The Dictatorship

All the ways the government shutdown will affect student loans, FAFSA

Published

9 months ago

October 2, 2025

All the ways the government shutdown will affect student loans, FAFSA

WASHINGTON (AP) — Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the U.S. Education Department will see more of its work come to a halt due to the government shutdown.

The department says many of its core operations will continue during the shutdown, which began at midnight Wednesday. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due. But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.

Since he took office, President Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the Education Department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the Supreme Court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.

In a shutdown, the Republican administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.

Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee in May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested this year’s layoffs had made her department lean — even too lean in some cases. Some staffers were brought back, she said, after officials found that the cuts went too deep.

“You hope that you’re just cutting fat. Sometimes you cut a little muscle, and you realize it as you’re continuing your programs, and you can bring people back to do that,” McMahon said. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January. It now has about 2,500.

AP AUDIO: How the government shutdown will affect student loans, FAFSA and the Education Department

AP correspondent Donna Warder reports on how the government shutdown will affect the Education Department.

Here is what the department does and how a shutdown is expected to affect that work.

Federal student loans

One of the department’s major roles is management of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. Student aid will be largely unaffected in the short term, according to the department’s shutdown contingency plan. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers must continue making payments on their debts.

About 9.9 million students receive some form of federal aid, spread across some 5,400 colleges, according to the department. Within the Office of Federal Student Aid, the department plans to furlough 632 of the 747 employees during the shutdown, although it didn’t say which ones. For most student loan issues, borrowers work with loan servicers hired by the department rather than directly with FSA staff.

The department will also continue to process the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSAwhich is a key piece of how colleges and universities provide aid packages to incoming students. Certain employees involved with rulemaking around changes to student loans, part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Republicans, also will be kept on to meet deadlines set by legislation.

Money for schools

While American schools are funded primarily by state and local money, the Education Department serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies. During the shutdown, the department will cease new grantmaking activity and pause its advisory and regulatory role to schools and grant recipients.

But because most federal grants to schools were made over the summerthe department says it would expect minimal disruption to school districts and other grant recipients. Title I money, which goes to schools with high concentrations of students in poverty, plus funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would continue during a shutdown.

Not all federal education money arrives ahead of the school year, however. One example is Impact Aid, a program that bolsters school budgets in areas where federal land management or other activities, such as military installations, reduce the amount of taxable land to generate revenue for the district. These schools likely will see disruptions in payments. More than 1,200 districts receive that aid across all 50 states, according to a national association that represents those schools.

If the shutdown lasts longer than a week, the department says it would revise its contingency plan to prevent significant disruptions to school districts.

Civil rights investigations

Under the shutdown, the department will stop its investigations into schools and universities over alleged civil rights violations.

Since the mass layoffs in March, the office has operated under a significantly reduced footprint. The department’s civil rights branch lost about half of its staff. The cuts raised questions about whether the office would be able to shrink a backlog of complaints from students who allege they have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, sex or disability status.

The department’s own data has shown a decline in resolving civil rights cases, while new complaints from families have increased. During the shutdown, work on the pending cases will stop.

Head Start preschools

One major federal education program is not part of McMahon’s department: the preschool program Head Start, which is overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Head Start will be mostly unscathed by a federal shutdown, at least in the short term, said Tommy Sheridan of the National Head Start Association. Nearly all Head Start preschools already were approved for funding for the fall and beyond.

But eight centers nationwide, serving around 7,500 children, will lose their federal money this month while the government is shut down. At least four, located in Florida, have enough funding from other sources to carry them to November, said Wanda Minick of the Florida Head Start Association.

If the shutdown extends longer than a month, more centers would find themselves in the same situation. Head Start serves hundreds of thousands of young children from low-income households. Many parents cannot afford child care without it, meaning a disruption could keep adults from school or work.

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AP Education Writers Collin Binkley and Moriah Balingit contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The Dictatorship

Millions drop Obamacare health coverage after subsidies expire and costs rise

Published

2 hours ago

June 29, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Millions drop Obamacare health coverage after subsidies expire and costs rise

Jun. 29, 2026, 2:04 AM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) — About 3 million fewer people in the United States had Affordable Care Acthealth insurance plans in February compared with the same time last year, according to new federal data.

