The Trump administration is continuing its pushback against state artificial intelligence laws that it views as ideologically biased, proposing a new Federal Trade Commission policy.

The proposed policy statement, which is open for public comment through July 31, would affect how the FTC regulates AI companies. The agency said it’s meant to address concerns that “AI companies that distort their systems’ outputs to achieve undisclosed ideological objectives” could be deceiving consumers in violation of federal law.

“The FTC wants to hear from businesses and consumers about their experiences and concerns regarding the subversion of AI systems for ideological ends,” Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in a statement.

The proposal specifically mentions a first-of-its-kind Colorado law that had banned “algorithmic discrimination,” or AI output that might lead to decisions disfavoring people on jobs, loans or healthcare based on their race, religion, gender and other protected categories. But the Colorado legislature already has repealed that provision. The revamped law instead focuses on regulating technology that results in “consequential decisions” for consumers. 

The controversial law prompted a lawsuit from xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which the U.S. Department of Justice supported.

In December 2025, President Donald Trump issued an executive order targeting state AI laws, including creation of a Department of Justice AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws. His order also directed the FTC to issue a policy statement on regulation of state laws that “require alterations to the truthful outputs of AI models.” 

Stateline asked the FTC if there were any state and city laws that officials felt were currently in violation of federal laws, but received no response.

Tyler Thompson, a Denver-based lawyer with firm Reed Smith who tracks emerging technology law, said the FTC proposal is important because it raises the possibility that companies could face deceptive-practices claims based on how they tune, weight or steer AI models, which could also prompt state policy on the issue.

“Just the fact that companies could be tweaking their models and that could lead to a deceptive trade practice, I think is huge news,” Thompson said.

Thompson believes the legal battle and the FTC’s focus on restricting similar laws will lead to “a more niche” policy focus on AI – such as deepfakes, nonconsensual sexual content, children’s safety, companion chatbots and data centers — areas where there is bipartisan agreement.

Noah M. Kenney, founder and principal consultant of Digital 520, an AI governance, security and privacy consultancy, who also responded to the FTC’s request for public comment, said the proposed statement carries more political pressure rather than being an enforceable federal regulation.

“The real effect of this statement is signaling and pressure, not legal preemption, especially paired with the December executive order’s AI litigation task force.”

Kenney said there is also an irony in the federal government’s argument.

“A federal effort to dictate what counts as a ‘neutral’ or ‘accurate’ output raises its own First Amendment concerns about compelled speech,” he said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

Job growth slowed in June to an increase of 57,000 after three straight months of gaining more than 100,000, according to a new report released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Job gains were also revised down from 172,000 to 129,000 for May, and from 179,000 to 148,000 for April. 

The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.2% — the lowest since June 2025, when it was 4.1%. 

The jobs increases were especially weak considering that the men’s World Cup soccer tournament likely added 40,000 jobs in June, said Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, in a statement. Gould said the unemployment rate drop was “for the wrong reasons” as 720,000 people left the labor market.

The industries adding the most jobs in June were business and professional services (36,000 jobs), social assistance (up 25,000 jobs) and healthcare (22,000 jobs). 

There was a drop of 61,000 jobs in leisure and hospitality jobs, reflecting weaker-than-usual seasonal hiring for the summer, the BLS said. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

A Wisconsin construction union is launching an organized peer support program for its members who need help with addiction, substance abuse or mental health challenges — only the third program of its kind in the U.S.

The program was announced Wednesday by the Wisconsin Laborers District Council and dubbed LEAN — short for Laborers Escaping Adversity Now.

People in construction say the nature of their jobs can make it hard to face up to serious problems.

“There’s this stigma that’s out there,” said Kent Miller, president and business manager of the union’s Wisconsin council. “It’s this physically challenging job, and you think that you’ve got to be tough with everything else, right?”

With LEAN, “we’re trying to break those barriers,” he said, “and make sure our members know that it’s OK to ask for help.”

Three union members have been selected and undergone training to work as the Wisconsin union’s first full-time peer support specialists.

