Idaho, Kansas and Missouri want a federal judge to let them intervene in a case that’s already been to the U.S. Supreme Court, so they can argue the FDA erred when it updated prescribing guidelines for abortion medication, shown in photo, in 2016.  (Photo by Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice wrote in a legal filing released Monday that three GOP-led states attempting to overturn federal prescribing guidelines for medication abortion have sought to keep a case going in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The filing is significant since it appears to indicate the Trump administration will defend the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decision nine years ago to broaden access to mifepristone. The Biden administration also sought to keep the newer prescribing guidelines intact.

Idaho, Kansas and Missouri want a federal judge to let them intervene in a case that’s already been to the U.S. Supreme Court, so they can argue the FDA erred when it updated prescribing guidelines for mifepristone in 2016.

The goal is to get those changes thrown out so use of mifepristone, one of two pharmaceuticals used in medication abortion, reverts to what was in place between 2000 and 2016.

That would cap medication abortion at seven weeks gestation instead of the current 10 weeks and patients seeking medication abortions would need to attend three, in-person doctor appointments. Medication abortion would no longer be available via telehealth and it could no longer be legally mailed to patients.

The Trump administration wrote in a 15-page brief filed with the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Texas that the three states “cannot keep alive a lawsuit in which the original plaintiffs were held to lack standing, those plaintiffs have now voluntarily dismissed their claims, and the States’ own claims have no connection to this District.”

“The States are free to pursue their claims in a District where venue is proper … but the States’ claims before this Court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” the brief adds.

The Department of Justice also wrote that at “a minimum, the States’ challenge to FDA’s 2016 actions is time-barred because the States sought to intervene more than six years after FDA finalized those actions.”

Original suit began in 2022

The original case challenging the federal government’s 2000 approval and current prescribing guidelines for medication abortion began in November 2022 when anti-abortion groups filed their lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Texas.

That case worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2024 that the anti-abortion organizations lacked standing to bring the case.

But Idaho, Kansas and Missouri state officials sought to intervene in the case before it reached the high court and have tried to keep the challenge to the 2016 prescribing guidelines moving forward.

The Department of Justice wrote in its brief that there were several reasons the case shouldn’t continue in the Northern District of Texas.

Among those is that the three states “fail to identify any actual or imminent controversy over whether any of their laws are preempted” and that they lack Article III standing since “they failed to exhaust their claims; and their challenge to FDA’s 2016 actions is outside the six-year statute of limitations.”

The case is assigned to Judge Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk, who overturned the FDA’s original 2000 approval of mifepristone in April 2023 in the original lawsuit.

That ruling never took effect as the original lawsuit worked its way through the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and up to the Supreme Court. 

A U.S. Border Patrol official vehicle  is shown parked near the border. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Judiciary Republicans Wednesday worked in committee on a portion of a major legislative package that would help fund President Donald Trump’s plans to conduct mass deportations of people living in the United States without permanent legal status.

The Judiciary panel’s $81 billion share of the “one, big beautiful” bill the president has requested of Congress would provide $45 billion for immigration detention centers, $8 billion to hire thousands of immigration enforcement officers and more than $14 billion for deportations, among other things.

The border security and immigration funds are part of a massive package that wraps together White House priorities including tax cuts and defense spending boosts. Republicans are pushing the deal through using a special procedure known as reconciliation that will allow the Senate GOP to skirt its usual 60-vote threshold when that chamber acts.

House Republicans returning from a two-week recess kicked off their work on reconciliation Tuesday, approving three of 11 bills out of committees on Armed Services, Education and Workforce and Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, lawmakers continued work on the various sections of the reconciliation bill with markups — which means a bill is debated and potentially amended or rewritten — in the Financial Services, Judiciary, Transportation and Infrastructure and Oversight and Government Reform committees.

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana said Republicans will spend the rest of this week and next debating the 11 separate bills in committees. Committees when they finish their measures will send them to the House Budget Committee, which is expected to bundle them together prior to a floor vote.

The Judiciary panel’s 116-page bill vastly overhauls U.S. asylum laws. It would, for example, create a fee structure for asylum seekers that would set a minimum cost for an application at no less than $1,000. Applications now are free.

“These and other resources and fees in this reconciliation bill will ensure the Trump administration has the adequate resources to enforce the immigration laws in a fiscally responsible way,” GOP Chair Jim Jordan of Ohio said.

The bill would establish a $1,000 fee for immigrants granted temporary protected status, which would mean they would have work authorizations and deportation protections.

It would also require sponsors to pay $3,500 to take in an unaccompanied minor who crosses the border without a legal status. Typically, unaccompanied minors are released to sponsors who are family members living in the United States.

The bill would also require immigrants without permanent legal status to pay a $550 fee for work permits every six months.

The top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, slammed the bill as targeting immigrants.

“Every day, this administration uses immigration enforcement as a template to erode constitutional rights and liberties,” he said.

A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.

‘A giveaway to ICE’

The Judiciary bill directs half of the fees collected from asylum seekers to go toward the agency that handles U.S. immigration courts, but Democrats criticized the provisions as creating a barrier for asylum seekers.

“The so-called immigration fees that are in this bill are really fines and nothing but a cruel attempt to make immigrating to this country impossible,” Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said.

Democratic Rep. Chuy Garcia of Illinois, said the bill would not only “gut asylum” but would significantly increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention.

Funding for ICE detention this fiscal year is roughly $3.4 billion, but the Judiciary bill would sharply increase that to $45 billion.

Garcia called the increase a “a giveaway to ICE, a rogue agency that’s terrorizing communities and clamping (down) on civil liberties and the Constitution itself, because they’ve been directed to do so by this president.”

House Republicans have also included language that would move the Federal Trade Commission into the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, a move Democrats argued would kneecap the FTC’s regulatory authority.

“You’re trying to shutter the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, making it harder for us to enforce our antitrust laws,” Democratic Rep. Becca Balint of Vermont said.

Consumer protections to take a hit

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Financial Services met in a lengthy, and at times tense, session to finalize legislation to cut “no less than” $1 billion from government programs and services under the panel’s jurisdiction, according to the budget resolution Congress approved in April.

Funds in the crosshairs include those previously authorized for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and grants provided under the Biden administration-era Inflation Reduction Act for homeowners to improve energy efficiency.

Chair French Hill said the committee “will do its part to reduce the deficit and decrease direct spending, so that Congress can enact pro-growth tax policies.”

“And remember, today, we are here with one purpose, to do our part to put our nation back on a responsible fiscal trajectory,” the Arkansas Republican said.

Democrats introduced dozens of amendments during the hourslong session to block cuts to community block grants and programs protecting consumers, including veterans, from illegal credit and lending practices.

Ranking member Maxine Waters said committee Republicans’ plans to cut the CFPB by 70% “is ridiculous.”

“The bureau has saved American consumers $21 billion by returning to them funds that big banks and predatory lenders swindled out of them,” said Waters, a California Democrat.

Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, when subprime mortgage lending cascaded into bank failures and home and job losses.

Republicans opposed amendment after amendment.

Rep. María Salazar of Florida tossed a copy of one of Waters’ lengthy amendments straight into a trash can after a staffer handed it to her. Michigan’s Rep. Bill Huizenga held up proceedings for several minutes when he accused Waters of breaking the rules by not distributing enough paper copies of her amendment.

“We cannot allow our government to continue spending money like there are no consequences,” GOP Rep. Mike Flood of Nebraska said in response to several Democratic amendments.

A final committee vote was expected Wednesday night.

Transportation section adds fees on electric vehicles

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also approved, by a party line 36-30 vote, reconciliation instructions that would cut $10 billion from the federal deficit while boosting spending for the U.S. Coast Guard and the air traffic control system.

Like other portions of the larger reconciliation package, the transportation committee’s instructions would add funding for national security and border enforcement, through the Coast Guard funding, while cutting money from programs favored by Democrats, including climate programs and any spending that could be construed as race-conscious.

The bill would provide $21.2 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion for air traffic control systems. It would raise money through a $250 annual fee on electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee on hybrids, while also cutting $4.6 billion from climate programs created in Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation package.

Chairman Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, said the measure included priorities for members of both parties, as well as business and labor interests.

