The percentage of working-age adults without health insurance has increased in the past two years, largely because many people can no longer afford Obamacare coverage after Congress allowed federal subsidies to expire at the end of last year.

The uninsured rate for adults ages 19-64 rose to 11.2% this year, up from 8.9% in 2024, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy and philanthropic nonprofit.

Nearly half of the 7,362 working-age adults who participated in the group’s biennial health insurance survey said they were uninsured, underinsured, or experienced a gap in coverage this year. Half said they delayed or avoided getting medical care because of the cost, compared with 46% in 2022.

The subsidies significantly lowered the cost of Obamacare coverage — making it free or nearly free for some people with low incomes. But the aid was designed as a temporary pandemic-era measure, and Congress allowed it to expire at the end of last year.

As a result, the percentage of working-age adults with health insurance from the marketplaces created under Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, declined to 6% this year, from 8% in 2024.

The percentage of working-age adults enrolled in Medicaid also declined, to 13% this year from 16% in 2022, as many states removed people from the rolls at the conclusion of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increase in the uninsured rate almost certainly will accelerate in January, when the Republican tax and spending law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act takes effect. That law will require many Medicaid recipients to prove they are working or engaging in approved community service activities for at least 80 hours a month.

The law also mandates that states verify enrollees’ Medicaid eligibility every six months.

Another factor in the growing percentage of people without coverage is the rising cost of healthcare, which is pushing up premiums for private insurance.

“It’s affecting people’s ability to pay off bills right away, and it’s having an effect on health plans,” said Sara Collins, a senior scholar at the Commonwealth Fund and the lead author of the report.

Almost a third of the survey respondents, whether insured and uninsured, said they currently had medical or dental bills or were paying off medical debt. And more than 70% of uninsured adults said they had cost-related problems getting care.

“I think it’s very concerning,” Collins said. “We know from our survey data that not going to get care isn’t and just generally is not good for people’s health over the long run.”

The rise in the uninsured rate comes after a long period of progress: Between 2010 and 2025, the overall uninsured rate in the United States fell by half, to 8% from nearly 16%, largely because of the Affordable Care Act.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Organizers launched more than 2,500 No Kings events across all 50 states and the District of Columbia Saturday, this time focusing their efforts on the midterm elections.

From roadside rallies to letter-writing campaigns and protest songs, this round of demonstrations aimed to get people to the polls early.  

In the bustling and diverse neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, where Bangladeshi street vendors whip up fuska – crispy, potato-filled shells – and Mexican taquerías serve up al pastor and carne asada, volunteers gathered at a popular local restaurant called The Queensboro. The organizers are part of the Jackson Heights chapter of Indivisible, one of the many grassroots organizations that have made No Kings demonstrations happen. 

Arianne Mayer, 49, cofounded the chapter about two years ago after President Donald Trump was elected to his second term. On this “No Kings: Vote Early Day of Action”, she hands out pens and paper to volunteers to write letters to voters in battleground states, encouraging them to get out and cast their ballots as early as possible. 

“The practice of mobilization of bodies is really helpful, especially in New York City, where you’re trying to mobilize many thousands of people,” Mayer said. “When you see those thousands of marches, you understand people everywhere are not OK with this, but it’s nice to have a different approach for this event. ” 

Mayer, like many people here, said she was deeply frustrated and “disgusted” by the presence of federal immigration agents targeting her neighbors. Many people also said the federal government is implementing increasingly authoritarian policies. 

Since summer 2025, the No Kings movement has held multiple massive demonstrations across thousands of sites around the country, attracting millions of people to protest against what they consider to be an overreach of government under the Trump Administration.

This time around organizers shifted their focus, understanding that the midterm elections  will determine which political party controls Congress. If it’s the Democrats, they could put up roadblocks to Trump’s agenda. Organizers are hoping the day of early voting could not only increase the pool of voters, but also ease the burden on poll workers on Nov. 3, Election Day. 

Voting is in full swing across dozens of states, with over 5 million ballots cast, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab. Trump faces a historic low in approval ratings. 

In Minnesota folk musician Emmett Doyle took to a stage in downtown Minneapolis to perform Lluís Llach’s “L’Estaca,” written in the 1960s in protest of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship in Spain. 

Doyle is one of 15 defendants facing federal felony conspiracy charges stemming from protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s crackdown in Minnesota.

“When I was getting pulled out of my truck by federal agents a couple months ago, one of the first things I asked them was, ‘Hey, is this about the songs?’ And they told me, ‘No, it’s about resisting ICE,’” Doyle said to the crowd of about 1,000. “I told them, ‘Well, you’re going to have to arrest all of Minneapolis if you want to hit me for that.’”

