In other words, Wisconsin voters won’t see Hong on the ballot until late summer.
A Marquette University Law School poll – published the same day as the misleading post – found 11% of Wisconsin voters said they plan to vote for Hong in the primary, compared to 10% for Mandela Barnes. A majority of voters, 65%, were undecided.
Polls do not determine election outcomes, and there is no guarantee that Hong will maintain that lead over the next six months.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
I have visited many after-school and summer programs across Wisconsin, from large urban sites to small rural schools, and what I’ve seen has stayed with me. I’ve watched students immersed in creative writing, acting and robotics. I’ve observed staff working one-on-one with kids navigating intense emotional challenges. And I’ve seen the smiles on middle schoolers’ faces as they reconnect with trusted mentors at the end of the school day. These programs are not “extras”; they provide crucial support to kids, families and entire communities.
The access gap
And yet, for far too many Wisconsin families, these opportunities remain out of reach. According to the latest America After 3PMreport, nearly 275,000 Wisconsin children who would participate in after-school programs are not enrolled because none are available. Four in five children who could benefit from these supports are missing out. Parents cite cost, lack of transportation and a simple lack of local programming as the biggest barriers.
The benefits are clear
The impact of these programs is undeniable. Parents overwhelmingly rate their children’s after-school programs as excellent or very good, reporting that they keep kids safe, build social skills and support mental wellness. Research in Wisconsin shows that students who participate in extracurricular activities are less likely to report anxiety or depression and more likely to feel a sense of belonging.
Out-of-school-time programs often provide the space for deep, long-term mentoring, a powerful protective factor in a young person’s life. While teachers are often stretched thin during the academic day, out-of-school-time staff can focus on the relational side of development.
The cost of instability
When funding is unstable, it undermines the very connections that make these programs transformative. Recently, a Boys & Girls Club director shared the human cost of budget constraints: They were forced to reduce a veteran staff member to part-time. This didn’t just trim a budget; it severed a multi-year mentorship. When that bond was broken, several youths stopped attending entirely.
Wisconsin lags behind national trends
Across the country, after-school and summer programs are increasingly viewed as essential to youth development. Twenty-seven states provide dedicated state funding for these programs; Wisconsin provides none. States as different as Alabama and Texas recognize that federal funding alone is not enough. So do our Midwestern neighbors.
Public support for these programs is strong and bipartisan. Families across Wisconsin want safe, enriching opportunities for their children. With a significant budget surplus, Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to invest in its future.
State leaders should view out-of-school programming as a foundation for safety, mental health and long-term economic opportunity. We have the resources; now we need the will. By committing to consistent state funding, we can ensure that every young person in Wisconsin has a place to belong when the school bell rings.
Daniel Gage is a consultant with the Afterschool Alliance and Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance, focusing on advocacy and outreach. He co-founded the Wisconsin Partnership for Children and Youth, a coalition that promotes after-school and summer programs as vital for healthy youth development and future citizenship.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
This story was originally published on Investigate Midwest.
Lisa Lawler wasn’t surprised when diagnosed with breast cancer in 2025. Her mother had breast cancer and died in 2016. It seemed like cancer had become a common diagnosis for many of her neighbors and friends.
“With how many people seem to get cancer in our community, you just assume you will get it,” said Lawler, who lives in rural Hardin County, Iowa. “But no one really talks about what’s causing it.”
After 10 rounds of radiation and a surgery to remove the tumor, Lawler’s cancer was in remission. Last year, she took a test to determine if her cancer was likely genetic, meaning a high chance of recurrence, which could lead her to have her entire breast removed.
She was surprised by the results.
“The genetic test they ran for me was one that covered 81 genes that are typically related to breast cancer,” Lawler said. “After the test, they told me my cancer is likely not genetic, but likely environmental, based on these 81 genes.
“Your next thought is, then what’s in the environment that caused my cancer?”
Increasingly, pesticides are being blamed for rising cancer rates across America’s agricultural communities.
Hardin County, home to around 800 farms, has a pesticide use rate more than four times the national average and a cancer rate among the highest in the state.
Most of the 500 counties with the highest pesticide use per square mile are located in the Midwest. Sixty percent of those counties also had cancer rates higher than the national average of 460 cases per 100,000 people, according to an analysis of data from both the U.S. Geological Survey and the National Cancer Institute.
This story was produced as part of the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship.
Last year, Investigate Midwest, in partnership with the University of Missouri, investigated the link between agrichemicals and cancer in Missouri, finding that many were rural communities that already lacked access to health care.
Investigate Midwest expanded on that coverage by analyzing data across the country, along with interviewing more than 100 farmers, environmentalists, lawmakers and scientists as part of a partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s StoryReach U.S. Fellowship. The result was the picture of a nation at a crossroads in dealing with this public health crisis that has not just been ignored by state and federal health officials, but aided.
This story was also supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
“Cancer is everywhere and it’s an experience that is unfortunately all too common,” said Kerri Johannsen, senior director of policy and programs at the Iowa Environmental Council, a Des Moines-based nonprofit that has been studying the state’s growing cancer rate.
Agrichemicals have helped America become a crop-producing power, increasing yields of commodity crops — such as corn and soybeans — used for food, fuel and animal feed.
Sprayed from airplanes, drones, tractors and handheld devices, these chemicals can drift through the air or run off into nearby rivers and streams.
And for decades, some farmers and pesticide users have developed neurological and respiratory issues. Thousands of lawsuits have alleged that pesticides and the companies that make them were to blame.
Pesticide manufacturers often rejected those claims while sometimes concealing research by their own employees that raised similar concerns. These companies — such as Bayer, Syngenta, Corteva and BASF — have also spent millions to lobby federal and state lawmakers for laws that would limit their legal liability and continue to allow them to sell agrichemicals.
