About five years ago, Shawn Wiederhoeft received a life-changing kidney transplant, and in the process, might have helped change the lives of future transplant recipients.
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Hundreds of nurses in northeastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin returned to work Wednesday after ending a two-week strike against Essentia Health, including nurses at its Superior clinic.
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After more craft breweries closed than opened across the nation for the first time in 20 years, a pair of Wisconsin craft brewery owners say they’re adapting to the times.
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A trade group president and an anti-vaping advocate share their thoughts on Wisconsin's new ban of non-FDA-approved vapes and e-cigarettes.
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Ann Marsh has been studying insects for more than two decades. Her research specimens include bugs that dehair rodents to feed to their young and a fly that uses its harpoon-like abdomen to insert eggs into prey.
The post Wisconsin wetland insects live a lifestyle of sex, violence and deception, entomologist says appeared first on WPR.
Much of Wisconsin is under a heat advisory Wednesday, and a new analysis by the nonprofit group Climate Central finds extreme heat streaks are becoming more common across the state and nation.
The post As heat rises in Wisconsin, new analysis finds heat streaks are becoming more common appeared first on WPR.
A statement issued by the La Crosse Police Department just before 1:00 p.m. said Eliotte Heinz's body was recovered at around 10:28 a.m. by the Houston County Sheriff's Department.
The post Body of missing 22-year-old Viterbo University student found in Mississippi River appeared first on WPR.
Tiger Stadium at Louisiana State University pictured on Sept. 13, 2024. (Matthew Perschall for Louisiana Illuminator)
WASHINGTON — A measure that would set a national framework for college athletes’ compensation got one step closer to becoming law Wednesday after advancing in two separate U.S. House panels.
The bill’s fate remains uncertain as it makes its way through Congress, and Democrats argue that the legislation would give “unchecked authority” to the NCAA on athletes’ pay and fails to provide labor and employment protections for athletes.
Two panels with jurisdiction over the matter — the House Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees — approved the legislation, known as the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act, or ‘‘SCORE Act.”
The Energy and Commerce Committee’s vote fell along party lines, 30-23.
On the Education and Workforce panel, the 18-17 vote featured all Republicans who were present voting in favor of the measure except Rep. Michael Baumgartner of Washington state. All Democrats on that panel voted against the measure. GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California and Elise Stefanik of New York did not vote.
Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said the bill “brings much needed stability to college athletics.”
“Since the NCAA lifted Name, Image and Likeness and transfer rules in 2021, college athletics have been in a period of chaos as constant litigation and efforts to classify student-athletes as employees jeopardize thousands of academic and athletic opportunities,” the Michigan Republican said during his committee’s consideration of the bill.
Kentucky GOP Rep. Brett Guthrie, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said during his panel’s markup that “without this bill, student-athletes will be left to fend for themselves against bad actors, non-revenue generating sports could face devastating cuts and legal uncertainty will continue to hang over all of college sports.”
The full House will not consider the legislation until at least September, when members return from their summer recess that began one day ahead of schedule Wednesday.
The effort, nominally bipartisan, comes as the college sports world grapples with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines that let student-athletes profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL. A patchwork of laws exists across states, and there is currently no federal NIL law.
A federal judge in June approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.
The bill would prohibit college athletes from being recognized as employees and would require colleges to “provide comprehensive academic support and career counseling services to student athletes that include life skills development programs,” such as those regarding mental health, nutrition, strength and conditioning and financial literacy.
The bill’s lead sponsors are GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Democratic Reps. Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Shomari Figures of Alabama.
Guthrie, Walberg and GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lisa McClain of Michigan, Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin and Russell Fry of South Carolina were also original co-sponsors.
Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said that “instead of holding the revenue-rich NCAA and its powerful conferences accountable, the SCORE Act provides a series of blank checks and bailouts that will not uplift or protect college athletes,” during the panel’s markup.
The Virginia Democrat said the bill “imposes obligations without oversight, fails to include concrete protections and outright bans college athletes from ever having labor or employment protections.”
“This extreme employment ban will not only open the door for further exploitation of college athletes and protect athletic departments’ bottom lines more than the students they serve, it is a broad stripping of athletes’ rights, and that should not be the solution,” he said.
Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, voiced similar concerns during his committee’s markup.
The measure “fails to offer meaningful protections to college athletes and completely ignores the true crisis facing colleges and universities,” he said, adding that President Donald Trump “continues to destroy America’s higher education system with reduced federal research dollars, taxes on endowments and cuts to federal student aid.”
Pallone also said the bill “gives the NCAA and conferences nearly limitless and unchecked authority to govern how athletes get paid, if they can transfer schools, and how much time they can be required to spend training, traveling and competing.”
Supporters of Kilmar Abrego Garcia protest outside the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville on June 13 before Abrego Garcia's arraignment on federal charges. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)
WASHINGTON — Two federal court rulings on Wednesday allowed Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador by federal immigration authorities in March, to be released from pre-trial detention in Tennessee without the risk of immediate removal from the U.S.
U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville denied the government’s request to keep Abrego Garcia jailed while he awaits trial on criminal charges stemming from a 2019 traffic stop.
Abrego Garcia denies the criminal charges lodged against him when the government quietly brought him back into the United States after months of illegal imprisonment in the central American country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where he remained until June 6.
“The pieces of evidence the Government cites to, taken alone or together, warrant a finding that Abrego is, at best, a low risk of nonappearance. As an initial matter, the Court agrees with Abrego that the nature of the crimes he is accused of do not, on their own, fall within the categories of crimes Congress specifically enumerated as warranting a presumption of detention,” Crenshaw, appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote in a 37-page opinion.
In a separate ruling in Maryland Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered that authorities cannot immediately take Abrego Garcia into custody upon his release in Tennessee.
Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s emergency request to return to his home state of Maryland while he awaits trial. Federal authorities previously told Xinis they intended to swiftly arrest Abrego Garcia, if released, on an immigration detainer.
“Accordingly, the Court shares Plaintiffs’ ongoing concern that, absent meaningful safeguards, Defendants may once again remove Abrego Garcia from the United States without having restored him to the status quo ante and without due process. Thus, additional relief is necessary,” Xinis, an Obama appointee, wrote in her 18-page order.
Xinis’ order requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to return Abrego Garcia to the agency’s order of supervision in Baltimore, the jurisdiction of his original immigration proceedings. If ICE initiates his removal to a third country, the authorities must provide 72 hours notice of the destination to Garcia and his legal counsel.
ICE arrested and detained Abrego Garcia in Maryland on March 12, and days later sent him among hundreds of other migrants on legally contested deportation flights to CECOT.
Abrego Garcia has detailed psychological and physical torture he experienced at the notorious prison.
Upon returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S., the Justice Department indicted him on human smuggling charges, stemming from the 2019 traffic stop. His attorneys maintain the Trump administration used the indictment to save face in light of court orders finding Abrego Garcia’s deportation unlawful and the Supreme Court’s order for the federal government to facilitate his return.
Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections in place since 2019, barring authorities from sending him back to his native El Salvador due to concerns he would experience gang violence there.
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, 2024 in Wilmington, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said late Tuesday he struck a “massive” trade deal with Japan, lowering his threatened tariffs on Japanese products.
The deal, according to Japanese negotiators, will include a lower rate on the country’s top export: automobiles.
Trump’s declaration of a new framework comes as a legal fight over a large portion of his tariff policy will be heard in federal appeals court next week.
The president announced via Truth Social Tuesday evening that Japan had agreed “at my direction” to invest $550 billion in the United States and will open its markets to more American products, including cars, trucks, rice and other agricultural goods.
In exchange, Trump agreed to lower what he calls “reciprocal” import taxes on Japanese products to 15%, down from the 25% rate he threatened in early July.
Tariffs are import taxes paid by U.S. companies and individuals who purchase goods from other countries.
While some details remained unclear, Trump said the agreement is “the largest Deal ever made,” and continued in a post on his online platform that “there has never been anything like it.”
Japan’s government confirmed the new deal Wednesday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the parties agreed to a 15% tariff on Japanese vehicles and auto parts imported into the U.S. without any volume restrictions — down from the blanket 25% U.S. tariff on foreign cars that went into effect in April. Hayashi delivered the remarks through an English translation during a morning press conference.
Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said securing $550 billion in investment from Japan would set the agreement apart from other trade deals.
