The Dictatorship

US aid cuts are contributing to exploitation of Rohingya children

Published

4 days ago

December 18, 2025

US aid cuts are contributing to exploitation of Rohingya children

UKHIYA, Bangladesh (AP) — In moments when she is alone, when there is a break in the beatings from her husband, the girl cries for the school that was once her place of peace in a world that has otherwise offered her none.

Ever since the military in her homeland of Myanmar killed her father in 2017, forcing her to flee to neighboring Bangladesh with her mother and little sisters, the school had protected Hasina from the predators who prowl her refugee camp, home to 1.2 million members of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority.

An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp, home to over a million of Myanmar's persecuted Rohingya minority, is pictured in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu) — An aerial view of a Rohingya refugee camp, home to over a million of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya minority, is pictured in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

It had also protected her from being forced into marriage. And then one day in June, when Hasina was 16 years old, her teacher announced that the school’s funding had been taken away. The school was closing. In a blink, Hasina’s education was over, and so, too, was her childhood.

With her learning opportunities gone, and her family worried that foreign aid cuts would make their fight for survival in the camps even more perilous, Hasina — along with hundreds of other girls under the age of 18 — was quickly married off. And, just like Hasina, many of the girls are now trapped in marriages with men who abuse them.

“I dreamed of being something, of working for the community,” Hasina, now 17, says softly. The Associated Press is withholding her full name to protect her from retaliation by her husband. “My life is destroyed.”

The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs. Beyond unwanted marriages, scores of children as young as 10 were forced into backbreaking manual labor, and girls as young as 12 forced into prostitution. With no safe space to play or learn, children were left to wander the labyrinthine camps, making them increasingly easy targets for kidnappers. And the young and desperate were picked off by traffickers who promised to restore what the children had lost: Hope.

In a sweltering building not far from the cramped shelter where her husband tortures her, Hasina plays nervously with the strap of her pink mobile phone case, emblazoned with the words “Forever Young.”

She is still young, she says. But the aid cuts forced her into womanhood and into a nightmare. Not long after marrying her husband, she says, he isolated her from her family and began to beat and sexually abuse her. She daydreams daily of school, where she was a whiz at English and hoped to become a teacher. Now, she is confined largely to her shelter, cooking and cleaning and waiting with dread for the next beating.

If she had any way to escape, she says, she would. But there is nowhere to go. She cannot return to Myanmar, where the military that killed thousands of Rohingya in 2017 during what the U.S. declared a genocide remains in charge of her homeland.

Now, her husband is in charge of her future, though she no longer sees one.

“If the school hadn’t closed,” she says, “I wouldn’t be trapped in this life.”

Kristen Gelineau has covered Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya people since 2017. Her reporting has exposed atrocities committed by Myanmar’s ruling military, including systematic rape of Rohingya women and girls and widespread use of torture against civilian prisoners.

Children targeted

Life has always been dangerous for the 600,000 children languishing in these chaotic, overcrowded camps, where a squalid jumble of bamboo and tarpaulin shelters are jammed onto landslide-prone hills. But Trump’s decision in January to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development has made it even more so, the AP found in interviews with 37 children, family members, teachers, community leaders and aid workers.

Violations against children in the camps have risen sharply this year, according to UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency. Between January and mid-November, reported cases of abduction and kidnapping more than quadrupled over the same time period last year, to 560 children. And there has been an eightfold increase in reports of armed groups’ recruitment and use of children for training and support roles in the camps, with 817 children affected. Many members of the armed groups are battling a powerful ethnic militia across the border in Myanmar. The actual number of cases is likely higher due to underreporting, according to UNICEF, which lost 27% of its funding due to the U.S. aid cuts and subsequently shuttered nearly 2,800 schools.

“The armed groups, with their roots in Myanmar, are operating in the camps, using the camps as a fertile ground for recruiting young people,” says Patrick Halton, a child protection manager for UNICEF. “Obviously, if children are not in learning centers and not in multipurpose centers, then they’re more vulnerable to this.”