“[They] are card-carrying Laborers that have first-hand experiences with recovery and working in the construction industry and with some of the challenges and stresses that working in the industry poses,” Miller said.

LEAN has established a round-the-clock hotline members can call if they need help, Miller said. The peer support specialists will be making the rounds of job sites and Laborers union halls to introduce themselves and distribute flyers explaining what they can offer.

The Wisconsin council represents 10,000 members of the Laborers International Union of North America — LIUNA. LEAN was started at a LIUNA chapter in Massachusetts, then replicated at the union’s St. Louis branch.

Laborers work in a variety of jobs alongside many other trades — building highways, working on pipelines, in landscaping and in asbestos removal, to name just some.

Some jobs are seasonal, with long layoffs during the offseason that can create financial uncertainty, giving workers the incentive “to get as much hours in as they can during the bulk of the construction season,” Miller said. Those long hours can take workers away from their families.

“Mental health and substance use challenges can affect anyone,” he said. He counts a half-dozen or more suicides among Wisconsin Laborers members in 2025 alone.

Wisconsin union members learned about LEAN at a union conference a couple of years ago. “When we heard about this program, we were just like, we’ve got to move forward with this,” Miller said

In 2024 the union arranged for people involved in the St. Louis program to give a presentation to the union and management trustees who jointly oversee Wisconsin Laborers Health Fund, which manages union members’ medical benefits.

“We as a fund really felt we needed this,” said Matt Marcellis, a management trustee for the Laborers Health Fund.

Marcellis is executive director of the Allied Construction Employers Association, which represents the construction employers who contract with building trades unions, including the Laborers.

“Construction workers — they’re kind of a unique breed,” Marcellis said. “They’re a group of people used to working hard and not accepting a lot of help.”

Since deciding to launch the program in Wisconsin, the union has spent more than a year laying the groundwork.

LEAN is supported through the union’s health fund. Its costs are covered by a 5-cent-per-hour contribution from each member’s pay that is part of the negotiated pay and benefits in the Laborers contracts.

The Laborers have an Employee Assistance Plan that provides counseling and other help for members. LEAN doesn’t replace those services, Miller said, but offers members a pathway to EAP services or an alternative for help.

Peer support specialists “can help point people in the right direction of the resources that we already have,” Miller said. “But if they’re not comfortable in going that direction yet, just talking with somebody, talking with our peer support specialist, will be a good first step.”

The first three peer specialists live in different parts of Wisconsin, giving the program coverage throughout the state. “Depending on how utilization is, and how the program takes off, if we need to put on another specialist, we will,” Miller said.

Conversations with the peer supporter are confidential and can go at the pace that the member is most comfortable with. “They’re going to give you the information, so people can feel more comfortable about making that informed decision on what that next step looks like,” Miller said.

LEAN has a webpage for union members with a map of Wisconsin’s 72 counties that members can use to find resources available in each, from hospitals and clinics to local 12-step group meetings, Miller said.

The peer support specialists have been visiting the state’s hospitals and clinics and assessing what they offer, so they can more easily refer people to the right providers based on the specific needs a member has when seeking help.

“To get into some of these programs there’s a waiting list, there’s a bunch of challenges, and there’s also concerns about the quality of outcomes,” Miller said. “We want to make sure that, if we’re steering our members to certain hospitals and clinics, that they’re the ones that are providing the best outcomes for our members and their families.”

Catron County, New Mexico, may be seeing the future of an aging population today. It has beautiful landscapes that draw retirees who fall in love with the area and want to stay among soaring rock formations and bright stars in dark skies. 

But it’s a tough place to get even minimal medical care. And employees are hard to find, with few young people to hire and support the tax base. It’s a microcosm of the national trend:  By 2034 the whole country may have more older adults than children; Social Security’s retirement fund could be exhausted by 2032, and the nation will depend on an ever-shrinking workforce of young people. 