“We all want to invest in our Coast Guard,” he said. “We all want to rebuild our air traffic control system and finally address the broken Highway Trust Fund. We have held countless hearings on all of these topics, both recently and, frankly, for years. And now members have the opportunity to actually act.”

Democrats on the panel complained that the reconciliation package was a partisan exercise and a departure from the panel’s normally congenial approach to business. They introduced dozens of amendments over the daylong committee meeting seeking to add funding for various programs. None were adopted.

“The larger Republican reconciliation package will add more than $15 trillion in new debt, gives away $7 trillion in deficit-financed tax cuts to the wealthy and slashes access to health care and food assistance for families,” ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington said. “Given that, I think we’re going to have to vote no on the bill before us.”

The vehicle fees, which would be deposited into the Highway Trust Fund that sends highway and transit money to states, created a partisan divide Wednesday.

Federal gas taxes provide the lion’s share of deposits to the fund and Republicans argued that, because drivers of electric vehicles pay no gas taxes and hybrid drivers pay less than those who drive gas-powered cars, the provision would make the contributions fairer.

Republicans scrapped a proposed $20 annual fee on gas-powered cars, which Graves said was meant to “start a conversation” on the solvency of the Highway Trust Fund. But the provision “became a political distraction that no longer centered around seriously addressing the problem,” he said.

Pennsylvania Democrat Chris Deluzio criticized the vehicle fees, noting Republicans were pursuing additional revenue opportunities to offset losses from tax cuts.

“I don’t know when you guys became the tax-and-spend liberals,” Deluzio told his Republican colleagues. “But I guess the taxing of car owners so you can pay for tax giveaways to billionaires is your new strategy. Good luck with that.”

Federal employee benefits targeted

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform voted nearly along party lines, 22-21, to send its portion of the reconciliation package to the Budget Committee, with Ohio Republican Rep. Mike Turner joining Democrats in opposition.

Turner was the first GOP lawmaker to cast a committee vote against reconciliation instructions this year.

The legislation hits at federal employee benefits and comes as the Trump administration continues to overhaul the federal workforce.

Part of the bill would raise federal employees’ required retirement contribution to a rate of 4.4% of their salary and eliminate an additional retirement annuity payment for federal employees who retire before the age of 62, while cutting more than $50 billion from the federal deficit.

At his committee’s markup, Chairman James Comer said the legislation “advances important budgetary reforms that will save taxpayers money.”

The Kentucky Republican acknowledged that the chief investigative committee in the U.S. House has “very limited jurisdiction to help reduce the federal budget deficit,” noting that the panel is “empowered to pursue civil service reforms, including federal employee benefits and reining in the influence of partisan and unaccountable government employee unions.”

But Democrats on the panel blasted the committee’s portion of the reconciliation package, saying the bill chips away at federal employees’ protections.

Rep. Stephen Lynch, the top Democrat on the panel, said congressional Republicans instructed the panel to target the federal workforce with roughly $50 billion in funding cuts “regardless of the impact on hard-working, loyal federal employees and their critical services that they provide to the American people.”

The Massachusetts Democrat said the bill “threatens to further undermine the federal workforce by reducing the take-home pay, the benefits and workforce protections of 2.4 million federal employees, most of whom are middle-class Americans and a third of whom are military veterans.”

Ohio’s Turner, who voted against the legislation because of the provision reducing pension benefits, said he supported the overall reconciliation package and hoped the pension measure would be stripped before a floor vote.

Turner said “making changes to pension retirement benefits in the middle of someone’s employment is wrong.” 

Four of the Wisconsin 14 – from (l to r) Jeff Davis, Kai Gardner Mishlove, Pat McFarland and Thomas Lang – urged state lawmakers to extend postpartum Medicaid on March 18, 2025. (Courtesy of Builders)

Thomas Lang and Jeff Davis — conservative Catholics from Wisconsin — did the unexpected on a recent Tuesday: They asked some of their conservative legislators to extend a social safety net for pregnant women.

Both men support local crisis pregnancy centers and groups opposed to abortion, and they typically oppose expanding public services. Davis said he’s always been a conservative spender, having grown up with a Depression-era father.

But after participating in a civic engagement program about abortion a year ago, both said their empathy for pregnant women is better informed.

