Politics

Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics. Global birth rates are falling, and many on the right want you to get out there and breed for the good of the U.S. of A.  “Let me say very simply, I want more babies in the United States of America,” Vice President JD Vance said at an anti-abortion rally in January.  But new polling finds that most Americans do not share his concern about declining birth rates. What they are concerned about, though, may be one of the reasons for lower birth rates: the budget-busting price of becoming a parent and raising a kid. And they largely disagree with Vance’s idea of how to fix it. Just 28% of Americans say declining birth rates are a major problem, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Meanwhile, 44% say it’s a minor problem, and 27% consider it no problem at all. Datawrapper Content And even fewer Americans are fans of Vance’s favorite subject: Just 12% think it should be a high priority for the government to encourage people to have more kids. Vance may couch his birthing obsession in language about replacement-level birth rates, but on closer inspection, it’s clear their concerns derive from reactionary misogyny, a reflexive fear and hatred of women choosing to have fewer kids—and of people other than stay-at-home moms raising those kids. “A dramatic expansion of child care is a bad deal for American parents,” Vance wrote in a 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed. But since more than 4 in 5 stay-at-home parents are women, it’s not hard to work out that what conservatives actually want is fewer women working. They’d rather them remain economically dependent on men. After all, this is the same guy who wants to end no-fault divorce and thinks women should stick it out in “violent” marriages. Vance also decried the idea of non-family-based child care, complaining to Tucker Carlson in 2021 that some Americans “want strangers to raise their kids.”  But again, this creep is just out of touch. The same poll finds that the vast majority of Americans (76%) see the cost of child care as a major problem, and another 18% see it as a minor problem. Only 5% don’t see it as a problem. Datawrapper Content The national average price to have an infant in a child care center is over $13,000 a year, according to data from Child Care Aware of America, a national organization that advocates for affordable child care. The median household income in 2023 was $80,610, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, meaning that child care accounts for over 16% of the typical family’s budget—an amount rivaled only by housing, food, and health insurance costs.  And what if that family has two kids? Or three? Or what if there’s only one parent? Some people simply can’t afford to have a kid, even if they want one. Datawrapper Content Of course, many Democrats are running on making child care more affordable—or, if you’re New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, free. That is one of Mamdani’s main campaign planks, which probably boosted him to his shock victory in the local Democratic primary last month. In 2024, 67% of Americans supported the idea of the government providing funding for child care, according to YouGov.  Other reasons for why some Americans are opting out of parenthood are the costs and dangers of getting pregnant in the first place. The AP-NORC poll finds that 41% of Americans say the steep price of fertility treatments as a major problem, and another 34% think it’s a minor problem. Furthermore, 39% see the risks of pregnancy and childbirth as a major problem, and 43% see it as a minor problem.  And unfortunately, the latter problem is getting much worse under Republican leadership. States with more abortion restrictions face higher rates of mothers dying during pregnancy and in the year following childbirth.  After all, if having a kid costs you your life, who can afford that? Any updates? Following the deadly floods in Central Texas, YouGov finds that roughly 1 in 5 Americans (18%) have had to evacuate their homes due to floods, tornados, and other extreme weather at least once in their lives. In the South, that number climbs to 1 in 4 (26%), likely due to the added threat of hurricanes. Relishing its own gleeful cruelty, the Trump administration has nicknamed an immigrant detention center “Alligator Alcatraz” since it’s located in the Florida Everglades. But yet again, the administration is overestimating the blood-thirstiness of the average American: Only 1 in 3 support the opening of this detention center, according to YouGov. Meanwhile, 48% oppose it, and 18% aren’t sure. American pride is falling, with some polls finding it at a new low—and especially low among Democrats and independents. But not only is there a partisan gap on American pride, there was also one on watching Fourth of July fireworks. YouGov finds that 56% of Republicans watched the fireworks this year, while 55% of Democrats and 54% of independents did not.  