Verified cases of child marriage, which the U.N. defines as the union of children under age 18, rose by 21% and verified child labor cases by 17% in the year to September, compared to the same time period last year. Those statistics are likely to be a significant undercount, says Halton.

“With the funding cuts, we had to downscale a lot in terms of the education,” Halton says. “It’s meant that children have not necessarily had things to do, and we’ve therefore seen this rise in children being married, children being in child labor.”

Though the U.S. spent just 1% of its budget on foreign aid, Trump dubbed USAID wasteful and shut it down, a move that has proven catastrophic for the world’s most vulnerable. In Myanmar, the AP found the aid cuts have caused children to starve to deathdespite U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement to Congress that “No one has died” because of the dissolution of USAID. A study published in The Lancet journal in June said the U.S. funding cuts could result in more than 14 million deaths, including more than 4.5 million children under age 5, by 2030.

In the Bangladesh camps, the U.S. — which has long been the biggest provider of aid to the predominantly Muslim Rohingya — slashed its funding by nearly half compared to last year. The overall Rohingya emergency response is only 50% funded for 2025, and aid agencies say next year is expected to be far worse.

In a statement to the AP, the State Department said the U.S. has provided more than $168 million to the Rohingya since the beginning of Trump’s term, although data from the U.N.’s financial tracking service show the U.S. contribution in 2025 is $156 million. Asked about the disparity, the State Department said the U.N.’s financial tracking service had not been recently updated and “generally does not show the latest information on all U.S. funding.”

The department said it had “advanced burden sharing and improved efficiency” in the Rohingya response, resulting in 11 countries increasing their funding by more than 10% year on year, collectively contributing $72 million.

“The Trump Administration continues to pursue the diplomatic efforts to encourage additional countries to help shoulder the burden,” the statement said.

The department didn’t respond to the AP’s request for evidence that the U.S. had influenced other countries’ funding decisions for the Rohingya response.

When the schools shut down, hundreds of underage girls — some as young as 14 — were married off, says Showkutara, executive director of the Rohingya Women Association for Education and Development. Her network of contacts across the camps have also reported an increase in kidnapping and trafficking, as well as a huge surge in the prostitution of girls as young as 12 since the aid cuts.

“After the school closures, they had no space to play. … That’s why they’re playing on the roads, far away from their blocks,” says Showkutara, who goes by one name. “There are some groups who are targeting the children.”

While UNICEF managed to repurpose some of its remaining funding, enabling the agency to recently reopen most of its learning centers, scores of schools run by other aid groups are still shut, and thousands of children remain out of class. And aid workers are anticipating even steeper funding cuts next year, leaving the schools’ futures uncertain. Save the Children has only secured a third of its funding target for life-saving services for 2026, meaning 20,000 children attending its schools are at risk of losing their education starting in January, says Golam Mostofa, the group’s area director for Cox’s Bazar, the closest city to the camps.

Meanwhile, Showkutara says, the children locked out of learning by the initial closures are forever lost: Both metaphorically, in the case of girls like Hasina who were married off to men who will never let them return to school even if they reopen, and literally, in the case of children who vanished into the trafficking network.

“It’s too late,” she says.

The death of dreams

The little boy sits slumped on a plastic stool under the punishing sun, his cheeks streaked with sweat, a cooler of freeze pops and other treats at his dirty feet. Ever since 10-year-old Mohammed Arfan’s school closed, this is where he spends 10 hours a day, seven days a week, selling snacks and daydreaming of the small schoolroom where he once felt safe and loved.

He had just finished his math lessons the day that his teacher told him the school’s funding was gone. As he walked home, he and his friends began to cry.

“I thought that I would not see my friends anymore, and that I was losing my future,” he says.

Ten-year-old Rohingya refugee Mohammed Arfan, left, sells snacks inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu) — Ten-year-old Rohingya refugee Mohammed Arfan, left, sells snacks inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

With no lessons to occupy his time, and his parents worried about their seven children’s survival, Arfan’s mother told him he would need to work to help keep the family fed.

He was terrified. If the camp’s kidnappers or thieves targeted him while he was working, he knew he was too small to fight back.

