President Biden's student-loan relief plan faces big bureaucratic hurdles and potential user frustrations, Axios' Sophia Cai and Erin Doherty report:

• Millions of Americans are in limbo waiting for information on how to take advantage of the plan.
• The Education Department doesn't have income data for most of the 43 million Americans eligible for forgiveness. That means 35 million people — including Pell Grant recipients — will have to attest that they make less than $125,000 per year and apply for relief.

What we're watching: StudentAid.gov, the government’s financial aid website, experienced significant delays Wednesday and Thursday after it was inundated with people seeking information on loan forgiveness.

• When we tried the page just before sending this newsletter, we got a message saying: "Please Wait ... StudentAid.gov is experiencing high volumes of visitors. You will be able to proceed to the site momentarily. Thanks for your patience!"

The White House doesn't know exactly how many eligible borrowers will actually end up applying for loan forgiveness — or how much it will cost.

• The Education Department hasn't yet released the website where people can apply for loan forgiveness by attesting that they meet the income requirement — and it's still unclear when that will be released, a person familiar with the matter tells Axios.

More importantly: When will borrowers actually see the relief?

• "That's the million-dollar question," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told NPR. "It's really important that folks know that we're also improving a system that was broken and that was antiquated."

How it'll work: The approximately 8 million qualifying borrowers for whom the agency already has income information will get automatic debt relief.

• For everyone else: The White House is asking them to sign up for updates from the Education Department to receive further info on how to apply.

Reality check: Experts caution that the agency may not be equipped to accomplish such a massive undertaking.

• "It's an understaffed and overcommitted organization," Charlie Eaton, a UC Merced associate professor of sociology and student loan expert, tells Axios.

The rub: The Biden administration says the loan payment moratorium will end in January. So "it's going to be really important borrowers have actually had a chance to declare their eligibility for loan forgiveness," Eaton says.

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The Democratic Party is about to find out whether unionizing campaign workers is a smart way to draw top talent, breed happy staffs and embody the party's ideals — or a distraction that will weaken candidates.

• The DCCC, the Democrats' House campaign arm, this week ratified the first collective bargaining agreement with its more than 250-member union, Axios' Andrew Solender reports.

Why it matters: The move could serve as a model and a pressure point for Democratic candidates running in 2024 to unionize.

• DCCC Staff Union co-founder Reed Elman Wexham, a DCCC regional digital director, told Axios: "We hope this contract will serve as a model to the Democratic ecosystem for what is possible."
• The union, part of Teamsters Local 238, is the largest collective bargaining unit in the Democratic Party.

🖼️ The big picture: The unionization movement in Democratic politics goes beyond this one committee.

• Staffers at the DNC and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee have also formed unions, both recognized by committee leaders.
• The Democratic-led House of Representatives earlier this year approved a resolution to recognize the right of congressional staffers to collectively bargain and unionize. Speaker Pelosi set a minimum annual pay for House staff.
• Several 2020 Democratic presidential campaigns unionized, including President Biden’s.

How it works: The DCCC contract includes health insurance and wage increases, rewards for employees who bring "valuable language expertise," and has grievance and arbitration provisions.

Reality check: Some Democrats worry about unionizing campaigns, which are temporary by nature. "You are signing up for something greater than yourself," Democratic strategist Chris Coffey said.

💭 Our thought bubble, from Axios' Josh Kraushaar: The shift from unionization is a huge departure from the culture of the campaign workplace.

• Campaigns are all about working long hours for low pay. In candid conversations, Democratic operatives say they're pro-union — but they’d question the efficacy of it for a campaign.

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Corporate profit margins jumped to the highest level since 1950 in the second quarter, Axios Markets' Matt Phillips writes from government data out yesterday.

• Why it matters: While executives bemoaned supply-chain snarls, inflation and wage growth over the last year, profits handily outpaced costs.

State of play: The data, from the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis, showed Q2 2022 was a remarkably good one for corporate America.

• Surging profits at oil companies were a major contributor.

This sign covered in signatures is displayed near the Artemis launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of Monday's scheduled test of NASA's new moon rocket. The uncrewed test flight is to last six weeks.

• Why it matters: The Artemis program aims to land humans on the lunar surface by the end of 2025. That would be the first time since 1972 — 50 years ago — during the Apollo moonshots.

Former President Trump is railing against the multiple investigations he's facing. But Investigations into former leaders are hardly rare around the world, Axios' Dave Lawler and Ivana Saric report:

• In at least 76 countries, leaders who left office since 2000 have been jailed or prosecuted — including in democracies like France, Israel and South Korea.
• Since 1980, around half of the world's countries have had at least one such case. And that's not counting impeachments or coups.

In the vast majority of cases, the charges former leaders have faced relate to corruption.

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President Biden kicked off his midterm campaigning last evening with a trip to suburban Rockville, Md., where he told DNC donors in a tent, off-camera:

• "What we’re seeing now is either the beginning, or the death knell, of an extreme MAGA philosophy. It’s not just Trump: It's the entire philosophy that underpins the — I'm going to say something, it’s like semi-fascism."

Later, surrounded by "BUILDING A BETTER AMERICA" signs, Biden took selfies at a giant rally where he name-checked former President Trump — a potential '24 contender:

• "Donald Trump isn't just a former president. He is a defeated former president. ... Will we build a future, or obsess over the past?"

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American Action Network, a conservative group with ties to House GOP leadership, plans a 10-day national ad campaign mocking President Biden's student-debt forgiveness plan as a "bailout for rich kids."

• A mechanic says: "Wanna be a struggling artist? College is on me."

The ad, which will air during college football and MLB games, features a waitress, mechanic and landscaper talking about working extra shifts to help theater majors get out of debt, Axios' Josh Kraushaar reports.

• AAN is spending $350,000 for the national ad campaign. The campaign will also microtarget blue-collar voters on digital platforms, AAN President Dan Conston told Axios.

Republicans aren't the only critics. Jim Kessler, executive vice president for policy at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, tweeted that the plan "[f]iscally reckless, unjustified on policy grounds, likely unconstitutional, politically fraught."

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The annual Burning Man bacchanal in the Nevada desert returns Sunday (Aug. 28-Sept. 5) after a two-year COVID hiatus — this time with MIT researchers conducting an experiment, Jennifer A. Kingson writes in Axios What's Next.

• As the 80,000 "Burners" arrive in Black Rock City (near Reno), MIT Media Lab researchers will hand out 600 small vessels that look like Altoids tins.

🧠 How it works: The goal is for people to pass them around and use the pen and paper inside to notate where and when they received the item, as well as where they're camping.

• "The idea is to map the networks of cooperation and serendipity at Burning Man," said Ziv Epstein, a Ph.D. student leading the experiment as part of a Human Dynamics research group.
• Using tins that make their way back to the MIT team after the weeklong event, the researchers will "map the gift economy of Burning Man," where people operate on the barter system (and pay $575 a ticket for the privilege).

🔭 Zoom out: The 36-year-old festival — where people create fantastical artworks and ride bicycles festooned with LED lights — is a sociologist's delight.

• Burning Man's organizers have long supported academia and maintain a list of scholarly papers drawn from the event.

🕶️ What we're watching: Pent-up demand for debauchery is likely to make this year's Burning Man particularly creative and memorable.

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