“This is one of the most transparently reviewed products ever,” said Jessica Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, speaking about her company’s production of Roundup, a glyphosate-based pesticide. “This product is so well studied … been on the market for over 50 years with thousands and thousands of studies. There is no linkage to cancer, there just isn’t.”
Under the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Agriculture have also hired dozens of former pesticide executives and lobbyists, some of whom have already pushed for deregulation of their industry. The Department of Health and Human Services has also altered its own reports to downplay the harm of pesticides.
Two states — North Dakota and Georgia — recently passed laws limiting their residents’ ability to sue pesticide companies, and at least a dozen other states will consider similar laws in the coming months.
“We’ve gotten to a point in the U.S. … where we’ve stopped treating pesticides as if they are dangerous tools,” said Rob Faux, who manages a small Iowa farm and has advocated against pesticide liability shield laws. “Instead, these companies tell these stories that these pesticides are completely safe and we are encouraged to use them anytime. We’ve been convinced that we must use them or we are not going to have enough food to eat.”
In Iowa, a state with heavy pesticide use — 53 million pounds last year — and the nation’s second-highest cancer rate, doctors and health officials have been sounding an alarm for years.
The state has become ground zero in the fight to limit the impact of pesticides on health and the environment. Farmers have gathered at the state Capitol to advocate for increased laws and funding to address the rising cancer rate. That advocacy likely helped defeat a bill last year that would have protected pesticide makers from some lawsuits.
I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar.”
— Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024
“I believe the groups wanting this (bill) to go through didn’t expect any substantial resistance, but there was enough resistance,” said Faux, who also works for the Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network, a nonprofit advocating for less agrichemical use.
The Iowa bill was strongly opposed by environmental and health organizations, which have traditionally been left-leaning. But there was also strong opposition from many conservative residents and farmers.
“I call myself a Republican, but this is not about politics; this is about money, about the almighty dollar,” said Bill Billings, a resident of Red Oak, Iowa, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2024.
Initially, doctors told Billings, then 61, he would likely be dead in a matter of months after discovering lymphoma in his lungs. A health enthusiast and hospital administrator, Billings had been a regular user of Roundup, the popular Bayer pesticide used on farms and residential properties.
“The cancer specialist said, very directly, (my) cancer is a result of being exposed to chemicals,” Billings said. “In my records, it literally says that I have cancer as a result of exposure to Roundup and agrochemicals.”
Billings was prescribed a five-drug regimen, along with chemotherapy. In September, he was declared cancer-free.
Last year, he hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit against Bayer.
“The irony is … Bayer Pharmaceuticals makes one of the drugs that treated my cancer,” Billings said. “It’s disturbing to find out you are in this financial circle — not only as a consumer, but as a patient.”
Bill Billings in Red Oak, Iowa, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
The home of Bill Billings in Red Oak, Iowa, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
Surrounding neighborhood in Red Oak, Iowa, photographed Jan. 21, 2026. (Photos by Geoff Johnson for Investigate Midwest)
Research increasingly links pesticides to growing cancer risk
Cancer is a complex disease and can be caused by numerous environmental and genetic factors. Some links have been clear — such as smoking and lung cancer — while other forms can be impossible to trace back to an original cause.
But scientific research linking pesticides with certain types of cancers has been growing.
“Our findings show that the impact of pesticide use on cancer incidence may rival that of smoking,” scientists wrote in a 2024 study, which was published in Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society.
The study linked pesticides to prostate, lung, pancreas and colon cancers. Pesticides have also been associated with lymphoma and Parkinson’s disease, the study claimed.
Many doctors in agricultural communities say the link with pesticides is hard to deny.
“Iowa has a super high rate (of cancer) and when you look at all of our modifiable risk factors … tobacco, obesity, too many calories, highly processed foods, lack of physical activity, alcohol consumption, getting vaccinated for HPV, sun exposure, and so on, Iowa doesn’t really stand out dramatically at any of those,” said Dr. Richard Deming, medical director at MercyOne Cancer Center in Des Moines. “But one thing that distinguishes Iowa from other states is our environmental exposure to agricultural chemicals.”
Deming and other health experts also point to Iowa’s high radon levels, a naturally occurring radioactive gas produced by uranium and radium.
The state also has high levels of fertilizer-derived nitrate in its water, which has been associated with increased cancer risk.
“But we use tons of ag chemicals that make it quite likely that the volume of these chemicals is contributing to what we’re seeing in Iowa in terms of the increased incidence of cancer,” Deming said.
A direct correlation can be difficult to determine, as cancer development times can range from months to decades. Overlaying cancer rates onto a map, however, highlights the nation’s top crop and vegetable growing regions, where pesticide use is highest.
The Midwestern states of Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri — leading corn-growing states — had the highest rates, while rates were also high in California and Florida, high fruit-growing states.
Lawler, who developed breast cancer in Hardin County, grew up on her family’s 400-acre farm, where her father grew corn and used 2,4-D, a pesticide made by Dow Chemicals. She and her siblings moved out of state after high school, but Lawler returned in 2010.
Pesticides have become indispensable in farming, Lawler acknowledged, but she wishes more people would ask questions about the risks.
“We change products all the time when we learn about the health impacts,” Lawler said.
These family photos show Lisa Lawler with her mother and siblings over the years. Lawler was recently diagnosed with breast cancer; her mother later died after a cancer diagnosis. The family believes years of farm pesticide and herbicide exposure may have contributed. (All photos courtesy of Lisa Lawler)
As lawsuits mount, Bayer pushes state laws to limit liability
In early 2022, Rodrigo Santos had just been promoted to the head of Bayer’s crop sciences division, a prestigious position within the German-based chemical company. But a global pandemic, climate change and a pending war in Ukraine were disrupting the global production and sale of crops — a direct hit to the company’s pesticide sales.
