ALBANY, New York — Flogged by voters — and President Donald Trump — about rising utility bills, Democratic lawmakers in blue states are zeroing in on a juicy target: utility profits.
Squeezed by high energy prices on one end and attacks from Republicans on the other, they’re introducing proposals from New York to California to limit how much investors can earn from gas and electric utilities. The idea is to defend against attacks like Trump’s executive order last week blaming blue states’ clean energy policies for high energy costs — and, potentially, to lower bills.
“When you knock on thousands of doors, you start to hear a theme, and the theme was, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to pay my utility bills,’” said Rhode Island state Rep. Megan Cotter, a Democrat who represents a district Trump won in November.
Democrats were already wrestling with high energy prices before Trump regained office. While electricity bills rose 3 percent nationwide from January 2024 to 2025, they rose more than 11 percent in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.