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Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mississippi appealing mail-in absentee ballot ruling to U.S. Supreme Court
Mississippi officials are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court a federal court ruling that struck down Mississippi's five-day grace period for mail-in absentee ballots to arrive after Election Day. Attorneys for the state filed court documents stating their intention to petition the nation's highest court to overturn a decision from an appellate court that found a state election law conflicted with federal election laws. U.S. District Judge Louis Guirrola halted all lower court action until the proceedings with the Supreme Court are completed. The Republican National Committee, the state Republican Party and the Libertarian Party of Mississippi sued Secretary of State Michael Watson and local elections officials over a state law that allows election workers to process absentee ballots postmarked by Election Day for up to five days after the election. The political parties argue that Congress is the only entity that can set specific parameters for federal elections, while state officials contend that federal law defers to states on specific details for conducting elections. Judge Guirrola initially ruled in favor of the state, but the plaintiffs appealed. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the most conservative appellate courts in the nation, overturned Guirrola's ruling and struck down the state law. Now Mississippi officials are asking the Supreme Court to uphold the state law, a decision that could have broad implications for more than a dozen states that have similar laws on the books. The litigation does not impact state or local races, including Mississippi's current municipal elections. Mississippi's next federal election will be the 2026 midterm, where all four of Mississippi's U.S. House members are up for reelection, as well as U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mississippi students may no longer have to pass U.S. history assessment test to graduate
The Mississippi Board of Education voted to receive public comment on whether to eliminate the state U.S. history test as a high school graduation requirement. The Commission on School Accreditation had voted in a special meeting on April 15 to eliminate the test. Chief Accountability Officer Paula Vanderford argued the benefits of eliminating the test, noting scores from the U.S. history test aren't included in the Mississippi Department of Education's accountability report cards. If approved, the statewide U.S. History Mississippi Academic Assessment Program test would no longer be a graduation requirement beginning this fall. Mississippi students would still be required to take and pass U.S. history class to graduate from high school. Those who had to repeat senior year of high school would have to take other options. Vanderford suggested requiring a college and career readiness course as an alternative. Getting rid of the test, she said, would save the state money and add more weight to the other three state assessments: Algebra, Biology, and English. The board voted to open the move to public comment period. After that, it will come back to the board for a final vote in June. 'One point that we talked about in the subcommittee and have talked about at great length with the accountability task force is that we're one of the few states with high stakes assessments or high-stakes end-of-course assessments for graduation, so it's been quite a number of years since we've taken a look at that to see if we wanted to go with a different route,' said Vanderford. Some members of the board expressed concern that taking out the history test would have a negative impact on students' historical knowledge. Mary Werner, who voted against removing the test, stated 'I think history is so important, and American history is just…even from a former English teacher's point of view, if you don't have the history, you have a hard time understanding the literature,' said Mary Werner, who did not support removing the test. She voted not to move the issue to public comment. Vanderford explained that passing the history course would be enough to demonstrate mastery of the subject. Board of Education Chair Glen East was also expressed concerned, but said he was confident that Mississippi's history curriculum was strong. He ultimately voted to move the issue to public comment. 'I do not see us going backwards based on the plain increase in the curriculum and the rigor we have placed on it.' Kelly Riley, executive director of Mississippi Professional Educators, commented that she wasn't surprised by the decision. 'I think due to the evolving accreditation model as well as the amount of time that is required to be spent preparing for and administering state tests, I can't say that I'm surprised by today's decision,' she said. This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Massachusetts is losing 15 acres of farmland a day. This is how the state is trying to fix it.