“The global food system is in crisis,” Santos wrote in a column for the World Economic Forum, going on to say that the world needed to grow more food without a significant increase in the amount of land devoted to crops.
But beyond the pandemic and war, another crisis presented an existential threat to one of the company’s top-selling products. Roundup, the glyphosate-based weed killer produced by Monsanto, which Bayer bought in 2018, had been blamed for causing cancer in thousands of lawsuits.
Since purchasing Missouri-based Monsanto, Bayer’s stock price has dropped more than 90% over five years.
In recent years, Bayer executives, including Santos, openly discussed discontinuing glyphosate production. We are “evaluating all the alternatives that we have for the business,” Santos told investors last year when asked about a possible sale of its Roundup division.
But while Bayer publicly said it was reconsidering its glyphosate business, a review of lobbying disclosure statements, campaign finance records, state legislative records and other documents reveals the world’s largest pesticide company remains committed to expanding its sales.
Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA regulates the warning labels on pesticide products. While state-level lawsuits have claimed that federal labeling is insufficient, pesticide companies, including Bayer, have argued that federal regulations should trump state laws.
Bayer, along with other corporate agriculture groups, has pushed for bills in more than a dozen states that would codify the view that federal labeling regulations are sufficient warning, effectively voiding state-level lawsuits.
Christiansen, the head of crop science communications for Bayer, disputed that these laws will stop lawsuits and said courts have yet to begin interpreting those that have passed.
“Folks can still sue a company, and they should if there’s a problem,” Christiansen said. “But the litigation industry has a lot to lose with these (bills) that are out there.”
Founded by Bayer, the Modern Ag Alliance has lobbied for these bills and promoted opinion articles downplaying the health impacts of pesticides.
“If farmers lose access to crop protection products because of misguided ideological agendas, U.S. agriculture would be upended, potentially forcing many family farms to shut down and driving up food costs for every American,” said Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, executive director of the Modern Ag Alliance.
The Modern Ag Alliance has spent more than a quarter of a million dollars on state lobbying since 2024.
Most of the bills came up short in 2025, but Georgia and North Dakota passed liability shields that will complicate local lawsuits.
Georgia’s Senate Bill 144, which took effect Jan. 1, received some bipartisan support but was mostly approved by the Republican majority and opposed by Democrats.
Similar bills have been filed in at least 10 states for this year’s legislative sessions.
In 2024, the Iowa bill was passed by the state Senate with a 30-to-19 vote. Ahead of a vote in the House last year, farmer and environmental groups lobbied against the bill.
The session ended without the House taking up a vote. The bill could return in 2026, but Faux, the Iowa farmer, said he also worries about it being “snuck into” another bill or budget agreement.
“I don’t think we can just assume this fight is over,” Faux said.
In other states, backlash seemed to stop liability shield bills before they got started.
In Oklahoma, Rep. Dell Kerbs, a Shawnee Republican, authored a pesticide liability shield bill he said was meant to end “frivolous” lawsuits against pesticide makers.
“What’s happened in our country is we have … judges that have decided they need to be in the labeling business,” Kerbs said when introducing his bill at a Feb. 11, 2025, hearing of the House agriculture committee.
State Rep. Ty Burns, another Republican, asked Kerbs why he chose to author the bill.
“I was first approached by Bayer,” Kerbs responded.
“But this is a labeling bill; it is not an immunity bill. It is just clarifying on EPA labeling regulations,” Kerbs added. “There is nothing that prevents a lawsuit from any single person. This is not giving a free pass to kill people. This simply is saying that a frivolous lawsuit to potentially pad the pocket of somebody who was not reading the label is not a justification to add that to a label through a state district court.”
But when Burns asked Kerbs about opposition to the bill, especially from many farmers, Kerbs denied receiving any complaints.
“That is hard to believe,” Burns told Kerbs, “because I have been bombarded.”
The bill was never presented to the House for a vote.
After early promises, MAHA walks back pesticide oversight
While liability shield laws have been largely advanced by Republican lawmakers, the push to further regulate pesticides has transcended partisan lines.
Both left-leaning environmental groups and conservative health movements, which have targeted agrichemicals and some vaccines, have called for reducing or eliminating the use of pesticides.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been a longtime critic of pesticides. In a May 2025 report, his Make America Healthy Again commission linked pesticide overuse to children’s health issues, which drew praise from both political camps.
George Kimbrell, co-executive director of the Center for Food Safety, which has advocated for stronger pesticide regulations, called the initial report a “baby step” forward and said he was encouraged after decades of inaction by the federal government.
“Going back my entire career, 20-plus years now of doing this work, it doesn’t matter if it’s a Democratic administration or a Republican administration, they have been beholden to and done the wishes of the pesticide industry,” Kimbrell told Investigate Midwest last year. “So, this is a unique moment where … there’s a chance that there could be some positive change in terms of responsible oversight for these toxins.”
Corporate agriculture groups heavily criticized the report, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and CropLife America, a national organization representing many large agrichemical companies, including Bayer, Corteva Agriscience and Syngenta.
Many of those groups and companies had been large financial backers of Trump. But Kennedy downplayed any concerns that the president would avoid taking a hard position against pesticide companies because of that support.
“I’ve met every president since my uncle was president, and I’ve never seen a president (like Trump), Democrat or Republican, that is willing to stand up to industry when it’s the right thing to do,” Kennedy said at a May 22, 2025, MAHA commission meeting as the president sat smiling to his right.
