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Since the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of federal student loan borrowers have existed in a peculiar grey zone: They’re not making payments on their debt, but the government hasn’t come after them. Under President Donald Trump’s administration, that’s begun to change. The Department of Education is cracking down on late borrowers, dismantling pandemic-era relief programs, and, beginning just last week, threatening to garnish the wages of some borrowers who stopped making debt payments.

Who’s affected: Forty-three million Americans have student debt, and roughly one in four of them — or 12 million people — are behind on payments. Five-and-a-half million people have missed so many payments that their loans are considered “in default.” Compared with borrowers who don’t default on their loans, borrowers who fall that far behind are more likely to be Black, to have a low income, or........

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