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By Alice Lillydahl

The Trump administration and the far right are engaging in dangerous, un-American tactics to suppress speech they dislike, cementing their control over institutions and the public by undermining First Amendment rights.

The Trump Administration and the far right have spoken vehemently against the “canceling” of individuals because they claim it silences voices and doles out uneven punishment to conservatives. However, now that they hold the highest-ranking positions in the government, these same figures are leading the charge to crush dissent through both the soft power of their words and by using the levers of the federal government against Americans.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Brendan Carr threatened to deplatform comedian Jimmy Kimmel. Vice President JD Vance rallied supporters to call the employers of people who did not adhere to the White House’s preferred script after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. And President Donald Trump instructed Microsoft to fire former Biden administration official Lisa Monaco, who oversaw the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigations into Trump’s conduct. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice has indicted high-profile enemies of the president, at his direct instruction, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Organizations and individuals who do not want to attract the ire of the Trump administration face an uncomfortable choice of conforming to the ideals of the administration and the far right or risking government-approved cancellation—a dangerous development that threatens Americans’ fundamental right to free speech. -- READ MORE

By Jazmine Amoako

This holiday season, many American families are finding their budgets under strain by the Trump administration’s trade and economic policies. December is usually a bright spot for households, but the administration’s unprecedented tariffs are driving up prices on consumer goods and cutting into what families can afford.

The Trump administration’s tariffs are fueling inflation

Despite the Trump administration’s claims that other countries would pay for its tariffs, President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are undoubtedly making life more expensive for Americans. According to analysis from the Harvard Business School (HBS) Pricing Lab, the price of imported goods rose about 4.0 percent between March and September 2025, while domestic goods rose 2.0 percent. Relative to pre-tariff trends from October 2024 to March 2025, this reflects price increases of 5.4 and 3.0 percent, respectively, and accounts for an added 0.7 percentage-point increase in inflation measured by the consumer price index (CPI) as of August 2025.* (see Figure 1) A separate analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis examined another inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, and found that from June to August 2025, “tariffs explain roughly 0.5 percentage points of headline PCE annualized inflation,” out of a total of 2.85 percent.

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By Emily Gee

Time is running short for Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces to update their systems before enrollment opens nationwide on November 1. With “window shopping” now live on HealthCare.gov and in other states, enrollees are already seeing their premium costs for 2026 rise by thousands of dollars. Nationally, the average premium cost is set to more than double for marketplace enrollees who receive financial assistance.

The expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits, which more than 20 million Americans rely on for affordable health insurance, is at the center of the federal government shutdown fight. The enhanced tax credit levels—which increased the generosity of the ACA’s original subsidies and guaranteed affordable coverage for more middle-class families—under current law sunset at the end of 2025. If Congress does not extend them, nearly 4 million more people will be uninsured by 2034, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been keeping House Republicans away from Washington, and Congress may not pass funding legislation by the critical November 1 date. That delay would be dire for the marketplaces, but it should not result in Congress completely abandoning legislation to improve health coverage affordability. In the weeks ahead, it would be still possible for federal and state marketplaces to implement eligibility changes for 2026 coverage. Congress could still pass a clean extension of enhanced tax credits to deliver some financial relief for enrollees and stem the coverage losses. . -- READ MORE

By Ben Greenho, Silva Mathema, & Rosa Barrientos-Ferrer

Introduction and summary -- For decades, the United States has been the world’s preeminent superpower, a position driven by its role as an innovation hub in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Through advances in new industries and technologies, U.S. innovation fuels economic growth and creates new jobs that benefit the American workforce. This global leadership in innovation has been attributable in part to America’s unparalleled ability to attract rich and diverse talent from all over the world.

Immigrant stories of success and innovation are woven intrinsically into the fabric of American history. For example, Sergey Brin escaped the Soviet Union, co-founded Google, and changed the way the world processed information Katalin Karikó, an immigrant from Hungary, co-developed the mRNA vaccine technology that helped the United States and the world respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and Levi Strauss, a Bavarian immigrant, created the quintessentially American blue jeans. Several major tech and telecommunications companies are led or founded by immigrants, and immigrants founded or co-founded an estimated 60 percent of the top U.S.-based artificial intelligence (AI) companies. Yet this dominance in innovation is being threatened by the Trump administration’s shortsighted anti-immigration policies.

The administration has sought to undermine the legal immigration system to fulfill its anti-immigration agenda, which hurts the U.S. economy and flies in the face of Americans’ growing support for legal immigration. These unprecedented actions—including detaining international students for expressing their opinions, revoking visas, attacking higher education institutions, and issuing new travel restrictions—have sent warning signals to prospective international students, researchers, and innovators worldwide that the United States is not a place that welcomes their skills to build their careers and strengthen the American economy. -- READ MORE

By Devon Ombres

In a recent poll of 1,000 Americans, 75 percent indicated they felt that “Allowing people and organizations to spend unlimited amounts of money in our elections makes our democracy weaker, because it gives wealthy special interests too much influence over the decisions our politicians make.” In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission (NRSC v. FEC), the U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to allow even special interests to effectively bypass campaign contribution limits by permitting unlimited coordination between parties and candidates. Since political parties can accept far more special interest money than candidates, money could flow through them to candidates through coordination with individual campaigns such coordinated spending was previously capped. This newly legal pass-through, which would upend decades of campaign finance laws, could exponentially increase the appearance of corruption in American electoral politics and make elected officials even more beholden to the special interests that fund their campaigns.


NRSC v. FEC was originally brought by then-Sen. and now Vice President JD Vance and asks the Supreme Court to overturn its 2001 precedent—FEC v. Colorado Federal Campaign Committee—that sets limits on coordinating campaign expenditures between national parties and candidates. The Supreme Court then held that limiting coordinated expenditures between national committees and candidates satisfied a “sufficiently important” government interest in “combating political corruption” and so did not violate the First Amendment. In practice, the coordinated campaign expenditure limit helps to prevent special interests from doing an end run around campaign contribution limits, which could result in the appearance of or actual political corruption by making candidates beholden to contributors. Campaign contribution limits currently stand at $3,500 to candidates per election, $44,300 to national party committees per year, and $62,000 from committees to Senate candidate per election.
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By Kennedy Andara and Sara Estep

Delayed September 2025 jobs data release reveals the hardships of finding a job in Trump’s economy, especially for people of color.

Today’s “Employment Situation Summary” data release by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the economic weakness created by President Donald Trump’s disastrous tariff policies, slash-and-burn to the federal government, and historic cuts to health care and social services. The resulting uncertainty for employers has led to a hiring slowdown and some to turn to layoffs.

While the October 2025 jobs data will likely not be released in its entirety due to the government shutdown, BLS released the delayed September 2025 data following the reopening of the government. Today’s release reveals how job seekers were struggling to find opportunities in September. Even before the shutdown, many job seekers’ unemployment duration neared the cutoff for unemployment benefits—typically 26 weeks, but it varies by state—as people remained unemployed for longer amounts of time. A Center for American Progress analysis shows that people of color, especially Black men and women, are experiencing greater difficulty finding work in Trump’s economy. Conditions such as these for Black workers have previously foreshadowed broader weakness in the economy.

Job seekers remain unemployed for longer periods of time

In September 2025, the unemployment rate increased to 4.4 percent, the highest rate since September 2021. Since Trump took office, unemployment has increased by 0.4 percentage points, and the Federal Reserve projects it will remain elevated in 2026. ​-- READ MORE