If you want to understand how Wisconsin Supreme Court elections became so political — with a record $100 million spent on this year’s nasty contest — it’s helpful to trace the history of former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.
Gableman’s career began full of promise, diligence and ambition. His cousin told Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher that at a young age Gableman “was always the adult in the room.”
But over the course of his career he became entangled in partisan politics.
Gableman was willing to travel hundreds of miles to take political appointments around the state, even receiving a Burnett County judgeship for which he didn’t apply. Gov. Scott McCallum acknowledged to Wisconsin Watch part of the reason he picked Gableman was he was a Republican supporter, bypassing two local finalists recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.
When Gableman ran for Wisconsin Supreme Court, he authorized a misleading, racially charged political ad against his opponent. At the time it was shocking enough to draw a formal complaint, but the Supreme Court couldn’t agree if it violated the judicial code of conduct. Now, you couldn’t turn on the TV or scroll social media before this year’s April 1 election without a faceful of misleading ads.
Despite his staunch Republican presence on the state’s high court, writing key opinions on Act 10 and dismissing an investigation into Gov. Scott Walker, Gableman fell out of favor with the party after he attended the 2016 Republican National Convention, in possible violation of judicial rules against partisanship. After causing disturbances in hospitality suites, he had to be escorted to his hotel. Party support for him waned. He decided, at age 50, not to run for a second 10-year term.
And yet, when President Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, Republicans called upon Gableman, who worked in Trump’s first administration, to investigate the results. Gableman found no evidence the election results were fraudulent and was called an “embarrassment” by the same Republican leader who hired him. The investigation ultimately cost taxpayers $2.8 million, four times more than its original budget. Now he’s facing a three-year suspension of his law license for his unprofessional conduct during the investigation.
The courts are not supposed to be subject to the same political whims of the legislative and executive branches. Supreme Court justices and judges run for office during nonpartisan spring elections for a reason.
As Kertscher’s account of Gableman’s career shows, raw power politics created this situation. It will be up to the public to decide if it wants something better.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Michael Gableman’s story is a study in how politics have infected Wisconsin’s courts is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court election, with its $100 million in record spending and wall-to-wall attack ads, spotlighted how politicized the state’s “nonpartisan” high court has become.
To understand how we got here, consider the rise and fall of former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who has agreed to surrender his law license for behavior unbecoming of a lawyer, let alone a former top judge.
Last November’s 10-count complaint filed by the Office of Lawyer Regulation, an arm of the very court he served on, is not the first time Gableman, 58, has been accused of an ethical lapse. But until now he has avoided public consequences. One example of Gableman’s actions, not previously reported, shows how closely intertwined an officially nonpartisan justice became with party politics.
Wisconsin Watch has learned that while a justice, Gableman attended the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland — in possible violation of judicial rules prohibiting attendance at party conventions — and while there, he appeared intoxicated and was escorted out of the convention hall after causing disturbances, according to two Wisconsin Republicans in attendance and a third briefed on the incident shortly after it happened.
Former longtime state GOP leader Steve King recalled then-U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy telling him that Gableman “has a problem and we need to get him back to his hotel.”
Gableman had established a solid legal career, having served in district attorney offices and courtrooms across the state. He made history winning election to the Supreme Court — the first candidate in four decades to defeat an incumbent justice.
But after the GOP convention in Cleveland, his career entered a downward spiral. His Republican support waned, and he decided not to run for a second 10-year term and disappeared from public life.
Then in 2021, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos hired Gableman as a special counsel to investigate Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss in Wisconsin.
At the time, it was not publicly disclosed that Gableman had worked a $170,000 executive branch job in the final year of Trump’s first administration.
According to newly obtained public records, Gableman’s compensation for the failed election probe was more than twice what was budgeted for his role.
The entire investigation cost taxpayers nearly $2.8 million, a new figure that includes a $432,000 open records lawsuit settlement reached earlier this month. The total is more than four times the $676,000 that was budgeted for the project.
Gableman’s career — from his first major courtroom job in 1999, to the pivotal 2008 Supreme Court election, to perpetuating Trump’s debunked election conspiracies — is a case study in what can happen when partisanship entangles the government branch most shielded from political volatility.
Raised in Waukesha County as the youngest of five in a middle-class family, Gableman stood out for doing right, his cousin David Gableman told Wisconsin Watch. The former justice, through his cousin, declined to be interviewed and didn’t respond to other interview requests.
While growing up, “he was always the adult in the room,” David Gableman said. “Always the serious one, very focused. … He always wanted to have an impact, he always wanted to make a difference in life.”
A multiyear class president at New Berlin West High School, Gableman earned a bachelor’s degree in history and education from Ripon College. At Ripon, he was sports editor of the yearbook and a member of Beta Sigma Pi.
In earning his law degree in 1993 from the Hamline School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gableman made the dean’s honor roll.
Gableman, who never married and has no children, was aided in his career rise by Republican Party connections and a willingness to move to rural areas.
After working as a county government attorney and prosecutor in Langlade, Forest and Marathon counties in northern Wisconsin, in 1999 Gableman was appointed by GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson as district attorney in far-northwestern Ashland County.
Looking back, Thompson doesn’t see it as odd that he didn’t choose a local attorney, though he acknowledged he doesn’t recall even interviewing Gableman.
