Home Depot keeps quiet on immigration raids outside its doors By Alina Selyukh , Liz Baker

 Ray Hudson arrived at his local Home Depot in Los Angeles preparing for a move. He picked up plastic crates. Usually, he would also hire help — one of the men who tend to gather nearby looking for work. But they weren't there.

Earlier that day, on August 6, federal agents in tactical gear sprung out of a rented moving truck, going after day laborers and food sellers in an immigration raid. Hudson heard about it on the news.

"It's just not right," Hudson said. "They're out here trying to make an honest living. They're not hurting nobody, they're not bothering nobody."

 If there's a company most caught up in the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, it's Home Depot, after numerous raids near stores around Los Angeles and the country. But the home-improvement giant has largely stayed quiet. 

During Tuesday's earnings call with Wall Street analysts, executives said nothing — and received no questions about — immigration raids or day laborers. Last week, after a man died as he ran from one of the raids onto a freeway and was struck by a car, Home Depot representatives did not respond to NPR's inquiry on the death. Earlier in the month, Home Depot replied to questions about the company's position on raids and interaction with federal authorities with a statement it has issued repeatedly:

"We ask associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety," the statement reads, in part. "We aren't notified that immigration enforcement activities are going to happen, and we aren't involved in them. In many cases, we don't know that arrests have taken place until after they're over. We're required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate."

Home Depot's hands-off response frustrates Chris Newman. He advocates for day laborer rights as the legal director of the National Day Labor Organizing Network.

 "I sympathize with the fact that they are now ground zero for a big polarizing political and cultural issue," Newman told NPR earlier this month. "However, I think that they have a responsibility and certainly a moral obligation to defend day laborers, who are both customers and service the stores where they seek work."

 

In a statement to NPR, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also said Home Depot has no role in their operations and businesses don't get notified in advance of enforcement actions.

Day laborer sites sprung up as Home Depot grew

Home Depot does not have a formal relationship with day laborers, but their history runs deep.

"Much of Home Depot's success has led to the conditions that we see in the industry today and why contractors turn to day laborers so often," said Nik Theodore, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago who's one of the top researchers on day laborers.

Before the 1990s, when the retailer grew into the biggest home improvement chain, contracting crews tried to keep their costs lower than their rivals by shopping for supplies at different wholesalers. But now, everyone pays the same prices at Home Depot. That's made the cost of labor a key way for a contractor to get the edge over competitors.

Add in the chronic worker shortage in construction, and day laborers became a particularly convenient and cheap solution: an on-demand workforce right outside the store. 

 

"The construction industry is highly volatile and the need for on-call labor remains high," Theodore said. "And the immigrants are filling that shortage."

Roughly half of Home Depot's sales are now to professional contractors, who might need quick help with demolition, construction or cleanup.

The other type of customer at Home Depot was, in many ways, created by the chain: The retailer early on began teaching home owners to DIY and skip the contractor. Those shoppers now hire day laborers, too, for quick repairs or landscaping.

 

Raids haven't had any clear impact on sales so far

Home Depot has said that day laborers are not part of its business model. Wall Street analysts say they're not a huge customer base and people who hire them would shop at the chain even if day laborers weren't nearby.

Investors so far have shrugged off the immigration spotlight on the company. Home Depot's stock price is at its highest since February.

"I don't think that it's had any impact really on their sales," said Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joe Feldman, speaking earlier this month. "There's nothing to say from Home Depot's standpoint in the sense that Home Depot doesn't hire [day laborers] — doesn't have a network to try to help them get hired — they just happen to show up at Home Depot's doorstep."

On Tuesday, Home Depot reported its U.S. sales grew 1.4% between early May and early August, a tepid result that nonetheless surpassed the previous quarter notably. Home owners have continued to delay major projects out of worry about the economy and tariffs, but appear to be doing more smaller projects.

The company has also stuck to a neutral tone on President Trump's tariffs. After Trump publicly shamed Walmart in May for warning that tariffs would lead to higher prices, Home Depot said it didn't expect "broad-based" price increases, though some products might disappear from shelves. On Tuesday, executives flagged possible "modest" price hikes for some imported products. 

 

Critics, meanwhile, often zero in on the company's perceived politics: Two of the company's three founders have supported Trump. But those men have not run Home Depot for about 20 years, and one of them died last year. The retailer donates to both political parties.

On Reddit, Home Depot workers have begun trading tales of raid impacts: Some claim fewer contractors are visiting and stores are struggling to meet sales goals; others say it's business as usual and sales are booming. 

 

Back at the Los Angeles Home Depot a few hours after that raid with the rental truck, shopper Margarita Ochoa pointed out one change.

"This parking lot is always full," she said. "Right now, there is like so many spaces."

Ochoa runs a housekeeping business and usually sends her employees to stock up on cleaning supplies or liquids for her pressure washer. But today, for the first time in a while, Ochoa is at the Home Depot.

"Because they're afraid to come," she said, "They're afraid to be here."

Ochoa said she hopes Home Depot will speak out more against the raids and also do more, perhaps by protecting people who run inside by closing the doors to immigration agents.

She was thinking of taking her business elsewhere, she said. But this Home Depot is still the most convenient to get her supplies — and it has been her store for 33 years.

 

"In general, day laborers love Home Depot, and Home Depot's bottom line loves day laborers," said Newman.

Electricity prices are climbing more than twice as fast as inflation Scott Horsley

 

Ken Thomas woke up this past Wednesday to find the power had gone out at his house in Boca Raton. A text message from his utility said a piece of equipment had failed at 2 a.m. By the time a repair crew showed up eight hours later, the hot, sticky Florida summer was already taking a toll.

"You just don't realize how important your power is until you don't have it," says Thomas, a retired air traffic controller. "In Florida's heat, you just can't live without air conditioning. And this time of year particularly."