“For quality healthcare, if you need even an X-ray, you are driving an hour and a half,” said Catron County Manager Deborah Mahler. “We have 900 miles of dirt roads that are not passable when it rains, so you have to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a high profile.” 

Some hospital systems send shuttle buses, but it’s not enough and the county would like to offer more medical transportation and attract a local medical practice. But there is little tax base to support either, Mahler said.

Local parks and ranches in the county, which abuts the state line with Arizona, provide world-class elk hunting and beautiful scenery such as the Cosmic Campground’s dark sky sanctuary for stargazers and the Catwalk National Recreation Trail through desert rock formations.

But with parks taking up so much land, there’s not much space for industry that might provide jobs for young families or provide a tax base to help older people, she said. 

There are now 17 states with more people over 65 than children under 18 as of last year. That’s up from 13 states in 2024 and just five in 2020, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. 

Michigan, New Mexico, South Carolina and Wisconsin are new to the list, which reflects ages as of mid-2025. 

Others may soon see some of the challenges already familiar to places like Sumter County, Florida, where there are almost 8 older adults per 1 child. In McCormick County, South Carolina; Catron County, New Mexico, and Jefferson County, Washington, the ratio is more than 4 to 1. 

Many states are enacting or considering legislation to support older residents: Wisconsin passed laws this year aimed at elder scams and easing the transition from hospital care to rehabilitation, and last year enacted a support program for dementia caregivers. 

New Mexico enacted a Medigap law in March allowing Medicare users to switch plans without insurers denying coverage or charging higher rates based on health status.

South Carolina’s state Senate passed a bill to give larger property tax breaks in February, and the proposal has been caught up in budget negotiations between that chamber and the House.  

Michigan is working on a state plan to help older residents and their families starting next year with a report due July 1 and taking effect in October. 

In 2020, the only states where older adults outnumbered children were Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia. Since then, besides the four states added in 2025, these states are also on the list: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

A delayed union organizing campaign at a Madison-based nonprofit healthcare cooperative has sparked dissent in the co-op about how the organization is governed.

When Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin holds its annual meeting for members Thursday evening, a group of patients who are co-op members will seek a vote to undo a recent change in the co-op’s bylaws.

The conflict at Group Health follows a stalled union organizing drive at the co-op — GHC for short — that began in 2024.

After Group Health employees filed their petition for a union, Group Health’s board and management distributed messages criticizing the union. GHC lawyers also told federal officials they would not accept the union’s proposal that specified which groups of employees would be represented by the union.

Patients who sign up with Group Health for their healthcare become members of the cooperative. Some long-time members contend the co-op management’s response to the union campaign is at odds with the co-op’s founding principles and its progressive heritage.

“It just seems like the cooperative seems to be drifting away from wellness and more and more into making money and growing,” said Ruth Brill, a Group Health member since 1979 who supports the unionizing campaign. Healthcare providers “wanted to serve us better” by seeking a union, she said. “I don’t see what the problem is.”

Co-op members have formed the GHC Members Union Support Team — GHC-MUST for short.

At Thursday’s meeting the group is recommending that members vote against accepting the minutes from the co-op’s 2025 membership meeting — usually a formality — to demonstrate their opposition to how the meeting was conducted, said Amihan Huesmann, one of the co-op patients and members.

The group has also endorsed three non-incumbents for the co-op board, in an election that was held partly online through Tuesday, June 23, and will also take votes in person at the meeting.

Members oppose GHC’s union stance

 In October 2025 at a special meeting, co-op members proposed and voted for a series of resolutions directed at the co-op board.  

One resolution called for the co-op to voluntarily recognize the Service Employees International Union in the departments and jobs where employees had originally asked for union representation.

Other resolutions directed the board, co-op management or both to report how much money co-op management had spent on legal or consulting fees in response to the union campaign and to issue a report on all emails, communications, meeting minutes and other documents relating to the co-op’s handling of the union drive.

Another resolution demanded the board and co-op management “faithfully follow the democratically expressed will” of co-op members, who, the resolution charged, have “been denied an opportunity to duly and fully exercise [their] role” in leading the co-op. A fifth resolution called for the board to hold a meeting by mid-January 2026 “on the democratization of GHC governance.”

