The Real Budget Fight Begins
It is extraordinary that congressional Republicans and the White House ran this gigantic piece of legislation with so many moving parts through the House, squeaked through the Senate, then got the House to accept the upper chamber's changes and pass it again—all before the president's July 4 deadline.
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CNBC
32 minutes ago
- CNBC
Virginia drops in America's Top States for Business rankings. Federal job cuts are a big reason
Six months into his second term in office, President Trump has begun to fundamentally change the relationship between the federal government and the states. In the process, he has shaken up CNBC's annual competitiveness ranking, America's Top States for Business. Virginia, last year's No. 1 state and a top three finisher in each of the last five years, slips to fourth place in 2025 — its worst showing since 2018 — and cedes the No. 1 spot to North Carolina. A major reason is a drop in the state's Economy ranking, to No. 14 in 2025 from No. 11 last year. Economy is the heaviest weighted category in the study under this year's methodology as more states pitch themselves as safe havens in a potential downturn. Virginia is already seeing a small downturn of sorts, as the Trump administration sets out to slash the federal workforce. That hits The Old Dominion where it lives. The federal government accounted for more than 144,000 jobs in Virginia last year, according to the Congressional Research Service. That is a larger percentage of the workforce than any state except Maryland and Hawaii. And that doesn't include Virginians who work for federal contractors, or commute to federal jobs elsewhere in the D.C. metro area. Include all of those, and the number approaches 300,000. In May, Virginia was one of only three states whose unemployment rate rose from the prior month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The state is still adding jobs each month, albeit at a slower pace than last year, and Virginia's 3.4% unemployment rate in May was still below the national average. But the slowdown — and the fact that many of the federal job cuts have yet to be reflected in the official numbers — concerns University of Virginia economist Eric Scorsone, Executive Director of the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. "Virginia has been an economy, historically, that is pretty resilient," he said. "But now, we're seeing something quite different, where Virginia is seeing some job losses, or at least job stagnation, whereas the nation as a whole is still creating jobs." The Center's most recent forecast, published in April, calls for the state to lose 32,000 jobs this year, with the job losses accelerating as the year goes on. While Scorsone said those job losses will occur primarily in the federal sector, he also sees a ripple effect. "Things like leisure and accommodations," he said. "As people lose jobs, they're going to spend less on those things, [and] maybe in retail," he added. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, says the state can absorb those federal job cuts. In February, the state launched a web site, targeting displaced workers with job listings and other resources from across the state. "We have 250,000 open jobs posted that are unfilled. And so, there's a great opportunity for folks to find a new opportunity, new job, new career," Youngkin said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on April 15. A recent check of the site showed that the number of openings has shrunk to 199,000 as jobs have been filled and private sector hiring has slowed. That still would appear to be more than enough for the federal workers likely to be displaced. But Scorsone said it is not that simple. "Virginia's federal workforce is different than, say, other states. Our workforce tends to be highly educated, professional executive level," he said. "Many of the jobs that are open may be in different sectors, like health care. You can't just easily move into a health care job if that's not your area of expertise," he added. In his CNBC appearance in April, Youngkin acknowledged the likelihood that the state will lose jobs, and that the private sector alternatives will not be an exact fit for many displaced government employees. "Listen, they're not perfect matches," he said. "They're high paying, good jobs that require someone to possibly get some retraining or re-skilling, or go into a new field, but they're really good jobs." Youngkin said the budget cuts, and job losses, are necessary. "We need to rein in spending and re-establish fiscal reality back into the federal government," he said, adding that Virginia goes into the upheaval from a position of strength. "We're seeing record surpluses in our budgets. We're able to use those surpluses to reduce taxes and invest in education and law enforcement and other investments in business development," Youngkin said. Indeed, Virginia is still a business powerhouse, with the top Education ranking in the CNBC study, and the second best rating for Infrastructure. Over time, no state has performed better than Virginia in the CNBC rankings. The state has taken top honors six times since the project began in 2007. But in 2025, with economic anxiety rising, Virginia's economic situation is just shaky enough to take it down a few pegs.
