Wisconsin farmers could get grants to use grazing practices that benefit soil health, animal welfare and water quality under a bipartisan bill making its way through the Wisconsin Legislature.
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WPR's "BETA" sat down with Joseph Patel to find out what inspired the making of the documentary, "SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)."
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The film “Brady Street: Portrait of a Neighborhood” shares some of the history of the street, ranging from tales of Polish and Italian immigration to the transformation of the neighborhood into a counterculture hotspot in the 1960s and 70s.
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We Energies is asking state utility regulators to approve special rates for data centers that would require those users to pay for infrastructure built for their developments.
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Phil Cook recently spoke with WPR's "BETA" about his love for the piano and a new record of solo instrumentals titled “Appalachia Borealis."
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WPR's "BETA" talks with author Sara Sligar, who has written a suspenseful, gripping narrative that raises several questions about the nature of truth in our digital age.
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For the first time since 2015, a liberal has been elected chief justice of Wisconsin's Supreme Court. Outgoing Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will take the helm for the next two months before retiring and will be succeeded by fellow liberal Justice Jill Karofsky for the remainder of the two-year term.
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Professional crime-scene cleaner Wicky has to mop up after a particularly grisly murder.
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Wisconsin leaders are reacting to Trump tariffs with tempered optimism, concern or outright castigation.
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. departs after testifying in a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 30, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
A federal judge in Rhode Island will grant a request from Democratic state officials to temporarily prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from cutting state health grants, the judge said at a Thursday afternoon hearing.
U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy said the 24 Democratic attorneys general and governors were likely to prevail on the merits of their case seeking to restore funding that the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services abruptly rescinded late last month.
““I’m going to grant the temporary restraining order. The balance of the equities are to maintaining the funding as it is,” McElroy said after brief arguments from attorneys representing a consortium of state governments and HHS. “The harm to the plaintiff states and the plaintiff agencies if we cease that … is clearly irreparable.”
HHS, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., revoked $11 billion in grant funding to states beginning on March 24, the states wrote in a Tuesday filing requesting the court block the move.
McElroy indicated at least part of her decision was based on the broadness of the Trump administration’s argument.
The administration was hampered from fighting the case after receiving the states’ motion for a temporary restraining order and “4,000 pages of exhibits” mere days ago, Leslie Kane, who represented HHS, said.
“Given the time limitation … it really significantly limits any substantive argument I can make at this time,” Kane said. She still offered a general objection to the “extraordinary emergency relief” she said the states were seeking.
But McElroy, whom Trump appointed during his first presidency, ruled that the “voluminous” record provided by the states weighed in favor of granting the order.
“Given that the government really hasn’t had time to make any kind of objection except a broad objection, I don’t see how I can deny the temporary restraining order on the record that’s before the court, which, again: quite voluminous,” McElroy said.
The rescissions of grant funding in late March from COVID-19-era laws surprised state health departments and led to rapid layoffs and pauses in contract work while states scrambled to understand what other cuts they would need to make.
Sarah Rice, an assistant attorney general in Rhode Island who argued for the Democratic states, listed several effects already or soon to be felt by the states.
In Minnesota, 170 employees had already been laid off, with hundreds more at risk of job loss. Rhode Island employees with extensive training on vaccine storage might be laid off. Subcontractors in Wisconsin were told to pause their work, and Washington state may be unable to move substance abuse and mental health patients from a “high-acuity” treatment setting to community treatment, Rice said.
“These are just exemplars from the very many declarations that the state employees put together,” she said.
States had no advance warning their funding would be pulled, and were especially shocked by the reversal of funding because HHS had told them how to continue to use COVID-19 funding, Rice said.
“This was quite a surprising turn because HHS had prior issued guidance that instructed the states how to modify these programs to comply with the appropriations statutes after the public health emergency related to COVID-19 had ended,” Rice said.
The department had even granted states extensions for various grants as late as June 2027, Rice added.
The attorneys general of Colorado, Rhode Island, California, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania brought the case.
New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2025 in Wilmington, California. The Japanese automotive maker is being impacted by President Trump’s new 25 percent imported automobile tariffs. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Markets and business owners in the United States and around the world reeled Thursday following President Donald Trump’s announcement of sweeping and steep tariffs that are not “reciprocal” but rather punish many countries that U.S. importers heavily rely on, experts say.
U.S. stocks plummeted, posting the worst one-day drop since June 2020, financial media reported at the closing bell Thursday. Business groups issued criticisms, experts predicted increases in household spending and even a conservative Republican senator pushed legislation that would increase congressional power over tariffs.
Trump unveiled the tariffs Wednesday during a White House Rose Garden event billed as “Liberation Day,” where he told the crowd that trading partners and allies have “torn apart our once beautiful American dream.”
His answer: Signing a “historic executive order instituting reciprocal tariffs on countries throughout the world. Reciprocal. That means they do it to us, and we do it to them. Very simple.”
But economists say the new U.S. tariffs Trump revealed Wednesday — illustrated on a large display table — do not match one-for-one other countries’ levies, as Trump said during his remarks.
Trump held in his hands a chart that claimed to show a list of other countries’ taxes on American imports.
But it was wrong.
Vietnam does not charge a 90% tariff on American imports, as the chart said. Rather its rate for imported U.S. goods was on average 9.4% in 2023, according to the World Trade Organization.
“The actual calculation (circulated by the White House) doesn’t factor in other countries’ tariffs,” said Brad Setser, senior fellow on global trade at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank focused on international affairs.
In other words, Setser told States Newsroom Thursday, “It’s a tariff on big bilateral trade deficits.”
