I joined the Prospect as a writing fellow in Spring 2025, just months before President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. Much of my reporting out of the gate chronicled how our social safety net and constitutional democracy have been falling apart at the seams since Trump returned to the White House.
While the focus of my coverage has varied over the past several months, a common thread that can be found throughout is arguably regulation. I’ve written about the implications of rolling back key guardrails designed to protect consumers, workers, and the environment. Many of those same stories highlighted the Trump administration’s attacks on federal agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Environmental Protection Agency, as well as the extent of regulatory capture taking hold at both the state and federal levels.
Speaking of regulatory capture, a fair amount of my recent reporting has centered on the role of state-level public utility commissions in regulating investor-owned utilities. As compelling as it is to lay the blame on data centers for driving up electricity prices, utility commissions are responsible for setting rates. They also have the final say on whether regulated utilities can merge or be acquired by another company. In both instances, these commissions have largely refrained from challenging investor-owned utilities, instead opting to rubber-stamp rate increases and fold in the face of private utility takeovers.
And with that, I’d like to reflect on a few stories I had the pleasure of writing for the Prospect in 2025.
Industry Lobbyists Pitch Driverless ‘Ghost Trains’ Across America
In April, the Department of Transportation declared open season on “burdensome” regulations to implement executive orders issued by President Trump in the early days and weeks of his second term. The freight rail industry, whose largest members are represented by the Association of American Railroads, made quick work of the opportunity to write its own rules and roll back regulations that impede extreme cost-cutting measures. At the time, I wrote about the industry’s push to reduce already threadbare crews with remotely operated or entirely autonomous trains, and replace visual safety inspections with Automated Track Inspection machines. Unions representing rail workers sounded the alarm on these safety-averse proposals. Organizers told me carriers’ efforts to automate the rail industry not only undermine labor, but endanger employees and trackside communities alike. Read the story.
The Scheme to Scramble Your Nest Egg
For this story, I teamed up with Prospect staff writer Whitney Curry Wimbish to dispel the allure of including private equity and cryptocurrency investments in personal retirement plans. Our reporting found that exposing the nation’s multitrillion-dollar defined contribution market to high-risk asset classes not only threatens to worsen the looming retirement crisis, but functionally provides a bailout to cash-strapped, underperforming private equity firms. Rather than democratizing access to a wider set of financial instruments, the Trump administration has signaled its willingness to soften existing regulatory guidance to give plan sponsors more cover for making these investments available to retail investors. Read the story.
BlackRock Just Bought a Minnesota Utility
I went to the Twin Cities in October to attend the final Minnesota Public Utilities Commission hearing on BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners’ $6.2 billion proposal to acquire Minnesota Power and its parent company, ALLETE. The commission unanimously approved the deal, and we brought you inside the room where it all went down. My post-hearing dispatch was a follow-up to a previous story I had written about pushback against the acquisition and the Minnesota Department of Commerce’s role in drumming up support for the takeover. Read the story.
Lightning in a Bottle
Concurrently, I had been chipping away at what would become my first-ever long-form feature for the Prospect. The piece offers a comprehensive look at the root causes of soaring electricity prices, influence-peddling by investor-owned utilities, and efforts by public power advocates to trigger a paradigm shift in the fundamental design of the utility system. My reporting also took me to Milwaukee, where I shadowed organizers with Milwaukee Democratic Socialists of America’s Power to the People campaign. As one public power advocate told me, the energy system “connects all of us to one another in the country, no matter who you are or where you live, which makes it an incredible site for building back our relationships and our social fabric.” Read the story.