During the month-long tournament, a great deal of scrutiny focused on the excessive private jet consumption by FIFA president Gianni Infantino. He flew an estimated 60,400 miles on a Gulfstream luxury jet provided by World Cup sponsor Qatar Airways, spewing almost 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

But Infantino wasn’t the only one committing a foul. Over 92,000 private jets flew in and out of World Cup host cities during the days around matches, according to a new tracking system created by the Institute for Policy Studies. This contributed over 147 kilotons of excess carbon emissions, the equivalent of driving 34,000 gas-guzzling cars for a year.

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Read the full article on The Hill.

The post Red Card: World Cup Fans and the Public Subsidize Private Jet Polluters appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

But despite the fact that climate change and extreme heat are posing a threat to the health and well-being of Americans, neither major party is offering a serious policy response.

Republicans have become the official party of climate change denial. The Trump administration and its GOP allies in Congress have aggressively attacked renewable energy while boosting fossil fuels. Meanwhile many Democrats have become increasingly silent about climate, leaving voters concerned about the issue with no major political party to represent their values and interests.

In fact, The New York Times recently found that many Democratic candidates are backtracking on their previous opposition to the oil and gas industries. “With voters worried about spiking gas prices and inflation, some of the party’s leaders argue that they should stop trying to throttle oil and gas, which heat the planet when burned,” the paper reported.

This messaging could cost lives and elections.

As a young voter, I saw this sense of abandonment play out in real time. I remember walking proudly around my campus all day in 2024 wearing an “I voted” sticker. I had voted early by mail, as had many of my classmates—or so I thought. What I came to realize throughout the day was that many of my classmates had yet to vote—and had no plan to.

Voting can be time consuming, frustrating, and often unnecessarily complicated. Barriers to voting are even more intimidating when you’re voting for the first time. For these reasons and more, many young people only make the effort to vote if they feel candidates will strongly advocate for the issues they care about.

On my campus, students are given access to all kinds of information about how and why to vote, and they’re given ample time and opportunity to do so. If students with access to so many resources on voting aren’t voting, how can we expect young people in parts of the country where there are larger barriers to voting to turn out en masse?

Over half of voters aged 18-29 didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election, and 77% of young voters didn’t vote in the 2022 midterms. The 2026 midterm races are already tight, which could make the failure to address climate change a recipe for political as well as ecological disaster.

There’s no contradiction between having a serious climate policy and being responsive to voter concerns about rising costs. Progressive populists like Zohran Mamdani in New York, Janeese Lewis George in Washington, DC, and Melat Kiros in Denver, among others, have all proven that climate-friendly economic populism can be effective at increasing voter turnout, especially among young people.

Economic populism goes hand in hand with a transition to green energy, as 90% of renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. Voters recognize that public investments in clean energy, public transit, and other climate-friendly policies ultimately save them money.

In New York, one of Mamdani’s core promises—Free, Fast Buses—was proof of this. In DC, a core component of Lewis George’s campaign was affordable energy for all, with a focus on expanding community and government solar to cut electric bills. In Denver, Kiros also campaigned on combining economic and environmental issues with her support of a Green New Deal.

These recent victories owed much to the young people who powered their campaigns. It was also overwhelmingly young people who organized the 75,000 person March To End Fossil Fuels in 2023 and organized 500,000 people around the US against fossil fuels in 2019.

These examples suggest young people aren’t apathetic—they’re just not being heard. They will power campaigns that support a transition to green energy. But they won’t make an effort for those who enable the fossil fuel industry or talk out of both sides of their mouths on the issue.

Now is the time to push for a future with cheaper, greener energy for all. It is not the time to backslide on fossil fuels.

The post Backsliding on Climate Could Cost Not Only Elections But Lives appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Nearly 100 years ago, the stock market crash of 1929 changed the United States and the world. With their backs up against the wall, the working class built strong movements that catapulted new leaders into power who were more responsive to the people’s demands for transformative change.

Henry A. Wallace was one of these leaders, and the Institute for Policy Studies is proud to carry on his legacy through our Henry A. Wallace Fellowship Program.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Agriculture Secretary (1933-1940) and Vice President (1941-1945), Wallace was a key architect of several New Deal programs that continue today — from Social Security to school lunches and food stamps (now SNAP) — and later became a champion of a non-militarized foreign policy. The FDR administration also adopted landmark labor protections and hiked taxes on the wealthy and large corporations.

New Deal reforms were not perfect. They had gaps that racist and anti-democratic forces have exploited over the years. But they undoubtedly made life better for many millions of Americans. Today, these gains are under threat, as the current administration seeks to dismantle New Deal and other bedrock 20th century laws and institutions.

The Institute for Policy Studies is working with social movement allies to not only defend the progressive achievements of the past but to reimagine them for a new era. We are fighting for a world in which every person can thrive, with universal rights to health care, housing, food, clean water, dignified work, and a fair judicial system — all on a healthy and peaceful planet.

The main impediments to this vision: the excessive power of the ultra-wealthy and large corporations and the squandering of public resources into militarized forces at home and abroad that leave us neither safe nor secure. Together these forces undermine democracy at home and abroad, and it will take powerful social movements and bold leaders to confront them.