“I’m sure that Michael Gableman’s name came forward as an individual, that he was a Republican and that he was a good lawyer,” Thompson told Wisconsin Watch.
Gableman later described himself as an independent when Thompson appointed him. His first recorded campaign contribution in a Wisconsin election was to a Democrat — $500 in 1998 to then-state Assembly Rep. Greg Huber, who represented Marathon County.
Ashland County was something of a GOP launching pad at the time. Gableman was preceded as district attorney by J.B. Van Hollen, who went on to become Wisconsin’s attorney general, and succeeded by Duffy, now Trump’s transportation secretary. Van Hollen and Duffy also had been tapped for the job from outside the county.
Running unopposed, Gableman was elected Ashland County district attorney as a Republican in 2000. District attorneys, unlike judges, can run with a partisan affiliation.
By then, Gableman chaired the county Republican Party. In 2002, he cut short his term as district attorney to take an administrative law judge position 260 miles away in Appleton under Thompson’s successor, GOP Gov. Scott McCallum.
The low-profile, largely bureaucratic position handles disputes within government agencies. But it gave Gableman the title of judge.
Just two months later, McCallum appointed Gableman to a vacant circuit court judgeship nearly 300 miles away in Burnett County.
It played out in a partisan way.
Gableman had not applied for the Burnett County judgeship. Yet McCallum chose him over two local applicants recommended by McCallum’s advisory committee for judicial appointments.
Gableman contributed $2,500 to McCallum’s campaign in the months before the appointment and headed up some McCallum fundraising events.
Asked why he picked Gableman, McCallum told Wisconsin Watch he knew Gableman “as a supporter of mine” and considered him a good attorney and a hard worker.
“It came down to it, the other two were Democrats, I appointed Gableman,” he said.
It’s true that one of the finalists, then-Burnett County district attorney Ken Kutz, was a Democrat. But the other, Mark Biller, then district attorney in neighboring Polk County, was a Republican. McCallum didn’t respond to requests to clarify his recollection of Kutz and Biller.
McCallum made it clear when interviewing Kutz that the selection process was decidedly partisan.
“The first question was, ‘Why the hell should I appoint a Democrat for judge in Burnett County?’” Kutz recalled to Wisconsin Watch.
Biller was in the right party, but he had lost his run for Polk County judge months earlier.
He said McCallum chose Gableman because McCallum was “looking for someone who could use that job for higher office and advance party goals.”
“He went out there and just campaigned to death,” Kutz recalled of Gableman’s run for Burnett County judge several months after being chosen by McCallum. “The guy is a politician like nobody’s business.”
Gableman “ran a real tight courtroom” and performed well as a Burnett County judge, said Kutz, who succeeded Gableman after Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him to the bench.
Gableman helped create the county’s Drug and Alcohol Court, one of the first in Wisconsin, its Restorative Justice Program that helps divert offenders from jail, and inmate and juvenile justice community service programs.
But in deciding to run for Supreme Court in 2008, he was virtually unknown outside of GOP circles. Republicans speaking on condition of anonymity said Gableman emerged as the candidate after better-known conservatives opted not to challenge the incumbent Justice Louis Butler.
Butler, a former Milwaukee County judge and the state’s first African American justice, had been appointed in 2004 by Doyle. Both he and Gableman were running statewide for the first time.
Gableman’s campaign, led by former state Republican Party executive director Darrin Schmitz, cast Gableman as a law-and-order candidate, drawing a contrast with Butler, who previously had worked as a public defender. In attack ads, Gableman’s supporters nicknamed Butler “loophole Louie” — suggesting Butler would use legal loopholes to help criminal defendants.
Gableman stayed on message, said David Gableman, who accompanied his cousin on many campaign trips. “It didn’t matter what the question was,” Gableman would always quickly pivot to how many sheriffs had endorsed him, his cousin said.
He also received heavy backing from business interests, especially Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which wanted a reliable conservative to flip what they viewed as an activist Supreme Court.
The court had issued a series of controversial rulings, including one finding that individual manufacturers could be held liable for a child’s lead paint injuries, even without proof they were responsible.
WMC and other conservative groups spent $2.75 million backing Gableman, nearly seven times what his own campaign spent, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign estimated.
At the time, the $6 million spent on the race — a fraction of the $100 million spent in the 2025 Supreme Court contest — passed the previous campaign spending record for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. That record had been set the previous year and was itself four times higher than the previous spending record.
Gableman defeated Butler by nearly 3 points, becoming the state’s first candidate to unseat an incumbent justice since 1967.
In his victory speech, Gableman declared a triumph for “judicial conservatism.”
William Bablitch, a former Supreme Court justice, said at the time: “Right now, the impression of the people of the state is justice is for sale, and some are going to get a fairer shake than others.”
In what would become a pattern, Gableman was accused of two ethical lapses during and soon after the 2008 campaign.
Liberal advocacy group One Wisconsin Now alleged Gableman had made campaign fundraising calls for McCallum from his taxpayer-funded Ashland County district attorney’s office in 2002. One Wisconsin Now produced records showing 55 calls had been made from Gableman’s office and from his government-issued cellphone to McCallum fundraisers and donors, McCallum’s campaign office and others.