But he had no choice, and so his daily drudgery began. Each morning, he wakes at 7 and walks for half an hour to the factory to pick up the treats. Then, hoisting the 15-kilogram (30-pound) cooler upon his bony shoulder, he walks another 30 minutes to the corner of the dusty road where he sets up shop among the garbage, rotting banana peels and swarms of flies. For his efforts, he takes home around 200 to 300 taka ($1.60 to $2.50) a day.

There are boys like Arfan all over the camps, selling food they’re desperate to eat and collecting trash in exchange for cash, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, skin seared by the sun.

In a drainage ditch next to a row of stinking latrines, 13-year-old Rahamot Ullah wades up to his waist in water clouded with raw sewage, plucking from the muck discarded pieces of plastic. Five hours of rummaging through the waste will generally net him enough plastic to trade for around 50 taka (40 cents).

His eye blazes with blood from the bamboo that pierced it 10 days earlier while slogging through the sewage. He began coming here soon after his school shut down, in the hopes he could collect enough trash to pay the 500 taka ($4) a month fee for private lessons. Many months, that fee has remained out of reach.

He worries he will drown in the ditch. And he worries that his dreams of becoming a camp official or a teacher will never come true.

Thirteen-year-old Rohingya refugee Rahamot Ullah collects plastic waste from a drainage canal inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu) — Thirteen-year-old Rohingya refugee Rahamot Ullah collects plastic waste from a drainage canal inside the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

Back on the street corner, Arfan, too, feels his dreams dying. He shouldn’t be here, he says, voice barely audible above the incessant shrieking of horns from the rickshaws racing past, just inches from his cooler.

“I feel shame working,” he says. “This is the time I should be studying.”

Each night when the sun sets, Arfan packs up and heads back to his shelter. And it is here where he lies on a mat on the bamboo floor, crying himself to sleep and pining for the life he was forced to leave behind.

‘My heart is still crying’

The laughter that once filled Noor Zia’s classroom has been replaced by tears. Nearly every day, she says, her former students stop by to see if the school has reopened, only to break down when told it has not.

Zia often finds herself in tears, too. Before the aid cuts, she was the head teacher of 21 early learning centers that served 630 children aged 3-5. But the closures left her without a job, making it even harder for her to keep her family alive on the camp’s meager rations.

“My heart is still crying, because my family depends on this job,” she says, sitting in the empty classroom, where the wall behind her is adorned with a drawing of the Myanmar flag — a country most of her students, born in the camps, have never seen.

The funding cuts’ pain goes beyond the school closures. Skills development programs that kept thousands of children occupied were also halted. Healthcare, nutrition and sanitation services have been reduced. In camps crawling with scabies and other diseases, the results of the reductions are clear on the children’s scrawny bodies. Lesions line their slender limbs. The wet, rattling coughs of babies fill the fetid air. Atop a muddy hill, clusters of kids scratch ferociously at their heads, while a 4-year-old stoically plucks nits from her friend’s scalp.

Bangladesh has barred the Rohingya from leaving the camps to find work, so they are reliant upon humanitarian aid to survive. But the U.N.’s World Food Program, which had counted the U.S. as its largest donor, says it only has enough funds to continue providing food rations through March.

The prospect of a ration cut has terrified families. With no country offering the Rohingya large-scale resettlement, many have opted to make a run for it, with devastating results. Nearly a third of the 1,340 Rohingya who have fled Bangladesh by boat this year have died or gone missing en route, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

Noor Kaida, a 17-year-old whose dreams of becoming a doctor were dashed when she was married off after her school shut, says she has lost two young relatives to traffickers. Shattered by the school closures, the 13- and 16-year-old girls believed traffickers who promised them a better life in Malaysia, Kaida says. Other passengers on the girls’ boats later told Kaida’s family both girls were killed; one by drowning, and the other at the hands of a trafficker.

“If the school wasn’t closed, they wouldn’t have had to take these risks,” Kaida says. “Because of the funding cuts and the school closures, thousands of girls were scattered in different places and their lives have been ruined.”