And so, what does that mean? And why did the president’s chart say that the U.S. would now be charging a 46% tax on every imported good from Vietnam?
Vietnam is a small country, but a competitive exporter, particularly in broadcasting equipment, microchips and computers. And the U.S. is a big customer.
In 2023, the U.S. imported $118 billion in goods from Vietnam, while Vietnam imported about $9.6 billion in U.S. products that year, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, a trade data project with roots at MIT.
The White House claimed on the chart that Vietnam applies a 90% tariff on the U.S. — when actually that percentage is roughly the dollar amount of the U.S. trade deficit divided by the dollar amount of how much the U.S. imports from the country. So, $120B – $10B = $110B, then divide that by $120B, and you get roughly 91%.
Trump said he would be “kind” and give trading partners “discounted” tariff rates by about half, and that’s how Vietnam landed at a 46% tax on its imports into the U.S.
“So Vietnam got hit with a huge tariff. It is literally that simple,” Setser said.
Economists and journalists almost immediately took to social media to question the glaring inaccuracy.
The new rates are a “bombshell” on U.S. allies and trading partners, said Jack Zhang, a professor of political science who runs the Trade War Lab at the University of Kansas.
Vietnam tried to head off Trump’s announcement in March by cutting levies on U.S. imports and signing “big purchase agreements,” Zhang said, but it didn’t work.
Historically countries have negotiated tariffs product by product in “laborious” talks, Zhang said.
“You know, ‘You reduce tariffs on your stuff, I will reduce tariffs on maybe some other stuff.’ And it nets out to be fair. This sort of lazy, back-of-the-envelope kind of calculation based on the trade deficit, it makes it really hard to negotiate in those terms,” he said.
Products from the European Union will now be taxed at 20%, Japan’s new rate is 24%, and South Korea’s 25% — all significant U.S. allies and trading partners. The EU has already threatened to retaliate if the U.S. does not come to the negotiating table.
Countries carrying a trade surplus with the U.S. — meaning they import more American goods than they sell back to the U.S. — did not escape the policy, as Trump imposed a universal 10% tariff on every nation.
The United Kingdom, which runs a trade surplus with the U.S. and in 2023 charged an average of 3.8% on imported American products, will now see a 10% tax on its items headed to U.S. buyers. Australia, whose Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the tariffs “totally unwarranted,” faces the same situation.
Trump’s informational table falsely stated that the U.K., Australia and a host of other countries — including the Heard and McDonald Islands, inhabited by penguins and seals — have been charging a 10% tax on American goods.
Trump did not include Canada and Mexico in his announcement Wednesday.
But those countries are already subject to up to 25% taxes on steel, aluminum and other imports that the administration enacted in March, after declaring emergencies over illicit fentanyl and immigrants crossing the northern and southern borders.
Additionally Trump’s 25% foreign car tax launched Thursday. The neighboring countries factor big into the automobile supply chain.
“Given the prospective damage to their own people, the American administration should eventually change course, but I don’t want to give false hope. The president believes that what he is doing is best for the American economy,” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday in remarks that streamed on C-SPAN. Carney said he and Trump have agreed to economic and security negotiations next month.
The proposed tariffs will amount to an average $2,100 tax increase per American household, according to an analysis released Thursday by the center-right Tax Foundation, which advocates for lower taxes.
The average levy on all imports will reach 18.8%, compared to 2.5% in 2024, according to the foundation’s modeling.
Numerous trade and advocacy groups spoke out against the tariffs.
The National Association of Manufacturers urged the Trump administration to “minimize tariff costs for manufacturers that are investing and expanding in the U.S.”
The center-right Taxpayers Protection Alliance issued a scathing statement Thursday. “American consumers and taxpayers should be appalled by this executive overreach,” said its president David Williams.
States Newsroom spoke to small business owners from around the country who expressed fear about the cost of day-to-day supplies. One Arizona coffee shop owner told the news outlet that he purchased a year’s supply of disposable coffee cups from China last year in anticipation of Trump igniting a trade war.
Trump announced a 34% tax on Chinese imports Wednesday, and some experts say that will stack on top of the existing 20% tariffs Trump imposed during his first administration that were kept in place by former President Joe Biden.
A bipartisan pair of senators introduced on Thursday what they’ve titled the “American Trade Review Act of 2025,” aiming to claw back congressional power over the president’s near unilateral decision-making on U.S. tariffs.
“Inflation and high costs are a threat to the stability and prosperity of American businesses of all sizes, to our farmers and to our consumers,” Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state said on the Senate floor. She and Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa are co-sponsoring the legislation.
“We live now in an interconnected world, a global economy, and advances in technology and transportation have brought that world closer and closer together. We have a global economy,” Cantwell continued.
States Newsroom sent a list of questions to the White House regarding their informational table of tariffs presented Wednesday and an opportunity to respond to criticism.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said, “Trillions in historic investment commitments from industry leaders ranging from Apple to Hyundai to TSMC are indicative of how this administration is working with the private sector while implementing President Trump’s pro-growth, pro-worker America First agenda of tariffs, deregulation, tax cuts, and the unleashing of American energy.
“These America First economic policies delivered historic job, wage, and investment growth in his first term, and everyone from Main Street to Wall Street is again going to thrive as President Trump secures our nation’s economic future,” the statement continued.
TSMC, a Taiwanese mega semiconductor producer, received $6.6 billion in direct funding from the U.S., plus $5 billion in cheap loans, under Biden’s administration after he signed the CHIPS and Science Act, according to an analysis by the Council on Foreign Relations. The country announced an additional $100 billion investment in early March.
Trump announced a 32% tariff on the island nation.
