Green Bay Correctional Institution | Photo by Andrew Kennard

Amidst a staffing crisis that worsened living conditions in Wisconsin prisons, the state gave corrections officers a large raise.  

The number of vacant positions for correctional officers and sergeants across adult institutions has declined over 20% from a peak of 35%. But there’s still a struggle with working conditions, former correctional officer Joe Verdegan said. 

“By its nature, with the clientele you have there, it’s a very toxic environment,” said Verdegan, who worked at Green Bay Correctional Institution from 1994 to 2020. “The toxic part of it will never change, but the problem is, you need veteran staff that can deal with it.” 

Wisconsin’s Act 10, passed in 2011, excluded many government workers from collective bargaining for anything other than inflationary increases to base wages. The law led to an exodus of veteran staff concerned about what might happen to their pensions, Verdegan wrote in a 2020 book about GBCI.

Act 10 grouped some workers together as public safety employees and others as general employees. Public safety employees’ collective bargaining rights were largely unchanged, while those of general employees were severely curtailed. 

Dane County Judge Jacob Frost struck down the law’s collective bargaining restriction, ruling that the Wisconsin Legislature didn’t have a defensible reason for excluding some public safety workers from the public safety group. 

On Wednesday, Frost put his order on hold, granting a temporary stay on his Dec 2 ruling while he considers written arguments that he should keep the ruling on hold while the Wisconsin Legislature appeals it.

Frost’s December 2 decision essentially confirmed a previous ruling released in July, in which he wrote that Act 10 violated the equal protection clause of the Wisconsin Constitution. Previous legal challenges failed to overturn the law. 

Opponents of the law celebrated what the decision might mean for employees’ power in the workplace, while supporters said Act 10 saved billions of dollars. Former Gov. Scott Walker, who signed Act 10 into law, called the decision “brazen political activism” and “an early Christmas present for the big government special interests.”

The law’s effect on retirement contributions led to an increased cost for public employees and government savings. Since employees were responsible for a larger share of pension contributions, state and local governments saved nearly $5.2 billion over the seven-year period from 2011 to 2017, according to a 2020 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum. 

The judge didn’t strike down Act 10 provisions that changed the rules for employees’ retirement contributions and health insurance premiums, an attorney representing unions in the case told Wisconsin Watch. Those provisions don’t rely on the distinction between the public safety and general employee groups, he said. 

Frost’s ruling has been appealed, and it’s expected to go to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Wisconsin Public Radio reported. Its fate might depend on an upcoming Wisconsin Supreme Court election and whether any justices recuse themselves. 

Frost didn’t find a legal problem with the Legislature treating the public safety group differently than the general employees group — for example, by providing them with benefits that would attract quality employees to jobs important for public safety. If teachers, administration or sanitation workers face labor unrest, their absence from work probably wouldn’t cause death or great harm, he wrote in the July ruling. 

Instead, Frost took issue with the Legislature’s decision to not include certain workers in the public safety group, including the Capitol Police, conservation wardens and correctional officers. 

Specifically referring to correctional officers, Frost wrote, “What greater threat is there to public safety than the escape of the persons that those in the public safety group arrested and brought to justice?” 

Wisconsin prisons have seen a staffing crisis, allegations of harassment 

After Act 10, GBCI staff had to contribute more to their pensions and paid higher health insurance premiums, Verdegan wrote in his book. 

“People were fleeing the prison to go drive truck, be bartenders, work in cheese factories, or even bag groceries at Woodman’s,” Verdegan wrote. 

Corrections officers were asked to put in more overtime around 2011 or 2012, former GBCI officer Jeff Hoffman told the Examiner in July. 

“From that time forward, it never got any better,” said Hoffman, who left GBCI in early 2023 after almost 23 years. “If you were there, you were going to work 16-hour shifts.” 

Staffing vacancies for correctional officers and sergeants have declined substantially from a peak of 35% in August 2023 to the current 12.9% vacancy rate.

In the DOC’s 2022 Climate and Engagement survey, over half of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the idea that their pay was fair relative to the duties they performed. Over half said that if they left DOC, it would be because of their salary and/or benefits. 

These responses were given before Wisconsin implemented a large pay raise for corrections officers. Under the pay increases, correctional officers’ wages increased from $20.29 an hour to over $30 an hour, with more pay for officers in higher-security and understaffed prisons. Wages had received a $4 boost from federal pandemic relief funds prior to the increase, the Associated Press reported. 

Verdegan wrote in his book that some supervisors would try to harass or intimidate staff. Sean Daley of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 32 made a similar remark to the Examiner in 2022. 

“It’s a tough enough job as it is,” Daley told the Examiner in 2022. “Add in that a lot of the supervisors think they’re ‘top-cops’ and spend their time tirelessly harassing staff with weak investigations and it just adds to the vacancy rates.”

Nearly half of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the statements “My supervisor cares about my interests” and “Employees are treated fairly in my work unit.” 

About 1 in 10 strongly disagreed with the statement “My supervisor treats me with dignity and respect,” with about a quarter expressing at least some disagreement. About three-quarters at least somewhat agreed that they have positive relationships with their colleagues. 

Close to 40% of security staff expressed at least some disagreement with the statements “Work rule violations are not tolerated” and “I can disclose a suspected violation of a rule, law, or regulation without fear or reprisal” in the 2022 survey.  

Some individual facilities have vacancy rates for correctional officers and sergeants that are higher than the overall number for adult facilities, including  20.5% at Waupun Correctional Institution. Waupun has seen several prisoner deaths and staff charged with crimes. 

Waupun has seen an influx of staff since September, when the vacancy rate was 42%. Sarah Cooper, administrator of the DOC’s division of adult institutions, said at a public meeting in September that other staff were sent to assist Waupun. For example, Waupun also had 40 supplemental staff per pay period, she said. 

Correctional officers and sergeants are far from the only staff in Wisconsin prisons. The Department of Corrections has varying levels of vacancies of other staff. Some of the highest vacancy rates are 22% for social services and 21% for psychological services. 

Prison Policy Initiative argues for addressing staffing issues through decarceration

While Wisconsin’s large pay raises have garnered credit for bringing in new staff, the state hasn’t yet seen whether current efforts will fully staff Wisconsin prisons. A briefing published last week by the Massachusetts-based Prison Policy Initiative challenged the idea that the U.S. can solve prison staffing problems through recruitment. 

The research and advocacy group argued that decarceration would be more effective in addressing understaffing than pay raises, lowering employment requirements, offering staff wellness programs or constructing new facilities. 

The group promoted reducing the prison populations through parole, other forms of release and taking steps to decrease the number of people admitted to prison. 

As of Dec. 6, Wisconsin’s adult prisons held over 23,000 people, more than 5,000 people higher than design capacity. The adult prison population has risen over 2,500 from fiscal year 2022 to fiscal year 2024. 

Incarcerated people face the worst harms of understaffing, the PPI argued, but they noted health risks that employees face, including injury, exposure to infectious diseases and high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. 

“Unfortunately, there’s only so much that a pay raise can do to ameliorate that,” said Wanda Bertram, communications strategist for the Prison Policy Initiative. 

A 2018 survey of Washington State Department of Corrections employees found that prison employees experience PTSD at a rate equivalent to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and higher than police officers. These jobs take a lot out of people, Bertram said. 

In Wisconsin’s adult prisons, 452 assaults on staff took place in fiscal year 2024, according to Department of Corrections data. The incident rate was 19.6 assaults per 1,000 incarcerated people, which is the highest it’s been since at least 2013, the earliest year available. These numbers are for adult institutions and many of the assaults involve prisoners spitting or throwing bodily substances (fewer than half involve battery, physical injury or sexual assault).

How long new staff stay in corrections also matters, and Bertram pointed to challenging turnover rates found in a 2020-2021 survey. The job isn’t for everyone, said Hoffman, the former GBCI correctional officer. 

“Historically speaking, from the time that I started there to the time that I left… if 10 new people would start at one point, usually half would quit,” Hoffman said. “Because they didn’t want to work in that environment.” 

Former officers’ thoughts on Act 10

Former correctional officer Denis O’Neill has had complicated feelings about Act 10. He said he would’ve liked to have more money in his pocket, but he said the act was for the greater good of Wisconsin and saved billions for taxpayers. 

In Verdegan’s book, O’Neill recounts the story of a fight in 2015 with an incarcerated man who was attacking a staff member. Verdegan wrote that there was “no question O’Neill was fighting for his life.” 

O’Neill left GBCI with a medical termination and had physical, cognitive and speech therapy, Verdegan wrote. He had at least four documented concussions while working at GBCI. O’Neill told the Examiner that he had to go back to doctors he was seeing and get new paperwork after the state said they didn’t receive the original documents. 

“It’s their job to make it as hard as possible as they can for you so that you get sick and tired of doing everything and you forget about it,” O’Neill said. “That’s the game I felt that was being played.”

O’Neill said he received his benefits after a state senator stepped in. He thinks the union could have taken care of the issue for him if it had not been disempowered under Act 10.

“I could’ve just continued to work on my recovery,” he said. 

Kimberly Verdegan, a former GBCI correctional officer who is married to Joe Verdegan, thinks prison jobs are less desirable than teaching jobs and that the passage of Act 10 didn’t take this into account. 

“Not to say that a teacher’s job isn’t important,” Kimberly Verdegan said. “But they have their holidays off, they go home at night. They don’t get forced to stay another shift.”

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections declined comment for this story, and AFSCME Council 32 did not respond to requests for comment. 

Update: This story has been updated with the most recent data on staff vacancies and prison assaults.

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University of Utah student Rebeca Damico said her professors at first took a hard line against AI when ChatGPT was introduced in 2022, but she and other students say schools have softened their stands as the usefulness – and career potential – of the technology has become clearer. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for States Newsroom)

For 21-year-old Rebeca Damico, ChatGPT’s public release in 2022 during her sophomore year of college at the University of Utah felt like navigating a minefield.

The public relations student, now readying to graduate in the spring, said her professors immediately added policies to their syllabuses banning use of the chatbot, calling the generative artificial intelligence tool a form of plagiarism.

“For me, as someone who follows the rules, I was very scared,” Damico said. “I was like, oh, I can’t, you know, even think about using it, because they’ll know.”

Salt Lake City-based Damico studied journalism before switching her major to public relations, and saw ChatGPT and tools like it as a real threat to the writing industry. She also felt very aware of the “temptation” she and her classmates now had — suddenly a term paper that might take you all night to write could be done in a few minutes with the help of AI.

“I know people that started using it and would use it to … write their entire essays. I know people that got caught. I know people that didn’t,” Damico said. “Especially in these last couple weeks of the semester, it’s so easy to be like, ‘Oh, put it into ChatGPT,’ but then we’re like, if we do it once, it’s kind of like, this slippery slope.”

But students say they’re getting mixed messages – the stern warning from professors against use of AI and the growing pressure from the job market to learn how to master it.

The technological developments of generative AI over the last few years have cracked open a new industry, and a wealth of job opportunities. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the first statewide partnership with a tech firm to bring AI curriculum, resources and opportunities to the state’s public colleges.

And even for those students not going into an IT role, it’s likely they will be asked to use AI in some way in their industries. Recent research from the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Work Trend Index Annual Report found that 75% of people in the workforce are using AI at work, and that some hiring managers are equally prioritizing AI skills with real-world job experience.

Higher ed’s view of AI

Over the last few years, the University of Utah, like most academic institutions, has had to take a position on AI. As Damico experienced, the university added AI guidelines to its student handbook that take a fairly hard stance against the tools.

It urges professors to add additional AI detection tools in addition to education platform Canvas’ Turnitin feature, which scans assignments for plagiarism. The guidelines also now define the use of AI tools without citation, documentation or authorization as forms of cheating.

Though Damico said some professors continue to hold a hard line against AI, some have started to embrace it. The case-by-case basis Damico describes from her professors is in line with how many academic institutions are handling the technology.

Some universities spell out college-wide rules, while others leave it up to professors themselves to set AI standards in their classrooms. Others, like Stanford University’s policy, acknowledge that students are likely to interact with it.

Stanford bans AI from being used to “substantially complete an assignment or exam,” and says students must disclose its use, but says “absent a clear statement from a course instructor, use of or consultation with generative AI shall be treated analogously to assistance from another person.”

Virginia Byrne is an associate professor of higher education and student affairs at Morgan State University in Baltimore, and she studies technology in the lives of learners and educators, with a focus on how it impacts college students. She said the university allows professors to figure out what works best for them when it comes to AI. She herself often assigns projects that prompt students to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of popular AI tools.

She’s also a researcher with the TRAILS Institute, an multi-institution organization aiming to understand what trust in AI looks like, and how to create ethical, sustainable AI solutions. Along with Morgan State, researchers from University of Maryland, George Washington University and Cornell University conduct a variety of research, such as how ChatGPT can be used in health decision making, how to create watermark technology for AI or how other countries are shaping AI policy.

“It’s cool to be in a space with people doing research that’s related, but so different,” Byrne said. “Because it expands your thinking, and it allows us to bring graduate students and undergraduate students into this community where everyone is focused on trustworthiness and AI, but from so many different lenses.”

Byrne hopes that her students can see the potential that AI has to make their lives and work more easy, but she worries that it creates an “artificial expectation” for how young people need to perform online.

“It might lead some folks, younger folks, who are just starting their careers, to feel like they need to use (social media tool) Canva to look totally perfect on LinkedIn, and use all these tools to … optimize their time and their calendars,” Byrne said. “And I just worry that it’s creating a false expectation of speed and efficiency that the tools currently can’t accomplish.”