Thomas has invested in energy-saving windows and insulation to keep his house comfortable. But in the heat of the summer, his power bills still top $400 a month. 

 "It's painful to see that bill when it comes in," he says.

Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That's especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime. 

 In Pembroke Pines, Fla., Al Salvi's power bill can reach $500 a month.

"There's a lot of seniors down here that are living check to check. They can barely afford prescriptions such as myself," says Salvi, who's 63 and uses a wheelchair. "Now we got to decide whether we're going to pay the electric bill or are we going to buy medication. And it's not fair to us. You're squeezing us between a rock and a hard place."

 

Earlier this year, the utility that serves both Thomas and Salvi, Florida Power & Light, applied for a rate increase that would have boosted bills for a typical South Florida resident by about 13% over the next four years.

The AARP launched a petition drive to oppose the rate hike, and quickly gathered tens of thousands of signatures.

"Our members are pretty upset," says Zayne Smith, AARP Florida's director of advocacy. "That's just another way people are getting nickel and dimed out of being able to afford to live here in Florida."

 

Last week, Florida Power & Light announced a tentative agreement on rates with commercial and industrial customers. CEO Armando Pimentel said the deal would ensure, "we can continue to provide reliable electricity to power our fast-growing state while keeping customer bills low."

Details of the new rate proposal have not been made public.

It's not just Florida that's wrestling with high-priced power. Electricity prices have been rising rapidly across the country — thanks to a combination of factors tied to both demand and supply.

Power-hungry AI data centers are one factor driving high prices

Power-hungry data centers have been popping up all over, to serve the boom in artificial intelligence. The Energy Department projects data centers and other commercial customers will use more electricity than households for the first time ever next year. That's a challenge for policymakers, who have to decide how to accommodate that extra demand and who should foot the bill.

"Regulators always play catchup," says John Quigley, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. "The growth of data centers is far outpacing the response by grid managers, public utility commissions across the country, and they're racing to catch up."

Natural gas exports also push prices higher

The soaring price of natural gas is also pushing power prices higher. More than 40% of electricity is generated using natural gas. As more gas is exported as liquid natural gas, the competition from foreign customers is driving up the price utilities have to pay here at home. 

 

The Energy Department says the cost of gas used to generate power jumped more than 40% in the first half of this year compared to 2024. Another 17% increase is expected next year.

"Any way you look at it, gas-fired power is expensive," Quigley says. "It's going to be increasingly expensive as natural gas exports increase. The future is to make electricity cheaper and the way to do it is clean energy."

One in six households already struggles to pay for power

Solar and wind power can be cheaper than gas-fired plants, even without government subsidies. But building new power supplies and the wires to carry it will cost money. And one out of six households already have trouble paying their current electric bills. 

 

"We're not questioning whether the grid needs to be rebuilt," says Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, which advocates for low-income energy customers. "We're not questioning whether there needs to be new data centers built. But the problem is, for low income families and people living in poverty, they don't have the ability to pay any more than they're currently paying, without falling even further behind and getting into shut-off situations."

The federal government currently spends about $4 billion a year to help low-income families with energy bills. But Wolfe says that's not enough to cover rising cooling costs in the summer. And President Trump's proposed budget would end the assistance altogether.

In Boca Raton, Ken Thomas was grateful to have his power restored this week, after about ten hours with no air conditioning. At the same time, he's bracing for his August electric bill.

"I value my utility that I need to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter," he says. "But I also know that there is a limit to what we can afford to pay."

 

FACT FOCUS: Trump misrepresents facts about wind power during Cabinet meeting by JENNIFER McDERMOTT

 

President Donald Trump expressed his disdain for wind power during a meeting with his Cabinet recently, calling it an expensive form of energy that “smart” countries don’t use.

His comments on Tuesday contained false and misleading information about the use of wind power in the United States and around the world, and came on the heels of an executive order he signed Monday that would end subsidies around “green” energy.

Here’s a look at the facts.

CLAIM: “Wind is a very expensive form of energy.”

THE FACTS: Onshore wind is one of the cheapest sources of electricity generation, with new wind farms expected to produce electricity around $30 per megawatt hour. This compares to a new natural gas plant, around $65 per megawatt hour, or a new advanced nuclear reactor, which runs over $80, according to estimates from the Energy Information Administration. Onshore wind farms cost less to build and operate than natural gas plants on average in most regions of the United States, even without tax credits. Though natural gas plants are available to produce electricity at any time of the day, unlike wind. Offshore wind is among the sources of new power generation that will cost the most to build and operate, at $88 per megawatt hour, according to the EIA.

 While electricity rates have risen nationwide over the past decade, states that have added a significant amount of onshore wind power, such as Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, have kept rates from rising as fast as other states, said Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at the nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation. For example, the share of electricity generated from wind in Iowa increased from 15% in 2010 to nearly 60% of the state’s electricity generation in 2023, while the state’s electricity rates grew at a rate slower than that of 42 other states, his research found.

 Wind power can be expensive if it’s built where winds are weaker, but the United States is adding it in places with strong wind resources, he added.

 

“Wind should be seen as part of an overall portfolio of electricity system resources and is an important part of keeping costs down,” he said Wednesday.

Trump has committed to increasing U.S. energy production, particularly fossil fuels. He signed an executive order Monday aimed at phasing out tax credits for wind and solar facilities.

 CLAIM: Wind turbines are “almost exclusively” made in China, but President Xi Jinping told Trump they have “very, very few.”

THE FACTS: China is the world’s largest manufacturer of wind turbines, producing more than half of the supply. It is also installing them in China at a record pace. In total, China has 1.3 terawatts of utility-scale wind and solar capacity in development, which could generate more electricity than neighboring Japan consumed in all of 2023, according to a report from the Global Energy Monitor released Wednesday. The report highlighted China’s offshore wind development, calling China the undisputed leader in the offshore wind sector, though it also said coal and gas are still on the rise across China.