The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments in 2023. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in a case related to a statewide literacy program that considers Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto power and lawmakers’ handling of emergency funds.
The case comes as the result of the last state budget and efforts by state lawmakers, Gov. Tony Evers and the Department of Public Instruction to overhaul literacy programs in Wisconsin.
During the 2023-25 budget cycle, lawmakers placed $50 million aside in an emergency fund controlled by the Joint Finance Committee that was meant to go towards funding new literacy programs. Lawmakers also passed AB 321 — now 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 — to establish the policy portions of the initiative, which included creating a new office in the Department of Public Instruction and instructing the agency to hire literacy coaches and create a grant program.
Lawmakers subsequently passed SB 971, now 2023 Wisconsin Act 100, to create a mechanism for DPI to spend the money when the funds were transferred. A partial veto by Gov. Tony Evers caused lawmakers to sue, saying it wasn’t an appropriations bill therefore not subject to a partial veto. Evers argued that the law included an appropriation and further asserted that DPI has been urging lawmakers to release the funds, which will lapse back into the state’s $4 billion budget surplus if not used before June 30.
Before the Supreme Court heard the case, a Dane County judge had ruled Evers’ veto proper, but said there wasn’t a case for the release of the funds. Both parties appealed to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, but the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed to take the appeal directly
Assistant Attorney General Charlotte Gibson, the Department of Justice lawyer for DPI and Evers, argued that lawmakers don’t have the power to withhold the money and the court should order the release of the money to DPI.
The issues at hand, Gibson said, “reflect an interlocking strategy to control how the executive branch spends funds and to limit the governor’s partial veto power. It involves dissecting appropriations into multiple bills and crediting funds set aside for executive agency programs to [the Joint Finance Committee] to control their destination and use. Those efforts are illegal, and they misread the governor’s veto authority.”
Gibson said that the intention of the law, and the money being placed in the emergency fund, was to give money to specific agencies for specific purposes. A brief notes that “over the past few decades, the Legislature has increasingly used that appropriation not for emergencies, but rather to fund anticipated expenses through a legislative committee that purports to retain veto power over how the executive branch spends appropriated money.”
Gibson said that the purpose of the emergency fund statute was not to serve as “a holding pen for lots of money that the Legislature wanted to give [the committee] power over,” but lawmakers are using it “to say, actually, we can spend it on whatever purpose…”
“We think to correct the constitutional violation here, this agency can order those funds to be released,” Gibson said.
Justices questioned Gibson on why the funds would need to be released to DPI if there was never an appropriation.
“The reality is the money’s sitting in a fund right now, and it hasn’t done anything with it,” Justice Rebecca Dallet said. “For all, we know they are going to use it for an emergency and not give it to anybody for anything else … that just hasn’t happened yet.”
Gibson replied that DPI has asked for the money and lawmakers haven’t given it to the agency.
“But, I’m saying, [JFC] hasn’t appropriated it anywhere,” Dallet said. “Is DPI having an emergency where you think this is emergency money that you should get…?”
“No, we think it’s unconstitutional for DPI not to get the money.” Gibson said.
“Even if you were right, that the statutory structure here is constitutionally problematic, I still don’t see how you win and get the money, because that is not what the law says,” Justice Brian Hagedorn said. “There’s no provision of law that actually gives the money to DPI or appropriates the money to DPI.”
Gibson noted that the co-chairs of the committee Sen. Howard Marklein and Rep. Mark Born have said the money is earmarked for the purpose of the literacy programs.
“What we’re struggling with is that we understand that there are hints and clues, earmarks — so different from an appropriation — and the way I’m looking at it, it could probably be parked in that fund indefinitely and that’s where I’m struggling with what’s the legal nexus,” said Justice Janet Protasiewicz.
Ryan Walsh, the attorney representing the Legislature, argued Evers’ veto was inappropriate because the bill was not an appropriation bill, and that the remedy should be that the bill is law as passed by the Legislature, without Evers’ veto.
“You can’t have an appropriation bill that makes no appropriation. It just doesn’t make sense,” Walsh said. However, he also said that if he is wrong then it means the law was improperly enacted because lawmakers passed it by voice vote, not roll call as is required of appropriations bills.
Walsh said that under his argument the money would stay in JFC and go back to the treasury at the end of the biennium.
“It doesn’t go to DPI,” Walsh said. “There is no obligation for [JFC] to disperse this money.”
Justice Jill Karofsky said that she didn’t disagree about the discretion of the committee, but asked about the potential for lawmakers to abuse the discretion.
“There aren’t really any guardrails here,” Karofsky said.
Walsh said abuse “just doesn’t happen.”
“What would stop the Legislature from emptying every last dollar of the Wisconsin treasury into a [JFC] emergency account?” Karofsky asked further.
Walsh said many things could prevent that from happening, including the governor refusing to sign a budget that does so.
Walsh also said the emergency account is a small portion of the state budget. He said that in the last 10 years the percentage of the budget that has gone to the supplemental account has ranged from 0.06% in the 2017-19 budget to 0.33% in the 2021-23 budget.
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley said she thought “part of why we are here [is] that some want us to take a look at this structure — allowing JFC to have this discretion — and that to not address it would be a rather lame opinion.”
Walsh said that he didn’t think the Court needed to reach the constitutional question.
“I don’t think anybody is insisting that you decide whether [Wisconsin should retain the] supplemental funding structure, which has been in place a long time, and by the way, the governor and the Legislature are assuming it’s still in place,” Walsh said. “We have a new budget pending… There are lots of reasons to be cautious here.”