Theresa Fesinstine is the founder of peoplepower.ai, which trains HR professionals on ways AI can be used efficiently within their organization. This semester, she instructed her first college course at the City University of New York on AI and business, and taught students of all years and backgrounds.

Fesinstine said she was surprised how many of her students knew little to nothing about AI, but heard that many other instructors warned they’d fail students who were found to have used it in assignments. She thinks this mixed messaging often comes from not understanding the technology, and its abilities to help with an outline, or to find research resources.

“It’s a little scary, and I think that’s where, right now, most of the trepidation is centered around,” she said. “It’s that most people, in my opinion, haven’t been trained or understand how to use AI most effectively, meaning they use it in the same way that you would use Google.”

Real-world applications

Shriya Boppana, a 25-year-old MBA student at Duke University, not only uses AI in her day-to-day life for schoolwork, but she’s also pursuing a career in generative AI development and acquisitions. She wasn’t initially interested in AI, she said, but she worked on a project with Google and realized how the technology was set to influence everyday life, and how malleable it still is.

“Once you kind of realize how much that the tech actually isn’t as fleshed out as you think it is, I was a little more interested in … trying to understand what the path is to get it where it needs to go,” Boppana said.

She said she uses some form of AI tool every day, from planning her own schedule, to having a chatbot help decide how students in a group project should divide and complete work, based on their availability. Because she works with it regularly, she understands the strengths and limitations of AI, saying it helps her get mundane tasks done, process data or outline an assignment.

But she said the personalized tone she aims to have in her writing just isn’t there yet with the publicly available AI tools, so she doesn’t completely rely on it for papers or correspondence.

Parris Haynes, a 22-year-old junior studying philosophy at Morgan State, said the structure and high demand of some students’ coursework almost “encourages or incentivizes” them to use AI to help get it all done.

He sees himself either going into law, or academia and said he’s a little nervous about how AI is changing those industries. Though he leans on AI to help organize thoughts or assignments for classes like chemistry, Haynes said he wouldn’t go near it when it comes to his work or career-related objectives for his philosophy classes.

“I don’t really see much of a space for AI to relieve me of the burden of any academic assignments or potential career tasks in regards to philosophy,” Haynes said. “Even if it could write a convincing human-seeming paper, a philosophical paper, it’s robbing me of the joy of doing it.”

Gen Z’s outlook on their future with AI 

Like Haynes, Fesinstine knows that some of her students are interested, but a little scared about the power AI may have over their futures. Although there’s a lot of research about how older generations’ jobs are impacted by AI, those just about to break into the workforce may be the most affected, because they’ve grown up with these technologies.

“I would say the attitude is — I use this term a lot, ‘cautiously curious,’” Fesinstine said.  “You know, there’s definitely a vibe around ethics and protection that I don’t know that I would see in other generations, perhaps … But there’s also an acknowledgement that this is something that a lot of companies are going to need and are going to want to use.”

Now, two years since ChatGPT’s release, Damico has started to realize the ways generative AI is useful in the workplace. She began working with PR firm Kronus Communications earlier this year, and was encouraged to explore some time-saving or brainstorming functions of generative AI.

She’s become a fan of having ChatGPT explain new business concepts to her, or to get it to suggest Instagram captions. She also likes to use it for more refined answers than Google might provide, such as if she’s searching for publications to pitch a client to.

Though she’s still cautious, and won’t use generative AI to write actual assignments for her, Damico said she realizes she needs the knowledge and experience after graduation — “it gives you kind of this edge.”

Boppana, who sees her career growing in the AI space, feels incredibly optimistic about the role AI will play in her future. She knows she’s more knowledgeable and prepared to go into an AI-centered workforce than most, but she feels like the opportunities for growth in healthcare, telecommunications, computing and more are worth wading into uncertain waters.

“I think it’s like a beautiful opportunity for people to learn how machines just interact with the human world, and how we can, I don’t know, make, like, prosthetic limbs, like test artificial hearts … find hearing aids,” Boppana said. “There’s so much beauty in the way that AI helps human beings. I think you just have to find your space within it.”

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A customer walks by a display of fresh eggs at a grocery store on Sept. 25 in San Anselmo, California. Grocery prices rose 0.4% in November, according to the Consumer Price Index, leading to tougher times for many during the holiday season. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A rise in food prices makes for a less than merry holiday season.

Grocery prices rose 0.4% in November, according to the Consumer Price Index, released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Eggs made one of the biggest jumps at 8.2% over the month, and 37.5% over the past year, providing challenges for people trying to eat a somewhat cheaper protein and families cooking holiday foods such as sugar cookies and jelly doughnuts.

Although the increase in food prices has moderated a bit from past years, they are still more than 20% higher than they were before the pandemic, according to David Ortega, at Michigan State University.

“It was a key issue in the election in terms of people really feeling that sticker shock at the grocery store,” said Ortega, a food economist.

President-elect Donald Trump vowed to bring down prices during his campaign and blamed the Biden administration for how they reached this point. But in an interview with TIME published this week, Trump said he does not believe his presidency would be a failure if grocery prices do not come down.

“It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up,” he said.

Price changes to understand before you set the holiday table

The increase in grocery, or food at home prices, was partly driven by the rise in egg and beef prices, Ortega said. He said the price of holiday roast has been affected by drought and high feed prices. This year, the inventory of beef cattle was the smallest beef herd since 1951.

“On eggs, the story continues to be bird flu together with increased consumer demand given the holiday season,” he said following Wednesday’s release of the latest Consumer Price Index. “And for beef the issue is supply — high input costs and decisions that beef producers made a couple of years back when they were facing drought and high feed prices which has reduced beef supply, and this in turn is affecting beef prices.”

The latest food price numbers presented a mixed bag for holiday shoppers looking to bake treats this month. Flour and prepared four mixes fell 1% and bread decreased 1.3%, while sugar and sweets rose 0.2%, and butter ticked up 1.5%.

Oranges, including the popular stocking stuffers tangerines, fell 1.8% in the latest Consumer Price Index report.

The rise in cost of eating your meals at home compared to the rise in cost of eating out is also getting narrower, with the gap in inflation between restaurant menu prices and grocery year-over-year prices being the narrowest it has been since May 2023, according to Supermarket News. Food at home in previous reports rose 0.2% and 0.4% compared to 0.2% and 0.3% for the past two food away from home reports.

Are companies profiting off of uncertain times?

Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collective, a left-of-center economic think tank, said that just a few seed producers, meatpackers, and grocers dominate the food industry, which is a key part of the story of what drives grocery prices. This hurts lower-income shoppers the hardest. Oklahoma, Iowa, and Arkansas are some of the states most dominated by a single grocer, such as Walmart or Hy-Vee.

“Across the food and grocery industry, we have a sector that is deeply consolidated,” Mabud said.  … And so when you have big companies controlling such large chunks of the market, we know that they have used things like inflation, things like supply chain shocks to jack up prices far beyond what their input costs to justify.”

Mabud said that when there is this level of market concentration, companies can signal to each other in earnings calls that they are going to start raising prices.

“If you know that your only other competitors are also raising prices, there’s kind of no reason for you to try to undercut them if you both hold giant shares of a market,” she said.

An economic paper published this year found that companies are able to coordinate price increases around cost shocks and increase profits from these events. Mabud said the holidays provide plenty of opportunity for the food industry to raise prices on things people ordinarily don’t buy and don’t have a price comparison for during a less in-demand season.

“Grocers and the food industry kind of know that they know that they have more information about the underlying cost of a good than a consumer who only comes to buy the Christmas ham once a year. And so they can take advantage of that,” she said.

An unhappy new year for grocery shoppers

Economists are watching out for how the next administration will impact food prices.

Trump’s promise to impose heavy tariffs on the U.S.’s biggest trading partners – Mexico, Canada and China – are expected to drive up the cost of everything, including groceries.

Products the U.S. can’t produce year round, like fruit and coffee, will be affected, Ortega said.

“There’s still a lot of uncertainty in terms of whether these tariffs are really going to be implemented or are they a negotiating tool? But that creates a lot of uncertainty,” he said. “Even that amount of uncertainty can lead to a rise in costs as companies prepare for the potential of these tariffs taking place.”

Trump’s expected policy of mass deportation of immigrants will also affect the agriculture industry, in addition to the major human rights implications.

“If there’s a mass deportation that is a shock to the labor supply and the agricultural sector. And that will lead to an increase in costs as producers and companies have to offer higher wages to attract enough labor. Ultimately that gets passed down to the consumer in the form of higher prices,” Ortega said.

Mabud is also concerned that expected tariffs could mean companies take advantage of the policy change well beyond the actual financial impact to their business.

“It’s a policy change where consumers don’t necessarily know how much the price of an avocado is going up because of a tariff versus a supply chain issue versus the grocery store just wanting to increase the price,” she said.

Patricia “Pogo” Overmeyer, 65, who works as a lawyer in Arizona and lives with her retired husband, said she has always been focused on how to save money on groceries. But she said she has become even more thrifty since inflation worsened.

She said she’s been using more meatless meals and stocks up on holiday food all year round when prices are low, some of which she freezes and cans.

“Once I retire, our income will not be as high,” she said, “Most likely I will forgo some foods or make substitutions. It’s anyone’s guess as to what we will be paying for groceries.”

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Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. (Photo by U.S. Forest Service)

The $20,000 salary increase for wildland firefighters in the 2021 infrastructure law could be coming to an end next week if Congress doesn’t act.

The infrastructure law included $600 million to boost salaries for the nearly 11,200 wildland firefighters for two years, giving the Interior Department or Forest Service employees a raise of either $20,000 each or 50% of their base salary.

Federal wildland firefighters earn as little as $15 per hour, with entry level positions earning just less than $27,000 per year, according to Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, an advocacy group. Those rates are well below those of some state employees in similar roles.

The problem is Congress provided the higher pay rate would expire with the rest of government spending, which is set for Dec. 20.

Lawmakers are likely to once again pass a continuing resolution prior to that deadline to keep the government open at current spending levels into the new year.

But because the firefighter pay boost was part of the infrastructure law instead of a yearly spending bill, it would require additional legislation to keep being paid out beyond Dec. 20.

Firefighters, their advocates and some members of Congress are now pushing to have the pay raise made permanent, as lawmakers enter the final days of this session of Congress.

Disaster bill

President Joe Biden asked for a disaster relief spending bill after hurricanes Helene and Milton to include $24 billion for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Biden called for the bill — which is expected to be attached to the continuing resolution — to include “statutory language to support permanent, comprehensive pay reform for Federal wildland firefighters.”

The disaster aid bill appears the best chance of addressing the issue this year.

And appropriators are looking at fixing the issue in their annual funding bills, even as work on those bills is likely to be paused as Congress instead looks to pass a stopgap measure past Dec. 20 to keep the government funded for the next few months.

A House proposal included in Republicans’ spending bill covering the Interior Department, the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies would direct $330 million for a pay increase to replace the expiring infrastructure law salary increase. It would be a permanent pay fix.

Setting a baseline in an annual spending bill would help keep the salaries consistent and avoid the uncertainty that comes with the expiration of the one-time infrastructure law funding, supporters say.

“Rather than continuing temporary and uncertain Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) supplemental payments, the funding in this bill will permanently address Federal wildland firefighter pay and capacity,” the funding bill’s chief sponsor, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, and Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer wrote in an August op-ed in the Idaho Statesman.

Simpson is the chair of the subcommittee responsible for writing the bill. Chavez-DeRemer, who represents a purple district in Central Oregon, lost her reelection bid this fall but won a nomination to join President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet as secretary of Labor.

The Musk-Ramaswamy cost-cutting drive

The effort comes amid an atmosphere favorable to funding cuts in Washington. Republicans, who will soon have unified control of Washington as Trump returns to the Oval Office, have blamed the inflation of the past four years on high government spending.

Trump has tasked entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy with looking at ways to reduce federal spending. The pair of wealthy Trump backers has estimated $2 trillion could be trimmed from the $6.75 trillion annual budget, though they have been vague about what exactly would be chopped.

The Musk-Ramaswamy organization, which has not been formally created but is dubbed the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is not expected to be an official government entity. A Trump spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment about whether wildland firefighter pay would be a target for funding cuts.

Finding the political will to increase spending for any purpose in such an environment could be challenging, though increasing the pay of wildland firefighters — who work to manage the increasingly severe and costly fires that particularly ravage the rural areas known as the wildland-urban interface — has support from across the political spectrum in Congress, including leading GOP members.

The House funding bill authored by Simpson that included the pay raise passed the House nearly along party lines.

In a video message to constituents this month, Simpson sounded broadly supportive of Musk and Ramaswamy’s mission, but indicated there were areas he would fight to avoid cuts. He did not explicitly mention firefighter pay.

“It will be an interesting debate,” Simpson said of the effort to identify funding cuts. “I don’t mind having outside eyes look at how Congress does their job and how the money is spent. It could be spent more efficiently and more effectively, thus saving the taxpayer money.”

He added he was “excited” to see recommendations from the pair.

“There will be some I suspect I disagree with and a lot of them I probably agree with,” he said. “So that will be a debate for Congress.”

Senate bill

The Senate, which generally requires a much more bipartisan approach than the House, has not passed the Simpson-authored bill that Democrats opposed because of its drastic cuts to the Interior Department and EPA.

But the Senate companion spending bill, sponsored by Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, who chairs the corresponding spending panel in the Senate, also includes a permanent raise for wildland firefighters, as well as funding for a firefighter health and wellness program and a fund for housing.