Diane Komsky, 67,drove an hour to the No Kings protest in Sioux Falls, South Dakota,because of the “madness in the White House,” she said. 

“I want to give peace a real chance for families in the United States,” she said.

Mark Lyons of Centennial, Colorado, said he hadn’t been involved in much political activism or organizing before last year. Saturday’s protest was his fourth No Kings event.

With the midterms approaching, Lyons is hopeful that Democrats will take control of Congress and “put all kinds of checks and balances” on the Trump administration.

“They’ve been stealing the country blind for the last two years,” he said. “There has to be accountability, and it can’t be business as usual.”

At an event in the nation’s capital, 25-year-old Octavia Clapp said using her right to vote especially matters as Trump attempts to wield authority over voting. The Trump administration has spent more than a year in court battles with dozens of states and voting rights groups seeking to force states to provide sensitive voter data and curb voting by mail.

“I think cracking down on mail-in voting and restricting people’s ability to vote easily is anti-democratic,” said Clapp, of Maryland. “Democracy is really important to me, and freedom is really important to me.”

But the No Kings events were also met with pushback, including directly from Trump’s team. 

“The fact that the ‘No Kings’ organizers are talking about voting in the upcoming election proves they should change their name,” said Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson. “This November, Americans have a clear choice between President Trump and Republican’s commonsense policies or the extreme Democrats radical socialist, open-border policies.”

In battleground state Virginia, two pro-Trump observers on the outskirts of the crowd in Richmond watched on.

 “I’ve learned that a lot of a lot of folks here tend to be older, toward the baby boomer side,” Jacob Seivers, 20, said of the protesters, whom he called “more courteous than you might expect” and “willing to talk.” 

Seivers, who lives in Bedford County, called the speakers’ rhetoric about Republicans “hilarious” and “nonsense.” He also said he believes Congress will flip blue after November.

Trump supporter John Hess of Centralia, Washington, was outnumbered in Olympia but took that in stride. Hess said he comes to the Capitol every week and didn’t know of the day’s events until Friday. 

“Normally I don’t get this much excitement,” he said 

Back in New York, another local Indivisible organizer, Katherine Scannell, 35, said it’s important to encourage people to exercise their right to vote.  

Scannell and volunteers set up shop at a neighborhood “open streets” event in Astoria, Queens, where residents could walk within the street blocked off from cars, listen to live music, and pick up fresh and locally grown vegetables. 

“Normally it’s a protest, but the No Kings coalition had nationwide calls talking about how we wanted to turn those protests and eyeballs into action,”Scannell said. “Voting early is a great way to protect everyone’s vote, because when you vote early it’s hard to sabotage those numbers.” 

Alyssa Chen and Maya Betti of Minnesota Reformer, Makenzie Huber of South Dakota Searchlight, Chase Woodruff of Colorado Newsline, Andrew Kerley for Virginia Mercury and Baya Burgess for States Newsroom’s D.C. bureau, contributed. 

As the nation’s physician shortage worsens, some fear the Trump administration’s immigration policies will dissuade or prevent doctors who earned their medical degrees in foreign countries from practicing in the United States.

Among all U.S. doctors, an estimated one quarter were educated abroad. But they make up an even larger proportion of physicians in many specialties, including internal medicine (41%), endocrinology (46%) and geriatrics (52%).

The U.S. has long welcomed foreign-educated physicians as a way to ameliorate its doctor shortage. Already, an estimated 102 million Americans live in communities that don’t have enough primary care providers, according to the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The agency projects a shortage of 141,160 full-time physicians by 2038.

Foreign-educated doctors are slightly more likely than American ones to work in areas with a shortage of primary care providers. And doctors who are here on H-1B visas — a federal program that allows U.S. employers to temporarily hire non-citizen workers for health care jobs and other positions requiring specialized knowledge — are more likely to work in high-poverty areas.

But last August, the Trump administration issued a rule increasing the fee for employers hiring workers through the H-1B visa program to $100,000, up from between $2,000 and $5,000. It also has issued a travel ban on residents of 39 countries. And earlier this month, the U.S. State Department broadened its “online presence review” of applicants for H-1B and other visas to ensure that they do not “pose a threat to national security or public safety.”

“The United States remains vigilant throughout the visa issuance process to confirm that applicants do not intend to cause harm to Americans or threaten U.S. interests,” the State Department said in its announcement of the expanded vetting.

Dr. Tarun Ramesh, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and a health policy researcher at Harvard Medical School, said Trump’s policies will make it more expensive for hospitals and other healthcare employers to hire foreign physicians and might dissuade many international doctors from coming here at all.

“We’ve created a system where we depend heavily on physicians trained abroad, and at the same time, we create immigration policies that make it harder for those physicians to enter, to train, to remain in the country,” Ramesh said. “And that intersection of both the health workforce and immigration workforce and immigration policy makes it a clear tension.”

Both left-leaning and conservative states have taken steps to attract foreign physicians.

As of the middle of this year, about two-dozen states of every political bent had enacted laws to make it easier for foreign nationals to get their U.S. medical licenses.

Georgia Republican state Sen. Dr. Ben Watson, who co-sponsored a law in his state, said there simply aren’t enough U.S. medical school graduates to keep pace with population growth. He said one of his main goals is to increase the number of doctors in rural areas.

“We did it in several different stages to assure quality,” Watson said. “Hopefully we can encourage rural migration from that standpoint, also.”

Since 1994, states also have used the federal Conrad 30 Waiver Program to boost the number of doctors in underserved areas. The law allows a limited number of foreign medical school graduates who have trained in the U.S. using a J-1 visa to waive the normal requirement that they return to their home countries for two years before applying to come back — as long as they practice in an underserved area.

In increasing the H-1B visa fee, the Trump administration argued that some employers, especially tech companies, have abused the program by using it to replace native-born workers with foreigners who will work for less, rather than using it to fill jobs they can’t find Americans to do.

“American IT workers have reported they were forced to train the foreign workers who were taking their jobs and to sign nondisclosure agreements about this indignity as a condition of receiving any form of severance,” President Donald Trump said in the executive order he issued in September 2025. “This suggests H-1B visas are not being used to fill occupational shortages or obtain highly skilled workers who are unavailable in the United States.”

But 20 Democratic-led states sued to stop the fee increase, and in June a federal judge ruled in their favor. The administration was thwarted again in September, but it isn’t giving up: its latest proposal is to levy a $103,265 fee for a subset of H-1B applicants.

Even as the legal wrangling continues, the administration’s proposal has had an effect. In November survey of its members, the American Hospital Association found that 64% of hospitals that utilize the H-1B program had paused, deferred or limited recruitment because of the possibility of the $100,000 fee.

Andrew Wizner, an attorney who represents medical institutions that hire foreign medical school graduates, said the onslaught of new rules, legislative holdups, and confusing court decisions almost certainly has dissuaded some H-1B and J-1 visa applicants from applying to practice or train here.

“If you’re outside the U.S. and loosely following, (you might think) ‘Oh, there’s this rule, and I heard a court may have set it aside, but I don’t really know how their system works, their judicial system, and what that means,’” Wizner said.

He said the message that foreign-educated doctors are receiving is a simple one: “Don’t come here.”

Bradley Cunningham, a regulatory affairs and policy analyst at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said most hospitals simply can’t afford to navigate the new legal challenges and fees associated with H-1B visas.

“There’s a tremendous amount of confusion and misinformation about what’s going on,” Cunningham said. Like Wizner, he said he suspects the uncertainty swirling around H-1B visas is causing many would-be applicants to think twice about coming to the U.S.

“We can’t determine causality, but I can’t imagine that that is helping the situation any more when you’re talking about having to commit your family to come overseas to train at an institution and not having security or assurance that you can complete your training.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

NEW YORK — Facing a surge of measles cases in New York state’s rural counties, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order on Monday allowing paramedics, pharmacists, midwives and other non-physicians to administer vaccines.

Hochul’s decision to declare a “state disaster emergency” comes amid the nation’s worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years and an eruption in neighboring Pennsylvania that is the largest that any single state has experienced since the early 1990s.

As of Oct. 3, New York had reported 108 total cases, its highest number since 2019. Pennsylvania has recorded more than 1,000 cases this year, and state officials there have attributed five deaths to the disease (so far the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has only confirmed two of them.) There have been no deaths in New York.

As of October 1, the CDC had recorded more than 3,887 confirmed cases this year in the United States.

“No one should get seriously ill or die from a vaccine-preventable disease. That is why I have taken steps to increase the number of health professionals who can vaccinate and test,” Hochul said in a news  release.

Also on Monday, New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, announced that the state would join 15 other Democratic-led states in suing the Trump administration over its decision to scale back the childhood vaccination schedule. Joining in the lawsuit are the state attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin, and the governor of Pennsylvania.

Measles is a respiratory virus that leads to symptoms of fever and rash, and can cause serious health complications, such as pneumonia and even death. It’s highly contagious and can be contracted through exposure to contaminated air or surfaces. It is entirely preventable, however, with the two-dose MMR, or measles, mumps, and rubella, vaccine.

Children under a year old, who are typically too young to receive the first dose of the vaccine, are highly susceptible.

Through a robust vaccination campaign, measles was declared to be effectively eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, according to the CDC. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, anti-vaccination sentiment began to rise, and measles cases have surged over the past  two years.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an outspoken vaccine skeptic and has opposed vaccine mandates. Under Kennedy, the agency has called into question the safety and efficacy of vaccines and  recommended fewer vaccines for children. The move has prompted most states to unlink their vaccine guidance from federal recommendations and form their own health alliances and standards.