Three months later, Kennedy’s MAHA commission published its final report, which contained no calls to further regulate pesticides. In fact, it called for the federal government to work with large agrichemical companies to ensure public “awareness and confidence” in the EPA’s current pesticide regulations.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment from Kennedy.
Many of the groups that expressed optimism over the initial report were outraged over the change.
“This report is … a clear sign that Big Ag, Bayer, and the pesticide industry are firmly embedded in the White House,” said David Murphy, the founder of United We Eat and a former finance director for Kennedy’s presidential campaign.
The Trump administration has employed several pesticide executives, researchers and lobbyists at the EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Kyle Kunker, who was a registered lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, an organization that has advocated for the legal liability shield laws at the state level, was hired last year to oversee pesticide policy at the EPA.
Three weeks later, the EPA recommended expanded use of dicamba-based herbicides, which federal courts had previously restricted. The EPA proposal was closely aligned with the position of the American Soybean Association.
In 2025, the EPA also hired Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva, both of whom worked with the American Chemistry Council.
Last month, a coalition of MAHA supporters called for the removal of Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA.
Recent EPA decisions around pesticides “will inevitably lead to higher rates of chronic disease, greater medical costs, and tremendous strain on our healthcare system,” the group stated in a petition circulating online.
Several prominent MAHA influencers have joined the petition, posting anti-pesticide messages on social media under handles such as The Glyphosate Girl and the Food Babe. “The EPA is acting like the Everyone Poisoned Agency,” wrote Kelly Ryerson, on her Glyphosate Girl Instagram feed.
As the EPA advances pesticide use, the Trump administration has also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that federal labeling laws invalidate state-level lawsuits.
“After careful scientific review and an assessment of hundreds of thousands of public comments, EPA has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings,” Trump’s solicitor general wrote in an amicus brief with the Supreme Court.
However, one of the studies the EPA has often cited in claiming pesticides are safe was recently retracted due to concerns about its authorship and potential conflicts of interest.
The report, published in 2000 by the scientific journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, claimed Roundup “does not pose a health risk to humans.” The report has been the foundation for numerous other studies, court cases and policy decisions.
The journal retracted the study last year, noting that court cases had revealed that Monsanto employees had contributed to the study. “This lack of transparency raises serious ethical concerns regarding the independence and accountability of the authors of this article and the academic integrity of the carcinogenicity studies presented,” the retraction stated.
“This is just one example of how the current process of certifying these chemicals is broken in the U.S.,” said Colleen Fowle, water program director at the Iowa Environmental Council. “At the very least, we’re hoping that this (retraction) eliminates this specific research article from being cited in the future and concentrates more on independent peer-reviewed research as our basis to determine the safety of glyphosate.”
Investigate Midwest is an independent, nonprofit newsroom whose mission is to serve the public interest by exposing dangerous and costly practices of influential agricultural corporations and institutions through in-depth and data-driven investigative journalism. Visit online at www.investigatemidwest.org
Gal Dahan has lived in Milwaukee for six years, most of that time as an international student. Now she’s trying to figure out if there’s a path for her to stay.
Prior to its closure last year, Northland College in Ashland borrowed money from its endowment fund to cover its financial shortfall, causing funds to dwindle from $22 million in 2024 to $3.3 million this year.
Vice President JD Vance was in Plover Thursday, campaigning for Republican Congressman Derrick Van Orden in an effort to hang on to the GOP's slim majority in the U.S. House.
Gov. Tony Evers says he's optimistic that he and Republican legislative leaders will strike a deal to lower property taxes and increase school funding, even after the Assembly adjourned for the year without an agreement in place.
Wisconsin voters are more concerned with reducing their property taxes than increasing funding for public schools. Voters also say they’re less inclined to support a school referendum.
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RSV activity is down for a second winter in a row. Some of the state's top infectious disease experts are cautiously optimistic that access to immunizations are contributing to the declining numbers.
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An employee walks behind cattle on an Idaho dairy farm in an undated photo. Dairy farms in Idaho say they depend on immigrant workers without legal work authorization and oppose mandates to check legal status with the federal E-Verify system. (Photo courtesy of Idaho Dairymen’s Association)
Pressured by businesses on the importance of immigrant labor, some Republican states are backing off plans to require all employers to check for legal employment status before hiring workers.
State and federal legislation to require that employers use E-Verify, a federal system to check legal status, has been limited this year as a push grows from business interests that say checking status could hurt state economies. Business groups have cited the cost of complying with the laws and the potential loss of crucial immigrant workers who don’t have legal work authorization.
Millions of worksites around the country use E-Verify to ensure new hires are legal to work in the United States, but it isn’t required in all states or for every industry. Going after employers has not been as popular with Republicans as immigration enforcement aimed at detaining and deporting people living here illegally.
In Idaho, for instance, legislation that would require all employers to use E-Verify, crafted with help from the conservative Heritage Foundation, is awaiting state House consideration — while a more limited mandate for large state and local government contractors passed the state Senate Feb. 19.
“I think we should tread lightly, and private businesses should not be enforcement agencies,” said state Sen. Mark Harris, a Republican and rancher who sponsored the less-stringent bill, on the Senate floor before the vote.
Idaho Republican state Sen. Brian Lenney, who voted for the bill, spoke resentfully of business leaders who came to the state Capitol to lobby against the broader mandate for all employers to use E-Verify.
“There were men in suits holding a press conference downstairs to let the world know and tell Idaho which industries cannot survive without illegal labor,” Lenney said before the vote. “They’re trying to protect a system that keeps human beings cheap, compliant and silent. … Is this bill making a dent, like it should? Not really.”
An industry-funded report said a sharp drop in unauthorized labor from deportations could cost the state economy billions of dollars and reduce state tax revenue by almost $400 million. The report, funded by the Idaho Alliance for a Legal Workforce and prepared by regional economists, emphasized the importance of immigrants to certain industries: As much as 90% of the workforce in dairy production is foreign-born, for example, and half of those individuals might not be authorized to work in the U.S.