“This bill honors the courageous work our federal wildland firefighters do by establishing a permanent fix to prevent a devastating pay cut,” Senate Appropriations Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, said in a statement after the committee passed the bill 28-1 in July.

Boeing workers gather on a picket line near the entrance to a Boeing facility on Oct. 24 in Seattle. The strike ended with a deal in November. Those workers returning to the job factored into growth reported in the latest labor report. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

The economy added 227,000 jobs in November, making for a strong jobs report despite a slight increase in the unemployment rate. Although the labor market has cooled this year, the Trump administration stands to inherit a fairly healthy labor market, with decent job growth across many sectors.

The number of jobs was bolstered by the return of striking workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing rose by 32,000 jobs. Boeing machinists who went on strike in September seeking higher pay and better retirement benefits reached a deal in November.

The agency also revised up the number of jobs added in the October and September reports by 56,000 jobs combined.

Although the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% to 4.2%, the economy is looking strong, particularly when you look at gross domestic product, said Louise Sheiner, with the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

“It’s been remarkably strong. If you look at what the Congressional Budget Office projected the level of real GDP before the pandemic, it’s higher now. We’ve just had a really strong economy,” said Sheiner, who focuses on fiscal policy.

Although she said the labor market has been slowing a little, it’s still healthy.

Elise Gould, senior economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the three-month average of job growth at 173,000 jobs shows a fairly strong labor market.

Employment in health care and government, including state government employment, continued to add jobs. Leisure and hospitality added 53,000 jobs and food services and drinking places added 29,000 jobs.

Gould said she is keeping an eye on the employment-to-population ratio, a measure of workers employed versus the working-age population. The measure is down 0.6 percentage point over the year.

“Let’s pay attention to that and see where that goes,” she said. “We were at a pretty nice high this summer that has come down a bit.”

Economists will also keep an eye on demographic data changes in the next jobs report. The unemployment rate for Black men jumped from 5.7% to 6% and the unemployment rate for Black women increased from 4.9% to 6%. Economists and policy experts said that although they will be watching these numbers, they don’t think the higher unemployment rate for Black people will necessarily continue. The month-to-month data can be volatile and may not point to a broader trend, they said.

“The Black unemployment rate jumped to 6.4% which is the highest since March and then looking at Black women, we saw their unemployment rate jumped to 6% which is the highest that we’ve seen in 2.5 years,” said Clara Wilson, senior policy analyst at the Groundwork Collaborative, a left-of-center economic think tank. “However, the spike in Black unemployment is something to always keep a track of because if we continue to see a rise in Black unemployment that typically is a warning signal canary in the coal mine that there could be further weakening in the labor market down the line.”

Retail jobs fell by 28,000, with a loss of 15,000 in general merchandise and 4,000 in electronics and appliance retailers.

“I’m not particularly concerned about it because it can be due to the fact that it was just a late Thanksgiving this year, so that holiday hiring may not have happened during the reference period in the same way,” Gould said.

Average hourly earnings rose 0.4%, the same as October, and 4% over the past year. Although some economists say the Federal Reserve would like to see wages come down to help it meet its 2% target for inflation, Wilson said higher wages are an indication that workers are benefiting from the current economy. She said she’s worried that the Trump administration will undo some of the economic progress she said has been made from the Biden administration’s major legislation.

“It’s really important to remember that real people are behind the data and the strong labor market propels more opportunities for workers and ensures families have higher wages and that leads to a stronger economy. Policymakers should take those lessons that we’ve learned from those strong public investments and sustain that progress,” Wilson said.

A scene on tariffs from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in 1986 is getting some extra attention. (Paramount Pictures.)

Fans of the movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” will remember the scene. Ben Stein plays a famously boring high school teacher giving a lecture about economics to a room full of teenagers fighting to stay awake. In about a minute, he covers the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the Laffer Curve, fundamental economic topics, desperately trying to get the students to engage with him.

“Anyone? Anyone…” is the memorable device Stein uses, to no avail, to engage an audience who couldn’t care less.

Some analysts say the economy is the reason voters chose Donald Trump for a second term in last month’s election. His economic plan is rooted in the broad and cavalier use of tariffs on imports from friends and foes alike. Last week, he announced his plan to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. The announcement prompted a surprise visit from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and a phone call from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Meanwhile, the American public, particularly Trump voters, remain in an economic daze much like Ben Stein’s class.

The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act was passed in 1930 in an attempt to thwart the impacts of the Great Depression. It was legislation initially designed to provide relief to the American agriculture sector but became “a means to raise tariffs in all sectors of the economy.” It also marked the end of an entrenched Republican platform of protectionist policymaking during that era. The policies ended because they were…anyone…anyone? Failures.

The details

Ignorance has become a vital asset in the political space these days. Yes, it is an asset in politics, but it is the devil in economics.

As a political asset, there are voters who believe that simply throwing a tariff at any nation they are mad at has nothing but benefits. Mad at Mexico because of migration? Slap them with a tariff and border crossings will go down, right? A good number of voters believe the answer is yes. Though this is almost entirely wrong, politically speaking, that ignorance served the pro-tariff candidate in November.

Economically however, the only real certainty that a 25% tariff on Mexico will have, is a 25% price increase in America. There actually is no disagreement on how tariffs functionally work, but I will refer to PBS for a simple explanation. Importers here pay the tariff, otherwise known as a tax, and remit that payment to the U.S. Treasury. How they pass that increase in costs along may vary a little from merchant to merchant, but ultimately it ends up in the price the American consumer pays.

Yes, a tariff program, in the most basic sense, is government imposed price increases. So, if high prices are the reason why an American voted against the current party in power, voting for higher prices seems, well, ignorant.

Now, does a tariff hurt who the angry American is mad at? Sure. In our example, Mexican goods become less affordable if a tariff is applied to them. In that sense, a tariff can hurt who it is designed to hurt. But that doesn’t change the fact that Americans pay the tariff, not the other country.

Many voters have the perspective that Trump imposed tariffs during his first term, and everything worked out fine. The Associated Press reports, “When Trump first became president in 2017, the federal government collected $34.6 billion in customs, duties and fees. That sum more than doubled under Trump to $70.8 billion in 2019, according to Office of Management and Budget records.” That sounds like a lot of money, until it is put in the context of the current $29.3 trillion gross domestic product.

The tariffs Trump is discussing in 2024 are wildly bigger and are being threatened toward virtually every country. But that’s not the only thing different between 2024 and 2017.

What else is different?

Anyone? Anyone?

The economy that Trump inherited in 2017 is sharply different than the one he will inherit in January. Inflation eight years ago was low and had been for a long time. Interest rates were also low and had been for a long time. The 2016 election wasn’t about inflation, and those rather small tariffs weren’t either. But times have changed.

For the life of me, I cannot find any credible theory as to how raising prices on imported goods will have the effect of lowering prices. I’ve written that sentence six times, and I know it reads like gibberish, but I just can’t help it.

Simply put, tariffs raise prices. After a bout with historic global inflation, consumers are exhausted with high prices. We can all agree with that part.

But there is a word for thinking that raising prices will actually lower them.

Anyone? Anyone?

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

Gov. Tony Evers kicks off a budget listening session in Appleton, Wis. on Monday, Dec. 2 | Photo by Andrew Kennard

Members of the public traveled to Einstein Middle School in Appleton Monday to tell Gov. Tony Evers about their priorities for Wisconsin’s 2025-2027 budget. 

During the first of Evers’ five planned listening sessions around the state ahead of his next budget proposal, Wisconsin residents expressed concern about the cost of housing, Wisconsin prisons and other issues in a breakout group attended by the Examiner. 

In opening remarks, Evers expressed support for addressing “long neglected” priorities and cited Wisconsin’s budget surplus of over $4 billion for the 2024 fiscal year. 

Evers said his priorities include expanding BadgerCare, legalizing marijuana, protecting access to reproductive health care, gun and justice reform, protecting the environment and investing in kids and schools. 

Local Republican state Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) has a different view on the surplus, Fox 11 reported. He wants to use it to  return money to taxpayers and provide relief from inflation.  

Members of the public split into six breakout groups. Each group focused on different topics relevant to the budget. The Examiner attended the “Strong & Safe Communities” group, which addressed issues ranging from affordable housing to Wisconsin’s prison system. 

A De Pere resident brought up the high cost of housing, saying that she and her husband are from Door County but couldn’t afford to live there even though they both work. Even in De Pere, “all the houses in my neighborhood are getting bought up and flipped,” she said. 

Tom Denk, who was formerly incarcerated, said he wants to see change in Wisconsin prisons. He said he wasn’t allowed access to enrichment  programs in prison. 

“The DOC needs more funding because their staff need to be educated. They need to have that trauma-informed care,” Denk said. “Because most people are going to get out of prison. I’m one of them.”

Substance abuse and anger management programs in the Wisconsin prison system have waitlists in the thousands. The Department of Corrections’ website says the agency tries to enroll people in programming as they get close to their release date. 

Karen Winkel, a homeless prevention specialist, said many of her clients have been recently released from the Department of Corrections or the Green Lake County Jail, with “no place to go. There’s no place to live.” 

Lisa Cruz, executive director of Multicultural Coalition, Inc., said her nonprofit is overwhelmed with serving immigrants and refugees. 

“It’s [a] humanitarian crisis,” Cruz said. “And I think we often think about that happening somewhere else, in another country, maybe in another state. It’s right here and it’s right now.”

Members of the group expressed concerns about American Rescue Plan funding running out, including funding for services for crime victims. Wisconsin passed $10 million in funding for victim services earlier this year, but providers are still facing budget cuts. 

“My agency received a 72% reduction, really impacting nearly half of our budget,” said Isabel Williston, executive director of ASTOP Sexual Abuse Center. 

Jared Hoy, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, attended the group discussion, but mostly listened since the focus was on the public’s input. 

An informational packet distributed at the event described positions the governor has taken on criminal justice. These include increasing funding for Wisconsin’s TAD (treatment alternatives and diversion) program and addressing staffing shortages that have worsened conditions in state prisons. 

Evers will introduce his budget proposal early next year, Communications Director Britt Cudaback told the Examiner in late October. In his remarks, Evers praised Wisconsin’s new legislative maps as more reflective of the “will of the people.” In last month’s election, the maps helped Democrats flip 14 previously Republican-held seats in the Legislature, narrowing Republican majorities. 

Evers’ next listening session is Wednesday evening in La Crosse, followed by Milwaukee, Ashland and a virtual session.  

Members of the public can submit comments on budget priorities through the governor’s constituent services page. 

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A red barn in rural Wisconsin. (Greg Conniff | For the Wisconsin Examiner)

In a purple corner of Wisconsin that reflects both the struggles and the promise of the state’s rural communities, a nonprofit group is trying to forge a path beyond isolation and political polarization.

River Valley Commons began six years ago with a lecture series to help residents of the village of Spring Green and the surrounding towns build community, expand critical thinking and foster hope and a sense of agency.

Today the organization connects disparate groups to address the concerns and needs of residents across a three-county area.

Stephanie “Stef” Morrill-Kerckhoff launched both the lecture series and River Valley Commons in 2019 after asking herself, “what can we do to increase the well-being of our area and the people who live in it?” she says. “And how can we do that collaboratively and in a way that brings in as many people, as many organizations, as we can?”

Stef and Joshua Morrill moved to the Wisconsin River valley area near Spring Green in 2013. Both were natives of western New York where the Chautauqua Institution, a nonprofit learning community and educational center, was founded 150 years ago and still operates.

The couple “felt like we would love to do something similar, where we could bring people together in a lovely natural space to learn and share information,” Stef Morrill-Kerckhoff says. They began organizing the first lecture series, working with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continuing Studies program, when Joshua Morrill died suddenly in February 2019.

The lecture program, usually held at the Octagon Barn, a distinctive rustic-looking venue northwest of Spring Green, became a memorial to Josh Morrill. His widow decided not to stop there. Since they had first moved to the region, the couple perceived a gap between the interest of local residents in addressing community needs and the wherewithal to reach their goals.

“One of the things that we had always wanted to do is to help with that …  just getting people together to talk about things, trying to move forward with solving problems, whatever they were,” says Morrill-Kerckhoff, who has since remarried.

The organization set its boundaries as the River Valley School District, with 11,000 residents and covering more than 400 square miles. Within the district are four villages and portions of nearly a dozen towns.

“The communities are different, but if you look at the broader picture, we all need broadband, we all need housing, we all need child care,” says Joy Kirkpatrick, the board chair of River Valley Commons who works for the University of Wisconsin Extension.

The organization’s work is informed by a desire to address the general problem  social scientist Robert Putnam diagnosed in “Bowling Alone.” The book, first published in the year 2000, analyzes the erosion of communal and civic life as engagement has declined among neighbors and with public institutions over the last half-century, fraying the social fabric.

“Whatever the reason, the civic groups and the clubs and the bowling league and the churches, indeed, dwindled, and we’re more alone in our houses,” said the author Sarah Smarsh, citing Putnam’s book when she spoke in August as part of the Morrill Lecture Series.

In early November, the series showed the documentary “Join or Die,” based on Putnam’s work, about the importance of participating in clubs and organizations as a component of healthier living for individuals as well as communities.

The goal of River Valley Commons isn’t to replace existing civic organizations but to help connect them with one another and “lift them up,” Kirkpatrick adds, whether they’re service clubs, local libraries, individual local government bodies or other groups.

Pandemic launch

By the time River Valley Commons officially got off the ground, the COVID-19 pandemic was just setting in. That redirected the organization’s initial mission toward fundraising for food pantries, including from people who were donating their federal pandemic relief checks.

