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Executive Order: Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness (Donald Trump, 2025)

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Executive Order: Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness is an executive order that President Donald Trump (R) issued on March 7, 2025, during his second term in office.[1]

Executive orders are directives the president writes to officials within the executive branch requiring them to take or stop some action related to policy or management. They are numbered, published in the Federal Register, cite the authority by which the president is making the order, and the Office of Management and Budget issues budgetary impact analyses for each order.[2][3] Click here to read more about executive orders issued during Trump's second term.

Text of the order

The section below displays the text of the order. Click here to view the order as published on the White House website.

“

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose. In 2007, the Congress established the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program to encourage Americans to enter the public service sector by promising to forgive their remaining student loans after they completed 10 years of service in those jobs while making 10 years of minimum payments.

The prior administration abused the PSLF Program through a waiver process, using taxpayer funds to pay off loans for employees still years away from the statutorily required number of payments. Moreover, instead of alleviating worker shortages in necessary occupations, the PSLF Program has misdirected tax dollars into activist organizations that not only fail to serve the public interest, but actually harm our national security and American values, sometimes through criminal means. The PSLF Program also creates perverse incentives that can increase the cost of tuition, can load students in low-need majors with unsustainable debt, and may push students into organizations that hide under the umbrella of a non-profit designation and degrade our national interest, thus requiring additional Federal funding to correct the negative societal effects caused by these organizations’ federally subsidized wrongdoing.

As President of the United States, I have a duty to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution and our national security, which includes ending the subsidization of illegal activities, including illegal immigration, human smuggling, child trafficking, pervasive damage to public property, and disruption of the public order, which threaten the security and stability of the United States. Accordingly, it is the policy of my Administration that individuals employed by organizations whose activities have a substantial illegal purpose shall not be eligible for public service loan forgiveness.

Sec. 2. Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The Secretary of Education shall propose revisions to 34 C.F.R. 685.219, Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, in coordination with the Secretary of the Treasury as appropriate, that ensure the definition of “public service” excludes organizations that engage in activities that have a substantial illegal purpose, including:

(a) aiding or abetting violations of 8 U.S.C. 1325 or other Federal immigration laws;

(b) supporting terrorism, including by facilitating funding to, or the operations of, cartels designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations consistent with 8 U.S.C. 1189, or by engaging in violence for the purpose of obstructing or influencing Federal Government policy;

(c) child abuse, including the chemical and surgical castration or mutilation of children or the trafficking of children to so-called transgender sanctuary States for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents, in violation of applicable law;

(d) engaging in a pattern of aiding and abetting illegal discrimination; or

(e) engaging in a pattern of violating State tort laws, including laws against trespassing, disorderly conduct, public nuisance, vandalism, and obstruction of highways.

Sec. 3. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person. [1][4]

”

Executive orders in the second term of the Trump administration

September 2025

August 2025


July 2025

June 2025

May 2025

April 2025

March 2025

February 2025

January 2025


Historical context

See also: Donald Trump's executive orders and actions, 2025

Overview, 1789-2025

The following chart shows the number of executive orders and average executive orders per year issued by each president of the United States from 1789 to 2025.

Average number of executive orders issued each year by president, 1921-2025

The following chart visualizes the average number of executive orders issued each year between 1921 and 2025, as noted in the table in the section above. The number of executive orders issued declined during this time period with Presidents Barack Obama (D) and George W. Bush issuing the fewest on average at 35 and 36 each year, respectively.

Executive orders issued over time, 2001-2025

The chart below displays the number of executive orders issued over time by Biden, Trump, Obama, and Bush.


See also

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 White House, "Restoring Public Service Loan Forgiveness," March 7, 2025
  2. ↑ Cooper, Phillip. (2014). By Order of the President: The Use and Abuse of Executive Direct Action. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. (pgs. 21-22)
  3. ↑ USA Today, "Presidential memoranda vs. executive orders. What's the difference?" January 24, 2017
  4. ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
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