One Wisconsin Now requested investigations, but several authorities, including Van Hollen, Duffy, the Government Accountability Board and the Office of Lawyer Regulation, refused.
The calls “sent the message that he was political,” said Sachin Chheda, who ran Butler’s campaign. “It also sent the message that he was willing to push the envelope.”
Gableman also faced a judicial oversight investigation for a misleading campaign ad he approved three weeks before the election.
The ad falsely implied that, as a public defender, Butler used a loophole to free imprisoned rapist Reuben Lee Mitchell, who later molested a child. In fact, Butler’s representation didn’t result in a reduced punishment and Mitchell committed the later crime only after serving his prison sentence.
“It just shows he was willing to do anything,” Scot Ross, former head of One Wisconsin Now, said of Gableman.
David Gableman noted there were harsh attack ads on both sides, recalling that another relative didn’t vote for his cousin after ads accused him of giving light sentences to sex offenders.
In October 2008, just two months after Gableman was sworn in, the state Judicial Commission filed a complaint against him, alleging his ad violated the state judicial code of conduct.
The commission dropped the case in 2010 after the Supreme Court deadlocked 3-3 on what to do about the complaint. Gableman didn’t participate. The other three conservative justices said that while the ad was “distasteful,” its statements were “objectively true” and protected by the First Amendment.
Gableman’s tenure on the Supreme Court was marked by controversy.
When Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused Justice David Prosser of putting his hands around her neck during an argument — an incident witnessed by four justices — Gableman’s account was the only outlier, characterizing the 5-foot-3 Walsh Bradley as looming over the 5-foot-9 Prosser, according to a sheriff’s report.
Gableman also claimed to sheriff’s investigators that Walsh Bradley had smacked him on the back of the head in the presence of their colleagues for calling Shirley Abrahamson, then the chief justice, by her first name. No other justice corroborated his story.
Ethics complaints were filed with two state agencies over Gableman’s acceptance of two years of free legal services, likely worth tens of thousands of dollars, in the case filed against him over the Butler ad. As a justice, Gableman did not recuse himself from cases argued by Michael Best & Friedrich, the law firm that provided his free legal aid. He ruled in favor of the firm’s clients five times, more than any other justice during his tenure on the court, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. No action was taken against him from those complaints.
A strong conservative on the court, Gableman wrote the court’s 5-2 opinion upholding Act 10, the 2011 law that effectively ended collective bargaining for most Wisconsin public employee unions. He also wrote the 4-2 decision that ended what was known as the John Doe II criminal investigation into Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s coordination with outside groups during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections that Act 10 triggered.
Then Cleveland happened.
Attending the Republican National Convention was problematic for a sitting justice. The state Judicial Code of Conduct directs judges to “avoid partisan activity” and says they may not “participate” in political party conventions. But what’s labeled as a comment on the rule says judges “may attend public events, even those sponsored by political parties or candidates, so long as the attendance does not constitute the kind of partisan activity prohibited by this rule.” In recent years, Wisconsin candidates for the Supreme Court and a justice-elect have spoken at state Democratic and Republican party conventions.
One Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he witnessed Gableman being “loud and obnoxious” at the convention. Gableman appeared to be intoxicated before other attendees escorted him out of the convention hall and back to his hotel, the Republican source said.
That source and another Republican, who was not in attendance, said they were told by party colleagues that Gableman belligerently insulted Janesville U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, then speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in a hospitality suite, before Duffy became involved and whisked him away.
Spokespersons for Duffy and Ryan did not return messages seeking comment.
David Gableman said he drove to the convention with his cousin, though they didn’t attend all of the same events together. He said he wasn’t aware of any incidents.
The Republicans who declined to be identified said the incident added to concerns about whether Gableman would be the best candidate to back in 2018. In June 2017, Gableman, then only 50, announced he would not run for a second term.
In 2020, Gableman was hired by the federal Office of Personnel Management at a salary of $170,800 putting him among the highest-paid 10% of employees in the agency. Gableman was involved in implementing a Trump executive order to curb diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training for federal employees, a precursor to what would happen this year with Trump’s second administration.
When Trump lost the 2020 election and fought the result in court with baseless claims of voter fraud, Gableman, no longer working in government, became a lieutenant in Trump’s election fraud-fighting army.
Gableman, like Trump, “has always been kind of anti-establishment,” believes “the swamp” is deep and that politicians aren’t accountable, David Gableman said. “He’s been loyal to Trump not because he’s a blind soldier, but because he has similar political beliefs.”
Defending Trump also allowed Gableman to return to the public spotlight.
Four days after Trump’s loss to Joe Biden, Gableman suggested at a pro-Trump rally in Milwaukee that the election had been stolen.
In June 2021, Trump accused Vos, the state’s Assembly speaker, and other Wisconsin GOP leaders of “working hard to cover up election corruption.”
The next day, Vos announced at the state Republican Party convention that he had retained Gableman to investigate the 2020 election.
The move took pressure off Vos and other Wisconsin Republicans from Trump’s base. They were placating Trump by choosing a Trump-aligned former Supreme Court justice to lead the investigation.
Vos miscalculated.
