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Three years after a miscarriage that caused a severe, nearly septic infection because a Tennessee hospital denied her an abortion, Katy Dulong was looking forward to telling her story in a trial that was scheduled to begin Monday.

But this week, the state appealed to a higher court based on a new law passed by the legislature in March, and the court put the trial on hold indefinitely. It will now be months before the lower court can proceed.

Dulong had complications that led to a miscarriage in November 2022 at 16 weeks of pregnancy, long before fetal viability. Under the state’s abortion ban, which had only been in place for a few months, the hospital sent her home to miscarry on her own. When that didn’t happen, severe infection started to set in 10 days later, when she was able to get doctors to agree to help. The experience left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tennessee bill expands attorney general rights to appeal case rulings

The delay in the legal case feels like the state trying to silence her and the other plaintiffs, she said.

“It’s shocking to me that there’s anyone in this world that would have such opposing views to think that our voices don’t matter,” Dulong said in an interview. “How are they taking away our voice right now?”

In a motion to dismiss in February, the state argued it couldn’t be sued by the plaintiffs under a term called sovereign immunity, and in April, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law making it harder to sue the state on the constitutionality of a state or government action. Legislators passed another bill allowing the state to automatically appeal a decision related to sovereign immunity.

Nicolas Kabat, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who has been working on the case with the plaintiffs, said the state has tried to have the case dismissed four times without success, and said this is just the latest move to delay the trial. But he said the latest laws passed by the legislature allowing automatic appeals in the middle of a case, on the eve of a trial, make the situation unique.   

“There is nothing unusual about appealing an appealable order,” said Phil Buehler, press secretary for Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, in an email Thursday.

Similar lawsuits are ongoing or have already been resolved in several states with bans, including Texas and Idaho, where state residents have challenged the law based on their personal experiences. Plaintiffs in Idaho won their case in April 2025, when a judge said the near-total abortion ban does not mean a pregnant patient’s death has to be imminent or “assured” to perform an abortion. Complaints are also pending related to Texas hospitals allegedly not complying with federal law mandating emergency room treatment for a patient who needs an abortion as stabilizing care.

Women with serious pregnancy complications sue over state abortion bans

Allie Phillips, the lead plaintiff in Tennessee, joined several other women to sue the state in September 2023, alleging that the abortion ban put their health and lives in jeopardy when they were pregnant. They asked the state to clarify the law so that health is considered in an abortion decision, not just an immediate threat to a pregnant patient’s life. The way the law is written, attorneys argue, is too vague to allow for those exceptions.

Phillips and Nicole Blackmon, another plaintiff, had fetuses with anomalies related to the development of vital organs. Blackmon couldn’t afford to travel out of the state for an abortion, and eventually had to stop working because the pregnancy was affecting her health. She delivered a stillborn baby in her seventh month of pregnancy. Phillips raised enough money to seek an abortion in New York, only to find when she got there that the fetus had already died.

After the court granted a temporary block on the law as it relates to pregnancy complications, the state passed several laws that affected the case. The first bill, meant to clarify the state’s health exception for an abortion, was enacted in April 2025 but didn’t solve the issue, Kabat said. The language still wasn’t clear enough, and the court agreed and allowed the suit to continue.

Kabat said the legal team will continue its effort to clarify Tennessee’s laws so that stories like Dulong’s don’t happen to others.

“No matter how long this takes, we’re going to get the trial, we’re going to get these stories heard and we’re going to seek accountability from the state,” Kabat said.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org. 

At Family Planning Associates in Chicago, in the office where staff take phone calls from potential abortion patients, a U.S. map colored in with red and green dry-erase markers notes the latest status of abortion access in every state. The map can change at any time.

In the center of the map’s biggest sea of red is Illinois, outlined in green — showing it’s a state with strong abortion access — surrounded by several states that ban or severely restrict abortion. Illinois is the destination for nearly 1 in 4 people traveling to another state for abortion care, according to a report from the Guttmacher Institute, an advocacy and research organization that supports abortion access and tracks data nationwide.

“Illinois really became kind of a haven state for the Midwest and much of the South immediately post-Dobbs,” said Megan Jeyifo, executive director of the Chicago Abortion Fund, which provides logistical and financial support to people who need abortions.

The state’s geography explains part of its popularity; in five of the six border states, abortion is either banned or largely inaccessible. But Illinois also is among the states that have put in place new policies — along with millions of dollars — to welcome patients who aren’t their residents. Advocates and providers say other safe-haven states should replicate the investments.

That’s happened most recently in Maine and Washington state, where governors approved funding to support family planning and abortion care, including for out-of-state patients.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion and allowed states to regulate the procedure, 13 states have implemented near-total abortion bans, and seven others have bans after six to 12 weeks. Although about one-quarter of people who need an abortion now obtain medication by telemedicine, many who live in states with bans still have to travel elsewhere for various reasons, including fear of prosecution.

Guttmacher’s data showed that fewer people traveled for care in the past two years than the peak of 170,000 who traveled in 2023, the year after Dobbs.

That number fell to about 155,000 in 2024, including 35,000 who went to Illinois, the data showed. Last year, an estimated 142,000 abortion patients traveled out of state, with a fairly consistent number, about 32,000, going to Illinois.

The next-highest destination after Illinois was North Carolina, followed by New Mexico and Kansas.

Guttmacher and other advocates attribute part of that decrease in the national numbers to wider availability of telehealth access to abortion medication that can be mailed to patients in other states. There were an estimated 1.1 million abortions across the United States in 2025, about the same amount as 2024 but the highest number since 2009, according to Guttmacher.

Shield laws protect health care providers in many states, including California, Illinois and New York. Those laws have prevented Republican attorneys general in other states, such as Texas and Louisiana, from trying to punish providers who prescribe the drugs.

Louisiana has unsuccessfully tried to charge and extradite doctors from California and New York, and is also suing the federal government to remove the provision that allows abortion medication to be prescribed by telehealth. A federal judge put the case on hold for now as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration completes a safety review.

Policy changes in Illinois

Illinois’ “haven” status is derided by anti-abortion groups, who call the state’s policies extreme.

“The abortion industry in Illinois is the wild west, which is clear by these numbers,” said Mary Kate Zander, president and CEO of Illinois Right to Life, to the Chicago Sun-Times, speaking about the Guttmacher report.

One state changing its laws to restrict abortion access can lead to a significant influx of patients traveling to clinics in other states. Dr. Allison Cowett, chief medical and advocacy officer for Family Planning Associates, said when six-week abortion bans went into effect in Florida and Georgia in May and October of 2024, respectively, many more patients from the South started coming to Chicago.

“Within the first few months after Dobbs, we had more than 1 in 3 patients coming from outside Illinois, and that has maintained for those three, almost four years,” Cowett said.

Illinois also borders Indiana, which has a near-total abortion ban in place. Cowett said Indiana residents were the largest percentage of out-of-state abortion patients at her clinic before 2022, and it has stayed that way.

Restricting, cutting Medicaid funding shifts more reproductive health care to telemedicine

Jeyifo said when she started as a volunteer with the Chicago Abortion Fund in 2016, the organization couldn’t financially support large numbers of out-of-state patients because Illinois didn’t invest in access the way it does now. The biggest change came in 2018, when Illinois allowed its state Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures.

“We would not have been able to expand our support outside of Illinois residents without that coverage,” Jeyifo said.

Nineteen other states allow their Medicaid program to cover abortion procedures, according to KFF, a health policy research group.

In 2023, Democratic lawmakers in Illinois allocated $10 million from the state health department to establish the Complex Abortion Regional Line for Access, known as CARLA, a hotline for the Chicago Abortion Fund and four area hospitals to help coordinate care. Jeyifo said more than 1,000 people have received assistance through that hotline in the years since.

The state has also helped fill in lost Medicaid funding after Congress passed a provision blocking federal Medicaid payments to certain abortion providers, mainly targeting Planned Parenthood, and it has helped pay for training and other programs that help connect people with care.

In January, the state launched a new partnership with the Chicago-based Michael Reese Health Trust to establish the Prairie State Access Fund, which will provide aid to out-of-state patients in need of reproductive and gender-affirming health care.

“(Illinois) is this model for other receiving states around the country to take up and learn about, because the proximity on a map is important, but the resources that are available once you get to a place are so much more important,” Jeyifo said.

Finding nearby states

The Guttmacher report showed 62,000 of the 142,000 people who traveled came from states with near-total bans, more than double the number who traveled from those states before 2022. But it has declined over the past year, down from 74,000 who traveled from those states in 2024.

The next-highest state for travelers, North Carolina, is relatively close to Georgia and Florida. The number of out-of-state travelers has remained steady there since 2024, even though North Carolina has a 12-week ban and a three-day waiting period for abortions.

In New Mexico and Kansas, about two-thirds of all abortions provided were for people traveling from outside the state, but those numbers are going down. New Mexico is often a destination for people from Texas, and Kansas borders Oklahoma, two states with strict bans. Kansas also borders Missouri; voters in 2024 passed a constitutional amendment legalizing abortion, but access has not returned, and lawmakers are trying to reverse the amendment in this year’s midterm elections.

Family Planning Associates is one of the largest independent abortion clinics in Illinois. It expanded its staff — including doctors, nurses and front desk workers — during the first year after Dobbs from about 40 people to more than 70 to handle the new patient volume, Cowett said. The clinic also expanded its physical space by about two-thirds.

Many of those who come from the South have never left their home state, Cowett said, and it can be overwhelming for them to come to a big city during an already emotional event. The abortion fund and others help supply a closet in the clinic that is stocked with toiletries, basic clothing, shoes and other items to assemble care packages for patients.

The state has also provided security infrastructure grants to nonprofits to protect against potential attacks, such as a clinic firebombing in Peoria, Illinois, in 2023, two days after Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker signed abortion protections into law. No one was in the building at the time.

Such aid was especially important for the Choices: Center for Reproductive Health clinic in Carbondale, a city at the southern tip of Illinois and the intersection of neighboring states with strong anti-abortion laws: Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.

