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By Kennedy Andara & Sara Estep

Today’s “Employment Situation Summary” data release by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the harms of the Trump administration’s economic and tariff policies. With 22,000 jobs added in August and unemployment rising for the second month in a row, to 4.3 percent, the economic data reveal the stress that the administration’s policies are putting on the American economy.

Despite claims from the Trump administration that the tariffs are going bolster American manufacturing, the latest economic data tell a different story.

42,000 -- jobs lost since April 20

Manufacturing employment has been falling since April, and job growth is slower than it was between January 2024 and August 2024. The timing of the manufacturing declines corresponds with the Trump administration’s disastrous tariff policies, which are projected to cost American households $2,400 annually. Since President Donald Trump’s tariff announcement in April 2025, overall manufacturing employment has declined by 42,000, while job openings and hires have fallen by 76,000 and 18,000, respectively. Despite Trump’s claims that his policies will reignite the manufacturing industry in the United States, his policies have achieved the opposite. ​ -- READ MORE

By Corey Husak


The combination of new tariffs announced by the Trump administration in 2025 and new policies implemented in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will cause Americans’ incomes after taxes and transfers to decrease across the board in 2027, relative to 2025. Indeed, only the top 1 percent of U.S. households by earnings will see an increase. Despite some lawmakers’ attempts to rebrand the bill as a “working families tax cut,” middle-income households will experience a net income decrease of 1.2 percent, or $1,300, in 2027. Meanwhile, the top 1 percent will receive a net income increase of nearly $5,000.

The recently enacted OBBBA will increase deficits by $3.4 trillion over the next decade, while newly increased tariffs will raise revenues by roughly $2.9 trillion over the same period—if kept in place unchanged. However, much of the cost of the OBBBA comes from simply continuing previous, unpaid-for tax policies. The renewal of sunsetting provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) does not provide additional tax cuts beyond what a household was experiencing in January 2025, so this analysis discounts that portion of the bill, as it is more concerned with how policies will change Americans’ budgets going forward. Extending the TCJA tax provisions was counted as part of the Congressional Budget Office’s official cost estimate of the bill because these provisions had not been paid for or previously authorized in law. -- READ MORE

By Alia Hidayat


The benefits of clean energy for people are clear: It provides job growth, fewer pollution-related health risks, and cheaper energy. Renewable energy such as wind and solar is also faster to deploy than natural gas power plants, providing relief from rising electricity costs. Less commonly discussed is how clean energy can benefit nature. Fossil fuels, climate change, and associated pollution pose an existential threat to wildlife across the globe. Clean energy requires less land to be mined, results in less pollution, and alleviates the massive impacts of climate change on species.

States and local communities will make many of the most influential decisions over how and where the clean energy build-out will unfold. Given the repeated attacks on clean energy by the federal government, it is more important than ever for states and localities to take a strong, proactive stance on how to rapidly build out clean energy in a way that benefits communities and wildlife. Also important will be building out the suite of creative low-to-no-cost solutions in the face of reduced federal funding to states to support these efforts.

Smart policy can manage trade-offs --On the whole, wildlife experts generally agree that the risks to nature from clean energy are outweighed by the massive impacts of continued fossil fuel usage. -- READ MORE

From Center for American Progress

Every year, millions of people become victims of violent crime. Experiencing violence can become life altering—resulting in trauma, disability, and unplanned expenses for medical bills, funeral arrangements, mental health counseling, and more.

State crime victim compensation (CVC) programs are a lifeline of support when there is nowhere else to turn to for financial relief. However, these programs are too often underutilized due to restrictive state laws that create unnecessary barriers to access.

A new state-by-state analysis launched by CAP and Common Justice evaluated gaps in victim compensation programs in Wisconsin and gave the state a score of 22 out of 57. -- READ MORE

By Aurelia Glass


The administration has already cut minimum wage protections for hundreds of thousands of federal contract workers and halted plans to require companies to pay disabled workers at least $7.25 per hour this Labor Day, it will advance plans to eliminate federal minimum wage protections for millions of child care and home care providers.


The Trump administration claims that its actions are raising pay for the working class when in reality, they are empowering corporations to lower wages for millions of workers by eliminating minimum wage protections for federal contractors, disabled workers, and domestic workers providing home care and child care.


Minimum wage standards are a fundamental U.S. labor protection. Minimum hourly pay and overtime standards prevent employers from paying workers the lowest they can get away with. But the administration is using its executive authority to:
• End minimum wage and overtime protections for upward of 3.7 million domestic workers
• Reduce the minimum wage for federal contractors by $9,256 annually
• Reverse a policy that would have prevented over 600 employers from legally paying disabled workers less than the minimum wage ​-- READ MORE

By Jill Rosenthal and Steven Woolf

The Make America Healthy Again Commission’s strategy report underscores the importance of childhood nutrition but casts doubt on proven health strategies fails to acknowledge the Trump administration’s harm to children’s health and distracts from effective strategies to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity and to ensure access to vaccines, food security, and clean air and water.


The data are clear that children in the United States are less healthy than those in 18 peer countries, and the gap is widening. Yet the Trump administration’s agenda, alongside the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) Commission’s recently released “Make Our Children Healthy Again” strategy report, will not make American kids healthier. In fact, they will further endanger children’s health.


From 2007 to 2023, children from birth to age 19 in the United States were almost twice as likely to die compared with their counterparts in peer countries, translating to 54 excess child deaths per day. During this time period, children in the United States had worsening rates of chronic developmental, mental, and physical health conditions higher obesity rates poorer sleep and even earlier onset of puberty. ​ -- READ MORE