’Pray for me’

The 13-year-old boy had been missing for nine days when the call came in from an unfamiliar number.

“Baba, I’m leaving,” Mohammed told his frantic father. “I’m on the big boat now. Pray for me.”

The call disconnected, and Mohib Ullah knew his worst nightmare had come true: Just like so many other children in recent months, his boy had been taken by traffickers. Ullah — who has no relation to Rahamot Ullah — called back again and again, but the phone was switched off.

Mohammed — whose full name the AP is withholding for safety reasons — had been miserable since his school closed. The kindhearted boy who loved to read and learn, especially English, had long dreamed of becoming a teacher. When his education ended, he told his father through tears that his life was over. Ullah promised to try and find money for private school, but as a widower caring for four children, it was impossible.

Brown sandals of 13-year-old Mohammed are propped against the wall, alongside sparkly pink sneakers belonging to his sister, inside their shelter in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu) — Brown sandals of 13-year-old Mohammed are propped against the wall, alongside sparkly pink sneakers belonging to his sister, inside their shelter in the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Saturday, Nov. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmud Hossain Opu)

The teen hatched a plan, which he shared in secret with his big sister, Bibi: He would go with a trafficker to Malaysia, and find a future there. Bibi tried to talk him out of it; traffickers who take children on the long, dangerous journey generally detain the youngsters at the end until their parents pay a fee for their release. The children of parents who can’t pay are often tortured, and sometimes killed. Bibi warned her brother that their father would never be able to afford the trafficker’s payment.

But Mohammed didn’t care. “It’s better to withstand two years of torture than stay here in a hopeless camp,” he told his sister. “It’s better to die if I can’t continue learning.”

In a panic, Bibi shared her brother’s plan with their father, who was horrified; he knew how deadly the journey to Malaysia can be. He ordered his son to stay put, and to stay patient. The schools will reopen someday, he assured Mohammed. But the teen was convinced they would not.

And so, one morning in October, Mohammed left his family’s shelter and never returned. Ullah scoured the camps and called relatives, searching for any trace of his son. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. He has already lost another son, an 8-year-old who suddenly died on the anniversary of Ullah’s wife’s death, after crying all day about missing his mother and then saying he felt unwell. The prospect of losing one more child was unbearable.

Mohammed’s call came on Oct. 21. And then, for over six weeks, there was silence.

On Dec. 6, Ullah’s phone finally rang. It was Mohammed — still alive, but sick and sobbing. The traffickers were demanding 380,000 taka ($3,100) for his release — an astronomical sum that Ullah told Mohammed he did not have. But the terrified boy begged his father to try and find it.

Ullah knew if couldn’t, his son would likely be killed. And so he pleaded with anyone he could think of for any money they could spare. In the end, he collected just enough, and Mohammed was set free in Malaysia.

Ullah does not know what will become of his boy, who is still so young and wandering around a country that is alien to him.

“If he could have continued his studies, he could have been a teacher, he could have stayed near me,” Ullah says, blinking back tears. “Now he’s left me and I can’t see him. So I lost my dream, too.”

His voice cracks as he describes what was long one of his greatest joys: The sight of his son coming home from school, backpack slung across his shoulders.

Now, the stacks of workbooks Mohammed once pored over sit in his bedroom, untouched. His brown sandals are propped against the wall, alongside the sparkly pink sneakers belonging to the sister who tried in vain to stop him.

And, hanging from a piece of bamboo, gathering dust, is his backpack.

—-

Contact AP’s global investigative team at [email protected] or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

The Dictatorship

Nicki Minaj praises Trump, Vance at Arizona conservative event

Published

3 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

Nicki Minaj praises Trump, Vance at Arizona conservative event

Rapper Nicki Minaj on Sunday made a surprise appearance at a gathering of conservatives in Arizona that was memorializing late activist Charlie Kirkand used her time on stage to praise President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vancecalling them “role models” for young men.

