“On the Holmes Front” with Frank Holmes
As the media hurl abuse at his administration day after day, President Donald Trump keeps quietly rolling back Democratic programs and racking up wins for the American people.
Although almost no media outlets covered it, the president just made a huge move that saved you nearly $200 billion and kept you from paying the bills of upper-middle-class government bureaucrats.
What’s more, he stopped future Democrats from trying to take more of your hard-earned money to pay off their secretaries and underlings.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration settled a lawsuit to end an illegal attempt by President Joe Biden to have taxpayers pick up the tab for overdue student loans.
The Department of Education adopted a settlement to end the Biden-Harris administration’s “Saving on a Valuable Education” (SAVE) Plan, the DOE announced on December 9.
Under its terms, people who earned up to 225 percent of the poverty level—or $72,338 for a family of four—could get away with not paying a dime on their student loans.
It would have forced taxpayers to pay an extra $188.8 billion… or about $35,623 apiece for the six million beneficiaries who took out student loans without repaying them.
People who made more than that still got by with making low monthly loan payments…and the government would magically wipe away all their student loan debt after 20 to 25 years… or 10 years, if you worked for the government. The Trump administration says everyone who takes out a loan has to pay it back for at least 30 years.
“We’re putting the final nail in the coffin for the Biden Administration’s illegal SAVE Plan,” said the U.S. Department of Education, posting a picture of a tombstone. And it put the blame on the Biden administration, which “unfairly strung borrowers along, making promises that could never be kept.”
Not only did the administration stop Biden’s plan to socialize college loan debt, he stopped future presidents from trying to do it, too.
We’re putting the final nail in the coffin for the Biden Administration's illegal SAVE Plan.
For four years, they unfairly strung borrowers along, making promises that could never be kept. pic.twitter.com/N9oFuljvbx
— U.S. Department of Education (@usedgov) December 9, 2025
The court ruled that, if any president tries to force taxpayers to pay off other people’s student loans within the next 10 years, the administration has to notify the state of Missouri (which filed the lawsuit) at least 30 days in advance—so the state can file a lawsuit and shut down that illegal plan, too.
That left the liberals howling. The settlement would “pigeonhole or harm future administration’s ability to” have taxpayers pay liberal government employees’ student loans, said the president and founder of Student Debt Crisis Center, Natalia Abrams. “Like, we don’t even have the words to explain what that feels like.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson, a far-Left Democrat in bright red Mississippi, also complained because the SAVE Plan gave even more unfair advantages to government bureaucrats.
Thompson called college students who foisted their debts off on taxpayers “public servants who expected loan forgiveness after 10 years.” then again, he also called the shooting of two National Guardsmen in the nation’s capital by an Afghan “refugee” an “unfortunate accident.”
This was not “an unfortunate accident.” This was a terrorist attack that left one of our servicemembers dead and another fighting for his life.
This attack happened as a direct result of Joe Biden’s reckless, weak, and dangerous foreign policy.pic.twitter.com/dJYc0QJurF
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) December 12, 2025
Ultra-liberal Robert Reich, a former Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton who has turned into an online influencer, whined that now “borrowers may now have to spend hundreds more per month paying off their loans.”
But the Trump administration says the Democrats who ran the Biden-Harris administration own the blame, and President Trump’s action is way overdue.
“The Biden Administration made impossible promises to win points with voters. We must restore the principle that loans must be paid back,” answered Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “That starts and ENDS with borrowers — not American taxpayers.”
This puts an end to the Democrats’ years-long effort to force taxpayers to pay off student loans—a step toward socialized “free” college tuition.
Then-President Biden announced he intended to “forgive” $400 million of student loans in the summer of 2022. The Supreme Court overturned that plan in its June 2023 Biden v. Nebraska ruling. But Biden immediately announced the new “SAVE Plan” a few months later.
As The Horn told you, the SAVE Plan “bears a striking resemblance to the one already struck down in court.”
The settlement snagged headlines, but a court actually struck down the SAVE Plan in February.
The court ruled it was “hard pressed to conclude that Congress,” which passed legislation ordering student loans to run for 25 years, had actually authorized the government “to wipe out any remaining principal or interest of any borrower in as few as ten years of low or no payments.” The Biden administration was just trying “to wipe away debt through accounting tricks.”
No one had referred student loan borrowers to a collection agency since March 2020—the heart of the COVID pandemic. But the pandemic’s over, and so is their free ride.
The federal government restarted federal loan repayments on May 5. “Borrowers will now be clearly expected to pay their student loans, and those who default on their loan obligations will face involuntary collections,” White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt announced in April.
The settlement wraps up the Democrats’ backdoor “free college” policy all at once.
“For four years, the Biden Administration sought to unlawfully shift student loan debt onto American taxpayers, many of whom either never took out a loan to finance their postsecondary education or never even went to college themselves, simply for a political win to prop up a failing Administration,” said Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent.
New statistics on student loans show the policy came just in time.
Karoline Leavitt on Student Loans:
"No student loan has been referred to collection since March of 2020. That comes to an end. On May 5th, the Department of Education will resume involuntary collections for borrowers with defaulted federal student loans." pic.twitter.com/epgIkluUwF
— Red Line News (@RedLineNewsUSA) April 22, 2025
A historic 14.3 percent of all student loans are in serious delinquency in the third quarter of this year. That’s the largest share of borrowers that deeply in arrears since the government started keeping data on the subject in the year 2000. The Department of Education has tried to help those who are in debt calculate how much to set aside for the loans each month by placing a student loan payment simulator on the DOE’s website.
The SAVE Plan settlement is just one of several actions the Trump administration is taking to upend the Ivory Tower.
The Trump administration has moved to end DEI and eliminate Critical Race Theory from school lessons—although many have just renamed the departments and kept on teaching the CRT curriculum.
The Department of Education this week rolled out an earnings calculator to help would-be college students understand how much—or how little—they will make if they pursue a certain college degree.
The Trump administration has also pushed vocational education trainings.
And it plans to abolish the Department of Education—a Democratic pay-off to teachers unions for contributing millions of dollars each election cycle to liberal election campaigns.training
The student loan crisis is a real one. Democrats have promised colleges they have their back as Ivory Tower administrators jacked up college tuition rates for generations. The same politicians sent U.S. factory jobs to Mexico and China, making it impossible to earn a living without a degree. Then they imported H-1B visa workers to take the jobs meant for college students who followed their advice and “learned to code.”
But the answer isn’t to have taxpayers pay even more for a failed product. Thanks to President Trump for recognizing that.