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For months, student debt advocates have held out hope that President JOE BIDEN would extend the federal student loan payment pause again when it is set to expire late summer.

But when White House chief of staff JEFF ZIENTS hosted a small group of debt relief advocates earlier this month in the Roosevelt Room, the issue never came up. Zients passed out chocolate chip cookies packaged in bags with the presidential seal and reiterated the administration’s commitment to help borrowers. He solicited feedback from the group and gave everyone a chance to speak during the 45-minute meeting.

The failure to explicitly address the payment pause left advocates frustrated and concerned that the administration will actually stick to its timeline to let loan relief lapse this time around.

“It’s concerning that allowing payments to restart even appears to be on the table,” said one advocate, who asked not be named to protect relationships with the Biden administration.

Student loan payments have been paused since March 2020 to help alleviate the economic impact of the Covid pandemic. Biden has extended the moratorium multiple times since taking office.

At the end of last year, as legal challenges over the plan made their way up to the Supreme Court, Biden issued an eighth extension. He said that federal loan payments would kick back on 60 days after the litigation was resolved. If the litigation wasn’t resolved by June 30, then payments would resume 60 days after that.

Advocates always viewed the timeline as flexible. They saw two key factors working in their favor.

First, the political calculus. Millions of debt holders could have their balances completely wiped clean if the Supreme Court upholds Biden’s debt cancellation plan — but that’s a pretty big if. Amid the uncertainty, advocates argued that many borrowers relied on the pause and assumed, to some extent, that they wouldn’t have to restart payments while Biden was in office, especially as a presidential election neared.

Second, the logistical considerations. Resuming payments after such a long hiatus was always going to be a tricky bureaucratic undertaking. But a funding shortfall at the Education Department has exacerbated that challenge and administration officials, congressional Democrats and consumer advocacy groups have expressed concern that the Biden administration may not have enough money to smoothly transition borrowers back into repayment.

But despite those factors, advocates worry that Biden might not be open to yet another extension. Pressed by Republicans on Capitol Hill, Education Secretary MIGUEL CARDONA said during hearings over the past couple weeks that the administration is committed to restarting payments after the Supreme Court rules.

“We’re preparing to restart repayment because the emergency period is over,” Cardona told a Senate appropriations subcommittee last week. “The HEROES Act provides me the opportunity to create a waiver for those who were impacted significantly by the pandemic.”

When asked about the payment pause, an administration official said: “We’re confident the law is on our side and that the Supreme Court will allow the Department to move forward with providing one-time debt relief to borrowers to ensure that they are not made worse off with respect to their loans because of the pandemic and as they prepare to restart loan payments.”

Meanwhile, the Education Department has been looking at ways to soften the blow of payments restarting. Officials are considering, for example, a grace period in which borrowers aren’t penalized for missing payments for as long as the first year after they resume, according to people familiar with the plans.

A lot could still happen between now and September. Some advocates note that, in the past, Biden has waited until just a few days before the pause’s expiration to issue another extension, and that the administration might be more reluctant to telegraph its next move before the Supreme Court issues its decision.

While advocates were initially skeptical of how much of an ally Zients would be inside the White House, a person familiar with Zients’ thinking says he regularly engages with debt relief advocates and lawmakers on the issue, including Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.), Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER (D-N.Y.) and Rep. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.).

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With help from the White House Historical Association

During which presidency was the White House first lit up with exterior lighting?

(Answer at bottom.)

TGIF! It’s that time of the week when we feature a cartoon! This one’s by JEFF KOTERBA. Our very own MATT WUERKER publishes a selection of cartoons from all over the country.

WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE THE COIN… OR NOT: White House aides have privately told progressives that the president will not use the 14th Amendment as a way out of the debt ceiling standoff, despite their agitation for him to do so, our ADAM CANCRYN reports.

Adam’s story comes on a difficult day for those debt ceiling talks. Despite the early optimism, negotiations between the White House and lawmakers were put on pause Friday morning. Rep. GARRET GRAVES (R-La.), one of House Speaker KEVIN MCCARTHY’s deputies who has been part of the discussions, said they “decided to press pause, because it’s just not productive.” Our SARAH FERRIS has the latest.

FROM THOUSANDS OF MILES AWAY: Before the fan was hit with, well, you know what, the White House tweeted a pic on Friday of the president Zooming (or Webexing?) with the team tasked with negotiating on the debt limit while he attends the G-7 in Japan. Jeff Zients’ work from home look was a plaid shirt, while counselor to the president STEVE RICCHETTI seems to be more of a Patagonia pullover kind of guy. The White House said in the tweet that Biden’s “team informed him that steady progress is being made” and the president “remains confident that Congress will take necessary action to avoid default.”

