Jun. 7, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

ByChristina Wyman

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently announced it would freeze enrollment in Dolly Parton’s Imagination Librarya literacy initiative that offers one free book per month for children from birth until five years old. More than 20 states provide full or partial funding for the program, which claims to have donated over 300 million books to kids in the U.S. and elsewhere. The beneficiaries includes 170,000 Missouri childrenbut the state’s Republican-dominated legislature decided to cut the program’s funding from $6 million to $2 million.

As a teacher and author for children, I know the consequences of these cuts are all too clear. I have witnessed firsthand what it looks like when children do not have access to books. Such a drastic cut to such an important service is more of the same as far as this country’s continued acts of political and economic violence against its own citizens.

From literacy advocates to the American Association of Pediatrics to even the current U.S. governmenteveryone agrees that early childhood literacy is critical. According to Take Action For Libraries, a nonprofit political action committee, early access to books paves the way for a lifetime of learningwith more books in the home potentially leading to higher educational attainment.

The impact of access to books is also a symbolic one. I grew up in a working-class household and could feel, at a young age, that my family’s socioeconomic status did not measure up to that of many of my peers. We lived in a small walk-up apartment in Brooklyn; we spent most weeks surviving paycheck to paycheck. While many of my classmates and friends were in similar (or worse) positions, others enjoyed vacation homes, their parents’ new cars, and all manner of resources not available to the rest of us. Those kids could afford educational and enrichment opportunities. We had to hope and pray for many of the same chances — or settle for free alternative, if there were any.

But while my family did not have much, we did have books. Though my parents read little, they made sure the bedroom I shared with my sister was stocked with stories. We often devoured several books a week, having to resort to rereading them if we finished them before our next trip to bookstores or libraries (another institution currently under attack). Had Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library been available in the 1980s, there is no doubt my parents would have taken advantage of this program. And while families of any income can participate in Parton’s initiative, as with any universal social program those with the least will suffer from cuts the most.

It is a certain kind of person who sees early and easy access to books as a bad thing. Part of my role in schools involves visiting classrooms for teaching observations. I will never forget one school I was assigned to observe in rural Wisconsin. I sat at the teacher’s desk as he picked up the autobiography of Pakastani activist Malala Yousafzai. I expected each student to grab their own class copy so that that they could read along with him—so that they could huddle over the book at their desks, feeling its pages and connecting with the words in ways that every reader understands.

Some children had their own copies, likely furnished by their parents. But most did not. Instead, the teacher read his one copy aloud, while those without a book stared at each other, kicked each other under their desks, doodled in their notebooks, picked at their fingers, and participated in any other distraction they could think of – all because they simply could not see the words on the page.

To be clear, that teacher was one of the most effective and engaging teachers I have ever known; he did the best he could with what he had available. I later learned that his school district did not offer its schools a budget for class sets of books. But to this day, I wonder what sort of opportunities those kids were given to develop a love of reading (if any).

Teachers (and our wallets) can only do so much – we are not magicians. To read books, children need access to them – the same type of access that Missouri is poised to take away from its own communities, and the effects can be observed in all corners of schooling.

The state’s decision comes at a perilous time for children’s literacy. According to the National Assessment for Educational Progress, also known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” reading scores for high school seniors fell to their lowest since 1992. Surveys have found that high school students are assigned fewer and fewer books to read. Children are reading, and especially for funless than ever. And schools’ overreliance on technology is likely to be exacerbated by the looming disaster that is AI.

Through no fault of their own, our children, our books, are in crisis. Free book programs should be considered a necessary component to all communities – like clean water and sanitation. Instead, Missouri’s decision to cut a beloved free book program, and any other state that follows suit, is only contributing to the challenges we currently face.

As a writer for children, I often visit schools to talk with kids about the importance of reading: “No one can take away your ability to read books,” I often say. What I don’t tell them is that there are so many groups, from politicians to legislators to self-proclaimed “parents’ rights” groups who are trying to do exactly that. If students become readers, they will know exactly what these people are trying to take away from them: Their ability to navigate the world as socially literate, informed, and empathetic citizens. Books, and access to them, is one of the few aspects of childhood that holds the potential to feel fair and equal. Is it any wonder that those currently in power wish to do away with it?

Jun. 7, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

A group of three families, on behalf of their transgender childrenand two transgender young adults, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in New York seeking to block a subpoena from the Justice Department for NYU Langone to release their medical records and other personal information to the government. The filing is only the most recent in a slate of lawsuits led by trans kids and their families across the country, from Maryland to California.

The timing of these lawsuits is notable as they come in and around Pride Month, a period intended for the celebration of queerness and to honor hard-won battles for social and legal acceptance. Instead, trans children, and their families, are living in fear and using time, energy and resources to protect themselves from the state for the perceived transgression of merely existing.

The government’s objective in its subpoena, which bids hospital representatives to appear in court before a grand jury in June and present documents “sufficient to identify each patient” who as a minor received gender-confirming care of any kind dating back to 2020,  appears to be twofold: to deny healthcare to trans kids, by, among other things, citing billing to insurance companies as “fraudulent”; and to intimidate healthcare providers from providing gender-confirming care to transgender patients at all.