“My wife was a great sounding board for me being more empathetic towards women, because she was a very empathetic woman, and I kind of lost a little bit of that when she passed away,” Davis said, noting it’s been two years. “I didn’t have her level of compassion, and this helped me, seriously, to be more compassionate, and not just to women who are having an abortion, but just people in general.”

One year ago, 14 people around Wisconsin, dubbed the Wisconsin 14, were recruited by the civic engagement nonprofit Builders (formerly known as Starts With Us) to try to find common ground on reproductive health policy despite their deep divisions on abortion. For most of the participants, as the emotionally grueling Citizen Solutions sessions would reveal, their beliefs are rooted in personal trauma.

A year later, several of the participants who had severe disagreements have come back together to fight for their first consensus solution: extending postpartum Medicaid.

While the Wisconsin 14 ultimately could not agree on a single abortion-related policy, they were united on five policy proposals to make it easier and safer to give birth. Several of the participants returned to the Capitol in Madison last month to lobby their state legislators to pass Assembly Bill 97/Senate Bill 23, which like one of their proposals, would extend Medicaid coverage for women from 60 days to 12 months after giving birth if they do not already qualify for the state’s Medicaid program. Under current law, pregnant individuals in Wisconsin are eligible for Medicaid at a higher income threshold than those who are not pregnant: 306% instead of 100% of the federal poverty level. But they can lose that coverage 60 days after giving birth if their income increases beyond the non-pregnant eligibility threshold.

Reproductive health experts have identified postpartum Medicaid extension as the first step to maternal health equity, as States Newsroom has reported. According to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 80% of pregnancy-related deaths nationwide are preventable, and almost one-third of pregnancy-related deaths occurred after delivery.

Wisconsin and Arkansas are currently the only states cutting off postpartum Medicaid after 60 days, despite these being largely popular policies.

“Last spring, 20,000 Wisconsinites from 70 counties across the state weighed in on the proposals during a public feedback period,” said Builders communications director Tori Larned in an email. “Nearly three-quarters (73%) of people favored extending Medicaid postpartum.”

This is the second year the proposal has been introduced in the legislature, and like last year it has received bipartisan support but severe opposition from House Speaker Robin Vos. The Republican has described the bill as an expansion of “welfare,” including last week, when the bill passed the Senate 32-1.

“My position has been fairly clear from the very beginning: I’ve never supported an expansion of welfare. I can’t imagine that I would ever support one,” Vos said at a press conference after the April 22 vote, according to the Wisconsin Examiner. “But we have to talk about it as a caucus.”

Vos’ office did not reply to a request for comment for this story.

In the past month, several among the Wisconsin 14 have lobbied their legislators in person, talked about the bill in public, and a few have or are currently writing op-eds. Larned told States Newsroom nearly every participant has called Vos’ office urging him to extend postpartum Medicaid to a full year. 

“[S]tagnation on this issue does not reflect the public will,” wrote Kateri Klingele Pinell and Kai Gardner Mishlove, two of the Wisconsin 14, who fundamentally disagreed on when abortion should be legal and accessible, in a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel op-ed. “Extended Medicaid coverage is crucial for the physical, emotional, and mental well-being of mothers and their children. Sixty days is insufficient to address the vast array of medical needs that arise during the postpartum period.”

They cited a 2024 Wisconsin Maternal Mortality Review Team report showing that between 2019 and 2020 the majority of pregnancy-related deaths were caused by cardiovascular conditions or hypertensive disorders or due to mental health conditions, including drug overdoses. They also noted that Black women and women from low-income households suffer worse maternal health outcomes. They cited an American Hospital Association report to argue that prolonging postpartum coverage would generate cost savings.

They ended the op-ed addressing Vos directly.

“We have faith that Speaker Vos and his colleagues in the Assembly will answer our call,” they wrote. “Vos has already expressed his desire to, ‘protect life while ensuring women receive necessary medical care.’ The passage of this bill offers him the opportunity to properly represent his constituents.”

Klingele Pinell is a clinical mental health professional who opposes abortion, but believes in expanding public health services, especially as someone who says she has relied on them as a young single mom. Gardner Mishlove is a grief doula and the executive directive of Jewish Social Services in Madison, which she said provides short- and long-term case-management and advocacy to vulnerable populations.