It wasn’t widely known at the time that Gableman had been working for Trump’s administration in 2020. Asked if he knew, when hiring Gableman, that the former justice had been working for Trump, Vos said he didn’t think so.
Gableman began his first months of election investigation work at the New Berlin Public Library because he didn’t own a computer.
It didn’t go well. Gableman acknowledged having little understanding of how elections work. He also:
His work did please one fan, however.
In April 2022, Gableman attended a party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where Trump praised him before an audience: “Michael, you’ve been unbelievable,” The Washington Post reported.
His efforts drew derision from Wisconsin legal authorities and even the party leader who hired him.
In June 2022, a year into the election investigation, Dane County Circuit Judge Frank Remington asked the Office of Lawyer Regulation in a court order to discipline Gableman. Remington found Gableman in contempt of court and fined him $2,000 per day for refusing Remington’s order to produce documents. Gableman also displayed “sneering” and mocking behavior in court, Remington wrote, and “destroyed any sense of decorum and irreparably damaged the public’s perception of the judicial process.”
Vos fired Gableman two months later, in August 2022, calling him an “embarrassment.”
After the firing, Gableman’s name was removed from his law school’s list of notable alumni.
Gableman was paid $117,000, more than double the $55,000 that had been budgeted, according to a previously unreported document Wisconsin Watch obtained from the Assembly clerk.
“He paid no attention to detail, he delegated almost all the work to somebody else and very poor follow-through,” Vos told Wisconsin Watch. “It seemed like Mike Gableman was more concerned about the money he was earning as opposed to finding the truth.”
Reviews by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau, the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty and The Associated Press found no evidence of uncounted, miscounted or fraudulent votes that would have had any bearing in Wisconsin in the 2020 election.
Gableman’s work was supposed to conclude within a few months. Ultimately, the nearly 14-month probe cost taxpayers $2.77 million, including $1.82 million for outside lawyers. Earlier this month, the state agreed to pay $431,843 in legal fees to American Oversight, a group that sued over destruction of records related to the investigation.
Less than a month after being fired, Gableman told a gathering of Outagamie County Republicans: “Our comfort is holding us back from taking the action that’s necessary. … It’s that very comfort that is keeping us from what our Founders knew to be the only way to keep an honest government, which is revolution.”
Even while under investigation for lawyer misconduct, he continued to advance his election conspiracies to sympathetic audiences.
The Wolf River Area Patriots promoted its January meeting by touting a Gableman speech on the importance of electing conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel to the state Supreme Court.
About 50 people turned out in tiny New London, two hours northwest of Milwaukee. The meeting was open to the public. Gableman spoke in his resonant baritone for more than an hour, stoking fear and spreading unproven theories about casting votes in the names of overseas military service people or the deceased, and saying Wisconsin elections “are only as secure as the worst criminally minded fraudster wants them to be.”
Gableman said little about Schimel, who went on to lose the April 1 election, other than that he was superior to eventual winner Susan Crawford. He called Crawford “a particularly nasty piece of work.”
At more than $100 million, the Schimel-Crawford race set a national record for spending on a state supreme court contest and featured droves of misleading attack ads that have become common since Gableman’s 2008 campaign.
The state Office of Lawyer Regulation’s case against Gableman, which includes allegations raised in a 100-page complaint from the Law Forward law firm in March 2023, said he violated 10 counts of Supreme Court rules of professional conduct for attorneys. He is accused of making false statements about a judge, an opposing attorney and two mayors; making false statements to the Office of Lawyer Regulation; disobeying a court order; and violating the state open records law and confidentiality rules.
Gableman had gone from a top jurist sworn to uphold the constitution to a political player accused of lying in court and breaking laws.
He initially denied the charges, which could have led to the permanent loss of his law license.
But on April 7, he capitulated.
In the settlement filing: “Gableman hereby stipulates that he cannot successfully defend against the allegations of misconduct … and agrees that the allegations of the complaint provide an adequate factual basis for a determination of SCR (Supreme Court Rules) violations as alleged in each of the ten counts of the complaint.”
He agreed with this admission to losing his license to practice law for three years.
The proposed settlement must be approved by two more authorities to become official:
A lawyer serving as referee in the case.
And the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Some research for this article was provided by Audrey Nielsen of the nonprofit Sunlight Research Center, which assists newsrooms with investigative reporting.
Wisconsin’s Supreme Court has become hyper political. The rise and fall of Michael Gableman’s career shows how that happened. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Climate, weather and water-related research in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes would take a hit under the Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The post Wisconsin and Great Lakes research could suffer under proposed cuts to NOAA appeared first on WPR.
About 250,000 people are expected to descend on Green Bay next week for the NFL draft. Republican lawmakers from the region say they'll seek more than $1 million in the next state budget to reimburse local law enforcement agencies tasked with keeping it safe.
The post Green Bay area Republicans seek $1.25M from state to reimburse safety costs of NFL draft appeared first on WPR.
The NFL draft is expected to draw close to 250,000 people to Green Bay. But a little more than a week out from the event, multiple Airbnb properties near Lambeau Field still had availability.
The post Airbnbs still available near Lambeau a little over a week out from the NFL draft appeared first on WPR.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers is backing a bill that would exempt gun safes and other "firearm safety devices" from Wisconsin's sales tax.
