Tangle - Trump resumes collections on student loans.

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

On May 5, the federal government began collecting on its defaulted student loan portfolio for the first time since March 2020 for approximately five million borrowers in default. As part of its collection efforts, the Trump administration says it will garnish wages, tax refunds, and federal benefits of defaulted student loan borrowers. After collections resumed, approximately 2.2 million had their credit scores drop by 100 points or more, potentially impacting their ability to secure housing, insurance, car loans, and employment.Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: What do you think of student debt repayment? Let us know!Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and Ari Weitzman, and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about student loan repayments. Beginning again, that is right. Student debt collections are starting up.

We're going to break down some arguments from the left and the right on that story. And then today we have something a little different. Ari Weitzman, Tangle managing editor, is going to be giving his take on today's topic. That is happening for a few reasons. One of them, the big one, I guess, is that I am head down working on this piece that's coming out tomorrow about the war in Gaza and Israel and Zionism and just where my head is at today on this really difficult issue. My views have changed in the last 20 months since this all started, since October 7th.

And I'm gonna try and articulate how they've changed and what has kind of been happening in my brain, especially in recent months, I think the last few months especially. So that piece is coming out tomorrow. It's long. It's a big one. We will release a podcast version of it.

I can't believe I'm going to have to read it out loud. I think it's like 15 pages at this point, but it's going to be out in the podcast. It'll be out in the newsletter. And I think it's going to be really worth your time, but I'm pretty absorbed in it. And Ari volunteered to take today's take because he had some thoughts so I passed the mic over to him.

So hope you enjoy that and also keep an eye out tomorrow for this piece on Zionism and the war. And with that, I'm going to send it over to John for today's main story and then Ari for today's take and I'll be back for your questions answered. Thanks, Isaac. And welcome everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald Trump does not have the authority to impose global tariffs under economic emergency legislation.

The decision blocks all tariffs imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Number 2. A White House official said on Wednesday Elon Musk would leave his position in the Trump administration, with his offboarding process beginning that same night. Separately, Musk said he was disappointed by the Trump-supported Big Beautiful bill passed by the House, suggesting that its impact on the federal deficit undermined his work with the Department of Government efficiency.

3. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the U.S. will begin revoking visas from Chinese exchange students, specifically calling out those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. Number 4. President Trump issued a series of pardons, including reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley, who were convicted of fraud and tax evasion, rapper NBA Youngboy who pleaded guilty to a federal gun charge, and former representative Michael Grimm, the Republican

from New York, who was convicted of tax fraud. And number 5. President Trump announced he will nominate Emil Bové, a Justice Department official and one of his former personal attorneys, to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. A big development for student loan borrowers who are now in default. Starting today, the federal government is going to start collecting the debt. The Education Department says about 5 million people are in default, which means they have not made a payment in more than 270 days.

And another 4 million are seriously delinquent or more than 90 days late. On May 5th, the federal government began collecting on its defaulted student loan portfolio for the first time since March 2020 for approximately five million borrowers in default. As part of its collection efforts, the Trump administration says it will garnish wages, tax refunds, and federal benefits of defaulted student loan borrowers. After collections resumed, approximately 2.2 million people had their credit scores drop by 100 points or more, potentially impacting their ability to secure housing, insurance, car loans, and employment. For context, President Donald Trump initially suspended student loan repayments for two months in March 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, later extending the pause through the end of the year. President Biden

maintained that freeze until October 2023 while pursuing a robust agenda of student loan forgiveness, some of which succeeded and some of which the court struck down. When collections resumed, the Biden administration did not penalize borrowers for falling behind in the first year of continued payments. We covered the debate over student loan debt during Biden's term, and you can check that out with the link in today's episode description. On April 21st, the Department of Education said the resumption of collections would protect taxpayers from shouldering the cost of federal student loans that borrowers willingly undertook

to finance their post-secondary education, adding, this initiative will be paired with a comprehensive communications and outreach campaign to ensure borrowers understand how to return to repayment or get out of default. Education Secretary Linda McMahon also criticized the Biden administration's handling of the issue, saying the executive branch does not have the constitutional authority to wipe debt away, nor do the loan balances simply disappear. ED restarted collection by notifying roughly 195,000 student loan borrowers in default that their federal benefits, including Social Security retirement checks, would be subject to garnishment in 30 days.

