South Carolina’s top Statehouse news for 2025

With Donald Trump back in the White House and Republicans in charge of every branch of government in Washington and South Carolina, 2025 was a year of sharp right turns for Palmetto State policymakers. Here’s just some of what that looked like:

1: Taxes, spending and ‘crap’

After a nasty intraparty fight between mainstream and far-right Republicans that featured a lengthy floor debate about which side was more “full of crap,” S.C. lawmakers pulled together to pass a $14.5 billion state budget in late May.

Among the highlights: an income tax cut for high-earners, modestly bigger paychecks for teachers and a hefty pay hike for legislators — the last of which was struck down by the S.C. Supreme Court in November.

2: Better reading scores, fewer books

Having struck out twice in the state Supreme Court with private school voucher plans, Republican lawmakers passed a carefully crafted $7,500-per-child voucher law in May that they say can pass constitutional muster if challenged again.

In other 2025 education news, the state Department of Education took over two more failing rural school districts, S.C. officially took the top spot as the state with the most books banned from school libraries and reading test scores were up substantially across the state, while math scores remained flat.

3: An energy boost?

With population growth and data centers driving demand, S.C. leaders bet big on natural gas and nuclear power in 2025.

In June, Gov. Henry McMaster signed the Energy Security Act, which streamlined regulatory approvals for new power plants and approved state-owned Santee Cooper’s participation in a new natural gas facility that has already doubled in cost. And in December, Santee Cooper began the process of selling a pair of partially built mothballed nuclear reactors, abandoned at taxpayer expense in 2017, to a private company that promises to bring them online.

4: Medicaid cuts and measles

With the support of eight out of S.C.’s nine federal lawmakers, President Trump signed a budget blueprint into law in July that slashed more than $1 trillion in federal health spending. Experts say those cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of S.C. residents scrambling to deal with lost coverage and spiking insurance costs in 2026.

In other news, S.C. ended 2025 with a growing measles outbreak in and around Spartanburg County, as public health officials imposed quarantines and reminded residents that vaccines are safe, effective and widely available.

5: This, that and the other

With liquor liability costs skyrocketing for bar owners, S.C. lawmakers passed a tort reform bill that broadly limits South Carolinians right to sue and may or may not help bar owners.

In the wake of a conservative activist’s September murder in Utah, public- and private-sector employees in S.C. were fired for what many deemed inappropriate social media comments, raising First Amendment concerns on both right and left.

And at year’s end, about 300 S.C. National Guardsmen found themselves back in Washington for a second tour of duty in Trump’s effort to use military force against civilian crime on American streets.