“We need to reassure moms and families that they will not lose coverage during this crucial time,” Gardner Mishlove told States Newsroom. “Can you imagine deciding to maintain a pregnancy and then realizing that you’re going to lose your health insurance 60 days after? Being a new mom, there’s a lot to deal with, a lot to juggle, and if that’s one less thing for you to juggle so that you can make sure that you maintain connection to your healthcare provider, to your behavioral health provider, for the health and wellness not only of yourself but your family, then that’s a huge burden that’s lifted from that mother, from the family, from the health care system.”

Bridging the divide 

In mid-March, four of the Wisconsin 14 joined a lobbying event co-sponsored by Main Street Alliance, where they urged state lawmakers to pass the postpartum Medicaid extension, focusing on more reluctant Assembly and Senate Republicans.

Davis, the 77-year-old widower, said it felt out of his comfort zone just to drive from his farm to the Capitol and navigate traffic and parking, but he felt it was important to do.

“I just kind of thought that maybe my input, because of being pro-life and being for the bill, would carry some weight,” Davis told States Newsroom.

Davis and Lang said they didn’t initially appreciate how difficult it would be to move the needle with some of the Republican legislators, especially after learning how much extending postpartum Medicaid is likely to cost the state.

The state has projected that an additional 5,020 women would have coverage per month under the bill, costing an estimated $18.5 million, including $7.3 million in state general purpose revenue with the rest coming from the federal government. As the Wisconsin Examiner has reported, if Wisconsin joined other states that have accepted the full federal Medicaid expansion, the cost for the postpartum coverage would be reduced to $15.1 million in all funds including $5.2 million in general purpose revenue. However, under the Trump administration, the federal Medicaid program as a whole is under threat. 

“We’re talking a drop in the bucket,” Lang said. “We’re talking about a small annual average number of pregnant women in Wisconsin, so the fiscal hawks really don’t have much to worry about, and more importantly we’re talking about getting women out of a corner. … Everybody agrees that no woman gets pregnant to have an abortion. It’s always something of a compulsion. So let’s get her out of the corner if we want her to have choice, right?”

Gardner Mishlove and Patricia McFarland — whose politics and abortion views veer widely left from Davis’ and Lang’s — said they tried to find common ground with more conservative legislators. 

“[We’re] trying to end the divide, to find ways to talk to each other about basic human issues, so that you are not just pro-birth, but if you’re pro life, you really want the family to thrive,” said McFarland, who had a traumatic illegal abortion before Roe v. Wade enshrined federal abortion rights in 1973 and is now an abortion-rights activist. “You want that baby to be born and to have all the care they deserve.”

The fate of the bill remains uncertain, but the Wisconsin 14 have not given up on it.

Jacob VandenPlas, a dad, farmer, agricultural educator and veteran from Door County, has some of the most nuanced politics and abortion views among the 14.

VandenPlas ran for Congress as a Libertarian in 2022 and is considering a future run for governor as an independent or for Wisconsin state Senate as a Republican. He said he believes abortion should be broadly legal through the first trimester and then restricted with exceptions for health and rape. VandenPlas said he’s been calling different legislators about the postpartum Medicaid bill; lobbying his representative, Republican Rep. Joel Kitchens, at the gym; and is currently working on an op-ed. He pitches it from a Libertarian angle.

“This is our future generation, and the constriction on the pocketbooks of the American people and how much the government has robbed from us makes it very difficult to start families,” VandenPlas said. “We’re talking the cost of housing and everything else. It’s very, very important to be able to help the future mothers and future families of our state.”

“Most importantly,” he continued. “This is one of the single best ways that we can address abortion. If you want to start limiting those numbers, we have to start addressing the reasons why women are choosing abortion, and this is one of them. We can save babies’ lives by extending postpartum care, and we can save the lives of mothers.”

Builders head of programs Ashley Phillips said the organization has not given up on trying to pursue abortion consensus solutions in other states, as abortion restrictions continue to broadly impact reproductive health care, including for those who want to have babies but have a shortage of health care options. She said Builders is conducting listening sessions in Texas, the next likely state for their third Citizens Solutions initiative. But this time participants will determine the policy area, she said.

“One thing I have learned is that this work is messy, it’s complicated, it’s hard, and in the moment, it often doesn’t feel great,” Phillips said. “And then I saw a subset of those people this weekend in Wisconsin, and the joy was back, and the belief that they could do something despite having a lot of discomfort around that issue of abortion.”

New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled a reprieve on auto tariffs will come Tuesday ahead of the president’s stop in Michigan to mark his first 100 days in office.

Bessent and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday curtailing the import taxes for domestic car manufacturers, but offered few specifics. The president’s 25% levy on cars and auto parts went into effect at the beginning of April.

“I’m not going to go into the details of the auto tariff relief, but I can tell you that it will go substantially toward reshoring American auto manufacturing,” Bessent said. “And again, the goal here is to bring back the high-quality industrial jobs to the U.S.”

The press secretary and Bessent began the day defending Trump’s trade policy as part of a weeklong morning press conference series marking the 100-day milestone in Trump’s second administration.

Investors and businesses have been on edge since Trump declared foreign trade a national emergency on April 2 and imposed what he billed as “reciprocal” tariffs on nearly every nation. Trump issued a 90-day pause on the steep levies — some reaching nearly 50% — after trillions of dollars disappeared from U.S. and world markets in reaction to the dramatic policy.

However, Trump dug in his heels on goods from China, increasing tariffs to 145%. Nearly all other countries face universal 10% baseline levy.

No deals yet

Nearly a month after the tariffs went into effect, Bessent told reporters the administration has not yet inked deals with any of the 17 trading partners, not counting China, currently in negotiations with the U.S. When pressed about a timeline for the deals, Bessent said Trump has created “strategic uncertainty” as a tool to get the best terms.

“I think the aperture of uncertainty will be narrowing, and as we start moving toward announcing deals, then there will be certainty. But certainty is not necessarily a good thing in negotiating,” Bessent said.

Bessent sidestepped questions about trade talks with China, saying he wouldn’t get “into the nitty-gritty of who’s talking to whom.” China has imposed 125% tariffs on U.S. goods and has denied any meaningful negotiations.

“I think that, you know, over time, we will see that the Chinese tariffs are unsustainable for China,” Bessent said, adding that China sends more goods to the U.S. than Americans send to China.

Americans’ approval of Trump’s job performance, particularly on economic policy, is lagging, according to numerous recent surveys.

In response to a report that Amazon will highlight spikes in prices due to tariffs, Leavitt said the e-commerce behemoth was committing a “hostile and political act.” Punchbowl News reported the story Tuesday citing “a person familiar with the plan.”

Amazon denied the report hours later, according to NPR and other outlets.

Tax cuts

When asked about potential economic damage from business owners clamping down on hiring and growth, Bessent told reporters “tax cuts are coming.”

The secretary said he and Trump met at the White House Monday with congressional Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana and Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.

Johnson and Thune have signaled different timelines — from Memorial Day to further into summer — for when Congress would finish a large budget reconciliation package, at the heart of which is Trump’s plan to extend his 2017 tax law.

Bessent said Trump wants the tax bill to revive and expand full business expensing, meaning businesses could write off expenses for certain investments, like equipment.

“The other thing that we are looking to add is full expensing for factories,” Bessent said. “So bring your factory back, you can fully expense the equipment and the building.”

In the village of Noatak in Alaska’s Northwest Arctic region, Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) data showed the community had lower breastfeeding initiation and six-week breastfeeding rates than the statewide average. This data supported funding to offer culturally-adapted peer breastfeeding services in the region. (Courtesy of Laura Norton-Cruz)

In the remote villages of Alaska where social worker Laura Norton-Cruz works to improve maternal and infant health, there are no hospitals.

Pregnant patients, almost all of whom are Alaska Native, often fly on small 10-seat planes to the region’s larger hub community of Kotzebue. While some give birth there, many more then take a jet out of the Northwest Arctic region to Anchorage, the state’s largest city. By the time they fly back to Kotzebue for their six-week checkup, a high percentage have stopped breastfeeding because of a lack of ongoing supports. 

Norton-Cruz knows that because of data collected by Alaska’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS)— a grantee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s PRAMS program, started in 1987 in an effort to reduce infant morbidity and mortality.

