Student borrowers, take note. In testimony before a House subcommittee, the head of the office of Federal Student Aid told lawmakers that his agency is preparing for federal student loan repayments to resume early next year.

Richard Cordray, FSA’s chief operating officer, oversees the federal student loans of roughly 43 million borrowers. In a hearing Wednesday that ran just over three hours, he shared new details about those plans to resume repayment, his agency’s handling of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, the possibility of broader loan forgiveness — and whether he would hold executives liable for the collapse of colleges that defrauded students.

Here’s a rundown of what Cordray said, what he tried not to say and why it matters.

Borrowers will have to resume student loan payments soon

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, Congress and the Education Department paused interest and repayment requirements for borrowers with federal student loans back in March 2020. Now, a year and a half later, Cordray told lawmakers those payments will resume as early as Jan. 31, 2022.

“We know this will not be an easy transition,” Cordray told lawmakers in his opening remarks. “This is a defining moment for FSA, and it’s crucially important for millions of Americans that we succeed.”

The core of FSA’s plan to restart loan payments, Cordray said, “is clear communication, quality customer service and targeted support for those having trouble making their payments.”

One of the biggest challenges that Cordray and FSA face is accommodating borrowers who have lost work during the pandemic and will need help adjusting their payments. For help navigating this return to repayment, check out this FAQ.

Will the Biden administration embrace broad student loan forgiveness?

Perhaps the biggest question Cordray faces these days is whether the Biden administration will pursue the kind of broad student loan forgiveness championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. During Wednesday’s hearing, lawmakers asked Cordray if he would support a policy to forgive $10,000 in federal student loan debt for every borrower. Cordray’s answer?

A bureaucratic bob and weave: “That’s a policy decision. I have an operational job.”

“All right, so you don’t have a personal preference,” replied Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C. “If the president said, ‘Everybody gets $10,000 off,’ you’d just do your job and implement it, correct?”

“I think if that were the decision, it would benefit many, many borrowers who are otherwise in trouble,” Cordray responded, “but it is not my decision to make.”

Cordray also ducked a question from Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., who asked about a memo, reportedly being drafted by the Education Department, explaining whether President Biden has the legal authority to discharge federal student debts.

“That’s a matter for the White House to determine,” Cordray said, “obviously not for me.”

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is being fixed, slowly

This month, the Biden administration announced that it is overhauling the troubled Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which promises federal student loan forgiveness for borrowers who work 10 years in public service. Its poor management and confusing rules have left many borrowers in the cold.

Wednesday, Cordray said the overhaul is “game changing” for hundreds of thousands of borrowers, while acknowledging that “there’s an awful lot of work to do to make that announcement into reality.”

One challenge: The U.S. government doesn’t directly manage student loans. It pays loan servicers to do that. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-Conn., told Cordray that he’s worried these servicers aren’t prepared for the big changes.

Courtney said he’s already hearing from constituents who complain, when they ask for help, their servicers say they “don’t have the guidance to implement the PSLF changes.”

Borrowers have shared similar stories with NPR. Several say they’ve called their servicers since the overhaul announcement, believing they now qualify for forgiveness, and asked, “What do we need to do?” But they were told, essentially: “We don’t know yet.”

One borrower told NPR, when she called to ask about her eligibility for this new PSLF waiver, her servicer “was about as useless as a chocolate teapot.”

“We’ve heard some of the same things you’ve heard,” Cordray admitted to lawmakers, “and we want to get these things sorted out as quickly as possible.”

But he also urged patience, saying “we’re operating in real time here. It’s been a matter of days since the [Education] Secretary’s announcement. And we want to make sure people have the right guidance here, and sometimes the quick is the enemy of the good.”

Cordray’s bottom line, though: “We do intend — and we will — deliver on the announcement that was made and get relief to people.”

If you’re a public service borrower eager for clarity, check out this handy thread:

If you ran a failed, predatory school, you might be held liable

One of the most interesting moments in Wednesday’s hearing could signal a big policy shift.

Rep. Bobby Scott, the Democratic Chairman of the House education committee, reminded Cordray that the Education Department has the authority to hold executives liable for financial costs when a school defrauds students and collapses. But the Department has been loathe to use it, even in the high-profile failures of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute.

This is a big issue for Scott, who sent Education Secretary Miguel Cardona a letter in August and convened a hearing in March, where Dan Zibel, of Student Defense, laid out the legal case for holding executives personally liable. On Wednesday, Scott again urged Cordray to embrace the idea as “a deterrent” to prevent future fraud.

Keep in mind, this is a controversial idea. But, unlike Cordray’s muted responses to some of the hearing’s other controversial questions, this time he was forthcoming.

“We see eye to eye on this,” Cordray told Scott. “We absolutely agree. More needs to be done to prevent people from abusing these student aid programs.”

“We agree on the direction here,” Cordray continued, “and I thought [your letter] was a good bit of a kick in the behind for us to make sure we’re moving down the road on this. And we will.”

And we will.

With those three words, Cordray forcefully embraced a policy that is likely to send a shudder through the for-profit college space.

On the night before the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Washington Post reporter Robert Costa walked through the streets of D.C., surrounded by a throng of Trump supporters. He says he remembers a particular energy in the crowd that night.

“They were clashing with police officers. They were fighting with each other. There was a euphoria,” Costa says. “The mob … it was loud.”