The post Wisconsin proposal to exempt gun safes from sales tax advances with bipartisan support appeared first on WPR.
Actors David Duchovny and Richard Kind trace their roots from Jewish communities in Eastern Europe to the U.S.
The post Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:Chosen appeared first on WPR.
Journalists Jim Acosta and Van Jones learn about their ancestors.
The post Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates, Jr.:Anchormen appeared first on WPR.
There are currently 16 assistant district attorneys with the Waukesha County District Attorney's Office. However, a 2024 Wisconsin Department of Administration analysis said the county should have around 10 more prosecutors.
The post Waukesha County DA calls out need for more prosecutors appeared first on WPR.
USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins announced in a press release Monday that her agency was immediately canceling the $3.1 billion program.
The post Farm, environmental groups lose millions in federal ‘climate-smart’ funding appeared first on WPR.
“Thermometers don’t care who’s in office,” said Dan Vimont, a professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “By undercutting our ability to monitor and assess the current state of our world, we are disadvantaging ourselves economically, and we’re disadvantaging ourselves in our national security as well.”
The post How cuts impacting a federal climate report could affect Wisconsin’s disaster preparedness appeared first on WPR.
Former President Biden speaks about Social Security at a disability conference in Chicago on April 15, 2025. The remarks were his first in public since leaving office in January. (Image via C-SPAN livestream)
Former President Joe Biden on Tuesday used his first public address since leaving office to criticize the current administration for cutting thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration and to rebut those who have questioned the program’s relevance.
“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden said. “They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing 7,000 employees — 7,000 — out the door in that time, including the most seasoned career officials.”
The Social Security Administration announced earlier this year it would cut staffing from 57,000 to 50,000 employees and reduce the number of regional offices from 10 to four.
Biden urged Republicans to preserve Social Security for future generations, arguing during his 30-minute speech to the national conference of Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago that people have been able to rely on it throughout wars, recessions and the pandemic.
“Social Security is about more than retirement accounts. It’s about honoring a fundamental trust between government and people,” Biden said. “It’s about peace of mind for those who work their whole lives, so they can rest assured they’ll have a chance to get back some of what they earned and what they deserve.”
Biden, who accepted the organization’s Beacon of Hope award, said protecting Social Security and the federal workers who administer the program is about defending core principles.
“Who are we? What makes us distinct from the rest of the world?” Biden asked. “It comes down to basic, in my view, fundamental American values — nobody’s king, nobody’s the boss. Everybody has a shot.”
Biden criticized members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet for making harsh comments about the program. He noted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if she missed a Social Security payment and that “the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen because whoever screams is the one stealing.”
Biden also called out billionaire and head of U.S. DOGE Service Elon Musk for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”
“What the hell are they talking about?” Biden said. “People earn these benefits. They paid into that benefit. They rely on that benefit.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing several hours before Biden’s speech the Trump administration doesn’t plan to cut off Americans’ Social Security benefits.
“Let me make it very clear ahead of former President Biden’s remarks: The president, this president, President Trump is absolutely certain about protecting Social Security benefits for law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens and seniors who have paid into this program,” she said. “He will always protect that program. He campaigned on it. He protected it in his first term.”
Leavitt also took a swipe at Biden’s age, saying she didn’t expect him to give a speech during the evening.
“My first reaction when seeing former President Biden was speaking tonight was, I’m shocked that he was speaking at nighttime. I had thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight,” she said.
Biden, 82, last year dropped his reelection bid in a rematch against Trump, 78, amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.
Democrats have raised concerns for months that staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration will impact Americans’ ability to get their questions about the program answered or their issues resolved quickly.
Social Security Commissioner nominee Frank Bisignano testified during his hearing in March that, if confirmed, he would try to “ensure that every beneficiary receives their payments on time, that disability claims are processed in the manner they should be.”
Bisignano said he hoped to ensure Social Security recipients could visit an office, use the website, or speak to a real person after calling the 1-800 number.
“On the phone, I’m committed to reducing wait times and providing beneficiaries with a better experience; waiting 20 minutes-plus to get an answer will be of yesteryear,” Bisignano said. “I also believe we can significantly improve the length of the disability claim process.”
Bisignano promised lawmakers he would reduce the 1% error rate in payments, which he said was “five decimal places too high.” And he said repeatedly that personally identifiable information will be “protected.”
The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines in early April to send Bisignano’s nomination to the floor, but he hasn’t yet been confirmed.
A crowd gathered outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Tuesday, April 10, 2025, to protest the government's erroneous deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, to a mega-prison in the Central American country. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ordered a defiant Trump administration to provide evidence about how it has tried to secure the release of an immigrant mistakenly deported to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, saying that to date, the record shows “nothing has been done.”
District Judge Paula Xinis laid out a two-week timeline for the government to produce sworn statements on whether and how immigration officials are complying with her previous court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
“Discovery will bear out whether you have,” Xinis said, referring to the process through which information is disclosed in court. “And if you haven’t, whether it’s a choice or on justified ground.”
“Cancel vacation, cancel other appointments. I’m usually very good about things like that in my courtroom, but not this time,” she said during a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, had ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by April 7.