Furthermore, the Treasury Department said it will send notices to 5.3 million defaulted borrowers about the possible collection of their wages later this summer. The Trump administration is also pursuing several other changes to its management of the federal student loan program. In early May, ED put out a notice that it would halt future loans to students at schools if more than 30 percent of that school's recent students had defaulted over the past three years or if 40% had defaulted in the most recent year. Furthermore, the version of President Trump's big beautiful bill spending package passed by the House includes provisions that would change the formula for how much the federal

government grants borrowers, place new caps on individual student loan amounts, and eliminate many repayment plans. Today, we'll share arguments from the right and the left about the resumption of collections on student loans, and then managing editor Ari Weitzman will give his take. [♪ music playing, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, typing sounds, We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, first up, let's start with what the right is saying. The right strongly supports the Trump administration's handling of repayments, suggesting Biden's policies hurt both borrowers and taxpayers.

Some say the move is a necessary step to return to pre-COVID policies. Others say colleges must play a leading role in helping their former students in default. The Dallas Morning News editorial board said it's time to repay student loans. The federal student loan program has distorted the cost and benefit of higher education in ways that need to be better understood. As initially conceived, subsidized loan programs were a good way to provide gap financing for students who couldn't otherwise afford the cost of a college education, the board wrote. But borrowing rules that were especially generous for graduate programs saw universities increasingly pull students into high-cost programs that led to massive debt loads. This happened even as the cost of a college degree,

both undergraduate and graduate, spiraled beyond inflation. The relationship between the availability of mass student loans and the rising cost of an education seems more causal than corollary, and that has saddled too many young people with too much debt, and too often, that debt doesn't result in a degree that will lead to a job with a salary corollary, and that has saddled too many young people with too much debt, and too often that debt doesn't result in a degree that will lead to a job with a salary to keep up with

payments while having enough left over for everyday life," the board said. The Biden administration's approach to just forget about the debt altogether did nothing to address the underlying distortions that the student loan program has created in higher education. In the Washington Post, Ramesh Panur wrote, Trump is right. Those student loans need to be repaid. COVID is over. It's no longer a mass social phenomenon that can justify emergency measures. We've acted on that logic in almost every area of American life.

It's time that the COVID era ends for student loans, too. That's what the Trump administration is doing by resuming efforts to collect from delinquent borrowers," Paneeru said. That's a necessary but inefficient step toward getting borrowers back in the habit of making payments. That habit broke down during the past five years as the federal government paused loan repayments and then extended the pause. Forgiving much or all of the debt, an idea popular among progressives and the borrowers themselves, is an alternative to reviving loan payments.

But the extended pause on student loans has already cost taxpayers more than $238 billion. That number would rise even more if the government forgave more of the debt, Panura wrote. That's not the only unfairness that loan forgiveness would involve. The more a borrower had sacrificed to pay down their debts, the less they would receive. Nor is there a clear-cut case for forgiving debts from college while leaving mortgages, car loans, and small business loans intact. For the American Enterprise Institute, Preston Cooper argued colleges must help return student borrowers to repayment.

Everyone involved should want to avoid this looming tidal wave of student loan defaults. Borrowers who default see their wages garnished and their tax refunds seized, in addition to a black mark on their credit records. Taxpayers also lose out. The government typically recovers just 65 to 75 percent of defaulted student loan balances. But if student loan defaults go high enough, colleges could face serious consequences, Cooper said. According to federal law, when a high proportion of former students default on their loans within three years of entering repayment, their school could lose access to Pell grants and student loans going forward. For many schools reliant on federal aid, triggering this provision could be a death sentence. Preventing defaults must be an all hands on deck effort.

The Trump administration has announced many positive steps to that end. A communications campaign, direct outreach to borrowers, and clearing the backlog of applications for income driven repayment, Cooper wrote. But colleges, which rake in tens of billions of dollars annually from student loans, have a responsibility too. It's time for schools to uphold their obligations by reminding their alumni that the student

loan payment pause is over. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is critical of the administration's handling of loan collections, worrying that it will exacerbate millions of Americans' financial struggles. Some question the decision to focus on student loans while eschewing other tax collection efforts. Others argue the administration is cracking down on student

loans to justify its tax cut proposal. In the American Prospect, David Dayen said, student debtors are under attack on all sides. Roughly 5.3 million student borrowers who haven't paid for more than 360 days were thrown into collections on May 5. The government data shows that another $5.59 million could hit default status within six months, Dan wrote. Given the availability of affordable options like income-driven repayment, the number of

borrowers in default should really be zero. But the Trump administration's actions aren't helping. In response to a court order blocking the Biden administration's generous income-driven repayment plan in February, the Education Department pulled down applications for three other IDR plans and loan consolidation. Millions of student borrowers can't keep up with their loan payments now, but House Republican solution is to price out the borrowers of the future. The Republican bill eliminates all but two repayment programs, Dayan said.