In the reportreleased Friday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested the 13% drop in enrollment from 22.1 million people in 2025 to 19.2 million this year could be attributed to a federal crackdown on fraudulent or “phantom” enrollment. But health analysts said it was more likely related to the Jan. 1 expiration of federal subsidieswhich caused a surge in plan costs that resulted in many people being unable to pay their premiums.

“We know that real people lost their health insurance coverage,” said Cynthia Cox, a vice president and director of the ACA program at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF, citing survey findings on people who had left their plans. “This coverage loss happened at the same time millions of people faced double or even triple digit increases in their premium payments.”

The new data, compiled in April but showing coverage in February, represents the government’s first official look at how people’s inability to pay their first bills this year affected total enrollment. That is because the figures capture the marketplace after a nonpayment grace period expired.

A federal estimate in Januaryshowed that about 800,000 fewer people had signed up for ACA plans compared with the same time last year, marking the first time in the past four years that enrollment had been down from the previous year at that point in the shopping window.

Cox said KFF expects the total number of people in the government healthcare program to continue to declinethroughout the year, potentially to a low of about 17.5 million. That would be a significant drop for the government’s flagship subsidized health insurance program for working-age people who do not qualify for Medicaid. In recent years, ACA plans have become a popular choice for gig workers, farmers, ranchers, hairstylists and others without health coverage through an employer.

The ACA subsidies that expired this year were at the center of a bitter fight in Congress last fall, with Democrats and some Republicans calling for their renewal. Sharp increases in health costs across ACA and other health insurance programs come as voters in the approaching November elections say affordability is among their top concerns.

The Dictatorship

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Published

12 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Rep. Julia Letlow wins Louisiana GOP Senate primary runoff

Jun. 27, 2026, 9:51 PM EDT

Rep. Julia Letlow won Louisiana’s Republican Senate primary runoff Saturday, defeating former Rep. John Fleming.

Her win comes as a victory for President Donald Trump, who has endorsed her repeatedly throughout the race — including before she was even officially running.

Letlow made history in 2021 when she became the first Republican woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. In that special election, she won the seat that her late husband, Luke Letlow, had won prior to dying of complications related to Covid-19 in December 2020.

Letlow had no political experience prior to running for her late husband’s seat. She holds a doctorate in communication from the University of South Florida and worked as an administrator for Tulane University and the University of Louisiana, according to her LinkedIn page. Nonetheless, she won the special election House race with nearly 65% of the vote.

In Congress, she has served on the appropriations and education committees, and has been a reliably MAGA Republican.

Letlow’s win also comes as a rebuke to Fleming, who loaned himself more than $11 million, according to the Federal Election Commission, and tried running for the same seat in 2016 only to finish in fifth place in the nonpartisan primary. (Letlow did not loan her campaign any money, and took in more than $5.35 million compared to Fleming’s more than $12.1 million, FEC filings show.)

Trump has played a key role in the race. In addition to backing Letlow early on, the president also helped tank Republican incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election campaign in last month’s primary, based on the senator’s record of bucking his party and voting in favor of Trump’s second impeachment. In the primaryLetlow earned nearly 45% of the vote, giving her a healthy lead over both Fleming, who received about 28% of the vote, and Cassidy, who earned nearly 25%.

Ahead of Saturday’s runoff, polling showed Letlow and Fleming in a close race, with Letlow retaining a small lead in several polls.

Letlow will now proceed to the November general election to face off against the Democratic nominee, farmer Jamie Davis, who came out on top in tonight’s Democratic primary runoff.

The state has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her last term in office.

Julianne McShane is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW who also covers the politics of abortion and reproductive rights. You can send her tips from a non-work device on Signal at jmcshane.19 or follow her on X or Bluesky.