A federal appeals court swiftly upheld Xinis’ order. The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices ruled 9-0 Thursday that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return — though they stopped short of requiring it — and provide the El Salvadoran due process through the U.S. immigration courts.
The Supreme Court “could not have been clearer,” Xinis said to Drew Ensign, the deputy assistant attorney general who represented the government Tuesday.
Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, who lived with his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and their 5-year-old child, was apprehended by immigration officials in mid-March.
He was among roughly 260 Venezuelan men the U.S. flew on commercial jets, without due process, to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.
Garcia has no criminal history in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country, according to court filings in the lawsuit Vasquez Sura brought against the government last month.
An immigration judge issued a protective order in 2019 shielding his return to El Salvador because of near certainty he would face violence and persecution.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted in court documents that Abrego Garcia’s removal on March 15 was an “administrative error.”
The White House maintains it has no power to ask El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia from CECOT, and that Xinis overstepped her authority in ordering the administration to conduct foreign affairs.
The White House also asserts Abrego Garcia is a “foreign terrorist” and a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, which the administration designated a foreign terrorist organization in February.
“Deporting him was always going to be the end result,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday at the daily press briefing.
“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” she said.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told journalists Monday during a visit to the Oval Office, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” labeling Abrego Garcia as a “terrorist.”
The government echoed Bukele’s comments in its daily status report.
“DHS does not have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation,” Joseph Mazarra, acting general counsel for DHS, wrote in Monday’s report.
Following a tense hearing Friday, where the government refused to provide the whereabouts of Abrego Garcia, Xinis ordered the administration to provide the daily updates.
On Tuesday, Xinis told Ensign that the government has provided “very little information of any value” in the reports.
“As a factual matter, I do need evidence in this record because to date what the record shows is nothing has been done,” Xinis said.
Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Vasquez Sura asked the court to order immigration officials to arrange for her husband’s return by the end of April 14.
She also asked the court to mandate government officials provide documents and depositions related to Abrego Garcia’s release, and to show cause as to why Xinis should not hold the government in contempt of court for not complying with orders to bring Abrego Garcia back.
Xinis said she will not make a decision on contempt until she reviews a record of evidence.
The government maintains the Supreme Court’s decision does not mean they must work with El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia because the president, not federal courts, has jurisdiction over foreign affairs.
The administration also contends that the Supreme Court’s use of the term “facilitate” only means that they need to remove “domestic” barriers to bringing Abrego back to the U.S. — not that they would have to work with El Salvador to secure his release.
“Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable — or constitutional — here,” they wrote in a response to Vasquez Sura’s request.
In the Oval Office Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the U.S. would provide a plane, but cannot force Bukele to release Abrego Garcia.
Ensign provided a transcript of the Oval Office meeting to the court 15 minutes prior to Tuesday’s hearing, according to Xinis.
“I don’t consider what happened yesterday as evidence before this court yet,” Xinis said.
Ensign pushed back on Xinis’ order for expedited discovery, saying that the issue is a “narrow interpretative dispute” of what the word facilitate means that “does not require discovery.”
After pushing back again, Xinis responded, “I just don’t think it’s that difficult. I think you want to make it that difficult because getting to the facts may not be that favorable.”
Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization in 2011, fleeing violence in his home country of El Salvador, according to court records.
Six years later while he was looking for work at a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, he was taken into custody by Prince George’s County Police Department.
While there, he was questioned about gang affiliation and law enforcement did not believe he was not a member of the MS-13 gang, according to court records.
The evidence officers submitted included Abrego Garcia wearing a Chicago Bulls hat, a hoodie and a statement from a confidential informant that stated he was a member of MS-13, according to court documents.
While he was never charged with, or convicted of being, in a gang, he was kept in ICE detention while his case proceeded before an immigration judge.
Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)
Immigrant rights groups are cautioning migrants without legal status about the dangers of obeying the Department of Homeland Security’s directive to register with authorities, group leaders told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.
Representatives from immigrant groups across the country said the requirement, which a federal judge upheld last week, is an enforcement tool for President Donald Trump’s administration and that following the directive to register could lead to unlawful detention and deportation.
Participants on the call did not explicitly say they were counseling migrants without legal status against complying with the directive, but said people affected should seek legal counsel first.
“This tool is to identify individuals for detention, deportation and to threaten with imprisonment if they do not comply,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said.
“These actions are abhorrent to the values of this country, and we will not stand silent to see cruelty as the official immigration policy of this administration. To our community, our message is that you’re not alone, you have rights, seek legal guidance, and you’re not obligated to provide information that can hurt you or your family.”
Under Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration has sent “innocent people” to detention facilities at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, Salas said.
The administration has detained immigrants of all legal statuses without due process, and ignored court orders to reverse those actions. Advocates on the press call Tuesday said that defies the law.
Immigrants, even without legal status in the country, are “entitled to their day in immigration court,” Nicole Melaku, the executive director of National Partnership for New Americans, said.
The directive, which requires immigrants who have registered with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to always carry with them proof of their registration, would also lead to racial profiling of U.S. citizens, advocates have said.
Salas said her organization, which is based in Southern California, does not know of anyone who has completed the registration.