The rap star was interviewed at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest convention by Erika Kirkthe widow of Charlie Kirk, about her newly found support for Trump — someone she had condemned in the past — and about her actions denouncing violence against Christians in Nigeria.

The Grammy-nominated rapper’s recent alignment with the Make America Great Again movement has caught some interest because of her past criticism of Trump even when the artist’s own political ideology had been difficult to pin down. But her appearance Sunday at the flagship event for the powerful conservative youth organization may shore up her status as a MAGA acolyte.

Minaj mocked California Gov. Gavin Newsomreferring to him as New-scum, a nickname Trump gave him. Newsom, a Democrat, has 2028 prospects. Minaj expressed admiration for the Republican president and Vance, who received an endorsement from Erika Kirk despite the fact he has not said whether he will run for president. Kirk took over as leader of Turning Point.

“This administration is full of people with heart and soul, and they make me proud of them. Our vice president, he makes me … well, I love both of them,” Minaj said. “Both of them have a very uncanny ability to be someone that you relate to.”

Minaj’s appearance included an awkward moment when, in an attempt to praise Vance’s political skills, she described him as an “assassin.”

She paused, seemingly regretting her word choice, and after Kirk appeared to wipe a tear from one of her eyes, the artist put her hand over her mouth while the crowd murmured.

“If the internet wants to clip it, who cares? I love this woman,” said Erika Kirk, who became a widow when Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September.

Last month, the rapper shared a message posted by Trump on his Truth Social network about potential actions to sanction Nigeria saying the government is failing to rein in the persecution of Christians in the West African country. Experts and residents say the violence that has long plagued Nigeria isn’t so simply explained.

“Reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude. We live in a country where we can freely worship God,” Minaj shared on X. She was then invited to speak at a panel at the U.S. mission to the United Nations along with U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz and faith leaders.

Minaj said she was tired of being “pushed around,” and she said that speaking your mind with different ideas is controversial because “people are no longer using their minds.” Kirk thanked Minaj for being “courageous,” despite the backlash she is receiving from the entertainment industry for expressing support for Trump.

“I didn’t notice,” Minaj said. “We don’t even think about them.” Kirk then said “we don’t have time to. We’re too busy building, right?”

“We’re the cool kids,” Minaj said.

The Trinidadian-born rapper is best known for her hits “Super Freaky Girl,” “Anaconda” and “Starships.” She has been nominated for 12 Grammy Awards over the course of her career.

In 2018, Minaj was one of several celebrities condemning Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that split more than 5,000 children from their families at the Mexico border. Back then, she shared her own story of arriving to the country at 5 years old, describing herself as an “illegal immigrant.”

“This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?” she posted then on Instagram.

On Sunday on stage with Erika Kirk, Minaj said, “it’s OK to change your mind.”

The Dictatorship

Trump’s first year back in office has been a roller coaster for clean energy

Published

3 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump’s first year back in office has been a roller coaster for clean energy

There were some highs amid a lot of lows in a roller coaster year for clean energy as President Donald Trump worked to boost polluting fuels while blocking wind and solaraccording to dozens of energy developers, experts and politicians.

Surveyed by The Associated Press, many described 2025 as turbulent and challenging for clean energy, though there was progress as projects connected to the electric grid. They said clean energy must continue to grow to meet skyrocketing demand for electricity to power data centers and to lower Americans’ utility bills.

Solar builder and operator Jorge Vargas said it has been “a very tough year for clean energy” as Trump often made headlines criticizing renewable energy and Republicans muscled a tax and spending cut bill through Congress in July that dramatically rolled back tax breaks for clean energy.

“There was a cooldown effect this year,” said Vargas, cofounder and CEO of Aspen Power. “Having said that, we are a resilient industry.”

Plug Power president Jose Luis Crespo said the developments — both policy recalibration and technological progress — will shape clean energy’s trajectory for years to come.

Energy policy whiplash in 2025

Much of clean energy’s fate in 2025 was driven by booster Joe Biden’s exit from the White House.

The year began with ample federal subsidies for clean energy technologies, a growing number of U.S.-based companies making parts and materials for projects and a lot of demand from states and corporations, said Tom Harper, partner at global consultant Baringa.