This tactic appears to be working as trans healthcare centers and clinics around the country shutter, making care increasingly hard to access. “In addition to concerns about how the government might use private health information, parents said they fear that their children’s records will be held up as part of an investigation that ultimately aims to deny them medical treatment,” The New York Times reported Tuesday.

While the DOJ told the Times that it does not respond to requests for comment on grand jury subpoenas or activities, the Times also reported that “[t]he government has said it is acting on the behalf of patients and families as it investigates whether health providers and drug companies have illegally promoted off-label use of medications or used fraudulent billing practices to secure insurance coverage for gender-related treatments to minors.”

The DOJ has based its investigations into gender-confirming care for trans youth in the Northern District of Texaswhich is home court for a notoriously reactionary and partisan chief district judge, Reed O’Connor, and therefore “a venue favored by conservatives,” Reuters explains. In the past, O’Connor has taken initiatives to quash legal recourse for the subjects of his rulings, such as Rhode Island Hospital, which has been treating trans minors. “He…issued an injunction claiming to prohibit the hospital from seeking relief in the federal courts that oversee Rhode Island under threat of contempt. And he barred the hospital from ‘aiding and abetting’ any other party that might ask for help from these courts, including the children whose rights will be trampled by disclosure of their records,” Slate reported in May.

In basing its investigation in the Northern District of Texas, the department can file requests for subpoenas — for medical records and private patient information in other states — in O’Connor’s court. This, as Slate reporting describes, is part of the DOJ’s wider attempt at “forum shopping key cases to MAGA judges across the country who are much more likely to reward underhanded tactics.” It’s a breach of the sanctity of state laws, variations of which have been an important part of this country’s legal framework.

The Justice Department has made the case that part of its investigation involves looking at trans healthcare providers’ use of off-label drugs, arguing this could be either fraudulent or illegal. Yet as the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality explainsoff-label use is both “legal and common.” (For instance, Trazodone, while originally intended to treat depression, is often prescribed for other conditions, such as insomnia, bulimia, alcohol dependence or diabetic neuropathy.)

This is all to say that this administration is not just failing to take care of our most vulnerable populations, but it is actively targeting them. The fact that vulnerable children and their families are compelled to sue the federal government in an effort to have their constitutional rights honored says everything we need to know about this current political landscape.

“Every week there’s something new,” one teenager targeted in the Rhode Island Hospital case, who was only identified by their first initial because their family has faced harassment and threats in the past, told WBUR. “One week, they try to ban care. Another week, you find out that they want to know your personal information.”

It is the job of any well-functioning democracy to protect children and other vulnerable groups. As a trans man, navigating the progressively hostile and reactionary medical, political and legal landscapes demands an enormous amount of energy, not to mention it produces a great deal of fear and anxiety — and I am in my 40s. I cannot imagine how much this state targeting of trans youth is derailing the lives of children who want and deserve nothing more than to simply be kids.

Noor Noman is a writer focused on culture, race and LGBTQ issues.

Jun. 7, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT

This is an adapted excerpt from the May 31 episode of “Velshi.”

Just search “utility companies” under news, and you’ll find a familiar story playing out across the country: report after report of skyrocketing electric bills and mounting public anger with service providers. Out-of-control utility bills have become another aspect of the country’s affordability crisis, driven by an industry operating with too little accountability.

Retail electricity prices rose 7% in 2025 alone, part of a nearly 40% rise since 2021, which makes it the fastest period of electricity price growth on record. The average household’s monthly electric bill has climbed from roughly $121 in 2021 to $156 today, marking a nearly 30% increase that outpaces inflation.

Meanwhile, utility companies continue to ask regulators to let them charge even more money. In just the first three months of this year, utility companies sought approval for $9.4 billion in rate increases. That follows a record-setting 2025, when they requested $31 billion, more than double what they sought the year before.

According to the consumer advocacy group Powerlines“Today, nearly 80 million Americans are struggling to pay their utility bills, forgoing basic expenses like food, education, and health care to keep their lights on.”

In the words of the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller: “Where’s all the f&$*#ing money going?”

For their part, the utility companies will point to extreme weather, aging infrastructure, the transition to cleaner energy and now the enormous power demands of data centers. And while that is real, it doesn’t add up — and it hasn’t for years. We have been paying more for years.

The government has increased spending on the U.S. transmission system fivefold over the past two decades. But if all that money were actually fixing the grid, why do we keep hearing the grid is unreliable? Why do we keep hearing we need even more?

The answer lies in the utility business model, the part most people never hear about. Most people assume utilities work like ordinary businesses. They don’t. A regulated utility does not primarily make money by selling you electricity at a markup. Nearly every dollar it spends on operating costs is ultimately recovered from customers through rates approved by government regulators.

The real profits come from something else: capital investment.

When a utility builds a power plant, transmission line, substation or other major piece of infrastructure, regulators allow it to recover those costs from customers over decades.