CNBC
32 minutes ago
- CNBC
Massachusetts is 2025's Most Improved State for Business boosted by financial independence from D.C.
For 400 years, the spirit of independence has served the people of Massachusetts well. In 2025, it helped the state achieve a turnaround of sorts in CNBC's annual America's Top States for Business study. The Bay State is America's most improved state in this year's rankings, rising 18 spots to No. 20 overall, after staging the biggest drop — falling 23 places — last year. Massachusetts was able to make that U-turn thanks to its relative independence from Washington. With federal budget cuts looming, this year's CNBC study considered their potential impact on each state's economy. Economy is the most important category in 2025, and Massachusetts improved its ranking in the category to No. 15, from No. 40 last year. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, federal funds comprised 30% of Massachusetts government spending last fiscal year. That made Massachusetts the 14th least dependent state on Washington (Wyoming was the least dependent at 19%; Louisiana was the most at 50%). In addition, Massachusetts' federal workforce of about 25,000 people makes up only about half a percent of its total workforce, according to data from the Congressional Research Service. That makes the state's federal workforce the eighth-smallest in the country relative to the total. "We tackle hard problems in Massachusetts. Hard stuff. Wicked hard stuff sometimes," Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, said in her State of the Commonwealth speech in January. She pointed to $1.5 billion in state funding for child care to make up for federal cuts after the pandemic. "We were the only state to fully replace federal support that went away," she said. Massachusetts still lags the nation in access to affordable child care, according to Child Care Aware of America, but it improved its performance this year, helping the state to an eighth-place finish in the Quality of Life category. But independence only goes so far, even in Massachusetts. The state is the third-largest recipient of federal health and science research grants, after New York and California. The Trump administration has taken aim at those grants nationwide, but nowhere more directly than in Massachusetts. Since April, the Trump administration has moved to freeze $3.2 billion in grants to Harvard University and to terminate another $100 million in federal contracts with the 389-year-old institution, accusing the university of liberal bias and of harboring antisemitism. The school has sued to block the cuts, citing the First Amendment, and the university's own efforts to curtail antisemitism on campus. But Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council — a business organization that has been advocating for the state's tech industry since 1977 — said Harvard is not the only institution threatened by the federal cuts. "We do have a large number of research institutions that are critically important to generating and contributing to our innovation economy here," he told CNBC. "Everyone's feeling the pinch," he added. In May, the University of Massachusetts directed department heads to develop budget scenarios that include 3% and 5% cuts. As of mid-June, the university said it had already received $29 million less in federal research awards than at the same time a year earlier. To blunt some of the impact of the cuts, the university established a matching fund that it says has committed more than $700,000 toward salaries and research funding that would otherwise be cut. But that money is a drop in the bucket, with the university normally receiving $180 million a year in federal research support, including $44 million in so-called "indirect" funding for facilities and administration that the administration has sought to sharply reduce. "Unfortunately, the commonwealth is really not in a position to play the role of savior as perhaps it could if it had been managing its state budget more appropriately," Anderson said. Anderson said that 15 years of what he called "unsustainable" growth in state spending have hobbled Massachusetts at the worst possible time. "At exactly the time when the federal government is cutting back, we find ourselves unable to invest quickly or effectively in the key economic development projects that are driven by powerful innovations like artificial intelligence," he said. Anderson also pointed to the Mass Leads Act, signed into law by Gov. Healey last year, which the High Technology Council supported. The four-year economic development bill purports to include hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for life science, climate technology, and artificial intelligence. While the law sets a goal of $4 billion for economic development, Anderson said only $251 million of that is currently funded due to state borrowing caps. "It doesn't allow Massachusetts to keep up," he said. An analysis by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics found Massachusetts roughly in the middle of the pack when it comes to state support for research and development, ranking 22nd in 2023. While Massachusetts improved its overall ranking in the CNBC study, it still has some serious issues beyond its budget pressures. It is the second-most-expensive state to do business in, behind Hawaii. Wage costs are the highest in the nation; utility costs are the third highest. And the state ranks No. 42 for Business Friendliness, with a heavy regulatory hand. Anderson said the long-term solution to the state's competitive issues might be to take that independent streak a bit further, encouraging research institutions to work more closely with the private sector rather than relying on state support. "This could be the beginning of a new era of collaboration between private sector companies and these institutions," he said. Join the conversation. Didn't see your state mentioned? You can see where it ranked overall, and in all 10 categories of competitiveness, in the full rankings of the 2025 America's Top States for Business.