It ends with subsidies stripped back, a weakened supply chain, higher costs from tariffs and some customers questioning their commitment to clean energy, Harper said. He described the year as “paradigm shifting.”

Trump called wind and solar power “the scam of the century” and vowed not to approve new projects. The federal government canceled grants for hundreds of projects.

The Republicans’ tax bill reversed or steeply curtailed clean energy programs established through the Democrats’ flagship climate and health care bill in 2022. Wayne Winegarden, at the Pacific Research Institute think tank, said the time has come for alternative energy to demonstrate viability without subsidies. ( Fossil fuels also receive subsidies.)

Many energy executives said this was the most consequential policy shift. The bill reshaped the economics of clean energy projects, drove a rush to start construction before incentives expire and forced developers to reassess their strategies for acquiring parts and materials, Lennart Hinrichs said. He leads the expansion of TWAICE in the Americas, providing analytics software for battery energy storage systems.

Companies can’t make billion-dollar investments with so much policy uncertainty, said American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet.

Consequently, greenhouse gas emissions will fall at a much lower rate than previously projected in the U.S., said Brian Murray, director of the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Duke University.

A worker does checks on battery storage pods at Orsted's Eleven Mile Solar Center lithium-ion battery storage energy facility Feb. 29, 2024, in Coolidge, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File) — A worker does checks on battery storage pods at Orsted’s Eleven Mile Solar Center lithium-ion battery storage energy facility Feb. 29, 2024, in Coolidge, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

Still, solar and battery storage are booming

Solar and storage accounted for 85% of the new power added to the grid in the first nine months of the Trump administration, according to Wood Mackenzie research.

That’s because the economics remain strong, demand is high and the technologies can be deployed quickly, said Mike Hall, CEO of Anza Renewables.

Solar energy company Sol Systems said it had a record year as it brought its largest utility-scale project online and grew its business. The energy storage systems company CMBlu Energy said storage clearly stands out as a winner this year too, moving from optional to essential.

“Trump’s effort to manipulate government regulation to harm clean energy just isn’t enough to offset the natural advantages that clean energy has,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said. “The direction is still all good.”

The Solar Energy Industries Association said that no matter the policies in Washington, solar and storage will grow as the backbone of the nation’s energy future.

Nuclear and geothermal had a good year, too

Democrats and Republicans have supported investing to keep nuclear reactors online, restart previously closed reactors and deploy new, advanced reactor designs. Nuclear power is a carbon-free source of electricity, though not typically labeled as green energy like other renewables.

“Who had ‘restart Three Mile Island’ on their 2025 Bingo card?” questioned Baringa partner David Shepheard. The Pennsylvania plant was the site of the nation’s worst commercial nuclear power accident, in 1979. The Energy Department is loaning $1 billion to help finance a restart.

The base of a cooling tower at Constellation's nuclear power plant stands on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa., June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File) — The base of a cooling tower at Constellation’s nuclear power plant stands on Three Mile Island near Middletown, Pa., June 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)

Everyone loves nuclear, said Darrin Kayser, executive vice president at Edelman. It helps that the technology for small, modular reactors is starting to come to fruition, Kayser added.

Benton Arnett, a senior director at the Nuclear Energy Institute, said that as the need for clean, reliable power intensifies, “we will look back on the actions being taken now as laying the foundation.”

The Trump administration also supports geothermal energy, and the tax bill largely preserved geothermal tax credits. The Geothermal Rising association said technologies continue to mature and produce, making 2025 a breakthrough year.

Offshore wind had a terrible year

Momentum for offshore wind in the United States came to a grinding halt just as the industry was starting to gain traction, said Joey Lange, a senior managing director at Trio, a global sustainability and energy advisory company.

Wind turbines operate at Vineyard Wind 1 offshore wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts, July 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

The Trump administration stopped construction on major offshore wind farmsrevoked wind energy permits and paused permitting, canceled plans to use large areas of federal waters for new offshore wind development and stopped federal funding for offshore wind projects.

