Teacher union pay: The country's two largest teacher unions paid their leaders more than $500,000 each, then steered political money to one party.
Pennsylvania data centers: Gov. Josh Shapiro spent a year championing the data center industry. This week he reversed course.
Wisconsin healthcare costs: A new study found Wisconsin hospitals charge 25.6% more than Illinois hospitals for identical in-person care, even within the same health system.
Meta youth lawsuit: A trial began this week in Oakland, California, where 33 states are accusing Meta of designing addictive Instagram and Facebook features that harm kids.
Texas-Minnesota extradition fight: Texas is holding an ICE officer Minnesota wants back, and Gov. Greg Abbott set a condition for his return.
Teacher union leaders earn $500,000 as political money flows to Democrats
Photo: Allison Shelley / EDUimages / CC BY-NC 4.0 / Edited in Canva
What we found: The leaders of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, the country's two largest teacher unions, each collected more than $500,000 in salary and benefits in 2025, a review of federal labor filings by The Center Square found. Separate records show the two unions contributed to Democratic members of the U.S. House Education and Labor Committee in 2025 and 2026, while making no contributions to any Republican member of the committee.
The stakes: Union members fund both the executive pay and the political spending through dues deducted from taxpayer-funded paychecks. National reading and math proficiency sits near 30%, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The backstory: The scrutiny follows the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018 Janus v. AFSCME ruling, which let public school teachers opt out of union membership. Some members, like longtime California teacher Todd Loeffler, say they still question how much of their dues fund politics rather than classroom advocacy.
Where it stands: Neither union responded to multiple requests for comment on the pay or political spending figures.
3 States
Pennsylvania: Gov. Josh Shapiro signed an executive order this week barring data centers from the state's fast-track permitting program and banning nondisclosure agreements tied to their development, reversing his earlier embrace of the industry. New York already has a one-year moratorium on large data center permits in place, a comparison state Sen. Katie Muth raised in questioning how strict Shapiro's new rules really are.
Wisconsin: A new study found Wisconsin hospitals charge 25.6% more than Illinois hospitals for identical in-person care, even within the same company. Researchers point to reduced competition from years of hospital consolidation as a likely driver behind the gap. The same pattern held across insurers, with Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare customers each charged more than 25% more in Wisconsin than in Illinois.
California: A trial began this week in Oakland in a lawsuit brought by a bipartisan coalition of 33 states, including California Attorney General Rob Bonta, accusing Meta of designing addictive Instagram and Facebook features that harm children's mental and physical health. Filed in 2023, the case could bring penalties topping $1 trillion, though the attorneys general say the goal is mainly to force Meta to change its practices, a fight with implications for young social media users nationwide.
2 Issues
Immigration: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is refusing to sign an extradition order for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer Christian Castro, who faces assault charges in Minnesota, saying he doesn't trust Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz following welfare fraud cases uncovered in the state. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has sued to force Abbott's hand, asking a federal judge to order the extradition before Texas law requires Castro's release after 90 days in custody.
Transportation: Twenty-two states have sued to block the Trump administration from accessing a national database containing personal information on roughly 17 million commercial drivers. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says the federal government is entitled to the data to keep highways safe, while the states argue the demand exceeds federal authority and threatens drivers' privacy. It's the latest fight between the same coalition of attorneys general and the administration over access to state-held data.
1 Number
$460 billion
That's how much the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development spent on 18 housing assistance programs from 2015 to 2024, according to an analysis by Open The Books, a nonprofit government spending watchdog, which found that spending narrowed the typical state's home-price-to-income affordability gap by 2.75% over that decade.
Trump responds to report on Democratic attorneys general’s pre-election lawsuit plans
President Donald Trump told The Center Square he was "not surprised" by reporting that Democratic attorneys general were coordinating lawsuits against him months before his reelection. He called it further proof of what he described as the "weaponized" use of government against him.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul
Hochul urged the Department of Homeland Security this week not to end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, Syrians, and other groups, warning it would force New York to cut essential government workers within days. She said the change would also hit the state's health care industry and other private employers. The plea comes after federal courts already sided with the administration on ending TPS for hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.
What percentage of Americans eligible for food assistance actually received it in 2023?
A new Urban Institute tool tracks how many eligible people actually receive benefits from taxpayer-funded safety net programs in every state. Millions of eligible Americans never receive food assistance, a gap researchers attribute partly to lack of awareness about the programs.
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