PAY UP — Millions of Americans are now facing the possible resumption of student loan payments on Aug. 30 — for the first time since the outset of the pandemic — as a result of the debt limit deal cut between President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Biden’s original student debt relief plan — which would offer up to $20,000 in forgiveness — is at risk as well. The Supreme Court is set to decide the legality of the plan and House Republicans are taking up legislation to repeal the program. If the administration can’t successfully navigate potential challenges to the plan by August, the goodwill that Biden engendered with younger voters suffering from substantial amounts of debt could evaporate. And Americans who have relied on the payment pause to pay their other bills could come under intense financial stress.

Nightly spoke with Michael Stratford, an education reporter at POLITICO, on how student loan forgiveness ended up in the debt limit deal and how the Biden administration will deal with the fallout.

How did student loan forgiveness become a bargaining chip in the debt limit negotiations?

Conservatives have made it a priority to stop Biden’s student debt relief plan, which they say is costly for taxpayers, an illegal abuse of power, and unfair to Americans who didn’t attend college or already paid off their loans.

The initial House GOP debt ceiling plan included provisions that would have blocked an even broader array of Biden’s student loan policies. In addition to overturning the program to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt, the House-passed bill would’ve blocked the pause on student loan payments, nullified a new income-driven repayment plan aimed at lowering monthly payments and permanently curtailed the Education Department’s power to make changes to the student loan programs.

The White House fended off efforts to rollback most of those policies during the negotiations. But as part of the final compromise deal, the Biden administration agreed to language that winds down the pause on student loan payments and interest.

Several members of the House Freedom Caucus who are opposed to the debt deal today cited student debt relief as one of the many areas where the bill doesn’t go far enough in achieving conservative priorities.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), chair of the caucus, blasted the fact that the “student loan bailout” was left intact under the deal. “Biden forgives, you pay,” he said. “None of that changes.”

The deal “upholds Joe Biden’s student loan transfer scheme,” said Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.).

What legal challenges are currently affecting Biden’s debt cancellation plan? How might the Biden administration respond to Supreme Court rulings on debt cancellation in light of payments now beginning again later this summer?

The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this year in two cases brought by Republican attorneys general and a conservative group that challenged the legality of student debt cancellation. The conservative majority on the court appears skeptical of allowing Biden’s plan to move ahead, and the justices are expected to issue their ruling in the coming weeks.

The prohibition on further extensions of the payment pause potentially takes away one of Biden’s tools for responding to a possible loss at the Supreme Court. The Education Department wouldn’t be able to again delay payments and interest if its debt cancellation plan gets rejected. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the weekend said that was precisely what the language was designed to do.

The administration already had plans to end the payment pause later this year. How does this outcome differ?

That’s right, the Biden administration had already been planning to restart payments at the end of the summer. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona confirmed those plans as recently as earlier this month when he testified to Congress.

White House officials have therefore portrayed this provision as merely codifying into law what the administration was already planning to do. It’s true that this was the stated plan all along. But, of course, cementing something into law is different than announcing it in a press release.

The administration on several previous occasions announced that the payment pause was ending, only to reverse course at the last minute and give borrowers another reprieve. Many progressives and student debt activists were holding out hope that the administration would be able to further extend the payment pause if the Supreme Court strikes down the debt cancellation plan.

The Education Department had taken some steps internally toward preparing to resume collecting loans, such as developing an initial grace period in which borrowers aren’t penalized for missing payments as they receive student loan bills for the first time in more than three years. But the administration had not yet begun actively reaching out to tell borrowers that their payments were resuming.

How do you see this outcome affecting Biden, given that student debt relief was a major plank of his presidency?

If this debt ceiling deal becomes law — and the repayment deadline is set in stone — the political challenge for Biden begins.

The administration is going to have to figure out how to prepare millions of borrowers, many of whom are part of Biden’s base, to resume paying on student loans that they are expecting to have partially or fully forgiven. It raises the pressure on the White House to come up with a Plan B for student debt cancellation that it has repeatedly insisted it is not developing.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at [email protected]. Or contact tonight’s author at [email protected] or on Twitter at @katherinealong.

— Utah Republican Chris Stewart plans to resign from House: Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) plans to resign from Congress, according to a Republican familiar with the matter. The Salt Lake Tribune was the first to report on Stewart’s plans today. According to The Tribune, Stewart could resign as early as this week, reducing Republicans’ already-slim majority in the House. Stewart’s retirement would trigger a special election. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, would have a week to set the dates for a primary and a general election.