 

“The whole narrative that we’re led to believe in the West is that China is building coal plants and that it’s doing nothing for its carbon footprint,” Tom Harper, partner at the global consultant Baringa, said Tuesday. “So the surprising thing is China is building a portfolio of zero-carbon resources that are designed to not perfectly complement each other, but to work alongside each other to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”

CLAIM: “If you look at smart countries, they don’t use it.”

THE FACTS: At least 136 countries and territories around the world use wind power to generate electricity, according to the EIA, with many countries growing the amount they produce. The top five markets for wind power in 2024 were China, the U.S., Brazil, India and Germany, while Uzbekistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia represent the next wave of wind energy growth, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.

Council CEO Ben Backwell said 2024 marked yet another record year for wind energy growth, with the “industry increasingly pushing into new regions.”

 

Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, disputed the idea that smart countries don’t use wind power. China is soaring ahead in building a massive amount of wind power while Germany, the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain, Sweden, France and many other countries in Europe have large programs of wind construction, he said Wednesday.

“By cutting back on wind power development, the U.S. is ceding the lead to China in this important technology, and killing a lot of U.S. jobs,” Gerrard said in an e-mail.

CLAIM: In New England, two whales washed up over 50 years, “and last summer they had 14 washed up. Now, I’m not saying that’s the wind farm that was built, that maybe it is right.”

 

THE FACTS: There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA says it analyzes the causes of death whenever possible, following the science and data. Unfounded claims about offshore wind threatening whales have surfaced as a flashpoint in the fight over the future of renewable energy.

The nation’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm officially opened in 2024 east of Montauk Point, New York. The nation’s second-largest offshore wind farm is under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. A five-turbine pilot project has been operating since 2016 off the coast of Rhode Island.

CLAIM: “The birds are dying all over the place.”

THE FACTS: Turbines, like all infrastructure, can pose a risk to birds. However, the National Audubon Society, which is dedicated to the conservation of birds, thinks developers can manage these risks and climate change is a greater threat. An Audubon report found that two-thirds of North American bird species could face extinction due to rising temperatures.

In January, the nonprofit said responsible offshore wind development is a clear win for birds, the U.S. economy and the climate.

“While persistent myths claim widespread and devastating effects of offshore wind turbines on wildlife, the science tells a different story. Our findings clearly indicate that we can responsibly deploy offshore wind in a manner that still protects birds and their habitats,” Sam Wojcicki, Audubon’s senior director for climate policy, wrote in a January post. The organization also supports wind energy on land when it is sited and operated properly to minimize the impact on birds and other wildlife.

CLAIM: “You can’t take them down because the environmentalists don’t let you bury the blades.”

THE FACTS: Wind turbine blades are challenging to recycle. They are designed for durability to withstand hurricane-force winds. However, the U.S. already has the ability to recycle most wind turbine materials, according to the Department of Energy. It issued a report in January that found 90% of wind turbines can be recycled using existing infrastructure, while new strategies and innovative recycling methods will be needed to tackle the rest.

The wind power industry acknowledges that the disposal of wind turbine blades is an issue. Danish wind energy developer Ørsted committed in 2021 to never sending turbine blades to landfill, instead reusing, recycling or otherwise recovering them.

Advocates fear Trump's crackdown in D.C. will put many homeless people behind bars by Brian Mann

WASHINGTON — As hundreds of National Guard troops deployed on Tuesday in the nation's capital, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said homeless people in Washington, D.C., who refuse to move into shelters will face prosecution or fines.

"Homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services," Leavitt said during a press briefing, when asked by NPR about the expanding crackdown. "If they refuse, they will be subjected to fines or jail time."

 According to Leavitt, Metropolitan police and federal law enforcement agents in Washington will strictly enforce existing laws that force homeless people off the city's streets as part of an effort to "make D.C. safe and beautiful."

 

"That involves removing mentally disturbed individuals and homeless encampments as well," Leavitt said.

The get-tough policy toward people living without permanent housing is part of President Trump's wider push to end what he has described as rampant crime and disorder. In fact, violent crime reached a 30-year low in the city last year and other forms of criminal activity are also down sharply, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Trump has disputed those figures and speaking during a press conference on Monday, he said "drugged-out maniacs and homeless people" have contributed to a sharp decline in the city's quality of life.

Posting on his social media platform, Trump also suggested homeless people will be forced out of Washington entirely: "The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital," Trump wrote.

That rhetoric has drawn sharp criticism from housing advocates and experts who say Trump's stepped-up law enforcement campaign won't solve the growing crisis of homelessness.

"There are very few beds available [in Washington]," said Jessie Rabinowitz with National Homelessness Law Center. "There are a handful of shelter beds available in far-flung parts of the city. Often in parts of the city where people don't want to be."

 "I'm pretty well a quiet person"

Many people living on the streets or in tent camps around the city voiced confusion and anger at the federal push to remove them from the community. 

 

"I prefer to sleep under the stars," said Dallas Bossert, age 64. "The problem with a lot of your shelters is it's a 30-day stay and then you have to move. You can't really get nothing done."

Bossert said he hoped police and federal agents would leave him alone: "I think what the government is trying to do is get the hard-line troublemakers out of the downtown area. I'm pretty well a quiet person."

But Donald Whitehead, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said he feared many of the city's homeless residents will wind up displaced and incarcerated.

He noted that Trump has compared his campaign against disorder in Washington to the escalating effort to detain migrants without legal status.

"There is a fear this may be similar to what's happened to people rounded up due to their immigration status," Whitehead said, pointing to detention camps that have sprung up around the country.

"We're very concerned that people could be removed involuntarily away from services. That could lead to a lot of very bad outcomes including death."

More pressure, fewer services

Experts also voiced concern about efforts to pressure people living with addiction into treatment at a time when there aren't enough recovery facilities capable of treating the complex health issues that stem from use of fentanyl, methamphetamines and other toxic street drugs.

