A pair of decisions by two federal judges has put key parts of President Biden's plan for

easing student loan payments on hold and their future in doubt.

William Bringham has the details on the impact.

It's the first part of a two-part focus tonight of our series,

Rethinking College.

Jeff, judges in two states, Missouri and Kansas blocked parts of the Biden administration student loan repayment

program known as Save.

It offers a way for students and graduates to lower monthly payments and get some debt forgiveness.

More than 8 million people are currently enrolled,

but these rulings put those key features on pause.

So what does this mean for borrowers?

Danielle Douglas Gabriel covers higher education for the Washington Post and she joins us again now.

Danielle, thank you so much for being here again.

Before we get into the arguments embedded in these two cases, can you just remind us what the president and the administration student loan program was really all about?

Who and how was the administration trying to help here?

So first thanks for having me and the objective here was really to try to make student loan

payments more manageable for the vast

majority of Americans who have education debt and the way that this would work

is it protecting more of the income that they earn from the calculation that determines their monthly

bills.

This is really built on a plan that has been in existence for 30 years in one iteration

or the next and it really just makes it far more generous

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