The people who are required to register are unclear about whether it is in their interest to comply, and distrust of Trump – who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and has routinely flouted due process for immigrants – is a major obstacle.
“We don’t have anybody who has – that we know – yet registered,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion in our community as to whether to do this or not. What does it mean? What are the risks? And I also want to say that … everything that has come from this administration has actually been harmful, so people are taking that into account.”
U.S. Judge Trevor Neil McFadden, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2017, rejected advocacy groups’ attempt to block the directive, saying in an order last week that the groups hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by it.
But the legal fight against the directive will continue, George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at the immigrant services organization CASA, said.
In addition to a possible appeal of McFadden’s ruling, Escobar said his organizations would watch “very, very closely” how the administration conducts the operation, with special attention to racial profiling, and would not hesitate to bring court challenges.
“We will do everything possible to fight this,” he said. “This may be a show-me-your-papers type of situation where people may be racially profiled, stopped on the street just because they’re speaking in other languages, because they look like an immigrant, and has to be asked to show this registration compliance.”
Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.
Children outside with a child care teacher at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)
A news report that the Trump administration is considering ending the federal government’s Head Start program has alarmed providers and parents who rely on the child care and early education program.
“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 14 Head Start centers in Dane and Green counties. “The children and families we work with are some of the most vulnerable folks in our communities. The parents in those communities rely on the care we provide to stay employed.”
USA Today reported Friday that the Trump administration “is considering a budget proposal that would zero out funding for Head Start.” The news report quoted an anonymous administration official who said the White House funding blueprint for the 2026 fiscal year doesn’t allocate money for Head Start.
The president’s budget is a wish list, and Congress decides how to appropriate federal funds. An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told USA Today that “no final funding decisions have been made.”
Project 2025, the agenda drafted by Russell Vought prior to his confirmation as OMB director, calls for eliminating Head Start.
Responding to the report Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tied the proposal to President Donald Trump’s goal of extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted in his first term.
“Shutting down Head Start — taking care away from kids, firing teachers, and making child care even more expensive for parents — all so President Trump can hand out new tax breaks for the wealthy and well-connected is flat out wrong and you can be sure I will fight this proposal at every turn,” Baldwin said.
Head Start was founded in 1966, part of the War on Poverty undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson. It provides child care and preschool for families with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline. Children living in foster homes are also eligible for Head Start.
In Wisconsin more than 15,000 children are enrolled in more than 300 Head Start child care centers across the state, according to the Wisconsin Head Start Association. With more than 4,300 employees, Head Start ranks in the top 100 employers in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, the association’s executive director.
“At least 70% of our families have a parent who is either working or in school full time,” Mauer said Monday. The remaining families include grandparents who are retired but full-time caregivers for their grandchildren as well as families unable to work due to disabilities or who “are working through some very, very significant challenges.”
She predicted that the impact from ending the program wouldn’t stop with the families who rely on Head Start.
“If Head Start isn’t there, if this program were to shut down, surely there’ll be tremendous cascading economic impacts in our communities,” Mauer said. “I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you’re at work, it’ll create a disaster.
Fears for the survival of Head Start are escalating as the state’s overall child care sector is increasingly under strain. As many as 25% of child care centers in a survey released April 10 said they could close without continuing support in the next state budget.
April Mullins-Datko is Head Start director for ADVOCAP, a social service agency serving Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Green Lake counties. She said that the agency’s four Head Start centers would likely not survive the loss of federal support.
“We would lose services for the 202 children we serve,” Mullins-Datko said. “It would exacerbate the child care crisis we have in our communities, which then has negative impacts on our available workforce.”
I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you're at work, it'll create a disaster.
– Jennie Mauer, Wisconsin Head Start Association executive director
ADVOCAP’s centers include three in Fond du Lac County and one in Green Lake County, with 193 families relying on the program for the care and early education of their children.
“Ninety-three percent of my families are working or going to school full time,” Mullins-Datko said.
The agency’s Head Start federal contract is supposed to be good through Dec. 31, 2028, Mullins-Datko said, but with reports of defunding she fears that won’t be honored: “There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of adherence to law and contracts.”
Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council provides social services in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau Claire counties in West Central Wisconsin. The agency’s programs include nine Head Start centers enrolling 442 children. Of those, 382 children are in preschool and 60 are in Early Head Start, for children from birth to age 3, said Thanh Bui-Duquette, Western Dairyland’s Head Start director.
Three centers are in cities — two in Eau Claire and one in Altoona — but the rest are in rural communities.
“We meet the needs of each individual community,” Bui-Duquette said. “The needs of the urban Eau Claire area look very different from rural Trempealeau County.”
Even with jobs, 96% of the families with children in Western Dairyland’s program have incomes below the federal poverty guideline. For children from those families, she said, Head Start has been demonstrated to improve long-term outcomes — increasing the chances of graduating from high school and going on to higher education, and reducing the chances of ending up in the criminal justice system.
“It’s important to have that solid foundation early on, especially for children from disadvantaged families,” Bui-Duquette said.
The news that Head Start is in the crosshairs of budget-writers in the Trump administration follows other jolts to the program in the last two months.
In late January and early February, Head Start operators reported widespread problems in their efforts to collect standard payments from the federal government. Under Head Start contracts, programs incur an expense then submit documentation through a federal online portal to get reimbursed. Head Start programs reported that payments stalled, for nearly two weeks in some cases, without explanation.