Over the past century, movements of workers, environmentalists, immigrants, peace promoters, racial and gender justice activists, and others have built on the progress of the New Deal era to win important victories. Drawing from our collaborations with these movements — and from Henry Wallace’s prescient vision — IPS identifies here key concrete measures to expand democracy by countering the power of billionaires, corporations, and the Pentagon.

Countering Billionaire Power

Over the last 40 years, the concentration of income, wealth, and power has accelerated, with unprecedented wealth pooling in the asset accounts of the global billionaire class. Roughly 3,400 global billionaires hold over $20.1 trillion in combined assets. In the United States, 977 billionaires hold an estimated $9.24 trillion, with an increase of 32 percent over the previous year.

In June 2026, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, serving as a flashing red light for democratic societies around the world. Musk and 15 U.S. citizens each have over $100 billion in assets, with a combined $4 trillion.

Over the last 40 years, the concentration of income, wealth, and power has accelerated, with unprecedented wealth pooling in the asset accounts of the global billionaire class. Roughly 3,400 global billionaires hold over $20.1 trillion in combined assets. In the United States, 977 billionaires hold an estimated $9.24 trillion, with an increase of 32 percent over the previous year.

In June 2026, Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire, serving as a flashing red light for democratic societies around the world. Musk and 15 U.S. citizens each have over $100 billion in assets, with a combined $4 trillion.

The problem is not billionaire wealth per se, but the tremendous power this wealth creates to distort markets, politics, and society. Individuals with such levels of wealth are not just purchasing another mansion or private jet. They are buying politicians, acquiring media outlets, and blocking broadly supported policy changes. Such democracy-distorting concentrations of wealth and power disrupt the daily lives of ordinary people — driving up housing and healthcare costs, robbing people of their voice and vote, and supercharging the racial wealth divide.

Priority policies:

1. Make the U.S. tax code more progressive to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share.
   • Support state and federal reforms to strengthen progressive income taxes and tax income from assets at higher levels than income from wages.
   • Shift the estate tax to an inheritance tax levied on recipients of multi-million-dollar wealth transfers.
   • Institute an annual federal wealth tax on fortunes over $50 million.
2. Close loopholes that enable wealth hiding and massive tax avoidance.
   • Adopt legislation to increase transparency of trusts and shut down off-shore tax haven transactions.
   • Revamp trust law to ensure transparency and appropriate taxation of assets in trusts and eliminate so-called “dynasty trusts” that enable vast fortunes to pass untaxed down narrow generational lines.
   • Invest in tax oversight and enforcement to ensure the wealthiest people are unable to opt out of their tax obligations.
3. Support game-changing grassroots campaigns that tax excessive wealth to invest in broadly popular investments.
   • Tax luxury private jets and their fuel and activities to fund green transit and infrastructure.
   • Use revenue from taxes on huge inheritances to close the historical racial wealth divide and invest in financially progressive baby bonds and other wealth-building initiatives for those excluded by the legacy of racism.
   • Tax luxury real estate transactions to fund permanently affordable housing.
   • Tax extreme wealth to fund the transition to a renewable energy economy and the phaseout of fossil fuels. A globally coordinated 2 percent tax on those with wealth of more than $50 million (and a 5 percent tax on the wealth of billionaires) would both reduce the super-emitters and generate revenue for green energy investments and infrastructure.

Countering Corporate Power

Large corporations are undermining our democracy by using their market power and political clout to kill off competitors, suppress wages and labor rights, avoid paying taxes, and drive up prices for food, medicine, housing, and other basic goods. Fossil fuel corporations have bought off officials who are driving a planet-killing agenda while repressing democratic resistance, particularly from Indigenous, Black, and other marginalized communities.

Corporate leaders are reaping the benefits of these destructive practices while ordinary families and taxpayers are paying the costs. Average CEOs today make hundreds of times more than their typical workers. And numerous leading U.S. corporations, including the country’s top two private sector employers – Walmart and Amazon – pay their workers so little that many of them have to rely on public assistance.

Priority policies:

1. Build the countervailing power of workers.
   • Expand democracy in the workplace by strengthening protections for union organizing and collective bargaining for all workers and by preventing employers from dragging out first-contract negotiations.
   • Adopt a federal “full employment” jobs guarantee to provide living-wage employment to any adult who wants to work.
   • Hold companies accountable for failing to pay living wages by requiring them to pay into the public systems sustaining their workforce.
   • Construct guardrails against harmful uses of AI in the workplace, including monitoring and control of workers without their knowledge.
   • Defend federal employees who provide vital services, including postal workers, against privatization and anti-union attacks.
   • Lift the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes to ensure a public pension system that allows all seniors to live in dignity.
   • Overhaul trade policies to strengthen protections for workers everywhere and eliminate provisions that allow private investors to sue governments over public interest regulations.
2. Use corporate tax policy to raise sufficient revenue for social needs – and to discourage harmful corporate behavior.
   • Raise rates and plug loopholes so that large corporations pay their fair share of the costs of the transition to a renewable energy economy, universal health care, and social programs that eliminate poverty in the world’s richest nation.
   • Increase taxes on companies that pay their CEO more than 50 times their median worker pay to discourage the extreme gaps that are driving inequality and undermining business effectiveness.
   • Introduce a financial transactions tax to encourage long-term, job-creating investment instead of short-term Wall Street speculation.
   • Reinstitute a ban on stock buybacks, or raise taxes on them, to substantially reduce the use of this wasteful financial maneuver for enriching CEOs at workers’ expense.
3. Wield the power of the public purse against corporate predators.
   • End taxpayer support for government subsidies and contracts going to corporations engaging in practices that undermine workers and communities, including price-gouging, union-busting and other labor rights abuses, environmental violations, poverty wages, and excessive CEO pay and stock buybacks. This includes ending all subsidies to fossil fuel corporations.
4. Get corporate money out of politics.
   • Support state efforts to circumvent the notorious Citizens United Supreme Court ruling on corporate political spending, including Hawaii’s recently passed ban and similar pending legislation in at least 14 additional states.

Countering Pentagon Power

U.S. policymakers have chosen military dominance over the welfare of people in the United States and globally. Today’s $1 trillion budget for war and weapons is 90 percent higher than in 2000. The president is now requesting a war budget in excess of $1.5 trillion, significantly higher than at the peak of World War II, adjusted for inflation. And the U.S. government’s $240 billion in mass detention and deportation spending is eight times the previous annual spending for immigration enforcement.

Those budget priorities have enabled the invasion of Venezuela and a misguided “war on drugs,” the arming of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the U.S.-Israel war on Iran, causing thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions of people. U.S. immigrant communities are being terrorized. Children and families are being held in inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, the wars have led to higher prices for fuel and food for people all over the world already facing affordability crises. Militarism is escalating at home, with the occupation of cities and hyper-militarized borders.

Priority policies:

1. Cut the military budget in half.
   • Wars and weapons don’t keep us safe. The U.S. can guarantee our security for far less than we have been spending.
   • Cutting the war budget in half, approximately back to late 1990s levels in real terms, would make immoral and illegal wars of choice less likely while allowing the United States to prioritize true defense.
2. Reinvest those hundreds of billions of dollars in programs prioritizing our families.
   • A $500 billion savings from the war budget could revitalize our country and transform finances for millions of households.
   • With this sum, we could erase all medical debt ($220 billion) and private student loan debt ($148 billion), reverse Medicaid cuts from Trump’s Big Bad Bill ($91 billion/year), restore Affordable Care Act subsidies to make healthcare more affordable for millions ($35 billion/year), and more.
3. Reinforce our democracy by strengthening the constitutional power of the U.S. Congress to declare war.
   • We can achieve this through empowering War Powers Resolutions and Joint Resolutions of Disapproval to not only assert Congressional opposition to specific wars and weapons sales, but to actually stop them.
4. Dismantle the current immigration enforcement apparatus and welcome immigrants by providing legal status and paths to citizenship for immigrants who are already here, and providing accessible pathways to migration for those who wish to come.
   • Immigrants are vital to a healthy U.S. democracy and economy. Their contribution to U.S. economic output is larger than their share of the total population, and immigrants – including undocumented immigrants – pay a significant share of the taxes that sustain public services and infrastructure.
5. Strengthen review and approval processes to ensure that every nation receiving U.S. arms abides by the same human rights standards, with no exceptions.
   • The U.S. government undermines its legitimacy and standing in the world when it applies human rights standards inconsistently, based on commercial or geo-political interests.

Download

A PDF version of this report can be downloaded here.

The post Forging a Democracy that Works for All appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.

Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone — a toll that’s still  unacceptably high.

Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the U.S. alone.

Scientists have found that all of these regional heatwaves were made likelier and more severe because of human-caused climate change, mainly attributable to burning fossil fuels.

Major oil and gas corporations have known for decades that their business model would cause disasters like these. Their response was to minimize or even hide their findings to keep the public in the dark about the risks — and pay front groupsto deceive them.

This drive to preserve profits at the expense of humanity has understandably caused outrage. Eleven U.S. states, two tribes, and dozens of local governments are suing fossil fuel corporations for damages for the harm they’ve suffered from climate disasters.

State legislators have also joined the fray. New York and Vermont have passed “Climate Superfund” bills that require fossil fuel corporations to pay for economic losses arising from extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding. Similar laws are being considered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The U.S. has experienced more than $200 billion in climate damages every year since 2016, and it’s only fair that fossil fuel corporations pay for some of the damage caused by their reckless greed.

But instead of trying to make Big Oil pay up, some lawmakers in Congress are trying to do the opposite. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) have introduced House and Senate bills, respectively, that seek to dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield Big Oil from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and — most outrageously — block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.

This is legislation expressly designed to protect a powerful, wealthy industry from having to face any accountability for harming the public. And when you follow the money, you can see why.