In December 2025, the board declined all five resolutions as written.

By the end of 2025, SEIU Wisconsin and Group Health were at an impasse in a tangled legal dispute over who would be included in the union.

SEIU filed a long list of unfair labor practice charges stating that Group Health had illegally retaliated against union supporters. The union obtained a National Labor Relations Board order to block a planned representation election until the charges were resolved.

GHC and the union negotiated a confidential settlement to resolve the unfair labor practice charges that put the union organizing drive on hold.

Seeking stronger governance role

Since January, the GHC-MUST group has been pursuing changes to the organization’s bylaws that they contend would restore a stronger role for members in the co-op’s governance. The group also circulated a petition to recall the chair of the co-op board.

Under the bylaws in place when the group was circulating their proposals, bylaws proposals and recall petitions required 100 signatures. When the group delivered their bylaws proposals and the recall petition, however, their submission was rejected, with GHC’s board citing a change to the bylaws that the board had just enacted.

The board in March made “some wholesale changes without member input, without an explanation of why they were needed, without talking about the serious ramifications for members,” said Steve Rankin, a Group Health member who has been active in GHC-MUST.

The board increased the threshold for nominating people to the board who weren’t selected by the co-op’s nominating committee. Previously 100 members could nominate a board member that way. Those nominees now must garner 3% of Group Health’s 54,693 Class A voting members, according to GHC — about 1,640 people.

Another key change involved bylaws amendments. The co-op’s previous bylaws allowed members to approve amendments by a majority vote at the annual meeting or a special meeting with a quorum present, so long as a statement about the proposed changes is included with the original meeting notice.

Under the revised bylaws, members proposing a change must first garner a 75% majority vote at a co-op members meeting. The proposal would then go to a follow-up referendum of all co-op members, where the change would pass with a simple majority, but only if at least 10% of the members take part in that vote. That same two-step procedure would also be required to remove a board member.

“They changed the bylaws without informing members that it was happening and without including members,” said Huesmann, a Group Health member for two decades who had worked on the members’ proposals.

Marty Anderson, chief strategy and business development officer for GHC, said  that “the bylaws do not require an announcement to the membership prior to the bylaws change being considered by the board of directors.”

Group Health increased the bylaws change threshold “such that a small minority of people can’t change how the cooperative operates for the other 69,900 people who are part of the cooperative,” Anderson said.

While Huesmann and Rankin contend the board’s changes were aimed at thwarting their petitions, Anderson said the board’s changes “were happening outside of the knowledge of those petitions happening.”

Huesmann said the petitions were widely circulated and publicized in the weeks before they were submitted, however. The campaign “wasn’t secret,” Huesmann said. “It’s not like we were hiding that we were circulating petitions.”

Rankin said the changes amount to a power grab.

“It doesn’t ensure broader member participation, it ensures members are no longer able to do that,” Rankin said. “They just made it an inaccessible framework instead of one that would be accessible.”

Correction: This report has been updated to correct the procedure in the new GHC bylaws for bylaws amendments. 

For some teenagers across the country, the summer is the first opportunity to gain work experience for their nascent resume. 

In a handful of states, however, teens who find jobs will find fewer protections under child labor laws. Four states — Indiana, Nebraska, Washington and West Virginia — enacted laws this year that weaken child labor protections, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit think tank. In all, 13 states had bills seeking to weaken those protections; some are still under consideration.

Another three states saw bills filed this year to increase child labor standards, with one state — Oregon — enacting a new law. Oregon now stipulates that state rules on the total hours a minor can work cannot be less restrictive than the federal Fair Labor Standards Act rules that were in effect on Jan. 1. 

Among the states easing child labor laws this year, Nebraska established a lower minimum wage for 14- and 15-year-olds.  West Virginia made changes that allow teens to work longer hours in youth apprenticeships and relaxed rules related to time working on hazardous work assignments. 

