By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

In U.S. cities big and small, mayors are finding their tenures shaped by housing shortages, and efforts to build more homes, so that people of any income can afford a place to live.

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In a series of conversations, mayors of big cities such as Atlanta and Seattle, as well as of midsize Midwest cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, told Stateline that housing is the No. 1 priority for mayors to tackle.

“Housing is by far one of the most important issues facing every mayor in America. It impacts everything from safety to the workforce to transit,” said Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, who also is the immediate past president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. “Mayors are on the front lines of our nation’s housing crisis. And it is a crisis.”

More than half of mayors in a recent bipartisan survey expect affordability in their cities to decline over the next year, and nearly all say their residents are dissatisfied with current housing costs. The survey was released in June by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, along with the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Capital One Insights Center.

And while a large share of big-city mayors are Democratic, members of both parties are seeking some nonpartisan solutions. Republican Mark Shepherd of Clearfield, Utah, and Democrat Rex Richardson of Long Beach, California, are pressing Congress to expand rental assistance and affordable housing programs, while also partnering with business leaders to boost supply. The two mayors help lead a coalition called Mayors and CEOs for U.S. Housing Investment.

Housing is a pivotal issue in next month’s mayoral races in Minneapolis, New York City and Seattle.

But even as mayors set ambitious targets, they’re often working within narrow lanes of authority. While city halls can zone land, streamline permits and invest local dollars, they can’t override state preemption laws or control climbing construction costs and interest rates. In many municipalities, the success and reach of a mayor’s housing vision hinges as much on what state lawmakers allow as on what local voters demand.

At least 30 states have barred cities from enacting rent control. Other factors not related to the push-and-pull of home rule between state and local governments cap how much mayors can influence housing within their borders.

“You have to analyze what you can control and what you can’t,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said. “Interest rates, tariffs, the cost of materials — those are conditions we can’t fix. What we can do is plan smarter, permit faster and fund what’s within our reach.”

A fast-growing metro area

Ginther, the Columbus mayor, could talk about housing all day. He told Stateline he can’t imagine a mayor in the country who doesn’t have housing consistently on their minds.

As Columbus grapples with record growth and rising housing costs, Ginther says the city’s biggest challenge isn’t political will, it’s scale. Columbus needs 200,000 more housing units in the next 10 years to help bring down the cost of rents and ownership, he said.

Ginther, who is serving his second term, recently proposed creating a Division of Housing Stability. He said that mayors need to use the talent in their offices and agencies to tackle different aspects of the housing crisis, from helping residents find an affordable home to enabling them to keep it.

He’s also said that city voters’ willingness to approve big-dollar bond issues is a “buy-in” that many cities would be fortunate to have.

Since 2019, the city has used $250 million in bonds to build about 4,000 rental units. Voters are being asked to support another $500 million housing bond this November, along with other bonds for parks, police and fire, and road paving. More than half the city’s residents are renters.

Ginther said it’s a part of a $1.9 billion infrastructure package — combining city, county, state, federal and private resources — to reach the 200,000-unit goal.

“It’s ambitious, but if we commit to housing the way we’ve committed to jobs and workforce development, we’ll get it done.”

According to census data, the Columbus metropolitan area ranks among the fastest-growing U.S. metros. Meanwhile, the Ohio Housing Finance Agency reports that from 2016 to 2021, the state saw a 38% decline in vacant units available for sale or rent, and during the same period saw a 13% increase in units classified for seasonal, recreational or occasional use, such as short-term rentals.

“The city has created jobs and we have one of the fastest-growing economies in the Midwest, but we didn’t build enough housing in previous years to keep up with that. And we have been only doing it a certain way,” said Ginther.

He added that the scale of housing issues is bigger than any one jurisdiction.

“We need regional and state partners to step up, too,” Ginther said. “I’ve said I’ll do half the [Franklin County] region’s housing needs … but I need my suburban and exurban neighbors to do their part.”