"[Addiction] is a chronic illness. It's not the kind of thing where you sweep them up, you get them better and then they're cured and that's it," said Dr. Stephen Taylor, head of the American Society of Addiction Medicine.

According to Taylor, Trump's rhetoric about homeless people experiencing addiction dehumanizes Americans struggling with serious illness. 

 

"It's quite frankly painful. People who experience addiction are us, our friends, our neighbors our family members, our children," Taylor said. "They're people who happen to have an illness that can be devastating."

In recent months, the Trump administration has slashed funding for addiction research and treatment grants, while also sharply reducing Medicaid insurance spending that many people with substance use disorder rely upon.

The White House has also proposed deep cuts to rental assistance for low-income families at a time when housing costs have soared for many Americans.

"They're cutting the housing for people," said Constances Harrison, 52, who lives in a homeless encampment near the Lincoln Memorial. "I wish they would stop treating homeless people like we're dogs and like we're all addicts."

 

According to Leavitt, roughly 70 homeless camps in Washington have already been broken up since March by federal authorities.

Trump made it plain this week he wants similar aggressive action against people living on the streets in other cities. Some advocates said they believe a national effort to punish and incarcerate people without housing is already underway.

"We've already started to see that taking hold in communities that criminalize people just because they don't have a safe place to sleep," said Ann Oliva, who heads the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Oliva and others interviewed by NPR said Trump is tapping into real frustration among Americans that the number of people living on the streets and in tent camps keeps growing.

"The solution isn't to punish unsheltered people by putting them in jail," Oliva said. "The solution should be to provide them access to safe and affordable housing and the services they need to maintain that housing."

 

 

This isn’t how wars are ended − a veteran diplomat explains how Trump-Putin summit is amateurish and politically driven BY

 Donald Heflin 

 A hastily arranged summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin is set for Aug. 15, 2025, in Alaska, where the two leaders will discuss a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will not attend, barring a last-minute change. The Conversation’s politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed longtime diplomat Donald Heflin, now teaching at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, to get his perspective on the unconventional meeting and why it’s likely to produce, as he says, a photograph and a statement, but not a peace deal.

How do wars end?

Wars end for three reasons. One is that both sides get exhausted and decide to make peace. The second, which is more common: One side gets exhausted and raises its hand and says, “Yeah, we’re ready to come to the peace table.”

And then the third is – we’ve seen this happen in the Mideast – outside forces like the U.S. or Europe come in and say, “That’s enough. We’re imposing our will from the outside. You guys stop this.”

What we’ve seen in the Russia-Ukraine situation is neither side has shown a real willingness to go to the conference table and give up territory.

So the fighting continues. And the role that Trump and his administration are playing right now is that third possibility, an outside power comes in and says, “Enough.” 

 Now you have to look at Russia. Russia is maybe a former superpower, but a power, and it’s got nuclear arms and it’s got a big army. This is not some small, Middle Eastern country that the United States can completely dominate. They’re nearly a peer. So can you really impose your will on them and get them to come to the conference table in seriousness if they don’t want to? I kind of doubt it.

 

How does this upcoming Trump-Putin meeting fit into the history of peace negotiations?

The analogy a lot of people are using is the Munich Conference in 1938, where Great Britain met with Hitler’s Germany. I don’t like to make comparisons to Nazism or Hitler’s Germany. Those guys started World War II and perpetrated the Holocaust and killed 30 or 40 million people. It’s hard to compare anything to that.

But in diplomatic terms, we go back to 1938. Germany said, “Listen, we have all these German citizens living in this new country of Czechoslovakia. They’re not being treated right. We want them to become part of Germany.” And they were poised to invade.

The prime minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, went and met with Hitler in Munich and came up with an agreement by which the German parts of Czechoslovakia would become part of Germany. And that would be it. That would be all that Germany would ask for, and the West gave some kind of light security guarantees.

Czechoslovakia wasn’t there. This was a peace imposed on them.

And sure enough, you know, within a year or two, Germany was saying, “No, we want all of Czechoslovakia. And, P.S., we want Poland.” And thus World War II started. 

 

Can you spell out the comparisons further?

Czechoslovakia wasn’t at the table. Ukraine’s not at the table.

Again, I’m not sure I want to compare Putin to Hitler, but he is a strongman authoritarian president with a big military.

Security guarantees were given to Czechoslavakia and not honored. The West gave Ukraine security guarantees when that country gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994. We told them, “If you’re going to be brave and give up your nuclear weapons, we’ll make sure you’re never invaded.” And they’ve been invaded twice since then, in 2014 and 2022. The West didn’t step up.

So history would tell us that the possibilities for a lasting peace coming out of this summit are pretty low. 

 

What kind of expertise is required in negotiating a peace deal?

Here’s what usually happens in most countries that have a big foreign policy or national security establishment, and even in some smaller countries.

The political leaders come up with their policy goal, what they want to achieve.

And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, “This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?”

And then the experts say, “Oh, we do this and we do that, and we’ll assign staff to work it out. We’ll work with our Russian counterparts and try to narrow the issues down, and we’ll come up with numbers and maps.”

With all the replacement of personnel since the inauguration, the U.S. not only has a new group of political appointees – including some, like Marco Rubio, who, generally speaking, know what they’re doing in terms of national security – but also many who don’t know what they’re doing. They’ve also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn’t there.

That’s a real problem. The U.S. national security establishment is increasingly being run by the B team – at best.

How will this be a problem when Trump meets Putin?

You have two leaders of two big countries like this, they usually don’t meet on a few days’ notice. It would have to be a real crisis.

This meeting could happen two or three weeks from now as easily as it could this week.

And if that happened, you would have a chance to prepare. You’d have a chance to get all kinds of documents in front of the American participants. You would meet with your Russian counterparts. You’d meet with Ukrainian counterparts, maybe some of the Western European countries. And when the two sides sat down at the table, it would be very professional.