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Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks during a confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Oz has been confirmed as President Donald Trump’s nominee to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed former television personality and onetime Pennsylvania political candidate Mehmet Oz as director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The 53-45 party-line vote places Oz at the helm of the federal agency responsible for administering health care programs relied on by 1 in 4 Americans, including children, seniors and lower-income people.
His confirmation comes as Republicans in Congress look to Medicaid, a state-federal partnership that covers medical expenses for some low-income and older Americans, as a source for hundreds of billions in spending cuts to help pay for extending the 2017 GOP tax law.
Oz testified during his confirmation hearing in mid-March that there are several “painful truths” confronting federal programs within CMS.
“Health care expenditures are growing 2 to 3% faster than our economy; not sustainable. The Medicare trust fund will be insolvent within a decade, that’s the 2.9% taken out of your paycheck,” Oz said. “Medicaid is the number one expense item in most states, consuming 30% of those state budgets, and that’s crowding out essential services like schools and public safety that many of you spent your careers trying to develop. Our health care cost per person in this country is twice that of other developed nations.”
Oz said that chronic disease, which he argued is “linked to poor lifestyle choices,” drives much of the federal spending on health care. He singled out obesity as a central issue.
Oz testified he intended to “empower beneficiaries with better tools and more transparency,” “incentivize health care providers to optimize care with real-time information” in part by using artificial intelligence to “liberate doctors and nurses from paperwork,” and modernize efforts that track waste, fraud and abuse.
Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said during the hearing that Oz’s comments during a failed Senate campaign about privatizing Medicare were unacceptable.
Wyden also criticized Oz for promoting products on this daytime television show that had no scientific research supporting their claims of improving people’s health or preventing disease.
“Dr. Oz has used his program to promote some of the most ludicrous wellness grifting that I’ve heard about to date,” Wyden said.
Idaho Republican Sen. Mike Crapo, chairman of the committee, said during a floor speech Thursday that Oz was well qualified to run CMS.
“At his hearing, Dr. Oz spoke strongly about his desire to modernize the CMS and encourage a healthy lifestyle for all Americans,” Crapo said. “His vision for treating the underlying causes of chronic disease and equipping providers with innovative technologies to serve patients will also be a much- needed sea change at CMS.”
The agency manages several federal health programs, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the health insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act.
The agency spent more than $1.5 trillion during the last full fiscal year, about 22% of all federal spending.
The more than 6,000 people who work at CMS as well as contractors “process over one billion Medicare claims annually, monitor quality of care, provide the states with matching funds for Medicaid benefits, and develop policies and procedures designed to give the best possible service to beneficiaries,” according to the latest financial report.
CMS is one of many agencies housed in the Department of Health and Human Services that is subject to restructuring plans from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Oz received his undergraduate degree from Harvard University before earning a joint M.D. and MBA from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and Wharton Business School.
He starred in the daytime show “Dr. Oz,” which ran from 2009 until 2022.
He won the Republican primary in the 2022 Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race but was defeated during the general election by Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.
When President Donald Trump announced in November he intended to nominate Oz to lead CMS, he wrote that Oz would “cut waste and fraud within our Country’s most expensive Government Agency, which is a third of our Nation’s Healthcare spend, and a quarter of our entire National Budget.”
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley speaks at an election night party for Justice-elect Susan Crawford. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Justice Ann Walsh Bradley will retire from the Wisconsin Supreme Court in July with one more title on her curriculum vitae: chief justice.
Bradley, the Court’s most senior member, was elected by her colleagues Thursday to serve as the leader of the Court. She’ll succeed outgoing Chief Justice Annette Ziegler, whose second two-year term in the top position ends April 30.
Bradley’s term will run about two months starting May 1, and she’ll step down June 30 in anticipation of her retirement. In preparation for that, the justices also elected Justice Jill Karofsky to fill out the remainder of the two-year chief justice term, ending April 30, 2027.
Both Bradley and Karofsky, who was elected to the Court in 2020, are members of the Court’s liberal majority.
From the late 19th century to the mid-2010s, the state Supreme Court’s chief justice had been selected by seniority. In 2015, a constitutional amendment drafted by the Legislature’s Republican majority changed the selection process to a majority vote of the Court’s seven justices. The amendment also instituted a two-year term for the chief justice.
The amendment was aimed at unseating Justice Shirley Abrahamson, the Court’s first woman justice. Abrahamson had been chief justice since 1996, the second-longest to serve in the position. After voters ratified the amendment in April 2015, a majority of the justices — at the time, five conservatives — elected Justice Pat Roggensack chief. They reelected her in 2019, then elected Ziegler as her successor in 2021.
Bradley said in a statement that her election as chief justice is a “tremendous honor.”
“It has been my life’s goal to honor the rule of law, enhance access to justice, and serve the 5.9 million people who call Wisconsin home,” Bradley said. “Serving as Chief Justice enables me to further those goals.”
Bradley also participated in her final oral arguments Thursday morning, where Ziegler delivered kind words about her and called attention to her thorough resume and accomplishments
Prior to her time in law, Bradley served as a high school teacher before earning her law degree at UW-Madison Law School in 1976. Bradley worked in private practice, as a city attorney and as a public defender, including being appointed to the state public defender board in 1983.
In 1985, Bradley was appointed to serve as a circuit court judge in Marathon County.
Bradley won her first term on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1995, and was reelected for two consecutive terms in 2005 and 2015. She decided to retire this year and will be succeeded by Justice-elect Susan Crawford, who defeated her challenger Brad Schimel Tuesday ensuring a 4-3 liberal majority on the Court until at least 2028.
Ziegler said Bradley has likely heard over 2,400 cases in oral arguments, give or take some cases, during her many years of service.