Fox News
33 minutes ago
- Fox News
Massachusetts bill would force ICE agents to unmask
A new bill in Massachusetts aims to require U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and other federal immigration enforcement officers to unmask. The legislative proposal was introduced Wednesday by Democratic state Rep. James Hawkins. It calls for a new section to the Massachusetts Penal Code that states, "A law enforcement officer shall not wear any mask or personal disguise while interacting with the public in the performance of their duties, except for medical grade masks that are surgical or N95 respirators designed to prevent the transmission of airborne diseases and masks designed to protect against exposure to smoke or toxins during a state of emergency." "A violation of this section shall be punishable as a misdemeanor," the bill, which was co-sponsored by another 10 Democratic state representatives, said. It says the intent of the legislature is to enact legislation "to require law enforcement officers to include their name or badge number on their uniforms," as well as to enact legislation to "ensure that Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team officers can utilize gear necessary to protect their faces from physical harm while they perform their SWAT responsibilities." ICE acting director Todd Lyons defended mask-wearing by his agents during a May press conference announcing an operation had resulted in nearly 1,500 arrests across Massachusetts. "I'm sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I'm not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line, because people don't like what immigration enforcement is," Lyons during a press conference in Boston. "Is that the issue here that we're upset about, the masks? Or is anyone upset about the fact that ICE officers' families were labeled terrorists?" During an operation in Los Angeles weeks prior, Lyons said, ICE agents were "doxed" – having their personal information publicized – and people took photos of agents' names and faces and posted them online "with death threats to their families and to themselves." Most of those arrested in the Massachusetts operation had "significant criminality in the U.S. or abroad" and agents targeted "the most dangerous alien offenders in some of the most crime-infested neighborhoods of Massachusetts," officials said. "If sanctuary cities would change their policies and turn these violent criminal aliens over to us, into our custody, instead of releasing them to the public, we would not have to go out to the communities and do this," Lyons added. "Boston's my hometown, and it really shocks me that officials all over Massachusetts would rather release sex offenders, fentanyl dealers, drug dealers, human traffickers and child rapists back into the neighborhoods." Hawkins cited the March arrest of Tufts University graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk by masked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents outside of her home in Somerville, Mass. ICE accused the 30-year-old Turkish national of supporting Hamas, and DHS later confirmed her student visa had been revoked. She was subsequently transported to ICE detention centers in New Hampshire, Vermont and Louisiana, until a judge approved her release and return to Massachusetts in May. The bill is only the latest of a series of legislative proposals brought by Democrats seeking to unmask ICE agents. U.S. Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introduced the "Visible Identification Standards for Immigration-Based Law Enforcement" or VISIBLE Act this week. They argue the bill would "strengthen oversight, transparency, and accountability for the Trump Administration's indiscriminate and alarming immigration enforcement tactics that have terrorized communities across California and the nation." Reacting to the Senate bill, President Donald Trump noted how demonstrators protesting ICE and other Trump administration policies don masks and other face coverings regularly to hide their identities. "It's sort of funny when people picket in front of Columbia, in front of Harvard, and they have masks on – more than masks. I mean, you can't see anything. Nobody complains about that. But when a patriot who works for ICE or Border Patrol puts a mask on so that they won't recognize him and his family, so they can lead a little bit of a normal life after having worked so hard and so dangerously, there's a problem with that," Trump said Wednesday during a White House meeting with African leaders. "This is the problem with the Democrats. They have a lot of bad things going on in their heads," Trump added. "They've lost their confidence, number one. And they're really – they've become somewhat deranged. I want to do whatever is necessary to protect our great law enforcement people. And they are right at the top of the list." The Justice Department told Fox News Digital on Wednesday it is actively tracking the recent uptick in "targeted assaults" against federal immigration enforcement agents and ICE facilities.