It’s a much shorter drive to Carbondale for people in those states than it is to Chicago, said Jennifer Pepper, Choices president and CEO, and it’s a more familiar, smaller area.

The state grant allowed them to harden the physical security of the clinic in Carbondale, Pepper said, which is something they haven’t been able to do for their sister location in Memphis, Tennessee. That clinic provides birth control, wellness exams and midwifery services, but receives no state support.

“We’ve never had state support in all of our 52 years in Tennessee,” Pepper said.

State assistance

Other states with Democratic leadership and protective abortion laws are starting to approve more funding to support reproductive health care.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed a budget bill Friday that includes funding for lost Medicaid reimbursements and creates an ongoing $5 million annual appropriation for family planning services. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson signed a law in late March establishing a new revenue source for abortion care by implementing a tax on health insurance companies that is expected to generate about $10 million in the first year and about $2 million in each subsequent year.

Jeyifo, of the Chicago Abortion Fund, said she hopes to see more of those efforts in other states with laws that are supportive of reproductive health care, including ones with Democratic leadership that could be doing more to expand clinic availability and rescind waiting periods, such as the 24-hour waiting requirement that still exists in Wisconsin before a patient can get an abortion.

“So many states in our region could be doing more just for their own residents, let alone people traveling,” Jeyifo said.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

Some anti-abortion state lawmakers are pushing to revise the definition of “abortion” so abortion bans don’t apply to cases in which the death of an “unborn child” is the result of medical care provided to the pregnant woman.

In the four years since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to ban abortion, stories continue to emerge of women with doomed pregnancies who developed life-threatening infections, had to travel to another state, or even died because doctors were afraid to provide what was once considered standard pregnancy-loss care.

Thirteen states have abortion bans, and all of them include a medical exception that allows abortions to protect the life of the pregnant woman. Some, but not all, of the bans also have exceptions to protect the health of the woman.

But patients and providers have argued in lawsuits challenging the bans that such exceptions are too ill defined to give doctors and hospitals the confidence to provide timely care. As a result, they say, providers end up denying care until the woman’s condition deteriorates to a point where the exceptions definitely apply, jeopardizing her health and future fertility.

Last year, states including Texas, Kentucky and Tennessee enacted laws designed to provide additional clarity. Confusion persists in those states and others, however, and research has linked abortion restrictions to higher rates of maternal death and injury.

The latest measures, crafted and promoted by national anti-abortion groups, would redefine “abortion” as the intentional ending of the life of the “unborn child.” Supporters say they would clear the way for doctors to manage miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and other pregnancy-related emergencies.

“No one wants a physician to hesitate or pause and further endanger the life of the mother,” said Ingrid Duran, director of state legislation for the National Right to Life Committee, which has advocated for all of the measures, in a written statement. “This is why providing clearer language in defining terms can be beneficial.”

But reproductive rights advocates and many OB-GYNs say the real purpose of the bills is to fortify abortion bans that are broadly unpopular, even in states with full bans, and under legal challenge in multiple states. They argue the new measures are still too vague because they hang on the intentions of individual physicians, and many of the same procedures and medicines used in abortions are used to treat miscarriages.

They also say the language in the bills could grant embryos legal rights, thereby making some fertility treatments illegal.

“If you’re trying to define what is and is not an abortion, and you’re creating really specific, narrow guidelines, it could really unintentionally classify some pregnancy-related procedures as abortion care, and therefore within the law not medically necessary,” said Elias Schmidt, state legislative counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group.

South Dakota is first

In March, South Dakota became the first state to enact such a law. Its measure states that the state’s abortion ban only applies to “the intentional termination of the life of a human being in the uterus,” and not to medical treatment that results in “the accidental or unintentional death of the unborn child,” treatment to resolve a miscarriage or ectopic pregnancy, “the removal from the uterus of a deceased unborn child,” or a medical procedure that aims to save the fetus.

To the concern of fertility-treatment advocates, the law also defines “human being” as “an individual living member of the species of Homo sapiens, including the unborn human being during the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation.”

A similar bill introduced in Missouri defines abortion as “the act of using or prescribing any instrument, device, medicine, drug, or any other means or substance with the intent to destroy the life of an embryo or fetus in his or her mother’s womb.” It explicitly exempts miscarriage management and treatment for ectopic pregnancies from the definition.

And a bill in Utah, where abortion is still legal up to 18 weeks’ gestation, would regulate how an abortion procedure is recorded in a patient’s chart, distinguishing between an elective abortion and a medically indicated abortion. It defines the latter as an abortion “to remove a deceased fetus,” resolve an ectopic pregnancy, or to avert the death or “serious physical risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function of a woman.”

Wisconsin’s legislature recently voted not to advance a similar bill this past legislative session.

Blame for the confusion

Anti-abortion groups blame doctors and abortion-rights advocates for creating the confusion around the medical exceptions in abortion bans, insisting it is clear what is a medically indicated abortion and what is purely elective.

“The fact that we’re in a place now that states actually have to define (abortion) is a result of my field, particularly (the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) not clarifying it,” said Dr. Susan Bane, vice chair of the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which is made up of about 7,500 physicians and other medical professionals who oppose abortion.

The organization has launched a medical education and messaging campaign arguing that abortion bans do not prevent necessary health care.

According to Bane, the main difference between an induced abortion and medically indicated termination is that in the first case, “you want a dead baby at the end of whatever you do.”

The author of the South Dakota law, Republican state Rep. Leslie Heinemann, said he sponsored the measure to quell some of the criticism that the medical exceptions in his state’s ban were ill defined. He admitted he underestimated how difficult it would be to codify in law when care for a miscarriage is necessary.

“Even the medical community had trouble with helping define some of the issues,” he said.

The version of the bill that became law names only a few conditions and leaves the rest up to the discretion of physicians, who must exercise “appropriate and reasonable medical judgment that performance of an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant female” to avoid felony charges.

Heinemann insisted his measure would not restrict fertility treatments or birth control. But reproductive health and legal experts say that by defining the beginning of human life as “the entire embryonic and fetal ages from fertilization to full gestation,” it could have that effect.

“Embedding personhood language into state laws does really bring up concern around contraceptive access and IVF access,” said Kimya Forouzan, principal state policy adviser for the Guttmacher Institute, a think tank that supports abortion rights.

“As personhood provisions grow in the state code, it brings up the question: At what point are we granting the legal rights of a person and placing those rights above the individual themselves?”

Dr. Amy Kelley, an OB-GYN in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who was the chair of the South Dakota chapter of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists from 2023 to 2025, said lawmakers ignored her and other doctors’ concerns that the amended abortion ban is still too vague.

“The whole point of medicine is to prevent people from becoming on the brink of death, right? So are they expecting us to wait until that?” Kelley said. “It’s still not very clear, and the definition for miscarriage and ectopic is also not the one we wanted. It’s just not helpful.”

Kelley said that since her state enacted an abortion ban, she often waits longer to terminate a pregnancy for medical reasons, and will sometimes send patients out of state for care. She noted that the new law doesn’t explain what level of risk to the pregnant woman justifies terminating a pregnancy.

“They want to say elective abortions are not allowed. But what do they consider elective?” she said. “Let’s say they have a heart condition and their risk of dying in pregnancy is 40%. Is that an elective abortion because their risk is not 100%?”

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org

When an Alabama clinic’s only OB-GYN left the state to provide abortion care in Colorado, the head of operations thought the facility would have to close.

But Robin Marty, executive director at WAWC Healthcare in Tuscaloosa, hired a doctor in August who she called a “unicorn” — someone who’s from Alabama and, after training outside of the state, returned home to practice medicine.

Marty said Alabama’s near-total abortion ban could cause physicians to practice elsewhere after they finish their residencies.

“Doctors don’t want to worry about surveillance, potential arrests and other legal issues,” she said.

A study published in March found that applications to medical residency programs in states with abortion restrictions have declined compared to states where abortion remained mostly legal. The findings are an “early signal” that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision nearly four years ago overturning federal abortion rights protections may exacerbate health care shortages, said lead author Dr. Anisha Ganguly.

A majority of doctors end up practicing medicine in states where they trained. Obstetrician and gynecology training programs typically take four years to complete, so the full scope of how abortion restrictions affect where physicians work after they complete their residencies remains to be seen.

Still, experts said the findings could spell trouble for the future of the reproductive health care workforce in states with abortion restrictions, some of which are already plagued with maternity care deserts.

Doctors say bans limit training, standards of care

OB-GYNs affiliated with Physicians for Reproductive Health who either trained or work in states with abortion bans told States Newsroom that restrictions after the Supreme Court decision hamstrung their ability to offer reproductive care and affected the education of medical residents.

Dr. Neha Ali grew up in Texas and trained there, too. But by the end of her OB-GYN residency’s second year, the state enacted SB 8, a six-week abortion ban that allowed residents in the state to sue providers or anyone who helped someone terminate a pregnancy. After the Dobbs decision in June 2022, a near-total abortion ban took effect in Texas.

“I knew I wanted to be an abortion provider before I started OB-GYN residency, and I chose to be in Texas for my residency training because I wanted to experience what that’s like in a state with barriers. But ultimately, the barriers became too large,” Ali said.

After she finished residency in 2024, Ali moved to Colorado, a state with strong abortion-rights protections, where she practices complex family planning.

Ali said she talks to medical students about her experience training in Texas, where she was not able to perform any dilation and evacuations — a second-trimester abortion procedure — during residency.

“I do think it’s very valuable to see what it’s like to be in a restrictive state and understand what that is like to be a provider there, but that doesn’t sell people on a residency for four years,” she said.

OB-GYN Dr. Louis Monnig trained in Kentucky before the state banned abortion.

“Making it difficult or putting up barriers to that training just limits the abilities of any doctor who provides reproductive care to have opportunities to get exposure and experience, and just get better at what they’re doing,” he said.

Monnig completed his residency in June 2023 and moved back to his home state of Louisiana because of his connections to the region and its health care disparities. “It felt like it was worth it to come back,” he said.

In October 2024, a Louisiana law classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances took effect.

“It made me lose faith that lawmakers were doing any of these things to actually protect patients or patient safety,” he said.