Combined with efforts by Republican-leaning states to weaken vaccine mandates, the federal shift has contributed to a decline in the vaccination rate among kindergarteners and a resulting increase in measles cases.

According to health policy research group KFF, 92.4% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccination for the 2025-2026 school year, compared with 95% in the 2019-2020 school year. During the last school year, 39 states had MMR vaccination rates below 95% — the minimum considered necessary to prevent community spread, according to KFF.

Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois Chicago praised governors for taking action to stop the spread of measles. But Wallace said it’s critical that the federal government encourage people to get vaccinated to slow the spread of the disease.

“There really isn’t a national promotion of ‘Hey, we’re having an outbreak right now. Please vaccinate your kids. The MMR is safe and effective, and it prevents measles.’ That’s not being pumped out on social media. That’s not being put on TV,” Wallace said. “So this administration is not promoting the best tool that we have to prevent severe disease from viruses.”

Nationally, the CDC reports that 352 people have been hospitalized this year due to measles. Of the 3,887 confirmed cases, 61% are people younger than 19 and 95% were not vaccinated or had an unknown vaccine status.

According to CDC data, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin, Texas, and Virginia are experiencing the highest number of cases.

The rise in cases under Kennedy’s leadership has prompted Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to call for the secretary’s ouster.

“He’s making it harder for governors to be able to keep people safe in our communities. I’m actually shocked that the president is letting him get away with this,” Shapiro said in a recent NBC News interview. “I don’t know why he’s still allowing him to even serve in the role”.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Concerned about conditions in federal immigrant detention facilities but often barred from entering them, some Democratic-led states are fighting to enforce their own health and safety standards at the sites.

The Trump administration, citing the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, argues that states don’t have the authority to regulate federal facilities.

But states counter that because the federal government has contracted with private companies to operate the sites, they have the right — and the responsibility — to make sure those companies follow state health and safety rules.

Washington state, for example, is embroiled in legal fight with the Florida-based GEO Group over a 2023 law that directs state health officials to regularly inspect privately run detention facilities, including those holding immigrants. The GEO Group operates nearly two dozen immigrant detention facilities nationwide.

Despite the law, state health inspectors have repeatedly been denied access to a GEO Group facility in Tacoma, where there have been allegations of medical mistreatment, abuse and neglect and concerns about water quality and food. In an April legal filing, the state cited complaints of rotten, bug-riddled food and only two working bathrooms for 100 people.

The state health department says it has received more than 3,500 complaints about the Northwest ICE Processing Center, but has been denied access 10 times since 2023.

“Our point is that GEO is a private entity, and so it doesn’t get to claim these federal preemption defenses because those are reserved for the federal government,” said Ellen Range, a section chief in the Washington Office of the Attorney General.

“You can’t contract around the law,” Range added.

The GEO Group did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But during a May earnings call, George Zoley, the CEO, chairman and founder of the company, decried what he called “unwarranted litigation” and described state efforts to inspect the detention facilities as “fundamentally unconstitutional.”

“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities. They are federal facilities to begin with, in my opinion,” Zoley said.

Federal ownership “will provide stronger credibility in the courts…that these are federal facilities carrying out the congressional priorities of immigration programs and policies that Congress has passed,” Zoley added, “and that states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.”

At least two other states have enacted laws this year that are similar to Washington’s.

Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey last month signed a law that empowers the state auditor to inspect immigrant detention facilities to make sure they are following local health and safety rules. And in June, Colorado enacted a measure that strengthens the authority of state and local health officials to inspect immigrant detention facilities, ratchets up the frequency of unannounced inspections and specifies what inspectors must look for.

The Colorado law also includes a civil penalty of up to $50,000 for facilities that refuse to allow an inspection.

“Our community has been outraged by the conditions in these holding facilities and in these detention centers,” Colorado Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, who authored the bill, said.

“I think that it’s important for the state to set guidelines and guardrails, and for contractors to follow the law,” Velasco said. “The issue is that they’re saying that they are exempted from the law because they are a federal contractor. So that has been very frustrating.”

Colorado and the GEO Group also have been facing off in court. Last month, Colorado sued the company for refusing access and information requests related to a confirmed tuberculosis case at its facility in Aurora. The next day, a federal judge blocked part of Colorado’s law in response to a GEO Group lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the measure.

And in California, Democrats are trying to renew a law that directs the state attorney general to regularly review conditions in detention facilities and report back to lawmakers and the governor. That law is scheduled to expire next year, but Democratic Attorney General Rob Bonta is pushing legislation that would extend it indefinitely.