The Trump administration is moving to revoke U.S. citizenship for those who have committed crimes, and he’s even flirting with the idea of deporting Mamdani, a U.S. citizen who was born in Uganda. However, these threats are vastly unpopular, with 70% of likely voters thinking the president shouldn’t have the power to revoke citizenship from immigrants, according to Data for Progress. Fifty-five percent even say the government shouldn’t be able to deport naturalized citizens who have committed serious crimes. The Internal Revenue Services will now allow churches to endorse political candidates without risking their tax-exempt status, further eroding the boundary between church and state. However, just 20% of Americans support the idea of churches making endorsements, according to 2023 data recently released by the Public Religion Research Institute. Not even a

A cartoon by Mike Luckovich. Related | Pam Bondi has really pissed off MAGA

Please consider supporting PoliticusUSA by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now In the week after the deadly flash flood that killed hundreds in Texas, the talk has been about Jeffrey Epstein, responsibility for the government response, and general chaos surrounding Trump. The one thing that has not been discussed is climate change, but Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) redirected the conversation back to a crisis that Trump is trying to bury. Sen. Sanders said in a statement: In the midst of everything else going on, it’s easy to ignore the extraordinary planetary crisis we face from climate change. But we just can’t allow ourselves to do that. The past 10 years have been the warmest 10 years on record. 2024 was the warmest year in recorded history. January 2025 was the hottest January on record. Western Europe just had its hottest June on record. The recent heat wave in the United States put nearly 190 million Americans under heat advisories and broke heat records in more than 280 locations. Over the past 60 years, the frequency of heat waves in the United States has tripled. According to a new study from Yale University, 64% of Americans think global warming is affecting the weather in the U.S. and almost HALF say they have personally experienced its effects. PoliticusUSA is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. From May 2024 to May 2025, 4 billion people — half of the world’s population — experienced at least one extra month of extreme heat due to climate change. Climate change exacerbated Hurricane Helene last fall in the American Southeast, flooding in Texas this past week and in Vermont and Brazil last summer, recent wildfires in Canada and Los Angeles, and health waves in the United States, Europe, India and Pakistan. And what is President Trump’s response? He just fired the last remaining State Department employees who work on climate change, which is undoubtedly one of the greatest threats to our national security. Donald Trump is putting the planet and future generations at risk for the short-term profits of his fossil fuel executive friends. Trump is giving the fossil fuel industry exactly what they wanted when they wrote all of those campaign checks to him as the Republican candidate in the summer of 2024. The clean energy progress that was made under Biden has been erased by Trump and the Republican congressional majorities. It is not just a political shift, but it is also, as Senator Sanders pointed out, an endangering of the planet. Trump dismisses climate change as a hoax, but the bad policy decisions that Trump is making on energy policy are harming the American people for decades. Trump is also raising energy bills for the American people by contracting the energy market and giving people fewer choices. Bernie Sanders is in his eighties, but he is fighting for the future of the planet. The crisis is getting worse, even if Trump is trying to get people to ignore it. What do you think of Sen. Sanders’s statement on climate change? Share your thoughts in the comments below. Leave a comment