The medications are used not only for abortions, but miscarriages and other conditions, too. The law has sowed confusion among health care providers and led some to practice emergency drills to access the drugs during obstetric emergencies, Louisiana Illuminator reported. Monnig said the law has “changed some of the day-to-day operational workflow for patient care,” especially for situations where misoprostol is used, such as labor induction and postpartum hemorrhaging.

Patients have faced issues when trying to get prescriptions filled: Pharmacists have called Monnig’s office to make sure a patient wasn’t having an abortion after he prescribed misoprostol for conditions such as cervical stenosis — when it’s difficult to insert a medical instrument in the cervical canal.

Drop in applications to ban states’ residency programs

Out of more than 22 million applications to 4,315 residency programs across the U.S., 67% were submitted to programs in states without abortion restrictions between 2018 and 2023, the new research showed. Thirty-three percent went to programs in states with restrictions.

Fewer women than men applied to train in states with abortion restrictions before the Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling, according to the study, and that disparity widened after more than a dozen states enacted abortion bans. The number of men applying to residency programs in states with abortion restrictions — mostly in the South and the Midwest — also decreased significantly.

“When there’s a decreased level of interest in these states, it suggests to us that there’s an evolving health care workforce shortage in these states,” said Ganguly, an internal medicine physician and an assistant professor at University of North Carolina’s Division of General Medicine and Epidemiology.

Many states with abortion bans — Idaho, Iowa and Georgia, for example — are also facing labor and delivery unit closures, particularly in rural areas where hospitals struggle with provider recruitment. Health officials in these states listed improvements to maternal health as a priority in their applications to the federal Rural Health Care Transformation Program, but solutions will take years to implement.

Shortages affect more than one specialty. Ganguly said OB-GYNs have historically offered the bulk of abortion-related care in the U.S., but it’s increasingly important in emergency medicine, family medicine and internal medicine. Primary care providers and emergency medicine doctors often diagnose pregnancy complications such as miscarriages, and internists help women who have chronic disease manage and plan for pregnancy.

Dr. Hector Chapa, an OB-GYN who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at Texas A&M University and is a member of the American Association of Pro–Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, took issue with the study’s approach.

“It’s essential to understand that this study is not specific to OB‑GYN residency programs, and by grouping OB‑GYN with family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine, the study assumes that all specialties are affected equally, despite their very different levels of involvement in abortion. This broad grouping risks introducing bias into the results,” he said in a statement.

Ganguly said her team did examine applications to OB-GYN residency programs in isolation to affirm findings of a decline among applicants in abortion-restricted states. Looking at other specialties, too, was meant to provide clarity about how bans affect the health care workforce more broadly.

OB-GYN education and the maternal health care workforce

The latest study adds to a body of research examining how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in 2022 affected training after medical school, particularly for those specializing in reproductive health care.

In the 2023-2024 application cycle, the number of applicants to training programs in states with abortion bans decreased by 4.2% compared to the previous cycle, while there was less than a 1% decrease in applications to residency programs in states where abortion is legal, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges.

In some states, abortion bans have definitively led to an exodus of OB-GYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists. Idaho lost 35% of its doctors who provide obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to a study published in July.

Having reproductive health providers flee states with abortion bans is “devastating,” according to Pamela Merritt, the executive director of Medical Students for Choice.

“It’s a public health disaster that we’re going to see the consequences of decades to come,” she said.

Merritt’s organization has chapters at several medical schools in states with abortion bans. She said students are not getting adequate training, and some are even discouraged from discussing abortion.

In February, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a Medical Students for Choice chapter’s talk with an OB-GYN who wrote a book about providing abortion care later in pregnancy. School officials told The Texas Tribune hosting the event on campus was not in the university’s best interests.

“Everybody who graduates from medical school in Texas should know that there’s this thing called third-trimester abortion, that when the life of the mother is at risk, you legally can provide this care,” Merritt said.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation last year clarifying that doctors can offer pregnant women abortions during medical emergencies. The Texas Medical Board released guidelines for the abortion law this year, nearly half a decade after the state banned most abortions and at least four Texans died after being denied prompt abortion care, ProPublica reported.

Program helps residents in restrictive states get abortion care training

“Every single physician, nurse and health care provider needs to be educated about abortion care,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, an OB-GYN and the director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is a huge crisis in OB-GYN specifically: All OB-GYNs must have the competence and the skill to safely empty the uterus. Even if the individual is personally uncomfortable providing abortion care, they have to be able to empty the uterus to save someone’s life in an emergency.”

Steinauer leads the Ryan Residency Training Program, which works with OB-GYN residencies across the country to ensure comprehensive abortion and family planning rotations. Nearly a dozen states lack Ryan programs, and most of them have near-total abortion bans.

She said residencies in states with abortion bans are struggling to make sure their students have the skills to provide abortion: “We’re at risk of having a whole generation of OB-GYN graduates who are not skilled to provide the care they need to provide.”

To remedy this issue, the Ryan Program has helped to establish 20 partnerships with schools in abortion-restrictive states to train OB-GYN medical residents in states with reproductive rights protections.

Steinauer said the rotations are between two to four weeks and complicated to plan, but they help doctors learn procedural skills, how to manage medication abortions and counseling.

The rotations also help OB-GYNs navigate pain management during obstetric procedures, communicate effectively with abortion patients and familiarize themselves with ultrasounds, she said. These skills are important for providing the full spectrum of reproductive health care, from inserting IUDs to treating miscarriages, the doctor said.

“It’s such a refreshing experience for them to be working in a state without a ban, and they get to see abortion as normal health care,” she said.

Stateline reporter Elisha Brown can be reached at ebrown@stateline.org.

States with and without abortion bans are advancing bills that would shield anti-abortion pregnancy resource centers from certain government mandates and attempts at regulation, allowing them to sue for damages if any part of the law is violated.

At least four states introduced the legislation this session, and two of them, Kansas and Wyoming, made it law. Montana also passed a similar law in 2025. The bills are still pending in Oklahoma and New Hampshire.

They are based on model legislation drafted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal advocacy group that represented one of the large umbrella organizations for pregnancy centers around the country, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, when the California government attempted to regulate the centers in 2018 by requiring signage to be placed informing clients of available abortion options at state-funded clinics.

“This really just reflects the legal reality that pregnancy care centers have been hauled into court when they’ve decided they are not interested in pushing abortion and (the government is) going to make them,” said Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy for the anti-abortion group Students for Life Action.

Many crisis pregnancy centers are faith based, with a mission of preventing anyone who walks in from choosing an abortion. In a recent 50-state analysis, States Newsroom found that 21 states allocated more than $491 million of taxpayer funds to crisis pregnancy centers since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 that upended federal abortion rights. Medical experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, say the centers can endanger public health by delaying legitimate health care and some centers that advertise services like free ultrasounds can miss diagnoses like ectopic or molar pregnancies, which are nonviable and can be life-threatening conditions.

The centers have also been criticized by advocates for misleading potential clients about their services, making it look like they provide abortion care, and for promoting treatments like abortion pill reversal that are unproven and potentially dangerous.

California’s law, which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down in 2018 on free speech grounds, also mandated disclosure if the pregnancy resource center was unlicensed. Violators would be fined $500 for a first offense.

Hamrick said the center protection bills are an “inoculation” against what she called malicious lawsuits that would punish them for refusing to go against their anti-abortion mission.

Samantha Nagler, a legal fellow with the Equal Justice Works program at Gender Justice, said the bills are carving out an area of health care where providers can omit information during a visit and face no consequences for it.

“No other health care provider I can think of is just exempted from regulation,” Nagler said.

Israel Cook, legislative counsel for the Center for Reproductive Right’s policy and advocacy team, said this type of legislation is becoming more popular as reproductive rights advocates push for regulation of crisis pregnancy centers.

Colorado passed a law in 2023 making it a deceptive trade practice to disseminate any public advertisement that indicates a facility provides abortions or emergency contraceptives when they do not. The law included a similar provision barring advertisement of abortion pill reversal, but a federal judge blocked enforcement of that part of the law in August. Alliance Defending Freedom also assisted with that lawsuit.

“It’s very scary for (the centers) to not be on the hook for the kind of harm that they perpetuate,” Cook said.

Oklahoma sponsor: Law allows centers to ‘stay in their lane’

The bills prohibit a state or local government from adopting or enacting a law, rule, ordinance or any other type of regulation that would require a center to offer or perform abortion, make referrals for abortion or abortion medication, or post any type of advertisement or material promoting abortion or abortion medication. Every bill, with the exception of Kansas, also says the centers cannot be compelled to offer or refer for contraception.

The Kansas Legislature passed House Bill 2635 on March 12 and overturned a veto by Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday. Kelly said she vetoed it because Kansans already voted to keep the government out of private medical decisions in 2022, preventing lawmakers from passing an abortion ban. Kelly also opposes the funding that crisis pregnancy centers receive from the state on an annual basis — the legislature approved $3 million in 2025, on top of a $10 million tax credit program.

Oklahoma’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a similar bill in early March, but it hasn’t yet been heard by the Senate. It was sponsored by Republican Rep. Denise Crosswhite Hader, who said it was legislation that allowed the centers to continue their mission.

Oklahoma’s bill prescribes the largest penalties with an allowance for treble damages, which means a successful lawsuit could yield three times the amount of damages proven in court. A pregnancy center would be entitled to at least $10,000.

“I don’t see abortion as care. I see abortion as ending a pregnancy,” she said on the House floor during debate. The centers want to help with continuing a pregnancy, she said, but when they avoid abortion, they’re getting sued, “and what we’re trying to do is help it so that they can stay in their lane and not fight lawsuits over and over.”

The state government allocated $18 million to a revolving grant fund for crisis pregnancy centers in 2024 that will last through November 2027.

Oklahoma has a near-total abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest, only an exception to save a pregnant person’s life. With that in mind, Democratic Rep. Cyndi Munson told States Newsroom she doesn’t see the need for the legislation.