“That wasn’t how I expected to start, but it was a way that we were able to provide some value very quickly, in an unexpected thing we were able to help with,” Morrill-Kerckhoff says.

Since then, the organization has focused on “helping people and organizations with ideas they have that they want to implement, or problems that they perceive in the community that they want to work on.”

One such project started in Spring Green. The Sauk County village has grown into one of Wisconsin’s prime tourist destinations on the strength of the nationally renowned American Players Theatre along with the quirky House on the Rock and the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin studio.

When some visitors in 2021 stopped Spring Green resident Patti Peltier on the street and asked about a place to eat, “I couldn’t think of any place that was open to direct tourists too,” Peltier says. “I took this concern to Stef, and we started looking for what sort of things could serve as an economic engine for our community.”

The result was Savor the River Valley, bringing together restaurants, shops, small farmers and food processors to help support and promote each other.

Peltier, a retired corporate marketing professional, says that there are many such food entrepreneurs in the area. Savor the River Valley aims to connect tourists with those businesses, but also “to connect all those food businesses so they could help support each other, help solve common problems,” she says.

Savor the River Valley has grown to 40 members. Membership is free, Peltier says, and open to all food-related businesses in the region.

In the winter, a slow time for the industry, the group sponsors food classes and pop-up dinners to draw in off-season visitors. A farm-and-food tour in April brings in some shoulder-season traffic, and the network publishes a local food guide for the tourist season.

“We’ve got a very collaborative model,” Peltier says. “We’re trying to see how much we can do by working together.”

Community catalyst

Peltier sees Morrill-Kerckhoff and River Valley Commons as a community catalyst. “It created a focal point for gathering up ideas and concerns about what we need in our community, looking for ways to solve those problems and looking for people who are willing to work together on those problems,” she says.

River Valley Commons also offers practical support, providing administrative assistance and serving as the fiscal agent for Savor the River Valley. It has done the same for other local projects and institutions.

Stacey Feiner and her husband, Bill Meyer, operate My Fine Homestead, a small organic farming operation about a half-hour west of Spring Green. They distribute produce, eggs, meat and other wares using the community supported agriculture model — CSA for short — with consumers paying an annual subscription fee and receiving deliveries every week or every other week.

A community farmer’s market in Spring Green led by My Fine Homestead and other providers is now part of River Valley Commons, providing a legal structure and acting as the market’s fiscal agent. Savor the River Valley helps “bring people to the area and creates a buzz,” Feiner says.

She and her husband were both raised on Wisconsin dairy farms. At a Morrill Lecture event in October, Feiner told the audience the story of how the couple navigated the shift from the farm life they’d grown up in to the small-scale organic farming that they practice now.

The couple’s business model thrives on forging personal relationships with customers. After Feiner shared their story that evening, “people have come up to me who saw it or watched it on YouTube and said, ‘I just feel more connected to you,’” she says.

“There’s all these little community projects that are happening, and sometimes couldn’t get a foot off the ground to get going,” Feiner says. “River Valley Commons has provided an umbrella, a safety-net organizational structure,” bringing together people with diverse skills “to piggyback off each other.”

Broadband access and affordable housing

River Valley Commons has helped convene a broadband coalition of local governments and others interested in upgrading internet service in the area. That work was made easier as state and federal funds for broadband expansion became available, Morrill-Kerckhoff says. The coalition has sponsored regular monthly technology help sessions at area libraries.

The lack of affordable housing has been another issue for the region, one that it has in common with the rest of Wisconsin. The organization has assembled a group including architects, lenders, local government officials and employers, but housing has presented bigger challenges not so easily resolved.

In the meantime, the organization is continually evolving.

Morrill-Kerckhoff envisions convening what she has been calling “common ground tables” — “where we can bring together groups of people to talk about different issues from any perspective, all perspectives, to try to find some common ground within some of the bigger issues that maybe we are always talking about.”

As for the lecture series itself, Morrill-Kerckhoff says, “I’d like to try to find ways to engage different communities than we have so far.”

River Valley Commons is also working to ensure its stability for the long term. To that end, it recently joined Wisconsin Partners — a confederation of  nonprofits.

Wisconsin Partners’ executive director, Rachel Peller, says that organization also arose from the concerns highlighted in “Bowling Alone” — “the reality and the idea that membership in associations has declined, so we’re all more isolated than we were before.”

Isolation and polarization

Peller traces the heightened polarization of these times to that isolation as well. It’s not just political polarization, but a divide that is represented in the media people consume and in their social contexts. Those divisions can obscure the potential for common ground, she says.

“Our policy differences are actually not that sharp,” Peller contends. “If you look at what people want to happen, what people believe in and what some of those core values are, there’s actually more overlap than we think there is, and the big issue is the social perception of that divide.”

Rural voters and their discontents

That perception is made worse by the retreat from community life that “Bowling Alone” describes, she says, which also leaves people feeling powerless. “So the more isolated we are, the less we feel like we can make an impact in our communities.”

Wisconsin Partners’ member groups include AARP, the Wisconsin Council of Churches, organizations of public health workers and child care educators, and the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority.

Part of what animates the organization is “recognizing the connection between all these different sectors,” Peller says. “If we don’t have child care, then we don’t have health care, and if we don’t have health care, our seniors are struggling, and if our seniors are struggling, then so are our churches.”

Wisconsin Partners has started up local groups in Southwest Wisconsin, the Kickapoo Valley and the Fox Valley. River Valley Commons is the first such group to join after launching on its own.

Peller credits River Valley Commons with being “really creative and nimble and adaptive” in its efforts.

“The work that Stephanie and River Valley Commons does almost just speaks for itself,” Peller says. “It’s just very powerful to know that everyday people are working together to make a difference in their own community, and trying and trying and trying again because it matters to them.”

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Tech insiders say Biden is leaving a strong foundation for high-tech industry, boosting broadband access, setting a foundation for AI regulation, and encouraging chip manufacturing. (Rebecca Noble | Getty Images)

As he’s poised to leave office in two months, President Joe Biden will leave a legacy of “proactive,” “nuanced” and “effective” tech policy strategy behind him, technologists across different sectors told States Newsroom.

Biden’s term was bookended by major issues in the tech world. When he took office in early 2021, he was faced with an economy and workforce that was struggling to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, and longstanding issues with a digital divide across the country. As he prepares to exit the White House, federal agencies are working to incorporate the principles from the 2023 AI Bill of Rights, on evolving technologies that will undoubtedly continue changing American life.

Though he was unable to get federal regulations on AI passed through Congress, Biden’s goal was to bring tech access to all Americans, while safeguarding against potential harms, the technologists said.

“I think everything that he does is foundational,” said Suriel Arellano, a longtime consultant and author on digital transformation who’s based in Los Angeles. “So it definitely sets the stage for long term innovation and regulation.”

The digital divide 

For Arellano, Biden’s attempt to bring internet access to all families stands out as a lasting piece of the president’s legacy. Broadband internet for work, healthcare and education was a part of Biden’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, especially targeting people in rural areas.

Biden earmarked $65 billion toward the project, which was dolled out to states and federal departments to establish or improve the physical infrastructure to support internet access. As of September, more than 2.4 million previously unserved homes and businesses have been connected to the internet, and $50 billion has been given to grant programs that support these goals across the states.

Arellano said he thinks there’s still work to do with the physical broadband infrastructure before that promise is realized — “I think that should have come first,” he said.

“But I think as a legacy, I think breaching the digital divide is actually one of the strong — maybe not the strongest, but I would say it’s definitely a strong legacy that he leaves,” Arellano said.

Shaping the U.S. conversation about AI

During Biden’s presidency, practical and responsible application of artificial intelligence became a major part of the tech conversation. The 2023 AI Bill of Rights created the White House AI Council, the creation of a framework for federal agencies to follow relating to privacy protection and a list of guidelines for securing AI workers, for navigating the effects on the labor market and for ensuring equity in AI use, among others.

The guidelines put forth by the administration are subtle, and “not likely to be felt by the average consumer,” said Austin-based Alex Shahrestani, an attorney and managing partner at Promise Legal, which specializes in tech and regulatory policy.

“It was something that’s very light touch and essentially sets up the groundwork to introduce a regulatory framework for AI providers without it being something that they’re really going to push back on,” Shahrestani said.

In recent months, some federal agencies have released their guidelines called for by the AI Bill of Rights, including the Department of Labor, and The Office of Management and Budget, which outlines how the government will go about “responsible acquisition” of AI. It may not seem like these guidelines would affect the average consumer, Shahrestani said, but government contractors are likely to be larger companies that already have a significant commercial footprint.

“It sets up these companies to then follow these procedures in other contexts, so whether that’s B2B or direct-to-consumer applications, that’s like more of a trickle down sort of approach,” he said.

Sheena Franklin, D.C.-based founder of K’ept Health and previously a lobbyist, said Biden emphasized the ethical use and development of AI, and set a tone of fostering public trust and preventing harm with the AI Bill of Rights.

Franklin and Shahrestani agreed it’s possible that President-elect Donald Trump could repeal some of Biden’s executive orders on AI, but they see the Bill of Rights as a fairly light approach to regulating it.

“It was a really nuanced and effective approach,” Shahrestani said. “There’s some inertia building, right? Like a snowball rolling down the hill. We’re early days for the snowball, but it just got started and it will only grow to be a bigger one.”

The CHIPS act

Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, which aimed to strengthen domestic semiconductor manufacturing, supply chains and the innovation economy with a $53 billion investment, is a major piece of his legacy, Franklin said. The bill centered on worker and community investments, and prioritized small businesses and underrepresented communities, with a goal of economic growth in the U.S., and especially in communities that needed support.

Two years after the bill was signed, the federal government, in partnership with American companies, has provided funding for semiconductor manufacturing projects that created more than 100,000 jobs and workforce development programs. The U.S. is on track to produce 30% of the world’s semiconductor chips in 2032, up from 10% today.

“He was really trying to position the U.S. as a global leader when it came to technology, because that industry is going to continue to grow,” Franklin said.

It’s hard to quantify what the lasting impact of the CHIPS act will be, but one immediate factor is computing, Shahrestani said. The AI models being developed right now have infinite abilities, he said, but the computing power had previously held the industry back.

“Being able to provide more compute through better chips, and more sophisticated hardware is going to be a big part of what provides, and what is behind the best AI technologies,” Shahrestani said.

Accountability for Big Tech

Many in the Big Tech community see Biden’s AI Bill of Rights, and its data privacy inclusions, as well as the Justice Department’s monopoly lawsuits against tech giants like Apple and Google, as hampering innovation.

Arellano is optimistic about the technological advances and innovation that the U.S. may see under a less regulation-focused Trump presidency, but he cautions that some regulations may be needed for privacy protections.

“My concern is always on the public side, you know, putting the dog on a leash, and making sure that our regulations are there in place to protect the people,” he said.

Franklin predicts that if Biden attempts any last-minute tech policy before he leaves office, it will probably be to pursue further antitrust cases. It would align with his goal of fostering competition between startups and small businesses and reinforce his legacy of safeguarding consumer interests, she said.

When she considered how to describe Biden’s tech legacy, Franklin said she nearly used the word “strength,” though she said he ultimately could have done a little bit more for tech regulation. But she landed on two words: “thoughtful and proactive.”

“Meaning, he’s thinking about everybody’s concerns,” Franklin said. “Not just thinking about the Big Tech and not just thinking about the consumers, right? Like there has to be a balance there.”

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Dogecoin. In the week after the 2024 presidential election, the coin’s value jumped 250%. (Image: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Rockets aren’t the only thing Elon Musk is sending into the stratosphere.

After a three-year plummet, dogecoin is blasting off again, jumping 250% since the election of Donald Trump – part of a broader wave of optimism in the industry, due to Trump’s courting of crypto advocates during his campaign.

Trump’s informal appointment of Musk to what he calls the Department of Government Efficiency – D.O.G.E for short – also helped pump the dog-themed meme coin.

This isn’t the first time Musk, who styles himself as “the Dogefather,” has fueled interest in dogecoin.

In May 2021, its price shot up in anticipation of Musk’s guest appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” During one skit, Musk played a financial analyst in conversation with a Weekend Update host, who repeatedly asked him, “What is dogecoin?” After some obfuscation, Musk’s character finally admitted that it was a hustle. The price of the coin went into a freefall. Just over a year later, it had shed over 90% of its peak value.

The losses hit small investors hard. In 2022, one of them filed a class action lawsuit against Musk for market manipulation and insider trading, though the case was dismissed in August 2024.

Why has dogecoin – a meme coin that was never meant to be taken seriously as an investment – seen such extreme swings in value?

We’re all in this together

Dogecoin was launched in 2013 to spoof bitcoin and a slew of other cryptocurrencies that were claiming to disrupt the traditional world of finance. Two strangers from across the globe met online, copied the code of an existing coin, and branded it with the already popular Doge internet meme – a picture of a Shiba Inu dog surrounded by fragments of broken English: “wow much coin.”

Although their main goal was to make the coin pointless and undesirable, it became one of the most popular and enduring cryptocurrencies on the market.

Following dogecoin’s previous surge in 2021, I studied how its fervent network of influencers and everyday investors worked together to draw tremendous attention – and capital – to the joke currency.

Elon Musk’s 2021 appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’ caused the price of dogecoin to tumble.

To understand the appeal of these absurd investments, you have to look at the time and energy that users invest into these networks and the rewards, both financial and social, they get in return.

Meme coins are collaborative enterprises. Members of these online communities have an economic incentive to become outspoken boosters: The more the value of dogecoin rises, the more their investments grow. But they also receive social validation from other meme coin investors when they pump up the coin.