Joanne DiNardo operates and manages the Sholan Farm along with 75 volunteers. For the farm to reach its long-term viability goals, DiNardo is hoping to build a pavilion and other infrastructure to attract more customers. (Rebeca Pereira for CommonWealth Beacon) Twice a year, Kathryn Szerlag, a professor of soil and water chemistry at Texas A&M, traverses the country to reunite with relatives on their family dairy farm in Northbridge, Massachusetts. This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. 'All of [my research] came from playing in the cow manure,' she reflected on a Friday in December, the day before boarding a flight home for the holidays. 'That was my day care: a pair of rubber boots.' The farm provided a singular education. Before academia, Szerlag was a country kid entrusted with testing the butterfat concentration of the milk of 300 cows. It was there, wading in dung, that she ultimately found her subject matter: the environmental degradation wreaked by high phosphorus levels in animal manures. The farm has remained in agricultural production for four generations, bulwarked by Szerlag's father, her late uncle, Frank, and his son, Stephen. But it hasn't persisted unscathed. More than a decade ago, the Szerlags sold a field and a wooded swath of land to a real estate developer. Public records show the development, Presidential Estates, carved into the erstwhile farmland a cul-de-sac of single-family homes. In compliance with the town of Northbridge's requirement that open space account for at least one-third of a development, the remainder of the land was deeded to the Metacomet Land Trust in 2019. The Szerlag's land sale isn't an uncommon choice. Census data indicate that, with their backs against the wall, many farmers sell fragments of their land to support the rest of their business. Since 1997, the number of Massachusetts farms smaller than 50 acres has swelled while the number of larger farms has plummeted. Some farmers sell their land because there is no one to take over the family business — in Massachusetts, there are three times as many farmers over the age of 65 as under the age of 35. Others do so because the price of agricultural production has become too burdensome. An acre of farmland now costs $14,300 in Massachusetts — third most expensive nationally after New Jersey and Rhode Island. Over the past three decades, the cost of farming itself has nearly doubled. The latest data from the US Agricultural Census show more than 100,000 acres of farmland in Massachusetts have been lost since 1997. Almost a quarter of those acres was lost between 2017 and 2022. That's an average of losing just under 15 acres of farmland a day, approximately 15 football fields end zone to end zone, roughly double the rate of farmland loss nationwide. The American Farmland Trust, a nonprofit working to conserve agricultural lands, estimates that, without stronger protections, the state stands to lose between 50,000 and 90,000 acres of farmland by 2040 — a possibility Massachusetts may manage to thwart as the levers of the state Legislature begin to arc toward more aggressive farmland preservation. More than a way of life, farmland loss across New England risks the region's food security and the environmental contributions of farmers applying regenerative, climate-conscious agricultural practices. These approaches restore soil health, sequester carbon, improve water retention, and reduce erosion, helping the region withstand extreme weather events as the effects of the climate crisis worsen. And it is in service of these stakes that, on Beacon Hill, a commission is poised to issue a series of recommendations for confronting the 21st-century challenges facing farmers in Massachusetts. At the Community Harvest Project, a nonprofit farm in Harvard, Tori Buerschaper trailed behind a cohort of volunteers weaving through rows of apple trees. She watched on as they sorted first grade apples from those that were blemished or bruised, bagging good ones by the dozen and setting gnarled ones aside to send to the cider mill. The nonprofit designed this workflow to not only bridge the disconnect between consumers and the food they eat but to illuminate the realities of hunger in Massachusetts. 'We luckily live in one of the most prosperous states in the US, where it's easy to think there isn't hunger,' Buerschaper said. 'When people have limited income, they're forced to pick and choose. The thing you kind of get to last, or that you can more easily cut out, is food.' So far, the model they built has been a success. In 2023 alone, CHP hosted more than six thousand volunteers at its orchard in Harvard and at its 15-acre farm in Grafton. Together, each year, the two locations yield 300,000 pounds of apples, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and other produce that's sold to 26 partner agencies committed to combating food insecurity. But the nonprofit's operation wasn't always this expansive. In 2014, CHP was farming on leased land when donors in Harvard gifted the nonprofit 75 acres of orchard and rolling hills after more than 50 years of private ownership. Land is in high demand in the central Massachusetts town, and Buerschaper explained that her nonprofit 'could have made the decision to sell it to the highest bidder.' 