Single debtors carrying the average amount of student debt as of the end of 2024, $38,374, and the current 6.3% interest rate would owe $432 a month and would pay close to $3,000 per year more than the cheapest Biden-era plan, according to an analysis by the Student Borrowers Protection Center. The alternative, an income-driven repayment plan, would last 30 years before the balance is extinguished and offer little assistance to most borrowers unless they don't earn much. In Bloomberg, Catherine Ann Edwards suggested the U.S. chose the wrong crackdown.

Do 18-year-olds understand the financial risks they are taking on? Does tuition reflect the services provided? In short, is college still worth the investment? The conclusion is that none of this matters. The government is a lender, and if you borrow from it, you have to pay it back. This is simple, which is not the same thing as fair,

Edwards wrote. Contrast the way the federal government treats those who have defaulted on their student loans with those who have cheated on their taxes. The Education Department is now withholding tax refunds and other federal payments for students who have defaulted on their loans, and will begin to garnish wages this summer. And what is the IRS doing about the so-called tax gap, the amount of money that should be collected in taxes but isn't, which amounted to $606 billion in 2022? Those who aren't paying back their student loans and those who aren't paying their taxes are similar in the broadest sense.

Both are failing to pay what they owe, but they are far from equivalent. People who don't make enough money to pay off a student loan are different from people who lie about their assets in order to reduce their taxes, Edwards said. So why is the federal government getting tough with the former while taking an incredibly lighter touch with the latter? The decision can't be defended on economic grounds. It's not more efficient. And it certainly can't be justified on the basis of fairness. In MSNBC, Sarah Bundy wrote, I'm a 54-year-old student debtor. and it certainly can't be justified on the basis of fairness.

In MSNBC, Sarah Bundy wrote, I'm a 54-year-old student debtor. Trump is plunging people like me into financial pain. After months of causing chaos at the Department of Education and sabotaging affordable loan repayment and relief plans, the White House is now plunging millions of hardworking and middle-class families already scratching to make ends meet into a new level of financial pain," Bundy said. As a 54-year-old student debtor who has struggled for years to make my loan payments, I've

experienced decades of a broken student loan system. President Trump is not protecting taxpayers, as the government claims. He is punishing the working poor to justify tax cuts that benefit billionaires. Working class families like mine need more relief, not higher bills and harsher consequences for missed payments. Instead, Trump is worsening consequences for struggling borrowers, Bundy wrote. Resuming loan garnishments will be a disaster for countless families. Like millions of others, I am currently in safe forbearance, the Biden

administration's update of long-standing repayment programs pegged to a borrower's income. The Republicans want to replace save with a new repayment assistance plan that is designed to bleed the working class or force borrowers into default. Let's head over to Ari for his take. Hi, thanks, John, Isaac. This is managing editor Ari Weitzman giving the take for today. So let me start just by saying that student loans are unfair. Some people get more help than others and some paid more than others, but at the end of the day, everyone is responsible for their individual debts. That much is clear to me. But at the same time, we don't have to go out of our way to make things more unfair. Millions of

borrowers went into default or entered collections this month, and it just doesn't have to be that way. First, let me back up a little bit and retread some ground. When Isaac wrote about Biden's student debt forgiveness plan a few years ago, he called out how many people opposing debt forgiveness griped over the plan's unfairness. And I empathize with their point. Like Isaac and like millions of Americans, I got student loans to pay for college. And like many others, I worked and I saved to pay them off. I paid my own room and board throughout college by taking a job during my undergraduate years

at UChicago. I crammed in with four friends and with a three-bedroom apartment to save costs and was even able to take a quarter off to save on tuition. I graduated on time in 2009, right in the middle of the Great Recession, and loan forgiveness would have been an enormous help to me at that time. Instead, banks got bailed out to prevent a further economic crash. I don't bemoan any of that.

Yes, some people getting loans forgiven while people like me pay them off is unfair, but I had to go through something bad, therefore everyone should, isn't a good enough argument to justify any policy or to oppose one. Conversely, I've had enormous benefits where others didn't. I was able to get a Pell Grant to reduce the cost of tuition a bit, and I received federal

loans with interest-free years upon graduation. I was also healthy and able to find work, which was not the case for many people. And when my interest-free years were up and my largest privilege of all, my dad did me an enormous favor and bought my entire loan balance. He still required me to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars I then owed him, but his terms were pretty reasonable. Zero interest and a call and card on his birthday and Father's Day. So, happy early birthday, Dad, and thanks again to the First Annual Bank of Dad for helping me out.