They would have very similar briefing papers in front of them. The issues would be narrowed down.

None of that’s going to happen in Alaska. It’s going to be two political leaders meeting and deciding things, often driven by political considerations, but without any real idea of whether they can really be implemented or how they could be implemented.

Could a peace deal possibly be enforced?

Again, the situation is kind of haunted by the West never enforcing security guarantees promised in 1994. So I’m not sure how well this could be enforced.

Historically, Russia and Ukraine were always linked up, and that’s the problem. What’s Putin’s bottom line? Would he give up Crimea? No. Would he give up the part of eastern Ukraine that de facto had been taken over by Russia before this war even started? Probably not. Would he give up what they’ve gained since then? OK, maybe.

Then let’s put ourselves in Ukraine’s shoes. Will they want to give up Crimea? They say, “No.” Do they want to give up any of the eastern part of the country? They say, “No.”

I’m curious what your colleagues in the diplomatic world are saying about this upcoming meeting.

People who understand the process of diplomacy think that this is very amateurish and is unlikely to yield real results that are enforceable. It will yield some kind of statement and a photo of Trump and Putin shaking hands. There will be people who believe that this will solve the problem. It won’t.

The hidden costs of cutting Medicaid Emily Crawford

 

With the passage of the big Republican tax and spending bill, the federal government is poised to reduce support for Medicaid and the insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these cuts could cause 10 million Americans to lose health insurance by 2034.

Lawmakers have justified these cuts as a necessary step to address the bigger budget deficit exacerbated by tax cuts and other spending increases in the big bill. However, that doesn't capture how these cuts will send costs spilling out around society, to be paid by hospitals, clinics, individuals and then in the end, back to the federal government.

 Where do people go if they are uninsured?

Health care is different from other goods, like movie tickets, cocktails, or cars. If people can't pay for health care, they don't suddenly stop needing it. So, where do people get their health care if they don't have health insurance?

 

One option is federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) – community clinics that provide low-income people comprehensive primary care, dental services, mental health and substance abuse services and specialty care. FQHCs charge a subsidized rate based on ability to pay, with 90% of their patients at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. They are a vital source of care for the uninsured or the underinsured, with over 15,000 sites serving over 31 million patients in 2023.

Sure, slashing the number of people on Medicaid will reduce taxpayer dollars going to the Medicaid program. But FQHCs rely on Medicaid patients as their primary source of revenue, and use grant funding from the federal government to cover the costs of providing care to the uninsured. Cuts to Medicaid coverage, without commensurate increases in federal grants to cover the costs of the uninsured, could threaten the stability and scope of FQHCs. Even with grants amounting to $5.6 billion in 2023, FQHCs operate on razor-thin margins, and declining Medicaid enrollment following the COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated their financial strain. So, short of increased grant funding, clinics may have to cut spending per patient, could have a harder time recruiting and retaining medical providers, or reduce the number of services offered to patients. This could result in more uninsured patients resorting to the hospital emergency rooms to close the gap.

 

Hospitals as insurers of last resort

Due to a variety of factors, hospitals must treat patients regardless of their ability to pay. For example, federal law requires that hospitals provide care to all patients who show up in their emergency departments. In addition, federal law mandates that non-profit hospitals must provide some community benefit via charity care, or "free or discounted health services" to maintain their tax-exempt status. Nonprofit hospitals are an important source of care – nearly half of all hospitals in the U.S. are nonprofit. Medical ethics also compel physicians to be "Good Samaritans" and treat patients regardless of their ability to pay.

Through the tax-exempt status of nonprofit hospitals, taxpayers are effectively subsidizing some of this charity care for the uninsured. But, cutting Medicaid is going to hurt hospitals, too. Half of rural hospitals are already operating at a deficit, and the Medicaid cuts threaten to push an additional 300 hospitals "towards a fiscal cliff". While concern over rural hospital closures led to an additional $50 billion being allocated to a "Rural Health Transformation Program," an analysis by KFF estimates that this only offsets one-third of the lost revenue from the Medicaid cuts.

A paper by economists Craig Garthwaite, Tal Gross, and Matthew Notowidigdo argues that hospitals act as "insurers of last resort." When policy makers cut Medicaid enrollment, hospitals ultimately bear the cost. According to MACPAC (the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission), hospitals provided $22.5 billion worth of uncompensated care to uninsured individuals in 2021, for a total of nearly $40 billion spent on charity care and bad debt (or, around 5 to 6% of hospital expenses). Using hospital financial data, the authors estimate that for each visit from the uninsured, hospitals bear on average $11,000 of uncompensated care costs.

Nonprofit hospitals, both religious and secular alike, report higher uncompensated care costs. When the uninsured population increases, for-profit hospitals report small and insignificant effects on uncompensated care costs. Each additional uninsured person in the country leads to, on average, an additional $800 that hospitals pay in uncompensated care costs.

 

Medical debt

So far, we've found that increasing the uninsured population places financial burdens on two important parts of the social safety net: community health clinics and nonprofit hospitals. But what about the patients themselves?

Even among those with health insurance, expensive medical bills coupled with high deductibles and cost-sharing can lead to medical debt and in some cases, bankruptcy. An analysis from KFF found that 20 million people, or around 8% of adults, have some form of medical debt, with around 6%of adults owing more than $1,000. In total, people in the U.S. hold a whopping $220 billion in medical debt. The incidence of medical debt is higher among the uninsured (11%), low-income people (11%), and those with disabilities (13%).

Being uninsured and having an inpatient hospital stay can spell financial disaster. This study, entitled "The Economic Consequences of Hospital Admissions," finds that having a hospital admission while uninsured increases the probability of bankruptcy by nearly 40%. They estimate that hospital admissions are estimated to be responsible for around 6% of bankruptcies for the uninsured, and even 4% of bankruptcies for the insured.