'It's very likely that would have been a developer over a farmer,' she said. We luckily live in one of the most prosperous states in the US, where it's easy to think there isn't hunger. When people have limited income, they're forced to pick and choose. The thing you kind of get to last, or that you can more easily cut out, is food. – Tori Buerschaper, Executive Director at Community Harvest Project, Inc. Years later, standing watch over the orchard's undulating hills, these considerations seem to Buerschaper a distant reality. Now, owing to the state's Agricultural Preservation Restriction program, or APR, the nonprofit's land is safeguarded against any future development. If a farmer is looking to buy land and conserve it — or protect land they already own from future development — the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture, or MDAR, will pay the farmer the difference between the land's market value and its developable value. From then on, the state owns an easement on the land, meaning it can dictate the terms of any future land sale and use, ensuring that land remains in agricultural production in perpetuity. Since it was established in 1977, the APR program has conserved more than 950 parcels — or 70,000 acres — of farmland across the state, and it has served as a template for farmland conservation programs across the nation. These deed-restricted acres will be farmland forever. In 2023, CHP closed on an APR totaling almost $3 million, money that CHP's board of trustees chose to invest. Buerschaper said the nonprofit plans to withdraw $80,000 from its investment portfolio per year. She said the funds have helped ease financial fears about 'the growing pains [that] never really stopped.' APR is one of the best tools the state has to preserve farmland. Other programs exist under the breadth of MDAR's purview: a land licensing program for state-owned farmland; a succession-planning workshop, Farm-Pass, to help aging farmers transfer their business to a new owner; and numerous grant opportunities designed to keep farms viable and farmers employed. But these programs are only a treatment, not a cure, for the seemingly insurmountable financial hurdles which push many farmers to sell. APR money can run out with time, and enrolling in the program to begin with may not even occur to farmers needing an immediate remedy for their financial troubles. The application process requires patience and foresight: Once a farmer applies to the program, staff at MDAR and a third-party appraiser assess the farm's resource value and work with the landowner to come up with a funding plan. The state's Agricultural Lands Preservation Committee then votes twice before giving the transaction final approval. In some cases, farmers can opt in to receive federal funding from the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, extending the application process even further. While MDAR is bound to this existing procedure, which can take years, developers are not. With deeper pockets and greater agility, developers tend to have an advantage over the state's interest in preservation, especially as the business of farming becomes more and more untenable. In 2016, Sean Stanton purchased North Plain Farm in Great Barrington, land that had been protected by the APR program for decades and in agricultural production for centuries. Then, three years ago, he closed on another APR that allowed him to purchase a 75-acre property a quarter mile down the road. MDAR encourages farmers to look for local partners to help fund up to half of the value of their easement. In Stanton's relatively anomalous case, the town of Great Barrington contributed $92,000 to the purchase. Meanwhile, MDAR awarded him $828,000. The state's near-million-dollar investment in North Plain Farm wasn't the first or the only support it gave. Stanton has received grant funding from MDAR's Farm Viability Enhancement Program to purchase new farm equipment, and he's taken business classes through the agency's Tilling the Soil of Opportunity program. The funding he's received from the state has helped support his business, but it hasn't inoculated the farm against financial distress. Until he decided to go back to school, enrolling in a social work master's program at Westfield State, Stanton said he was 'for years, digging a bigger financial hole.' Now, he hopes to practice as a clinical social worker as soon as 2026. He'll become one of more than half of the state's farmers who do not list farming as their primary occupation, and he wonders what will happen when his well of APR funds runs dry. On the farm, he teased a joke about how farmers make money. 'This is so depressing,' he warned. 