Rep. Hageman has received more than $23,000 in campaign money from the petroleum refining and marketing industry in this cycle, making it the second biggest industry (after sugar) backing her candidacy. She’s also received thousands more from other fossil fuel interests.

Also in this cycle alone, Sen. Cruz has gotten more than $129,000 in contributions from different segments of the oil and gas industry.

Effectively, these legislators — like too many others — were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

And if we want the kind of democracy we need and deserve, the rest of us shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.

The post Naked Fossil Fuel Corruption appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The U.S.-Israeli war on Iran is illegal, unpopular and just plain wrong. The war has led to thousands of deaths and injuries in Iran, Lebanon, and surrounding countries, as well as the deaths of 18 U.S. troops to date.

Both the House and Senate have passed resolutions calling for an end to the war. President Trump has blatantly ignored those calls while continuing U.S. strikes against Iran. The war violates both U.S. and international law.

And, the war has created costs here at home. Already, this administration’s policies have led to the loss of health care and food stamps (SNAP) for millions of Americans amidst an affordability crisis. Now, the war on Iran is causing even higher gas and food prices. A recent poll showed that even among the MAGA faithful, only one-third believe the war on Iran to be worth the costs.

Instead of providing an additional $73 billion for war on Iran, we could do ALL of the following:

• One year of free universal preschool for 3 and 4-year-olds ($35 billion/ year)
• Restore the food stamps program from Trump’s cuts, making benefits available again to 4 million people ($18.6 billion/ year)
• Provide rapid or permanent supportive housing to every person in a homeless shelter ($9.6 billion)
• Double funding for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to protect clean air and water ($8.8 billion)

Providing more money to the Pentagon at this time will prolong the war and continue to underfund programs that Americans need and deserve. With so many potential better uses for these funds, there is no excuse for their approval.

The post What Could We Do Instead of Spending Another $73 Billion for War? appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The administration has removed temporary protected status (TPS) for more than a million people from over a dozen countries. It is sending people back to active war zones in Sudan and Somalia. It is deporting people to Myanmar, a country under a military dictatorship. In the case of Venezuela, it is returning people to a country struggling to deal with the after-effects of an earthquake.

Some holders of this status have been in the country for a long time. Nearly 90 percent of the 170,000 Salvadorans who have TPS, first granted 25 years ago, participate in the U.S. labor force, contributing over $5 billion to the U.S. economy.

The president makes no exceptions in its campaign to deport anyone and everyone. Even as it has promised to fight a war on behalf of the people of Iran, it has reportedly provided information about Iranian asylum-seekers to the Iranian government. These details about their lives, such as their sexual preferences and religious beliefs, make it even more likely that they will be persecuted on return. Dozens of Russians, who don’t enjoy TPS, were flown back to Russia, where several were immediately slapped with draft notices. Over 4,000 Cubans have been sent to Mexico where they languish in a cruel limbo.

There is no length to which the administration won’t go to deport people, even American citizens like the children born in the United States who were kicked out of the country along with their parents. So far, the Supreme Court has blocked the administration’s attempt to overturn the “birthright citizenship” clause in the U.S. Constitution. But Trump is still pushing his allies to take up the fight in Congress to change the law.

The administration even tried to add 2.7 million living people to the “Death Master File,” which is a database of dead people maintained by the Social Security Administration. Trump’s plan was to make life so difficult for people declared “dead” that they would self-deport or, if they showed up to dispute their “death,” to detain them in preparation for deportation. It was only because of a whistleblower that this plan didn’t go into effect.

But the most visible effort by the U.S. government has been to target the approximately 14 million “unauthorized immigrants” who, as of 2023, constituted over 4 percent of the U.S. population. Such immigrants keep the American economy afloat by picking fruit, slaughtering cows, building houses, and taking care of the elderly.

Trump’s mass deportation campaign, in other words, would wreck the U.S. economy. The undocumented don’t take away jobs from native-born Americans because the latter generally don’t want the jobs that immigrants fill. But the administration is willing to risk economic disaster in its effort to keep America a predominantly white country.

Trump’s anti-immigrant plan has not just evicted people. It has not just locked them away in detention centers.

It has killed them.

In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were involved in two killings. Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national living with his wife and young daughter in a small town in Maine, was not the subject of an ICE raid, but ICE agents killed him anyway. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican immigrant, was a businessman and father of three on his way to work in Houston when agents stopped his car and shot him.

More than a dozen people have died in these kinds of interactions with ICE, including two U.S. citizens—Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good—protesting ICE actions in Minnesota.

The number of detainees who have died in custody is even higher. Tens of thousands of people are being held in detention facilities that the Trump administration has established around the country. Despite administration claims that it is only deporting dangerous criminals, more than 70 percent of those detained have no prior criminal convictions.