President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history. But halfway through his first year back in office, he’s not even matching the numbers under former President Barack Obama, let alone fulfilling his own pledge. New figures obtained by NBC News show that while Immigration and Customs Enforcement is arresting immigrants at the fastest pace in at least five years, deportations are lagging significantly.  In June, ICE detained around 30,000 people—the highest monthly total since data began being released in late 2020. However, deportations that month barely exceeded 18,000. May showed a similar trend: 24,000 arrests but only about 15,000 deportations. It’s becoming a hallmark of Trump’s second term: performative crackdowns, legal overreach, and a deportation bottleneck that stalls the scheme—even with him having the full power of federal agencies. Since February, Trump’s administration has averaged 14,700 deportations per month. That’s less than half of the former Obama administration’s 2013 average—36,000 per month—and only slightly above Biden’s early 2024 pace of around 12,660 per month (including border removals handled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection). Trump has long campaigned on cruelty, promising to deport 1 million people in his first year, even as public support for immigration has grown recently. Now, even his base is noticing the disconnect: Arrests are up, rhetoric is loud, and results are minimal. Datawrapper Content The data supports what immigration advocates have long said: Trump’s goals were unrealistic. There simply aren’t enough eligible people to deport quickly enough to reach that number legally. And when legal barriers arise, Trump seems eager to bypass due process to maintain appearances. To speed up removals, the administration has started fast-tracking cases—stripping asylum protections, revoking visas, breaking promises to undocumented farmworkers, and pushing immigrants into expedited removal without court hearings. But even these heavy-handed tactics haven’t closed the gap. Legal safeguards are slowing things down—thankfully and for good reason. Immigration attorneys told NBC that many detainees are still waiting on asylum decisions or have court orders preventing deportation. These delays are part of the process. But Trump’s team views them as obstacles. That impatience has already led to serious mistakes. ICE has wrongfully deported at least four immigrants recently, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia and Jordin Alexander Melgar-Salmeron, who were later ordered to be returned by judges. Sister RoseAnn Castilleja, center, holds a Rosary and sign as she marches with other immigration advocates as they protest recent detentions by ICE, in San Antonio, Texas, on July 1. Meanwhile, ICE detention centers are overwhelmed. NBC reports that more than 60,000 people are being detained, far exceeding the 41,500 beds funded by Congress. Overcrowding, poor hygiene, and medical neglect are reportedly widespread, even if Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin dismissed those claims as “categorically false.” She also claimed ICE is working “diligently” to expand detention capacity. That expansion may happen soon. Congress recently passed Trump’s vicious budget law, which allocates $45 billion to immigration enforcement and potentially tripling ICE’s detention capacity. Critics argue it won’t improve outcomes—just worsen dysfunction. But as Trump’s team doubles down on dehumanizing rhetoric, they’re now stuck with a problem of their own making: trying to justify the threat they’ve spent years exaggerating. After all, if the crisis were truly as severe as Trump and his allies claim, he wouldn’t be struggling to deliver on his biggest campaign promise. Instead, we’re watching his signature policy stumble against legal limits, logistical failures, and cold hard reality. Trump isn’t just falling short and losing support. He’s also revealing the emptiness of his immigration agenda. The cruelty is the point. The follow-through has never really mattered.

In his inauguration address, President Donald Trump made a bold—and clunky—promise to “plant the Stars and Stripes on the planet Mars.” Of course, none of this is new: Trump has been yapping about landing on the moon since at least 2017, when he pressed NASA to return to the lunar surface. But now Trump’s dream of taking credit for a manned landing on a celestial body appears to be slipping out of his grasp.  On Wednesday, Politico reported that over 2,100 senior NASA officials are set to leave after a push by higher-ups. Those exiting include many in the agency’s human space flight division. And those departures are likely just the beginning. Trump’s 2026 budget proposal includes slashing NASA’s budget by 25% and cutting another 5,000 employees.  Far from the golden age of space exploration he promised in January, experts now worry that Trump’s funding and staff cuts could cede American space leadership to a rising China. The risk is so great that every living former NASA administrator joined forces to warn that the new budget could permanently hobble the nation’s space program.  