'How do you make a million dollars farming? Start with two.' For farmers who have held their APRs for longer than Stanton, concerns about their businesses' longevity are even more acute. In July 2001, Dean Mazzarella stood on Pleasant Street, where the road bends and slices across Sholan Farm in Leominster, and accepted a check from the Commonwealth to purchase the farm and to conserve it as farmland in perpetuity. Mazzarella has been mayor of Leominster for more than 30 years, and by 2001 he had already seen numerous farms in and around the city succumb to a fate that Sholan Farm only narrowly escaped. Over time, Sholan's owners aged and stopped farming the land. When the land entered the real estate market in 1999, developers drafted a plan to convert the farm's 167 acres into houses. That's when the possibility arose for the city to buy the land instead. With support from the state, the city closed on an APR that totaled $4.75 million. MDAR contributed $2.6 million toward the purchase, and the Department of Conservation and Recreation funded another $1.6 million to support the farm in conserving reservoirs on the land. The city pitched in $500,000 to purchase the land and fundraised the remaining value of the easement through Friends of Sholan Farm. In the process, Mazzarella found an ally in Joanne DiNardo, who now operates and manages the farm alongside 75 volunteers. DiNardo said the lump sum infusion from the state and other partners 'helped us save the farm.' But for Sholan to meet its long-term viability goals — to expand its offerings, to stay open 12 months out of the year, to build a pavilion and other infrastructure that could attract more customers — DiNardo said a 'one and done' investment won't be enough. Unlike privately-owned farms enrolled in the APR program, city-owned farms like Sholan aren't eligible for APR improvement grants that could help keep the business afloat for years to come. If Sholan's APR money runs out and the business isn't otherwise profitable, the city could feasibly sell or lease the land to other farmers, maintaining compliance with the terms of the easement. The land would stay in agricultural production, but the city, like all farmers who sell in the face of financial hurdles, would pay the cost. 'Maybe more cities would buy orchards, you know, farms, and maybe get schools to run them or volunteers, like we do. But after you buy the land, you're on your own,' Mazzarella said. 'So, what's the incentive?' Beyond these pastoral terrains and panoramic fields, over the course of the last two years, a coalition of legislators and state agricultural leaders heard testimony on the future of the Commonwealth's agricultural sector. Led by state Sen. Jo Comerford and state Rep. Kate Hogan, the 21st Century Agriculture Commission is expected to recommend a slate of reforms aimed at tackling climate change's impact on farms and the demand for educational and technical assistance for farmers. Their recommendations, previewed at a public hearing in July, also address the state's farmland freefall and the financial obstacles facing farmers. Initially scheduled to be released in December, the commission's report received a year-long extension and will be released to the public before the end of 2025. Crucially, the commission is poised to recommend including farms smaller than five acres in the state's existing agricultural lands tax exemption, a change that could only be accomplished by amending Chapter 61A of the state constitution. This measure, a reflection of how 'farming has changed in Massachusetts,' is also a matter of equity for Winton Pitcoff, deputy commissioner of MDAR. 'It's important that farmers who have been excluded for a variety of reasons — particularly farmers of color through systemic racism that can't afford large tracts of land — it's important that we make sure that they can farm if they want to. That means making sure they can access land.' Farmland preservation has already secured an important step forward with a measure enshrined in the multibillion-dollar economic development bond bill. For months, the must-pass bill idled unresolved following the end of the formal session, but lawmakers returned for a vote and sent the bill to Gov. Maura Healey's desk in November. The measure authorizes MDAR to buy, protect and sell farmland, giving the agency enough purchasing power and agility to beat out developers vying for flat, open land unlike the APR program, which is a safety net that requires foresight and patience. 'It's pretty appealing when someone is able to give you a check right on the spot to buy your land. That's usually a developer. That's what leads to conversion,' explained Pitcoff. 