Federation of American Scientists

FAS Endorses the State Energy and Oversight Act of 2026 We won’t solve the cost-of-living crisis without improving the capacity of state public utility commissions to protect customers, find and implement new solutions to meet rising demand, and realign broken utility incentives.

Every American depends on electricity to power homes, transportation, communications, and perform daily tasks. Yet the nation’s energy system remains one of the largest determinants of public health.

California just took an important step toward making electric trucks more affordable and easier for businesses to buy. On September 20, Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1213, a new law that will require more transparency around the prices of electric trucks that receive state incentives. Sounds trivial, but is actually a remarkable example of regulatory ingenuity in action.

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and Groundswell partnered to model how expanding access to residential air conditioning (AC) could reduce heat-attributable deaths and adult emergency department (ED) visits across Greater Boston, Minneapolis–St. Paul, and Greater Houston from 2026 through 2030.

Nowhere would consumers simply rely on automobile manufacturers’ own assessments of vehicle safety. Instead, credible crash-test results depend on independent evaluation. Similarly, parents would not give toys to children that toy manufacturers unilaterally certified themselves as safe for children. Aircraft manufacturers are subject to independent testing and certification regimes. Pharmaceutical companies cannot self-certify that a new drug is safe and effective.

Decisions made based on instinct, analogy, and a strong theory of change have a way of becoming retroactively reframed as evidence-based once they work out. That’s part of why “well-reasoned” and “evidence-based” are often used interchangeably in policy conversations – and why it can be hard to tell, looking back, which parts of our policies, programs, and institutions were actually designed on rigorous grounds and which just got lucky.

No institution gets built on a clean sheet. Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible. A new Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)-style agency has a foundation partly because of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) model that came before it and the foundational research funded by more traditional R&D institutions that makes its agenda possible.

Google Earth recently began blurring out military sites in South Korea. Our team first discovered this development in early September when checking in on Lotte Skyhill Seongju Country Club, a golf course in South Korea where the United States has deployed a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense battery since 2017. Although the site was visible just a week prior, the entire golf course is now obscured.

In the United States, we have an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine where and how we build housing. Our country faces a severe housing shortage: We need to build at least 14 million homes to meet demand over the next decade. This shortage drives up housing costs, prevents people from living near good jobs and schools, and makes it all but impossible for many would-be buyers to break into the housing market. Fortunately, policymakers are taking notice.

Housing in America is expensive, and there isn’t enough of it in the places people want to live. The resulting competition among renters and buyers drives up home prices and rents, widening the gap between what people earn and what it costs to keep a roof overhead. Today, roughly 750,000 people are homeless.