The Dictatorship

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Published

12 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

‘Horrifying’: Pulte’s choice for top spy aide stokes fears of Trump vote tampering

Jun. 28, 2026, 1:36 PM EDT

Bill Pulte, the acting director of national intelligencehas stirred fear by choosing as his chief of staff a GOP election lawyer who oversaw a poll watching program that included Jack Posobiec and other conservative conspiracy theorists. The lawyer, Christina Norton, also appears to have no experience working in the intelligence community.

“It is horrifying,” a former senior U.S. intelligence official told MS NOW Saturday. “Not only does Norton have absolutely no background, experience or expertise in national security or intelligence, but her principal qualifications appear to be loyalty to Pulte and an embrace of absurd election-interference conspiracies.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who has been a vocal critic of Pulte, also raised concerns about election integrity on Sunday while taking shots at the director of national intelligence and the office itself.

“We should eliminate the DNI, and we should eliminate Pulte from the DNI until that happens,” he said on BLN, adding, “I am concerned that we’re gonna continue to cast doubt on elections in November and erode what has been a 250-year tradition of a peaceful transition of power.”

Pulte’s choice of Norton is also likely to increase concerns among Democrats that President Donald Trump intends to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to interfere in the midterm elections. Pulte, a loyalist with no intelligence experience, has used his current position as head of federal mortgage agencies to refer political rivals of the president for federal criminal prosecution.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told MS NOW on Sunday that the choice “just confirms” that the “only job qualification is absolute political loyalty and devotion to Donald Trump.” But he expressed faith in the judicial system during an appearance on “The Weekend,” noting that “right now we have federal courts across the land that are rejecting their various attempts to take over the election process. Nine different federal courts have rejected the claim that the president, by executive order, can compel the states in the union to turn over all of their voter lists to Donald Trump and to the White House.”

The New York Times first reported Norton’s appointment.

The former senior intelligence official, who requested anonymity due to concerns of retaliation, told MS NOW the choice also “signals as clearly as could be that Pulte has been put at ODNI to misuse the awesome power of the U.S. intelligence community to interfere in the upcoming midterm elections.”

Norton, reached by MS NOW by telephone, declined to comment and referred questions to an ODNI spokesperson. The spokesperson declined to comment on Norton but defended Pulte’s tenure.

“Acting Director Pulte and his team are focused on carrying out President Trump’s national security priorities while faithfully executing ODNI’s statutory mission,” the spokesperson told MS NOW. “We are leading the Intelligence Community to provide President Trump with elite, apolitical intelligence that keeps America safe.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, said his objection to Pulte is “that he used personal information to target a political enemy of the president,” a reference to New York Attorney General Letitia James.

“You should not be using the force of government to crash upon somebody just because the person in charge does not like them or finds them inconvenient. The fact that Bill did that is disqualifying for someone to be the director of national intelligence,” Cassidy said.

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Friday that Congress would ensure that the ODNI under Pulte will “report on legitimate foreign threats to elections, not Donald Trump’s imaginary ones.”

Himes warned that, “Trump was explicit when he appointed Bill Pulte to a job he had no qualifications for that he had elections in mind.”

Trump has said in interviews with the news media that he would like to see Pulte shrink the size of the ODNI and investigate election fraud. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, participated in investigations in Georgia and Puerto Rico to find proof of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Democrats and some former intelligence officials say they worry that Pulte may try to falsely claim that his office has found evidence that foreign governments are secretly funding Democratic candidates in the midterms.

Pulte could falsely claim foreign actors have hacked U.S. voting machines, they say, and altered vote totals in favor of Democrats during the midterms. Or Trump could instruct Pulte to be present if FBI agents seize ballots and election records in November as they did earlier this year in Fulton County, Georgia.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned in a statement on Friday that Pulte should not use his position to spread Trump’s false election conspiracy theories.

“The mission of ODNI is to identify and counter foreign threats, not to import election denialism into the Intelligence Community,” Warner said. “Americans have every reason to fear that this administration is once again eroding the wall between our intelligence agencies and domestic elections.”

David Rohde is the senior national security reporter for MS NOW and a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Previously he was the senior executive editor for national security and law for NBC News.