“I can assure you it’s quite impressive,” Ziegler said. “I don’t know how many opinions that you’ve written, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, but that number is also certainly impressive, and so, I would like to thank you Justice Ann Walsh Bradley for your service to the public and your service on this court.”
Bradley thanked Ziegler and said that it’s been an honor to serve. She also thanked her husband and family for their support throughout the years.
“People ask me, ‘Will you miss this place and miss this job?’ And, of course, I will,” Bradley said. “What makes this job is not only the heavy responsibility and an opportunity to serve, but an opportunity to serve with people who care deeply about the rule of law and care deeply about the people of this state.”
Karofsky said in a statement about her election to serve as chief justice that she appreciates the confidence of her colleagues and she will “continue to work respectfully with every member of this Court to ensure the administration of Court business is conducted in a fair and efficient manner.”
“The people of Wisconsin have great faith in this Court, and I intend to be a Chief that increases the people’s confidence even further,” Karofsky said. “I hope to be someone that every judge and staff person in the judicial system finds approachable, so we can continue to improve the service we provide in all 72 counties, keeping each of us safe and ensuring access to justice.”
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The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
This story was updated at 6:44 p.m. EDT.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education demanded in a letter to state education leaders on Thursday that they certify all K-12 schools in their states are complying with an earlier Dear Colleague letter banning diversity, equity and inclusion practices if they want to keep receiving federal financial assistance.
The department’s sweeping order gives K-12 state education agencies 10 days to collect the certifications of compliance from local school governing bodies, and then sign them and return them to the federal department.
The new demand stems from a February letter threatening to rescind federal funds for schools that use DEI, or race-conscious practices, in admissions, programming, training, hiring, scholarships and other aspects of student life.
Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said “federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” in a statement Thursday.
“When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal antidiscrimination requirements,” Trainor said. He added that “unfortunately, we have seen too many schools flout or outright violate these obligations, including by using (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs to discriminate against one group of Americans to favor another based on identity characteristics in clear violation of Title VI.”
He did not cite examples in the statement.
Trainor said the department “is taking an important step toward ensuring that states understand — and comply with — their existing obligations under civil rights laws and Students v. Harvard.”
In the February letter, Trainor offered a wide-ranging interpretation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2023 involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The nation’s highest court struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
Trainor wrote that though the ruling “addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly.”
The four-page letter raised a slew of questions for schools — from pre-K through college — over what exactly falls within the requirements.
The department later released a Frequently Asked Questions document on the letter in an attempt to provide more guidance.
In the document, the department noted that it’s prohibited from “exercising control over the content of school curricula” and “nothing in Title VI, its implementing regulations, or the Dear Colleague Letter requires or authorizes a school to restrict any rights otherwise protected by the First Amendment.”
The agency also clarified that “programs focused on interests in particular cultures, heritages, and areas of the world” are allowed as long as “they are open to all students regardless of race.”
Meanwhile, legal challenges are already underway against the Dear Colleague letter, including one spearheaded by the American Federation of Teachers and another from the National Education Association.
“In the middle of a school year, the president is trying to bully the very same school districts that he insisted, just a few weeks ago, should be in charge of education,” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said in a Thursday statement.
Weingarten added that “this is a power grab and a money grab — and it’s also blatantly unlawful.”
“We know the administration wants to divert federal education funds into block grants, vouchers or tax cuts, but it’s simply not legal; only Congress can do that. Further, federal statute explicitly prohibits any president from telling schools and colleges what to teach, and funds cannot be withheld on the basis of Title VI Civil Rights Act claims without due process,” she said.
In a Thursday statement, Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said “educators and parents know that teaching should be guided by what is best for students, not by threat of illegal restrictions and punishment.”
“That is why we sued the Trump administration — and we stand by our lawsuit,” she said.
“This latest action by the Trump administration to shut down free speech and coerce educators to abandon inclusive practices at school remains illegal and unconstitutional as we pointed out in our legal filing,” she added.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth speaks during his Senate Armed Services Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Jan. 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department’s Office of the Inspector General announced Thursday it has opened an investigation into Secretary Pete Hegseth’s highly criticized use of the Signal messaging app to communicate about plans to bomb Yemen.
The evaluation stems from a letter the chairman and ranking member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Democrat Jack Reed of Rhode Island, sent last week, asking the watchdog agency to look into the matter.
Acting Defense Department Inspector General Steven A. Stebbins wrote in a memo announcing the investigation that the Inspector General Act of 1978 “authorizes us to have access to personnel and materials as we determine necessary to perform our oversight in a timely manner.”
The purpose of the evaluation, he wrote, “is to determine the extent to which the Secretary of Defense and other DoD personnel complied with DoD policies and procedures for the use of a commercial messaging application for official business. Additionally, we will review compliance with classification and records retention requirements.”
The investigation will take place in Washington, D.C., as well as U.S. Central Command Headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
Concerns about the use of Signal, an encrypted messaging app available commercially, began after The Atlantic published an article detailing how its editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to a group chat exchanging messages about national security plans. The ensuing controversy has been dubbed “Signalgate.”
Vice President J.D. Vance, Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and others were all in the group.
They were discussing plans for U.S. troops to bomb Houthi rebels in Yemen, which has raised significant concerns about how senior Trump administration officials are communicating and handling classified information.
A NOAA NO-XP radar antenna prior to operations in VORTEX 2 in Norman, Oklahoma, on Oct. 5, 2010. (Photo credit NOAA)
Democrats on the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee and a panel of experts on Wednesday blasted the Trump administration’s reduction to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s budget and workforce, citing consequences for everyday weather data, national security and affected industries.