In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said that the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement “is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies.”

“All detainees are provided with proper meals, quality water, blankets, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the spokesperson wrote. “In fact, ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”

Disturbing reports

In May, the Trump administration shuttered the Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, created by Congress in 2019 to investigate detainee deaths, access to health care and other issues.

But another government watchdog, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security, last week released a report on its January 2026 inspection of the Florida ICE facility widely known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Inspectors found that detainees were kept in small metal enclosures for up to two hours, and didn’t have clean drinking water, daily showers, or safely stored food. The facility closed in June.

Earlier this year, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat, issued a report citing “over a thousand credible reports of human rights abuses” in immigrant detention facilities since President Donald Trump began his second term. Investigators from Ossoff’s staff found 44 reports of family separation, including mothers being separated from their breastfeeding infants; 206 reports of medical neglect; 88 reports of physical and sexual abuse; and 139 reports of denial of adequate food and water.

The reports come as ICE, using new tactics and striving to meet daily arrest quotas, is detaining more people: Federal immigration authorities say they arrested 51,000 immigrants in July, more than any other month of the Trump administration.

The number of people in detention soared to more than 65,700 in mid-July, compared to 37,000 two years ago, an increase of about 70%, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a Syracuse University research group.

“It is worth saying that the detention system has changed a lot in the last year and a half. It’s roughly doubled in size,” said Scott Shuchart, who served as assistant director for regulatory affairs at ICE from 2022 to 2025.

“We’re basically holding people who either haven’t committed a crime or who aren’t being detained for having committed a crime as though they were criminals, and then we do it very badly,” he said. “ICE is not constituted or equipped to manage the contractor facilities well — it has never done it well.”

Taking responsibility

Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for low-income immigrants, said states that are trying to enforce health and safety rules in detention facilities are struggling to fill the oversight role that federal immigration authorities have abdicated.

“It has created this tricky litigation issue, where a state trying to protect the people in ICE facilities has to sue both the federal government — ICE — and a private prison company,” Whitlock said. “And what these two entities often do is it’s a little bit of like hot potato, where the private prison company says, ‘Oh, we’re not the right defendant.’”

Claire Trickler-McNulty, an assistant director in the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration who helped oversee ICE detention facilities, cautioned that there could be some unintended consequences of the new state laws.

Federal contractors might opt to move detainees out of a state where there are a lot of restrictions to one with fewer restrictions, said Trickler-McNulty, who is now an immigration policy fellow at Hyphen, a nonprofit group. That would make it more difficult for families of detainees to support or even find their loved ones from a distance.

She also suggested, as Zoley of the GEO Group did, that the federal government might buy more facilities to thwart state oversight. In that case, states would have to think creatively about what they can control.

For example, she said, federal facilities will still have to use local resources, such as sewage and water lines, and likely would have to hire private contractors to handle security.

“The actual facility is quite dependent on the state and local resources. So ideally, it would be a collaborative arrangement,” she said. “If you want it to be better and have improvements, you really need a willing partner on the other side.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

The official poverty rate in the United States dipped slightly by half a percentage point last year to a historic low of 10.2%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released Tuesday.

The supplemental poverty rate, a more holistic figure that includes an individual’s non-cash resources, remained essentially unchanged at 13.1%, according to the bureau’s annual poverty report. The report measured 2025 numbers in comparison with 2024 and previous years.

The median household income for 2025 rose 2.6% from the previous year to $87,460, the highest on record, according to the bureau’s annual income report.

Some experts cautioned that the data doesn’t reflect the effects of new federal policy changes that will be hitting households hard this year, and that the United States should expect grimmer statistics in next September’s report. Most significantly, the massive tax and spending bill passed by Congress last year slashed Medicaid, food assistance and other public benefits that have kept millions in the country hovering above the poverty line.

This week’s numbers are not all that surprising, but they may not reflect an entirely positive picture, said Steven Durlauf, a professor and director of the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago.

The supplemental poverty measure, he noted, is more all encompassing because it includes cash and noncash benefits and expenses, such as taxes and medical expenses, whereas the official poverty measure focuses just on cash resources. 

“There’s some basic good news there, and that is that median household income, you know, substantially increased 2.6% after inflation is nothing to to sneeze at,” Durlauf said. But he said the fact that the supplemental measure hasn’t budged could mean that people with lower incomes, and who may rely on more government benefits, aren’t really benefiting from “an economy that’s running hot.” 

Census data show women in full-time, year round work saw higher median earnings from last year by about 3%, while men in the same position saw a decline of 0.9%. 

And while it’s true there was growth in wage income this year, Durlauf said, he expects the numbers will be worse next year for people from more marginalized backgrounds. He pointed to “inequality-increasing” policies such as tax cuts for the rich, cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and major cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program for people with lower incomes. 