I think we should tread lightly, and private businesses should not be enforcement agencies.
– Idaho Republican state Sen. Mark Harris
There were 21 states with E-Verify requirements for contracts or business licenses as of 2024, federal data showed. Seventeen states had pending legislation to begin or expand E-Verify mandates as of Feb. 5, said Mick Bullock, a spokesperson for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Some bills have not progressed after business opposition, such as an E-Verify mandate in Kansas opposed by the Kansas Chamber and the League of Kansas Municipalities. The chamber said the bill “would create an aggressive, invasive, and costly system of employment verification on all Kansas businesses” in 2025 testimony.
“The goal of this bill is to prevent illegal immigration, however with the bill’s broad definitions and severe penalties this legislation would suppress business operations,” the chamber wrote in submitted testimony.
Another example of a limited E-Verify mandate is a recent Ohio law. It applies only to nonresidential construction, despite testimony about illegal labor in residential construction. After Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure in December, it takes effect March 20.
An earlier version of the same Ohio bill passed the state House in 2024 but did not pass the state Senate. In a hearing at the time, Richard Ochocki, an organizer for the state plumbers and pipefitters union, said he spent three hours at an apartment and condo construction site in Columbus without finding even one person with the legal work status required to join the union.
“The flow of undocumented workers to Ohio has been steadily increasing over my five and a half years as an organizer. I have personally encountered undocumented workers in Cleveland, Canton, Ashland, Lima, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus,” said Ochocki, speaking in favor of E-Verify, in prepared remarks.
Madeline Zavodny, a professor at the University of North Florida who has researched the effects of E-Verify on the labor market, said exemptions for short-term work such as agriculture or small business is common, but limiting it to part of one industry such as nonresidential construction is unusual.
“The more limited the law is, the less impact it would have,” Zavodny said. “And nonresidential construction may be heavily unionized in Ohio such that there’s not a lot of unauthorized workers anyway. Unauthorized workers are often day laborers who work primarily in residential construction, not nonresidential.”
Meg Rietschlin, majority owner of a construction firm that bids on schools, roads, culverts and other nonresidential construction projects in rural Crawford County, Ohio, said she requires her workers to have a valid driver’s license, which should be enough to show they have legal status. An E-Verify mandate would drive her out of business because of the additional paperwork, she wrote in 2024 testimony.
“If you inundate me with the requirement to collect so much information, I will cease to be,” Rietschlin wrote. “This proposed law is meant to drive the small contractor out of public works opportunities.”
A report Zavodny co-authored in 2015 found E-Verify mandates appeared to help some workers who compete with unauthorized workers, such as Mexican immigrants who became citizens and U.S.-born Hispanic people, but did not measurably help U.S.-born non-Hispanic white people.
A 2020 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no evidence that E-Verify mandates improve the native-born labor market in general, and no evidence that people without work authorization moved away because of the mandates. Unauthorized workers may move from large businesses to small businesses that are less likely to comply with the mandates, the paper concluded.
As the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ramped up last year, restaurants and construction lost the largest number of immigrant laborers compared with 2024, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data. Landscaping, building services and warehousing industries also lost tens of thousands of laborers.
Rick Naerebout, who represents about 350 Idaho dairy farmers as CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said his members depend on unauthorized labor to run their farms that together produce more than 18 billion pounds of milk in 2025, behind only California and Wisconsin.
Idaho farms have not seen large-scale raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Naerebout said, though there was one last year in South Dakota and one in New Mexico in June, among others. Naerebout said he believes President Donald Trump has paused most ICE raids on agriculture and tourism, as has been reported by The New York Times and Stateline.
Idaho should limit E-Verify mandates to government as the state Senate bill would do, and shouldn’t pass more stringent mandates as the other bills would do, Naerebout added.
“The president couldn’t be more clear that he wants there to be space for critical industries like agriculture to try and get to where we find the solution,” Naerebout said. “The irony is Idaho voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and you’ve got Idaho Republicans now saying what the president’s doing isn’t good enough.”
Among other states, Tennessee has a broad E-Verify mandate for all businesses with at least 35 employees, though the exact number of employees has shifted over the years. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law effective in 2023 that lowered the threshold from 50 to 35, and one proposed bill this year could shift it back to 50 employees.
The mandate has faced business opposition but “other than a brief period of adjustment implementation has gone very smoothly,” Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a statement to Stateline. McNally and other state officials have collaborated with the Trump administration on a package of proposed state legislation this year, including making E-Verify mandatory for state and local government hires.
Florida also has an E-Verify mandate for employers with 25 or more employees, with a bill under consideration to expand it to all employers. It passed the state House in January and is now in a state Senate committee.
In Democratic-led California, employers starting this month must notify employees about their rights under state law, including a prohibition on using E-Verify in a discriminatory way to screen only some employees. A bill in Democratic-led New York, with 12 Democratic sponsors, would prohibit use of E-Verify to screen job applicants or check on existing employees, which is already prohibited by federal law. E-Verify can only be used legally after a job offer and before an employee has started work.
Meanwhile, some conservative-leaning states are moving to tighten rules. An Indiana bill would hold public works subcontractors accountable as part of an E-Verify mandate for public agency contracts and a West Virginia bill would require all employers to use E-Verify.
Federal legislation to mandate E-Verify for all employers has bogged down in recent years. A Senate bill last year did not progress beyond a committee, and a similar House bill bogged down in 2018.
Last year, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie introduced a bill that would require E-Verify for federal contractors only, saying it was “an area where mandatory E-Verify makes clear sense” in prepared testimony.