Payments have since resumed, but Mauer said directors are reporting demands for more information holding up payments.
“They’re getting substantial delays for things that are accepted expenses, which is concerning,” she said.
On April 1, Head Start operators learned that the program’s five regional offices across the country were closed without any advance notice, including the Chicago office that serves Wisconsin and five other states in the Upper Midwest.
Those events and the report that the program could be defunded have rattled Head Start employees and the parents who have counted on the program, operators say.
“Families and staff are both really scared and concerned,” said Bailey, the Reach Dane director. “Families are reaching out, worried the program is going to close, asking, ‘Is my child still going to be able to go to school?’”
Reach Dane’s human resources staff has been interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in the coming school year, and applicants are nervous about whether the job will exist, she added.
Bailey said the program is trying to be transparent with employees and families about the uncertainty and fight for the program’s survival, all without sparking panic.
“Trying to figure out how to navigate and inform folks when there’s no communication is a hard place to be,” she said.
This report has been updated.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Robert "RJay" Fisher shows off a recording studio that is part of the Green Bay Office of Violence Prevention's new location. Fisher is a violence interrupter with the office. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)
Robert “RJay” Fisher has personal experience with the damage gun violence can cause. His work with Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention aims to keep others from experiencing the same harm.
Fisher said that “having a brother who is now incarcerated for a situation that happened in Green Bay, that was pretty tough for me. And I know what type of trauma I experienced from that. I had a brother who was shot here on the west side of Green Bay, about 11 years ago. And so, I remember getting those calls, and having to deal with those emotions, and what that felt like.”
He said other family members have been shot. ”I also have lost a lot of friends due to gun violence,” said Fisher. “And just recently, two years ago, I lost my uncle, one of my only uncles, due to gun violence.”
Fisher is a violence interrupter at the Office of Violence Prevention, where he builds relationships with community members and tries to prevent violence before it happens.
The office listens to “rumblings in the community,” Fisher said. When they hear something from social media or word of mouth, it’s their job to put out the fire.
Fisher said he’s been in the community for a long time and worked for the Green Bay Area Public School District. He said his relationships and people’s respect for him enable him “to intervene in those situations and start conversations.”
“And then if they’re open [to it], I try to either meet with them or bring them into the space,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical to have a home base.”
Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention was formed in 2023 after the city was awarded a grant from the Medical College of Wisconsin. On Monday, the office held the grand opening of its new location on the east side of Green Bay.
Director Andrea Kressin described it as a safe space where relationship building and coaching can happen. This is important for the office’s prevention work to support people who are at the highest risk of engaging in violence or deter them from engaging in further violence, she said.
Police officers operated at the office’s old location, and high-risk individuals might not have a good relationship with police, Fisher said.
“We kind of take them out of their environment, and bring them in a calm, safe space where we can then use our CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] strategies to kind of help them rewire the way they think,” Fisher said.
In its 2023 crime report, the Green Bay Police Department reported six homicides and a 17% decrease in assault offenses, which included gun violence.
In its 2024 crime report, the department reported four fewer homicides, but also reported a rise in crimes against persons of around 18%. Some of the offenses that led to the increase included aggravated assault, simple assault and kidnapping/abduction.
The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform partnered with Green Bay Police and other local community corrections agencies to study shootings and homicides in Green Bay between 2019 and 2021. The analysis found that in Green Bay “most gun violence is tightly concentrated on a small number of very high risk young Black male adults that share a common set of risk factors.”
These risk factors included involvement in street crews/groups and significant criminal justice history, according to the analysis. The analysis found that shootings were often caused by a “petty conflict over a young woman, a simple argument, or a feud on social media.” People involved in groups or gangs were also involved in a range of other criminal activities, such as selling drugs or robbery, which made them more likely to be involved in violence.
One of the report’s recommendations was that the city of Green Bay should invest in development and expansion of community-based violence intervention services.
Kressin said the Office of Violence Prevention has played a part in contributing to a short-term reduction in the number of homicides as well as shots-fired incidents in the community.
When a violent incident happens and has the potential to lead to retaliation in the community, a primary role of the office is to intervene, Kressin said. She also said the office has built partnerships with community organizations, participated in community events, hosted community conversations in Spanish and English and knocked on doors.
Fisher said the Green Bay Police Department shares information with the Office of Violence Prevention. The department can give information to Kressin, and the office can make a plan to get involved. The goal is to minimize and defuse a situation so they don’t have to contact the police, but the office will contact the police to avoid someone getting hurt, Fisher said.
The new location includes a recording studio, lending library, video production tools and interactive workshops aimed at building life skills in collaboration with community organizations, the office said in a statement.
Kressin said participants can learn about music production and build relationships with violence interrupters. One of the interrupters is working with podcasting and videography, and the Office of Violence Prevention is getting started with the rollout, she said.
Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis was one of the speakers at the grand opening’s press conference.
“Our police officers in our organization have been able to make some really great relationships, and a lot of us, myself included, have been able to see tangible results in real people’s lives as a result of that work together,” Davis said. “And so we’re looking forward to what the future holds for this program and for this community.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Login