(NEW YORK) — Nearly two million student loan borrowers are at risk of having their wages garnished next month, credit-reporting agency TransUnion said on Tuesday.
Fresh data shows a sharp increase in the number of delinquent student loan borrowers in recent months, following the end of a pandemic-era pause on student debt payments.
Student loan borrowers are considered delinquent if they fail to make a loan payment for 90 days. When late payment stretches on for a total of 270 days, then the borrower falls into default.
Roughly 6 million student loan borrowers entered delinquency between February and April, TransUnion said, estimating that about one-third of those borrowers could enter default in July.
When a federal student loan enters default, the government can send it for collections, garnishing wages or even taking money from Social Security payments or tax refunds.
The Trump administration started collecting defaulted student loan payments in May, lifting a pause initiated in 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We continue to see more and more federal student loan borrowers being reported as the 90+ days delinquent, making a larger number of consumers vulnerable to entering default and the start of collections activities,” Michele Raneri, vice president and head of U.S. research and consulting at TransUnion, said in a statement.
Some borrowers’ credit scores have also suffered. Student loan holders who have entered delinquency in recent months have suffered an average credit-score reduction of 60 points, TransUnion data showed.
Roughly one in five of the newly delinquent borrowers held relatively strong credit ratings of prime or above.
“This underscores the fact that student loan borrowers of any credit risk tier can find themselves falling behind in their payments and at risk for default, even during a time in which we’ve seen most consumers are managing their debt relatively well,” Joshua Turnbull, senior vice president and head of consumer lending at TransUnion, said in a statement.
The risk to borrowers’ credit scores dates back to policy decisions made when former President Joe Biden’s administration resumed federal student loan payments after a period of relief that had been enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the Biden administration lifted the pause in the fall of 2023, the White House set in motion a 12-month moratorium. The administration did not count late payments toward delinquency. That moratorium ended in October, meaning borrowers could be considered delinquent if they didn’t make payments for more than 90 days, returning to the way the process worked pre-pandemic.
In all, some 42 million borrowers owe more than $1.6 trillion in student debt, the Department of Education said in April.
Despite the surge in newly delinquent borrowers, many of the loan holders still have time to avert garnished wages. Just 0.3% of the newly delinquent borrowers have already entered default, TransUnion said.
(NEW YORK) — New York City’s municipal races are bringing disgraced politicians back into the limelight, with multiple candidates seeking a political comeback and raising the question of whether voters will give them a second — or third — chance.
Among the slate is Anthony Weiner, the disgraced former congressman whose downfall came after a slew of sexting scandals that culminated in a 21-month federal prison sentence, who is vying for Manhattan’s City Council seat.
This comes as New York City’s mayoral race faces its share of controversy as well, with former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continuing to deny the sexual harassment allegations that led to his resignation nearly four years ago.
And though the federal investigation into incumbent Mayor Eric Adams over fraud and bribery was dismissed earlier this year, he continues to take heat as the first sitting mayor to be indicted as he attempts to court voters running as an independent.
Yet Weiner, 60, is attempting to differentiate himself from the other candidates with checkered pasts by emphasizing accountability for his wrongdoings.
“All of that happened, and I accept responsibility for it,” he told ABC’s “The View” in May. “You won’t hear me do what some other people in public life have done — Donald Trump or Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams: ‘I’m a victim, they persecuted me for no reason.’ I was dealing with very serious problems. I was dealing with what I now understand to be addiction.”
“I am saying ‘Yes, I did these things. I got into recovery. I tried to make my life better,'” he said. “And now I can be of service. And I’m a damn good politician.”
In 2011, Weiner resigned from his congressional seat after a sexually explicit photo was posted on his social media page — which he initially said was a hack, but later admitted was his own doing — in addition to revelations of more sexting content with various women online.
He attempted a comeback two years later in an unsuccessful New York City mayoral run. Despite his initial lead, his campaign was plagued by controversy as more sexually explicit messages and images became public, with Weiner operating under the alias “Carlos Danger.”
In 2016, new sexting allegations came to light which prompted his wife Huma Abedin to announce the couple’s split.
In 2017, Weiner was sentenced to 21 months in federal prison after one of his sexting scandals was found to involve a 15-year-old girl. Following his release, he was also designated a Level 1 registered sexual offender, classified as a low-risk to reoffend.
During his appearance on “The View,” Weiner emphasized that he was still in recovery for sex addiction.
