President Biden greeted students after speaking about student loan forgiveness at Delaware State University on Friday.AL DRAGO/NYT

WASHINGTON — Not long after President Biden on Friday celebrated that nearly 22 million people had applied for his student loan cancellation plan, a federal appeals court temporarily blocked the administration from discharging any debt.

The stay by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit blunted the momentum the program has gained since the online application went live on Monday. The administration hasn’t begun discharging any debt while several legal challenges have been working their way through the courts.

Now Americans who have applied to have as much as $20,000 in debt forgiven potentially face a longer delay or the possibility the program will be scuttled by the courts