However, the research consistently shows that getting coverage can save the uninsured from medical ruin. Using the Medicaid expansions from the mid-1990s and early 2000s, another study finds that a 10 percentage point increase in Medicaid eligibility reduces consumer bankruptcies by 8%. The famed Oregon health insurance experiment, which randomly gave people Medicaid coverage, finds similar results. Having health insurance reduces the probability of an unpaid medical bill sent to collections agencies by 25% and reduces the probability of having out-of-pocket medical expenditures by 35%.

Poor health makes us all poorer

Being uninsured is, understandably, bad for your health: the uninsured receive less preventative care, have greater difficulty obtaining prescription drugs and dental care, and are less likely to get the specialty care they need. It's also bad economically for the uninsured themselves as we've shown above. But a more unhealthy populace is bad for the economy itself, too: long-term evidence shows that having insurance coverage as a child improves future productivity as an adult. By the age of 28, those who had Medicaid coverage as a child had higher college enrollment, higher wages, and used fewer government benefits. This paper estimates that the government was able to recoup 58 cents on every dollar spent on childhood Medicaid coverage. Having a sick workforce is just bad for economic growth: workers in poor health work fewer hours, reducing our overall labor productivity.

 So, the federal government may save money by tightening Medicaid eligibility, but this will put strain on other parts of the economy. Community health clinics, hospitals, patients, and taxpayers, will all be footing the bill in some ways, and of course the uninsured themselves.

 

Harvard scientists say research could be set back years after funding freeze by LEAH WILLINGHAM and MICHAEL CASEY

 Hundreds of Harvard researchers have fallen victim to the freeze on funding by the Trump administration

 Harvard University professor Alberto Ascherio's research is literally frozen.

Collected from millions of U.S. soldiers over two decades using millions of dollars from taxpayers, the epidemiology and nutrition scientist has blood samples stored in liquid nitrogen freezers within the university’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The samples are key to his award-winning research, which seeks a cure to multiple sclerosis and other neurodegenerative diseases. But for months, Ascherio has been unable to work with the samples because he lost $7 million in federal research funding, a casualty of Harvard's fight with the Trump administration 

.“It's like we have been creating a state-of-the-art telescope to explore the universe, and now we don’t have money to launch it,” said Ascherio. “We built everything and now we are ready to use it to make a new discovery that could impact millions of people in the world and then, 'Poof. You're being cut off.'”

 

Researchers laid off and science shelved

The loss of an estimated $2.6 billion in federal funding at Harvard has meant that some of the world's most prominent researchers are laying off young researchers. They are shelving years or even decades of research, into everything from opioid addiction to cancer.

And despite Harvard's lawsuits against the administration, and settlement talks between the warring parties, researchers are confronting the fact that some of their work may never resume.

The funding cuts are part of a monthslong battle that the Trump administration has waged against some the country's top universities including Columbia, Brown and Northwestern. The administration has taken a particularly aggressive stance against Harvard, freezing funding after the country's oldest university rejected a series of government demands issued by a federal antisemitism task force.

The government had demanded sweeping changes at Harvard related to campus protests, academics and admissions — meant to address government accusations that the university had become a hotbed of liberalism and tolerated anti-Jewish harassment.

Research jeopardized, even if court case prevails

Harvard responded by filing a federal lawsuit, accusing the Trump administration of waging a retaliation campaign against the university. In the lawsuit, it laid out reforms it had taken to address antisemitism but also vowed not to “surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

“Make no mistake: Harvard rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus," the university said in its legal complaint. “But rather than engage with Harvard regarding those ongoing efforts, the Government announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism.”

The Trump administration denies the cuts were made in retaliation, saying the grants were under review even before the demands were sent in April. It argues the government has wide discretion to cancel federal contracts for policy reasons.

 

The funding cuts have left Harvard's research community in a state of shock, feeling as if they are being unfairly targeted in a fight has nothing to do with them. Some have been forced to shutter labs or scramble to find nongovernment funding to replace lost money.

In May, Harvard announced that it would put up at least $250 million of its own money to continue research efforts, but university President Alan Garber warned of “difficult decisions and sacrifices” ahead.

Ascherio said the university was able to pull together funding to pay his researchers’ salaries until next June. But he’s still been left without resources needed to fund critical research tasks, like lab work. Even a year's delay can put his research back five years, he said.

Knowledge lost in funding freeze

“It’s really devastating,” agreed Rita Hamad, the director of the Social Policies for Health Equity Research Center at Harvard, who had three multiyear grants totaling $10 million canceled by the Trump administration. The grants funded research into the impact of school segregation on heart health, how pandemic-era policies in over 250 counties affected mental health, and the role of neighborhood factors in dementia.

At the School of Public Health, where Hamad is based, 190 grants have been terminated, affecting roughly 130 scientists.

“Just thinking about all the knowledge that’s not going to be gained or that is going to be actively lost," Hamad said. She expects significant layoffs on her team if the funding freeze continues for a few more months. "It’s all just a mixture of frustration and anger and sadness all the time, every day."

John Quackenbush, a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the School of Public Health, has spent the past few months enduring cuts on multiple fronts.

In April, a multimillion dollar grant was not renewed, jeopardizing a study into the role sex plays in disease. In May, he lost about $1.2 million in federal funding for in the coming year due to the Harvard freeze. Four departmental grants worth $24 million that funded training of doctoral students also were canceled as part of the fight with the Trump administration, Quackenbush said.

 

“I’m in a position where I have to really think about, ‘Can I revive this research?’” he said. “Can I restart these programs even if Harvard and the Trump administration reached some kind of settlement? If they do reach a settlement, how quickly can the funding be turned back on? Can it be turned back on?”

The researchers all agreed that the funding cuts have little or nothing to do with the university's fight against antisemitism. Some, however, argue changes at Harvard were long overdue and pressure from the Trump administration was necessary.