He also recognized that he would receive blowback during his campaign, but he did not think his past should hold him back. He cited a need for change among Democratic candidates as his reason for getting back into politics.
“When I woke up in November of ’24 and saw the election results — but more than who won, I looked around New York City and saw how many fewer Democrats even turned out to vote. And I started to say to myself ‘something is seriously wrong here,'” he said. “We’re hardcore anti-Trump territory and Trump did better.”
Weiner presents a more moderate platform than some of his Democratic counterparts. According to his campaign website, some of his goals include increasing police presence, protecting undocumented immigrants but deporting violent criminals, taxing the rich, and eliminating waste.
In Tuesday’s Democratic primary, Weiner faces Assembly Member Harvey Epstein, Manhattan Community Board Chair Andrea Gordillo, nonprofit leader Sarah Batchu, and community advocate Allie Ryan.
Jon G. Fuller/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(BIG BEND NATIONAL PARK, Texas) — Paleontologists have found fossilized remains of a giant possum-like mammal that lived 60 million years ago.
The fossils, found at Big Bend National Park in Texas, belong to a group of ancient near-marsupials from the Paleocene period that scientists call Swaindelphys, according to a paper published last week in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The prehistoric species, called Swaindelphys solastella, was “gigantic” compared to other Swaindelphys at the time but are actually about the size of a modern hedgehog, according to the researchers.
“I compared them to a lot of other marsupials from around the same time period to see what they’re most closely related to,” said Kristen Miller, a doctoral student at The University of Kansas’ Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum and lead author of the paper, said in a statement.
At first, the paleontologists thought the fossils belonged to a group of metatherians — or marsupial-like mammals — from the Cretaceous period that survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, the mass extinction event believed to have wiped dinosaurs from the planet 66 million years ago.
But additional analysis revealed that the specimens belonged to a “surprisingly large” new species of Swaindelphys.
“Not only are they the largest metatherians from this time period, but they’re also the youngest and located at the most southern latitude,” Miller said.
The new fossil is the largest marsupial — in terms of body and size — found so far in North America from the Paleocene period, Chris Beard, senior curator with KU’s Biodiversity Institute, said in a statement.
“Since everything is bigger in Texas, this is perhaps not surprising,” Beard said.
“I call them ‘primatomorphans,'” Beard said. “They’re not, technically speaking, primates, but they’re very close to the ancestry of living and fossil primates. These marsupials are probably ecological analogues of early primates.”
The researchers’ work is aimed at uncovering some of the smaller and harder-to-find fossil mammals that lived at Big Bend at the time, Beard said.
The paleontologists are also interested in the differences in the kinds of fossils found in more northern regions, such as Wyoming and Alberta, Canada.
“North of that ancient divide, we see the classic Bighorn Basin taxa in their expected time periods,” Miller said said. “But south of that, in river drainages that originate in the central Rockies and areas farther to the south, things start to go a little wacky.”
More research into Swaindelphys solastella, as well as new fieldwork in Big Bend, is planned.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Families Over Billionaires
(WASHINGTON) — The House Oversight Committee’s first closed-door transcribed meeting investigating former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity began Tuesday with former White House Domestic Policy Council Director Neera Tanden appearing for questioning on Capitol Hill.
Committee Chairman James Comer is investigating Biden’s health and mental “decline,” as well as the use of an autopen for pardons and other executive actions.
“This is the first of what will be many interviews with people we believe were involved in the autopen scandal in the Biden administration,” Comer told reporters Tuesday morning. “I think the American people want to know, I think there’s a huge level of curiosity in the press corps [with] respect to who was actually calling the shots in the Biden administration.”
Following the introductory portion of the meeting, Comer said Republicans wrapped a “good hour,” while Rep. Wesley Bell, D-Mo., called it an “extraordinary waste of time.”
Tanden was nominated by Biden to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget but ultimately withdrew her nomination after facing a bruising confirmation battle and bipartisan criticism over her past tweets that attacked members of Congress.
In addition to Tanden, additional former Biden senior aides are expected to sit down for interviews in the coming weeks without being subpoenaed, including Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Annie Tomasini.
Dr. Kevin O’Connor, the former White House physician for Biden, will appear under subpoena before the committee for a closed, transcribed interview on July 9, a source familiar with the committee’s plans told ABC News.
ABC News’ Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — “We are especially mindful that we are in the middle of a war right now,” former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — the front-runner in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary — told a crowd at a Juneteenth lunch event in the Bronx on Thursday.