Mackenzie said he had sponsored an E-Verify law as a state lawmaker in 2019, and that it “has ensured there is a lawful workforce in the construction industry in my home state of Pennsylvania, protecting American workers from unfair competition, providing a level playing field for businesses, and helping to confirm all appropriate taxes are paid.”
Mackenzie’s bill on federal contractors had a committee hearing in January, during which California Democratic U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said the bill would need an exemption for agriculture, since the government buys food and milk produced by undocumented workers for the military and schools on military bases.
“If we don’t exempt ag, we will have a very serious problem throughout the federal government, especially in our military that relies on ag products in feeding our soldiers,” Lofgren said. Her request to amend the bill was voted down.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas, is among the nation's largest Hispanic-serving institutions.(Photo by Hugh Jackson/Nevada Current)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats threw a spotlight Thursday on President Donald Trump’s attempts to yank funds away from minority-serving institutions, as the administration tries to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies in schools.
Hawaii U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted an unofficial hearing that gathered advocates, leaders, experts and students to sound the alarm on the consequences of cutting funding for the more than 800 MSIs, as they are known, that enroll millions of students of color. Many are from low-income households or are the first in their families to attend college.
Hirono blasted the administration’s broader efforts to end DEI efforts in schools, as well as larger ongoing actions to axe the 46-year-old U.S. Department of Education.
Trump “has been attacking these programs and is now working to illegally eliminate the programs entirely, not to mention they would like to eliminate the entire federal Department of Education,” she said.
In September, the department decided to gut and reprogram $350 million in discretionary funds that support minority-serving institutions, over claims that the programs for Black, Asian, Indigenous and Hispanic students and more are “racially discriminatory.”
Soon after, the department moved to redirect $495 million in additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities as well as tribal colleges.
Adding fuel to the fire, the Justice Department issued an opinion in December finding several grant programs for minority-serving institutions to be “unconstitutional.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon concurred with that opinion, and the agency said later that month it was “currently evaluating the full impact” of the opinion on affected programs.
‘Plainly cruel’
Mike Hoa Nguyen, associate professor of education and principal investigator for the MSI Data Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said MSIs are “the backbone of American higher education.”
Nguyen said these institutions “provide critical pathways to academic opportunity and achievement for millions of students of color, particularly those from low-income households and those who are often the first in their families to go to college.”
He noted that as a result of the funds being reprogrammed, MSIs have been left “struggling to figure out how to explain the continuity of vital services — services that have been empirically demonstrated to improve student learning, boost academic performance in the classroom and ultimately lead them to graduate.”
Nguyen added that “these funds are about providing the basic resources so students can learn, grow, succeed and contribute to our society and our economy, and eliminating these resources in general — and in such an abrupt manner — isn’t just misaligned and misguided, it’s plainly cruel.”
Rowena Tomaneng, president of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, said “essential programs nationwide have been shuttered or destabilized” as a consequence of the yanked funding.
“These programs are not supplemental — they are essential to closing equity gaps for first-generation and low-income students,” said Tomaneng, whose organization advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, faculty and staff across higher education.
“Their loss will reverse hard-won gains, widen disparities and weaken institutions that serve as gateways to opportunity,” Tomaneng said.
Senators send letter to McMahon
The hearing came a week after Hirono, along with Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, led nearly two dozen colleagues in urging McMahon to reverse her department’s decision to unilaterally halt federal funding for MSIs.
“This decision is yet another example of this Administration attempting to circumvent Congress and its obligations to follow the law,” the senators wrote. “Unilaterally deciding that long-standing programs are unconstitutional, absent a ruling from the judiciary, sets a dangerous precedent and disrupts needed support that colleges and students rely on.”
Meanwhile, Trump signed into law earlier in February a spending package that funds the Education Department at $79 billion this fiscal year.
The measure also “increases funding for all Title III and V programs that support HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal colleges, and other minority-serving institutions,” per a summary from Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats.
Hirono noted that “only Congress can eliminate these programs, and Congress has decided not to do so,” during the hearing.
“In fact, we provided additional funding for these programs in the fiscal year (20)26 spending bill reiterating our support for them, but of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about Congress’ priorities,” she said.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The offices of the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, in Madison. The department administers the state unemployment insurance program. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Gov. Tony Evers has written to the White House, demanding that President Donald Trump release $29 million Wisconsin was promised to complete an upgrade of the state’s unemployment insurance system.
Evers’letter to Trump, sent Tuesday, repeatedly leans into the upgrade project as a tool for “preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in our unemployment insurance system.”
The terminated grants “were being used to efficiently and effectively reduce fraud and ensure correct payment of benefits,” Evers wrote. Referring to the justification stated in the U.S. Department of Labor’sletter in May canceling the grants, Evers added: “Notably, Wisconsin was informed that, apparently, those grants no longer effectuate the priorities of the U.S. DOL.”
Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system upgrade was launched after major snags in the unemployment system in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when business shutdowns spiked unemployment claims in the state. There werewidespread complaints about the system, and Eversfired his first Department of Workforce Development cabinet secretary over the delays.
The Evers administration blamed the state’s computer system used for processing claims, which was based on decades-old technology, and in 2021 lawmakers authorized amajor overhaul of the system.
With an $80 million grant from the federal government, part of the American Rescue Plan Act pandemic relief measure enacted in the first months of President Joe Biden’s administration, DWD proceeded with the upgrades.
“We upgraded the entire claimant portal,” DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview in August. Among a number of improvements, the upgrade made it possible for people filing an unemployment claim to send photos or digital document files to the agency, she said.