In other words, behind every meme coin is a collective of strangers on a communal mission to make more money.

Dogecoin and its imitators have been described by their leadership as crypto movements, shared journeys and community-owned projects. Beyond branding the assets with culturally resonant images, whether it’s a Shiba Inu dog or Pepe the Frog, successful crypto ventures are characterized by complex webs of trust. Trust in the technology. Trust in its potential for future appreciation. And trust that those holding power in the networks won’t exploit the rest.

This loyalty is woven among a global network of users who collaborate around the clock to promote their coin and demonstrate their unwavering commitment to its success.

In times of price appreciation, the collective buzzes with elation.

During price dips, community members mutually reinforce their comrades’ – and their own – beliefs that this is just a bump in the road and that their collective efforts will eventually lead to a handsome payoff. Even in the coldest of crypto winters, this ritualistic behavior helps these speculative communities endure. Community serves as a substitute for financial loss.

The investment strategies in these communities – and the conviction in their payoff – involve repeating and reposting what others have said, like any traditional internet meme.

Trolling traditional valuation

The real value of meme coins cannot be understood in the same way as traditional assets, such as stocks and physical commodities. These types of assets have fundamentals, such as a company’s financial statements, or public demand for basic goods, from coffee to oil.

Conversely, the fundamentals of meme coins are reflected in their network activity, such as daily active users, and less concrete metrics, such as social sentiment and mindshare – how much public awareness a coin has generated compared with its rivals.

Of course, the valuations of traditional assets are also affected by these social factors. The difference is that meme coins offer little by way of productive activity. They add nothing to the economy. Occasionally, their leadership will build financial services around them, but these are generally added as afterthoughts, especially as a way to drum up more speculative excitement.

Meme coins troll the traditional conventions of valuation and mock the edicts and dogmas of mainstream investors.

And that’s exactly the point.

Participation in meme coin communities – or any crypto community, for that matter – entails embracing an alternative economic experience. They are speculative sandboxes for playing outside of the conventional rules of investment.

Who let the Doge out?

Musk is the quintessential meme coin influencer.

As the richest man in the world, he’s viewed by many as a paragon of savvy investing. His massive following extends far beyond dogecoin’s social network. And his promotional efforts are playful – so playful that the judge in his class-action case dismissed his dogecoin tweets as mere “puffery” and that “no reasonable investor could rely upon them.”

Dogecoin previously reached the peak of its memetic momentum when Musk appeared on “Saturday Night Live.” Now, instead of sitting at the Weekend Update news desk cracking jokes, he’s sitting in Trump’s office advising the president-elect. In other words, dogecoin’s memetic resonance has ascended from pop culture to politics, helping it capture a bigger slice of the public’s mindshare.

While dogecoin has specifically benefited from Musk’s proximity to Trump, the broader crypto market is leaping with optimism for a crypto-friendly administration. Speaking at the Bitcoin 2024 conference in July, the GOP candidate ensured he’d make the United States “the crypto capital of the planet.” After pouring $131 million into this election cycle, the crypto industry can now claim 274 pro-crypto members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 20 pro-crypto U.S. senators.

Between Musk buddying up with Trump and a shifting regulatory environment, the dog can once again run free.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A ‘For Sale’ sign is seen on March 19 in Austin, Texas. Policymakers are watching for indications of what President-elect Donald Trump plans to do to ease housing costs next year after an election where voters were laser-focused on the economy.

Americans hand over a huge chunk of their paycheck for a roof over their heads. Policymakers are looking out for indications of what President-elect Donald Trump plans to do to ease housing costs next year after an election where voters were laser-focused on the economy.

Housing accounted for 32.9% of consumers’ spending in 2023, making it the largest share of consumer expenditures, according to the most recently available data Bureau of Labor Statistics. And that was an increase of 5.7% from 2022.

This year, many Americans still struggle to find affordable housing, whether they choose to rent or buy a home.

There’s a lot economists and housing advocates still don’t know about what to expect from a second Trump term. It’s unclear which campaign promises will find their way into administrative rules or  legislation, even with a Republican trifecta – the GOP will control the White House and both chambers of Congress.

But policy experts, researchers and economic analysts are looking at Trump’s record, his recent remarks on housing, and  Project 2025 – the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 900-page plan to overhaul the executive branch – for a glimpse of what may lie ahead.

Tariffs and the cost of building homes

Trump has spoken frequently of his proposed 60% tariff on goods from China, which he has said would create more manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Tariffs could be as high as 20% on goods from other countries.

But housing economists and other experts say that could be bad news for building more affordable housing.

Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company, said tariffs are one of her main concerns about the effects of a second Trump term.

“One of the biggest concerns is not just lumber [costs], but the overall cost of materials, which have been going up,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist for CoreLogic, a financial services company.

Construction material prices have risen 38.8% since February 2020, according to an Associated Builders and Contractors’ analysis of October Producer Price Index data.

Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the department of planning and landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, said building costs are already high from tariffs on Canadian lumber that Trump first imposed and that the Biden administration kept and increased.

“It used to be in construction that you would get a bid from a contractor or a subcontractor or supplier and it would be good for 60 days. Now, the bids are good for like five days because you don’t know where prices are going to be,” he said.

Immigration policy and its effect on construction labor

Trump tweeted on Nov. 18 that he is planning to use the declaration of a national emergency as part of his mass  deportation plan.

Besides disrupting lives, Trump’s plan  could have effects on what it costs to build housing, Hepp said.

“There is the cost of labor as well, if we do indeed have all these deportations. That’s a big, big concern,” she said. “A large share of labor in the construction industry obviously comes from immigrants. That is a huge issue for new construction and particularly new construction as it relates to affordable housing.”

Foreign-born construction workers made up 3 million of the 11.9 million people who work in the construction industry in 2023, according to the latest American Community Survey data.

Trump’s ‘not in my backyard’  rhetoric

The former president hasn’t always been clear on where he stands with zoning regulations and making way for more affordable housing in a wide variety of neighborhoods.

In a July Bloomberg interview, Trump spoke critically of zoning regulations and said that they drive up housing costs. But Trump also has a record of tending toward a “not in my backyard,” or NIMBY, approach to housing that maintained some of these zoning regulations. The Trump administration moved to roll back an Obama-era regulation that tied HUD funding to assessing and reducing housing discrimination in neighborhoods.

“He’ll talk about reducing regulations on developers, but he’ll also use this NIMBYism talking about protecting suburbs from low-income housing and you really can’t have it both ways,” said Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Paulsen said Project 2025 embraces a pushback against anti-NIMBY approaches to expand multi-family housing.

“What I read in the Project 2025 documents is a clear statement that says every local community and neighborhood should be able to choose the housing it wants to accept or not. The challenge of that is that if every community in every neighborhood can veto housing, then we just don’t get enough housing and prices go up and prices and rents go up,” he said.

A more punitive approach to homelessness 

Last year, homelessness rose to its highest level recorded since the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began collecting this information in 2007. The ending of pandemic safety nets that gave some households better financial stability and a lack of affordable housing supply contributed to the number of unhoused people, the report explained.

Trump has been outspoken on his view that homeless people should be “off our streets.” The president-elect has also proposed putting unhoused people with mental health issues into “mental institutions.”

“There’s a movement that I think is largely reflected in Project 2025 that says, actually, cities need more coercive policy tools to enforce public order and to require that someone who’s camping take a shelter placement even if they don’t want it,” Paulsen said.

Saadian said that given the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which makes it easier to criminalize unhoused populations for sleeping outside, she’s worried about a changing political environment where policies that prioritize stable housing over policing fall out of favor.

“I think all of that just shows a culture shift in the political dynamic here that we’re definitely worried about,” she said.

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President-elect Donald Trump says on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China until those countries stop the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the U.S. (Getty photo illustration by Olivier Le Moal)

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement Monday that he would impose harsh tariffs on the United States’ closest trading partners will work against his pledge to bring down consumer prices, Democrats in Congress and economists are warning.

In a pair of posts to his social media platform, Truth Social, on Monday evening, Trump said on his first day in office he would impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on goods from China until those countries stopped the flow of illegal drugs and migrants into the U.S.

“Thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,” Trump wrote. “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!”

While Trump has not always followed through on threats of stiff tariffs — generating doubts about how severe the next round will actually be — the executive branch does have wide latitude to impose the taxes on foreign goods without congressional approval, meaning it is likely Trump will act in some way.

“We are going to get several tariff threats via rage-posts over the next four years,” Brendan Duke, a senior director for economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, said in an interview. “Unclear what exact levels on what exact countries he is going to pursue.”

What about inflation?

Tariffs are consistent with Trump’s preference for a protectionist trade policy, but may actively hurt in an area that was key to his election win over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris this month: taming inflation.

An analysis from the Center for American Progress said the tariffs Trump announced Monday would raise annual costs for the average U.S. family by $1,300.

Democratic members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees tax and trade policy, estimated tariffs favored by Trump would increase consumer costs by up to $4,000 per year.

According to CBS News exit polling, 78% of voters said inflation was a moderate or severe hardship. Trump won voters who rated the economy as bad by 40 points over Harris.

Cars, ag and energy to be hardest-hit

About 15% of goods consumed in the United States are imported, Gary Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an economics research center, said.

Adding across-the-board tariffs on those imports would contribute to consumers’ overall cost of living, even without considering related economic consequences.

“You’ve added to inflation, and that’s assuming that U.S. producers of similar products don’t jack up their prices,” he said. “But experience shows that if the economy is strong, they’ll do just that.”

The U.S. automotive sector, which is heavily integrated with Mexico and Canada with parts of a single vehicle produced in all three countries, could see “pretty startling” price increases, Hufbauer said.

Additionally, the U.S. imports Mexican fruits and vegetables and Canadian oil, complicating Trump’s campaign promise to bring down prices specifically of groceries and gas, Duke said.

“Americans have obviously been frustrated with the cost of food and the cost of gas,” he said. “Some parts of the United States are heavily reliant on Canadian oil, even though we’re a net exporter … So, one would expect price increases, especially in places like the Midwest that are heavily dependent on Canadian oil.”

Tariffs on Chinese goods would increase the costs of electronics, clothing and other consumer goods, Duke said.

Democratic legislation

Ways and Means Democrats, led by Washington’s Suzan DelBene and Virginia’s Don Beyer, and also joined by Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, Terri Sewell of Alabama, Steven Horsford of Nevada, Dan Kildee of Michigan and four others, introduced a bill Tuesday to rein in the executive’s ability to implement tariffs, citing the added cost to American families.

“The American people have clearly and consistently said that costs are one of their top concerns,” DelBene said in a statement. “Imposing sweeping tariffs on imported goods would raise prices on consumer products by thousands of dollars a year according to estimates. Not only would widespread tariffs drive up costs at home and likely send our economy into recession, but they would damage our trade relationships with allies and likely lead to significant retaliation, hurting American workers, farmers, and businesses.”

Trump’s promises of dramatic tariffs go beyond the intent of the law that gave the president the power to enact tariffs, the Democrats said. Congress wanted a president to be able to quickly impose tariffs on hostile foreign countries, but did not intend “to allow a president to indiscriminately impose tariffs without Congress’ approval.”

Tariffs can be an important tool for conducting foreign policy, but the range Trump is proposing is 10 to 20 times beyond what even he did in his first term, Duke said.

He cautioned that the final form of new tariffs may not be exactly what Trump proposed Monday night, though they could be similar.

“He’s gonna do something on tariffs. I don’t know what. It’s probably not these exact levels on these exact countries,” he said. “But it rhymes with it.”

Immigrant farm workers harvest broccoli on March 16, 2006, near the border town of San Luis, south of Yuma, Arizona. (David McNew | Getty Images)

A federal judge in Kentucky has blocked the Biden administration’s expanded protections for farmworkers who come to work in the United States under H-2A visas.

The injunction issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Danny Reeves applies in Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia and Alabama. Plaintiffs in the case —  Kentucky farmers and Republican attorneys general from the four states — argued that the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) rules would allow foreign farmworkers to unionize.

Reeves agreed, saying the rules rephrase the National Labor Relations Act to extend American workers’ right to unionize to foreign H-2A workers, a change that he said would require action by Congress.

“The Final Rule not so sneakily creates substantive collective bargaining rights for H-2A agricultural workers through the ‘prohibitions’ it places on their employers,” Reeves wrote. “Framing these provisions as mere expansions of anti-retaliation policies, the DOL attempts to grant H-2A workers substantive rights without Congressional authorization.”

The DOL had finalized the rules to give temporary farmworkers additional legal protections against employer retaliation, unsafe working conditions and illegal recruitment practices.

A voicemail left with the U.S. Department of Labor media relations office asking about the injunction was not immediately returned.

In fiscal year 2022, the DOL certified approximately 370,000 workers through the H-2A visa process. According to the nonprofit research organization Center for Global Development, the majority of H-2A visa workers come from Mexico.

Coleman, the Kentucky attorney general, in a statement said the “unlawful and unnecessary” Biden administration rule “would have made it harder to get farmers’ products to grocery store shelves and would have increased already high prices for families.”

“We will continue to do what’s right to stand up for Kentucky’s farmers,” Coleman said.

Reeves declined a request from plaintiffs to block the federal rules nationwide, curbing the impact of his order to just the states and individual farmers and farm labor organizations that asked for an injunction.

The new rules had already been blocked in 17 other states after a separate ruling from a federal judge in Georgia.

Read the ruling

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Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on Facebook and X.