But earlier this month, the Trump administration cut the federal program, its 17-member team and more workers in the Division of Reproductive Health as part of sweeping layoffs within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Rita Hamad, associate professor at Harvard School of Public Health, said PRAMS helps researchers understand what kinds of state policies are improving or harming child health.

“I can’t overemphasize what an important dataset this is and how unique it is to really show national trends and help us try to understand how to optimize the health of moms and young kids,” Hamad said.

PRAMS does not ask abortion-related questions, but some anti-abortion groups still try to make a connection.

“The cuts seem appropriate given all the bias in choosing topics and analyzing data, but if Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System wishes to justify their reporting, point to the study that has most helped women and their children, born and preborn, survive and thrive,’’ Kristi Hamrick, vice president of media and policy at Students for Life of America, told States Newsroom in an email.

Over the past two years, Norton-Cruz used Alaska’s PRAMS data to identify low breastfeeding rates in the region, connect with people in the villages and interview them about what would help them continue to breastfeed. What they wanted, she said, was a peer in the community who understood the culture — so that’s what she’s been working to set up through federal programs and funding that is now uncertain.

Norton-Cruz also uses responses from PRAMS surveys to identify risk factors and interventions that can help prevent domestic and sexual violence and childhood trauma, particularly in rural communities, where the rates of domestic violence and maternal death are high.

“PRAMS data not being available, I believe, is going to kill mothers and babies,” she said. “And it’s going to result in worse health for infants.”

New York City grant is renewed, but data collection is paused

Individual states collect and report their own data, and the CDC team was responsible for aggregating it into one national picture. Some localities, such as New York City, maintain a full dashboard of data that can be explored by year and survey question. The most recent fully published data is from 2022 and shows responses by region, marital status, Medicaid status and more.

For instance, 2022 data showed women on Medicaid experienced depressive symptoms at a higher rate after giving birth than those not on Medicaid. It also showed that a much higher percentage of women not on Medicaid reported putting their babies on their backs to sleep, the recommended method for safe sleep — 63% of women on Medicaid reported following that method, versus 85% not on Medicaid.

Hamad said PRAMS is the only national survey dataset dedicated to pregnancy and the postpartum period. Her team has studied the outcomes of the Women, Infants, and Children food assistance program, and how state paid family leave policies have affected rates of postpartum depression.

“This survey has been going on for decades and recruits people from almost all states,’’ she said. “There’s really no other dataset that we can use to look at the effects of state and federal policies on infant health and postpartum women.”

Under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Health and Human Services laid off about 10,000 employees as part of a restructuring effort in early April. The overhaul is part of the “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, and the agency said it focused cuts on redundant or unnecessary administrative positions. It rescinded some of the firings in the weeks since, with Kennedy telling reporters that some were “mistakes.” It’s unclear if any of those hired back were PRAMS employees.

The cuts, Hamad said, also run counter to the administration’s stated goals of wanting to protect women, children and families.

“The government needs this data to accomplish what it says it wants to do, and it’s not going to be able to do that now,” she said.

The funding for local PRAMS programs seems to be unaffected for now. Spokespersons for health department teams in Alaska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas told States Newsroom they have not had any layoffs or changes to their grants, but the funding for this fiscal year ends on April 30. Forty-six states, along with D.C., New York City and two U.S. territories, participate in the program. According to the CDC, those jurisdictions represent 81% of all live births in the United States.

New York State Department of Health spokesperson Danielle De Souza told States Newsroom in an email their program has received another year of funding that begins May 1 and supports one full-time and two part-time staffers. But without the assistance of the national CDC team to compile, clean, and prepare the data, maintain the data collection platform and establish standards, De Souza said their state-level operations are on pause.

“We remain hopeful that the data collection platform will be fully reactivated, and that CDC coordination of PRAMS will resume,” De Souza said. “The department is assessing the challenges and feasibility of continuing operations if that does not occur.”

Hamad said some states might be willing to allocate state dollars to the programs to keep them running, but the states that have some of the worst maternal and infant health outcomes — such as Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama — are the least likely to have the political will to do that. And it would still make the data less robust and valuable than it was before.

