Month: November 2025

American households’ debt burdens increased to the highest level on record in the third quarter of 2025, according to a new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The New York Fed’s Center for Microeconomic Data released its quarterly report on household debt and credit this week, which showed that household debt rose by $197 billion in the third quarter to a record of $18.59 trillion.

Mortgage balances grew by $137 billion in the quarter to a total of $13.07 trillion at the end of September, while credit card balances rose $24 billion to a total of $1.23 trillion at the end of the quarter. Auto loan balances were steady at $1.66 trillion, while student loan balances increased $15 billion to a total of $1.65 trillion.

“Household debt balances are growing at a moderate pace, with delinquency rates stabilizing,” said Donghoon Lee, economic research advisor at the New York Fed. “The relatively low mortgage delinquency rates reflect the housing market’s resilience, driven by ample home equity and tight underwriting standards.”

Overall delinquency rates remained elevated in the third quarter of 2025, with 4.5% of outstanding debt in some stage of delinquency.

The New York Fed noted that transitions into early delinquency were mixed with credit card debt and student loans increasing, while all other debt types saw decreases.

Transitions into serious delinquencies, defined as 90 days or more delinquent, were largely stable for auto loans, credit cards and mortgages. Overall debt flow into serious delinquency was 3.03% in the third quarter of 2025, up from 1.68% in the same quarter last year.

Missed payments on federal student loans weren’t reported to credit bureaus from the second quarter of 2020 to the four quarter of 2024, and the resumption of those reports caused student delinquencies to rise sharply in the first half of 2025.

The New York Fed found that in the third quarter of 2025, 9.4% of aggregate student debt was reported as 90+ days delinquent or in default, compared with 7.8% in the first quarter and 10.2% in the second quarter.

A group of shutdown-weary Democratic senators voted with Republicans on Sunday night to advance a legislative vehicle to reopen the federal government and end the 40-day shutdown that has left tens of thousands of workers furloughed and caused chaos at the nation’s airports.

The Senate voted 60-40 to proceed to a House-passed continuing resolution to reopen the government, taking a big first step toward ending the shutdown after a group of centrist Democrats negotiated a funding deal with Senate Republican colleagues and the White House.

That proposal would fund military construction, veterans’ affairs, the Department of Agriculture and the legislative branch though September 30, 2026.  It includes a stopgap measure to fund the rest of government through January 30, 2026.

The compromise proposal includes language to retain more than 4,000 federal workers targeted for layoffs during the shutdown as well as language to prevent the Trump administration from firing additional federal workers through reductions in force (RIFs) for the length of the newly drafted continuing resolution — until January 30, 2026.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday seemed skeptical of President Donald Trump’s authority to impose sweeping tariffs in a series of executive orders earlier this year. During more than two-and-a-half hours of oral arguments, a majority of the justices appeared to agree with the small businesses and states challenging the tariffs that they exceeded the powers given to the president under a federal law providing him the authority to regulate commerce during national emergencies created by foreign threats.

The law at the center of the case is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Enacted in 1977, the president can invoke it “to deal with any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States,” if he declares a national emergency “with respect to such threat.” Under Section 1702 of the law, when there is a national emergency, the president may “regulate … importation or exportation” of “property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.”

Representing the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices that IEEPA “confers major powers to address major problems on the President, who is perhaps the most major actor in the realm of foreign affairs.” “The phrase ‘regulate … importation,’” he added, “plainly embraces tariffs, which are among the most traditional and direct methods of regulating importation.”

Sauer faced a barrage of questions from the court’s liberal justices. Justice Elena Kagan, for example, emphasized that Congress – not the president – had “the power to impose taxes, the power to regulate foreign commerce.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed to what she described as the purpose of IEEPA, noting that the law “was designed and intended to limit presidential authority, that Congress was concerned about how presidents had been using the authority under the predecessor statute,” the Trading with the Enemy Act.

Additional skepticism came from Justice Neil Gorsuch, who raised two related objections to the powers that Trump is claiming. Gorsuch asked Sauer, on Trump’s theory, “what would prohibit Congress from just abdicating all responsibility to regulate foreign commerce, for that matter, [or] declare war to the President?” And a few minutes later, Gorsuch suggested that one problem with reading a law like IEEPA to give the president broad powers would be that it would create a “one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch” because, once the president had such powers, he could veto any effort by Congress to take them back.