Virtually every American interacts with NOAA’s weather data, which supplies forecasting services across the country.
The agency’s climate and oceanic research supports the U.S. Navy’s operations and even the commercial fishing industry – described during the forum as having “a love-hate relationship” with the agency – depends on NOAA to open and close fisheries, the lawmakers and experts said.
But those missions were imperiled in February by the firings of 7% of NOAA’s staff of scientists and others overseeing federal research and monitoring of weather and oceans, the group of Democrats said.
“These critical functions are being dismantled by the sweeping, indiscriminate layoffs of nonpartisan public servants and facility closures,” U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat who led the forum, said.
The reductions in force at NOAA, which houses agencies including the National Weather Service, National Ocean Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service and the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, were part of across-the-board cuts to the federal workforce sought by President Donald Trump and billionaire White House adviser Elon Musk.
The group of Democrats, who met without involvement of the committee’s Republican majority, said the cuts would hurt a wide range of Americans who depend on the agency’s data collection and rulemaking.
One of NOAA’s core missions is collecting and publishing weather data across the country used in forecasting apps and other common sources of weather information.
“There is no weather forecast that’s produced in this country that isn’t dependent on NOAA, none” Mary Glackin, a former deputy under secretary for operations at the agency under presidents of both parties, said.
The availability of federal data made possible the creation of companies like Accuweather, which started by collecting data in a garage, Glackin said.
U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Jon White told the panel NOAA’s extensive forecasting data was also critical to naval operations, saying reductions in that data would hurt the military’s readiness, both shipping out of domestic stations and in potential conflict zones.
“Hurricane forecasting and typhoon forecasting rely on the data from NOAA, whether it’s satellite data,” White said. “Reductions in that data and that information provide critical threats to our military infrastructure. Ships that (start) out of Norfolk and San Diego rely on that information about upcoming storms, especially hurricanes on the East Coast. … It’s not just billions of dollars of ship damage: It’s lives that are at stake.”
Magaziner was the one who called the commercial fishing industry’s connection with NOAA “a love-hate relationship,” but he and witnesses noted that the agency oversees the most basic functions the industry needs to operate.
Sarah Schumann, a fisherman with operations in Rhode Island and Alaska, criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for allying too strongly with offshore wind developers, but said the new administration’s actions were also detrimental to the industry.
“These cuts will bog down the agency’s ability to serve the public for fishermen,” Schumann said. “Because of climate change, we desperately need faster, more nimble and more collaborative data collection and decision-making, and there is a very slim chance we’re going to get that with this.”
Trump’s slowdown of regulations – requiring federal agencies to withdraw 10 regulations for every one new regulation put into place – has also hampered commercial fishing operations.
Opening and closing fisheries for a season are done through NOAA rulemaking, environmental attorney Lizzie Lewis told the panel. Bluefin tuna fisheries were not closed on time and were overfished by 125% and fisheries in New England are unlikely to open on time, she said.
The cuts, part of Musk’s initiative to make government more efficient, are not having their intended effect in streamlining government, Magaziner and others on the panel, including New Mexico’s Melanie Stansbury, said.
“The assertion that mass layoffs will somehow improve efficiency is not only misleading, it is outright dangerous,” Magaziner said. “Real people, real jobs and real lives are on the line. Without NOAA’s real-time data, emergency responders are left without the critical information they need to respond to impending disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, floods and severe storms putting millions at risk.”
The layoffs also decimated morale at the agency and made attracting qualified young people to its public service mission more difficult, Lewis told the panel.
“We are losing an entire generation of scientists and leaders who can help this country,” Lewis said. “We can keep its people safe and can grow its economy. And that to me is the devastating human cost.”
The U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans released an updated budget resolution Wednesday that sets a May 9 deadline for more than a dozen committees to approve their slice of the massive package that will permanently extend the GOP tax cuts and make significant reductions in spending.
The 70-page budget resolution, however, includes different guidelines for the House and Senate committees, allowing GOP leaders to sidestep their differences on policy for the moment, but not the long haul.
The budget resolution also sets the stage for the House to raise the debt limit by $4 trillion and the Senate to lift it by not more than $5 trillion in the reconciliation package.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote in a statement that final approval of the budget resolution would “unlock the ability for the appropriate Senate committees to fully fund our border needs for four years, provide much-needed financial relief to our military at a time of great danger, make the 2017 tax cuts permanent to energize the economy, and do what has been promised for decades: go through every line item of the budget to cut wasteful and unnecessary spending — hopefully by the trillions.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., released a statement of his own, saying the “parliamentarian has reviewed the Budget Committee’s substitute amendment and deemed it appropriate for consideration under the Budget Act.”
“It is now time for the Senate to move forward with this budget resolution in order to further advance our shared Republican agenda in Congress,” Thune wrote.
The Senate parliamentarian is the nonpartisan scorekeeper who ensures everything included in a reconciliation bill meets the chamber’s strict rules.
The complicated reconciliation process will allow the GOP to approve its core policy goals without needing support from Democrats in the Senate, where 60 votes are usually needed to advance legislation. Reconciliation does, however, come with several hoops to jump through.
One of those hurdles will come later this week when the Senate endures the dreaded vote-a-rama; a marathon amendment voting session that typically lasts overnight. After that, senators will be able to send the budget resolution to the House for final approval.
The tax-and-spending blueprint released Wednesday will send a dozen House committees instructions on how to draft their pieces of the package, while 10 Senate committees will write bills.