Under a new Indiana law, the state’s Department of Labor will no longer be required to maintain the employer database for youth employment or require employers to participate in the database, meaning employers are not required to report that they employ workers younger than 18. 

Washington state lawmakers made it easier for teens in approved work-based learning programs to work longer hours, doubling the daily limit from four hours a day for up to 20 hours a week, to eight hours a day for up to 48 hours a week for minors enrolled in those programs. West Virginia’s law also loosened guardrails for minors in youth apprenticeship programs and lowered the age for workers to sell alcohol in bars. 

The Economic Policy Institute’s review, published this month, found that legislation seeking to roll back child labor protections follows four trends: lowering minimum wages for teen workers; making changes to youth apprenticeships, eliminating youth permits and weakening safeguards for teen child care workers.

A few other rollbacks remain pending in Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Bills in Florida, Massachusetts and Missouri proposed lowering youth wages but did not pass.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

When SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket and artificial intelligence company, began trading on the stock market last week, he became the world’s first trillionaire.

The SpaceX IPO made the world’s richest man even richer, grabbing headlines worldwide. But it is merely the most vivid illustration of a U.S. trend that has been accelerating since 2022.

The richest 1% of Americans held nearly a third of the country’s total wealth at the end of 2025, the largest percentage the Federal Reserve Board has recorded since it started monitoring the numbers in 1989. In 1990, the share was 22.5%.

The latest percentage, 31.9%, is likely the largest since the end of World War II, possibly heralding a return to the extreme wealth inequality of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And it is likely to balloon further as a result of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and other pro-business policies.

Today’s top 1% consists of about 1.4 million households with at least $12 million in net worth, holding a total of $55.9 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% consists of 67.7 million households with less than $264,000 in net worth.

Using different methods than the Fed, French economist Thomas Piketty has asserted that the richest 1% of Americans held nearly half the nation’s wealth in 1928 and 1929, just before the Great Depression. Their share declined after that, during a period of high marginal income tax rates (the percentage of tax you pay on your last dollar of income) and widespread discomfort with astronomical pay for executives. Instead, corporations plowed their profits into expansion and higher wages for workers.

But the share of wealth held by the top 1% began rising again in the 1970s, according to the Piketty data.

Piketty, who theorizes that unfettered capitalism always leads to high concentration of wealth, told Stateline in an email that “there’s nothing natural about this — it’s all due to policies.”

“If the super-rich capture the state and pay little tax, then it’s easy to accumulate a lot, but history suggests that politics can revert quite quickly,” Piketty wrote.

Another prominent economist who recently studied the wealth of California billionaires, Emmanuel Saez, described the current spike in the share of wealth held by the top 1% as driven primarily by the stock market boom. Saez is director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the University of California, Berkeley.

New taxes proposed

In at least a dozen states, including Illinois, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Virginia, lawmakers have proposed new taxes for the wealthiest taxpayers. Some of the proposals would tax annual incomes above a certain threshold while others would tax capital assets, including high-value stocks and real estate.

In California, advocates in April announced they had gathered enough signatures for a November ballot initiative that would impose a one-time tax on billionaires. The state’s billionaires held about $2.3 trillion in wealth as of June 10, assets that could generate almost $101 billion from the proposed tax.

This year, at least 12 billionaires left California. They include Lynsi Snider, who inherited the In-N-Out hamburger chain and moved to Tennessee, and car loan magnate Don Hankey, who moved to Nevada. However, moves into the state and new wealth created 23 new California billionaires this year. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has vowed to stay in California despite a potential $8 billion one-time tax bill.

There are no state-level statistics on the top 1%, though Census Bureau estimates from 2022 show the states with the highest shares of households with more than $500,000 in net worth are Hawaii (48%), the District of Columbia (47%) and Washington state (43%). Hawaii also has the highest average net worth at more than $1 million, mostly because homeowners in that state have an average of $600,000 of equity in their homes. The states with the next highest average net worth are California ($792,000), and Massachusetts ($751,000).

