More than 30 million Americans could have their student loan balances reduced or eliminated under a new forgiveness plan unveiled Monday by the Biden administration in an ongoing effort to save a debt relief program struck down last year by the U.S. Supreme Court. Administration officials relied heavily on the court’s opinion to draft the new proposal, which targets specific groups of borrowers for loan and interest forgiveness under the authority of the Higher Education Act, our D.C. bureau reported.

The proposed regulations “address specific situations and specific populations in ways that we feel very confident are covered by what the secretary’s long-standing authority under [the Higher Education Act] allows him to do,” a senior administration official said Sunday on a call with reporters. “We’re confident that we’re acting within the scope of the law, as set forth by the Supreme Court.”

Still, it’s likely to face new legal challenges from Republicans, who sued to block implementation of the administration’s first debt relief program and have been skeptical of subsequent efforts to salvage it. The new proposal quickly attracted criticism from U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the ranking Republican on the Senate education committee, who dismissed the plan as a politically motivated attempt to woo undecided voters months ahead of the presidential election.

“These loan schemes do not forgive debt. They transfer the debt from those who willingly took it on to the 87 percent of Americans who decided to not go to college or already worked to pay off their loans,” Cassidy said in a statement. “This is an unfair ploy to buy votes before an election and does absolutely nothing to address the high cost of education that puts young people right back into debt.”

The measure will be released for public comment in the coming months and, if finalized, could take effect as early as this fall, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. The rollout would likely begin with a one-time cancellation of up to $20,000 in accrued interest for all borrowers regardless of income. Single borrowers earning less than $120,000 and married couples earning less than $240,000 who are enrolled in income-driven repayment plans could have all of their accrued interest forgiven. An estimated 25 million people would benefit from some type of interest cancellation, which would not require an application, officials said.

The plan would also eliminate debt for borrowers who have been repaying their loans for more than 20 years, along with people who are eligible for relief under other plans but have not applied. The Department of Education would use its own data to identify those borrowers, officials said.

“President Biden will use every tool available to cancel student loan debt for as many borrowers as possible, no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stand in his way,” Jean-Pierre said.

Republicans in Kentucky took a swing at higher education funding last month by declining to allocate $50 million toward a nursing school at Kentucky State University despite a record-high revenue surplus and a statewide shortage of nurses. Critics said the rejection (a “travesty”) was only the latest installment in a long pattern of neglect and underinvestment in historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, the Kentucky Lantern reported.

“The real tragedy is that we had the money to do it,” said state Rep. George Brown Jr., a Lexington Democrat.

Non-HBCUs fared better during the budget process, Black lawmakers noted — particularly Northern Kentucky University and the University of Kentucky, which scored $125 million for a proposed biomedical center. That money came from a $2.7 billion one-time spending plan, which also allocated $60 million for a veterinary tech facility at Murray State University, $25 million for a University of Louisville cancer center and $22 million for a livestock innovation center at a University of Kentucky research farm.

“Kentucky State always seems to suffer and always has to wait,” Brown said March 29 on the House floor. “‘You have to ‘wait your turn; it’s not your time.’ … So the question is, when will it be Kentucky State’s time?”

But the school did receive funding, Republicans noted, including $60 million in bonding for “asset preservation” and another $5 million to design a health science center for the nursing program (but nothing to build it). Those allocations came at the request of the university, which revised its original proposal after assessing failing infrastructure and other maintenance needs, according to state Sen. Chris McDaniel, a Republican and chairman of the Senate budget committee, who pledged his “full intent” to fund the nursing school in the 2026 budget.

Not everyone was so gracious. After noting a series of controversies at KSU, including misappropriated funds and an accreditation warning, Senate Republican Floor Leader Damon Thayer opined that the school is “probably lucky” to still be receiving taxpayer funding at all.

“With the recent numbers and results that have come from K-State, I think we should be dubious moving forward,” he said. Those numbers, he added, “have been pretty embarrassing.”

Things have gone better at the Labriola National American Indian Data Center at Arizona State University, which until recently had just a single full-time employee but now has six full-time Indigenous staffers and 12 student workers in a newly expanded, 6,000-square-foot space. The center, which aims to promote Indigenous history and connect with Native American students and community members, is the first Indigenous-led and staffed library space at a research university in the United States, the Arizona Mirror reported.

The new space, located on the second floor of the Hayden Library on ASU’s Tempe campus, includes thousands of books by Indigenous authors, study spaces, and a multi-use area for workshops and livestreams, all of it anchored by murals depicting mountains sacred to the O’odham tribe. Every decor choice was intentional and designed to reflect both the university and the history of the land it sits on, according to Alex Soto, the center’s director and a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation.

“These murals depict significant mountains in O’odham culture to let students know that we’re still an O’odham land, but the land also has knowledge, more than a book will ever have,” Soto said.

Officials heralded the reimagined center, which opened to the public on April 3, as a feat of cooperation and heritage.

“These things don’t just happen on their own. It takes a lot of hard work behind the scenes to commit,” said Jacob Moore, ASU’s vice president and special advisor to the president for American Indian affairs. “I think everybody all along the way has been committed, and it shows.”