Trump’s actions, both proposed and enacted, are helping to hollow out NASA by boosting brain drain, slashing budgets, and saddling the agency with interim leaders who care more about battling “wokeness” than they do about scientific research and space exploration. As always, his own voters will be the ones who pay the price. In Florida, NASA spending supported over 35,500 direct and indirect jobs and more than $8 billion in economic activity in the government’s 2023 fiscal year. Economists now estimate Trump’s proposed cuts will slash those numbers. Of course, Trump won Florida by 13 percentage points in last year’s presidential election.  Trump’s self-defeating cuts to NASA are just the latest in a series of policy decisions that are baffling even his key allies. In an April op-ed for RealClear The flag of the United States, deployed on the surface of the moon, dominates this photograph taken from inside the Lunar Module of Apollo 11, on July 20, 1969. Science, MAGA blowhard Newt Gingrich called Trump’s decision to gut NASA “mindless,” arguing that, if enacted, Trump’s cuts would be “the end of America’s leadership in space science.”  “There are many opportunities to reform NASA without sacrificing science research,” he wrote. But the quality of America’s scientific research is hardly a concern for the thoughtless Republican lawmakers tasked with shuffling Trump’s half-baked ideas through Congress. They’ll willingly vote for legislation that devastates their own constituents, as voters saw recently in their eagerness to gut Medicaid. Other Republicans who once loudly pushed for a strong NASA are now silent in the face of Trump’s sweeping cuts. In April, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz warned in a post on X that a“ moon mission MUST happen in President Trump’s term or else China will beat us there and build the first moonbase.”  Daily Kos reached out to Cruz’s office to ask if he still feels confident in NASA’s ability to deliver a moon landing. As of publication time, his office hasn’t responded.  That’s probably smart. With thousands of NASA employees leaving or being forced out, and the White House openly threatening Elon Musk and SpaceX, it’s unclear how Cruz intends to get anyone to the moon any time soon. He might want to check on that. As of 2023, NASA supported nearly 42,000 jobs in the state and had an economic impact there of over $9 billion, according to the agency. It makes sense given that Houston is the site of Johnson Space Center, one of NASA’s major field centers. There’s another big problem roiling NASA: It has no real leader. The agency has been without a Senate-confirmed NASA administrator since Trump took office in January. Late last year, Trump announced he would nominate Jared Isaacman, a billionaire ally of Musk, to lead the agency. But Trump pulled Isaacman’s nomination in May, days before it was set to be voted on in the Senate—and around the time of his falling-out with Musk. Since January, Trump has gotten by with acting administrators. First was Janet Petro, whose defining achievement was eliminating NASA’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But on Thursday, Trump pulled his nominee for the spot and said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, an alumnus of MTV’s “Road Rules,” will be the new acting head, replacing Petro. Of course, fittingly for the Trump administration, Duffy has no relevant experience to lead NASA. 

A cartoon by Clay Jones. Related | EPA chief clashes with MAGA over weather conspiracies Campaign Action

In the last nine years, federal funding for a system has been denied to the county as it contends with a tax base hostile to government overspending. By Terri Langford and Dan Keemahill for The Texas Tribune In the week after the tragic July 4 flooding in Kerr County, several officials have blamed taxpayer pressure as the reason flood warning sirens were never installed along the Guadalupe River. “The public reeled at the cost,” Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly told reporters one day after the rain pushed Guadalupe River levels more than 32 feet, resulting in nearly 100 deaths in the county, as of Thursday. Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly discusses the ongoing search and rescue efforts on July 5 in Kerrville, Texas, after flooding along the Guadalupe River. A community that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024, Kerr County constructed an economic engine on the allure of the Guadalupe River. Government leaders acknowledged the need for more disaster mitigation, including a $1 million flood warning system that would better alert the public to emergencies, to sustain that growth, but they were hamstrung by a small and tightfisted tax base. An examination of transcripts since 2016 from Kerr County’s governing body, the commissioners court, offers a peek into a small Texas county paralyzed by two competing interests: to make one of the country’s most