“The main issue for most individuals is going to be the fact that prices and inflation is outstripping wage growth, and so that’s obviously some diminution of real incomes for some people,” Durlauf said. 

U.S. Census Bureau data also show 92.1% of people were insured in 2025, as compared with 92% in 2024 – reflecting the relatively flat uninsurance curve in the U.S. since 2020, when 91.4% of people were insured. 

The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, estimated that roughly 15 million people would become uninsured by 2034, well more than the current estimate of 1.3 million uninsured people. 

Additionally, the number of children receiving SNAP benefits fell by 1.2 million between July 2025 and July 2026, according to an August analysis released by the left-leaning research group Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. 

“The combination of the erratic fiscal policies, the effect on energy prices via this destabilization of the Middle East, and to be blunt, the utterly irresponsible fiscal policies of the country in terms of budget deficits, are not conducive to an economic environment in which the economy does well in terms of the usual ways we think about growth,” Durlauf said. 

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Powerful U.S. officials past and present faced families, survivors and first responders Friday at ceremonies to honor the 25th anniversary of the day 2,977 Americans died in terrorist attacks in Virginia, New York and Pennsylvania.

At the Pentagon, Condoleezza Rice, who was serving at the time under President George W. Bush as national security advisor, told the crowd she wanted to share something “deeply personal.”

“Those of us in authority on that day did not see the nature of the danger in time to prevent the attack of 9/11. We did what we knew to do, but by definition, it was not enough. … I will always carry deep personal remorse for the pain that you, the families of the fallen, still feel, and for the trauma that our country endured,” she said.

Speakers at all three Sept. 11 milestone anniversary events recounted stories of courage and loss as people found themselves in an unimaginable circumstance. 

Some also flared with frustration at what they say is a lack of justice for those who planned the attacks.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking at the memorial service for the 184 people who died when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, highlighted the anniversary as a justification for their stagnant war with Iran. 

That nearly seven-month-old conflict has killed 18 U.S. service members, injured over 700 more and taken the lives of thousands of civilians across the Middle East.

“We will never, ever forget. That’s why we fight today. We don’t have a choice,” Trump said. “There can only be victory. We fight hard. We fight to win. We will always remember the victims and the families of September 11, 2001, very famous date, unfortunately.”

Hegseth told the crowd, which was only open to victims’ families, survivors and their families, that Americans were “ignorant of the Islamist threat” 25 years ago.

“Every day, enemies plot to curb our power and kill our citizens, including from Islamic terrorists abroad and at home, but we are ever vigilant,” he said, adding that the U.S. has killed Iran’s leaders and put their Navy “at the bottom of the sea.”

The deeply unpopular war has continued, despite early promises from Hegseth and Trump that it would not morph into the prolonged Middle East conflicts that followed the Sept. 11 attacks.

‘No justice’

At the site in Lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center’s twin towers once stood, families read names of the 2,753 victims who died inside the towers, on the ground and on the two hijacked airliners, American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175.

Terry Strada, widow of the late Tom Strada, who died in the north tower, slammed recent presidential administrations of both parties for not holding Saudi Arabia accountable for allegations that the kingdom’s officials knew about the attacks.

“My husband Tom Strada, you are missed more with each year that passes. But how can it be 25 years and still we have no justice for the role that Saudi Arabia played in your murder?” she said to loud cheers from the crowd.

“For 25 years, administration after administration, including leaders in front of us here today, chose to protect the Saudis instead of standing with the 9/11 families,” she said. 

 

“President Trump can still change that. Tell the Saudis to stop lying. Tell them that if they want to be friends with the USA, they cannot continue to deny all of this, all of the pain, all of the destruction that we have all been suffering through. Vice President Vance, thank you for being here today. Please carry that message back,” she said, again receiving loud cheers.

Vice President JD Vance sat in a front row at the ceremony alongside former presidents Bush, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. 

Former first ladies Michelle Obama, Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, also a former secretary of state, were seated in the row, as was former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Neither the Embassy of Saudi Arabia nor the White House immediately responded to States Newsroom’s requests for a response.

Painful memories

Families at the site in Lower Manhattan shared memories seared in their minds.

Bob Lee, 67, was a firefighter in the Bronx that day. He remembers how many first responders had to gather together to clean up the dust and debris that had settled around the city.

“When you see the people that were down here, everybody’s eyes was … full of soot and dust, and their eyes were glowing like bright red because all the stuff that was in their eyes,” Lee said. “It was just a crazy scene.”

Lee moved to Kansas City, Missouri, shortly after 9/11. He was 42 at the time and realized he had been exposed to a lot of toxic air.

