The federal poverty rate dipped slightly in 2025, median household income increased and the number of Americans with health coverage remained near historic highs. The data released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Tuesday shows the importance of food assistance and health coverage access. Sharon Parrott of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains:
Basic needs programs were key to raising incomes above the poverty line and ensuring people could access the health care they needed. Refundable tax credits lifted 6 million people above the poverty line, and SNAP lifted more than 3 million people above the poverty line, while the ACA marketplace and Medicaid provided much needed coverage to tens of millions of people.
Poverty and health insurance figures for 2025 do not yet show the impact of most of the federal reconciliation law’s cuts to food assistance and health coverage:
That law made the largest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in our nation’s history and failed to extend the premium tax credit enhancements that made the ACA marketplace more affordable and successful in expanding coverage and lowering costs. These cuts are already taking food assistance and health coverage away from millions of people who need it, driving up poverty and hardship.
Dueling efforts underway to revamp Louisiana school funding
A new state task force and the state’s top education board are both looking at ways to change the complex formula Louisiana uses to distribute state tax dollars to local public schools. The task force created by Gov. Jeff Landry and legislative leaders wants to overhaul the Minimum Foundation Program, while the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education would prefer to just make some tweaks. But as The Times-Picayune |Baton Rouge Advocate’s Patrick Wall explains, neither group can accomplish its goals without the other:
Under Louisiana’s constitution, the education board is responsible for developing the formula, but lawmakers must approve and fund it. Either group can propose changes, but they won’t take effect unless both sides agree. “They need to work hand-in-hand,” said David Claxton, who leads the Louisiana Association of School Superintendents and is a member of the legislative task force.
While politicians bicker, average teacher salaries in Louisiana are 49th among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, and are rising at less than half the rate of the national average.
Hurricane Helene recovery provides a cautionary tale for Louisiana
It’s been two years since Hurricane Helene ravaged Western North Carolina. Chris Kromm of Facing South explains how the region’s recovery has been slow and uneven due to meager federal funding:
[North Carolina Gov. Josh] Stein said the total amount of federal funding that had been allocated to the state as of July was about $9.3 billion, less than 16 percent of the estimated damages of $60 billion. That’s glaringly out of step with the federal government’s response to past disasters.
The Trump administration is shifting more of the financial responsibility of recovering from natural disasters to states:
To plug the shortfall, North Carolina has put up more than $4 billion of its own money. That includes $175 million to repair private roads and bridges, utility assistance for more than 10,000 households, and more than $100 million for small businesses affected by the storm. Trump hasn’t asked for, and Congress hasn’t appropriated, any new funding since Helene hit.
The 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season has been historically quiet, but another storm will certainly hit Louisiana. Looming budget deficits could affect the state’s ability to pick up the increased fiscal responsibility of recovering.
Incompetence is (still) the new corruption
A federal lawsuit has been filed by two formerly incarcerated people for being held in prison past their scheduled release dates. Plaintiff attorneys are seeking class action status so others can join the suit. That’s because Louisiana has a long, well-documented history of keeping people locked in prisons and jails beyond their release dates. Andrea Hagan, in a guest column for the Louisiana Illuminator, explains:
[The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections’] own review in 2012 found more than 2,000 people each year were held past their release dates, according to the lawsuit. A decade later, federal investigators found 26.8% of people Louisiana released from jails and prisons in early 2022 were held too long, at an estimated cost to the public exceeding $2.5 million a year.
Number of the Day
53% – Share of Americans who are “extremely” or “very” concerned about artificial intelligence’s environmental impacts, up from 41% last year. (Source: The AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago)