President Donald Trump’s administration has pulled the plug on a $7 billion program designed to make the electric grid more resilient and expand access to renewable energy in low-income communities. The decision to cancel the Solar for All program means a loss of $156 million for Louisiana – money that was expected to help 15,000 households access more affordable energy under the Solar for Y’All initiative. The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate’s Josie Abugov reports:
“Louisianans are already rightfully upset about their energy bills – they are high, getting higher, and already unaffordable for many,” said CPEX President Camille Manning-Broome. “Electricity is becoming a luxury in Louisiana – while residents in states generating solar are getting money back.” She lauded the now-terminated program as a way to address affordability and grid resilience in a state with one of the nation’s highest electricity cost burdens. The federal Solar for All program guaranteed that participating low-income residents would see 20% reductions in household bills.
An economy by, and for, the wealthy
America’s job market is showing signs of major weakness as economic gains are increasingly concentrated at the very top while the bottom 80% of households struggle to keep up with rising costs. Heather Long writes in The Washington Post that the economy – and the stock market – are increasingly dependent on a few superstar companies and wealthy consumers.
The middle class remains on edge that price hikes from tariffs or job losses — or both — could be coming soon. Already, many workers have seen their hours reduced and fewer opportunities for overtime and bonuses. Credit card and auto loan delinquencies are above pre-pandemic levels, Federal Reserve and Fitch Ratings data show. And millions of Americans have missed student loan repayments, triggering credit score drops. The middle class is basically tapped out financially. Any further rise in costs from tariffs or decline in income from job losses would be tough to absorb, especially as government aid programs decline.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ties middle-class economic malaise, especially among young men, to the fact that housing has become increasingly unaffordable. Writing in the Post, Emanuel notes that the median age of first-time homebuyers is now 38, up from 28 three decades ago.
If there’s any silver lining to the housing crisis, it’s that, unlike so many of our national challenges, it’s solvable. Unlike the rise of China, or the specter of AI, or the scourge of global climate change, we don’t need a new batch of policy tools or institutions to help working-class families purchase their first homes. We’ve done this before.
His proposed solutions include a generous new tax credit for first-time homebuyers, along with more favorable interest rates and federal incentive programs for states and cities that encourage more home building.
The dread of turning 26
The federal Affordable Care Act created a new rite of passage for young adults: Age 26, when people are required to find health insurance as they are no longer eligible to stay on their parents’ health care plan. This “insurance cliff” has created hardships for millions of people, who are often forced to choose between hundreds of inadequate insurance plans, and it’s expected to get worse next year when the price of that coverage will increase sharply as tax credits that offset the premium costs are due to expire. Elizabeth Rosenthal and Hannah Norman of KFF Health News, in a partnership with The New York Times, report:
(M)any buy cheap subpar insurance that leaves them with insurmountable debt following a medical crisis. Others choose plans with extremely limited networks, losing access to their longtime doctors and medicines. Often they find those policies online, in what has become a dizzyingly complicated system of government-regulated insurance marketplaces. They vary in quality from state to state; some are far better than others. But they generally offer few easily identifiable, affordable and workable choices.
Voting Rights Act under threat
A Louisiana redistricting case that’s pending before the U.S. Supreme Court threatens to unravel key elements of the federal Voting Rights Act and make permanent changes to the way states and localities draw political boundaries. Mark Ballard of The Times-Picayune | Baton Rouge Advocate breaks it down:
The Voting Rights Act’s Section 2 requires minority-majority districts if the population lives close enough together, shares similar political goals, and is in a state, like Louisiana, where White majority districts have never elected a Black candidate. State Attorney General Liz Murrill had asked the justices to sort out how a state could draw district maps without running afoul of the often-conflicting laws. … John Bisognano, president of the National Redistricting Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit affiliated with the Democratic Party, noted the high court had never found a conflict between the Equal Protection Clause and the Voting Rights Act. “If the Court decides to now undo that precedent, it would be a head-spinning reversal of itself,” Bisognano said in a statement.
Number of the Day
15 – Percentage of 26-year-olds who are uninsured, the highest percentage among Americans of any age. (Source: KFF Health News via The New York Times)