“If a private organization has a policy, they can stick to their policy. I don’t know why we need to put additional protections into law,” Munson said.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s health care struggles continue, according to Munson. The state ranked 46th in infant mortality in a report from the nonprofit March of Dimes, and 31st in maternal mortality. But reproductive health care in general can also be difficult to obtain. Munson said she recently had to wait an entire year to receive her annual gynecological exam because her provider is overbooked.

She worries that at a certain point, crisis pregnancy centers will be the only type of health care that’s left, especially in more rural parts of the state.

“Not every woman is looking for abortion access, but they all need reproductive health care,” Munson said.

About 135,000 borrowers in Wisconsin are enrolled in the SAVE plan and should be on the lookout for notices from the U.S. Department of Education.

The post A Biden-era student loan repayment plan is ending. Here’s what Wisconsin borrowers should know appeared first on WPR.

When an Alabama clinic’s only OB-GYN left the state to provide abortion care in Colorado, the head of operations thought the facility would have to close. 

But Robin Marty, executive director at WAWC Healthcare in Tuscaloosa, hired a doctor in August who she called a “unicorn” — someone who’s from Alabama and, after training outside of the state, returned home to practice medicine. 

Marty said Alabama’s near-total abortion ban could cause physicians to practice elsewhere after they finish their residencies. 

“Doctors don’t want to worry about surveillance, potential arrests and other legal issues,” she said. 

A study published this month found that applications to medical residency programs in states with abortion restrictions have declined compared to states where abortion remained mostly legal. The findings are an “early signal” that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision nearly four years ago overturning federal abortion rights protections may exacerbate health care shortages, said lead author Dr. Anisha Ganguly.

A majority of doctors end up practicing medicine in states where they trained. Obstetrician and gynecology training programs typically take four years to complete, so the full scope of how abortion restrictions affect where physicians work after they complete their residencies remains to be seen. 

Still, experts said the findings could spell trouble for the future of the reproductive health care workforce in states with abortion restrictions, some of which are already plagued with maternity care deserts. 

Doctors say bans limit training, standards of care

OB-GYNs affiliated with Physicians for Reproductive Health who either trained or work in states with abortion bans told States Newsroom that restrictions after the Supreme Court decision hamstrung their ability to offer reproductive care and affected the education of medical residents. 

Dr. Neha Ali grew up in Texas and trained there, too. But by the end of her OB-GYN residency’s second year, the state enacted SB 8, a six-week abortion ban that allowed residents in the state to sue providers or anyone who helped someone terminate a pregnancy. After the Dobbs decision in June 2022, a near-total abortion ban took effect in Texas.

“I knew I wanted to be an abortion provider before I started OB-GYN residency, and I chose to be in Texas for my residency training because I wanted to experience what that’s like in a state with barriers. But ultimately, the barriers became too large,” Ali said. 

After she finished residency in 2024, Ali moved to Colorado, a state with strong abortion-rights protections, where she practices complex family planning.

Ali said she talks to medical students about her experience training in Texas, where she was not able to perform any dilation and evacuations — a second-trimester abortion procedure — during residency. 

“I do think it’s very valuable to see what it’s like to be in a restrictive state and understand what that is like to be a provider there, but that doesn’t sell people on a residency for four years,” she said.

OB-GYN Dr. Louis Monnig trained in Kentucky before the state banned abortion. 

“Making it difficult or putting up barriers to that training just limits the abilities of any doctor who provides reproductive care to have opportunities to get exposure and experience, and just get better at what they’re doing,” he said. 

Monnig completed his residency in June 2023 and moved back to his home state of Louisiana because of his connections to the region and its health care disparities. “It felt like it was worth it to come back,” he said. 

In October 2024, a Louisiana law classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances took effect. 

“It made me lose faith that lawmakers were doing any of these things to actually protect patients or patient safety,” he said. 

The medications are used not only for abortions, but miscarriages and other conditions, too. The law has sowed confusion among health care providers and led some to practice emergency drills to access the drugs during obstetric emergencies, Louisiana Illuminator reported. Monnig said the law has “changed some of the day-to-day operational workflow for patient care,” especially for situations where misoprostol is used, such as labor induction and postpartum hemorrhaging. 

Patients have faced issues when trying to get prescriptions filled: Pharmacists have called Monnig’s office to make sure a patient wasn’t having an abortion after he prescribed misoprostol for conditions such as cervical stenosis — when it’s difficult to insert a medical instrument in the cervical canal.

Drop in applications to ban states’ residency programs

Out of more than 22 million applications to 4,315 residency programs across the U.S., 67% were submitted to programs in states without abortion restrictions between 2018 and 2023, the new research showed. Thirty-three percent went to programs in states with restrictions. 

Fewer women than men applied to train in states with abortion restrictions before the Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling, according to the study, and that disparity widened after more than a dozen states enacted abortion bans. The number of men applying to residency programs in states with abortion restrictions — mostly in the South and the Midwest — also decreased significantly. 

“When there’s a decreased level of interest in these states, it suggests to us that there’s an evolving health care workforce shortage in these states,” said Ganguly, an internal medicine physician and an assistant professor at University of North Carolina’s Division of General Medicine and Epidemiology. 

Many states with abortion bans — Idaho, Iowa and Georgia, for example — are also facing labor and delivery unit closures, particularly in rural areas where hospitals struggle with provider recruitment. Health officials in these states listed improvements to maternal health as a priority in their applications to the federal Rural Health Care Transformation Program, but solutions will take years to implement. 

Shortages affect more than one specialty. Ganguly said OB-GYNs have historically offered the bulk of abortion-related care in the U.S., but it’s increasingly important in emergency medicine, family medicine and internal medicine. Primary care providers and emergency medicine doctors often diagnose pregnancy complications such as miscarriages, and internists help women who have chronic disease manage and plan for pregnancy. 

Dr. Hector Chapa, an OB-GYN who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at Texas A&M University and is a member of the American Association of Pro–Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, took issue with the study’s approach. 

“It’s essential to understand that this study is not specific to OB‑GYN residency programs, and by grouping OB‑GYN with family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine, the study assumes that all specialties are affected equally, despite their very different levels of involvement in abortion. This broad grouping risks introducing bias into the results,” he said in a statement. 

Ganguly said her team did examine applications to OB-GYN residency programs in isolation to affirm findings of a decline among applicants in abortion-restricted states. Looking at other specialties, too, was meant to provide clarity about how bans affect the health care workforce more broadly.

OB-GYN education and the maternal health care workforce 

The latest study adds to a body of research examining how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in 2022 affected training after medical school, particularly for those specializing in reproductive health care. 

In the 2023-2024 application cycle, the number of applicants to training programs in states with abortion bans decreased by 4.2% compared to the previous cycle, while there was less than a 1% decrease in applications to residency programs in states where abortion is legal, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges. 

In some states, abortion bans have definitively led to an exodus of OB-GYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists. Idaho lost 35% of its doctors who provide obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to a study published in July. 

Having reproductive health providers flee states with abortion bans is “devastating,” according to Pamela Merritt, the executive director of Medical Students for Choice. 

“It’s a public health disaster that we’re going to see the consequences of decades to come,” she said. 

Merritt’s organization has chapters at several medical schools in states with abortion bans. She said students are not getting adequate training, and some are even discouraged from discussing abortion. 

In February, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a Medical Students for Choice chapter’s talk with an OB-GYN who wrote a book about providing abortion care later in pregnancy. School officials told The Texas Tribune hosting the event on campus was not in the university’s best interests.   

“Everybody who graduates from medical school in Texas should know that there’s this thing called third-trimester abortion, that when the life of the mother is at risk, you legally can provide this care,” Merritt said. 

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation last year clarifying that doctors can offer pregnant women abortions during medical emergencies. The Texas Medical Board released guidelines for the abortion law this year, nearly half a decade after the state banned most abortions and at least four Texans died after being denied prompt abortion care, ProPublica reported. 

Program helps residents in restrictive states get abortion care training 

“Every single physician, nurse and health care provider needs to be educated about abortion care,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, an OB-GYN and the director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is a huge crisis in OB-GYN specifically: All OB-GYNs must have the competence and the skill to safely empty the uterus. Even if the individual is personally uncomfortable providing abortion care, they have to be able to empty the uterus to save someone’s life in an emergency.”

Steinauer leads the Ryan Residency Training Program, which works with OB-GYN residencies across the country to ensure comprehensive abortion and family planning rotations. Nearly a dozen states lack Ryan programs, and most of them have near-total abortion bans. 

She said residencies in states with abortion bans are struggling to make sure their students have the skills to provide abortion: “We’re at risk of having a whole generation of OB-GYN graduates who are not skilled to provide the care they need to provide.” 

To remedy this issue, the Ryan Program has helped to establish 20 partnerships with schools in abortion-restrictive states to train OB-GYN medical residents in states with reproductive rights protections. 

Steinauer said the rotations are between two to four weeks and complicated to plan, but they help doctors learn procedural skills, how to manage medication abortions and counseling. 

The rotations also help OB-GYNs navigate pain management during obstetric procedures, communicate effectively with abortion patients and familiarize themselves with ultrasounds, she said. These skills are important for providing the full spectrum of reproductive health care, from inserting IUDs to treating miscarriages, the doctor said. 

“It’s such a refreshing experience for them to be working in a state without a ban, and they get to see abortion as normal health care,” she said. 

Gas prices are climbing again across the United States — with little clarity on where prices are headed next — spurring proposals for state gas tax holidays in the hopes of offering drivers some relief.

The national average hit $3.96 per gallon Monday, up from $3.72 the week before, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A month ago, the average price per gallon was $2.79.

Some analysts warn prices could continue climbing in the coming weeks, potentially pushing the national average above $4 per gallon for the first time since 2022.

Data from AAA, a national travel and motorist organization, shows a similar upward trend for both regular gas and diesel.

While the Energy Information Administration no longer publishes detailed data for every state, regional figures show increases across much of the country. The West Coast, Central Atlantic states and Rocky Mountain region are seeing some of the highest average prices, with California, Colorado and Washington among those experiencing the largest recent increases.