'It's not like the department wants to become a landlord and buy lots of land. What this does is give us the flexibility to purchase land more quickly.' The agency will need to build its buy, protect and sell program from the ground up, writing new regulations and advocating for funds from the state budget each year. Also included in the economic development bond bill is an initiative to cut some of the red tape around non-agriculture activities on APR farms – a change that will help forge alternative revenue streams for these businesses. As long as the land in question remains in full-time commercial agriculture, MDAR may grant farmers special permits for hosting weddings, classes, charity runs, and other agritourism events adjacent to actual agricultural production. Previously, farmers like Tori Buerschaper, who hosts a 5k fundraiser at CHP, would need to apply for a discreet permit with each occasion they plan to host an activity. The new permits will be valid for at least one year, and MDAR will have the option to renew these grants, which ultimately aim to promote what the text of the bill refers to as the 'long-term productivity of the agricultural resource and the sustainability of the farm enterprise.' In the eyes of Jared Freedman, Comerford's chief of staff, the next step for Massachusetts is to recruit support for farmland preservation beyond the marbled halls of the State House, creating financial incentives for municipalities to prioritize preserving farmland. This model already exists through the PILOT, or payment in lieu of taxes, program, which helps cities and towns recover some of the revenue they lose from state- or nonprofit-owned lands, institutions, renewable energy installations, and more. Land owned by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, for example, is property tax-exempt, and therefore returns no tax revenue for local communities. In return for hosting state-owned lands, 297 communities receive aid through the PILOT program. Freedman suggested it could be expanded to aid the state's efforts to work with cities and towns to prevent farmland loss. 'These municipalities are struggling to pay for their schools, to pay for their fire, to pay for their EMS, to repave their roads,' Freedman said. 'If you're gonna try to protect forests and farmlands, the municipalities can't suffer.' In the state with one of the highest rates of farmland conversion, the stakes have never been higher. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
FEMA quietly removes access to New England coastal erosion hazard tool
Part of the Nantucket coastline, shored up with 'geotubes' to slow erosion. (Photo by Jennifer Smith/CommonWealth Beacon) At some point between February and early March, as seasonal wind and rain hammered New England coasts, a relatively new but enthusiastically embraced tool for predicting erosion slipped off the Federal Emergency Management Agency website. This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Pioneered on Nantucket in 2020, the Coastal Erosion Hazard viewer that covered all of New England is now unavailable. It predicted erosion risk across the coast for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100, and until recently was publicly accessible on an online map used by planners and individuals alike. 'The tool was really helpful,' said Leah Hill, Nantucket's coastal resilience coordinator, 'because erosion is episodic. So, an area can be stable for five, 10, 15 years, maybe lose like a foot [of beach] or so, or nothing, and then a storm could come and it could lose a bunch.' Historical erosion data and flood maps kept by the state are useful, she said, but the FEMA maps incorporated sea level rise to project potential future erosion over time. The Biden administration promoted the tool for homeowners, business owners, and community officials making resiliency decisions based on erosion concerns. Hill is acutely aware of climate risks to the small island, which has one of the highest erosion rates in the state. These erosion maps, which resulted in a detailed Nantucket erosion assessment, have become baked into her work to inform residents about their property risks. 'Prospective homeowners or homeowners will call me and say, 'You know, I'm thinking about purchasing this property. What are the risks associated with it?'' Hill said. 'I'll create, using the best available data, a risk assessment for that property. I don't give real estate advice, but I can tell them about certain risk criteria. … And in order to do so, I use the FEMA erosion projection maps.' When Hill went to the site in early March, the page that used to open up the ArcGIS erosion maps instead took her to a login screen with no way to access the maps. When the maps remained inaccessible for weeks, she reached out to the Woods Hole Sea Grant for help connecting with the FEMA Region 1 team, which covers New England, receiving a brief email response on March 24. 'FEMA is currently taking swift action to ensure the alignment with President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem's direction,' wrote Kerry Bogdan, the risk analysis branch chief at FEMA Region 1. 