Bertha Madras, a Harvard psychobiologist who lost funding to create a free, parent-focused training to prevent teen opioid overdose and drug use, said she’s happy to see the culling of what she called “politically motivated social science studies.”

White House pressure a good thing?

Madras said pressure from the White House has catalyzed much-needed reform at the university, where several programs of study have “really gone off the wall in terms of being shaped by orthodoxy that is not representative of the country as a whole.”

But Madras, who served on the President’s Commission on Opioids during Trump’s first term, said holding scientists’ research funding hostage as a bargaining chip doesn’t make sense.

“I don’t know if reform would have happened without the president of the United States pointing the bony finger at Harvard," she said. “But sacrificing science is problematic, and it’s very worrisome because it is one of the major pillars of strength of the country.”

Quackenbush and other Harvard researchers argue the cuts are part of a larger attack on science by the Trump administration that puts the country's reputation as the global research leader at risk. Support for students and post-doctoral fellows has been slashed, visas for foreign scholars threatened, and new guidelines and funding cuts at the NIH will make it much more difficult to get federal funding in the future, they said. It also will be difficult to replace federal funding with money from the private sector.

 “We’re all sort of moving toward this future in which this 80-year partnership between the government and the universities is going to be jeopardized,” Quackenbush said. “We’re going to face real challenges in continuing to lead the world in scientific excellence.”

 

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose by Rebecca Hersher

 The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions, according to current and former NASA staffers. If the plans are carried out, one of the missions would be permanently terminated, because the satellite would burn up in the atmosphere.

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

 

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions. The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

Both missions, known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatories, measure carbon dioxide and plant growth around the globe. They use identical measurement devices, but one device is attached to a stand-alone satellite while the other is attached to the International Space Station. The standalone satellite would burn up in the atmosphere if NASA pursued plans to terminate the mission.

NASA employees who work on the two missions are making what the agency calls Phase F plans for both carbon-monitoring missions, according to David Crisp, a longtime NASA scientist who designed the instruments and managed the missions until he retired in 2022. Phase F plans lay out options for terminating NASA missions.

Crisp says NASA employees making those termination plans have reached out to him for his technical expertise. "What I have heard is direct communications from people who were making those plans, who weren't allowed to tell me that that's what they were told to do. But they were allowed to ask me questions," Crisp says. "They were asking me very sharp questions. The only thing that would have motivated those questions was [that] somebody told them to come up with a termination plan."

 

Three other academic scientists who use data from the missions confirmed that they, too, have been contacted with questions related to mission termination. All three asked for anonymity because they are concerned that speaking about the mission termination plans publicly could endanger the jobs of the NASA employees who contacted them.

Two current NASA employees also confirmed that NASA mission leaders were told to make termination plans for projects that would lose funding under President Trump's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, or FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The employees asked to remain anonymous, because they were told they would be fired if they revealed the request.

 

Congress funded the missions and may fund them again

Presidential budget proposals are wish lists that often bear little resemblance to final congressional budgets. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory missions have already received funding from Congress through the end of the 2025 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Draft budgets that Congress is currently considering for next year keep NASA funding basically flat. But it's not clear whether these specific missions will receive funding again, or if Congress will pass a budget before current funding expires on Sept. 30.

Last week, NASA announced it will consider proposals from private companies and universities that are willing to take on the cost of maintaining the device that is attached to the International Space Station, as well as another device that measures ozone in the atmosphere.

NASA did not respond to questions from NPR about whether other missions will also be privatized, or about why the agency is making plans to potentially terminate projects that may receive funding in Congress' next budget.

In July, congressional Democrats sent a letter to acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy warning his agency not to terminate missions that Congress has funded, and arguing that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and its director, Russ Vought, are overstepping by directing NASA and other agencies to stop spending money that Congress has already appropriated.

 

"Congress has the power of the purse, not Trump or Vought," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., one of the authors of the letter and the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in an email to NPR. "Eliminating funds or scaling down the operations of Earth-observing satellites would be catastrophic and would severely impair our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to severe weather and climate disasters. The Trump administration is forcing the proposed cuts in its FY26 budget request on already appropriated FY25 funds. This is illegal."

A spokesperson for OMB told NPR via email that "OMB had nothing to do with NASA Earth Science leadership's request for termination plans." The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy did not respond to questions from NPR.

In the past, Vought has been vocal about cutting what he sees as inappropriate spending on projects related to climate change. Before he joined the Trump administration, Vought authored sections of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 roadmap for remaking the federal government. In that document, Vought wrote that "the Biden Administration's climate fanaticism will need a whole-of-government unwinding" and argued that federal regulators should make it easier for commercial satellites to be launched.

The data from these missions is even more valuable than intended

The missions are called Orbiting Carbon Observatories because they were originally designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But soon after they launched, scientists realized that they were also accidentally measuring plant growth on Earth.

Basically, when plants are growing, photosynthesis is happening in their cells. And that photosynthesis gives off a very specific wavelength of light. The OCO instruments in space measure that light all over the planet.

"NASA and others have turned this happy accident into an incredibly valuable set of maps of plant photosynthesis around the world," explains Scott Denning, a longtime climate scientist at Colorado State University who worked on the OCO missions and is now retired. "Lo and behold, we also get these lovely, high resolution maps of plant growth," he says. "And that's useful to farmers, useful to rangeland and grazing and drought monitoring and forest mapping and all kinds of things, in addition to the CO2 measurements."

 For example, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and many private agricultural consulting companies use the data to forecast and track crop yield, drought conditions and more.

 

The information can also help predict future political instability, since crop failures are a major driver of mass migration all over the world. For example, persistent drought in Honduras is one factor that has led many farmers there to migrate north, NPR reporting found. And damage to crops and livestock from extreme weather in Northern Africa has contributed to migration from that region. "This is a national security issue, for sure," Crisp says.