More than 50 people have died in the detention facilities, a rate that is more than twice as high as Trump’s first term. They have died because of conditions inside the facilities or because they didn’t receive sufficient medical care. Several have committed suicide—or their deaths have been reported as suicides. Here’s what fellow deportees reported about the supposed suicide of Geraldo Lunas Campos:

Santos Jesús Flores, a Salvadoran who was in the SHU that night, said in a declaration that Lunas Campos’s hands and feet had been cuffed. He’d heard Lunas Campos begging for his medicine, followed soon afterward by “the sounds of the guards punching Geraldo, the clanking of Geraldo’s handcuffs, the sounds of shoes scraping against the floor. Then I heard Geraldo saying, ‘I have asthma. I can’t breathe.’” Flores’s account is consistent with that of Ricardo Andrade Mosquera, a twenty-nine-year-old from Venezuela, who was in another nearby cell. “They were on top of him,” he told the El Paso Times. “He screamed horribly as they hit him.”

The Trump administration has pledged to deport a million people a year. It hasn’t quite reached that benchmark, with the administration itself claiming around 900,000 deportations as of mid-May. It has also claimed that more than 2 million people have self-deported. However, without transparent data from the Department of Homeland Security, it is difficult to verify the administration’s claims.

These numbers are critical to the administration’s approval rating. On virtually all other policies, Trump is losing popularity. Inflation numbers remain high, and the economy is failing millions of Americans. The war in Iran continues to push up gas prices. The administration is still dogged by controversies around budget cuts, corruption, anti-vaccine policies, and connections to Jeffrey Epstein. The overall approval rating for the administration is around 37 percent, with a large percentage of independent voters now adopting negative views of the president.

The one issue where a sizable number of Americans still approve of administration policies, however, is immigration. Compared to the economy at 33 percent and the war in Iran at 29 percent, 40 percent of Americans approve of his immigration policies. But even here the numbers are declining, since half of Americans supported his approach to immigration when he took office in 2025.

The administration has tried to tout the successes of its deportation program. But the deaths of citizens and non-citizens alike have put supporters of the president on the defensive. The detention and deportation of key members of communities—hard workers, religious leaders, even those espousing the same conservative family values of the administration—have led to a significant decline in anti-immigrant sentiment among Republicans.

Still, with the economy on the rocks and the war in Iran nowhere near an end, the Republicans will likely try to emphasize the “success” of the administration on immigration policy in the upcoming midterm elections in November. It will be a desperate strategy. As more information comes out about lives lost, communities harmed, and an economy hobbled by the loss of critical workers, the administration’s deportation strategy may turn out to be a failure politically as well for the president and his party.

The post Trump’s War at Home appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

The campaign for rent stabilization collected more than 157,000 signatures to place such a measure on the ballot this November. But to the delight of corporate landlords and real estate executives, the Supreme Judicial Court struck it from the ballot — based on a precedent-setting technicality: The measure exempted religious institutions, which the court found unlawful even though most rent control ordinances across the country contain this exemption.

However, the fight is not over. The Legislature now has the opportunity to act. State lawmakers must take action to uphold the will of Bay Staters by lifting the ban on rent control and allowing local jurisdictions to pass the rent stabilization ordinances that work best for their communities.

The evidence is adding up that the housing affordability crisis can’t be solved solely by building more market-rate housing. It will take thoughtful, flexible measures like the proposed legislative compromise that was gaining momentum before the court’s decision, which would allow cities and towns to opt into rent stabilization.

Rent control stabilizes communities. A recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of Housing Economics examined 112 studies on rent control and found the policy is successful at lowering rents. Rent stabilization implemented in Paris, France, in 2019, for example, led to an average decrease of 3.7 to 4.2 percent four years after its implementation — with “no evidence that the policy led to a structural decline in the number of listings.”

Moderate rent control also does not hurt new housing production, according to a study from the University of Southern California. And the existence of rent stabilized units in New York City did not stop 2025 from being a prolific year in residential completions there.

The real estate industry wrongly claims high rents are simply a supply problem. They are pushing to deregulate and build more market-rate housing. But this argument fundamentally misunderstands the root cause of our housing affordability crisis.

A working paper published earlier this year by scholars from the University of California, Berkeley, and other institutions found that the fundamental driver of housing unaffordability isn’t necessarily an undersupply of new housing. It’s income inequality. As income growth gets distributed upwards — and the wages of non-college educated households continue to stagnate — developers increasingly prioritize responding to the housing demand driven by higher-income households.

As a result, new market-rate construction can often raise rents for low-income households, accelerating gentrification before any potential benefits of cheaper housing “trickle down.” Older homes may eventually experience a drop in average rental prices, but it could take decades before they are affordable to lower-income households.

Nor will private developers automatically build more just because zoning laws are loosened. Developers are profit-maximizing firms. They’ll build more housing only when market conditions are at their most favorable — not just because they have the option to build more. They’ll simply delay construction if they anticipate profits will be greater in the future.

For private developers and landlords, the market is working as intended. Their goal is not to guarantee that the vast majority of tenants are cheaply housed, but to make profits and increase the value of their real estate assets. They have no incentive to significantly lower prices through oversupply.

More housing is absolutely necessary for bringing prices down, but market-rate construction alone does little to deliver affordability to working households in the short and medium term. Struggling families cannot wait 10 years for older properties to filter down. People need relief now.