'To that end, FEMA Region 1's Coastal Erosion Hazard viewer will be unavailable at this time.' FEMA did not respond to request for comment on the timing or rationale of removing the maps. Business magazine Fast Company reported that two software engineers were able to save and recreate data from FEMA's Future Risk Index tool when it, too, quietly vanished in February. The index mapped the projected economic losses from climate change down to the county level, based on hazards like flooding, drought, heat waves, and wildfires under different emissions scenarios. The FEMA future erosion maps are what's known as 'non-regulatory products,' essentially tools that are designed to be accessible and user-friendly, geared toward communicating information to the public, while regulatory products like FEMA floodplain maps are required by law and determine floodplain management, mitigation, and insurance policy. For instance, if a building is in a FEMA regulatory floodplain, there may be rules for resiliency improvements. But if a parcel is a long-term future erosion risk, the way to protect it or develop it is often up to the owner's discretion and informed by the available public information. 'I'm scrambling a little bit,' Hill said. She saved some of the GIS maps, but not all of them, and it isn't yet clear if the data sets have been saved elsewhere. The map scrubbing is an abrupt about-face on federal data sets, just six months after the federal government touted them as a way to help people plan for a future in the face of climate change. Bogdan told The Connecticut Mirror in September 2024 that an assortment of FEMA tools like erosion maps and forward-looking flood risk maps offered critical and helpful insights for municipalities and individuals alike. 'They're not going to tell you where you can develop, how to develop, what your insurance rate should be, but they are going to convey that hazard risk,' Bogdan said. 'What the risk is so people can plan for it.' Communities have incorporated the erosion map viewer with enthusiasm, she said. 'Some of our severely impacted communities from coastal erosion have really embraced this tool, and they're incorporating it into their long-term planning for things like grid retreat, placement of utilities, water lines, gas lines, that kind of stuff,' Bogdan told The Mirror. The Trump administration has, in its first three months, taken steps to roll back policies around climate resiliency planning. On March 25, FEMA announced that it stopped implementing certain floodplain management requirements for federally funded projects. This Obama-era standard, which was a mechanism for federal agencies to manage risk by requiring federally funded projects to be located out of flood risk areas or constructed to reduce the effects of current and future flood hazards, was halted under the first Trump administration, reinstated by Biden, and is now off again. 'Stopping implementation will reduce the total timeline to rebuild in disaster-impacted communities and eliminate additional costs previously required to adhere to these strict requirements,' the FEMA announcement said in late March. Last week, FEMA announced that it is ending the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, which has given states and communities billions of dollars to protect against natural disasters. The agency is also canceling all BRIC applications from fiscal years 2020-2023. FEMA said the BRIC program is 'more concerned with climate change than helping Americans affected by natural disasters' in a statement announcing the cuts. There has been no official statement on removing public mapping software that anticipates future flood or erosion risk. Other pages removed include the agency's 2022 'Guide to Expanding Mitigation: Making the Connection to the Coast,' which supplied emergency managers, community planners, coastal and floodplain managers, and other community stakeholders with resources and ideas to mitigate risk. A banner atop FEMA's website reads: ' is being updated to comply with President Trump's Executive Orders. Thank you for your patience and understanding.' Shannon Hulst, a floodplain and community rating system specialist with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Sea Grant and Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, who was able to connect Hill with FEMA Region 1, said ad-hoc data removal is cause for concern. 'It's disconcerting,' said Hulst, who works on projects like developing flood insurance programs for towns along Cape Cod. 'And it certainly can make our jobs more challenging. I know, on our end, we're working on downloading some of that data to make sure we continue to have access to it.' In her capacity, Hulst mostly relies on regulatory products like the floodplain maps, which are 'a whole different ball game.' There is no word that the flood maps will be taken down, Hulst said, and Massachusetts keeps state-level flood maps as back-up. 'We'll still be OK with that data,' she said of the flood maps, but the disappearance of solid predictive data is an issue for consistent long-term planning. 'When we know that there is a risk, and that is what we were using as the best available data to inform us about that risk, and we're trying to manage our communities to the best of our ability to protect ourselves from that risk,' she said, 'it makes it difficult.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariffs on Canada threaten our energy future and economic growth
