jahana Hayes (D-Conn.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Henry Johnson (D-Ga.), Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), Luz Rivas (D-Calif.), Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Terri Sewell (D-Ala.), Lateefah Simon (D-Calif.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) joined in signing the letter.
Senator Warren has led the fight to make our higher education system
more affordable, cancel student loan debt, and hold student loan
servicers accountable for incompetence and malfeasance. She launched the
Save Our Schools campaign in a coordinated effort to fight back against President Trump’s attempts to abolish the Department of Education:
- On May 28, 2026, in response to a request from U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent government watchdog, confirmed the expansion of its investigation into the Department of Education’s (ED) transfer of critical programs to other agencies through interagency agreements (IAAs), including the transfer of student loan default collections to the Department of the Treasury. GAO previously confirmed it had initiated an investigation into ED’s transfer of grant programs for career and technical education and adult education to the Department of Labor.
- On May 21, 2026, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) asked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to open a new investigation into whether the Trump administration's dismantling of the Department of Education (ED) is harming ED’s ability to root out waste, fraud, and abuse of Title IV financial aid funds.
- On May 4, 2026, Senator Warren (D-Mass.) released new responses from the Department of Education (ED) and the Treasury Department (Treasury) demonstrating that the agencies cannot articulate a clear purpose or plan for implementing their illegal interagency agreement (IAA) transferring the administration of federal student loans to Treasury.
- On April 28, 2026, Senators Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders (I-Vt.) pressed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) Student Loan Ombudsman, Geoffrey Gradler, on his plan to protect student loan borrowers, especially given his past censorship of a key student loan report at the CFPB and his background as a lobbyist for lenders.
- On April 17, 2026, Senator Warren led 31 senators in a letter to the Chair and Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, urging them to provide “the highest possible amount of funding” to the Office of Federal Student Aid in fiscal year 2027.
- On April 2, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ron Wyden, Patty Murray, and Tammy Baldwin — all top Democrats on influential education committees — pressed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to rescind their plans to move the administration of federal student loans to the Treasury Department.
- On March 11, 2026, following a request from Senator Warren (D-Mass.), the Government Accountability Office, an independent government watchdog, opened an investigation into the Department of Education’s transfer of grant programs to the Department of Labor.
- On February 23, 2026, Senators Warren (D-Mass.) and Sanders (I-Vt.), along with Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), released a response from the Department of Education (ED) to their November letter regarding a potential sale of the federal student debt portfolio. In the response, ED confirms for the first time publicly that they are weighing a sale of the federal student loan portfolio.
- On February 19, 2026, Senator Warren led members of Congress urging the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office to open an investigation into the Department of Education’s (ED) transfer of grant programs to agencies with no expertise in education policy, such as the Department of Labor.
- On February 19, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) pushed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on concerns that the U.S. Department of Education is apparently obstructing Congressional efforts to hold federal student loan servicers accountable for underperformance.
- On February 2, 2026, Senator Warren released a new report revealing the findings of their investigation into how private student loan lenders will reap the benefits from cuts to federal student loan access enacted in Republicans’ Big, Beautiful Bill (OBBBA). The report is the first Congressional analysis of the impacts of the OBBBA’s student loan restrictions on the private lending market.
- On January 22, 2026, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Tim Kaine (D-Va.) led their Senate colleagues in demanding answers from Trump Education Secretary Linda McMahon about the Trump Administration’s proposal to eliminate affordable student loan repayment options for millions of Americans.
- On December 8, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in writing to the federal student loan servicers to ensure they are providing borrowers with the customer service they deserve in the wake of the Trump administration’s student loan policy whiplash. The senators sent letters to MOHELA, Nelnet, EdFinancial, Maximus, and CRI.
- On December 1, 2025, Senator Warren published an op-ed in USA Today calling for Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to resign following the recent news that President Trump and Secretary McMahon plan to further dismantle the Department of Education (ED).
- On November 24, 2025, Senator Warren pushed for an expanded investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle ED and whether its recent decision to transfer many of ED’s responsibilities to four other agencies violates federal law.