Some people in the crowd started muttering — the war in the Middle East?
“We’re in the middle of a war — you don’t see it? Day in and day out, when you turn on the TV news and you see a president named Mr. Trump. Have you seen President Trump on TV?”
As some in the crowd booed, Cuomo added, “President Trump has declared war on Democratic states, Democratic cities. He’s declared war on working families, he’s declared war on immigrants, he’s declared war on minorities, and he’s declared war on New York City and New York State.” He later told reporters, “Good news is — we beat [the administration] once before, and we’re going to beat them again.”
In the final days of campaigning for Tuesday’s New York City ranked choice Democratic mayoral primary, which has 11 candidates on the ballot, Cuomo and others fanned out across the city to make their closing arguments, with one shared focus being how they’re framing themselves as the best choice to stand up to the White House.
Curtis Sliwa, who lost to Mayor Eric Adams in 2021, is the only Republican running for mayor.
Voters, meanwhile, told ABC News they’re looking at both national and local issues — particularly affordability — as they decide who to cast votes for.
And scorching high temperatures in New York City could impact turnout on Election Day, as voters brave the heat to trudge to their polling places on Tuesday, with the city’s election board preparing for dehydration, and even potential heat-related power outages.
The New York City Board of Elections said last week in a news release that it is making sure polling sites that don’t have air conditioning will have fans, a “steady supply of water.” The board said it is working with emergency management and utility providers to make sure polling places don’t lose power, too.
A spokesperson for the board told City & State NY that potential heat-induced blackouts might impact vote counting, since then ballots would need to be counted similarly to absentee or affidavit ballots that get scanned later.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, signed legislation over the weekend allowing voters to receive refreshments while in line to vote.
In an email sent to supporters on Tuesday to supporters, Cuomo asked voters to “vote as early as you can to avoid the hottest parts of the day.”
For Cuomo, the election could mark his political comeback. His governorship was derailed after several women accused him of sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct. He resigned as governor in 2021 but has consistently denied the allegations. One voter in downtown Manhattan told ABC News that she is voting for Cuomo despite misgivings over the allegations, mentioning that he had issued an apology in 2021.
Carmen S., a medical assistant who lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, told ABC News in an interview that immigration policy is one of the important issues in the race, becoming emotional speaking about the White House’s immigration policies. She declined to provide her full last name.
“I’m a child of immigrants,” she said. “Not every immigrant is a criminal.”
While she didn’t share who she ranked on her ballot, she praised Cuomo for his record and how he handled his job as governor.
Cuomo’s main opponent in the primary is state assembly member Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist whose progressive economic plans have galvanized many voters.
Mamdani, in an interview with ABC News on Thursday in Astoria, Queens, just hours after he voted early at a polling site in the Museum of the Moving Image, said his closing argument is that he is the one who can take on the “twin crises” facing the city: “Authoritarianism from the outside and an affordability crisis from the inside.”
“And what we need is a mayor who’s able to stand up to both of those and deliver a city that every New Yorker can afford and that every New Yorker understands that they belong to,” Mamdani told ABC News.
And as to why should people around the country care about this race, he said, “This is a referendum on where our party goes; it is a referendum on whether billionaires and corporations can buy yet another election, or if we opt for a new generation of leadership, one that isn’t funded by Trump donors, one that is actually able to stand up and fight for working class New Yorkers.”
That outlook has impressed some voters. Angela Pham, a 38-year-old content designer who lives in Greenwich Village, told ABC News in an interview after voting early that Mamdani “needs to win.”
“We’re supposed to be the most progressive city in America,” she said. “I feel like he’s the only candidate that makes sense for the things that we need to happen.”
Asked how she felt about Cuomo, Pham said, “He needs to get out of politics and retire to a farm.”
Mamdani has faced some pushback over his criticism of Israel, given New York’s large Jewish population. In response, he has emphasized policies to combat antisemitism and said that he wants to focus on city issues.
Cuomo has criticized Mamdani’s comments about Israel and made combatting antisemitism a key campaign focus. One voter in Greenwich Village told ABC News that concerns about antisemitism were a main driver for his decision to vote for Cuomo.
Fellow candidate New York City comptroller Brad Lander, who has “cross-endorsed” Mamdani, has received less momentum in polling but has gotten heightened attention since he was briefly detained last week by federal agents while escorting a defendant out of immigration court.