Tariffs on clean Canadian electricity imports threaten to burden U.S. consumers with an estimated $400 million in additional costs annually. (Getty image) The imposition of tariffs on energy imports from Canada jeopardizes both our climate targets and the economic security of millions of residents and businesses across New England and New York. This article first appeared on CommonWealth Beacon and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. President Trump has imposed broad 25% tariffs on Canadian imports. It remains unclear whether these tariffs apply to electricity (the Trump administration issued no clarification), an intangible good that has never before been subject to import duties. The Northeast has long been a leader in clean energy innovation, setting ambitious goals to transition to a more sustainable, affordable, and reliable power grid. Tariffs of this magnitude on clean Canadian electricity imports are a direct attack on affordability, burdening U.S. consumers with an estimated $400 million in additional costs annually. These tariffs will be felt particularly during peak-demand periods, when the Northeast's reliance on Canadian electricity is most acute. During these hours, tariffs could increase wholesale electricity prices by up to 30%. These costs disproportionately affect working families and small businesses that are already struggling with high energy costs. At a time when states like Massachusetts and New York are working to expand clean energy infrastructure and reduce reliance on fossil fuels, the artificial price increases from tariffs will drive clean and affordable hydroelectricity from Canada out of energy markets. The result is the opposite effect of what our state policies seek and instead will drive up costs and push the region further into dependence on natural gas and oil. Massachusetts alone is expected to see a $200 million increase in electricity if 25% tariffs are imposed on Canadian electricity imports. Beyond the financial impact, tariffs will undermine the reliability of the Northeast's power grid. Just this year, during the coldest periods of January and February, Canadian energy exports accounted for 10% of New York's demand and 15% in New England, rising to 20% during peak-demand hours. With the added tariff costs on imports, our region will inevitably rely more heavily on fossil fuel plants that are vulnerable to fuel supply shortages and price spikes during extreme weather events. The energy market works by selecting the least expensive form of energy available to provide the required amount of energy demanded by the market. If tariffs make otherwise affordable Canadian hydroelectricity more expensive than oil and gas, the market will choose those less costly sources. Some parts of our region are especially vulnerable. Certain rural areas in Vermont and Northern Maine, which are directly linked to electric grids in Canada and have no viable alternative supply, could be hardest hit. Tariffs could lead to millions of dollars in increased costs annually, exacerbating energy insecurity for residents who already face higher-than-average electricity prices. Imposing tariffs on Canadian hydroelectricity is not just bad economics—it's bad climate policy. With the withdrawal of this affordable, clean energy source, the region will be forced to burn more natural gas and oil, leading to an estimated 10 million additional tons of carbon emissions annually — annual emissions equivalent to those emitted by every car registered in New York City. This is a step backward at a time when we should be accelerating our clean energy transition. The Northeast has set aggressive goals to cut emissions and transition to 100% clean power, yet these tariffs will make clean energy less competitive, slowing progress toward a carbon-free grid. Supporters of these tariffs argue that they will level the playing field for domestic energy producers but, in reality, they will undermine the market forces that are driving innovation and competition in the clean energy sector. They completely ignore the interconnected nature of the U.S.-Canadian electricity system, which has historically provided economic, reliability, and environmental benefits to both countries. Just last week, New York State released a report assessing tariff impacts. State agencies conclude that 'losing access to Canadian imports during the peak summer cooling months could create significant reliability challenges.' New York and New England cannot afford to let anything but the public interest and cost dictate energy policy. These tariffs will raise prices, reduce reliability, and set back the clean energy transition at a time when we need to accelerate progress, not stall it. Governors, legislators, and regulators in the Northeast must visibly stand together against these tariffs, advocating for continued access to affordable, clean electricity. Businesses, labor groups, and community organizations must also speak out, making it clear that these policies will harm local economies, cost jobs, and increase energy burdens for working families. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