“I told them I was retiring,” Lee said recalling that he knew a lot of his colleagues would get sick. He was a union representative for his unit in the Bronx. 

“I lost hundreds of those guys. You know, it’s crazy … Quite a few friends have died of cancer.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week announced that his office had released around 170,000 pages of records that had been closed off over the last 25 years on the level of toxic air pollution people were exposed to in the aftermath of 9/11.

The records suggest that New Yorkers were misled about the air quality and that officials downplayed how dangerous it was to breathe the air. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to 50,000 people, including first responders and survivors, developed cancer in relation to the event. 

Christopher Santora, then 23, was a firefighter who responded to the attacks and was enveloped in debris as the towers fell. He lost his life trying to save people that day. His cousin Jason Roettger, 56, was chosen to read the names of people who had died during 9/11 at Friday’s ceremony.

Roettger said it was an honor to be a part of the event and to represent his cousin. He said he’s glad the air quality records were released.

“I think everyone that was here in the city, or even in New Jersey, everyone in this area knew the air wasn’t good,” Roettger said. “Even though the government said ‘No, the air is fine.’ I think everyone knew that that was a lie.”

Wanda Hernandez, 72, lost her daughter Monique de Jesus, who was 28 at the time. She was working at the World Trade Center. 

Hernandez said Friday she was focusing on all the beautiful moments she had with her daughter before that day.

“We went on vacation for my birthday before it happened, like a month before. Yeah. Yeah, we had a good time, you know, and we went to a wedding like a week before it happened,” Hernandez said. “Two weeks, so that was nice. Had a good time. I was a good mother. She was a good daughter.”

‘A vast empty space in the side of the Pentagon’

Over a 13-minute speech Friday morning at the Pentagon, Rice, who also served as secretary of state later in the Bush administration, painted a picture of administration officials caught completely off guard by the attacks, orchestrated by the well-known anti-American extremist terror network al-Qaeda.

“I was at my desk at the White House that day when my executive assistant, a young Army officer, told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. ‘What a strange accident,’ I thought,” Rice said.

“I called President Bush, who was reading to children at an education event in Florida. He too thought that it must have just been an accident. But within 17 minutes, a second plane hit the World Trade Center,” she continued.

What followed, according to Rice, was a whirlwind as officials rushed to secure locations — Bush to Air Force One, Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney to a White House bunker and CIA Director George Tenet to an undisclosed location. 

Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell was in Peru “and trying to get home.” Those in the White House “Situation Room,” Rice recalled, just heard the “ringing and ringing and ringing” of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s phone at the Pentagon, where he had been hosting a congressional breakfast. 

The late Rumsfeld would end up outside assisting in rescue efforts “as his security detail begged him to flee,” she said.

“I remember turning to a television screen, and the horror and the shock that I felt. There was a smoking crater, a vast empty space, in the side of the Pentagon.”

Fight with hijackers

A morning observance program was also held at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, to mark 25 years since 40 passengers and crew members died when the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a rural field. 

Families read aloud the names of the victims during the ceremony.

Members of Flight 93 fought with hijackers over Western Pennsylvania and forced the flight to crash, which prevented the hijacked aircraft from hitting the intended destination of the U.S. Capitol.

Others expected to speak Friday afternoon included Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Gordon Felt, brother of Edward Porter Felt, one of the 40 people who died on Flight 93, was set to speak, along with retired United Airlines Capt. Morrie Wiener, who piloted Flight 93 prior to the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, and Jessica Bowron, acting director of the National Park Service.

Mullin ties mass deportation to Sept. 11

Outside of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington, D.C., Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin used the anniversary to promote the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, and said that lack of cooperation from so-called sanctuary cities is what could lead to another 9/11.

“It’s a safe haven that incubates terrorist activity and it doesn’t just stay local,” he said.

He specifically called out Democratic-led cities of Seattle, Boston and New York City.

“It shouldn’t be political,” he said. “When we start looking at the 25th anniversary, if there’s anything we should agree on, it should be that. Why should the Department of Homeland Security be controversial? We’re taking care of your backyard.”

Immigration enforcement agencies under the department have been roiled in scandal and carried out alleged illegal orders since Trump’s second term began. 

The events have included allowing deportation flights to take off against a judge’s order, erroneous deportations of individuals with legal protections, and the killing by immigration agents of two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, of Minneapolis. 

The latest scrutiny of the department comes after a $20 million no-bid contract was extended in Kentucky to outfit agents with electric shock gloves.

Courage and ‘selfless service’

Despite the lasting pain, speakers Friday noted that relatives of those killed in the attacks found ways to move forward and persevere.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine at the Pentagon said the milestone anniversary was not only about remembering those lost, but “it is also a story of great American courage, selfless service, and those who’ve made the choice to carry those memories forward.” 