So, people like me getting a leg up while others have had to struggle with crushing interest rates and insurmountable debt is also unfair. But similarly, those inequalities also in and of themselves don't prevent enough reason to offer student loan forgiveness. After all, the government has its own debts to pay, and the $1.6 trillion held by student loan debtors is too much money to simply cancel, even partially. Let's centralize the main issue. Trump decided to extend repayment pauses throughout his first term. Biden decided to do the same, and now Trump is resuming collection very poorly. The Department of Education gave inadequate notice to borrowers and put them in a position

they did not have to be in. Roughly 2 million people just had their credit scores drop by over 100 points, which means their rates of borrowing are increasing and they're being pushed into an otherwise avoidable hardship. If I have anything to criticize Trump for, it's that. Of course, the government had to start recollecting these debts eventually. Again, people have to repay their debts. And now is as good a time as any to do that.

There's low unemployment, inflation is relatively stable, and the government's looking for ways to increase its revenue. Trump could have directed the Department of Education to give more clear communication about repayments, and it certainly didn't have to consider debtors who missed their first repayments after restarting them in default. Instead, it's another example of the administration pursuing a reasonable goal through unreasonable methods and creating totally avoidable problems. However, Biden bears a large portion of responsibility too, for laying the groundwork for this problem by pursuing loan forgiveness and continual repayment pauses as a matter of federal policy.

Let me add briefly that I think helping student loan debtors in some way was the right thing to do. But pausing these loans en masse while forgiving hundreds of thousands of loans had enormous consequences. It incentivized debtors to not need to pay their loans off. I mean, why pay if their balances might just go away anyway? It may have contributed to the rising cost of tuition and it generally benefited people with degrees,

the ones who are well positioned to pay their loans back while shifting the burden to the rest of us to shoulder their debts. That's to say nothing of the fact that many of Biden's efforts were illegal and likely contributed to the crushing inflation that dominated his term. To be clear, Biden had other options to pursue if he wanted to make good on his campaign

promise to help student loan holders. He could have focused only on the most disadvantaged borrowers or tried to lower interest rates on these loans instead. I never understood why he decided to go so broad. I also don't know why he didn't simultaneously pursue reforms to the federal loan programs that can make these debts less burdensome. Instead, he left the fundamental problems unchanged. Yes, fundamental aspects of student loans were unfair under Biden, and they remain unfair today. Again, life's not fair, but we don't have to go out of our way to make it so.

While unpaid federally held loans aren't themselves inherited by the borrows children should they die, many debts are bought or refinanced by private lenders that require that those loans, whose rates and allowed payments are misleading at best and crippling at worst, are themselves inherited. In short, student loan markets are rife with abuse and illegal practices. And now we all know that missing just a few of these payments is as bad in the eyes of U.S. creditors as going into bankruptcy. I'm glad that Trump is trying to institute some reforms to the student loan program, and limiting the students it grants loans to using the repayment records of others at

their institution sounds like a good step. Easing the penalties for the missed payments for this current cohort of affected borrowers, to me, is an obvious next step. And then after that, expunging their default records and pausing collections temporarily while the government coordinates a much better repayment process, should be the next one.

Over five million borrowers were put into collections. Millions more could default within six months. This is a major problem. And not just for those debtors. Right now, bond yields are up. The Federal Reserve's interest rate remains high. And while the job market is strong, other warning indicators are flashing on the economic dashboard. In this context, the ramifications on the greater economy of millions of people being unable to get loans or being hit with higher interest rates is no small thing. At the end of the day, people who hold student loans are a lot like graduates of Ivy League colleges.

And I don't mean because they're the same people. I mean they draw way too much of our policy discussion and don't represent the majority. About 12% of Americans or 16% of US adults have student loans. Again, 16% of US adults have student loans. Again, 16% of US adults, not a small number. But compare that to other groups of debtors. 38% of American adults have revolving credit card debt, which represents over $600 billion.

85 million people own mortgages, representing over $12.6 trillion in combined debt. This focus on student debtors is frustratingly myopic, frequently regressive, and, yes, unfair. Still, I think Trump ought to help them out a little more. There truly is no benefit to haphazardly throwing millions of debtors into financial purgatory. You can believe that it's unfair to continue to help these borrowers. And that's fine. But helping them out is probably the best thing for the overall economy.

If we did it for Goldman Sachs in 2008 because it was the best thing for the economy, why not pause payments for a class of consumers while the administration develops a better plan? Whether that's fair or unfair isn't really the point. It's just the best thing for all of us. All right, that's it for my take. I'm going to send it over to Isaac for today's reader question. We'll be right back after this quick break.