Conservative and liberal experts agree that a soaring stock market and business profits have made it a good time for the wealthy, while middle-class and lower-income people are doing less well, especially as inflation gobbles up wage increases. There’s also widespread agreement that Trump’s tariffs (since struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court) disproportionately harmed lower-income and middle-class people, and that the tax cuts in the broad tax and spending measure Trump signed last summer (commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act) will disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

The combined effects of the tariffs and the tax and spending law will help households with the top 10% of incomes most and hurt 70% of households between now and 2034, according to a June 1 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank that drew on information from the Budget Lab at Yale University.

Chuck Marr, the center’s vice president for federal tax policy, pointed to the law’s extension of  a deep corporate income tax cut that dates from Trump’s first administration.

“Trump’s whole policy has really leaned into increasing this disparity,” Marr said. “You’ve got AI coming and globalization has shifted income and wealth upward, and instead of pushing back against that, Trump and others have leaned into it.”

Nevertheless, Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the U.S. government’s tax and spending policy is “still highly progressive in that low-income households receive benefits from the high-income households paying taxes.”

“It’s a little less so than it was prior to the passage of the (Trump tax and spending law) and the tariffs, but it’s still the case. It hasn’t changed the story that much,” Pomerleau said.

Marr agreed that the federal tax system is basically progressive, in that it uses taxes on high income earners to pay for the needs of low-income residents. But tax collections are low in the United States compared with other wealthy countries: Of the 20 wealthiest nations, only Ireland collects less government revenue as a share of GDP.

“Compared to other countries, inequality is high because we redistribute so much less money,” Marr said. “It’s a progressive tax system but it doesn’t raise a lot of money.”

Inflation divide

The Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, an accounting of national economic conditions released June 3, found a divide in how inflation, which has increased as a result of the war in Iran, has affected American spending.

“Higher-income households remained resilient and less sensitive to price increase, while middle-income households were described as ‘squeezing more life out of every dollar before deciding to spend it,’ and low-income consumers showed greater financial strain,” the report said.

The “squeezing” analogy for the middle class came from a roundtable discussion of hospitality executives in the Kansas City, Missouri, area in late May, said Jeremy Hill, a regional economist for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Hill said there was a gasp in the room when one high-end restaurant chain executive said the chain could raise prices at will and keep expanding, hampered only by a shortage of high-end chefs to staff locations. Meanwhile, hotels, bars and restaurants serving the middle class are struggling to get people to come in and spend.

“It’s not that they (wealthy people) don’t care about inflation. They’re worried about what it might do to future demand or their own stocks,” Hill said. “But today, it’s not impacting the way they spend.”

The stock market’s recent run has contributed the most to the consolidation of wealth at the top. Rising real estate prices also have also added to wealth, especially for longtime homeowners.

“This has disproportionately helped those who already hold assets while the average American pays higher prices for everyday essentials,” said E.J. Antoni, chief economist for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “In other words, Wall Street got rich while Main Street got inflation.”

White Americans own outsized shares of assets such as stock and real estate, according to the federal statistics. White people are 57% of the population but own 82% of the assets, while Black and Hispanic people, who make up a combined 24% of the U.S. population, have less than 7% of assets. Asians are included in an “Other” category, which is about 9% of population and holds about  11.3% of the nation’s total assets.

By generation, Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 hold almost half of wealth, while Millennials and Gen X hold the lion’s share of liabilities, such as mortgages and consumer debt, that detract from net worth. Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) have about 42% of liabilities and Gen X (1965-1980) have 35%, compared with 22% for Baby Boomers.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing for young people to be in debt as they build careers and pay off student loans, said Pomerleau, the American Enterprise Institute economist.

“Doctors with $450,000 in medical school debt might be in the bottom 10%, yes, but that person is going to be in the top 1% of wealth at some point in their lives,” Pomerleau said.

“You enter the labor force with a net liability, but you save over time, that liability is paid down, you’re paying off your mortgage, and that’s when your wealth starts growing.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.