Biden is teasing a coming decision on student-loan forgiveness. Here's everything we know about how it could look.

In April, Biden gave himself until the end of August to announce a decision regarding student debt cancellation, or to extend the payment pause he'd already continued four times.

"Between now and August 31, it's either going to be extended again or we're going to make a decision, as Ron referenced, about canceling student debt," White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told Pod Save America referring to Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff, who also told the podcast in March that leading up to the prior May 1 payment restart date, the president would either extend the pause again — which he did — or decide how he could act on student debt using executive action.

Since Psaki revealed the end-of-August deadline, Biden truncated the timeline for the announcement to be a few weeks from April.

"I'm in the process of taking a hard look at whether there will be additional debt forgiveness," Biden said at the end of the month. "And I'll have an answer for that in the next couple of weeks."

Following Biden's hints that an announcement on forgiveness could be coming soon, GOP Sens. John Thune, Richard Burr, Mike Braun, Bill Cassidy, and Roger Marshall introduced the Stop Reckless Student Loans Action Act, which would end the payment pause and bar Biden from canceling student debt broadly.

"As Americans continue to return to the workforce more than two years since the pandemic began, it is time for borrowers to resume repayment of student debt obligations," Thune said in a statement. "Taxpayers and working families should not be responsible for continuing to bear the costs associated with this suspension of repayment. This common-sense legislation would protect taxpayers and prevent President Biden from suspending federal student loan repayments in perpetuity."

Democratic senators such as Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren have made it clear that for many progressives, $50,000 in forgiveness per borrower is the number to strive for.

"Canceling $50,000 of student-loan debt would give 36 million Americans permanent total relief," Warren said during a town hall in January. "That would be the end of their debt burden. And it would aid millions more by significantly reducing the principal on their debt."

But at the end of April, Biden shattered progressives' hopes, saying that although he is considering debt forgiveness as promised, it will not be for as high as $50,000 per borrower.

"I am considering dealing with some debt reduction, I am not considering $50,000 debt reduction," he told a reporter last month. It marked one of his most decisive comments to date on what he is considering when it comes to canceling student debt broadly.

Top Biden aides are looking at limiting student debt relief to people earning less than $125,000 to $150,000, or $250,000 to $300,000 for couples that file joint taxes, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. But they said that Biden hadn't made a final decision.

"There's different proposals floating around the administration about how to structure this," one person told the Washington Post.

But as Psaki later noted, while income caps are in line with what Biden considered on the campaign trail, that may not be what the final policy looks like. Income caps could also pose problems for many Americans, as doing so means setting up a layer of income verification before the government grants debt relief. And it would mean that borrowers would miss out on relief if they don't know to sign up or apply for it, Politico reported.

Three Democratic senators — Elizabeth Warren, Chuck Schumer, and Raphael Warnock — want Biden's student-loan relief to be expansive, and are requesting him to hold off on implementing any loan forgiveness through executive action until they can arrange a meeting with him, sources told Politico last week.

Following Biden's comments that he is not considering $50,000 in debt cancellation for federal borrowers, something that Warren, Warnock, and Schumer have pushed for repeatedly, the progressive senators reportedly moved to intervene.

"President Biden told the senator months ago he wanted to meet about this issue, and the senator wants to make sure the president hears why Georgians want strong debt relief before the White House takes any action," a Warnock spokesperson told Politico.

The contents of the Education Department's memo outlining whether or not the president has the authority to unilaterally cancel student debt remain private to Biden's team, leaving others to speculate over the last year.

This month, a Wall Street Journal exclusive found that Charlie Rose, a top lawyer in former President Barack Obama's Education Department, is not confident that it's legal.

According to a legal analysis the Journal obtained, Rose said that canceling student debt for every borrower without tailoring the relief toward each borrower's individual needs could be overruled in court and leave the administration at risk of being sued by student-loan companies.

"If the issue is litigated, the more persuasive analyses tend to support the conclusion that the Executive Branch likely does not have the unilateral authority to engage in mass student debt cancellation," Rose wrote.

Republicans aren't happy about Biden's potential student loan action.

Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina representative, was among congressional Republicans who have voiced their disapproval of student debt cancellation recently.

"The Biden administration is trying once again to save its tanking poll numbers by writing a blank check to student loan borrowers using Americans' pocketbooks," she said in an op-ed for Fox News.

Senator Mitt Romney and several of his Republican colleagues introduced a bill that would bar the Biden administration from broadly canceling student-loan debt this week, prohibiting him from even partially forgiving borrowers' outstanding balances.

The bill would include exemptions for student-loan forgiveness, cancelation, and repayment programs that are already in effect, such as the Public Service Loan Forgiveness and Teacher Loan Forgiveness programs.

The bill is unlikely to become law anytime soon with a 50-50 Senate, a Democratic-controlled House, and Biden in the Oval Office, but the message is clear.