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Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer (R-Oregon) lost her congressional seat in a close election this month to Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum. (Julia Shumway | Oregon Capital Chronicle)

Oregon Republican U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who cultivated a closer relationship with some labor unions than most Republicans and narrowly lost her bid for a second term in Congress earlier this month, is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Labor Department.

Trump on Friday praised Chavez-DeRemer, the daughter of a Teamster who sought endorsements from unions in her unsuccessful reelection campaign, for building relationships with business and labor.

“I look forward to working with her to create tremendous opportunity for American Workers, to expand Training and Apprenticeships, to grow wages and improve working conditions, to bring back our Manufacturing jobs,” Trump said in a statement. ‘Together, we will achieve historic cooperation between Business and Labor that will restore the American Dream for Working Families.”

Chavez-DeRemer thanked him in a social media post, writing “Working-class Americans finally have a lifeline with you in the White House. It’s time to bring our economy to new heights and secure a prosperous future for all hardworking Americans.”

She narrowly won election in 2022 in Oregon’s 5th Congressional District, which stretches from Bend across the Cascades to the suburbs of Portland. Democratic President Joe Biden won the district by 9 points in 2020, and Democratic state Rep. Janelle Bynum — who twice beat Chavez-DeRemer in state legislative races and will be Oregon’s first Black member of Congress — defeated Chavez-DeRemer by 2.4 points this year.

Chavez-DeRemer operated as a moderate Republican during her nearly two years in federal office, frequently citing an analysis that rated her the second-most bipartisan member of Congress.

She also sought support from unions, garnering endorsements from more than 20 of them. Most of those endorsements came from small local unions, though she received the sole endorsement of Teamsters Joint Council No. 37, which represents roughly 20,000 workers in various industries across Oregon, Idaho and southwest Washington.

National Teamsters President Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention this summer, supported Chavez-DeRemer for labor secretary. He posted a photo Friday evening of himself with Trump and Chavez-DeRemer, thanking Trump in the caption for “putting American workers first” by nominating Chavez-DeRemer.

“North America’s strongest union is ready to work with you every step of the way to expand good union jobs and rebuild our nation’s middle class,” he wrote.

Oregon’s largest private-sector union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, gave both Chavez-DeRemer and Bynum its “greenlight” stamp, indicating that both candidates’ values align with the union’s. The state’s other large unions — Service Employees International Union Local 503, with 72,000 members; the Oregon Education Association, with 41,000 members; and the ​​American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, with 300,000 Oregon members — exclusively backed Bynum.

Chavez-DeRemer rarely mentioned Trump on the campaign trail, though she publicly endorsed him ahead of the May primary in Oregon. One of her final campaign stops, an October rally with House Speaker Mike Johnson, was to an audience decked out in pro-Trump merchandise.

The business manager of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 701 introduced Chavez-DeRemer at that event, and Johnson commented on her support for unions.

“She’s got more labor union endorsements than any Republican I’ve ever seen in my life,” Johnson said. “She understands the plight of working people.”

Since losing her election, Chavez-DeRemer has vocally praised Trump, writing on X earlier this week that he “expanded on his Working Class coalition by speaking directly to hardworking Americans. This is a true political realignment. We must continue to be the party of the American Worker, with President Trump leading the way!”

Democrats criticize record

Democrats criticized Chavez-DeRemer for endorsing Trump and voting for Johnson as speaker, as well as for inconsistent statements and actions on issues including abortion rights, protections for LGBTQ+ individuals and the Biden administration’s infrastructure law.

Both liberals and conservatives have criticized her labor record — Democrats say she hasn’t proven that she’s a friend of the labor movement despite seeking endorsements, while conservative organizations including the Competitive Enterprise Institute faulted her for backing the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, a Democratic priority which would weaken state “right-to-work” laws to allow unions to collect dues from all employees, increase penalties for employers who violate labor law and strengthen employees’ legal rights to join a union.

Before running for Congress in 2022, Chavez-DeRemer served on the Happy Valley City Council and as mayor of the 28,000-population Portland suburb. She ran unsuccessfully for the state House in 2016 and 2018, losing both times to Bynum.

Some of her colleagues in Oregon’s congressional delegation were surprised by rumors Trump was considering Chavez-DeRemer.

U.S. Rep. Andrea Salinas, a Democrat who along with Chavez-DeRemer was one of Oregon’s first Latinas in Congress, called discussion about it “interesting” during a Thursday interview.

“If the Trump administration thinks that she would be a reasonable pick for Department of Labor, I think that could be interesting,” Salinas said. “I don’t know how much background she actually has in labor and workforce issues, I think she served on the committee, but yeah, it could be interesting.”

Retiring U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, the Democratic dean of Oregon’s congressional delegation, said he didn’t know what to make of Trump’s appointments, who he said were “manifestly polarizing and unqualified.”

“I wish Lori luck,” he told the Capital Chronicle. “I hope they treat her better than they treated the others by not doing their homework. That’s a brutal situation to be in, and I wish her well if she decides to wade into it.”

U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, who will return to being the only Republican member of Oregon’s congressional delegation after Chavez-DeRemer’s loss, praised her nomination.

“She is an excellent choice by president-elect Trump to serve as labor secretary and she will be a credit to our great state of Oregon. Congratulations again to you, Lori, soon to be ‘Madam Secretary’!!” Bentz wrote on X.

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and X.

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President-elect Donald Trump said Monday he would nominate former Congressman Sean Duffy as Transportation secretary. In this photo, Duffy and his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, speak onstage during the 2023 FOX Nation Patriot Awards at The Grand Ole Opry on Nov. 16, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee. (Photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images)

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy, a Wisconsin Republican, to be the next secretary of Transportation, Trump said in a statement Monday evening.

Duffy, who earned praise from both parties during his House tenure for helping to pass legislation funding a bridge connecting Wisconsin and Minnesota, won five elections to the U.S. House but resigned his seat in 2019 to care for a daughter born with a heart condition and Down syndrome.

Duffy appeared on MTV’s “The Real World” before running for Congress. He met his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, on the show.

After leaving Congress, Duffy returned to TV, appearing as a commentator on CNN, a contributor for Fox News and later a co-host on Fox Business.

A former member of the House Financial Services Committee, he also led the financial services practice at the Republican-leaning lobbying firm BGR Group.

In the written statement from the presidential transition, Trump highlighted Duffy’s years in Congress.

“Sean will use his experience and the relationships he has built over many years in Congress to maintain and rebuild our Nation’s Infrastructure, and fulfill our Mission of ushering in The Golden Age of Travel, focusing on Safety, Efficiency, and Innovation,” Trump wrote. “Importantly, he will greatly elevate the Travel Experience for all Americans!”

Trump and Duffy appear to enjoy a warm relationship, with the former president encouraging Duffy to run for Wisconsin governor in 2022, bypassing the front-runner for the GOP nomination, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch.

DOT portfolio

Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed, a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021. That law authorizes highway and transit programs through the end of September 2026.

The law increased several sources of transportation funding, including some grant programs that are awarded at the secretary’s discretion.

If confirmed, Duffy would also oversee the Federal Aviation Administration, which is monitoring Boeing after a series of safety mishaps involving the manufacturer’s jets.

New standards for rail safety, following a disastrous derailment last year of a train carrying hazardous materials near East Palestine, Ohio, and autonomous vehicles could also be on the next secretary’s agenda.

Trump’s Transportation secretary in his first term was Elaine Chao, who was the Labor secretary under former President George W. Bush. Chao, who is married to outgoing Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, announced her resignation from the administration on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s record on transportation during his first term was marked by a series of false starts on a massive infrastructure package that never materialized. Some inside the administration sought to boost private-sector involvement in infrastructure, while others favored more direct federal spending.

Tesla owner Elon Musk, right, was hardly alone in the tech sector in supporting the reelection efforts by Donald Trump, left. Many Silicon Valley investors and innovators were hoping for a lighter regulatory hand than they have seen under President Joe Biden. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Some venture capital investors, who have funded the tech boom in Silicon Valley and beyond, say they are excited by the prospect of a lighter regulatory environment under a new Trump Administration than they saw under President Joe Biden.

But they warn that Trump policies that will benefit many technology companies may come at a cost to other pro-Trump voters.

The Bay Area bubble of Silicon Valley, which is home to institutional tech giants like Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe, had been previously seen as a left-leaning region, like many other California communities. But the 2024 election was a unique one, venture capitalists and founders say.

“There’s been a significant shift in the valley rightward since the last election,” said Joe Endoso, a Silicon Valley investor.  “And you’ve seen that in the financial flows — in the level of dollars — that were directed towards supporting President Trump’s campaign from the technology sector.”

Endoso, president of financial tech platform Linqto, said some tech industry people who previously voted for progressive issues and candidates this time cast their ballot for Trump. He said he’s heard more concern about potential regulations in the tech industry and negative economic effects under continued Democratic leadership.

This turn toward Trump wasn’t universal in the Valley. The majority of donations from employees at companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft went toward Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, Reuters reported in September. But tech billionaires like Elon Musk and venture capital investors, like Andreessen Horowitz co-founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, poured millions into his campaign.

While Trump didn’t receive unanimous support from the tech sector, many American tech giants and investors are excited about the light-handed approach to tech regulation that’s likely to come in the next four years. Congress has struggled to pass any federal laws around emerging technology like AI, though states have done so on their own on issues like data privacy, transparency, discrimination, and on how AI-generated images can be used.

The Biden administration, however, on its own issued a number of “best practice” guides for emerging technologies and aggressively pursued antitrust cases against some tech giants, including an ongoing case against Google that could force the company to spin off its popular Chrome web browser.

It appears unlikely that Trump will continue the Biden era regulatory and enforcement drives.

Those working in emerging technologies like AI are making advancements so quickly that regulators are unlikely to be able to keep up anyway, Endoso said. The tech industry mindset — move fast and break things, first coined by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg — will likely continue under Trump’s administration.

“You’re running through walls and hoping that when the regulations come about, they’re not going to be so, you know, restrictive,” Endoso said. “But you’re not going to sit and wait for the regulators. You can’t afford to.”

Why care about the VC market?

Venture capitalists pour money into many promising startups in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, looking for the ones that will create lucrative new technologies or “disrupt” existing ones. Silicon Valley successes include Uber, which received its first round of venture capital investment for just about $1.3 million in 2010, and Airbnb, which started with just a $20,000 investment in 2008. Today, the companies are worth $146 billion and $84 billion, respectively.

Many more, however, fail. High-visibility startups that folded after raising very large sums include streaming platform Quibi, which raised $1.75 billion and ChaCha, the SMS text-based search platform that had raised $108 million.

The high-risk, high-reward nature of the industry makes for a rarified business, and there’s a high barrier to entry. To become an accredited venture capital investor, one must have an income of at least $200,000 a year, or be worth $1 million. The handful of firms pouring the most money into the United States technology market are usually worth billions.

Yet, the technology being developed and funded by wealthy investors today will shape the next decade of everyone’s lives. Some of the most influential technology in the global economy has been released under President Joe Biden’s administration in the last three and a half years.

Advancements in generative AI and machine learning technology, rapid development of augmented and virtual reality, further adoption of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as internet connected appliances and home devices, along with automation of many industries have already shifted much of American life. ChatGPT, one of the most recognizable examples of generative AI that the public can use, was only released two years ago, but the sector of generative AI is already threatening many American jobs.

Those with writing-focused careers like copywriters and social media marketers, are already feeling the disruption, and experts believe STEM professionals, educators and workforce trainers and others in creative and arts fields are going to see much of their job responsibilities automated by AI by 2030. 

The venture capital market has been a volatile one over the last four years. Though many of Trump’s attacks on Democrats during his campaign cycle centered on the healthy economy under his first term, the COVID-19 pandemic was the single-biggest economic factor to disrupt the venture capital market and others.

The U.S. saw its biggest year for venture capital investments in 2021, but supply-chain issues and the continuing reliance on remote work changed the trajectory of many companies’ plans to go public on the stock market. High inflation and interest rates have kept many investors from deploying capital and many companies from completing mergers and acquisitions since then, although the second half of 2024 is looking up.

The economy quickly became the number one issue for Americans in the presidential election cycle. And though thriving venture capital markets usually benefit those that are already wealthy enough to invest, we’ll likely see a positive correlation in the general markets too, said Scott Nissenbaum, president and CEO of Ben Franklin Technology Partners, an innovation-centered fund in Pennsylvania.

“A thriving, efficient market is good for venture capital. And the flip side is also true,” he said. “We feed into and create the innovations and the efficiencies and the next generation … that create the robust and the boom.”

How investors and founders are preparing for Trump 

Nissenbaum predicts that Trump may remove regulations for technology used by U.S. transportation and military systems, allowing for more tech integration than previously permitted without human safeguards in place. That might look like more flight optimization technology, or more drone usage by military branches. Nissenbaum also thinks Trump will attempt to open up space travel, especially with big backing by Musk, who runs SpaceX.

Health care also has been implementing technology rapidly, and Nissenbaum believes could see some major changes under Trump.

That is of note for healthtech founder Sipra Laddha, an Atlanta-based psychiatrist and cofounder of LunaJoy, which provides in-person and virtual wellness visits for women. The three-year-old company raised venture capital in 2022 and 2023, despite a more challenging fundraising market. Women’s health care companies saw a surge of VC investment in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022, an exception to the generally slower investment market at the time.

But she is uncertain about how Trump’s potential cabinet appointees, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will affect LunaJoy’s operation. Kennedy has made health a key issue in his public advocacy and political activity, but he has also espoused eccentric and even false views on issues such as vaccines and pharmaceuticals.

