In February 2025, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision pausing the entire SAVE income-driven repayment (IDR) plan for student loans. The Biden-Harris administration introduced the SAVE Plan in 2023 as the most affordable option for borrowers seeking to have their payments reduced and their loans ultimately forgiven. Three days after the Eighth Circuit's decision, the Trump administration paused all IDR plan applications, including ones not affected by the Eighth Circuit's decision, and directed student loan servicers not to process existing IDR applications. Because borrowers must be enrolled in an IDR plan to qualify for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, this drastic decision also jeopardized the ability of teachers, nurses, first responders, and other public servants to receive forgiveness after ten years of qualifying payments. One week after a national teachers' union filed a lawsuit to revive IDR plan application processing, the Department of Education filed a notice with the court stating that it had reopened the IDR online application and was coordinating with student loan servicers to resume processing IDR applications.

Prior to the Trump Administration’s decision to remove IDR applications and halt application processing, more than 1 million borrowers remained in a backlog waiting for their application to be processed. https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/3725_letter_to_department_of_education_on_student_loan_repaymentspdf.pdf