Rising gas prices are putting renewed pressure on household finances, especially for low- and middle-income Americans who have less flexibility to absorb higher transportation costs. The increases can ripple through daily life, influencing how much people drive, where they travel and how they spend money elsewhere.

Still, economists say the most significant factor right now is not just the price itself, but the uncertainty surrounding it. With national policy decisions and geopolitical developments in the Middle East shifting rapidly, there is little consensus on how long prices will remain elevated or how high they could climb.

“Gasoline prices don’t live in isolation,” said Steven Durlauf, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Durlauf also is the director of the university’s Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility. “Reductions in the supply of petroleum, oil-based products affect the entire economy.”

States weigh gas tax holidays

With prices rising, local leaders and state lawmakers in several states — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Utah — have weighed gas tax holidays as a way to provide relief at the pump.

Georgia lawmakers have already enacted a temporary suspension, while officials in Florida and Maryland have expressed skepticism, citing budget constraints and questions about how much savings would actually reach consumers.

Gas prices have risen across all of these states, with some of the sharpest increases in the South.

Gas tax holidays, which temporarily suspend or reduce state fuel taxes, gained traction in 2022 when gas prices last topped $4 per gallon. Supporters say they can offer immediate, visible relief by lowering the per-gallon cost of fuel.

But researchers and some economists say the benefits are often limited and uneven. A new analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning tax policy research group, estimates that the recent rise in gas prices is on pace to cost American drivers an additional $9.4 billion per month.

The researchers found that gas tax holidays may provide only minimal relief to those who need it most. For households earning less than $53,000 a year, a federal gas tax holiday would save about $5 per month on average.

Some research suggests that much of the benefit from such policies may not reach consumers at all. When fuel supply is constrained, a significant share of the savings can be absorbed within the oil and gas supply chain rather than passed on at the pump.

State-level examples reflect similar patterns. In Georgia, analysts from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that the state’s newly enacted tax holiday is expected to cost the state about $196 million per month and disproportionately benefit wealthier households: The bottom 60% are expected to receive just 22% of the tax cuts — or roughly $13 per family, according to the ITEP analysis.

Utah lawmakers have spent a year planning for a 15% cut in the state’s gas tax from July through December. But some economists say any savings for consumers might be engulfed by higher prices.

“It’s still unclear the extent people will notice that tax cut,” Phil Dean, chief economist at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah, told the Utah News Dispatch.

There are also fiscal trade-offs. Gas taxes are a key source of revenue for transportation infrastructure, and suspending them — even temporarily — can strain state budgets, particularly in places where revenues have fallen in recent years.

Some experts say more targeted approaches, such as direct income rebates or assistance aimed at lower-income households, may be more effective in offsetting rising fuel costs without reducing transportation funding.

“A tax holiday is, I think, something most economists would be uncomfortable with,” said Durlauf, the University of Chicago economist.

If the consumer demand is still there, gasoline prices might still rise, he said. “It’s not obvious to me that the prices will not just adjust to (gas tax holidays) as well.”

Global tensions

Much of the recent volatility stems from the Trump administration’s war in Iran and uncertainty surrounding the Strait of Hormuz — a critical global oil transit route through which a significant share of the world’s oil supply passes. Iran has effectively restricted access to some vessels in the region, raising fears of supply disruptions that can quickly ripple through global markets.

Even the threat of disruption can send oil prices higher, as traders react to the possibility of reduced supply.

Though the United States produces substantial amounts of oil domestically, it remains part of a global market, meaning international developments still directly affect prices at the pump.

“Americans can’t fence themselves off from the impacts of global changes to supply and demand,” said Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, a fuel savings and price-tracking company. “Actions have consequences, and consumers are very much feeling that.”

Crude oil remains the single biggest driver of gasoline prices, accounting for about half of the cost of a gallon of regular gas, according to the Energy Information Administration. Refining makes up about 20%, while distribution and marketing account for 11%, and taxes roughly 18%.

Brent crude oil — the international benchmark — has surged in recent weeks, briefly reaching $119 per barrel last week. It settled around $100 per barrel on Monday, and rose again on Tuesday to about $113 per barrel.

Federal forecasts expect prices to remain elevated in the near term before easing later this year.

Seasonal factors are also contributing to the increase. As warmer weather approaches, refineries transition to producing summer-blend gasoline, which is more expensive to manufacture but designed to reduce evaporation and meet environmental standards.

Warmer weather also usually means more drivers will be on the road.

“The oil industry is volatile. It’s a global market, and that’s why we don’t predict what’s going to happen next because it’s impossible to,” said Aixa Diaz, a spokesperson for AAA. “This all coincided at a time when gas would normally be going up anyway for us.”

At its core, gasoline pricing reflects basic supply and demand dynamics. When supply tightens — or is expected to — prices rise. When demand falls, prices tend to drop, sometimes sharply.

“Whenever there’s a perceived shift in either supply or demand, there’s going to be an equal reaction,” De Haan said. “This is just one of the larger reactions, because it’s a larger impact.”

The recent spike has also been fueled by rapidly shifting political signals. President Donald Trump said Monday that the United States is in talks with Iran to resolve the conflict, helping to briefly push oil prices lower after they surged amid Trump’s threats to target Iran’s energy infrastructure. Iran denied there were ongoing talks.

Such volatility, economists say, adds another layer of uncertainty that can weigh on both consumers and the broader economy.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at ahernandez@stateline.org.

The U.S. government will pay a French energy firm nearly $1 billion to cancel its plans to build a pair of wind farms off the East Coast, the Trump administration announced Monday in its latest move to stymie offshore wind. 

The French firm TotalEnergies will forfeit its leases for projects off the coasts of New York and North Carolina, with the United States paying $928 million to reimburse what the company initially spent on the leases.

Under the deal, TotalEnergies will reinvest that money into oil and gas projects, including a liquefied natural gas export facility in Texas. 

President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to block the development of offshore wind projects, which many East Coast states have been counting on to meet their energy needs in the coming years. The projects canceled under the deal announced Monday would have provided power to more than 1 million homes. 

Late last year, the Trump administration invoked classified national security threats to stop work on five wind farms that were under construction, but courts have ruled that the projects can proceed. But for dozens of other projects still in the planning and permitting stages, industry experts expect little progress while Trump remains in office. 

The administration claimed in a statement that the projects were “unreliable and costly.” But New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, condemned the agreement.

“Using a pay-not-to-play scheme to pressure a company to not build offshore wind is an outrageous abuse of taxpayer dollars,” Hochul said in a statement to The New York Times.

Environmental groups also blasted the deal, with some noting that it comes as Trump’s war with Iran has caused chaos for global oil markets.

“This deal is an outrageous misuse of taxpayer dollars to prevent Americans from having clean, affordable power exactly when they need it most,” Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at the Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement. 

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

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Authors & Organizational Affiliation

Section 1 — Common Ground

• Emmanuelle Mikosz — Director General, Forum for the Future of Agriculture (EU)
• Tyler McCann — Managing Director, Canadian Agri-Policy Institute (Canada)
• Katie McRobert — Executive Director, Australian Farm Institute (Australia)
• Shari Rogge-Fidler — President & CEO, Farm Foundation (United States)

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Section 2 — Deep Dives

• Michael Robertson, Andy Hall, Rohan Nelson — Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO – Australia)
• Gail Tavill — Chief Sustainability Officer, OSI Group (United States)
• Dr. Tassos Haniotis — Special Advisor for Sustainable Productivity, Forum for the Future of Agriculture (EU); Senior Guest Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
• Vivian Hoffmann — Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); Associate Professor, Carleton University, Department of Economics and School of Public Policy and Administration

---

Section 3 — What We Learned

• GFFPI Leadership Team, and
• Dr. Sunghun Lim — Agricultural Economics Fellow, Farm Foundation

---

About GFFPI 

The Global Forum on Farm Policy and Innovation (GFFPI) is a collaborative platform formed by four leading independent agricultural institutes from Australia, Canada, the European Union, and the United States. The partnership uses evidence-based insights and emerging research to fuel dialogue, unlock new thinking, and identify opportunities to advance sustainable agriculture globally. 

Founding organizations: 

• Australian Farm Institute 

• Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute 

• Farm Foundation 

• Forum for the Future of Agriculture 

The post Finding Common Ground in a Divided World appeared first on Farm Foundation.

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Jessika Trancik, a professor in MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, has been named the new director of the Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC), effective July 1. The SSRC convenes and supports researchers focused on problems and solutions at the intersection of technology and its societal impacts.

Trancik conducts research on technology innovation and energy systems. At the Trancik Lab, she and her team develop methods drawing on engineering knowledge, data science, and policy analysis. Their work examines the pace and drivers of technological change, helping identify where innovation is occurring most rapidly, how emerging technologies stack up against existing systems, and which performance thresholds matter most for real-world impact. Her models have been used to inform government innovation policy and have been applied across a wide range of industries.

“Professor Trancik’s deep expertise in the societal implications of technology, and her commitment to developing impactful solutions across industries, make her an excellent fit to lead SSRC,” says Maria C. Yang, interim dean of engineering and William E. Leonhard (1940) Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Much of Trancik’s research focuses on the domain of energy systems, and establishing methods for energy technology evaluation, including of their costs, performance, and environmental impacts. She covers a wide range of energy services — including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. Her research has applications in solar and wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission. Trancik is also known for her research on extreme events in renewable energy availability.

A prolific researcher, Trancik has helped measure progress and inform the development of solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle charging infrastructure, and other low-carbon technologies — and anticipate future trends. One of her widely cited contributions includes quantifying learning rates and identifying where targeted investments can most effectively accelerate innovation. These tools have been used by U.S. federal agencies, international organizations, and the private sector to shape energy R&D portfolios, climate policy, and infrastructure planning.

Trancik is committed to engaging and informing the public on energy consumption. She and her team developed the app carboncounter.com, which helps users choose cars with low costs and low environmental impacts.

As an educator, Trancik teaches courses for students across MIT’s five schools and the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing.

“The question guiding my teaching and research is how do we solve big societal challenges with technology, and how can we be more deliberate in developing and supporting technologies to get us there?” Trancik said in an article about course IDS.521/IDS.065 (Energy Systems for Climate Change Mitigation).

Trancik received her undergraduate degree in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. As a Rhodes Scholar, she completed her PhD in materials science at the University of Oxford. She subsequently worked for the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. After serving as an Omidyar Research Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute, she joined MIT in 2010 as a faculty member.

Trancik succeeds Fotini Christia, the Ford International Professor of Social Sciences in the Department of Political Science and director of IDSS, who previously served as director of SSRC.

On May 6, MIT AgeLab’s Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) Consortium, part of the MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics, celebrated 10 years of its global academic-industry collaboration. AVT was founded with the aim of developing new data that contribute to automotive manufacturers, suppliers, and insurers’ real-world understanding of how drivers use and respond to increasingly sophisticated vehicle technologies, such as assistive and automated driving, while accelerating the applied insight needed to advance design and development. The celebration event brought together stakeholders from across the industry for a set of keynote addresses and panel discussions on critical topics significant to the industry and its future, including artificial intelligence, automotive technology, collision repair, consumer behavior, sustainability, vehicle safety policy, and global competitiveness.

Bryan Reimer, founder and co-director of the AVT Consortium, opened the event by remarking that over the decade AVT has collected hundreds of terabytes of data, presented and discussed research with its over 25 member organizations, supported members’ strategic and policy initiatives, published select outcomes, and built AVT into a global influencer with tremendous impact in the automotive industry. He noted that current opportunities and challenges for the industry include distracted driving, a lack of consumer trust and concerns around transparency in assistive and automated driving features, and high consumer expectations for vehicle technology, safety, and affordability. How will industry respond? Major players in attendance weighed in.

In a powerful exchange on vehicle safety regulation, John Bozzella, president and CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and Mark Rosekind, former chief safety innovation officer of Zoox, former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board, challenged industry and government to adopt a more strategic, data-driven, and collaborative approach to safety. They asserted that regulation must evolve alongside innovation, not lag behind it by decades. Appealing to the automakers in attendance, Bozzella cited the success of voluntary commitments on automatic emergency braking as a model for future progress. “That’s a way to do something important and impactful ahead of regulation.” They advocated for shared data platforms, anonymous reporting, and a common regulatory vision that sets safety baselines while allowing room for experimentation. The 40,000 annual road fatalities demand urgency — what’s needed is a move away from tactical fixes and toward a systemic safety strategy. “Safety delayed is safety denied,” Rosekind stated. “Tell me how you’re going to improve safety. Let’s be explicit.”

Drawing inspiration from aviation’s exemplary safety record, Kathy Abbott, chief scientific and technical advisor for the Federal Aviation Administration, pointed to a culture of rigorous regulation, continuous improvement, and cross-sectoral data sharing. Aviation’s model, built on highly trained personnel and strict predictability standards, contrasts sharply with the fragmented approach in the automotive industry. The keynote emphasized that a foundation of safety culture — one that recognizes that technological ability alone isn’t justification for deployment — must guide the auto industry forward. Just as aviation doesn’t equate absence of failure with success, vehicle safety must be measured holistically and proactively.

With assistive and automated driving top of mind in the industry, Pete Bigelow of Automotive News offered a pragmatic diagnosis. With companies like Ford and Volkswagen stepping back from full autonomy projects like Argo AI, the industry is now focused on Level 2 and 3 technologies, which refer to assisted and automated driving, respectively. Tesla, GM, and Mercedes are experimenting with subscription models for driver assistance systems, yet consumer confusion remains high. JD Power reports that many drivers do not grasp the differences between L2 and L2+, or whether these technologies offer safety or convenience features. Safety benefits have yet to manifest in reduced traffic deaths, which have risen by 20 percent since 2020. The recurring challenge: L3 systems demand that human drivers take over during technical difficulties, despite driver disengagement being their primary benefit, potentially worsening outcomes. Bigelow cited a quote from Bryan Reimer as one of the best he’s received in his career: “Level 3 systems are an engineer’s dream and a plaintiff attorney’s next yacht,” highlighting the legal and design complexity of systems that demand handoffs between machine and human.

In terms of the impact of AI on the automotive industry, Mauricio Muñoz, senior research engineer at AI Sweden, underscored that despite AI’s transformative potential, the automotive industry cannot rely on general AI megatrends to solve domain-specific challenges. While landmark achievements like AlphaFold demonstrate AI’s prowess, automotive applications require domain expertise, data sovereignty, and targeted collaboration. Energy constraints, data firewalls, and the high costs of AI infrastructure all pose limitations, making it critical that companies fund purpose-driven research that can reduce costs and improve implementation fidelity. Muñoz warned that while excitement abounds — with some predicting artificial superintelligence by 2028 — real progress demands organizational alignment and a deep understanding of the automotive context, not just computational power.

Turning the focus to consumers, a collision repair panel drawing Richard Billyeald from Thatcham Research, Hami Ebrahimi from Caliber Collision, and Mike Nelson from Nelson Law explored the unintended consequences of vehicle technology advances: spiraling repair costs, labor shortages, and a lack of repairability standards. Panelists warned that even minor repairs for advanced vehicles now require costly and complex sensor recalibrations — compounded by inconsistent manufacturer guidance and no clear consumer alerts when systems are out of calibration. The panel called for greater standardization, consumer education, and repair-friendly design. As insurance premiums climb and more people forgo insurance claims, the lack of coordination between automakers, regulators, and service providers threatens consumer safety and undermines trust. The group warned that until Level 2 systems function reliably and affordably, moving toward Level 3 autonomy is premature and risky.

While the repair panel emphasized today’s urgent challenges, other speakers looked to the future. Honda’s Ryan Harty, for example, highlighted the company’s aggressive push toward sustainability and safety. Honda aims for zero environmental impact and zero traffic fatalities, with plans to be 100 percent electric by 2040 and to lead in energy storage and clean power integration. The company has developed tools to coach young drivers and is investing in charging infrastructure, grid-aware battery usage, and green hydrogen storage. “What consumers buy in the market dictates what the manufacturers make,” Harty noted, underscoring the importance of aligning product strategy with user demand and environmental responsibility. He stressed that manufacturers can only decarbonize as fast as the industry allows, and emphasized the need to shift from cost-based to life-cycle-based product strategies.

Finally, a panel involving Laura Chace of ITS America, Jon Demerly of Qualcomm, Brad Stertz of Audi/VW Group, and Anant Thaker of Aptiv covered the near-, mid-, and long-term future of vehicle technology. Panelists emphasized that consumer expectations, infrastructure investment, and regulatory modernization must evolve together. Despite record bicycle fatality rates and persistent distracted driving, features like school bus detection and stop sign alerts remain underutilized due to skepticism and cost. Panelists stressed that we must design systems for proactive safety rather than reactive response. The slow integration of digital infrastructure — sensors, edge computing, data analytics — stems not only from technical hurdles, but procurement and policy challenges as well. 

Reimer concluded the event by urging industry leaders to re-center the consumer in all conversations — from affordability to maintenance and repair. With the rising costs of ownership, growing gaps in trust in technology, and misalignment between innovation and consumer value, the future of mobility depends on rebuilding trust and reshaping industry economics. He called for global collaboration, greater standardization, and transparent innovation that consumers can understand and afford. He highlighted that global competitiveness and public safety both hang in the balance. As Reimer noted, “success will come through partnerships” — between industry, academia, and government — that work toward shared investment, cultural change, and a collective willingness to prioritize the public good.

© Photo: Kelly Davidson Studio

Farm Foundation has named Dr. Sunghun Lim as its 2025 Agricultural Economics Trade and Sustainability Fellow.

Farm Foundation’s Agricultural Economics Fellow program is a yearlong program for a faculty agricultural economist. The 2025 fellowship is focused on integrated systems approaches to understanding and overcoming the challenges in developing a greater understanding of how trade and sustainability are interconnected and are impacting the food and agricultural sectors in the United States and beyond in rapidly changing circumstances.
In addition to being mentored by staff in USDA’s Office of the Chief Economist, Lim in turn will mentor participants in the Farm Foundation and USDA Economic Research Service Agricultural Scholars program, among other engagements. 

His research has been published in leading academic journals, including the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Nature Communications, NBER Book Series, Food Policy, Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Handbook of Agricultural Economics, and The World Economy.

He earned his BS in Economics in 2013 and his MS in Agricultural and Resource Economics in 2015 from the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota in 2020.

Dr. Lim is Farm Foundation’s fifth Agricultural Economics Fellow and succeeds Dr. Sandro Steinbach (North Dakota State University), Drs. Trey Malone (University of Arkansas), Amanda Countryman (University of Colorado), and Alejandro Plastina (University of Iowa).

The post Farm Foundation® Announces 2025 Agricultural Fellow. appeared first on Farm Foundation.

The December Farm Foundation Forum, Tax Year 2025: Potential Impacts and Opportunities for Farmers and the Agriculture Sector, covered the possible outcomes and impacts for farms and the greater agricultural sector from potential changes to taxation policy in 2025 and beyond. Some key aspects discussed included the impact of expiring tax provisions, and specific issues like estate tax and bonus depreciation. 

The conversation was moderated by Todd Van Hoose, president and CEO of Farm Credit Council, and included input from Mark Albright, public affairs specialist in tax outreach partnership and education at the Internal Revenue Service; Kent Bacus, executive director of government affairs at National Cattlemen’s Beef Association; Tia McDonald, research agricultural economist with USDA Economic Research Service; Paul Neiffer, agribusiness and business advisor with Farm CPA Report; and Elizabeth Swanson, national tax senior manager with Pinion. 

Below are some of the main points presented by the panel. 

1. Expiring Tax Provisions: Expiring tax provisions, including key provisions from the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) and the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), will impact farm households. These include the child tax credit, earned income tax credit, estate tax exemptions, and bonus depreciation, set to expire by the end of 2025. 

2. Impact on Tax Liabilities: Expiring provisions are expected to increase tax liabilities by nearly $9 billion, with $650 million coming from the estate tax exemptions. The most significant increase will come from the expiration of changes to federal income tax rates, the removal of the state and local tax cap, and the reinstatement of the personal exemption. 