All right, thanks Ari for tackling the take today. That brings us to your questions answered. This one is from an anonymous listener in Texas who said, I've noticed that most news outlets use the phrase disproven claim in quotes, every time they mentioned certain topics in lockstep. And I wondered how they all decided to use the same term in relation to the same event or theory and what the criteria is for stating as fact that something is a disproven claim. Does it mean there are no experts who disagree that it's been disproven?

Is there just one person who needs to claim to have disproven it? Do all of the news outlets have a meeting to decide which topics they'll put that phrase in front of? Tell you the truth, it's a little 1984-ish the way they do it. So I was just wondering if you had any thoughts. Okay, so first of all, we hear you. There are many phrases that have certainly become common

in the way the media covers some claims, especially in the post-Trump and post-COVID era. And a lot of them kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Repeated the disproven or false claim is one example of that. Asserted or said without evidence is another. And then there's the classic experts say or experts disagree, which is a formulation

that I really personally don't like. Just labeling a statement as false or declaring no evidence to support a claim both feel like insufficient proof of work. So here at Tangle, at least, if we cover a politician saying something incorrect, we won't just say so and so said falsely, but we'll instead simply provide the pertinent facts

you can see for yourself. And when someone makes a claim that existing evidence can only oppose and not support, we won't say asserted without evidence, but instead we'll provide the best evidence for and against, even if the evidence in favor of the claim is only proximate. say asserted without evidence, but instead will provide the best evidence for and against, even if the evidence in favor of the claim is only proximate. But still, we can see why these phrases became popular.

Journalists frankly like using short and efficient phrases. They also tend to borrow wording from each other. That's something we do all the time. The phrases repeated the disproven claim or asserted without evidence are certainly efficient, but they do have their problems. These phrases are usually indicative of a kind of editorial bias and indicate a kind of in-group signaling,

which only further contributes to the issues of bias and media mistrust that we're all so familiar with by now. Even though we know that government officials in both the Biden and Trump administrations have pushed journalists to cover stories in the ways they want them to be covered, I will say these phrases probably aren't part of some coordinated conspiracy.

That is to say, we aren't going to go out on a limb and assert it without evidence. I think the more likely reality is that journalists and editors take certain shortcuts and repeat each other's languages, and that's really the phenomenon that you're observing. All right, with that, I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of today's pod, and like I said, I'll see you guys tomorrow.

Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. The start of the U.S. and Israel-backed plan to resume aid distribution in Gaza has experienced several setbacks this week. On Sunday, the chief executive of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which oversees the

new system of aid distribution, resigned after calling on Israel to allow more aid into the Strip. On Tuesday, Palestinians overran an aid distribution center, leading to reports of looting and shots fired by the Israeli military to disperse the crowd. While the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said aid distribution will still resume after the incident, the week's difficulties underscore challenges facing the new system designed to deliver aid directly to Gazans with support from private U.S. security firms. The Wall Street Journal has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description.

Alright next up is our numbers section. The approximate number of Americans with student loan debt in 2024 was 43 million according to Department of Education data. The total federal student loan debt at the end of 2024 was $1.6 trillion. The approximate average student debt owed by borrowers ages 24 and younger in 2024 was $14,000. The approximate average student debt owed by borrowers ages 62 and older in 2024 was $43,000.

The approximate number of student loan borrowers who have not made a monthly payment in over 360 days is 5 million, according to ED data. The approximate number of student loan borrowers in late-stage delinquency, those who have not made a payment in 91 to 180 days, is 4 million. The estimated increase in monthly student loan payments in 2025 is $1 to $3 billion, according to a Morgan Stanley estimate. And the percentage of Americans who say that it is important for the federal government

to forgive student loan debt is 39 percent, according to a June 2024 AP NORC poll. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. Obsessive-compulsive disorder affects nearly 1 in 50 people worldwide. In an attempt to better understand the genetic roots of OCD, University of Florida psychiatry professor Carol Matthews analyzed the DNA of over 50,000 people with OCD and over 2 million people without the condition. The study led to the discovery of hundreds of genetic markers potentially linked to OCD, which Matthews hopes will improve treatment options and identification methods for those at risk for the condition.

The conservation has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to READTANGLE.COM where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. In tomorrow's Friday edition, Isaac is tackling the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and exploring how the war has fundamentally shifted his beliefs about the conflict. It's a very personal piece that Isaac's been working on for a few months now, and we aim to have a podcast version of it for you tomorrow in addition to the newsletter as well. In order to get that Friday piece, you do need to be

a member. So if you haven't signed up already, please head over to our membership page. Isaac Ari and Camille will be here with the Sunday podcast and I will return on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have an absolutely wonderful weekend, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman

with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Kaspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Dyett75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.