Typically, the committee instructions, which just include a budget target, are similar, if not identical, for the House and Senate. But differences of opinion between Republican leaders about how much to cut federal spending, as well as other disagreements, led to differing instructions.
The House has a significantly higher threshold for cutting government spending than the Senate.
The Agriculture Committee needs to slice at least $230 billion; Education and Workforce must reduce spending by a minimum of $330 billion; Energy and Commerce needs to cut no less than $880 billion; Financial Services must find at least $1 billion in savings; Natural Resources has a minimum of $1 billion; Oversight and Government Reform has a floor of $50 billion; and the Transportation Committee needs to reduce deficits by $10 billion or more.
House committees that can increase the federal deficit include the Armed Services Committee with a cap of $100 billion in new spending, Homeland Security with a $90 billion ceiling for new funding for programs it oversees, Judiciary with a maximum of $110 billion and Ways and Means, which can increase deficits up to $4.5 trillion for tax cuts.
Senators set a much lower bar for themselves in terms of spending cuts, though the way the reconciliation instructions are written, as a floor and not a ceiling, will give leeway for those committees to cut much more.
Four Senate committees — Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; Energy and Natural Resources; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP — must each find at least $1 billion in spending cuts over the 10-year budget window.
Senate committees also got instructions for increasing the deficit, which will allow them to spend up to the dollar amount outlined in the budget resolution. Those committees include Armed Services at $150 billion; Commerce, Science and Transportation with $20 billion; Environment and Public Works at $1 billion; Finance with $1.5 trillion in new deficits, likely for tax cuts; Homeland Security at $175 billion and Judiciary with $175 billion.
Once the House and Senate both vote to adopt the same budget resolution, the committees can formally begin drafting and marking up their bills.
Those bills, according to the instructions, must be sent to the Budget committees before May 9. That panel will then bundle all of the various pieces together into one reconciliation package and send it to the floor.
The House and Senate must vote to approve the same reconciliation package before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature and become law.
Republicans have a paper-thin majority in the House and will need to ensure that lawmakers from across the party support all of the elements going into the reconciliation package. Even a few defectors in that chamber could block the bill from moving forward.
Senate GOP leaders have a bit more wiggle room, but cannot lose more than three of their members and pass a reconciliation bill.
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who said the power issues in Wisconsin mirrors current federal issues, at a press conference in December 2024. (Photo by: Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in a case that could determine whether a law passed in 2018 that requires approval from legislators on civil settlements violates the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches.
The case — Josh Kaul v. Wisconsin State Legislature — is the latest in an ongoing legal struggle focused on the division of power between the Legislature and the executive branch.
A law passed after Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Kaul were elected in 2018, but before they took office, gave the Legislature, through the Joint Finance Committee, the ability to sign off on and decide how to spend court settlement money. That had been a power traditionally held by the attorney general.
It was part of a slate of laws passed and signed by Republicans during the lame duck period just weeks before the new Democratic administration took power in 2019. The Joint Finance Committee has become the vehicle for lawmakers to maintain control over actions that agencies take outside of the legislative process, and this is not the first lawsuit the state’s top court has heard on the issue.
The case made it to the state Supreme Court after Kaul appealed a 2024 decision by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals District II that overturned a favorable decision made in 2022 by Dane County judge and now Justice-elect Susan Crawford.
Kaul said at a press conference after the arguments that the actions Wisconsin Republicans have taken to strip power from the executive branch are similar to those being taken by Republicans at the federal level.
“What we are seeing in these cases in Wisconsin in a lot of ways mirrors what’s going on with the federal government right now,” Kaul said. “At the federal level what we’re seeing is the executive branch trying to pull legislative power into its own hands and making decisions about how legislation should be applied or whether it should be applied. Here in Wisconsin what we saw instead was an effort to concentrate power in the Legislature.”
Kaul said that checks and balances and “multiple different sources of authority within the government” are necessary to protect the “our freedom and our liberty.”
“That’s why we have three co-equal branches of government,” Kaul said. “This case is about supporting that principle and ensuring that the separation of powers remains strong here in Wisconsin.”
During the arguments, Assistant Attorney General Hannah Jurss argued that the “executive branch has the power to execute the law” and the “Legislature’s constitutional power is to write the law.”
In a 2019 case, the state Supreme Court ruled that the law was constitutional. However, in a brief, Jurrs argues that the decision was not a broad endorsement of the law, but only “located a few instances where the statutes could be applied constitutionally and went no further.”
Jurrs argued the law is unconstitutional in part because there is no way for the executive to override a decision by the lawmakers, which has infringed on the executive branch’s work. The 2018 law has led to disputes between Kaul’s office and lawmakers over resolving cases involving state taxpayers.
“Having this sword, the legislative committee sword, hanging over our head infects our decision making at every stage and every action… whether to prosecute, how to prosecute. How to talk with our clients, when to pursue negotiation, and the terms,” Jurrs said. “We’ve presented 13 cases that [the committee] as a body never even convened to consider.”
Jurrs called the legislative seizure of executive powers an “unprecedented and unparalleled intrusion into execution of the law.” She also argued that it limits the ability for the attorney general to act in multi-state lawsuits.
Jurrs said that if the law had been in place in the 1990s when the state negotiated a tobacco resolution it would have led to a more complicated situation.
“Hey, 44 other states, we’re entering this gigantic resolution with the major tobacco companies. We know that everybody else has come to this agreement. It has to be really confidential, but excuse us, we’re gonna have to hold everything and we have to take this to a committee of our Legislature so that they can decide whether they want to rewrite this agreement or allow us to enter it or not,” Jurrs said.
Justice Rebecca Bradley expressed skepticism about Jurrs’ argument that the power should lie with the attorney general without the oversight of lawmakers.