The squeeze in small cities

In northern Utah’s Davis County, Clearfield is proudly the home of Hill Air Force Base. Since the 1940s, a large share of military air force personnel have worked and lived nearby.

But Shepherd, the mayor, says his city — with about 32,000 people and once the blue-collar “starter home capital” — has transformed into a market that military families can no longer afford.

“It’s scary,” Shepherd, a Republican who was elected in 2013, told Stateline. “We used to be where people came for their first homes. Now, four airmen are splitting a two-bedroom apartment.”

Despite limited land, Clearfield has permitted or built 4,000 homes in five years, many through denser, vertical development. Shepherd, a longtime real estate agent, is pushing for Utah to expand condominium construction and creative financing tools, including through a new $300 million state loan program.

“Everybody wants ownership,” he said. “If someone wants to buy, we have an obligation to help make that happen.”

But he’s frank about the political headwinds: resistance to density, neighboring cities blocking townhome projects, and a state legislature eager to preempt local control.

A construction worker helps build a mixed-use apartment complex that will hold more than 700 units of housing and 95,000 square feet of commercial space on Jan. 25, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Mario Tama/Getty Images North America/TNS)

“Density is a swear word for elected officials,” Shepherd said. “Some cities just won’t build, and when the carrot doesn’t work, sometimes you have to bring out the stick.”

Shepherd said housing challenges are a constant topic among his peers across the country, especially in communities tied to military installations. As a member of the National League of Cities’ Military Communities Council, he regularly exchanges ideas with other mayors facing similar shortages.

“I haven’t had one mayor of a military city tell me they’re totally fine with housing,” he said. “Everywhere, it’s the same story. … The demand is high, the supply is tight, and servicemembers are getting priced out.”

Pressure from outside city borders

In Atlanta, one of the economic and cultural hubs of the South, Mayor Andre Dickens has seen the city get some good headlines in its efforts to address housing issues.

According to Realtor.com’s August 2025 rental report, the median asking rent in metro Atlanta dropped 13.6% year-over-year, one of the largest declines among the 50 biggest U.S. metros, tied with Las Vegas. Dickens credits the trend to an intentional surge in housing production.

In just under four years, Dickens has reached 60% of his goal to build or preserve 20,000 units of lower-cost housing by 2030, he said. Since taking office, he said that 12,000 units are already built or underway, aided by an Affordable Housing Strike Force that meets monthly to fast-track permits and secure funding for those projects.

“Atlanta was seen as affordable compared to New York or California, but our incomes weren’t keeping up,” Dickens told Stateline. His approach, in addition to approving a boost in city workers’ pay last year, was to help create more housing. “We made it our mission to build for low- and moderate-income families and to stop people from being rent-burdened.”

Among the projects Dickens touted to Stateline was the Atlanta Beltline, an urban redevelopment along 22 miles of rail line that delivered 569 affordable housing units last year — almost double its annual goal. The aim is 5,600 units in the area by 2030. Funding often combines public and private sources, and Dickens said that as the mayor, it’s his responsibility to bring these groups to the table.

He also noted that the city is dealing with an influx of residents both from Atlanta’s suburbs and from cities that have their own housing challenges, such as Chicago, New Orleans and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

“Some suburban or rural counties don’t invest in homelessness or affordability, so those residents eventually land in cities,” said Dickens, who also is a co-chair of the National Housing Crisis Task Force, a coalition of elected officials.

“We can’t push them away,” he said. “We just have to deal with it, because cities are where people come for hope and help. That’s why mayors must lead with compassion and strategy.”

Kitchen-table terms

In Wisconsin, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway told Stateline that the capital city’s housing challenge is simple but daunting:

“We were not building enough housing to keep up with our population growth,” said Rhodes-Conway, who was elected in 2019. “We built ourselves into a problem.”

Madison is Wisconsin’s fastest-growing city, but housing supply lagged far behind. When Rhodes-Conway took office in 2019, the city’s rental vacancy rate hovered around 1-2%, she said, far below the healthy 5-6% range.

Since then, Rhodes-Conway and the City Council have opened new funding channels and loosened zoning rules to speed construction. The city’s Affordable Housing Fund, once focused solely on federally funded Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects, now includes money for co-ops, community land trusts and homeownership efforts, she said.

“It was important to invite folks to think creatively about how we create affordability,” she said.

Her administration also works to preserve existing affordable stock through the Efficiency Navigator program, which upgrades older apartments for energy efficiency in exchange for rent-stability commitments. On the regulatory side, Madison has updated its zoning code to clear “pain points” such as density limits and onerous approval processes that once stalled projects, she said.

The results are tangible, as the city has completed more than 17,000 new homes since 2015, with another 5,000 under construction. Under a regional plan, Madison aims to add 15,000 more between 2025 and 2030, aligning with Dane County’s housing goals.

Rhodes-Conway sees the role of a housing-focused mayor to be both a policymaker and a translator.

Mayors need to discuss housing not in zoning jargon, she said, but in kitchen-table terms: stories about parents who can’t afford to buy where they grew up, the seniors priced out of longtime homes, or workers enduring farther commutes for a reasonable, cost-efficient living situation.

“Talking about NIMBYs and AMIs [area median incomes] doesn’t help,” she said. “Talking about your neighbor or your kid who can’t find an apartment, that’s real life.”

Personal experience

Harrell, the Seattle mayor, says he’s trying to turn one of America’s priciest markets into a working model of coordinated, city-level housing governance. When Harrell took office in 2022, he declared himself a “housing mayor.” Seattle’s population growth and its million-dollar home prices demanded more than a single department could manage, he said.

“I realized a city as large as Seattle had a fragmented housing policy,” Harrell said. “So we created a housing subcabinet — every department that touches housing now rows in the same direction.”

And when the state government does make changes to housing or zoning laws, that’s when mayors need to strike, he said.

In 2023, for example, Washington state allowed for the building of duplexes, triplexes and other forms of “middle housing” on land formerly zoned only for single-family homes. Seattle immediately adopted the change.

Harrell shepherded a $970 million property tax levy approved by voters in 2023 to help pay for affordable housing. The city’s new 20-year housing plan increases zoning capacity to allow for 330,000 new housing units, roughly double the target of the city’s previous plan. His administration has also accelerated permitting, which he said has “sped up some projects by one to two years.”

For Harrell, who hopes to win a second term in November, changing affordability in the city harks back to his parents’ first home in Seattle.

“The first house my mom and dad bought here in Seattle is still there,” Harrell said. “Same condition, same footprint. … It hasn’t had an addition. They bought it for $6,000 and sold it for $30,000. That same modest house today is worth over a million dollars.”

He then drew a parallel to his own experience buying a starter home in the 1980s.

“The first house I bought, I was making less than $40,000 a year, and I bought it for $87,000 with my college roommate, at about twice our income,” he said. “That house, too, is worth about a million now. I should’ve held onto it.”

These two homes capture the scale of the affordability crisis, he said.

“That’s the context we’re operating in,” he said. “And if I’m asking people who are already struggling with rent or mortgages to pay more into affordable housing through a levy, I have to be the evangelist. I have to show that we’re putting our own skin in the game.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Jimmy Jenkins, Jamie Tarabay, Bloomberg News

Recent cyberattacks on public defenders’ offices in multiple Western U.S. states have spotlighted the technological vulnerabilities of an often overlooked but critical part of the U.S. judicial system.

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Public defenders, who represent clients unable to pay for their own lawyers in cases as serious as murder, are a staple of American justice. Many of the offices, which are scattered across the country, house decades of digital client records at any given moment.

Cyberattacks on public defender offices in Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have impacted thousands of case files, in some cases sabotaging those offices’ ability to defend their clients in a timely manner.

There’s no indication the separate episodes were part of a coordinated effort by attackers, but security experts say they underscore the appeal of cash-strapped organizations sitting on troves of data.

“Hackers now hit organizations that are unlikely to pay, like public defenders, because the disruption alone creates pressure,” said Jon DiMaggio, chief security strategist at Virginia-based Analyst1. “Going after victims with little to offer shows just how indiscriminate and damaging these attacks have become.”

The Arizona Federal Public Defender’s Office is still reeling from a major hack seven months ago that hijacked its systems and wiped out access to decades’ worth of data.

Officials said the hackers stole and encrypted 60 years’ worth of client records and other internal documents used to defend people accused of crimes ranging from financial fraud to murder.

The hack sent the office’s attorneys rushing to reconstruct case materials from other sources and prompted requests for delays in a death-penalty case inside the state and another in neighboring Utah.

‘Catastrophic’ Attack

The hack in Arizona was discovered in March and outlined in a court filing in early April. It led to a request for an extension in a capital case involving a man facing execution in Utah. The filing cited the cyberattack and said the office had no access to any of its files and needed more time to prepare a briefing.

Just a few days earlier, nearly 200 employees of the Arizona Federal Public Defender’s Office had woken up to an urgent text message from their boss, Jon Sands, instructing them to immediately power off their computers and close them, according to people familiar with the matter. They were told the computer network had been encrypted by hackers and all of their files were being held for ransom in cryptocurrency, said the people, who asked not to be named discussing a confidential matter.

After the initial alert, all employees were told to personally deliver or ship their electronic devices to the Phoenix office for security reviews and resets. A few weeks later, the federal court system offered employees in the Arizona office 12 months of credit monitoring, according to a letter sent to current and former staff that was viewed by Bloomberg.

The office called in cybersecurity experts, the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate and try to recoup the files, according to the letter.

In another case involving a death row inmate, Sands laid out more details.

“While the network has been restored, it is a blank slate,” Sands wrote in June. He said in the case of the death row clients, the public defenders office “has lost decades worth of digital case files and work product that must now be reconstructed in every case. The vast majority of our clients’ life history records and our work product have been lost.” In a subsequent filing, Sands described the attack as “catastrophic.”

‘Data Rubble’

Hackers deployed malware that corrupted the entire system, including the backup, turning key case files into “data rubble,” the office’s administrative officer William Sweet said in an email to Bloomberg.

The Arizona office declined to share details about the ransom demand or whether the state paid an extortion fee. No group has publicly claimed responsibility. Cyber researchers and analysts told Bloomberg they haven’t seen evidence the data was published online.

While the network has been restored, the files remain encrypted and out of reach. The office has requested bids for a provider of data backup services.

“We are still in the process of assessing the breach and restoring data to the best of our ability to support the representation of our clients,” Sands said in an email to Bloomberg. “We have continued to represent them effectively and zealously.”

The Justice Department declined to comment. The FBI said it couldn’t respond during the federal government shutdown. A spokesperson with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts acknowledged the attack and said the judiciary worked with cybersecurity experts and federal agencies to investigate the incident and mitigate any potential risks.

New Mexico

The Arizona breach follows a cyber incident in the New Mexico state-level public defender’s office. The office said it’d been the “target of a significant cybersecurity breach, compromising the office’s ability to communicate with clients and criminal court partners and to access critical internal records,” in a July, 2024 statement.

Chief Public Defender Ben Baur said in a statement to Bloomberg that the office continues to work to improve security.

“As public defenders, we work hard to help our clients and communities, with already strained resources,” Baur said. “Dealing with a cyber security incident made our work even more difficult.” His office declined to share whether there was a ransom demand or whether the state paid an extortion fee.

Security strategist DiMaggio pinned the incident on a ransomware group from Eastern Europe known as Rhysida. He said hackers asked for bids, starting at 10 Bitcoin, which at the time would have been worth just over $650,000.

At least 1.5 terabytes of data from the breach have been dumped online, including death certificates, driver’s license suspension notices, and the names of inmates held in a county detention center, DiMaggio said.

Separately, in February of 2024, “malware encryption” eliminated network access for the Colorado Office of the State Public Defender, according to a court notice. The office didn’t respond to requests for comment on the attack, whether there was a ransom demand or whether they paid a fee.

Federal Courts

Meanwhile, Russian state-sponsored hackers were found lurking in the records systems of U.S. courts, which contain federal court records, including district, appellate and bankruptcy courts, Bloomberg News has reported. Hackers had infiltrated the system years ago, gaining access to sensitive documents that were sealed from public view.

It’s unclear exactly when the hackers first penetrated the system and when the courts became aware of the breach. The judiciary said in a statement in August that it was enhancing security for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks and to block future attacks.

Alexander Leslie, a senior adviser at cybersecurity firm Recorded Future, said that public-sector organizations like courts “face significant challenges” in girding against cyber attacks.

“Implementing comprehensive backup and recovery systems takes time and sustained investment,” he said.

—With assistance from Andrew Martin.

©2025 Bloomberg News. Visit at bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By Karen Brown, New England Public Media, KFF Health News

It isn’t easy to promote moderation and financial discipline from the bowels of a casino.

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But that’s what Massachusetts state workers try to do every day, amid the clanging bells and flashing lights of the slot machines.

At the MGM Springfield in western Massachusetts, workers wearing green polos stand outside their small office, right off the casino floor.

Above them, a sign reads “GameSense,” the state’s signature program to curb problem gambling. A mounted screen cycles through messages such as “Keep sports betting fun. Set a budget and stick to it.”

The workers hand out free luggage tags and travel-size tissues to encourage people to stop and chat. If they succeed, they give customers brochures displaying the state’s gambling helpline number and website. They can even enroll them in a program called “PlayMyWay,” which allows customers to set monthly spending limits on how much they gamble.

Outside the casinos, GameSense is marketed on social media and on sports betting apps and websites. Meanwhile, the state’s Department of Public Health puts its own moderation messages on buses and billboards.

“That’s a big movement in 12 years,” said Mark Vander Linden, who oversees the GameSense program in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts’ first casino opened in 2015, and as the gaming industry grew, the state developed what it calls a “responsible gaming” program, funded by a surtax on gambling industry profits.

At first, state regulators tried various strategies to educate customers about the addictive nature of gambling, as well as the financial risks.

“It was much more about making sure that there are brochures that are available that explained the odds of whatever game it was,” Vander Linden said.

Since then, Massachusetts has put in place additional regulations on a booming industry that now includes widespread sports betting. For example, there’s no betting on Massachusetts college teams, and no gambling by credit card. All gambling companies must allow customers to set voluntary limits and sign up for a “voluntary self-exclusion list” that bans them from casinos or sports betting over various time intervals.

A Patchwork of State Policies

Some states have set similar limits to curb problem gambling, but others have very few. In the absence of a nationwide policy, or a national gambling commission to oversee the industry, each state is on its own.

A growing number of addiction researchers and policymakers say it’s time to take bolder — and more unified — steps to combat gambling disorders. They point to the explosion of the gaming industry since 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for states to legalize sports betting and unleashed an aggressive industry, now legal in 39 states. (Forty-eight states have legalized at least some form of gambling, including lotteries.)

Compared with the U.S., several other countries have gone much further in regulating the gambling industry, and some experts in the U.S. are looking to them as potential models.

For example, Norway’s government has a monopoly on all slot machines so it can control the types of games offered, and every gambler in the country is limited to losing 20,000 kroner (about $2,000) a month.

In the United Kingdom, most adults are limited to betting 5 pounds (about $7) on every spin on a slot machine, and gambling companies are subject to a 1% levy that goes into a fund for treatment and prevention of gambling disorders.

Last year, a report published in the medical journal The Lancet called on international health leaders to act quickly on regulations before gambling disorders become widespread and common — and that much harder to stop.

But policy leaders point out that the U.S. has less appetite for corporate regulation than many other countries, especially under the Trump administration. At the same time, they warn that doing nothing could pose a serious public health threat, especially now that sports betting apps allow people to gamble anywhere and anytime.

Fears That More Gambling Means More Addiction

Even before the marriage of online gaming and cellphones, researchers had estimated 1% to 2% of Americans already had a gambling disorder, and an additional 8% of people were at risk of developing one.

Some U.S. politicians fear the problem will only get worse.

“The sophistication and complexity of betting has become staggering,” said Democratic U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. “And that’s why we need protections that will enable an individual to say no.”

Blumenthal has cosponsored the SAFE Bet Act, legislation that would impose federal standards on sports betting companies.

The bill proposes a ban on gambling ads during live sporting events, mandatory “affordability checks” for high-spending customers, limits on VIP membership schemes, a ban on artificial intelligence tracking for marketing, and the creation of a national “self-exclusion” database, among other rules.

“States are unable to protect their consumers from the excessive and abusive offers, and sometimes misleading pitches,” Blumenthal said. “They simply don’t have the resources or the jurisdiction.”

The gambling industry is strongly opposed to the SAFE Bet Act. Federal standards would be a “slap in the face” to state regulators, said Joe Maloney, a spokesperson for the American Gaming Association.

“You have the potential to just dramatically, one, usurp the states’ authority and then, two, freeze the industry in place,” he said.

‘Responsible Gaming’ Versus the Public Health Approach

New regulations are also unnecessary, Maloney said. The industry acknowledges that gambling is addictive for some people, he said, which is why it developed an outreach/awareness initiative known as “responsible gaming.”

That includes messages on buses and billboards warning people to stop playing when it’s no longer fun and reminding them the odds of winning are very low.

“There’s very direct messages, such as, ‘You will lose money here,’” Maloney said.

He said his industry group does not collect data on whether such measures reduce addiction rates. But he said gambling restrictions are not the answer.

“If you suddenly start to pick and choose what can be legal or banned, you’re driving bettors out of the legal market and into the illegal market,” Maloney said.

Public health leaders argue that the industry’s “responsible gaming” model doesn’t work.

“You need regulation when the industry has shown an inability and unwillingness to police itself,” said Harry Levant, director of gambling policy for the Public Health Advocacy Institute at the Northeastern University School of Law in Boston.

One reason the industry’s approach is “ethically and scientifically flawed” is that it puts all the blame and responsibility on individuals with a gambling disorder, Levant said. “You can’t say to a person who is struggling with addiction, ‘Well, just don’t do that anymore.’”

Levant comes to the issue from personal experience. He is in recovery from a gambling addiction. A former lawyer, Levant was convicted in 2015 for stealing clients’ money to fund his betting habit. Since then, he not only has become an advocate for stronger regulations but also is a trained addiction therapist.

The American Gaming Association said it supports treatment for gambling disorders and helps pay for some referral and treatment services through state taxes. But Levant called that “the moral equivalent of Big Tobacco saying, ‘Let us do whatever we want for our cigarettes, as long as we pay for chemotherapy and hospice.’”

Instead, Levant advocates for a public health approach that would help prevent addiction from the get-go. That means putting limits on marketing and on the types, and frequency, of gambling — for everyone, not just those already in trouble.

To make his case, Levant opens his laptop and pulls up a corporate infomercial produced by Simplebet, a DraftKings subsidiary.

In the video, the company boasts about getting more people to gamble on sports through what’s called microbetting during live games. “We drive fan engagement by making every moment of every game a betting opportunity. Automatic, algorithmic, powered by machine learning and AI,” the voiceover said.

That’s the kind of constant engagement that promotes addiction, Levant said. (Contacted by KFF Health News and NPR, DraftKings declined to comment, instead sending a link to its “responsible gaming” program.)

Lawmakers Want To ‘Stop the Worst Excesses’ Before the Next Gambling Trend

Some of those gambling mechanisms would be limited by the SAFE Bet Act, which Levant and his colleagues at the Public Health Advocacy Institute helped write.

But if the legislation doesn’t get through the current regulation-averse Congress, then states need to take strong action on their own, Levant said.

The Massachusetts Legislature is currently considering the “Bettor Health Act,” which would impose additional rules on sports betting companies.

“The goal is not to stop gambling entirely,” said Massachusetts state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa, a cosponsor of the bill. “It’s to stop the worst excesses of online sports betting.”

The Massachusetts bill includes components of the federal legislation, such as mandatory “affordability checks.” Those would cap how much money some gamblers can lose. Affordability checks are modeled on a pilot program in the United Kingdom.

“If you’re only allowed to have two drinks, we know that you’re not going to get drunk, right?” Sabadosa said. “If you’re only allowed to gamble $100 a day because that’s an affordable amount, you’re not going to go broke. You’re still going to be able to pay the rent.”

The Bettor Health Act would also ban “prop” bets, which are wagers placed during a live game, such as who makes the first shot in basketball, or who hits the first home run in baseball.

But state tax revenue from sports betting rose to $2.8 billion in 2024 — a welcome source of funding for struggling state budgets. Because of that potential boost, Levant fears that state legislatures will shy away from further regulation.

States may even be tempted by the promise of additional revenue from new types of gambling, such as “iGaming.” That refers to online versions of roulette, blackjack, and other casino-style games, playable at any hour, from the comfort of home.

IGaming is currently legal in seven states, but pending legislation in other states, including Massachusetts, could expand its markets.

“We have empathy for how hard it is for states to balance their budgets in this current political environment,” Levant said, “but states are starting to recognize that the answer to that problem is not to further push a known addictive product.”

This article is part of a partnership with NPR and New England Public Media .

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Edward Lotterman

How do members of Congress differ from the beef our nation imports? All bones have been removed from most beef, but congressional representatives have only lost their spines.

Until this past week that joke held true.

But last week on Tuesday, five GOP senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — bravely split from their party, voting for a winning bill to overturn 50% tariffs on imports from Brazil.

Paul and Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine co-sponsored the bill. Minnesota senators Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith both voted for it. Klobuchar, long a member of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry committee, stood prominently at Kaine’s side in announcing the vote.

The next day, Wednesday, four of the GOP renegades, Collins, McConnell, Murkowski and Paul, again defied President Donald Trump, voting with Democrats gave a four-vote majority to a near-identical bill overturning Trump’s tariffs on Canada. And on Thursday, these four mavericks tipped the scale for a 51-47 vote to overturn all of Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs” worldwide.

In the short run, of course, these votes are merely symbolic.

With fewer renegades, the GOP majority in the House is stronger than in the Senate. All these tariffs will stand unless overturned by lawsuits pending in the courts. Yet these Senate votes show that tariffs, increasingly unpopular in the general public, are not a strict party-line issue. They are a beacon to other Republicans uneasy with increasing public dissatisfaction with import taxes.

It was a coincidence that these votes overlapped the Federal Reserve’s slight interest rate cut. However, some Fed board members expressed concern that tariff-induced inflation is not yet slain. Fed Chair Jerome Powell made it clear that further rate cuts, specifically at the Fed’s next meeting in December, are not a given.

Powell’s concerns, shared by the senators, are apparent to anyone at the check-out counter of their local supermarket. Trump rode into the Oval Office lambasting high consumer inflation under President Joe Biden. That pain was real. The Consumer Price Index for “all food eaten at home” was 22% higher on election day 2024 than four years earlier. Trump vowed to reverse that, “on day one!”

That hasn’t happened. Yes, as of September this groceries CPI category was only up 1.6% over last January when Trump was sworn in. But tariffs are starting to bite. If August and September increases persist, the jump in a year would be 5.5%.

Moreover, key foods rose more. Ground beef, the product most affected by imports, is up 14% since Trump put his hand on the Bible. Steaks and roasts are up 12.5%. And the CPI notated “Coffee, 100%, Ground Roast, All Sizes” is up 30% January to September. A necessity to many, coffee had risen an average 12% annually during the “Biden inflation.”

Such higher prices may explain why 50% tariffs on Brazil were the first issue teed up in the Senate. It’s no secret that coffee, much of this beef, and many other grocery store staples we take for granted, are imported.

Brazil is our largest single source of coffee. Some 35% of all we drink comes from there. This might not be as high as some think. But if you look at grocery-store brands bought by lower-income people who don’t frequent tony coffee shops, the percentage of Brazilian coffee is far higher. For people who live from one paycheck or SNAP deposit to another, the 30% coffee price increase from January to September isn’t minor. And 9% of that came in only two months after Trump’s July 29 announcement of 50% tariffs on all imports from Brazil.

Another item, one seldom mentioned, is orange juice. We are the world’s largest consumer of frozen OJ. But plant diseases are devastating U.S. orange production, making us the largest juice importer by far. Brazil is the world’s largest producer, and exporter, supplying 80% of the global total. Some 60% of our total comes from there. In the September CPI report, the price for “Orange Juice, Frozen Concentrate” is up 5.7% since January. However, its price has risen at an annual rate of 12.9% since the president announced the Brazil tariffs.

This is all a lot of data. What general lessons are involved?

The media, and some politicians, have focused on the simplistic but false dichotomy of who actually “pays the tariff” — exporting-nation producers or importing-nation consumers. It is far more complicated than that. In the real world, time needed for the costs — and benefits — to appear in the general economy vary greatly by specific product and the length of time for adjustments to take place. Producer-exporters are affected, as are consumer-importers. So are domestic producers, not only of the product itself, but of substitute ones.

The key question here is how badly we feel we need the product. Could we just do without it? Are there good substitutes? These determine exactly who loses, or gains, by how much, from new tariffs. Moreover, how quickly or slowly domestic production can be ramped up is key, if that is even possible. For imports like coffee, there generally are no U.S.-produced substitutes.

With current very high prices, U.S. beef production is increasing. But it takes time for new beef cows to be able to have calves. And, compared to chickens or hogs, cattle take a long time to reach slaughter weight. So adjustments to tariffs take time.

Similarly, bringing fruit trees to production takes years. But vegetables grow in weeks. Our country does have frost-free irrigated land in the southwest that once produced vegetables. This just was not competitive after production moved to Mexico. At some price, broccoli, green beans and the like could be produced again in relatively short order. But producers would be loath to invest money if the whim of a mercurial proto-dictator, or a Senate vote, or an activist judge, might abolish tariffs on competing cheaper imports overnight.

The same is true for seasonal vegetable production in areas with cold winters. In 1899, my grandfather came from the Netherlands to work in vegetable production on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Before federally-subsidized irrigation in southern California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey produced large quantities of vegetables each summer.

Baltimore was the canning capital of the country. H.J. Heinz was in Pennsylvania for a reason. Canned tomatoes and sauce, beans, peas and other vegetables again could be grown and frozen or canned, despite urbanization. Minnesota could produce corn, pears and pickles. At the farm level, production could ramp up quickly. But new processing plants are expensive. They take time to be up and running. Who will sink such millions if flattery from some foreign leader might prompt tariff reductions that would leave new investment here high and dry?

Coffee is an interesting case because it seems a necessity for many. Growing coffee here is near impossible. We can stiff Brazil and buy from Vietnam or Kenya, outbidding their traditional customers. These might then pick up slack that we left in Brazil. That happened when our 2018 tariffs on imports from China sent that nation to Brazil for soybeans, lowering but not destroying our overall exports.

The upshot is that we are going to pay more for goods subjected to tariffs but the degree and timing of that will vary greatly from product to product. And the full results may not be settled for years. The one sure thing is that resources available to meet the needs of our nation and the world as a whole will be wasted. We collectively will be less well off than we need be.

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St. Paul economist and writer Edward Lotterman can be reached at stpaul@edlotterman.com.