“When women don’t have choices, mental health is significantly worse, and that’s something that goes on, often, for the entire time of that family’s trajectory,”  Laddha said. “So I’m not quite sure what’s going to happen, but you know, those are certainly things that, as a women’s mental health company, we are looking at and watching closely to see what sort of legislation, rules and laws come out.”

When it comes to fundraising early next year, Laddha is optimistic. She’s focused on how fragmented the healthcare industry is right now, and plans to showcase how companies like hers will aim to integrate with larger health systems.

“Our role is to be really as disruptive as possible, and to bring to the forefront the most innovative solutions that we can do while still working within the current framework of healthcare that exists today,” she said.

Some sectors worry about Trump economic policy

While software and cloud-based technologists seem excited by the effects of deregulation, startup founders that make physical products, especially using microchip technology, are wary of Trump’s plan to impose tariffs on imported goods.

Samyr Laine, a managing partner at Los Angeles-based Freedom Trail Capital, specializes in consumer tech and consumer packaged goods. Laine said he feels a sense of relief in ending the “uncertainty” around who will take the presidency the next four years, but he predicts many founders will feel the costly effects of Trump’s planned tariffs, and pass those additional costs to consumers.

Though the existing companies in his portfolio won’t be hit too hard, it’s a factor they’ll be forced to review when considering investments in companies in the future. Those that will incur the additional costs of imported goods will have to adjust their profit margins and might not be as attractive to investors.

“As a consumer and someone who isn’t in the space, not to be like a fear monger, but expect that some of the things you typically pay for, the price will go up,” Laine said.

The effect on work

Although Trump was successful in picking up a significant amount of tech industry elite support this election season, much of his voter base is working class people who will not feel the positive effects of tech industry deregulation.

Endoso, the Silicon Valley investor and founder, says the Trump coalition of tech entrepreneurs and working-class voters represents “a division between the haves and the have-nots.” The usual basis on which people pick their electoral preferences, like race, geography, income and proximity to city life, were “shattered” this time around.

“It was a revolt of the working class, at least in my view,” he said.

The advancements of AI and machine learning, which will enrich the investor class, will have large implications on employment for those working class voters. The vast majority of Americans who are not college educated, and work physical jobs, might struggle to thrive, he said. We’ll likely see overhauls of industries as robots replace and automate a majority of physical labor in warehouses, and self-driving vehicles take over jobs like long-haul trucking and ride services such as Uber and Lyft.

“I think those are important questions to be asking from a policy standpoint, and I think that the intelligent answers shouldn’t be ‘let’s shut the innovation down.’” Endoso said. “That didn’t work in 19th century England. It won’t work here today, right? But it does require our rethinking the definition of work, and the definition of how you … organize a society along lines where you don’t need to have the same level of maybe direct labor input as we had in the past.”

Nissenbaum agreed, saying that AI has already begun to leak into every field and industry, and will only continue to disrupt how we work. As revolutionary as the internet and internet companies were in the late 1990s, the web has become the infrastructure for artificial intelligence to become more efficient and effective at everything it does.

With lighter regulation under a new Trump administration, we’re likely to see AI develop at unpredictable rates, he said. And laborers will definitely be feeling the effects over the next four years.

“You’re not going to lose your job to AI,” Nissenbaum said. “You’re going to lose your job to someone who understands how to do your job with AI.”

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A Connecticut Department of Transportation crew works on an Interstate 95 bridge on Nov. 05, 2023, in Westport, Connecticut. The Federal Reserve’s rate cut earlier this month could mean lower borrowing costs for state and local governments and bring changes for housing development, tax revenue and road, water and sewer construction. (By John Moore/Getty Images)

The Federal Reserve’s second consecutive key rate cut could mean more than just lower borrowing costs for the average consumer — state and local governments stand to benefit, too.

Lower interest rates may bring changes for housing development, tax revenue, debt refinancing and bread-and-butter projects like roads, water and sewer, state and local government officials told States Newsroom.

The Fed’s cut earlier this month followed an aggressive rate-hiking campaign to beat down inflation, and it came years after the last time the U.S. central bank lowered interest rates. Key borrowing rates now stand at 4.5 to 4.75%, and inflation has cooled to 2.7%. Economists expect another rate cut in December.

“On average, the lower the interest rates are expected to help stock market returns if historical trends hold,” said Liz Farmer, who focuses on budgets, fiscal distress, tax policy and pensions at The Pew Charitable Trusts. “So generally, you would expect a more positive effect on your average pension portfolio that has a good amount invested in equities.”

This change means states and localities will have lower borrowing costs, which will make it easier to make big long-term changes in infrastructure, to see higher sales tax collections as a result of more spending, and it is likely to result in better pension performance in an environment where stocks tend to respond to lower rates, fiscal policy experts at Pew say.

In 2021 and 2022, states had record high revenue growth due in part to federal pandemic aid and the impact of the federal aid on workers and businesses, according to Pew. But that kind of growth was unsustainable.

Recently, nearly all states have entered into a slower revenue growth environment, said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies at the National Association of State Budget Officers, a professional membership group for budget and finance officers. More than three dozen states had a fall in revenue in fiscal year 2023,  Pew’s analysis found. At least five states experienced budget shortfalls in fiscal year 2024, the think tank explained.

“States overall are remaining in a strong fiscal position. It’s just that we’re starting to see slower growth compared to what we did see for those a couple of years after the start of the pandemic,” he said. “That was really a unique set of circumstances where we had the additional federal aid provided by all the different COVID relief bills and at the same time where state revenue growth was growing so strongly, and that led to very strong growth in tax collections.”

Sigritz said that states, which have to almost entirely use borrowing for infrastructure and capital projects, will benefit from lower borrowing costs as a result of the Fed rate cuts.

David Schmiedicke, finance director for the city of Madison, Wisconsin’s finance department, said he’s hopeful that the lower cost of borrowing will reduce the cost of public infrastructure when seeking construction bids.

“We’re seeing a lot of development, even with the higher rates. Madison is an attractive place to live. People from around the country are moving here,” he said.

Rebecca Fleury, the city manager for Battle Creek, Michigan, said interest rates affect key services the public relies on, including fire departments.

“[Interest rates] have an impact on our ability as a city of 52,000 to provide the full services that we do. Every little bit impacts us, because we have to buy fire trucks,” she said.“If there’s a decrease in one of our three largest revenue sources, we feel it.”

But there are both pluses and minuses to the cut in the federal funds rate, Schmiedicke said, as it brings down the interest income states receive.

“It probably will reduce the amount of investment income the city receives on its cash balances. We saw that go up dramatically in 2022 and 2023, so that’ll probably come down as the Fed cuts rates,” Schmiedicke said.

Different tax policies also change how states and localities experience the Fed rate cuts.

H.D. Palmer, deputy director for external affairs and principal spokesman on fiscal and financial issues for California Gov. Gavin  Newsom, said that the lower interest rates are overall positive for the nation’s largest state because of the concentration of technology firms there, its progressive tax rate, and the taxing of capital gains and stock options as personal income.

“When the markets are doing well, those types of firms that are concentrated in California do well and in consequence, our revenues do well,” Palmer said.

The Alabama Department of Finance told States Newsroom that it is closely following the Fed’s actions as it “closely follows all actions that could impact our citizens and the State’s revenues.”

But the state agency said it may take some time to see any of the effects of recent rate cuts.

“While recent changes in the federal funds rate may lead to increased state revenues, absent a significant change in the rate, the impact on revenues and expenditures would not likely be seen immediately. We will continue to monitor and assess all economic indicators to ensure steady, sustainable, conservative growth for the benefit of all Alabamians,” the department said in a statement.

Schmiedicke said Wisconsin is very reliant on property taxes because although state law allows a statewide sales tax and counties can impose a 0.5% sales tax, cities other than Milwaukee have not been able to do so. The state also has strict limits on property tax increases.

“We could see more development in the city and that could definitely help with our overall property tax base, as well as if it results in more travel and room taxes,” he said.

As states and localities wrestle with how to provide more affordable housing, with nearly half of renters having to spend more than 30% of their income on housing, lower interest rates could help spur more building. Fleury said the costs of loans and labor and materials has been “astronomical,” making it hard for developers to build. Although she said Battle Creek would love to take advantage of Low Income Housing Tax Credits, it’s challenging to fund projects.

“I think that a lower interest rate could really help us get farther along in our housing plans,” she said “If you can’t get your project to pencil within what they’re able to fund or finance, we just never make the list.”

Despite lower interest rates creating a better environment for affordable rent and homes, states will likely continue to spend a lot of energy on housing programs, Sigritz said. Governors’ budget proposals and state of the state speeches have prioritized affordable housing more and more in the past few years, he said, and he expects this to continue.

“Housing affordability is not an issue that’s going to go away overnight, and there’s still a need for more housing,” Sigritz said. “It takes a while to build additional housing even in the lower-interest environment.”

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Workers remove a lead service line before it’s replaced by a brass one in Providence, R.I., in 2023. A new federal rule will require water systems across the country to replace roughly 9 million lead service lines to protect residents from potential poisoning. (Kevin G. Andrade | Rhode Island Current)

A new federal rule will require water utilities across the country to pull millions of lead drinking water pipes out of the ground and replace them, at a cost of billions of dollars.

States, cities and water utilities agree that the lead pipes need to go to ensure safe water for residents. But they say they may struggle to do so in the 10-year window required under the rule, and they fear some ratepayers will be hit with massive cost increases to pay for the work.

State officials are urging Congress to provide ongoing funding for the lead replacement effort. Local leaders say they’ll need lots of help to meet the deadline. And environmental advocates are calling on states to issue bonds or provide other financial support to water utilities.

“It took us close to 100 years to get all of these lead service lines in the ground, and the EPA is asking us to get them out in 10 years,” said Tom Dobbins, CEO of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies, an advocacy group for publicly owned water systems. “The [Biden] administration grossly underestimated the cost. Obviously, if the federal government doesn’t provide the funding for this, the ratepayers will have to pay for this. That exacerbates certain communities’ affordability issues.”

The new rule, issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in October, requires cities and water utilities to replace all lead service lines — the pipes that run from water mains to private residences under lawns and sidewalks. Because the lines extend under private property, some water system operators say the rule has created confusion over whether utilities or homeowners will be responsible for the replacement costs.

The EPA estimates that more than 9 million service lines are made of lead, a neurotoxin that can cause nervous system damage, learning disabilities and other health problems, especially in children. If lead pipes corrode, as in the infamous case of Flint, Michigan, they can poison drinking water.

While no amount of lead exposure is safe, the federal rule now requires utilities to notify the public and improve corrosion treatment if lead in their water exceeds 10 parts per billion. Some homes in Syracuse, New York, recently tested at 70 parts per billion.

“This is a significant public health advance,” said Erik Olson, who leads a drinking water protection campaign with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental nonprofit. “We’ve known for decades that lead service lines are dangerous, and, unfortunately, a lot of utilities just kept putting it on the back burner.”

Under the rule, water systems will have until 2027 to draft a plan for replacing their lead lines, after which they will have 10 years to complete the work.

Olson said President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to roll back many environmental regulations, would have a difficult time undoing the lead rule. A provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act prevents “backsliding” for federal protections, he said, and efforts to overturn the rule through Congress could prove deeply unpopular.

Money worries

The federal mandate comes after some states, including Illinois, Michigan and New Jersey, already issued their own lead replacement requirements and directed funding to their hardest-hit communities.

“It’s a challenging goal, but I think we’ve shown it’s achievable,” said Eric Oswald, director of the Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division in the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy. “I’m trying to make Michigan the first state to remove all lead service lines.”

The federal rule will accelerate Michigan’s timeline, as state regulations gave utilities a 20-year replacement window. But the initial state requirement has given water systems there a head start. Michigan has somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 service lines, of which it’s replaced about 50,000 so far. Oswald acknowledged that the work will be expensive.

In New Jersey, water utilities have replaced more than 25,000 service lines since a state lead law was passed in 2021 (that figure does not include a previous effort that replaced 23,000 pipes in Newark). But the state still has more than 120,000 lead service lines, which it said will cost at least $1.8 billion to replace.

“There’s nothing yet that has made me think that it’s not achievable, but right now the focus has been on getting a good inventory,” said Trish Ingelido, director of water supply and geoscience at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. “We’ll have a better sense in the next two years what the replacement rate is looking like.”

The EPA estimates that the cost of replacing lead pipes nationwide will be about $45 billion. A separate analysis by the consulting firm Safe Water Engineering, funded by the Natural Resources Defense Council, arrived at a similar figure. But the American Water Works Association, a coalition of water system operators, puts the cost at closer to $90 billion.

“This is important on the public health side, but it’s a challenge for local governments,” said Carolyn Berndt, legislative director for sustainability at the National League of Cities, which advocates for municipal governments. “We do see this raising concerns about affordability.”

While local governments worry about expenses, the EPA says that the public health costs of lead poisoning are far greater. A federal analysis estimates that the rule, on an annual basis, will prevent 1,500 cases of premature death from heart disease and protect 900,000 infants from having low birthweight. The agency says the savings from avoiding the poisoning of residents will be 13 times greater than the cost of replacing the pipes.

The EPA contends that replacement costs will be affordable. It estimates that household-level costs associated with the rule will range from 10 cents to $10 a month. The agency pointed to the success of states such as Michigan and New Jersey, which have already replaced tens of thousands of pipes, as evidence that the 10-year timeline is achievable. Federal officials argue that the market will correct for any shortages of labor and material that some states fear will slow the work.