3. Qualified Business Income (QBI) Deduction: The QBI deduction, which allows farm businesses to deduct 20% of their income, will be affected by expiring provisions. Larger farms benefit more from this deduction, but moderate-sales farms face the highest percentage increase in taxes due to the expiration of this provision. 

4. Estate Tax and Exemptions: A major concern for farm households is the estate tax exemption, which will be halved in 2026, potentially leading to higher estate tax liabilities for farm families.  

5. Concerns Over Bonus Depreciation: The phase-out of bonus depreciation, which allows faster write-offs of equipment costs, poses a risk to farm businesses that rely on capital-intensive equipment. The expiration could lead to significant tax burdens unless replaced with alternative provisions. 

6. CTA Compliance and Penalties: The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) mandates reporting beneficial ownership information for entities like LLCs. Failure to comply with CTA filing requirements can result in significant penalties. However, on December 3, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas entered a preliminary injunction suspending enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) and its implementation of regulations nationwide. 

7. IRS Resources for Farmers: Various IRS resources are available to farmers, including the Farmers Tax Guide, tax tips for farmers, and an online Agricultural Tax Center. These tools help farmers navigate tax complexities, especially regarding crop insurance, disaster payments, and updated provisions like mileage rates and self-employment tax thresholds. 

The two-hour discussion, including the audience question and answer session, was recorded and is archived on the Farm Foundation website.  

Please note: This summary was created with the help of ChatGPT. Please refer to the recorded session for full details. 

The post Farm Foundation Forum Detailed Possible Impacts of Upcoming Changes to Taxation Policy appeared first on Farm Foundation.

This article was originally published by CT Mirror.

Donald Trump’s return to power comes against a backdrop of the well-known anti-environmental legacy of his first term. His assertion that climate change was a “hoax,” was followed by the rolling back or outright revocation of more than 100 environmental regulations and policies, as tracked by numerous universities and newspapers at the time.

Blue-state attorneys general let none of this go without a fight — filing dozens of lawsuits and taking other actions on all manner of Trump administration moves, not just those connected to the environment, energy and climate. Connecticut was in the thick of it, especially on climate issues related to air quality and the emissions known to contribute to global warming and climate change.

But the second Trump administration could prove even more challenging for the attorneys general. It arrives with previous experience and a team potentially less prone to the mistakes that often caused failures in court in the first go-round. Trump will also have majorities in both chambers of Congress to bolster his agenda.

There are also the very specific policy and action recommendations in Project 2025, the conservative governing plan developed by the Heritage Foundation with assistance from many officials connected to Trump’s first term. After facing serious blowback to the plan during the campaign, Trump claimed he knew nothing about it, though his campaign website contained some of the same ideas.

Trump has since hired several Project 2025 authors for his new administration including a key architect, Russell Vought, to run the Office of Management and Budget. Vought held that same position for part of Trump’s first administration.

There is also a super-majority conservative U.S. Supreme Court that has already flexed its muscles. It has issued a number of rulings that have effectively closed off avenues for challenges. The Chevron decision in June and the court’s use of the so-called major questions doctrine both generally now restrict what agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and Energy Department can do without specific direction from Congress.

“It’s changed everything,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, who took office halfway through Trump’s first term, picking up the fight from his predecessor George Jepsen, in conjunction with attorneys general around the country.

“It’s hard to overstate how profound this change is,” Tong said. “It essentially overturns the whole apple cart of regulatory infrastructure in this country.”

“I think we’re expecting a fight on everything. And that regulatory process — in changes in rulemaking — is going to grind to a very slow crawl and in some cases, to a halt. And that was the point of the people that initiated this.”

The Supreme Court rulings were destined to cause difficulties for Connecticut and other states regardless of whether Trump or Harris won. Tong said he and his blue-state brethren had been planning for both contingencies, though he wouldn’t say what the strategies will be.

“We’ve been preparing for the prospect of the Trump presidency for a long time now, and we are very closely coordinated and aligned,” he said. “We are ready.”

Roger Reynolds, senior legal director with the advocacy group Save the Sound called the Supreme Court rulings hugely concerning. “We’re in a really critical place right now. They have a clear anti-regulatory agenda,” he said. “It’s about putting their hands on the scales on the side of the regulated industries.”

Connecticut’s Democratic senate leaders, President Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Majority Leader Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, sent a letter last week to Gov. Ned Lamont urging him to prepare to combat Trump administration actions that could hurt the state and the region. The request follows California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to hold a special legislative session to ensure there is enough money to take legal action against the Trump administration when necessary. Meanwhile, the governors of Colorado and Illinois are forming a blue state governors’ coalition to oppose Trump administration efforts.

The Biden administration has methodically reinstated many of Trump’s first administration rollbacks and fortified them with both regulatory-enhanced programs and funding, such as in the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure act.

Trump’s own campaign statements and promises as presented in his platform, Agenda 47, as well as Project 2025, could initiate another round of climate change, energy and environmental whiplash.

According to published reports, two of the first administration’s more effective members, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, both former fossil fuel industry lobbyists, are back at work in the transition and could be in line for positions in the new administration.

Within a week of the election Trump named former Long Island Republican congressman Lee Zeldin to run the EPA. He has limited environmental expertise but is a Trump loyalist. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, a fossil fuel proponent, was nominated to head the Interior Department and to lead a new National Energy Council. And a fracking company executive, Chris Wright, was named to lead the Energy Department and sit on that council. Wright has said there is no climate crisis.

A close review of the nearly 900-page Project 2025 shows that it targets climate change, as well as energy and environmental programs and regulations. The project seeks to cripple the EPA, curtail if not eliminate funding and subsidies for clean and renewable energy programs — including for electric vehicles — as well as eliminate the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. And it would eliminate any focus on environmental justice.

It seeks to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which is popular enough among Republicans whose states and districts have benefitted that 18 members of the House Republican Caucus sent a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson asking that it not be repealed.

Project 2025 also derides the idea of addressing climate change as a policy goal and seeks to remove even the mention of it broadly throughout government.

It contains pointed political statements such as this: “Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs.”

And it makes a number of specific recommendations to remove climate change as a consideration, such as with the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy: “End the focus on climate change and green subsidies;” and for the Energy Department: “Eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.”

Project 2025 would privatize the National Weather Service and dramatically reduce the percentage of funding provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for recovery from disasters like the historic flooding Connecticut, and other states, have experienced due to climate change.

During the campaign Trump disavowed knowledge of the plan, although Agenda 47 says some of the same things in far less detail. It reads: “On Day One, President Trump will rescind every one of Joe Biden’s industry-killing, jobs-killing, pro-China and anti-American electricity regulations,” and “President Trump will DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

The impacts of any of these would likely be felt down to state and local levels.

Connecticut’s biggest worries

If the Trump administration implements the environmental recommendations of Project 2025, Connecticut as well as other states face the possibility that unspent federal funds for climate and energy projects could be clawed back, costing jobs and the economic development around them.

Among 11 bullet points a conservative administration should pursue in energy policy: “Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests, and support the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.”

There is also the potential that the funding Connecticut and nearly all states have grown to rely on for large energy and electric grid projects could disappear. Project 2025 calls for eliminating and defunding the Grid Deployment Office.

And there could be the kinds of regulatory shifts seen during the first administration when approvals for offshore wind were slow-walked. Trump, who for years has stated his hatred for offshore wind, has threatened to stop all offshore wind projects on day one, referring to subsidies for them as “insane.”

Connecticut and the entire New England grid has been counting on offshore wind development to bolster its energy capabilities in the face of expanding power needs for economic development around data centers and other large businesses, as well as for electrification needs for motor vehicle charging and heat pump conversions.

Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner Katie Dykes steered clear of any hand-wringing when asked what she expects from a second Trump administration. She did, however, note that roughly a quarter of DEEP’s budget for both programs and personnel comes from a variety of different federal grants across a number of different federal agencies, EPA being the big one.

“There are a lot of different scenarios that people are contemplating with the new Congress and with the new administration, but it’s early to say what may happen,” she said. “We’re assessing options under different scenarios, but it’s too early to tell what the impacts will be.”

She ticked off a laundry list of programs that recently received federal money and noted the need to get the funds distributed and implemented. “We’re staying in touch with our neighboring states and with project developers to help understand how we can be nimble in the face of any changes that may come.”

And she said DEEP will be collaborating with the state Attorney General’s office and will follow its lead on any steps that need to be taken to protect Connecticut’s mission and interests.

One likely impact for Connecticut is that Trump’s policies will further prolong the now 50-year battle for clean air.

The state continues to face pollution and ozone levels that have long kept it from meeting federal air quality standards. The entire state does not meet 2015 standards and the southern part doesn’t even meet more lenient ones from 2008. That’s even as still tighter standards were issued in February.

The heat of this summer has once again resulted in a large number of bad air days — 23. The result over time has been persistently high asthma rates in the state, especially among vulnerable populations.

A principal cause is pollution and greenhouse gases that blow in from Midwest power plants running on fossil fuels of oil, gas and coal. Connecticut has long contended the situation violates the Good Neighbor provision of the Clean Air Act designed to keep upwind states from polluting downwind ones.

After four years fighting the first Trump administration’s efforts to loosen regulations on both greenhouse gas and standard pollutant emissions, Tong’s office has remained active the last four years, battling red-state attorneys general attempting to thwart the Biden administration’s tighter Good Neighbor regulations. In June, the Supreme Court stayed those regulations and sent them back to the lower courts.

“It’s not great,” Tong said, when asked whether the case is now stuck. “That doesn’t mean I’m gonna fight any less hard than I have. It doesn’t mean that we are any less focused on it. No one’s giving up, and no one’s saying darn it, because we have Lee Zeldin and a six-three conservative court that we should just move on to other things. It’s clean air; it’s foundational and fundamental to public health, so we’re just gonna keep at it. It’s not optional.”

Reynolds at Save the Sound is equally gloomy, saying the current litigation scenario puts everything several years out — again. “It doesn’t mean that it’s not necessarily going to go forward, but it certainly means it’s not going to be implemented anytime in the near future,” he said. “It’s absolutely a fair assessment that we’re not going to see clean air in Connecticut anytime soon.”