Rent control is an obvious alternative. Nearly 200 jurisdictions in the United States now have rent stabilization policies in place, benefiting millions of residents without hurting housing production rates. In Massachusetts, the city councils of Boston, Springfield, Northampton, Lynn, Holyoke, and Easthampton have all passed resolutions in support of rent stabilization.

Massachusetts has the unfortunate honor of being the most expensive state by average rent in the country. Rent control, accompanied by policies to reduce income inequality and increase the supply of permanent and deeply affordable social housing, is a crucial first step towards bringing households back from the brink.

With the vast majority of Massachusetts residents expressing support for a statewide rent control ballot measure they’ll no longer get a chance to vote on, the Legislature needs to lift the ban so communities can act.

The post Massachusetts Should Lift Its Ban on Rent Control appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

1. Priority policies to counter the power of billionaires: make the U.S. tax code more progressive; restore and expand progressivity of the U.S. tax system to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share, close tax loopholes that enable wealth hiding and massive tax avoidance, and support game-changing grassroots campaigns that tax excessive wealth to invest in broadly popular investments.
2. Priority policies to counter corporate power: build the countervailing power of workers, use corporate tax policy to raise sufficient revenue for social needs – and to discourage harmful corporate behavior, wield the power of the public purse against corporate predators, and get corporate money out of politics.
3. Priority policies to counter Pentagon power: cut the military budget in half, reinvest those hundreds of billions of dollars in programs prioritizing our families, reinforce our democracy by strengthening the constitutional power of the U.S. Congress to declare war, dismantle the current immigration enforcement apparatus and welcome immigrants by providing legal status and paths to citizenship for immigrants who are already here and accessible pathways to migration for those who wish to come, and strengthen review and approval processes to ensure that every nation receiving U.S. arms abides by the same human rights standards – with no exceptions.

Read the full progressive policy agenda. 

This new resource comes two days ahead of the 3rd annual Henry A. Wallace Symposium, Forging a Democracy that Works for All, which Institute for Policy Studies will host in partnership with The Nation and We Build Progress on July 23 from 2:30 pm to 6:30 p.m. EDT at Eaton DC. This free event is both in-person and live streamed and open to press. For in-person attendees, the Symposium will also be followed by an evening reception from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. 

The 3rd Annual Henry A. Wallace Symposium, Forging a Democracy that Works for All, features insights from movement leaders fighting to protect hard-earned rights and frontline communities, policy experts advancing a bold agenda to confront corporate and Pentagon power and create shared prosperity, and elected officials working to renew our democratic institutions from within. This conversation comes at a critical juncture, as a majority of Americans across the country are deeply concerned about affordability, about where their tax dollars go, and about the need for the government to invest in solutions that address the most urgent problems they and their neighbors face. 

The Symposium and bold new progressive agenda to advance democracy take their inspiration from Henry A. Wallace, who as Vice President under Franklin Delano Roosevelt noted that American democracy would be “measured by its deeds, not its words.” He foresaw the kind of organizing and participatory-democracy-in-action that is needed to ensure American democracy lives up to the promise of liberty, justice, and a fair chance at prosperity for all.

“Every generation inherits the work of forming a more perfect union. Today, that work is ours. There could not be a timelier moment for us to come together to talk about how we not only safeguard but reenvision our American democracy,” said IPS Executive Director Tope Folarin. “Two hundred and fifty years into our nation’s experiment in democracy, we are still contending with the same questions that have hounded us since the beginning. How do we forge a democracy that works for all of us, not just some of us? Our democracy agenda report and our Symposium offer a bold blueprint to counter the three great concentrations of power that stand between us and the world we deserve: the power of billionaires, the power of corporations, and the power of the Pentagon.”

Read the full Symposium description.

This event is free to attend and open to press. To RSVP as press, please contact IPS Deputy Communications Director Olivia Alperstein at olivia@ips-dc.org. 

This vital Symposium and democracy agenda blueprint are made possible by the generous support of the Wallace Global Fund. 

About the Institute for Policy Studies

For over sixty years, the Institute for Policy Studies has served as a leading multi-issue research organization that provides key fact-based support for bold policy solutions to urgent issues from rising inequality to the climate crisis. Highlights from IPS’s programs and research can be found on Facebook, Twitter/X, and Instagram. 

Learn more about the legacy of Henry A. Wallace. 

Press contacts:

Olivia Alperstein, Institute for Policy Studies, olivia@ips-dc.org

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The post Forging a Democracy that Works for All: Institute for Policy Studies Launches Blueprint to Counter Power of Billionaires, Corporations, and the Pentagon ahead of Symposium appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras– Mientras el Congreso Nacional se prepara para retomar su tercer y último debate hoy sobre las reformas a la Ley General de la Industria Eléctrica, un grupo de organizaciones nacionales e internacionales publica un nuevo informe: «El lado oscuro de la transición energética: colonialismo verde en el sur de Honduras».

El informe — elaborado por la Red de Abogadas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (RADDH), el Movimiento Ambientalista Social del Sur por la Vida (MASSVida), el Instituto de Estudios Políticos, el Instituto Transnacional, TerraJusta y la Red de Solidaridad con Honduras— advierte que la reforma resucita y profundiza el modelo que vendieron al país en 2014: Generación, distribución y transmisión privada de energía disfrazada de sostenibilidad, que genera daños ambientales, sociales y económicos en las comunidades afectadas, colma de garantías a los inversionistas privados, y trata el acceso a la electricidad como una mercancía en lugar de un derecho humano.

El informe se centra en el estudio de caso del proyecto solar Los Prados, propiedad de las empresas noruegas Scatec, Norfund y KLP Norfund Investments, en Namasigüe, Choluteca. Los contratos de este proyecto fueron aprobados de manera fragmentada para evitar mayor evaluación ambiental y otorgadas con evidencia de corrupción e irregularidades, que jamás han sido investigados debidamente. Las comunidades testifican que esto ha conllevado deforestación, desplazamiento, pérdida de tierras productivas y fuentes de agua, aumento del calor, y conflicto social en los territorios en los que se instalaron. Además, por más de 8 años, la empresa Scatec ha sostenido la persecución penal contra 10 defensores de los derechos humanos y el ambiente que se opusieron al proyecto de Los Prados por los daños en sus comunidades.

Este patrón mafioso, dañino y represivo, se repite con otros proyectos de energía solar en el sur y otras formas de generación eléctrica renovable, incluidas las represas hidroeléctricas. La experiencia del Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH) con el proyecto hidroeléctrica Agua Zarca —financiado en parte por el banco holandés FMO y vinculado a empresas relacionadas con David Castillo, condenado por el asesinato de nuestra compañera Berta Cáceres—,  involucra las mismas tácticas, las mismas prácticas mafiosas y la misma impunidad.

El pueblo hondureño ya ha pagado muy caro por este modelo. Hemos documentado siete empresas extranjeras del sector energético que interpusieron demandas de arbitraje internacional en contra del Estado, reclamando cientos de millones de dólares en compensaciones. Las empresas noruegas utilizaron la Ley de Promoción y Protección de Inversiones aprobada en 2011 para demandar a Honduras por $400 millones de dólares en el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencias Relativas a Inversiones (CIADI). Estas demandas se utilizaron como palanca de presión durante la renegociación de sus contratos. Prueba de ello es que, una vez terminada la negociación, las empresas retiraron sus demandas. Pese a ello, aún siguen pendientes cinco demandas en contra del pueblo hondureño por más de mil millones de dólares, una cantidad mayor al valor estimado que se pensaba ahorrar por la renegociación de los contratos de energía solar el año 2022. Este dinero que exigen las empresas, podría ser mejor utilizado para mejorar el sistema eléctrico y la provisión de este servicio a la población.

Toda esta situación nos preocupa profundamente y nos solidarizamos con las manifestaciones de las organizaciones campesinas e indígenas durante los últimos meses, ante la priorización por la administración actual de los intereses del sector privado a través de la Ley para el Fortalecimiento y Protección del Sector Agroindustrial, los Proyectos Energéticos, el Turismo, la Ganadería y los Pequeños Productores Agrícolas de Honduras. Junto con la posible aprobación de una nueva ley de energía que privatiza aún más a la ENEE, con altos costos para el erario público y el probable empeoramiento del servicio de luz para el pueblo, estas leyes abren la puerta a más invasiones de sus territorios, respaldados por marcos legales que castigan la protesta social y la resistencia.

En conclusión:

• Exigimos que Scatec ponga fin inmediato a la criminalización de las y los diez defensores y una reparación integral por los daños sufridos.
• Urge una investigación real —judicial e independiente— sobre los daños ambientales, sociales y económicos, y de la corrupción y los vínculos con el crimen organizado que rodean al proyecto Los Prados y los demás proyectos de energía renovable en Honduras.
• Exigimos la derogación de la Ley para el Fortalecimiento y Protección del Sector Agroindustrial, Proyectos de Energía, Turismo, Ganadería, Pequeños Productores Agrícolas de Honduras.
• Expresamos un no rotundo a la privatización de la energía, sin ningún tipo de disfraz de modernización.
• Denunciamos el retorno de Honduras al convenio del Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Diferencias Relativas a Inversiones (CIADI), anunciado el primer día de esta administración y que volverá a entrar en vigencia el 16 de agosto. Salir del CIADI no es suficiente para proteger el país en contra de las demandas de las empresas transnacionales, no obstante, es un primer paso hacia la recuperación de la soberanía sobre decisiones importantes de interés público.
• Urge un modelo energético y una verdadera transición energética justa bajo control público y comunitario, basada en la justicia y la democracia energética, que priorice un medio ambiente sano, la igualdad social, las necesidades de las comunidades y la garantía de los derechos colectivos —especialmente la autodeterminación de las comunidades campesinas, los pueblos indígenas y afro-indígenas Garífunas—, asegurando el respeto de su toma de decisiones en todo momento.