dangerous region for flash flooding safer and to heed to near constant calls from constituents to reduce property taxes and government waste. “This is a pretty conservative county,” said former Kerr County Judge Tom Pollard, 86. “Politically, of course, and financially as well.” County zeroes in on river safety in 2016 Cary Burgess, a local meteorologist whose weather reports can be found in the Kerrville Daily Times or heard on Hill Country radio stations, has noticed the construction all along the Guadalupe for the better part of the last decade. More Texans and out-of-state residents have been discovering the river’s pristine waters lined with bald cypress trees, a long-time draw for camping, hiking and kayaking, and they have been coming in droves to build more homes and businesses along the water’s edge. If any of the newcomers were familiar with the last deadly flood in 1987 that killed 10 evacuating teenagers, they found the river’s threat easy to dismiss. “They’ve been building up and building up and building up and doing more and more projects along the river that were getting dangerous,” Burgess recalls. “And people are building on this river, my gosh, they don’t even know what this river’s capable of.” By the time the 1987 flood hit, the county had grown to about 35,000 people. Today, there are about 53,000 people living in Kerr County. Embedded Content In 2016, Kerr County commissioners already knew they were getting outpaced by neighboring, rapidly growing counties on installing better flood warning systems and were looking for ways to pull ahead. During a March 28 meeting that year, they said as much. “Even though this is probably one of the highest flood-prone regions in the entire state where a lot of people are involved, their systems are state of the art,” Commissioner Tom Moser said then. He discussed how other counties like Comal had moved to sirens and more modern flood warning systems. “And the current one that we have, it will give – all it does is flashing light,” explained W.B. “Dub” Thomas, the county’s emergency management coordinator. “I mean all – that’s all you get at river crossings or wherever they’re located at.” Related | Trump and Texas point fingers as flood death toll rises Kerr County already had signed on with a company that allowed its residents to opt in and get a CodeRED alert about dangerous weather conditions. But Thomas urged the commissioners court to strive for something more. Cell service along the headwaters of the Guadalupe near Hunt was spotty in the western half of Kerr County, making a redundant system of alerts even more necessary. “I think we need a system that can be operated or controlled by a centralized location where – whether it’s the Sheriff’s communication personnel, myself or whatever, and it’s just a redundant system that will complement what we currently have,” Thomas said that year. By the next year, officials had sent off its application for a $731,413 grant to FEMA to help bring $976,000 worth of flood warning upgrades, including 10 high water detection systems without flashers, 20 gauges, possible outdoor sirens, and more. “The purpose of this project is to provide Kerr County with a flood warning system,” the county wrote in its application. “The System will be utilized for mass notification to citizens about high water levels and flooding conditions throughout Kerr County.” But the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which oversees billions of FEMA dollars designed to prevent disasters, denied the application because they didn’t have a current hazard mitigation plan. They resubmitted it, news outlets reported, but by then, priority was given to counties that had suffered damage from Hurricane Harvey. Political skepticism about a windfall All that concern about warning systems seemed to fade over the next five years, as the political atmosphere throughout the county became more polarized and COVID fatigue frayed local residents’ nerves. In 2021, Kerr County was awarded a $10.2 million windfall from the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA, which Congress passed that same year to support local governments impacted by the pandemic. Cities and counties were given flexibility to use the money on a variety of expenses, including those related to storm-related infrastructure. Corpus Christi, for example, allocated $15 million of its ARPA funding to “rehabilitate and/or replace aging storm water infrastructure.” Waco’s McLennan County spent $868,000 on low water crossings. Kerr County did not opt for ARPA to fund flood warning systems despite commissioners discussing such projects nearly two dozen times since 2016. In fact, a survey sent to residents about ARPA spending showed that 42% of the 180 responses wanted to reject the $10 million bonus altogether, largely on political grounds. “I’m here to