That has decimated the projects, developers and tech innovators, and no one in wind is raising or spending capital, said Eric Fischgrund, founder and CEO at FischTank PR. Still, Fischgrund said he remains optimistic because the world is transitioning to cleaner energy.

More clean energy needed in 2026

An energy strategy with a diverse mix of sources is the only way forward as demand grows from data centers and other sources, and as people demand affordable, reliable electricity, said former Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. Landrieu, now with Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, said promoting or punishing specific energy technologies on ideological grounds is unsustainable.

Experts expect solar and battery storage to continue growing in 2026 to add a lot of power to the grid quickly and cheaply. The market will continue to ensure that most new electricity is renewable, said Amanda Levin, policy analysis director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Hillary Bright, executive director of Turn Forward, thinks offshore wind will still play an important role too. It is both ready and needed to help address the demand for electricity in the new year, which will become increasingly clear “to all audiences,” she said. Turn Forward advocates for offshore wind.

That skyrocketing demand “is shaking up the political calculus that drove the administration’s early policy decisions around renewables,” she said.

BlueWave CEO Sean Finnerty thinks that states, feeling the pressure to deliver affordable, reliable electricity, will increasingly drive clean energy momentum in 2026 by streamlining permitting and the process of connecting to the grid, and by reducing costs for things like permits and fees.

Ed Gunn, Lunar Energy’s vice president for revenue, said the industry has weathered tough years before.

“The fundamentals are unchanged,” Gunn said, “there is massive value in clean energy.”

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The Dictatorship

Trump’s ‘A+++++’ economy collides with reality in city critical to midterms…

Published

20 hours ago

December 22, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump’s ‘A+++++’ economy collides with reality in city critical to midterms…

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) — When Idalia Bisbal moved to this Pennsylvania city synonymous with America’s working class, she hoped for a cheaper, easier life than the one she was leaving behind in her hometown of New York City.

About three years later, she is deeply disappointed.

“It’s worse than ever,” the 67-year-old retiree, who relies on Social Security, said when asked about the economy. “The prices are high. Everything is going up. You can’t afford food because you can’t afford rent. Utilities are too high. Gas is too expensive. Everything is too expensive.”

Bisbal was sipping an afternoon coffee at the Hamilton Family Restaurant not long after Vice President JD Vance rallied Republicans in a nearby suburb. In the Trump administration’s second high-profile trip to Pennsylvania in a week, Vance acknowledged the affordability crisisblamed it on the Biden administration and insisted better times were ahead. He later served food to men experiencing homelessness in Allentown.

The visit, on top of several recent speeches from President Donald Trumpreflects an increasingly urgent White House effort to respond to the economic anxiety that is gripping both parties. Those worries are a vulnerability for Republicans in competitive congressional districts like the one that includes Allentown, which could decide control of the U.S. House in next year’s midterms.

But in confronting the challenge, there are risks of appearing out of touch.

Only 31% of U.S. adults now approve of how Trump is handling the economy, down from 40% in March, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Yet Trump has called affordability concerns a “ hoax ” and gave the economy under his administration a grade of “A+++++.” Vance reiterated that assessment during his rally, prompting Bisbal to scoff.

“In his world,” Bisbal, a self-described “straight-up Democrat,” responded. “In the rich man’s world. In our world, trust me, it’s not an ‘A.’ To me, it’s an ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F,’ ‘F.’”

Agreement that prices are too high

With a population of roughly 125,000 people, Allentown anchors the Lehigh Valley, which is Pennsylvania’s third-largest metro area. In a dozen interviews this week with local officials, business leaders and residents of both parties, there was agreement on one thing: Prices are too high. Some pointed to gas prices while others said they felt the shock more at the grocery store or in their cost of health care or housing.

Few shared Trump’s unbridled boosterism about the economy.

Tony Iannelli, the president and CEO of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce, called Trump’s grade a “stretch,” saying “we have a strong economy but I think it’s not yet gone to the next stage of what I would call robust.”