- On November 17, 2025, Senator Warren led over 40 of her colleagues in a letter urging Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent to immediately end any plans to sell or transfer the federal student loan portfolio to the private market.
- On November 10, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in a letter urging the Trump administration to use the IRS’s existing legal authorities to stop the looming “tax bomb” facing borrowers who obtain income-driven repayment (IDR) discharges of their student loan debt.
- On October 15, 2025, Senator Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led 70 members of Congress in a letter calling on the Trump administration to address the ongoing and unprecedented wave of student loan delinquencies and defaults, which threatens the financial stability of millions of people and could have disastrous effects on the American economy.
- On September 19, 2025, following a push by Senator Warren and nine other senators, the Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education agreed to open an investigation into DOGE’s infiltration of internal systems, including the scope of its access to sensitive student loan borrower information and its impact on borrowers’ rights and privacy.
- On August 26, 2025, Senator Warren led colleagues in sending a follow-up letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon condemning the Department of Education for deliberately hiding the “Submit a Complaint” button on the Office of Federal Student Aid’s website, firing employees responsible for providing customer service to borrowers and families and misleading Congress about the scope of these firings.
- On August 7, 2025, Senator Warren publicly released Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s response to the senator’s 60+ questions and pressed for additional information. Senator Warren announced that she would refer certain matters where the Department has proved uncooperative to the Government Accountability Office and the Education Department’s Inspector General.
- On August 4, 2025, Senator Warren led eight Senators in pressing major private student loan lenders on their plans to serve the incoming surge of borrowers who will be pushed to the industry because of Republicans’ recently passed “Big, Beautiful Bill.”
- On July 17, 2025, Senator Warren released a new 23-page report, “Education At Risk: Frontline Impacts of Trump’s War on Students,” highlighting warnings from 11 major national education and civil rights organizations on the impact of the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the Department of Education (ED), slashing support to millions of American students, primary and secondary school teachers, administrators, parents, and student loan borrowers.
- On July 15, 2025, Senators Warren and Sanders, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, urging her to reverse the interest hike on student loan borrowers in the SAVE forbearance.
- On July 14, 2025, Senator Warren joined a letter to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, and Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, demanding that the Department of Education stop blocking nearly $7 billion in funds for K-12 schools, including for afterschool programs.
- On July 3, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in submitting an amicus brief for NAACP v. US, arguing to the United States District Court District of Maryland that President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education violate separation of powers and lack constitutional authority.
- On June 10, 2025, Senator Warren met with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and delivered over 1,000 letters to McMahon that the senator had received from people in all 50 states who were worried about the Secretary’s efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
- On June 9, 2025, Senator Warren led her colleagues in pushing the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Education to open an investigation into new information obtained by her office, revealing that DOGE may have gained access to two FSA internal systems, in addition to sensitive borrower data.
- On May 20, 2025, Senator Warren and 27 other senators pushed for full funding for the Office of Federal Student Aid.
- On May 14, 2025, Senator Warren led a Senate forum entitled “Stealing the American Dream: How Trump and Republicans Are Raising Education Costs for Families,” highlighting the consequences of Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education and President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” for working- and middle-class students and borrowers.
- On May 13, 2025, Senator Warren agreed to meet with Education Secretary Linda McMahon and promised to bring questions and stories from Americans across the country to highlight how the Trump administration’s attacks on education are hurting American families.
- On May 6, 2025, Senator Elizabeth Warren highlighted the consequences of President Trump and Secretary Linda McMahon’s reckless dismantling of the Department of Education for American families in a Senate forum.
- On April 24, 2025, Senator Warren launched a new investigation into the harms of President Trump’s attacks on the Department of Education, seeking information on the impact of the Trump administration’s actions from the members of twelve leading organizations representing schools, parents, teachers, students, borrowers, and researchers.
- On April 10, 2025, following a request led by Senator Warren, the Department of Education’s Acting Inspector General agreed to open an investigation into the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education.
- On April 2, 2025, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, along with Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, sent a letter to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon regarding the Department of Government Efficiency’s proposed plan to replace the Department of Education’s federal student aid call centers with generative artificial intelligence chatbots.
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