Mirelys Casique was ready to be reunited with her son, 24-year-old Francisco Garcia Casique. In March, Francisco called Mirelys from an ICE facility to say that he was being deported back home to Venezuela the following day. After 6 years apart, they would finally see each other again.  But Francisco would never arrive on Venezuelan soil.  Instead, he was deported to El Salvador’s infamous CECOT prison along with more than 230 others. “I was so hopeful, waiting for him on the couch, waiting for the news that the planes were arriving in Venezuela,” Mirelys told Daily Kos.  Francisco Garcia Casique working as a barber But when images began to circulate on social media of the shaved and shackled men forced to kneel on CECOT’s concrete floors, Mirelys knew that Francisco would not be coming home.  “I wanted to bang my head against the wall, refusing to believe my son belonged in that place,” she said. Francisco, like many of the people who President Donald Trump deported without just cause through use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, had no prior criminal convictions. Rather, he was targeted because of his tattoos and the fact that he’s from Aragua, the Venezuelan town home to the Tren de Aragua gang.  And while the Trump administration has labeled Francisco a dangerous criminal to justify keeping him in El Salvador, his mother says otherwise. “He was always a barber, a worker, responsible,” she told Daily Kos.  Before arriving in the United States in 2023, Francisco was living in Peru working as a barber. Ultimately, Francisco would cross the border illegally into the United States and later turn himself in, beginning a lengthy process of mandatory court hearings as he attempted to become a legal resident. In the meantime, he lived and worked in Texas.  “He left Venezuela to help his family as the eldest son, not to end up abused and locked in a prison as if he were a terrorist,” Mirelys said.  And while the Department of Homeland Security insists that Francisco is a member of Tren de Aragua, the young barber was part of an administrative mixup in the past.  An online Texas database listed suspected gang members, including Francisco. But the photo was incorrectly identified and was actually of an older, bearded man completely unaffiliated with Francisco. Despite being listed in the database, Francisco was released from ICE custody, given an ankle monitor, and labeled nonthreatening as he awaited trial. Francisco Garcia Casique is seen shackled with a shaved hed after being deported to El Salvador. But after Trump took office, Mirelys told Daily Kos, everything changed. On Feb. 6, ICE agents broke down Francisco’s door and violently abducted him in the middle of the night.  “It was a kidnapping,” she said.  Mirelys, like many other relatives of the Venezuelan men being held in CECOT, has not heard from her son since he boarded the deportation flight.  “Francisco is a humble young man. We are low-income people, but that doesn’t mean we should be labeled criminals or bad people,” she said.  On June 16, Mirelys—along with four other relatives of detained men—traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, to plead for the United Nations to step in. Many have also tried traveling directly to El Salvador to see their loved ones. But even with lawyers at their side, the trips have been unsuccessful.  And while Mirelys’ story of a heartbroken mother may resonate with the citizens of Geneva, she has returned to Venezuela without the results she was hoping for.  “Many have spoken out in support, but we want action,” she told Daily Kos. “We want this to end soon. We don’t know the extent of their physical and mental deterioration.” As reports have surfaced regarding the torture inside CECOT, the wellbeing of the deported Venezuelan men is a top concern.  It’s unclear what the next legal steps will be as people like Mirelys await their relatives’ hopeful release. While the Trump administration previously said that the responsibility to release anyone was in the hands of El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele has now insisted that El Salvador is simply holding them as a favor for the United States.  For Mirelys, all she can do is continue to tell her son’s story and hold onto hope.  “I want the world to know that even though we are going through this great pain and we are destroyed because this is an injustice—because evil wants to stalk us and hurt our families—we still believe in God, and God is just and good,” she said. “He will return our children to us.”

In recent years, major banks have begun the quiet, calculated and often callous closing of bank accounts belonging to honest, law-abiding Americans, typically without warning, cause or recourse.