Lander, speaking with ABC News on Thursday on the Upper East Side near an early voting site at a school, said that the mayoral election in the city has national implications, because the administration has said it hopes to ““liberate” Democratic cities from their elected officials. That’s [a] code word for a federal government takeover, an erosion of democracy, a denial of due process,” Lander said.
“Democracy is on the line right now,” he added.
Officials from the White House and administration have said their actions towards cities such as Los Angeles are meant to restore order amidst protests and unrest.
Juan Peralta, a 31-year-old from Harlem who works in events, told ABC News that the only two candidates on the ballot he’s excited about are Zohran Mamdani and Brad Lander, pointing to Mamdani’s proposal for free child care.
“Growing up in New York, I did feel like this was a place for families,” Peralta told ABC News. “Now I feel like it’s a place for families of a certain income.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House and Senate’s classified briefing on the Iran-Israel conflict has been postponed, multiple sources familiar confirmed.
The Senate’s briefing was delayed from Tuesday until Thursday to allow for additional briefers to attend, sources told ABC News. It’s not yet clear who those additional briefers would be.
The House’s classified briefing set for Tuesday afternoon has been postponed and it’s not yet clear when it will be rescheduled.
Sources told ABC News that the briefers who were expected to speak included Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John Caine, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg.
When the meetings occur, it’s expected that lawmakers, especially Democrats, will be looking for answers and evidence at the briefings from the administration — specifically why Trump said there was an imminent threat and carried out U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites over the weekend.
Their meetings come after several lawmakers on Capitol Hill argued the military action was unconstitutional. There are several bipartisan resolutions that could receive a vote in coming days that may put some lawmakers in uncomfortable positions as they consider whether Trump ignored the role of Congress in striking Tehran.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna introduced a War Powers Resolution last week to rebuke the president’s decision to launch strikes. As Massie continued to rail against Trump and his role in the conflict, the president lashed out at the Kentucky Republican, saying he was “not MAGA” and threatened to campaign for Massie’s Republican primary opponent in the next election.
Massie has now softened his approach, telling reporters at the Capitol on Monday that he’s now considering pulling the bipartisan War Powers Resolution.
“If the ceasefire holds, and we’re not engaged in hostilities, then it’s a moot point. I wouldn’t need to bring it to the floor,” Massie said.
Massie also added that he is open to patching things up with the president: “I’d like a ceasefire between me and President Trump. If I can get the same deal, after his bunker busters he dropped on me.”
Trump on Monday announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, after more than a week of fighting following Israel’s strikes — and subsequent U.S. attacks — on Iran’s nuclear program. Hours after the ceasefire took effect, Israel said Iran violated it — which Iran denies.
Trump expressed anger at both Israel and Iran, accusing both of violating the ceasefire agreement shortly after it began.
“I’m not happy with Israel. OK, when I say now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I’m not happy with them. I’m not happy with Iran either,” Trump said to reporters Tuesday morning.
Speaker Mike Johnson said late Monday that he expects the House briefing to have a different “tone” in the light of the ceasefire.
ABC News’ Rachel Scott contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The FBI is planning to reallocate potentially thousands of agents away from immigration enforcement to focus on cyber threats and counterterrorism efforts, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News Tuesday.
The shift in resources was prompted in part by the U.S. strikes in Iran over the weekend, the sources said.
The FBI has discussed shifting at least a couple thousand agents away from immigration work to help protect against threats from foreign adversaries, especially Iran, said the sources.
“The FBI does not comment on specific operational adjustments or personnel decisions,” an FBI official told ABC News. “However, we continuously assess and realign our resources to respond to the most pressing threats to our national security and to ensure the safety of the American people.”
Since the FBI started assigning agents to work on immigration enforcement in support of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, agents in the field had been expressing concerns that fewer resources were being dedicated to counterterrorism and cyber threats, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
ABC News previously reported that several months ago, the FBI directed agents from around the country — many of whom were working on counterterrorism and cyber issues — to focus instead on helping the Department of Homeland Security conduct immigration enforcement operations.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday morning had strong words for Israel and Iran as he accused both nations of violating a ceasefire agreement he announced just the night prior.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing. Do you understand that?” Trump told ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott when asked if both nations were committed to peace.
Trump was clearly frustrated as he spoke with reporters before departing the White House for a NATO summit at The Hague in the Netherlands.
“Israel says Iran violated the peace agreement and the ceasefire agreement. Do you believe that Iran is still committed to peace?” Scott asked the president.
“I do, yeah. They violated it but Israel violated it, too,” Trump responded.