Some of the other conservative justices joined Gorsuch in voicing skepticism. Chief Justice John Roberts, for example, suggested that Trump’s claim of power under IEEPA might violate the “major questions” doctrine – the idea that if Congress wants to grant power to make decisions of vast economic or political significance it must say so clearly. “The justification,” Roberts said, “is being used for a power to impose tariffs on any product from any country, in any amount for any length of time.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Sauer to point to other places in federal law where Congress used the phrase “regulate … importation” to give the president the power to impose tariffs. But she was also skeptical at times of the challengers’ arguments. Along with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, she pressed Benjamin Gutman, the solicitor general of Oregon, who represented the group of 12 states, about whether IEEPA on the one hand could give the president very broad powers – for example, allowing him to shut down all trade with another country – but on the other hand would not allow him to take the much smaller step, in her view, of imposing tariffs. Such a paradox, Kavanaugh suggested, created an “odd donut hole” in IEEPA.

A $700 million natural gas pipeline enhancement project designed to improve reliability and meet rising demand came online in Wisconsin and northern Illinois at the start of the month.

TC Energy, a Canadian company with a U.S. headquarters in Texas, announced the completion of the project on Monday.  The “Wisconsin Reliability Project” replaced about 51 miles of aging pipeline across Wisconsin and northern Illinois with modern infrastructure. The company said the change would improve safety and reliability.

TC Energy also upgraded natural gas compression facilities in Kewaskum and Weyauwega, as well as meter stations in Lena, Merrill, Oshkosh, South Wausau, Stevens Point and Two Rivers.

The company received approvals from federal regulators for the project in 2023 and 2024, according to a fact sheet from the company. Construction began last year and the project came into service on Nov. 1.

According to TC Energy, the pipeline will help meet a projected 45 percent increase in demand for natural gas in Wisconsin over the next decade.

Jon Draeger, vice president of U.S. Projects for TC Energy, said in a statement that reliable energy fuels everything from factories to farms.

“The Wisconsin Reliability Project connects our state to the energy it needs while creating well-paying jobs for local workers and generating millions in tax revenue that supports our schools and communities for generations to come,” Draeger stated.

Democrat Governor Tony Evers has quashed a GOP-backed bill that would have ordered tens of thousands of state employees to work in-person most of the time.

The original bill would have mandated in-person work for affected employees 100 percent of the time. Republican lawmakers later amended it to require in-office attendance during at least 80 percent of someone’s working hours in a given month. For many employees, that would have amounted to four days of in-person work each week.

In his veto message Friday, Evers said he opposes a “one-size-fits-all” mandate that would come at “great cost to taxpayers.”

“Under my administration, state government is working smarter and faster than ever before,” Evers wrote. “State agencies already are implementing robust accountability measures to ensure all state workers are fulfilling their responsibilities to the people of this state.”

A 2023 audit found that most Wisconsin state offices allow some form of remote work, although policies vary by agency.

“Without basic oversight, it’s nearly impossible to measure effectiveness and productivity,” state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, said just before the proposal cleared Wisconsin’s Assembly in September. “What began as an emergency response has become a permanent work entitlement.”

As amended, the legislation included an exception for workers who were already allowed to work remotely before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020. It also would have exempted employees of the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, which manages state retirement funds and other assets.

The goal of the legislation was ensuring accountability, sponsors said.

Months after a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that a Wisconsin-based religious charity should be exempt from certain taxes, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul is challenging religious tax exemptions entirely.

Kaul’s action comes after the nation’s highest court ruled in favor of the Catholic Charities Bureau in Superior, striking down a decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court from last year. The Wisconsin ruling would have subjected the charitable arm to the same unemployment taxes levied on other types of nonprofits.

At the heart of that dispute was a question of whether the faith-based social services organization was primarily a charitable group — subject to the same rules as nonreligious charities — or primarily a religious group, which would exempt them from some tax obligations, in the same way as houses of worship.

In a 9-0 decision, U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the state had violated the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom by requiring the Catholic Charities Bureau to pay unemployment tax while exempting other faith groups. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the First Amendment requires the government to be neutral between religions.

“There may be hard calls to make in policing that rule, but this is not one,” Sotomayor wrote.

The ruling sent the case back to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where in an Oct. 20 remedial brief, Kaul argued that the U.S. Supreme Court did not offer a fix for that violation.

Kaul and two assistant attorneys general argue that removing the exemption from paying unemployment taxes for all affected religious groups — rather than expanding the exemption for other similar religious social service organizations — is the preferred remedy.

“By striking the exemption, this Court can avoid collateral damage to Wisconsin workers while still curing the discrimination the U.S. Supreme Court identified,” Kaul wrote.

“Discrimination is cured by restoring equal treatment, which can be accomplished here in one of two ways: either by expanding the statutory exemption to groups like Catholic Charities or else by eliminating it altogether,” reads the brief.