“If one state is asking about how often you breastfed in the last week, and another one is asking about the last month, then we won’t have comparable data across states,” she said.

Project 2025, anti-abortion groups have criticized CDC data collection

Jacqueline Wolf, professor emeritus of social medicine at Ohio University, has studied the history of breastfeeding and childbirth practices and said the rates of maternal and infant death were high in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For every breastfed baby, 15 raw milk-fed babies died. Wolf said 13% of babies didn’t live to their 1st birthday, and more than half were dying from diarrhea.

To help determine what was causing those deaths and prevent it, public health specialists created detailed forms and collected information from families about a mother’s age, the parents’ occupations, race, income level, household conditions, and how the babies were fed.

Researchers at that time were able to determine that babies who weren’t breastfed were getting sick from unpasteurized milk and tainted water supply, and more than half were dying from diarrhea. Through public health reforms, like requiring cow’s milk to be pasteurized, sold in individual sterile bottles and kept cold during shipping, infant death rates dropped, Wolf said.

Health officials also increased education campaigns around the issue. Today, PRAMS uses survey data the same way.

“These were detectives,” Wolf said. “That’s what public health really is, detective work, which is why this data is so important.”

Project 2025, the blueprint document of directives for the next Republican presidential administration crafted by conservative group Heritage Foundation in 2024 and closely followed by President Donald Trump and his cabinet, details plans for the CDC’s data collection efforts. Page 453 of the 900-page document, written by Heritage Foundation executive Roger Severino says it’s proper for the CDC to collect and publish data related to disease and injury, but the agency should not make public health recommendations and policies based on that data because it is “an inescapably political function.”

The agency should be separated into two, Severino wrote, with one agency responsible for public health with a “severely confined ability to make policy recommendations.”

“The CDC can and should make assessments as to the health costs and benefits of health interventions, but it has limited to no capacity to measure the social costs or benefits they may entail,” the document says.

On page 455, Severino says the CDC should also eliminate programs and projects that “do not respect human life” and undermine family formation. It does not name PRAMS as a program that does this, but says the agency should ensure it is not promoting abortion as health care.

Hamrick, of Students for Life of America, told States Newsroom in an email that because there is no national abortion reporting act that tracks outcomes for women who end a pregnancy, assumptions in current reports “taint the outcomes.” Hamrick said the CDC has done a poor job of getting a complete picture of pregnancy risks, including the risk of preterm birth after having an abortion.

“Taxpayers don’t have money to waste on purely political messaging,” Hamrick said.

Without data, researcher worries policy recommendations will be easier to dismiss

If researchers like Laura Norton-Cruz don’t have PRAMS data moving forward, she said they will be operating in the dark in many ways, using anecdotal and clinical data that is not as reliable and accurate as the anonymous surveying. That can make it more difficult to push for funding and program changes from lawmakers as well.

“Moms need safe housing and domestic violence resources, moms need health care and breastfeeding support, and if we can’t show that, then they can justify not providing those things, knowing that those most affected by not having those things will be groups who are already marginalized,” Norton-Cruz said.

While HHS did not cite the administration’s ongoing efforts to remove any content from the federal government that acknowledges disparities in race or gender as its motivation for cutting the PRAMS team, researchers who spoke with States Newsroom think that could be the underlying reason. 

Wolf said race matters in data collection just as much as household economics or class, and it is just as relevant today as it was when PRAMS was established, as maternal death rates for Black women and other women of color are disproportionately high in a number of states. Those states are also often the poorest and have higher infant mortality rates.

Wolf recalled that during Trump’s first term in 2020, the first year of COVID, the administration ordered the CDC to stop publishing public data about the pandemic. She sees a parallel to today.

“I fear that is exactly what’s going on with PRAMS,” she said. “To pretend like you don’t have the data, so the problem doesn’t exist, is just about the worst response you can think of, because more and more mothers and babies are going to get hurt.”

States Newsroom state outlet reporters Anna Kaminski, Danielle Prokop and Emma Murphy contributed to this report.

“The sooner this can conclude, the sooner that the entire strategy plays out and we end up with whatever the result will be, the better,” Johnson told WPR's "Wisconsin Today."

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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).

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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. 

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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.

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