“Since modernizing the claimant portal, DWD has consistently paid 88% of regular UI claims within three days or less of the claim being filed,” states the latest quarterly report on the upgrade project. The report, under the signatures of Pechacek and Department of Administration Secretary-designee Kathy Blumenfeld, was filed with the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee Jan. 30.
Starting in September 2021, the Department of Labor awarded DWD four additional ARPA grants totaling $29 million. That included $11.25 million to modernize the UI system portal for employers; $6.3 million for fraud prevention and deduction and related modifications; $6.8 million for improved communications for UI users and $4.5 million in identity authentication and proofing and other improvements.
“The modern employer portal would improve communication between DWD and its customers for tax and wage reporting, employer information and support, responding to submitted unemployment insurance claims verification, and appeal activities all in a secure setting,” Pechacek and Blumenfeld wrote in the Jan. 30 report.
The Trump administration notified Wisconsin May 22 that the $29 million was being terminated. The letter left open the possibility of future grants
“Vendors working on UI modernization had to end their work before the product was complete,” Pechacek and Blumenfeld wrote in their report. “The Trump Administration’s decision to pull funding from UI modernization projects turned partially completed software contracts into sunk costs, effectively wasting many months and hundreds of millions of dollars nationally.”
DWD asked the Labor Department in June and July to reverse its decision, but the request was denied.In August, Evers wrote U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and again urged reinstatement of the grants.
“To be clear, if the Trump Administration does not reverse course and provide the $29 million Wisconsin expected to receive, the state will not be able to complete its UI system modernization project, which is designed to use innovative tools to help efficiently and effectively prevent benefit fraud and abuse,” Evers declared in the August letter.
Wisconsin’s appeals to the Labor Department to reconsider “have largely gone ignored,” Evers told Trump in his letter this week, with no “formal decision” from the department, nor any new grants to modernize UI systems.
“If fighting fraud is truly and earnestly a meaningful commitment of you and your administration, funding for states’ unemployment modernization projects must be restored,” Evers wrote.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The nation’s main agency for handling disaster response and recovery is shuttered for the third time in recent months and its workers are on the verge of missing paychecks, as members of Congress and the White House remain divided in a separate dispute over immigration enforcement.
Lawmakers are raising questions about how the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is affecting the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is housed within DHS. FEMA already lacks a permanent administrator and has been under threat of a major overhaul by President Donald Trump.
The agency is no stranger to shutdowns and keeps much of its workforce going without pay during a funding lapse, though several programs are paused until Congress approves a spending bill.
The longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely it is to have repercussions on FEMA’s staff, especially when thousands of its employees miss their first paycheck Friday.
Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said she hopes that missed income will increase pressure on Democrats to strike a deal on the last remaining government funding bill for fiscal 2026.
“You think about the winter storm the South went through. Now you think of the winter storm that we just had. We clearly need this to be functioning and working,” Britt said.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he doesn’t believe the Trump administration is “serious” about finding bipartisan agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement.
“We’ve sent them multiple compromises. They barely respond,” Murphy said. “I think it feels like they want the shutdown to continue, because they are prioritizing continuing their lawlessness at ICE.”
Minneapolis shootings
Democrats held up DHS funding after federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in late January during a surge in Minnesota, just weeks after different immigration officers shot and killed Renee Good. Both were U.S. citizens.
Democratic leaders have detailed several changes they want to make to immigration enforcement operations, including a requirement that agents wear body cameras and do not wear masks.
Republicans have said they’re willing to negotiate with Democrats on some of those issues, but have requests of their own, including that cities and states that don’t cooperate with federal immigration agencies do so.
The two parties were unable to broker an agreement before stopgap funding for the Department of Homeland Security expired, plunging all of its agencies into another shutdown that’s dragged on since Feb. 14.
This marks the third funding lapse for DHS this fiscal year. The first, which affected large swaths of the federal government, lasted 43 days and ended in mid-November. The second shutdown was partial since some of the full-year spending bills had become law. It lasted about four days, ending Feb. 3.
DHS’s contingency plan says about 20,975 of FEMA’s roughly 24,925 employees will keep working during the funding lapse.
In general, any federal employee tasked with the protection of life or property keeps working during a shutdown, while those assigned to other programs are supposed to be sent home. Neither category receives paychecks until Congress and the administration come to some sort of funding deal.
FEMA’s disaster relief fund is somewhat unique among federal programs since Congress has granted it the authority to deficit spend; it cannot run out of money, even during a shutdown.
A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that FEMA’s non-disaster grant and training programs tend to halt during a shutdown, possibly leading to “delays in awards, possible delays in grant drawdowns, and deferral or cancellation of training and exercises that support state and local preparedness.”
Staffing is also an ongoing issue for FEMA, not just during shutdowns but in general, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog.
“Recent FEMA workforce reductions may reduce how effective a federal response could be in future high-impact disasters,” it states.
FEMA didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from States Newsroom to share exactly how the shutdown has impacted the agency and provide a list of which programs are running during the funding lapse and which are on hold.
Noem criticism
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine., said she’s apprehensive about how the shutdown has affected several agencies housed within Homeland Security.
“My concerns are that FEMA, the Coast Guard and TSA are all bearing the brunt of this shutdown, which is why it is vital that we get an agreement and get one fast,” Collins said, referring to the Transportation Security Administration, which protects the nation’s transportation systems.
Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said there were issues with how DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was managing FEMA before the shutdown began.
“Well, let’s be clear that Noem hasn’t been good about sending out any FEMA emergency grants anyway,” Murray said. “So I’m always concerned about how she operates her agency.”
Trump also hasn’t nominated anyone to lead FEMA during his second term in the White House, opting instead to use a series of people to temporarily run the agency who didn’t need to go through the Senate confirmation process.