Tom Groves, who started a health and benefits consulting firm more than two decades ago, said the economy was at a “B+” as he blamed the Affordable Care Act, widely known as “Obamacare,” for contributing to higher health costs and he noted stock and labor market volatility. Joe Vichot, the chairman of the Lehigh County Republican Committee, referred to Trump’s grade as a “colloquialism.”

Far removed from Washington’s political theater, there was little consensus on who was responsible for the high prices or what should be done about it. There was, however, an acute sense of exhaustion at the seemingly endless political combat.

Pat Gallagher was finishing lunch a few booths down from Bisbal as she recalled meeting her late husband when they both worked at Bethlehem Steel, the manufacturing giant that closed in 2003. Now retired, she, too, relies on Social Security benefits and lives with her daughter, which helps keep costs down. She said she noticed the rising price of groceries and was becoming exasperated with the political climate.

“I get so frustrated with hearing about the politics,” she said.

Allentown has a front-row seat to politics

That feeling is understandable in a place that often gets a front-row seat to the national debate, whether it wants the view or not. Singer Billy Joel’s 1982 song “Allentown” helped elevate the city into the national consciousness, articulating simultaneous feelings of disillusionment and hope as factories shuttered.

In the decades since, Pennsylvania has become a must-win state in presidential politics and the backdrop for innumerable visits from candidates and the media. Trump and his Democratic rival in 2024, Kamala Harrismade several campaign swings through Allentown, with the then-vice president visiting the city on the eve of the election.

“Every race here, all the time,” Allentown’s mayor, Democrat Matt Tuerk, recalled of the frenzied race last year.

The pace of those visits — and the attention they garnered — has not faded from many minds. Some businesses and residents declined to talk this week when approached with questions about the economy or politics, recalling blowback from speaking in the past.

But as attention shifts to next year’s midterms, Allentown cannot escape its place as a political battleground.

Trump’s win last year helped lift other Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, to victory. Mackenzie, who unseated a three-term Democrat, is now one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress. To win again, he must turn out the Republicans who voted in 2024 — many of whom were likely more energized by Trump’s candidacy — while appealing to independents.

Mackenzie’s balancing act was on display when he spoke to the party faithful on Tuesday, bemoaning the “failures of Bidenomics” before Vance took the stage at the rally. A day later, the congressman was back in Washington, where he joined three other House Republicans to rebel against the party’s leadership and force a vote on extending health care subsidies that expire at the end of the year.

Vichot, the local GOP chairman, called Mackenzie an “underdog” in his reelection bid and said the health care move was a signal to voters that he is “compassionate for the people who need those services.”

A swing to Trump in 2024

Lehigh County, home to Allentown and the most populous county in the congressional district, swung toward Trump last year. Harris’ nearly 2.7 percentage point win in the county was the tightest margin for a Democratic presidential candidate since 2004. But Democrats are feeling confident after a strong performance in this fall’s elections when they handily won a race for county executive.

Retaking the congressional seat is now a top priority for Democrats. Gov. Josh Shapirowho faces reelection next year and is a potential presidential contender in 2028, endorsed firefighter union head Bob Brooks this week for the May primary.

Democrats are just a few seats shy of regaining the House majority and the first midterm after a presidential election historically favors the party that’s out of power. If the focus remains on the economy, Democrats are happy.

The Uline supplies distribution factory where Vance spoke, owned by a family that has made large donations to GOP causes, is a few miles from the Mack Trucks facility where staff was cut by about 200 employees this year. The company said that decision was driven in part by tariffs imposed by Trump. Shapiro eagerly pointed that out in responding to Vance’s visit.

But the image of Allentown as a purely manufacturing town is outdated. The downtown core is dotted by row homes, trendy hotels and a modern arena that is home to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms hockey team and hosts concerts by major artists. In recent years, Latinos have become a majority of the city’s population, driven by gains in the Puerto Rican, Mexican and Dominican communities.

“This is a place of rapid change,” said Tuerk, the city’s first Latino mayor. “It’s constantly changing and I think over the next three years until that next presidential election, we’re going to see a lot more change. It’s going to be an interesting ride.”