SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
affordability
Climate Progress Is Still Going Strong When Workers Take the Lead
Labor in Maine and elsewhere is proud to be advocating for and building clean power that provides affordable energy and good jobs for our communities.
Feb 01, 2026
The first year of this Trump administration has dealt significant blows to the advancement of clean energy and efforts to lower energy prices. The federal government has cut clean energy funding, repeatedly disrupted construction on in-progress wind energy projects, and shut down energy affordability programs. For workers on solar and wind energy projects, there’s been no shortage of bad news.
And yet, there’s also been undeniable progress. In the absence of federal leadership, state and local governments have picked up the slack, and labor unions have taken action.
To see what I mean, just take a closer look at my home state of Maine. In 2025, we had one of the most successful legislative sessions for climate and workers in our history. We passed landmark bills that expanded the state’s ability to build new clean energy projects and committed the state to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2040. Strong labor standards throughout this legislation help ensure every clean energy project we build in Maine creates high-quality, family-sustaining jobs while protecting ratepayers from rising costs. Policies like this are how we can insulate ourselves from harmful federal actions and continue to deliver real benefits. Other states could take note.
Across the country, energy demand is rising for the first time in decades, and we’re not building enough new energy to keep up. This supply and demand imbalance is pushing energy bills to unaffordable prices for working families, who are already struggling to stay afloat. At the same time, we’re experiencing the impacts of climate change with more and more frequency—extreme cold and devastating storms in the winter; scorching heatwaves, wildfires, and smog in the summer.
If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people.
This moment of high costs, worsening climate impacts, and a lack of good-wage jobs requires us to build more clean energy, urgently. We simply cannot bring down energy prices without more energy. Labor unions understand this, and we understand that clean energy will and is already creating thousands of job opportunities.
That’s why we so ardently fight for strong climate legislation in our state. It’s why our members were some of the first to speak up against federal cuts to clean energy tax credits. And throughout it all, we’re still building solar panels, installing heat pumps, erecting wind turbines, and upgrading building efficiency—work that makes our communities cleaner and safer.
Labor’s work for climate action will continue on, both in Maine and across the country. If we want climate policy to be popular and durable, it needs to do more than reduce emissions. It needs to materially deliver for working people—with good jobs, higher wages, and lower bills. It’s both possible and necessary to do all of this at once.
This year in Maine, we’re working to push the envelope even further to win bold, worker-led climate policy while driving down costs for ratepayers.
For example, we are advancing legislation that would streamline permitting of utility-scale clean energy projects built in Maine with high-road labor standards, accelerating the pace by which Maine brings clean energy online that is cheaper and lowering our exposure to global energy price volatility through greater energy independence.
The onus has certainly shifted to states to lead on climate and affordability; it’s not coming from the federal level. But that hasn’t deterred us in Maine, and it shouldn’t deter the rest of the country either. Even in red states like Texas, our brothers and sisters in labor have pushed for and won local climate progress.
Labor is proud to be advocating for and building clean power that provides affordable energy and good jobs for our communities. With working people at the table, we can drive meaningful climate action and pocketbook benefits for working people—all at once.
Let us not be afraid or resigned in this moment. Maine is proof that we can still create union jobs, lower costs, and build domestic clean energy, but only if we keep fighting for it.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Despite Vows on ‘Affordability,’ Trump Proclaims: ‘I Want to Drive Housing Prices Up’
We're not to going create conditions, said the billionaire president who inherited his wealth, "so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home."
Jan 29, 2026
President Donald Trump in recent weeks has vowed to make living in the US more affordable, as polls have consistently shown voters are giving him low marks on both his handling of the economy and inflation.
However, Trump undercut this pledge during a Cabinet meeting on Thursday in which he said he wanted—despite a nationwide housing crisis—to actively make housing even more expensive than it is today.
"Existing housing, people that own their home, we're going to keep them wealthy, we're going to keep those prices up," Trump said. "We're not going to destroy the value of their homes so that somebody that didn't work very hard can buy a home."
Trump: I don’t want to drive housing prices down. I want to drive housing prices up for people who own their homes. You can be sure that will happen pic.twitter.com/9BupkUmXss
— Acyn (@Acyn) January 29, 2026
Trump added that his administration wanted to "make it easier to buy" a house by lowering interest rates, but then reiterated that he wanted to make houses themselves more expensive.
"There's so much talk of, 'Oh, we're going to drive housing prices down,'" Trump said. "I don't want to drive housing prices down, I want to drive housing prices up for people that own their homes. And they can be assured that's what's going to happen."
The implications of the president's remarks were obvious to those concerned about the nation's affordable housing crisis and the struggle of working people trying to get by.
As Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director for the Campaign for New York Health, put it: "54% of Americans struggle to afford housing, and over 770,000 Americans are homeless—and Trump doesn't think those numbers are high enough."
A Fox News poll released on Wednesday found that 54% of Americans think the US is worse off now than it was a year ago, while just 31% say the country is in better shape. Just 25% of voters surveyed said they are better off now than they were a year ago, and more than 40% said that Trump's economic policies have personally hurt them.
Given Trump's already low numbers on economic performance, many observers were quick to ridicule him for his pledge to make existing houses less affordable for prospective buyers.
"Hello Donald this is your political strategist speaking," George Pearkes, global macro strategist for Bespoke Investment Group, sarcastically wrote. "I am advising you today to please keep saying this stuff."
Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) argued that Trump's views on housing prices put him well out of touch with most US voters.
"Trump only sees the world as a rich developer," she wrote in a social media post. "He has never, and will never, care about creating affordable homeownership for working and middle class Americans."
Vox writer Eric Levitz posted a not-so-subtle dig at Trump for straying so easily off message.
https://t.co/qnR9wJiaBX pic.twitter.com/zrafC50Bea
— Eric Levitz (@EricLevitz) January 29, 2026
Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris, meanwhile, said that Trump's inability to stay on message was entirely predictable given his notorious unpredictability.
"Trump launched an affordability-focused midterm campaign for Republicans this week, traveling to Iowa to give a speech about how good his presidency has been for the cost of living," he wrote. "That's going about as well as you'd think. Here POTUS is saying he is going to keep housing prices high."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Senate, Do the Right Thing and Refuse to Fund ICE
Senators who believe in compassion and human rights have a unique opportunity to pull back the agency’s powers by refusing to back an appropriations bill passed by the House of Representatives that would renew ICE's budget.
Jan 29, 2026
More Americans now support abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, than keeping it.
A January 13, 2026 Economist/YouGov poll found that 46% want to eliminate ICE, compared to 43% who support preserving it. It’s a trend that’s been growing since ICE agents have been running rampant in US cities during Donald Trump’s second term.
A majority of Americans in 2024 backed strict immigration enforcement, so this surge in anti-ICE sentiment likely stems from the agency’s draconian crackdown on immigrants, protesters, citizens, and even children. Most recently, federal agents shot and killed an ICU nurse named Alex Pretti in Minneapolis when he came to the defense of other protesters.
Pretti was only the latest casualty. On New Year’s eve, a Black man named Keith Porter was killed in Los Angeles, allegedly at the hands of an off-duty ICE officer with a documented history of abusing children and being racist and homophobic.
Imagine living in a nation where, instead of pouring our collective resources into hurting and killing our fellow human beings, we pay to house, feed, clothe, educate, and care for one another.
A week later in Minneapolis, ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed a white woman named Renee Good in an incident that galvanized the nation.
During the same crackdown, ICE agents dragged an elderly Hmong American man into the street in his underwear in frigid temperatures after invading his home and terrorizing his family. Other agents tear-gassed a family of eight trying to get home from their son’s sporting event, causing their infant child to lose consciousness.
These are just the documented incidents involving US citizens. Meanwhile, immigrant children as young as 5 years old are being targeted and detained, and dozens of noncitizens have died in ICE custody.
Senators who believe in compassion and human rights have a unique opportunity to pull back the agency’s powers by refusing to back an appropriations bill passed by the House of Representatives. That bill, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, “would renew ICE’s excessive budget, with no strings attached, adding to the over $170 billion in taxpayer funds already allocated for immigration enforcement in July 2025.”
Although seven House Democrats voted for the bill alongside Republicans, a majority of Democrats voted against it and there are even rumblings within the party to support the idea of eliminating the agency altogether. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.) recently introduced legislation to that effect.
Abolishing ICE is not only good for human rights in the nation—it would also free up funding for such critical needs as healthcare. “My position has always been clear that ICE funding should be cut,” explained Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) after Good was shot, adding: “the cuts to your healthcare are what’s paying for this.”
She’s right. Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” deeply slashed Medicaid funding and allowed subsidies that lowered healthcare costs for Affordable Care Act plans to expire at the same time it hiked ICE funding to historic levels.
ICE funding comes out of the pockets of all working Americans—who are currently, absurdly, funding an agency with striking similarities to Hitler’s Brown Shirts. This comes at a time of continued economic insecurity for a majority of Americans.
For a microcosm of what it would look like to reverse the equation, look at New York City. In just a few weeks the city’s popular new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who has clearly stated his desire to abolish ICE, has taken actionable steps toward affordable housing, universal childcare, and other bread-and-butter issues.
Imagine living in a nation where, instead of pouring our collective resources into hurting and killing our fellow human beings, we pay to house, feed, clothe, educate, and care for one another.
The Senate now faces such a choice. It was only after Pretti was killed that Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signaled his party would take a stand and block the vote.
This can and should be the first step toward eliminating ICE altogether.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular