By Lauren Schwahn, NerdWallet

House Republicans passed President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” on May 22.

This meaty budget reconciliation bill includes a provision to increase the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction limit. If the changes make it through the Senate, certain taxpayers could see big tax breaks.

What is the SALT cap?

The SALT deduction is a tax break that allows people who itemize to deduct certain taxes from their federal taxable income. Eligible deductions include property taxes and a choice of state and local sales taxes or state and local income taxes.

The SALT deduction is currently capped at $10,000 ($5,000 for those married filing separately) and is set to expire at the end of 2025.

What might change?

The House bill would raise the SALT cap to $40,000 ($20,000 for those married filing separately), four times higher than the current limit. The cap and income thresholds would increase by 1% annually through 2033. Taxpayers with a modified adjusted gross income over $500,000, would have a reduced deduction, but it would not go lower than $10,000.

But the details could change as the bill moves through the Senate.

Who might benefit?

High-earners making less than $500,000, especially those living in higher-tax states such as California and New York, are positioned to get the biggest breaks.

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These taxpayers are generally paying higher state income and property taxes, and could claim larger deductions under the proposed changes. The cap increase could lower these federal tax bills by thousands of dollars.

People who don’t pay state income taxes, don’t itemize and don’t own homes likely wouldn’t benefit from the changes, says Miklos Ringbauer, a certified public accountant in Los Angeles.

Should I do anything now?

Hold off on changing your tax strategy until the bill’s future is certain.

“This is not a law yet, so you can’t fully plan for it,” Ringbauer says. In the meantime, you can explore how the proposed changes might impact you.

Stay informed

Track the bill’s progress. Taxpayers can also call their senators and express their concerns with the bill or what they like about it, Ringbauer says, which could help shape the final version.

Compare deduction options

Calculate whether itemizing your deductions would be greater than taking the standard deduction. (The standard deduction for 2025 is $15,000 for single filers, $22,500 for heads of household and $30,000 for taxpayers who are married filing jointly.)

If you’re considering itemizing, explore ways to maximize your deductions, such as prepaying property taxes or increasing charitable donations.

Get help running the numbers

Ringbauer suggests plugging your numbers into tax software programs and online tax calculators, or working with a tax professional. Professionals can help you make the most tax advantageous choices, he says.

“We have resources and software now that can run different scenarios for our clients.”

Lauren Schwahn writes for NerdWallet. Email: lschwahn@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lauren_schwahn.

The article Tax Deductions Might Go Up. Would You Benefit? originally appeared on NerdWallet.

Barring something unforeseen, the 2025-26 Minnesota Wild season will begin with Filip Gustavson as the top goalie and Jesper Wallstedt as the backup, ready to carry part of the puck-stopping load.

But looking a little further down the Wild organization’s depth chart, general manager Bill Guerin returned from the recent World Championship in Sweden and Denmark liking what he saw from another goaltending prospect under contract in Minnesota.

Samuel Hlavaj, who turned 24 late last month, appeared in five games for Slovakia at the Worlds and put up impressive numbers while backstopping a pair of wins. In 36 appearances for the Iowa Wild last season, he had 14 wins and a save percentage of .904. The Slovaks were blanked twice in the World Championship preliminary round, and the lack of goal support was costly despite the goalie’s solid numbers.

“Hlavaj played great. They didn’t go as far as probably they wanted to, but him playing that big role for them was really important, especially for a goalie,” Guerin said. “There’s a lot of pressure and that’s what you need to be able to perform under pressure.”

One of the key defensemen for Czechia in the tournament was David Spacek, drafted by the Wild in the fifth round in 2022. Spacek, 22, played 72 games for Iowa last season and finished second on the team in assists. He was born in Ohio while his father, Jaroslav, was playing for the Columbus Blue Jackets, but David, 22, has elected to play for his family’s native county and gained valuable experience this spring.

“Spacek has played an important role on their national team for the past few years,” Guerin said, recalling the 2024 World Championship when Czechia beat Team USA in the medal round by a 1-0 score. Spacek set up Pavel Zacha for the game’s only goal and the hosts Czechs went on to win the gold medal.

“He’s playing important, meaningful hockey, and for us, prospect-wise, that’s great. We want him to have those experiences,” Guerin said.

With the Wild blue line in some potential flux at the NHL level, as veterans like Zach Bogosian and Jon Merrill near the ends of their contracts, Spacek is a name to remember if there are back end holes to fill as soon as the coming season.

Brock Nelson signs extension in Colorado

While veteran forward Brock Nelson lives in the Twin Cities in the off-season and occasionally gets back to Warroad, his northern Minnesota hometown, his career path will likely not include a stop in the State of Hockey.

On Wednesday the Colorado Avalanche announced a three-year contract extension for Nelson, who will turn 34 this fall.

Picked late in the first round by the New York Islanders in the 2010 NHL Draft, Nelson spent all of his career on Long Island until being dealt to Colorado near the trade deadline last season. He had 13 points in 19 regular season games for the Avalanche, and added four assists in their seven-game opening round playoff loss to Dallas.

A standout at the University of North Dakota prior to turning professional, Nelson is the grandson of 1960 Olympic gold medalist Bill Christian, and the nephew of Dave Christian, who led the 1980 Miracle on Ice team in assists.

Former Gopher to lead USA U-18 Women

Two decades ago, Courtney Kennedy took a chance on a fledgling women’s hockey program at the University of Minnesota, and the Massachusetts native ended up being a key player in the Gophers’ 2000 national title.

Now a skills coach for the Boston Fleet of the PWHL, Kennedy will get a chance to coach gold medalists next after USA Hockey named her head coach for the 2026 U.S. Under-18 Women’s National Team for the forthcoming World Championships next January in Nova Scotia.

Haley Skarupa will serve as the team’s general manager, while current Gophers women’s assistant coach Greg “Boom” May will be one of Team USA’s assistant coaches. Originally from Burnsville, May was previously the men’s hockey head coach at Augsburg University, and the hockey operations director for the Gophers men.

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As the offseason begins in earnest, some Wild stories to follow

By JENNIFER McDERMOTT

CALISTOGA, Calif. (AP) — For residents of this quaint tourist town on the northern edge of Napa Valley, the threat of wildfire is seldom out of mind. The hillside bears burn scars from a 2020 fire that forced all of Calistoga to evacuate, and the 2017 Tubbs fire that killed 22 people in wine country started just a few miles from downtown.

When fire danger required shutting off transmission lines that might spark a blaze, the town relied on a bank of generators in a popular recreation area that belched choking diesel exhaust and rumbled so loudly it drove people away.

But now Calistoga is shifting to a first-of-its-kind system that combines two clean-energy technologies — hydrogen fuel cells and batteries — for enough juice to power the city for about two days. Experts say the technology has potential beyond simply delivering clean backup power in emergencies; they say it’s a steppingstone to supporting the electric grid any day of the year.

As the system was undergoing its final tests in late May in an area that includes a dog park, ball fields, community garden and bike trail, residents said they were grateful to be guaranteed clean energy year-round. Lisa Gift, a resident who also serves on the city council, noted Calistoga is already grappling with climate change that is fueling more intense and frequent wildfires.

“Continuing to depend on fossil fuels was simply not sustainable,” Gift said. “That’s what excited me about this. It’s a clean and reliable energy solution that ensures the safety and resilience of our community.”

Energy Vault, an energy storage company based in California, built the new facility that was to come online in early June. Next year, it could be exporting power to the electric grid whenever needed once its application to fully connect is approved.

The installation sits next to where Pacific Gas & Electric used to set up nine mobile generators every year from late spring through fall. Behind a chain-link fence stand six hydrogen fuel cells standing two stories tall made by Plug Power in New York. Water vapor wafted from one of the fuel cells being tested as The Associated Press got an exclusive tour of the site as it was in final testing.

