President Donald Trump came into office promising to lower energy and electricity costs. But with the cost of electricity rising, congressional Democrats and left-leaning groups see an opening to go on the offense ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
A Wednesday letter led by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to six of Trump’s cabinet secretaries asks administration officials to explain why they are cutting programs to help Americans pay for high energy costs, while passing a tax cut bill that eliminated incentives for cheaper forms of energy like wind and solar.
The letter was signed by three other Democratic senators: Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. The letter was first provided to CNN.
“Rather than keeping his campaign promise to ‘cut the price of energy and electricity in half,’ President Trump’s shortsighted approach to energy policy is driving prices higher and doing so quickly,” the letter reads. “Instead of feeling relief, families are paying higher and higher utility bills.”
Warren’s letter asks the Trump administration about several of its actions that could contribute to raising electricity costs, including mandating aging fossil fuel power plants to continue operating and proposing cutting federal programs that help low-income Americans pay their energy bills.
Since 2022, retail electricity prices have increased faster than the rate of inflation, according to the US Energy Information Administration, which predicts prices will continue to rise through next year. Electricity prices are Americans’ second biggest annual energy expense, after paying for gasoline to fuel their vehicles, the EIA found.
An independent analysis from think tank Energy Innovation shows that US household energy bills will be higher over the next decade now that Republicans have passed Trump’s tax and spending bill, which shredded incentives for cheap forms of energy like wind and solar as well as electric vehicles and energy efficient appliances.
Trump’s tax changes are expected to reduce the amount of cheap renewables on the grid and increase the cost of building them. Wind and solar are now largely cheaper than fossil fuels like natural gas and coal, and adding more renewable energy to the grid helps keep utility bills lower, experts say.
A White House spokesperson repeated administration officials’ claims that wind and solar have increased electricity costs because they are intermittent and don’t stay on 24/7. That intermittency has diminished with the entrance of battery storage, which allows renewable energy to power the grid even when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.
“The previous administration’s reliance on unreliable wind and solar, while dismantling American energy dominance, led to higher costs,” White House spokesperson Harrison Fields told CNN in a statement. “The Trump administration is working tirelessly to undo this damage and continue the success of lowering prices for consumers.”
Prices for US natural gas, which generates most US electricity, have also gone up, and the EIA predicts they will continue to do so next year.
“You’re moving from not using a lot of fossil fuels to using a lot of fossil fuels. That makes the price go up a lot,” Robbie Orvis, Energy Innovation’s senior director of modeling and analysis, told CNN recently.
Congressional Democrats and Democratic-aligned groups are pouncing on the rising electricity costs ahead of the 2026 midterms.
“We know that this issue of rising utility bills is top of mind for voters and we know Republicans voted to raise their utility bills,” said Alex Witt, the senior advisor for accountability campaigns at Climate Power, a left-leaning group focused on clean energy and climate. “We’re doing everything we can to make sure they pay the political price for that.”
Climate Power is focused on states that are already seeing electricity prices spike, Witt said, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey.
“In terms of the impact of (Trump’s) bill, it’s only going to become more real for folks,” Witt said. “As long as that’s the case, we’re going to be driving that accountability.”
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