Costa’s new book Peril, which he co-wrote with journalist Bob Woodward, centers on President Trump’s final days in office — specifically the events leading up to and following the Capitol siege.

As the crowd agitated outside, Costa says, inside a “war room” at the nearby Willard hotel Trump lawyers and allies, including Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon and Jason Miller, were laying out a strategy to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

According to Costa, Trump attorney John Eastman drafted a memo suggesting that an alternate slate of electors be used as a tactic to stop the certification of the election results.

“They were trying to get [Vice President] Pence and others to move the election to the House of Representatives to block Biden from taking office,” Costa explains.

Costa says that Pence declined to go along with the plan — mostly because there were no alternate slates of electors on hand. But, Costa adds, “Imagine if in January 2025 Republicans are much more organized and they have alternate slates of electors ready in many states. What happens then?”

Ten months later, hundreds of members of the mob who stormed the Capitol are facing prosecution for their actions. But it remains to be seen whether anyone from the Willard war room will be charged.

“The looming question for Merrick Garland, the attorney general, is: Is he going to go at the key players, who may not be directly tied to the violence or may not have their fingerprints on the steel bars that were used against the Capitol Police officers that day, but [who] were part of planning an effort to defraud the United States?” Costa says. “I’m not a lawyer, but I think raising the question is certainly understandable based on all of this reporting.”

Interview highlights

On the scene on the street the night of Jan. 5 and into Jan. 6

[The crowd] was so loud that Trump could hear them. And Trump doesn’t like being outside — from what I’ve witnessed over the years, he’s more of an indoor person — but he keeps the door to the Oval Office open on the night of the 5th after Pence leaves just so he can hear the mob. And Woodward said to me, it’s almost like when he was writing The Final Days with Carl Bernstein, when [Richard] Nixon was talking to the pictures on the wall, Trump is talking to the mob. A few aides come in from the press shop, and say, “Mr. President, Mr. President, it’s cold. We closed the door. Why is the door open?” [And Trump says,] “I want to hear my people. Listen. They have courage. Listen.” And he keeps the door open for the whole meeting on the night of Jan. 5.

On Trump’s direct calls to the Willard war room

The fact that the calls happened is very important in the context of the whole insurrection because for months, as reporters, we know that Trump was pressuring Pence in the Oval Office. That’s been well documented and we knew that Giuliani and Bannon were up to a lot of stuff in Washington that night. What we wanted to figure out when we were looking at this book is was there a connection between the two? And the fact that Trump calls Bannon and Giuliani after Pence leaves the White House around 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 5 to update them, it shows that there is at the very least coordination between these two power centers on the eve of an insurrection. It will be up to the DOJ to decide whether this is a conspiracy, a crime to defraud the United States.

On the statement the Trump campaign issued Jan. 5 about Pence’s support, which wasn’t true — and the resulting tension between the president and the vice president

It was a campaign statement on Trump campaign letterhead saying, in Donald Trump’s words, that Mike Pence fully agrees with me. The quote that stunned the Pence people was “Mike Pence is in total agreement that on Jan. 6, the election should be overturned and he should move it to the House.” It was issued on a formal statement.

This is where you start to see the crack in the American democratic system — when the vice president and president are not in sync, and the president starts to speak for other constitutional officers. This is where Pence and his team really go into a bunker mode and they don’t even share the letter Pence ultimately releases on Jan. 6, explaining his decision to not try to do anything crazy on Jan. 6. They don’t even share it with the White House counsel or with Trump. That was the level of tension between the president and the vice president.

On a possible criminal charge of defrauding the U.S. for those who organized the insurrection

It’s a well-known part of the U.S. Code, and if someone wants to look it up, it’s 18 U.S. Code 371. It means that if you have one or two people conspiring to commit an offense against the United States, to defraud the U.S., then you have committed a crime and you shall be fined or imprisoned for possibly up to five years. This is a crime and it’s been prosecuted many, many times.

On the perils that remain and the threats to our democracy

You have a former president in Donald Trump who refuses to share documents to give any kind of information to an investigation about an insurrection that his friends and allies were part of, at least on the legal and political level, in trying to force the election to be overturned. There is violence and connections that need to be explained at a grassroots level and potentially at a higher level. And these unanswered questions are part of the peril that remains. If we don’t have accountability in truth and answers in a democracy, then what kind of democracy is it?

There are so many things that we just still don’t know. … What else don’t we know about the domestic side of things? The QAnon movement, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers seem to be growing by the day across the country. There’s a violence and extremism and a lot of the rhetoric now, publicly. You see Trump out there … he’s as active as ever. … There is a huge effort, whether it’s the Arizona “audit” — isn’t an audit at all. But the Arizona effort to maybe say Trump won the state. All these Republican-controlled states have people in them, in the Legislature’s key leaders who are doing a lot to try to change election laws, change voting rights. And [House Majority Whip] Jim Clyburn … says in our book that “democracy is on fire” because, on the federal level, Democrats won’t break the filibuster and pass voting rights legislation that they all agree on. But Republicans are very busy passing their voting laws in different states. And what I just see on the horizon is a collision of some sort on the voting rights issue and on the foundation of democracy. If the system’s not functioning and people aren’t accepting reality and pushing to change the laws, who knows what happens next?

Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the Web.