The Trump administration seems to have gone into hibernation since the election. The coronavirus is raging out of control, but the federal coronavirus task force is silent, with neither Trump nor its titular chair Mike Pence attending its meetings. Given the administration’s penchant for toxic actions, its inactivity may be a blessing, but in the case of student loan repayments, this is not the case.
The administration has thus far failed to address the repayment of student loans of 33 million Americans, which had been put on pause because of the pandemic. The freeze ends December 31, and no one in the administration has indicated whether the freeze will be extended or will end.
– “Trump’s student loan cliff threatens chaos for Biden,” by Michael Stratford: “At midnight on New Year’s Eve, President Donald Trump’s pause on student loan payments for 33 million Americans is set to expire, just three weeks before President-elect Joe Biden is slated to take over.
“The Education Department started warning borrowers through text messages and emails this week that their monthly payments will resume in January. Even though Trump said this summer that he planned to later “extend” the freeze beyond Dec. 31, a White House spokesperson declined to comment on whether the president is still considering another executive action to move the expiration date.
“If Trump doesn’t act unilaterally and Congress doesn’t act to avert the cliff either, Biden could waive his own executive wand once inaugurated, though the president-elect’s campaign will not divulge his plans. The intervening weeks of limbo could cause mass confusion and uncertainty for borrowers. For the incoming president, the economic and administrative mess could take months to untangle, consuming the early days of his Education Department.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree with Trump’s niece and will be surprised if Trump does anything to help Americans out.
If not extending that deadline hurts Biden and the United States people that failed to elect Trump, then Trump will let it expire and become Biden’s burden a month later.
So much depends on another aid package to those who need it the most.
They’re not real hard workers, Team Trump. The President’s tweeting and insults and conspiracy theories get all the attention but without his stirring up chaos and division people might have noticed there’s not been much work going on.
I think part of the reason they’re declining to do their jobs and help with the transition is it will be real work, as opposed to appearing on conservative news outlets and attacking people. Not much interested in real work, these folks. Not sure what they do all day, frankly. Will they “fix” the upcoming student loan crisis? Of course not. The only real effort I’ve seen out of any of them over four years is trying to get him re-elected and they failed at even that.
Biden has a really big job in front of him. I voted for him and I’m pulling for him but boy is he being handed an absolute, rolling disaster. I feel some sympathy for him although obviously he has a lot of experience so presumably knows he’s inheriting a train wreck. We could be peaking with hospitalizations and a lack of qualified medical providers to manage an enormous public health crisis the day Biden is sworn in and that’s just the life or death problem, the acute crisis. There are ten others waiting in the wings to land on him his first day of work. I don’t envy him.
I’m afraid the same thing will happen to him as did Obama. Take office in a crisis. Spend most of your time in office digging us out of it and then get blamed for taking so long to do “so little” setting us up for another Republican administration that will take credit for the recovery put in motion under the Democrats. I know this scenario is an incredible oversimplification, but it is essentially what happens.
I agree. Very frustrating that happens over and over again.
“Fordham Institute
Religiously-affiliated charter schools are on their way, thanks to a SCOTUS decision, likely pleasing conservatives but alarming progressives. We must figure out how to keep these schools from splitting the charter coalition, says Mike Petrilli.”
Why would religious charter schools “split the charter coalition”? The entire ed reform echo chamber now cheerlead private school vouchers and are pushing them all over the country.
Of course there will be “religious themed charter schools”. All of these people support direct public funding of religious private schools. They’re well beyond objecting to religious charter schools. That ship has sailed.
You know what would be really controversial in ed reform and is apparently strictly forbidden? Supporting public schools. Supporting the 90% of US students who attend public schools. The ed reformer who breaks ranks and actually provides some real tangible benefit to any public school or public school student anywhere would be a real maverick.
In sane times, this would be universally derided as a grift. But sane don’t exit–not that they ever did.
Trump has no interest in the Coronavirus now because he sees no way to use it to keep himself in office. No personal upside for him, so it’s not a concern.
Agree. He is also incapable of feeing the pain of others and his role in causing or reducing that. The number of people who will die, or lose jobs, or be evicted, or have loans on homes foreclosed—all at the holiday season and start of the new year–is of no concern to him or his many once-upon-a-time Republican enablers, now committed to the Party and cult of Trump.