Cam Hamilton, one of those FEMA leaders, said on a podcast released in mid-February there was “so much political volatility” during his time working at the agency, in part, because of Noem.
“The talking points were not coherent. I will say that my former boss was not as elaborate and sophisticated in team building,” he said. “So there was not an easy time understanding, what is the message, what is the platform.”
Hamilton worked as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA until he was ousted in May after he testified before Congress he personally did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
‘We’ve had all this snow’
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a senior appropriator and Republican Policy Committee chair, said she’s not happy with the FEMA shutdown.
“I’m not comfortable with what’s shut down at FEMA, and it should put pressure on the Democrats to push this through,” Capito said. “We’ve had all this snow, we’re going to have other disasters, and we rely on FEMA a lot in our state.”
Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said there is money available for disaster relief but that he’s concerned “whether or not people are going to be there to be administering” it.
Peters said he believes leaders at DHS, including Noem, are trying to make the shutdown more problematic than necessary.
“I think she’s trying to create pain,” Peters said. “She’s trying to create pain as opposed to trying to put in safeguards for ICE. It’s really pretty outrageous what she’s doing.”
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A Milwaukee police officer has been accused of abusing his access to the department’s Flock camera network, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee district attorney’s office Tuesday. Josue Ayala is charged with one count of misdemeanor misconduct in public for allegedly using MPD’s Flock network to determine the locations of two people, one of whom was in a romantic relationship with Ayala.
If convicted, Ayala could face up to nine months in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. The criminal complaint states that a negotiation is underway, “a condition of which requires Josue Ayala to resign his position as a police officer” for MPD.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Flock cameras continuously photograph and identify vehicles with AI-powered Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology, and then store that data in a network which can be searched by law enforcement agencies across the country. Distributed by the multi-billion dollar company Flock Safety, the cameras have been criticized for facilitating mass surveillance of citizens using a system that can be easily abused or misused by law enforcement.
According to the criminal complaint, one of the alleged victims used a website to determine that Ayala had conducted numerous searches of that person’s license plate. “VICTIM ONE believed that Officer Ayala ran VICTIM ONE’S license plate over 100 times,” the complaint states. Detectives reviewed audit data from MPD’s Flock network showing that one victim had been searched by Ayala 55 times while the other victim had been searched 124 times over the same time period.
Detectives learned that both victims used to be in a relationship together but had since broken up. After the relationship ended, one of the victims began to date Ayala. The investigation revealed that Ayala had used Flock while dating the victim.
The complaint states that Ayala was on duty when he conducted the searches. When officers use Flock, they need to put in a reason for the search. Ayala used “investigation” in order to conduct the unlawful searches. Last year, an analysis by the Wisconsin Examiner found that “investigation” was the most common search term Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used to access Flock during the first five months of 2025. Other agencies used even more vague search terms, including just a dot. Agencies disagreed about whether officers should be held accountable for using vague terms.
In December 2023, MPD leadership issued a memorandum warning that staff who used Flock for reasons unrelated to law enforcement could face discipline. MPD’s policy on ALPR technology and Flock also states that the system should only be used for “bona fide law enforcement purposes.”
Ayala had been assigned to the MPD’s District 2 station on Lincoln Avenue, but is now on full suspension. The resignation agreement is pending with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, a police department press release states.
Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said in a statement, “I am extremely disappointed to learn about the incident and expect all members, sworn and civilian, to demonstrate the highest ethical standards in the performance of their duties.”
A police officer uses the Flock Safety license plate reader system. (Photo courtesy of Flock Safety)
“If a member violates the code of conduct, they will be held accountable,” Norman added. “… I want to remind the public that everyone is afforded the right of due process under the law, and as such, are innocent until proven guilty.” Norman also directed his department to create additional auditing mechanisms, although the department’s press release does not explain what exactly those mechanisms are.
Ayala’s alleged use of surveillance technology for personal reasons is not an anomaly. In Menasha, an officer is facing felony misconduct in public office charges for using Flock to track a person’s vehicle while he was off duty. In Kenosha County, a sheriff’s deputy is also accused of using Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to track one of his co-workers. The Examiner has filed records requests to obtain the internal investigation regarding the Kenosha sheriff’s deputy.
The chief of the Greenfield Police Department is also facing felony misconduct in public office charges for installing a department-owned pole camera system on his property for personal reasons, and then deleting texts which may have been related to the investigation of the camera’s use. WTMJ reported that the chief captured himself deleting the messages using a body camera he’d worn to document a meeting where he was being offered the chance to retire.
Residents in Milwaukee have been increasingly critical about the use of Flock cameras and facial recognition technology by both the police department and sheriff’s office. After a Fire and Police Commission meeting earlier this month related to facial recognition, where dozens of residents denounced the use of surveillance technologies, Norman announced that MPD would ban facial recognition for its staff. Locals have called for more oversight and transparency around police surveillance technology in the city.
The Milwaukee Police Association (MPD’s union) denounced Norman’s decision to restrict facial recognition. After the charges were announced against Ayala, the union posted on Facebook that he is innocent until proven guilty, that it respects “the integrity of that process,” and clarified that Ayala is not related to the union’s president Alex Ayala.
Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that these latest accusations of Flock misuse “exemplify just how easily Flock cameras can be turned against the very people the technology purports to protect.”
McCray Jones criticized the use of vague terms to search Flock’s network, referencing reporting from the Examiner. “These meaningless, one-word descriptions make it impossible to know what the technology is being used for or whether it’s justified,” he said. McCray Jones called for greater public reporting and oversight of surveillance technologies in Milwaukee.
This story has been updated with comment from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.
(The Center Square) - A group of Wisconsin Democrats and labor leaders are pushing a minimum wage bill that would increase the state’s minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 immediately, progressively increase that to $20 by 2030 and then have…
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