En todo el Sur Global, la emergencia climática se está usando para justificar proyectos con inversión transnacional que repiten viejos patrones coloniales de despojo. Son protegidos por marcos legales que permiten a las corporaciones castigar a los gobiernos que se atreven a regular en favor del interés público, y que al mismo tiempo utilizan al estado para reprimir y criminalizar a los pueblos y comunidades que se oponen. Este es el caso de Honduras y del parque solar Los Prados, en donde las comunidades afectadas resisten a los intereses de las élites locales y mafiosas asociadas con inversores extranjeros, defendiendo sus territorios, su salud y el ambiente del extractivismo en forma de paneles solares.  

Es dado el 21 de julio de 2026, en Tegucigalpa-Honduras

Firmado por: la Red de Abogadas Defensoras de Derechos Humanos (RADDH), el Movimiento Ambientalista Social del Sur por la Vida (MASSVida), el Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) – Programa de Economía Global, el Instituto Transnacional (TNI), TerraJusta, y la Red de Solidaridad con Honduras (HSN).

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Lea este comunicado de prensa en inglés.

The post El modelo de energía «verde» de Honduras se basa en el despojo, advierte estudio, mientras el Congreso de Honduras se dispone a privatizar la Empresa Nacional de Energía Eléctrica (ENEE) appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.

Such deleterious, repressive and mafia-style behavior is evident with other solar
energy projects in the south and other forms of renewable electricity generation,
including hydroelectric dams. The experience of the Civic Council of Popular and
Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and the Agua Zarca hydroelectric
project — financed in part by the Dutch development bank FMO with ties to companies
associated with David Castillo, who was convicted of the murder of our colleague Berta
Cáceres — involves similar tactics, mafia-style practices, and impunity.

The Honduran people have already paid a heavy price for this model. Our report
identifies seven transnational firms in the energy sector that have filed international
arbitration claims, known as Investor State Dispute Settlement or ISDS, against
Honduras, seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation. The Norwegian
companies brought claims for $400 million against Honduras at the International
Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under the Investment Promotion
and Protection Act passed in 2011. These ISDS suits gave them leverage during the
renegotiation of their contracts. Proof of this is that, once the negotiations concluded,
the companies withdrew their claims. Nonetheless, five claims against the Honduran
people remain pending, totaling more than one billion dollars — an amount greater
than the former administration estimated would be saved from renegotiating solar
energy contracts. The funds that companies are claiming could be better used to
improve the electrical grid and service for the population.

We are deeply concerned about what is taking place and stand in solidarity with recent
protests of campesino and indigenous organizations in response to the current
administration’s prioritization of private-sector interests through the Law to
Strengthen and Protect the Agroindustrial Sector, Energy Projects, Tourism, Livestock,
and Small-Scale Agricultural Producers in Honduras. Along with the possible passage of
energy reforms that will further privatize the ENEE — at great cost to the public purse
and likely worsening electricity service for the people — these laws open the door to
further imposition of projects on community lands and territories, backed by legal
frameworks that punish social protest and resistance.

In conclusion:

We demand that Scatec immediately cease the criminalization of the ten land and
environment defenders and provide full reparations for the harm suffered.

A serious, full and impartial investigation is urgently needed into the environmental,
social, and economic damages, as well as the corruption and links to organized crime
related to the Los Prados project and other renewable energy projects in Honduras.

We call for the repeal of the Law to Strengthen and Protect the Agroindustrial Sector,
Energy Projects, Tourism, Livestock, and Small-Scale Agricultural Producers in
Honduras.

We express a resounding “no” to the privatization of the energy system, which is
being presented as a process of so-called modernization.

We denounce Honduras’s return to the ICSID convention, announced on day one of
the current administration and set to take effect on August 16, 2026. Withdrawing
from ICSID is not sufficient to protect the country against ISDS claims from
transnational corporations. It is a first step, however, toward recovering sovereignty
over needed decisions in the public interest.

There is an urgent need for an energy model and a truly just energy transition under
public and community control, based on energy justice and democracy, that
prioritizes a healthy environment, social equality, the needs of communities, and the
guarantee of collective rights — especially the self-determination of campesino
communities, and Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous Garifuna peoples — ensuring
respect for their decisions at all times.

Throughout the Global South, the climate emergency is being used to justify
transnational investments that repeat colonialist patterns of dispossession. These
investments are protected by legal frameworks that allow corporations to punish
governments that dare to regulate in the public interest, while at the same time using
the state to repress and criminalize peoples and communities in resistance. Like in Los
Prados, and the rest of Honduras, affected communities are resisting interests of local
and mafia-style elites acting in association with foreign investors, defending their
territories, their health, and the environment from extractivism in the form of solar
panels.

Issued on July 21, 2026, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Signed by: the Network of Women Human Rights Defense Lawyers (RADDH), the
Southern Social Environmental Movement for Life (MASSVida), the Institute for
Political Studies (IPS) – Global Economy Program, the Transnational Institute (TNI),
TerraJusta and the Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN).

Read a summary PDF.

Download a PDF of the full report.

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Lea este comunicado de prensa en español.

The post Honduras’ “green” energy model is based on dispossession, study warns, as Honduran Congress prepares to privatize the NationalElectrical Energy Company (ENEE) appeared first on Institute for Policy Studies.