“The courage of those extraordinary Americans in Pennsylvania, in New York, and right here on these hallowed grounds, did not end when the smoke cleared and the fires went out, because survivors and families have carried it forward through service, through sacrifice, and through remembrance,” Caine told the crowd.

On a rural stretch of land in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, an open meadow filled with bright wildflowers, a memorial grove of trees and a giant boulder marks the spot where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2001.

States Newsroom’s Pennsylvania Capital-Star Editor-in-Chief Tim Lambert recently revisited the national memorial on this field — where he happened to own a piece of land that was part of more than three dozen acres that made up the crash site.

“It’s always hard to come back here, but it’s always a chance to remember the sacrifices made by the passengers and crew of Flight 93 on that day,” Lambert said. “I think it’s important 25 years later to remember what they did and why they did it. They decided to act on a day that America was under attack.”

On that day, al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial planes. They slammed two into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth — Flight 93 — crashed in an open clearing near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The 40 passengers and crew are remembered for sacrificing their lives when they tried to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers and stop them from hitting what was believed to be their intended target: the U.S. Capitol.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed in what is the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. Forty-four people, including the four hijackers, died aboard Flight 93.

At the time, Lambert worked as a reporter for a public radio station in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

“It was around 4:30 in the afternoon — among the chaos of the newsroom — and I looked up at this TV that was on a cabinet, and the reporter from one of the national outlets was standing at the corner of the Lambertsville (and) Shanksville Road,” Lambert recalled. “And it was at that moment, I stopped and thought, ‘Wait, we still own land near Shanksville, and it’s awfully close to that intersection.’”

The next morning, Lambert said, he listened to a voice message on his home answering machine from his dad, who recognized the crash site on television, realizing that it was their family property.

Lambert was in a unique situation. While reporters across the nation and around the world were covering the tragic event, he was the only journalist who had access to the Flight 93 crash site. He realized he had a huge responsibility.

“I was well aware that history was at the door, and I wanted to do things the right way,” he said.

Lambert not only reported on the crash, but also assisted first responders and met with the families of the passengers and crew. He remembered what the land looked like that day. The plane had plowed into the ground at a high rate of speed, with the aircraft disintegrating into tiny bits and pieces, leaving a large crater.

Although the majority of the plane shattered and few bodies were recovered, authorities were able to identify the passengers and crew. More than 1,500 response members under the direction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation recovered fragments of the plane: twisted pieces of metal, tires, seat frames, luggage, clothing — most of which were no larger than a notebook.

The field was essentially a cemetery, and family members wanted to protect it. Only family members and some park rangers can visit the actual crash site. But the public can walk along the tall concrete walls of the nearby memorial, etched with the names of people who perished in the crash. Visitors can also go to a museum and walk through parts of the field to an overlook to view the crash site.

Through the years, Lambert has visited the site to pay his respects.

“It’s been a while since I’ve been here, so it’s almost like a little homecoming to visit with old friends, even if it’s just looking out on the field and remembering those who gave their lives that day,” he said.

The museum features photos of family members of passengers and crew, with details about their lives and memorabilia, including photographs, jewelry and uniforms. For example, the husband of flight attendant Lorraine Bay donated her United Airlines ID and one of her uniforms, along with a wine bottle corkscrew she used for in-flight service.

“You know, with these exhibits, I want to take something that’s very large and abstract and offer different avenues for different people to come in and relate to it,” said Betsy Keene, curator for the National Parks for Western Pennsylvania, which includes the Flight 93 National Memorial.

“Families say they want their loved one to be remembered as an individual person, as more than just this one day.”

She said there are about 9,300 objects collected from the crash site and from families that are cataloged at the memorial, including 800 pieces of the aircraft curated over the years.

“We want to have these objects to help people relate and to pull them into the story and to help them understand who these people were, what happened here, and what it meant to the world at the time,” Keene said.

Memorial Superintendent Stephen Clark said more than 400,000 visitors annually come to the park, owned and operated by the federal government and managed by the National Park Service.

“I think that this memorial, albeit 25 years, it’s still a glimpse. It’s still a blink of an eye in our nation’s history,” Clark said. “But I still think that even as the years roll on, this story will continue to be told.”

Through the years, Lambert said he’s had many chances to meet families whose loved ones died that day. As the 25th anniversary approaches, he said he plans to reflect on their stories.

“The memorial is beautiful. The memorial is very fitting. It’s a great tribute, and it’s a respectful tribute to the passengers and crew of Flight 93. But for me, I think about watching the land heal over the 25-year period,” Lambert said.

“To watch them sort of heal as the site heals through nature, and watch that sort of in tandem, is something that I will always think about anytime I look over that field.”

Pennsylvania Capital-Star reporter Peter Hall contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.