On top of that, the utility earns a guaranteed return on the money it invested. And that return is not trivial; for most investor-owned utilities, it falls somewhere between 9.5% and 11%. Compare that with what you earn in a high-yield savings account today, which is around 4% if you’re lucky.

According to the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group that calls for greater accountability in the utility sector, investor-owned utilities pocketed $244 billion in profit off customers from 2021 through 2024.

Here’s the breakdown of those costs, according to the group’s executive director: “If a customer has a $200 electric bill, something on the order of $30 isn’t paying for electric poles, or wires, or power plants. It’s paying a wealth transfer to Wall Street and the company’s executives.”

Now, it should be noted, this is an analysis that industry groups dispute. But consider the incentives that kind of business model creates. If you’re guaranteed a premium on every dollar you spend, what’s your next move? It is likely not fixing the grid or upgrading aging facilities; it’s spending more dollars.

Build more projects, deploy more capital. Whether those projects are the most efficient solution or even strictly necessary becomes a secondary concern.

That helps explain one of the strangest features of America’s electricity system. As Stoller puts itutilities are “truly paid to fritter away money, to gold-plate and waste.” And, if that’s not bad enough, in some states these same utilities can spend your money on political activities.

According to the Energy and Policy Institutein states where laws prohibit utilities from charging customers for political spending, consumers are saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Meanwhile, you, the average customer, are sitting around believing that paying more will lead to a better grid. That is the implicit bargain behind every rate increase. Customers are told that higher bills today will lead to a more reliable system tomorrow. Yet the opposite complaint seems to be growing louder every year.

The federal organizations responsible for monitoring the nation’s electric system have repeatedly warned that large portions of the country face increasing blackout risks as power demand grows and existing infrastructure ages.

Ultimately, the problem is that the system rewards spending itself: A utility that finds a cheaper solution earns less, and a utility that spends billions building — not fixing — infrastructure earns more.

As Stoller puts it“They are willing to waste $1,000 to send an extra $60 to shareholders.”

Many experts argue that one of the most effective ways to lower costs and improve reliability would be to build more high-voltage transmission lines connecting different regions of the country.

Think of the electric grid as a national marketplace. Some regions have abundant, inexpensive electricity.  The Great Plains, for example, have some of the world’s best wind resources. The Southwest has enormous solar potential. Other regions, particularly dense population centers in the Northeast and parts of the Midwest, often face higher electricity costs and tighter supply constraints.

The obvious solution is to move more power between these regions. Done correctly, these projects can lower costs, improve reliability and make the entire system more resilient.

But that requires coordination. Large interstate transmission projects involve multiple states and multiple regulators, more oversight. And crucially, they don’t fit as neatly into the business model that rewards individual utilities for expanding their own assets.

As a result, utilities favor smaller local projects that are easier to approve, easier to build and guaranteed to generate shareholder returns.

Other countries have moved far more aggressively to build long-distance infrastructure capable of moving power across vast regions. Look at Chinawhich has built more than 8,200 miles of high-voltage transmission lines in recent years. The U.S. has built a mere 375.

At this point, you may be wondering: Where are the regulators? After all, utilities don’t operate in a free market. Customers can’t simply switch providers when rates rise.

The entire justification for granting utilities monopoly status is that government regulators are supposed to act on behalf of the public. In theory, that’s the safeguard. In the real world, that has become part of the problem.

Consider a recent example in Pennsylvania. When the Pennsylvania utility PECO — a subsidiary of Exelon, the largest utility in the country — recently asked for a return of nearly 11%far above the national average, it took the governor publicly shaming them to get it withdrawn.

Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called PECO’s proposed rate hike “pure greed.” In response, PECO said in a statement that the company “shares Governor Shapiro’s concerns about affordability and remains focused on keeping customer bills as low as possible while continuing to invest in safe and reliable service.”

The rising costs led Shapiro to launch a new watchdog to scrutinize utility profits.

But critics argue that many of the state commissions that are supposed to oversee these utilities have been effectively captured. The revolving door between regulators and utility companies means that today’s watchdog can become tomorrow’s utility executive, and vice versa.

At the same time, utility companies are often permitted to contribute money to the campaigns of officials involved in overseeing them. The result is regulatory capture, with the system increasingly serving the interests of the companies rather than the ratepayers it was designed to protect.

That’s why the industry’s response to virtually every challenge sounds so familiar. Need to strengthen the grid against storms? More spending. Need to accommodate renewable energy? More spending. Need to support artificial intelligence data centers? More spending. Need to improve reliability? More spending. And systems rarely reform themselves when the people involved are benefiting from the status quo.

Most Americans don’t understand the mechanics of rate bases, transmission planning or regulatory capture. They don’t need to. What they understand is that their bills keep rising. They understand that every year seems to bring a new explanation for why prices have to go up again.

For much of the 20th century, utilities were largely run by engineers. Their mission was straightforward: keep the lights on. Today, the system is run by financial engineers focused on returns on their investments.

Allison Detzel contributed.