Carbon-monitoring satellites have revolutionized climate science

The carbon dioxide data that the instruments were originally designed to collect has revolutionized scientists' understanding of how quickly carbon dioxide is collecting in the atmosphere.

That's because measuring carbon dioxide with instruments in various locations on the Earth's surface, as scientists have been doing since the 1950s, doesn't provide information about the whole planet. Satellite data, on the other hand, covers the entire Earth.

And that data showed some surprising things. "Fifty years ago we thought the tropical forests were like a huge vacuum cleaner, sucking up carbon dioxide," Denning explains. "Now we know they're not."

Instead, boreal forests in the northern latitudes suck up a significant amount of carbon dioxide, the satellite data shows. And the patterns of which areas absorb the planet-warming gas, and how much they absorb, are continuously changing as the climate changes.

"The value of these observations is just increasing over time," explains Anna Michalak, a climate researcher at Carnegie Science and Stanford University who has worked extensively on greenhouse gas monitoring from space. "These are missions that are still providing critical information."

It is expensive to end satellite missions

The cost of maintaining the two OCO satellite missions up in space is a small fraction of the amount of money taxpayers already spent to design and launch the instruments. The two missions cost about $750 million to design, build and launch, according to David Crisp, the retired NASA scientist, and that number is even higher if you include the cost of an initial failed rocket launch that sent an identical carbon dioxide measuring instrument into the ocean in 2009.

 

By comparison, maintaining both OCO missions in orbit costs about $15 million per year, Crisp says. That money covers the cost of downloading the data, maintaining a network of calibration sensors on the ground and making sure the stand-alone satellite isn't hit by space debris, according to Crisp.

"Just from an economic standpoint, it makes no economic sense to terminate NASA missions that are returning incredibly valuable data," Crisp says.

NASA's recent call for universities and companies to potentially take over the cost of maintaining the OCO instrument attached to the International Space Station suggests the agency is also considering privatizing NASA science missions. Such partnerships raise a host of thorny questions, says Michalak, who has worked with private companies, nonprofit groups, universities and the federal government on greenhouse gas monitoring satellite projects.

"On the one hand the private sector is really starting to have a role," Michalak says. In recent years, multiple private groups in the U.S. have launched satellites that measure methane, a potent planet-warming gas that is poorly monitored compared to carbon dioxide.

"Looking at it from the outside, it can look like the private sector is really picking up some of what the federal agencies were doing in terms of Earth observations," she explains. "And it's true that they're contributing." But, she says, "Those efforts would not be possible without this underlying investment from public funding."

Here’s what could get more expensive from Trump’s massive tariff hikes By Elisabeth Buchwald

 

President Donald Trump has said that tariffs won’t lead to higher prices. But the United States economy seems to disagree: Inflation, which has remained fairly tame, is slowly creeping up because of tariffs.

Trump’s latest round of higher taxes on imports, which goes into effect next week, will immediately make imported goods from impacted countries more expensive in the United States.

And while businesses have tried to shoulder part of the cost, they now may be forced to pass along some of those expenses to consumers. That means higher prices for Americans. 

 Computers and other electronics

Computers are among the top goods the United States imported last year, according to US Commerce Department data. The top countries that exported computers and other electronic products to the United States last year were China, Mexico, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia. 

 

Goods from China already face a minimum 30%, albeit with some exclusions. However, rates could soon shoot even higher if a trade deal is not reached with China by August 12. Goods from Mexico can be shipped to the US duty-free if they comply with a trade deal Trump signed during his first term.

Meanwhile, goods from Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia are all set to be taxed at nearly double their current levels by next week.

Though price increases have been tame across the board, computers cost consumers nearly 5% more in June of this year compared to last, according to Consumer Price Index data.

While not among the top five sources of foreign-produced computers, India is still a major supplier of computers and other electronics to the US. Goods from there are set to face 25% minimum tariffs. 

 Economists at the Yale Budget Lab estimate that the tariffs Trump announced as of Thursday, if put in place indefinitely, could cause computer and other electronic prices to rise by 18.2% in the short run and 7.7% in the long run. The authors consider the short run to be two to three years from now, while the long run is considered three to ten years.

 Clothing

As with electronics, America buys much of its apparel from other countries. Top destinations include China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India and Indonesia.

The tariffs Trump is placing on these countries are impactful for the cost clothing, especially since that’s one of the top goods the US imports overall. 

 

Yale Budget Lab estimates prices could rise by 37.5% in the short run and 17.4% in the long run.

Watches

Wristwatches are one of the top exports to the United States from Switzerland, which is set to face a 39% “reciprocal” tariff. Last year the country sent over $4 billion worth of watches to the United States.

Prices of leather products, which often includes watches, are estimated to rise by 39.7% in the short run and 18.9% in the long run.

Shoes

China, Vietnam and Indonesia are top destinations where shoes are made and tariffs are set to start at a minimum of 19% for the three countries, come next week. 

 

Like watches, many kinds of shoes use leather and could face similar price increases as a result.

Alcohol

Imported wine and spirits encompass 35% of revenue of all US sales in the alcohol market, according to the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America (WSWA).

Tariffs on goods from the European Union, a main supplier of alcoholic beverages, including wine, whiskey and vodka, are set to rise from 10% to 15%.

Furniture

Vietnam is the top source of imported furniture, followed by China.

Toys

China and Vietnam are the top two countries that ship toys to the United States. Toy brands have already been warning of higher prices due to the tariffs in place on Chinese goods. The higher tariffs on Vietnamese goods are also likely to be a pressure point.

When could tariff-related price increases happen?

In addition to the fact that businesses haven’t been fully passing on tariff costs to consumers thus far, in anticipation of higher import taxes, many spent months stockpiling goods. 

 That’s in part why Goldman Sachs economists estimate it takes eight months for the effect of the costs of imported consumer goods “to be fully realized in consumer prices.”