“The Legislature in the provision that you’re attacking has prescribed the powers and duties of the attorney general, which is to basically give… the Legislature a check-and-balance on what the attorney general is doing and what I find frightening is that one person gets to make all of the policy decisions under your argument about what is going to be done with what is the taxpayers money,” Bradley said. “It’s not the attorney general’s money.”
Misha Tseytlin, the attorney representing the Legislature, argued that the statute serves as a check on the attorney general’s power and lawmakers have an interest in overseeing the money.
“It’s important to remember we’re talking about not the attorney general’s money, not the agency’s money, but the people’s money,” Tseytlin said. He said an example is the $420 million opioid settlement that was reached and approved by lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee in 2021. “The settlement was submitted to the Joint Finance committee, and it was approved by The Joint Finance committee. The Legislature in carrying out its constitutional duty to balance the budget of the state had to take into account all sorts of income, including that $420 million.”
Justice Rebecca Dallet questioned Tseytlin on how much power he was arguing lawmakers should have over funds.
“Any source of income that comes into the Legislature they’ve got control of, so could the Legislature appoint a committee to return tax returns to make sure they are getting the money that they’re supposed to?” Dallet asked. “My point in asking the question… is where does this end? Every single dollar that comes in means the Legislature has total control… There is no role for executive power here.”
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When a child's birth is covered by Medicaid, county social service agencies may require the father to pay back Medicaid costs as part of a child support order. (Getty Images)
Gov. Tony Evers is asking Wisconsin counties to give up a practice they’ve relied on for years: clawing back money from the absent fathers of children whose mothers were Medicaid recipients when they gave birth.
The practice is called birth cost recovery. When Medicaid covers the birth of a child and the father doesn’t live with the rest of the family, county social service departments and the courts may add a requirement to repay Medicaid to a father’s child support order.
In his 2025-27 state budget proposal, Evers wants to end the practice, and he’s offering counties a deal to give it up: a nearly $4 million boost for child support agencies.
Although permitted under federal law, only two states now authorize the use of birth cost recovery: Kansas and Wisconsin. Proponents of the practice have argued that it’s only fair to try to recoup state funds spent on the birth of a child if the child’s father can afford it.
But research at the Reproductive Equity Action Lab (REAL) questions the benefits of birth cost recovery when compared to the potential harm it can cause. The lab is affiliated with the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.
“This is a policy that takes money out of low-income families’ hands in the state of Wisconsin to pay the state back for the social services they receive,” Klaira Lerma, the lab’s associate director, told the Wisconsin Examiner. “This creates financial strain on families, and families view it as government greed.”
This week REAL published a policy brief on birth cost recovery. The brief summarizes research by the lab’s director, Professor Tiffany Green, along with Lerma and other contributors, that contradicts assumptions proponents have made.
There were 14,880 unmarried Wisconsin residents who gave birth in 2023. The brief reported that unmarried parents already tend to have lower incomes than married parents, making a birth cost recovery debt especially challenging.
Wisconsin gives counties the option to use birth cost recovery, but doesn’t require it. If a county takes the option, 15% of the money it recovers goes to the county’s child support program, while 85% goes back to the state Medicaid program.
ABC for Health, a Madison-based nonprofit public interest law firm, has been campaigning against birth cost recovery for more than a decade and succeeded in persuading Wisconsin’s two largest counties to drop the practice. Dane County stopped filing new birth cost recovery claims in 2020 and stopped pursuing old outstanding cases in 2023. Milwaukee County quit the practice in 2024.
As part of their investigation of the practice, REAL researchers interviewed 40 Wisconsin parents who had been subject to birth cost recovery.
Parents who live together aren’t subject to birth cost recovery — only noncustodial fathers. Lerma said parents told them they weren’t even aware they might be on the hook to repay Medicaid until there was a formal court order for child support.
“They described a lack of transparency and feeling bamboozled” when they were told about paying back Medicaid, Lerma said.
“Parents clearly described how Birth Cost Recovery payments reduce fathers’ ability to financially support their child(ren) by taking money out of their budget,” the policy brief states.
“You’re taking away the way somebody can feed their family,” one parent is quoted as saying. “You’re taking away child care, how somebody can provide for their family. You’re taking away [money for] health care.”
Another told researchers that a birth cost recovery payment “going back to the state is money that can be put into the child.”
For fathers in low-wage jobs, having to pay off a birth cost recovery debt “puts them in risk of losing housing, the ability to put food on the table,” a parent told the researchers.
“It also causes many marginalized fathers to throw up their hands and leave the lives of their children. And eventually, they may get caught, held in contempt. And once again, that whole cycle just starts,” the parent said. “They’re not going to get a job. They have this on their record. They’re not going to get housing. They’ll be always underemployed.”
Lerma said that in families covered by Medicaid, children are more likely to be at risk for illness. Birth cost recovery, she said, is effectively “taxing these families who are more likely to be facing significantly worse health outcomes.”
The brief cites research that found the financial strain from having to pay a birth cost recovery debt was associated with lower employment levels and less ability to maintain child support payments.
“In contrast, evidence shows eliminating Birth Cost Recovery appears to increase child support compliance,” the brief states.
“Ending Birth Cost Recovery across the state may reduce harm on Wisconsin families and result in more child support money going to children and their custodial parent,” the brief concludes.
To offset the expected loss counties would experience by giving up birth cost recovery entirely, Evers’ budget proposal sets aside $3.8 million over the two-year budget for county child support programs.
The brief says implementing that proposal could ensure “that county child support agencies remain fiscally solvent to carry out their mission.”
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