The order reiterates measures included in the recently passed budget reconciliation bill, leading renewable energy advocates to question its significance. By Dan Gearino for Inside Climate News President Donald Trump issued an executive order on July 7 that he said will “end taxpayer support for unaffordable and unreliable ‘green’ energy sources” such as wind and solar. But it’s not clear whether the order will have much of an effect other than to underscore the president’s antipathy for those power sources. Some observers speculate this action is fulfilling a promise to hardline conservative House members in order to win their votes last week for the massive budget reconciliation bill. The order is titled “Ending Market Distorting Subsidies for Unreliable Foreign Controlled Energy Sources.” It directs the Treasury department to “strictly enforce the termination of the clean electricity production and investment tax credits” as specified by the bill. Related | Trump thinks ‘windmills are killing our country’—yes, really The legislation, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed on July 4, says that projects must begin construction by mid-2026 or be placed in service by the end of 2027. This is a rapid phaseout compared to the previous law that had a phaseout that was to begin in 2032. The executive order advises the Treasury department to allow no wiggle room on the new deadlines. It also says the department must take prompt action to follow the bill’s new limits on tax credits going to entities with ties to China. In addition, it says the Department of the Interior must revise any policies or practices that give solar and wind power preferential treatment compared to other energy sources. A solar array atop a parking structure in Scottsdale, Ariz., in Jan. 2015. The Treasury and Interior departments also must make reports within 45 days about how they are complying with the order. Analysts, lawmakers and officials from renewable energy industry groups had mixed reactions about the significance of the order. But they do not downplay the effects of the bill that has become law. It is a gutting of incentives from President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act that will reduce federal government support for renewable energy, electric vehicles and manufacturing of those products and related components. The result, according to reports from Rhodium Group, Princeton University’s REPEAT Project, the think tank Energy Innovation and the Clean Energy Buyers Association, is likely to be a decrease in U.S. jobs and an increase in electricity prices. And yet, the executive order is likely to have minimal additional effect, said Pavel Molchanov, a managing director for the investment firm Raymond James. “Contrary to the EO’s headline, the EO does not abolish any tax credits,” he said in an email. “To state the obvious, only Congress can change tax law—which, in fact, is what Congress did last week via the budgetary megabill.” He expects little or no practical effect from the Interior department provision “It is worth noting that, under the Federal Power Act, the government cannot favor one type of power generation over another,” he said. “Thus, the EO simply restates existing law in that regard.” Derrick Flakoll, a senior policy associate for BloombergNEF, sees much greater potential for harm to the wind and solar industries. “It’s a big deal, but how big a deal it is we don’t know,” he said. He explained that the order is attempting to create uncertainty around the 2026 deadline, which is a crucial deadline for projects to have a smooth path to qualifying for tax credits. “It could push a lot of projects out of eligibility or into such an uncertain state of eligibility that it becomes hard to build and finance them,” he said. Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, offered this statement: “This executive order appears to target long-standing and well-established tax standards that allow for realistic financing timelines for all sorts of energy projects—including solar, wind, carbon capture and hydrogen projects,” she said. “We will continue to make the case that business certainty, predictability, and even-handedness are bedrocks of federal policy that cannot be undone by the stroke of a pen. We expect the Treasury Department to follow the law.” Datawrapper Content Rep. Sean Casten (D-Illinois), who has a background running clean energy businesses, said the order is about helping the market for fossil fuels by harming competing sources of electricity. “Donald Trump doesn’t hate renewable energy because it is clean,” he said in an email. “He hates it because it’s cheap. His latest executive orders are about making it harder for Americans to access cheap and reliable energy to ensure he keeps profits up for his friends in the fossil fuel industry.” Taylor Rogers, an assistant press secretary for Trump, pushed back on concerns that the president’s actions would lead to higher energy prices. “No one takes disingenuous cost concerns seriously from ‘clean energy’ groups that supported a $200 billion tax hike on the American people to fund the Green New Scam,” she said. “The One Big Beautiful Bill will continue to unleash America’s energy industry, dropping electricity costs that increased dramatically due to Joe Biden’s climate agenda.” She listed the many aspects of the bill that increase oil and gas production and reduce regulations, which she said will cut costs for consumers. Her response to questions did not include any comment about whether the executive order was part of a commitment made to Congressional Republicans. The budget bill passed the House on Friday, 218-214, with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against it. Several fiscally conservative House members initially balked at the spending levels in the bill, but most of them ended up voting for it after meeting with Trump. Related | We’re getting coal, whether we want it or not Asked about how Trump had earned their votes, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told CNBC on Friday that the president had told members he would use executive powers to stop renewable energy sources from being able to use subsidies. “A lot of these subsidies won’t