LET THE TRAINING BEGIN: The president on Friday agreed to a joint international effort to train Ukrainian pilots on modern fighter jets, including F-16s, our LARA SELIGMAN reports. The timeline as to when the aircraft will get to Ukraine remains unclear, as the nations involved still have to iron out when to send them, how many to send and who will transfer them.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE WANTS YOU TO READ: This LA Times piece by HAMED ALEAZIZ and PATRICK J. MCDONNELL about how “the doomsday scenarios that many politicians feared would follow the expiration of the pandemic-era restrictions known as Title 42 have not materialized.” Communications director BEN LABOLT and deputy press secretary ANDREW BATES each shared the piece on Twitter.

ALSO… Anything about how Biden has confirmed 129 federal judges since taking office. Deputy communications director HERBIE ZISKEND tweeted out a lengthy thread on Friday linking to various articles about how Biden has prioritized nominating women and judges of color, including this piece from Axios’ RUSSELL CONTRERAS about the president’s push for more Latino judges.

WHAT THE WHITE HOUSE DOESN’T WANT YOU TO READ: This article by our KIERRA FRAZIER about how Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) sees the relationship between progressives and the White House after the departure of former chief of staff RON KLAIN.

“I do think it has shifted pretty significantly,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I don’t think it’s a similar dynamic. … The dynamic with Ron Klain was very open.”

ALL THE SHOES THAT’S FIT TO PRINT: When Biden posted a picture on Twitter earlier this week with top lawmakers in the Oval Office, it did not go unnoticed that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Sen. MITCH MCCONNELL and Rep. HAKEEM JEFFRIES “were all captured wearing some variant of the dreaded footwear hybrid: the sneaker shoe,” NYT’s GUY TREBAY writes.

“‘Awful,’ Yang-Yi Goh, style director of GQ, pronounced the shoe that has become a style default among Capitol Hill staffers,” Trebay writes. “‘You’re trying to pass this tech-y monstrosity off as a proper dress shoe,’ Mr. Goh said, adding that a suit and necktie worn with a traditional hard-soled shoe symbolize respect for occasion, in this case a meeting with the most powerful man on earth.”

SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: When asked in an interview with CNN’s CHRIS WALLACE why Democrats would want to move their first primary to South Carolina — a state they have no chance of winning in the general election — Rep. JIM CLYBURN (D-S.C.) chose brutal honesty as a response.

“I don’t think you’re stacking the deck. I think you’re avoiding embarrassment. And that is what he is attempting to avoid here. And I would expect anybody to do the same,” Clyburn said.

TALKIN’ TRADE: Commerce Secretary GINA RAIMONDO and Trade Representative KATHERINE TAI are set to meet with Chinese Commerce Minister WANG WENTAO in the U.S. next week to talk about their respective concerns regarding economic and trade relations between the two nations, NBC News’ ROSE HOROWITCH reports.

WORKER CRUNCH: Despite the Biden administration’s push for manufacturing in the U.S., NYT’s MADELEINE NGO reports that there’s a lack of semiconductor workers available to see those investments pay off. The administration’s push “has run headfirst into the tightest labor market in years, with employers across the country struggling to find workers. Semiconductor manufacturers have long found it difficult to hire workers because of a lack of awareness of the industry and too few students entering relevant academic fields.”

GREAT NEWS FOR SYPHILIS: Although unspent Covid-19 money has come into play as part of the debt ceiling negotiations, public health leaders warn that taking the funds back could have severe consequences, like affecting local efforts to slow the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, our ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN reports. “States and cities are counting on unspent Covid funds to support the ranks of local public health workers who test people for sexually transmitted infections, find and contact others who were exposed, and direct people to treatment, efforts crucial to limiting the spread of STDs.”

WHOOPS: Two reports declassified Friday showed that the FBI in 2020 used the surveillance tool in Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to “investigate whether protesters involved in the Black Lives Matter movement had ties to terrorists,” our MAGGIE MILLER reports for Pro subscribers. The news comes as buzz about the reauthorization of Section 702 grows.

Here is how to think about Biden’s age (WaPo’s Editorial Board)

Joe Biden’s ‘Thank You’ In South Carolina (The Lever’s Andrew Perez)

‘No Labels’ Eyes a Third-Party Run in 2024. Democrats Are Alarmed (NYT’s Jonathan Weisman)

A lot of topics were covered in Transportation Secretary PETE BUTTIGIEG’s recent WIRED interview, including burgers.

Buttigieg used burgers as an analogy to explain the complexities of masculinity, as some on the far-right have discredited the Impossible Burger and other plant-based alternatives that tastes like meat.

“I love a good cheeseburger,” he said. “I hate a bad veggie burger. I like a good veggie burger. The Burger King Impossible Whopper with bacon is not a bad combo.”

We’ll have to give it a try.

During RICHARD NIXON’s presidency, first lady PAT NIXON wanted to not only improve the interior of the executive mansion, but she hoped to improve the exterior of the building. She worked closely with the National Park Service, which is responsible for the White House Grounds, to establish the appropriate exterior lighting, according to the White House Historical Association.

A CALL OUT — Do you think you have a harder trivia question? Send us your best one about the presidents with a citation and we may feature it.

Edited by Eun Kyung Kim and Sam Stein.