— Rosalynn Carter diagnosed with dementia: Former first lady Rosalynn Carter has been diagnosed with dementia, the Carter Center announced today. “She continues to live happily at home with her husband, enjoying spring in Plains and visits with loved ones,” the Carter Center said in a statement, referring to the Carters’ home in Georgia. During and after her time as first lady, Rosalynn Carter, 95, has been a longtime advocate for mental health.

— Key progressive pushes back on new food aid work requirements in debt deal: Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, said today that he’s “not happy” with the GOP-backed measure expanding work requirements on the nation’s leading food aid programs, which he had pleaded with White House negotiators to reject. McGovern also dismissed one of the White House’s key selling points on that part of the deal — that the expanded work requirements are offset by provisions that provide new access for veterans, the unhoused, and people just aging out of foster care. Biden aides hope that pitch will secure enough Democratic support for the bill ahead of the House vote on Wednesday. Without them, the legislation is likely to fail in the lower chamber.

PAC UP — Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is preparing for a likely presidential launch within the next two weeks, reports The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman.

To do so, some of his longest allies, including Brian Jones — who advised the McCain 2008 and Romney 2012 presidential campaigns — are laying the groundwork with a Super PAC called Tell It Like It Is.

Christie will plan to draw stark contrasts between himself and former President Donald Trump that began in earnest when he broke with Trump on false claims of election interference. Thus far, Christie has been one of the few Republicans in the potential field who has attacked Trump, as well as fellow leading contender Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, directly.

DESANTIS DUNK — DeSantis on Monday slammed the bipartisan debt ceiling deal, saying the country was still “careening towards bankruptcy.”

MOVED IT ALL ONLINE — The 2024 presidential campaign may barely have started, but we’re already getting a preview of just how online, free-wheeling and disorienting it’s likely to be, writes POLITICO’s Ben Schreckinger.

Over the weekend, an AI deepfake video featuring the face and voice of Ron DeSantis superimposed on “The Office” character Michael Scott went viral, aided by a tweet from Donald Trump Jr.

The uncanny deepfake proved just how far we’ve come in a short time with increasingly realistic memes attacking the opposition. And what about the candidates themselves?

Last week, DeSantis announced his campaign on Twitter Spaces. As technical failures delayed the launch, Biden ran straight into the social media slugfest, tweeting, “This link works” and directing followers to a page for donating to his reelection effort. Rather than remain above the fray in the other party’s primary — as sitting presidents have historically done — Biden’s team jumped right in on social media.

Biden’s tweet was also notable for its speed. Coming 16 minutes into the delayed kickoff, it essentially amounted to live commentary on a rival campaign event, something that was considered a shocking development when Trump first live-tweeted through a Democratic primary event in 2015.

WAR AT HOME — Moscow was targeted by a drone attack this morning after days of heavy fire on Kyiv, the Russian defense ministry said today, accusing Ukraine of being responsible, write Gabriel Gavin and Nicolas Camut.

“The attack involved eight uncrewed aircraft. All the enemy drones were shot down,” the defense ministry said in a statement, calling the event a “terrorist attack.”

The drone attack caused “minor damage to several buildings,” Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin said, adding that no one was “seriously injured” in the attack. The alleged attack comes after three days of heavy Russian drone and rocket strikes across the border in Ukraine.

It is not the first time Russia has accused Ukraine of carrying out aerial attacks on Russian soil. Earlier this month, Moscow claimed that Kyiv was behind an attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin in a drone attack that caused minor damage to the Kremlin.

FIVE MORE YEARS — Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will begin another five years as Turkey’s president after winning a divisive election that at one point seemed to threaten his hold on power, writes Elçin Poyrazlar.

The 69-year-old, who has dominated his country’s politics for two decades, won the runoff vote by 52 percent to 48 percent, with more than 99 percent of ballot boxes counted, beating opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, according to preliminary official results from Turkey’s Supreme Election Council.

Erdoğan declared victory in front of his residence in Istanbul, singing his campaign song before his speech. “I thank our nation, which gave us the responsibility of governing again for the next five years,” he said.

Turkey’s place as a key NATO power at the junction of Europe and the Middle East has made the election one of the most closely watched political contests in the world this year. With Erdoğan embarking on another five-year term, he is in a powerful position to influence not only the future direction of democracy in the 85 million strong country but also to shape politics in the region and beyond.

STREAM WARS — It was the talk of the media world during the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic: which streaming service would come out on top? Did anyone have a chance to challenge Netflix for dominance? How would Disney+ fare? But now, as the money has dried up, as subscribers balk at the price adding up of all those streamers, as rebrands like HBO Max to Max are filled with technological difficulties, the streaming wars feel over. Nobody won. In the midst of the Writers’ Guild of America strike, Angela Watercutter takes a look at the “day streaming died” in WIRED.