The feds have provided $15 billion for lead service line replacement through the 2021 infrastructure law passed by Congress, plus another $11.7 billion in state-administered drinking water funds that can be used for new lines. Some communities have used those federal grants and loans, along with pandemic relief funds, to make significant progress on their lead problem.

So far, the EPA says it has distributed $9 billion of the money targeted at service line replacements, enough to change out up to 1.7 million pipes. But many water systems are still working to inventory their lead pipes, leaving them little time to compete for the federal funding that expires in 2026.

“[Federal investments] provided significant new funding for this effort, but it’s absolutely not nearly enough for the successful implementation of the rule,” said Ben Grumbles, executive director of the Environmental Council of the States, a nonprofit association of environmental agency leaders.

Grumbles noted that state agencies also are facing significant expenses from new federal rules to limit exposure to PFAS, or “forever chemicals,” in drinking water (lead, a naturally occurring metal, is not among the man-made PFAS chemicals).

Cities struggle

At the local level, leaders are scrounging for funding as best they can.

“We’re looking at federal money, we’re looking at bonds, we’re looking at different loans and grants,” said Randy Conner, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Water Management. “We’re making sure we turn over all the couch cushions to find every quarter we can possibly find to put towards this effort.”

Chicago has an estimated 400,000 lead pipes, more than any other U.S. city. Because of the sheer scale of the problem, the EPA gave Chicago an extended deadline of 20 years to replace its lines. Even so, that would require pulling out 19,000 lines a year, well more than the city’s current pace of 8,000. That work will cost about $780 million annually, according to city officials.

Conner said the city is hoping for more federal and state support to avoid placing a heavy burden on ratepayers.

Meanwhile, state and local leaders say Congress is interfering with a key source of money for lead line replacement. Two loan programs, funded by the federal government but administered by states, provide crucial financing for water infrastructure work. State agency leaders deploy the funding based on detailed assessments of community needs.

But in recent years, members of Congress have bypassed states’ funding strategies to earmark money for projects in their districts. State agencies say they’re receiving less than half of the pool of money after Congress assigns its favored projects. That has left them less able to help the neediest communities. And many of the congressionally designated projects are lagging because they haven’t gone through the rigorous preparation work required by states.

“By diverting so much funding away from the successful [loan programs], disadvantaged communities are less likely to get funding,” said Grumbles, who oversees the coalition of state agencies.

Grumbles and others argue that any earmarks from Congress should only be in addition to the baseline loan program funding.

Other challenges

Costs aren’t the only obstacle water systems are facing. Some are concerned that the rush to replace millions of pipes nationwide will strain the workforce and supply chain capacity.

“The limiting factor is going to be the availability of contractors and professionals and materials to do the actual work,” said Robert Boos, executive director of the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Investment Authority. “That’s going to be a national issue, when you’ve got tens of thousands of communities trying to do this work.”

Pennsylvania has boosted clean water funding in its state budget, and it’s trying to tackle the workforce issue as well. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order in 2023 to create a workforce training program for infrastructure jobs, including lead pipe replacement.

Olson, the environmental advocate, pointed to Newark, New Jersey, which partnered with a labor union to train local residents. The city replaced all of its 23,000 lead service lines in just over two years.

“Creative thinking and political will are really what’s needed,” he said. “This is definitely doable.”

Another potential problem is the fact that service lines lie under private property, meaning utilities need cooperation from homeowners to conduct the work. In some cases, they’ve run into opposition from residents or struggled to reach absentee landlords.

“People just don’t trust government; they don’t think that anything is free,” said Conner, the Chicago official. “We want them to understand that we’re not coming into their house to give citations.”

Environmental advocates also note that service lines’ placement on private property has created confusion over who must pay to replace them. The federal rule does not explicitly make water utilities responsible.

“When the city goes to a household and says you have to pay a couple thousand dollars to replace your portion of the lead service line, it may work for higher-income people,” Olson said. “But the studies are showing that lower-income homeowners and landlords will not pay for it. It’s a real exacerbation of environmental injustices.”

He pointed to Michigan, which adopted a rule specifying that water systems are responsible for the costs of replacing lines. He also noted that some cities have passed ordinances allowing residents of a home to authorize pipe replacement if a landlord can’t be reached.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

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Jon Baselice, right, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, speaks at a conference in Washington, D.C., held by the National Immigration Forum. (Marty Schladen | Ohio Capital Journal)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President-elect Donald Trump made a visit to the nation’s capital last week to meet with congressional Republicans. As he did, a group of economic leaders meeting nearby had a simple message for him and his incoming administration: You can’t have robust economic growth without robust immigration.

Trump cruised to victory on Nov. 5 after a campaign that was based mostly around attacking immigration and criticizing the economy under Democratic President Joe Biden. Speaking at an event held Wednesday by the National Immigration Forum, a prominent Republican economist said the two issues are inextricably tied, just not in the way that the Trump campaign suggested.

“You can’t be America First by putting immigration last,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a White House economist under President George H.W. Bush and chief economic advisor to Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign. “The numbers just don’t add up.”

Holtz-Eakin and the other panelists stressed that with declining class sizes in American elementary schools, the country needs immigration to buttress the workforce and spur economic growth.

“Anyone who is arithmetically informed knows immigration is central to our future,” Holtz-Eakin said. “The demography is baked in the cake. Native-born Americans have such low fertility that in the absence of immigration, this country will look like Japan. It will get very, very old and smaller and smaller and smaller. We’ll lose our economic vitality.”

On the campaign trail, Trump promised rapid mass deportations of immigrants who aren’t here legally or who will be declared to be undocumented in the future. But Jon Baselice, vice president for immigration policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that likely isn’t possible.

“If you look at the resources they have, and at the resources they’re likely to get, they need to set expectations in a realistic way,” he said. “If they’re looking to deport millions of people in very short order, they’re likely to fail at that.”

Meanwhile, a dearth of immigrants can come with a serious economic downside.

The Pennsylvania Chamber of Commerce surveys employers in the state each year. Starting about a decade ago, the issue of having enough workers shot up the list of concerns, said Alex Halper, vice president of governmental affairs for the organization.

“We’ve had historically small kindergarten classes the last two years, and by far the fastest-growing demographic is 80 and older,” Halper said. “At the same time, out of 100 job openings, we have 56 people looking for work in Pennsylvania. We simply don’t have the people to fill positions for Pennsylvania employers.”

Immigrants are particularly crucial to the tech sector, panelists said.

Pearl Chang Esau is founder and CEO of the Arizona group Shàn strategies, which advises businesses on how to “improve their economic, environmental, and societal impact.” She said “dreamers” — non-citizens who came to the United States at an early age who have been allowed to stay under an executive order by former President Barack Obama — are an important piece of the tech puzzle.

“Thirty percent of dreamers in college are pursuing a STEM education, and they’re graduating without the ability to work,” she said. “So it is a no-brainer to capture that population into our workforce.”

There seemed to be widespread apprehension at the conference after Trump won on a starkly anti-immigration agenda.

“Many of us sense a giant mountain that lies before us,” Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said as she opened the conference.

But U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., said he hoped a coalition of business, law enforcement and faith leaders — which he called “business, badges and the Bible” — would create pressure for bipartisan solutions that polling indicates the public overwhelmingly wants. Suozzi said he hopes that polarization on the issue will decrease so that a critical mass of the public can see immigration as the nuanced issue that it is.

“Anybody who says, ‘Why don’t you just…’ doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” he said, to applause.

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and X.

Employees work at a Rivian electric vehicle factory in Normal, Ill., in 2021. A historic recovery in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 was concentrated in small urban areas such as McLean County, where Normal is located, and where car and candy factories have added jobs. (Courtesy of Rivian)

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, McLean County, Illinois, was known mostly as the home of State Farm Insurance in Bloomington and Illinois State University in Normal.

Now, the area illustrates a trend that’s bringing more factories to small cities with lower costs of living: It has thousands of new jobs manufacturing Rivian electric vehicles and a new candy factory that will produce Kinder Bueno and other Ferrero candies.

“Food and electric cars. This is not something we were known for before 2019,” said Patrick Hoban, president of Bloomington-Normal Economic Development Council in McLean County.

“We’re primarily an insurance and university town that’s just now seeing a rise in manufacturing. Rivian has ramped up from 300 to 8,000 employees, and I don’t think anyone realized how fast that was going to happen,” Hoban said.

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to rebuild American manufacturing, and he won handily in most areas hollowed out by the movement of factory jobs overseas. But the rebound Trump promises has already been underway in many places: McLean County is part of an unusually strong jump in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023 — the first time manufacturing employment has recovered fully from a recession since the 1970s, according to a recent report from the Economic Innovation Group, a bipartisan public policy organization in Washington, D.C.

There were about 12.9 million manufacturing jobs in 2023, slightly more than in 2019. However, the number of manufacturing jobs has declined precipitously since the all-time peak in 1979, when there were 19.4 million of them and they were a much larger share of overall employment.

Joseph McCartin, a Georgetown University professor and labor history expert, said manufacturing has been on an upswing since 2010 as the nation started recovering from the Great Recession. The pandemic interrupted the trajectory, but the United States recently saw a hopeful increase in pay for the new jobs, he said, as the Biden administration aimed to increase both wages and jobs through the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

“The Biden administration tried to use policy to ensure that more of these would be union jobs or at least offer union-level wages,” McCartin said. “This approach is almost certainly dead due to the results of the election.”

Employers may have a hard time filling lower-paying manufacturing jobs such as meat processing if the new Trump administration deports the immigrants who fill them, said William Jones, a University of Minnesota history professor and former president of the Labor and Working Class History Association.

“These will be hard hit if Trump follows up on his deportation plan,” Jones said. “The political rhetoric is that a bunch of native-born workers will move into these jobs, that they’re getting squeezed out, but that’s actually not the case. Some of these industries are extremely dependent on immigrant labor.”

Where growth happened

Small urban areas such as McLean County got most of the increase in manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2023, according to the Economic Innovation Group report. Rural areas lost those jobs, and large cities saw no change.

It was mostly Sun Belt and Western states that saw the increases during those years, according to a Stateline analysis of federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

The largest percentage changes in manufacturing jobs were in Nevada (up 14%), Utah (up 11%), and Arizona and Florida (each up 9%). The largest raw numbers of new manufacturing jobs were in Texas (up 48,200), Florida (up 35,100) and Georgia (up 22,900).

Southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi also have seen more automotive jobs as manufacturers have taken advantage of lower costs and state “right-to-work” laws that weaken unions. Vehicle manufacturing jumped by 7,800 in Alabama and 6,600 in Mississippi, the largest increases outside California.

Meanwhile, traditional Rust Belt states have seen continued declines, with manufacturing jobs down about 2% in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and also in Illinois — despite McLean County’s success.

Manufacturing is playing a critical role in Nevada as it tries to diversify its tourist-oriented economy so it can better weather downturns such as the one during the pandemic, said Steve Scheetz, research manager for the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development.

Automotive and other battery manufacturing and recycling, driven by electric carmaker Tesla and battery recycling firm Redwood Materials, account for much of the increase in Nevada manufacturing, Scheetz said.

As in Illinois, the job growth tended to be in smaller areas outside big cities, such as Storey County, just east of Reno, with a population of about 4,200.

“Fifteen years ago, this small county in rural Nevada was relatively unknown,” Scheetz said, adding that jobs and economic output has risen tenfold and the number of total jobs — including manufacturing — has grown from less than 4,000 to almost 16,000 in those 15 years. The county also is home to plants making building materials, industrial minerals and molded rubber, among other products.

The Biden administration focused on bringing more blue-collar jobs to small cities like Normal and Bloomington, said Jones, the University of Minnesota professor.

“Much of the growth is due to [President Joe] Biden’s manufacturing investments. There was a conscious strategy to focus on small towns to get the political benefit in places that tended to vote Republican,” said Jones.

If there was a play for political benefit, it got mixed results: Vice President Kamala Harris carried McLean County, Illinois, on Nov. 5, but she lost Storey County, Nevada, by the largest margin for a Democrat in 40 years.

Blue-collar wages

The decline of unions and the availability of cheaper labor overseas have dampened U.S. factory job wages in recent decades. Even so, manufacturing jobs remain an attractive path for blue-collar workers.

Manufacturing pay still ranks fairly high among the blue-collar fields at an average $34.42 per hour as of October — less than wages in energy ($39.98) or construction ($38.72), but considerably more than hospitality ($22.23) or retail ($24.76). That also was the case in 2019, and it has led many state and cities to seek more factory positions to balance out the lower-paying service jobs that have blossomed as manufacturing has waned.

But in the past year, state Republican leaders have pushed back on a burgeoning Southern labor movement that aims to bring higher wages and better benefits to blue-collar workers.

In Alabama, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law in May that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions. GOP leaders in Georgia and Tennessee also passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement, viewing unions as a threat to the states’ manufacturing economies.

Much of the increase in Alabama manufacturing jobs has been in the northern part of the state, near Tennessee and Georgia. Since the pandemic began, Mazda Toyota Manufacturing came on line with the goal of hiring 4,000 vehicle production workers and another 2,000 in nearby parts factories as other manufacturers also boosted hiring. Private investment in Alabama automotive manufacturing totaled $7 billion over the same time frame, Stefania Jones, a spokesperson for state Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair, said in a statement to Stateline.

Supply-chain problems during the pandemic illustrated the advantages of American-made goods, said McCartin, the Georgetown University professor. However, without union support, today’s factory workers are unlikely to achieve the middle-class lifestyle enjoyed by earlier generations, he said.

“The growth of manufacturing itself is unlikely to become a panacea for what ails working-class America,” McCartin said.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on Facebook and X.

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