Shipping containers hold two pairs of Energy Vault’s lithium-ion batteries. Nearby, a cinder block wall surrounds a massive, double-walled steel tank that holds 80,000 gallons (302,833 liters) of extremely cold liquid hydrogen that gets converted to gas to run the fuel cells.

Utility was searching for a cleaner solution

California utilities, especially PG&E, have had to pay large settlements over igniting wildfires. PG&E began cutting power at times to reduce fire risk in 2018, one of California’s deadliest and most destructive wildfire years. It ships diesel generators to about a dozen towns to provide backup power during those periods.

Calistoga, the largest with about 5,000 people, has had its power shut off 10 times. When generators ran, they spewed exhaust with harmful nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide and soot. PG&E considered replacing Calistoga’s diesel generators with a natural gas version that would pollute less, but opted instead for Energy Vault’s fully clean solution, said Dave Canny, the utility’s vice president for the North Coast Region.

Energy Vault CEO Robert Piconi said other communities, military bases and data centers could all use something similar, but potential customers wanted to see it function first.

“There’s a massive proof point with this project,” he said. “I think it’ll have a lot of implications for how people think about alternative, sustainable solutions.”

The fuel cell maker, Plug Power, is planning for these types of products to be its main business in a decade. Energy Vault said it’s buying clean hydrogen, produced with low or no greenhouse gas emissions, to run the fuel cells in Calistoga.

“This solution is just beautiful,” said Janice Lin, founder and president of the Green Hydrogen Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for green hydrogen projects to combat climate change. “No noise, no emissions. And it’s renewable. It’s dumping diesel.”

A year-round clean system brings comfort

Calistoga caters to tourists with a main thoroughfare that emphasizes local shops, restaurants, tasting rooms and art galleries over franchise stories. Residents pride themselves on a smalltown vibe, and say Calistoga isn’t posh like much of the rest of Napa Valley.

Some of those residents were concerned at first about the hydrogen, which is flammable and can be explosive. Fire Chief Jed Matcham said the “very, very large tank” got his attention, too.

He collaborated with Energy Vault on emergency planning and training, and said he’s comfortable with the safety measures in place. Energy Vault’s batteries also come with alarms, detectors and piping to extinguish a fire.

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The next time PG&E turns off the power to the area to prevent wildfires, it will tell Energy Vault when it’s safe to electrify Calistoga. The batteries will get things back up and running, discharging the energy stored inside them to the local microgrid.

Then the hydrogen fuel cells will take over to generate a steady level of power for a longer period. By working in tandem — the company likened it to the way a hybrid vehicle works — the batteries and fuel cells are expected to keep the lights on for about 48 hours or longer.

Clive Richardson, who owns downtown’s Calistoga Roastery and can typically be found behind the counter, drinking coffee and chatting with customers, said people in Calistoga get on edge when the winds kick up. And he knows what it’s like to have to empty out his store when power goes out — a big hit for a small-business owner.

A year-round clean solution for emergency power gives him a measure of comfort.

“This will give us far more security than we had before,” he said. “It’s fantastic that it’s come. Here we are, little ol’ Calistoga, and we’ve got the first-of-a-kind system that hopefully will be endorsed and go all over the world.”

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

By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Edmund White, the groundbreaking man of letters who documented and imagined the gay revolution through journalism, essays, plays and such novels as “A Boy’s Own Story” and “The Beautiful Room is Empty,” has died. He was 85.

White’s death was confirmed Wednesday by his agent, Bill Clegg.

Along with Larry Kramer, Armistead Maupin and others, White was among a generation of gay writers who in the 1970s became bards for a community no longer afraid to declare its existence. He was present at the Stonewall raids of 1969, when arrests at a club in Greenwich Village led to the birth of the modern gay movement and for decades was a participant and observer through the tragedy of AIDS, the advance of gay rights and culture and the recent backlash.