Scott then asked Trump if he was questioning Israel’s commitment to peace.
“Israel as soon as we made the deal, they came out and dropped a boat load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” Trump said. “The biggest load that we’ve seen, I’m not happy with Israel. Ok, when I say now you have 12 hours, you don’t go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them. So I’m not happy with him. I’m not happy with Iran either.”
Neither Iran nor Israel have publicly commented on Trump’s remarks about the apparent ceasefire violations.
Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday morning, sources familiar with the call told ABC News.
A White House source provided a brief readout of the call: “President Trump was exceptionally firm and direct with Prime Minister Netanyahu about what needed to happen to sustain the ceasefire. The Prime Minister understood the severity of the situation and the concerns President Trump expressed.”
Trump said on social media Monday evening that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, signaling a possible end to nearly two weeks of escalating air assaults by the two countries.
The agreement described by Trump involved two 12-hour ceasefire periods, starting at about 12 a.m. EDT starting with Iran. That would come “when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions,” Trump said in the post.
Israel would then follow with a second 12-hour ceasefire, Trump said.
After 24 hours, the war would be officially declared ended, according to Trump.
A man in Washington state was rescued after falling from a tree and spending four to five days in the woods, according to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office. Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office
(POULSBO, Wash.) — A Washington state man who was “stuck in the woods for days” after falling from a tree was rescued and is now recovering, according to the Kitsap County Sheriff’s Office.
The man was found on Saturday in Poulsbo, Washington — located in the Puget Sound region — after someone nearby called 911 when they heard a “voice in the woods calling for help,” the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
When a deputy arrived on the scene, he could hear a “faint, distressful voice” of a man saying “he had fallen from a tree,” the sheriff’s office said.
Officials and canines began a search and rescue operation, and after “combing through the area,” they were able to locate the man at approximately 7 a.m. on Saturday, the sheriff’s office said.
Once rescued, the man told authorities he had been lost for four to five days “while trying to take a shortcut through the woods,” officials said.
He was taken to St. Michael’s Medical Center for evaluation and treatment, officials said.
(NEW YORK) — Consumer confidence soured in June, erasing some of the boost in shopper attitudes that took hold last month as President Donald Trump rolled back tariffs, Conference Board data on Tuesday showed. The reading fell short of economists’ expectations.
The fresh data resumes a trend of worsening consumer confidence that stretches back to the outset of 2025. Last month, a burst of enthusiasm appeared to snap the malaise but fresh data suggests shoppers remain concerned about the path of the U.S. economy.
The decline in consumer confidence took hold across all age, income demographics and political affiliations, the Conference Board said, noting an especially large dropoff among Republicans.
“Consumer confidence weakened in June, erasing almost half of May’s sharp gains,” Stephanie Guichard, senior economist for global indicators at the Conference Board, said in a statement.
In recent weeks, Trump has dialed back some of his steepest levies, easing costs imposed upon companies and alleviating concern about a sharp surge of inflation. Importers typically pass along a share of the higher tax burden in the form of price hikes.
A trade agreement last month between the U.S. and China slashed tit-for-tat tariffs between the world’s two largest economies and triggered a surge in the stock market. Within days, Wall Street firms softened their forecasts of a downturn.
Still, an across-the-board 10% tariff applies to nearly all imports, except for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and some other items. Those tariffs stand in legal limbo, however, after a pair of federal court rulings late last month.
Warning signs point to the possibility of elevated prices over the coming months, however.
Nationwide retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have voiced alarm about the possibility they may raise prices as a result of the levies.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, said this month it expects U.S. inflation to reach 4% by the end of 2025, which would mark a sharp increase from current levels.
Federal Chair Jerome Powell, in recent months, has warned about the possibility that tariffs may cause what economists call “stagflation,” which is when inflation rises and the economy slows.
Stagflation could put the central bank in a difficult position. If the Fed were to raise interest rates, it could help ease inflation, but it may risk an economic downturn. If the Fed were to cut rates in an effort to spur economic growth, the move could unleash faster price increases.
The Federal Reserve held its benchmark interest rate steady last week, continuing a wait-and-see approach adopted by the central bank in recent months as it observes the potential effects of tariffs.
Speaking at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Powell said tariffs would likely “push up prices and weigh on economic activity” over the course of this year. But, he added, the effects would depend on the “ultimate level” of tariffs, which have frequently fluctuated.
“For the time being, we are well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance,” Powell said.