And the axis on environmental and climate regulation is likely to flip again as the Trump administration is expected to replace the Biden rules with their own less restrictive ones. The rulemaking process takes time and is likely to set off a whole new wave of court challenges, delaying things even more.

This session, the Supreme Court is taking up a challenge to the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act that requires in-depth environmental reviews for federal projects. A recent federal appeals court ruling curtailed how those reviews can be structured.

There are also hints in Project 2025 that the second Trump administration might try to overturn the so-called Endangerment Finding, which allowed greenhouse gases to be regulated — specifically as part of motor vehicle, power plant and industrial emissions.

All of these could further limit the tools attorneys general and others have for challenging environmental laws and regulations the new administration may want to overturn from the Biden era and before, or may seek to put in place.

Reynolds points out that states still have a lot of power — to approve power plants and review pipelines, among other things. And he notes that the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts specifically allow citizen suits if the federal government isn’t complying with those laws. He said that’s been Save the Sound’s bread and butter in upholding environmental regulations.

“That’s why, since the ‘70s, through all the administrations we’ve had, many of which have put a bull’s eye on environmental regulations, we’ve continued to have progress,” he said. “Our strategy is going to continue to be to enforce these incredibly powerful acts, and fight rollbacks and do what we can to get funding for these initiatives, and to get states and municipalities to take the lead.”

Reynolds isn’t the only one talking about states and municipalities taking the lead.

Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation and a former EPA regional administrator, said simply opposing Trump as state and local officials did during the first administration will not be enough this time, based on what Project 2025 espouses and what Trump has already said, because both clearly cater to the fossil fuel industry.

“What we’ll be pushing for is for states to fill in any gaps that are created by Trump’s attacks on federal agencies and the rollback of some standards,” he said. “A major concern in New England is the climate investments that Biden was able to secure in Congress. Those are enormously important to accelerating New England’s energy transition.”

But if the Trump administration embraces Project 2025’s threat to cut funding to clean energy and other climate-targeted programs, tax incentives and entire programs and offices — across all government, not just environment and energy areas — will states have the money to take the lead?

“States may have to come up with additional funding for the energy transition if the federal government goes into full retreat,” Campbell said.

Focus on the states

“Not going to happen this year,” said Sen. Norm Needleman, D-Essex and co-chair of the Energy and Technology Committee. “The state budgets before Trump won are already out of balance.”

He noted that many state employees — including at DEEP — are paid in whole or part with federal funds. “If you lose 10% of state employees because their funding is cut directly by federal budget changes,” he said. “I don’t know how we make that up, right? I just think it’s going to be a stressful, difficult time.”

Needleman said he still plans to hold a series of meetings before the legislative session begins to formulate policies and initiatives.

“I do not believe that anyone can fight a battle with only a strong defense. I think we need a combination of a sensible offense and a thoughtful defense about the damage that they can do, because we are going to have a target on our back,” he said.  

His co-chair, Rep. Jonathan Steinberg, D-Westport, said he and Needleman are already trying to figure out whether to resurrect some of the major energy, environmental and climate legislation that failed in the last two sessions. The presumption at that time was that the federal government would be at least neutral, if not supportive broadly of climate change initiatives.

“This may further chill our willingness to take on big things,” he said. “I would never throw up my hands and walk away. But coming into the session I was already feeling frustrated, constrained, finding it difficult to do the things that I think we really need to do, which are of bigger consequence, like a lot of this necessary investment in infrastructure.

“Now you layer in on top of it, either federal preemption of any regulatory framework we might choose, or certainly a cessation or diminishment of funding for the things that we’ve counted on the feds for in the past. It’s very hard to figure, what do we do first?”

Sen. Ryan Fazio, R-Greenwich and ranking member on the committee, said his goal is to make the best policy he can in alignment with his goals of low cost, reliable and environmentally responsible energy.

“Whether there’s a Democratic presidential administration or a Republican one, and there is going to be both in the next 20 years, and policy at the federal level — you make the best of it,” he said. “I haven’t seen, really in any substantial way, that federal policy has helped us meet those goals in Connecticut over the last decade or so.

“The goal is to make policy on a state level. You can’t count on federal policies. We need things to be sustainable on their own. Subsidies will not solve our woes.”

Steinberg offers some ideas for getting money if federal funding decreases or disappears. He suggests collaborations with the business community or investors. He said it might be worth considering something like taxing data center developers to cover the energy burden they bring. Such a tax could be reduced or eliminated if the company installs solar, geothermal, or some other energy reduction mechanism. “Anything to mitigate their energy burden by like a third or 50% before they can escape this tax,” he said.

The point, Steinberg said, is to figure out ways to get things done. It could be opting for low cost solutions in the near term or working with the Green Bank on private funding sources.

“I think that there are things that we must explore doing, even if it’s going to be harder,” he said.

Others said the transition to clean energy in New England is well underway which will help survive another round of Donald Trump.

“There is so much momentum behind clean energy technologies in particular,” said Julie McNamara, deputy policy director climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “It’s two things at once. There will continue to be progress and there will not be as much progress as there could or must have been.

“Certain things will slow or stop because we’re approaching the parts of the clean energy transition where it gets hard. A lot of the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and so we’re starting to need to take those next further steps, the kind of things where It takes real, intentional work to couple policy with economics and a vision for the future.”

But Steinberg warned against the impulse to just wait Trump out. “It is not only not an answer; it would be irresponsible, in my view.”

He said everyone will need to be creative. “But the one thing we cannot lose is our resolve,” he said. “We just need to keep doing it, because we don’t have a choice.”

Connecticut took on Trump on climate before. It will probably be harder to do it again. is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The Biden administration has enacted the most consequential federal clean energy and climate policy in U.S. history, giving the nation a fighting chance at reducing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to deal with the climate crisis. Former President Donald Trump, who has won the 2024 presidential election, has pledged to undo that work.

Though Trump’s executive powers will allow him to slow the energy transition in a number of ways, the extent to which he rolls back Biden’s clean energy accomplishments will be dictated in part by whether Republicans retain control of the House of Representatives. The GOP flipped the U.S. Senate, but votes are still being counted in key House races as of Wednesday morning.

Here’s what clean energy and climate experts say is most likely to be lost under a second Trump administration — and what might survive.

What Trump has said about energy

Trump’s rhetoric presages a worst-case future. He has called climate change a hoax and the Biden administration’s climate policies a ​“green new scam.” He has said he wants to repeal the landmark Inflation Reduction Act and halt the law’s hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits, grants, and other federal incentives for clean energy, electric vehicles, and other low-carbon technologies.

Trump has also made ​“drill, baby, drill” a call-and-response line at his rallies, pledging to undo any restraints on production and use of the fossil fuels driving climate change. U.S. oil and gas production is already at a record high under the Biden administration.

“He has pledged to do the bidding for Big Oil on day one,” Andrew Reagan, executive director of Clean Energy for America, said during a recent webinar.

“Oil and gas lobbyists are drafting executive orders for him to sign on day one,” Reagan added, citing news reports of plans from oil industry groups to roll back key Biden administration regulations and executive orders.

A Trump administration would be all but certain to reverse key Environmental Protection Agency regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, light-duty and heavy-duty vehicles, and the oil and gas industry, all of which analysts say are necessary to meet the country’s climate commitments. It’s also almost sure to lift the Biden administration’s pause on federal permitting of fossil-gas export facilities.

Trump has also promised to withdraw the U.S. from international climate agreements (again), including the Paris agreement aimed at limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

“We know that Trump would take us out of the Paris agreement, and that would be the last time his administration uttered the word ​‘climate,’” Catherine Wolfram, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics in the Biden administration’s Treasury Department, told Canary Media. ​“Losing that global leadership would be one of the greatest losses of a Trump presidency.”

What will happen to the Inflation Reduction Act? 

Trump won’t have the power to enact all of his promises on his own. Some of the decisions must be made by Congress, including any effort to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act or to claw back unspent funds from that law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law.

Complete repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act would be highly disruptive to a clean energy sector that has seen planned investment grow to roughly $500 billion since the law was passed in mid-2022.

It would also undermine clean energy job growth, which has increased at roughly twice the pace of U.S. employment overall. A recent survey of clean energy companies found that a repeal of the law would be expected to lead to half of them losing business or revenue, roughly one-quarter losing projects or contracts, about one-fifth laying off workers, and about one in 10 going out of business. 

“We found that especially rural areas and smaller rural communities would experience the largest negative impacts of repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act,” Shara Mohtadi, co-founder of S2 Strategies, said in an October webinar presenting the survey data. ​“These are the regions of the country that have seen the biggest uptake in the economic benefits and the manufacturing jobs coming from other countries into the United States.”

Indeed, most of the investment and job growth the IRA has spurred has taken place in states and congressional districts represented by Republicans.

These on-the-ground realities have driven expectations that large swaths of the law’s tax credits would be likely to survive even with Republican control of the White House and both houses of Congress. Trump would face pushback within his own party to undoing the law entirely.

In an August letter to current Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), 18 House Republicans warned against repealing the clean energy and manufacturing tax credits created by the Inflation Reduction Act, which have ​“spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country — including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the 18 House Republicans wrote. ​“A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”

Republicans would need a roughly 20-seat majority to overcome opposition from these party members opposed to a full repeal, said Harry Godfrey, head of the federal investment and manufacturing working group of trade group Advanced Energy United.

“I don’t envision Republicans holding the House with 20-plus seats,” he said.

Godfrey also doubted that a Trump administration would be eager to undermine the domestic manufacturing boom that the law’s tax credits have spurred. He noted that at the October 1 vice-presidential debate, J.D. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator and Trump’s running mate, emphasized the need for the U.S. to ​“consolidate American dominance” in key energy sectors and industries now dominated by China.

While Vance went on to falsely accuse the Biden administration of failing to bolster U.S. industries against China, the goal of emphasizing domestic competitiveness could lead Republicans to avoid undermining progress in that direction, he suggested.

How Trump’s second term could derail the clean energy transition is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.