FILE – Author Edmund White appears at his home in New York, Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, file)

A resident of New York and Paris for much of his adult life, he was a novelist, journalist, biographer, playwright, activist, teacher and memoirist. “A Boy’s Own Story” was a bestseller and classic coming-of-age novel that demonstrated gay literature’s commercial appeal. He wrote a prizewinning biography of playwright Jean Genet, books on Marcel Proust and Arthur Rimbaud. He was a professor of creative writing at Princeton University, where colleagues included Toni Morrison and his close friend, Joyce Carol Oates.

“Among gay writers of his generation, Edmund White has emerged as the most versatile man of letters,” cultural critic Morris Dickstein wrote in The New York Times in 1995. “A cosmopolitan writer with a deep sense of tradition, he has bridged the gap between gay subcultures and a broader literary audience.”

Childhood yearnings

White was born in Cincinnati in 1940, but age at 7 moved with his mother to the Chicago area after his parents divorced. His father was a civil engineer “who reigned in silence over dinner as he studied his paper.” His mother was a psychologist “given to rages or fits of weeping.” Trapped in “the closed, sniveling, resentful world of childhood,” at times suicidal, White was at the same time a “fierce little autodidact” who sought escape through the stories of others, whether Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” or a biography of dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

“As a young teenager I looked desperately for things to read that might excite me or assure me I wasn’t the only one, that might confirm my identity I was unhappily piecing together,” he wrote in the 1991 essay “Out of the Closet, On to the Bookshelf.”

FILE – Author Edmund White stands outside his apartment April 24, 2006 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file)

As he wrote in “A Boy’s Own Story,” he knew as a child that he was attracted to boys, but for years was convinced he must change — out of a desire to please his father (whom he otherwise despised) and a wish to be “normal.” Even as he secretly wrote a “coming out” novel while a teenager, he insisted on seeing a therapist and begged to be sent to boarding school. One of the funniest and saddest episodes from “A Boy’s Own Story” told of a brief crush he had on a teenage girl, ended by a polite and devastating note of rejection.

“For the next few months I grieved,” White writes. “I would stay up all night crying and playing records and writing sonnets to Helen. What was I crying for?”

Early struggles, changing times

Through much of the 1960s, he was writing novels that were rejected or never finished. Late at night, he would “dress as a hippie, and head out for the bars.” A favorite stop was the Stonewall, where he would down vodka tonics and try to find the nerve to ask a man he had crush on to dance. He was in the neighborhood on the night of June 28, 1969, when police raided the Stonewall and “all hell broke loose.”

“Up until that moment we had all thought homosexuality was a medical term,” wrote White, who soon joined the protests. “Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group — with rights, a culture, an agenda.”

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White’s debut novel, the surreal and suggestive “Forgetting Elena,” was published in 1973. He collaborated with Charles Silverstein on “The Joy of Gay Sex,” a follow-up to the bestselling “The Joy of Sex” that was updated after the emergence of AIDS. In 1978, his first openly gay novel, “Nocturnes for the King of Naples,” was released and he followed with the nonfiction “States of Desire,” his attempt to show “the varieties of gay experience and also to suggest the enormous range of gay life to straight and gay people — to show that gays aren’t just hairdressers, they’re also petroleum engineers and ranchers and short-order cooks.”

His other works included “Skinned Alive: Stories” and the novel “A Previous Life,” in which he turns himself into a fictional character and imagines himself long forgotten after his death. In 2009, he published “City Boy,” a memoir of New York in the 1960s and ’70s in which he told of his friendships and rivalries and gave the real names of fictional characters from his earlier novels. Other recent books included the novels “Jack Holmes & His Friend” and the memoir “Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris.”

“From an early age I had the idea that writing was truth-telling,” he told The Guardian around the time “Jack Holmes” was released. “It’s on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature — the holy book. There’s nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious and it should be totally transparent.”