“There isn’t a lot of information about over what period of time this would cover, and how it would be financed, and things like that, but the headline number of $550 billion is certainly notable, if it’s believable and if it’s achievable,” Schott said Wednesday in an interview with States Newsroom.
While specifics are unknown, possible investments from Japan might include Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel, or a joint venture to export liquified natural gas from Alaska.
Schott said the trade deal “is likely going to set a template” for trade talks with other nations, including ongoing negotiations this week in Washington, D.C., with South Korean officials.
The news of a deal with Japan came just after the White House announced new trade arrangements with Indonesia and the Philippines ahead of a self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline, when steeper tariffs are set to trigger on trading partners around the world.
Trump had threatened Japan in a letter earlier this month with a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on all Japanese goods set to begin Aug. 1, in addition to special sectoral and national security tariffs on foreign automobiles, at 25%, and imported steel and aluminum, which now sit at 50%.
The president shocked global markets in early April when he announced a universal 10% tariff on every foreign good coming into the U.S., plus staggering additional “reciprocal” import taxes on major trading partners based on the country’s trading relationship with the U.S.
Trump initially slapped a 24% reciprocal tariff on Japan, which imports less from the U.S. than U.S. entities buy from Japan. The U.S. ran a $69.4 billion trade deficit with Japan in 2024, according to the Census Bureau.
Trump has twice delayed his so-called reciprocal tariffs on other economies as his administration attempts to leverage the threats into agreements. The administration has yet to strike a new deal with the European Union, another major trading partner.
The U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit is set to hear oral arguments July 31 over Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which he triggered by declaring international trade a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs as unconstitutional in a May 28 decision, following two legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.
Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among the states that brought the suit.
V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, led the business plaintiffs. Others included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.
Upon appeal from the White House, the Federal Circuit allowed Trump’s tariffs to remain in place while the case moved forward.
Federal payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024 and that violated the Impoundment Control Act, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. (Photo by SDI Productions via Getty Images)
The Health and Human Services Department illegally withheld payments from Head Start for the first months of President Donald Trump’s term, a government watchdog reported Wednesday.
HHS payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024. That violated the Impoundment Control Act, a law governing the president’s duty to spend congressionally appropriated funds, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
The law, sometimes called the ICA, allows the president to withhold appropriated funds in some circumstances. But the publicly available data did not show those conditions were met and HHS did not mount any defense prior to the report’s publication, according to the GAO.
“Because that evidence indicates that HHS withheld appropriated funds from expenditure, and because the burden to justify such withholdings rests with HHS and the executive branch, we conclude that HHS violated the ICA by withholding funds,” the report said.
Before the report’s publication, HHS did not provide the GAO with information requested by the watchdog or a legal analysis, according to the report, which was signed by GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez.
However, an HHS spokesperson told States Newsroom in a Wednesday email that it would respond to the GAO and disputed the report’s conclusion.
“HHS did not impound Head Start funds and disputes the conclusion of the GAO report,” the spokesperson wrote. “GAO should anticipate a forthcoming response from HHS to incorporate into an updated report.”
Head Start is a federal grant program to fund pre-kindergarten services for low-income families. The federal government provides up to 80% of a local program’s eligible costs, the report said. As of last year, 1,600 organizations received Head Start funding for education, nutritional, health and social services.
Organizations receiving Head Start funding generally win grant approvals for five years at a time. Programs in good standing are automatically renewed, according to the report.
Mere days after Trump took office in January, dozens of Head Start grant recipients found they were unable to access funds they’d expected from HHS, according to a Jan. 28 statement from the National Head Start Association, a coalition of grantees.
GAO’s analysis showed the department disbursed about one-third less grant funding in the first three months of the Trump administration than it had over the same period in 2024. The difference amounted to $825 million less for Head Start grants over those months.
The law does allow for HHS to stop funding for grantees before the end of the five-year period under certain circumstances, such as for failing to meet performance standards or becoming under-enrolled.
In those cases, though, HHS must warn the programs of potential cuts in grants, provide a detailed plan the organization can implement to avoid grant cancellation and give the grantee a fair hearing as well as the ability to apply for refunding — all before funding can be cut off, according to the GAO report.
There is no indication HHS took any of those steps before abruptly cutting funds in January, according to the report.
Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted President Donald Trump and his HHS in a lengthy statement that asserted Congress’ power over spending decisions and admonished the administration for harming an important program for working families.
“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start—but that’s not his choice to make,” Murray said. “Congress delivered this funding for Head Start on a bipartisan basis, and instead of trying to destroy preschool programs and breaking our laws to hurt working families, President Trump needs to ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely, consistent way moving forward—and he must also finally get out the rest of the investments he has been robbing the American people of.”
Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, highlighted Congress’ role in directing federal funding, calling on Trump and White House Budget Director Russell Vought to comply with appropriations laws.
“The President is not a king, and laws are not suggestions,” Merkley said in a statement. “Once again, we’re seeing proof that this administration is in clear violation of the law under the Impoundment Control Act. The funds appropriated by Congress are not merely suggestions for Donald Trump and Russ Vought to ignore – these are funds that hardworking families rely on, and Head Start is essential to making sure the doors of opportunity are open to every child in our country.”
The GAO report did not list any further action the agency would take but did note that litigation over the withheld funding is ongoing.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit in April in federal court in Seattle that included parents and Head Start grant recipients.
The suit described widespread confusion that Head Start organizations experienced when they could not access expected federal funding, compounded by cuts to support staff in regional offices.
The report detailed the lack of participation by HHS in the GAO’s investigation and tied it to a separate legal fight involving a public website.
“HHS has not provided the information we requested regarding factual information and its legal views concerning the potential impoundment of appropriated funds,” the report said.
Without information from the administration, the watchdog based its findings on publicly available data.
The White House Office of Management and Budget added an obstacle to that task, the watchdog said.
The office “removed agency apportionment data from its public websites, which is both contrary to OMB’s duty to make such information publicly available and to GAO’s statutory authority to access such information,” the GAO report said.
On that question, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to once again publish details about the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his ruling that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to post a website detailing how it doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.
Flood waters left debris including vehicles and equipment scattered in Louise Hays Park on July 5, 2025 in Kerrville, Texas. (Photo by Eric Vryn/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration official running the Federal Emergency Management Agency testified Wednesday the response to flash flooding in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend served as an “outstanding” model for the rest of the country.
His conclusions about the catastrophic flooding, which had a death toll of 135 and included extensive search and rescue operations, were questioned by several members of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee holding the hearing.
David Richardson, the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator, told the panel that he “can’t see anything that we did wrong.”
“The response in Texas, which was community-led, state managed and federally supported, brought the maximum amount of capability to bear in Texas at the right time and the right place,” Richardson said. “We made that happen and that is a model of how response should be done.”
Richardson testified that in his view “emergency management is not a pile-on sport. It’s well coordinated, relies on personal relationships, it’s got to be exercised beforehand. And all those things came together on Texas’ worst day.”
Richardson told the panel that while he was on vacation when the Texas flooding began and for several days afterward, he “remained in my truck the whole time” making phone calls to state and federal officials.
“Texas got what they needed when they needed it,” he testified.
When asked by Texas Republican Rep. Brian Babin “what steps will FEMA take to ensure that something like this will never happen again,” Richardson said the agency works “as closely as we can with emergency managers in Texas and the local communities.”
“Through mitigation grants, resilience and those type of efforts, we work with them to build the best emergency management system we can have,” Richardson said. “And as you saw in Texas, under the secretary’s leadership and the president’s leadership, it worked very, very well.”
Arizona Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton, ranking member on the subcommittee, rejected Richardson’s characterization that the Texas response and recovery efforts were handled appropriately.
“It haunts me that we could have had more urban search and rescue pre-positioned in place,” Stanton said. “We could have saved more of those people.”
Stanton alleged that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s requirement that any contract costing more than $100,000 get her approval hindered federal search and rescue operations.
“That bottleneck delayed urban search and rescue teams for more than 72 hours,” he said. “By the time many urban search and rescue teams reached Texas, no one had been found alive for days.”
Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, chairman of the subcommittee, appeared to defend FEMA’s approach to the Texas flooding, saying it’s not possible for FEMA to pre-position resources for all flood warnings.
“Flood warnings happen all across the country on a regular basis and FEMA doesn’t pre-position to every flood warning it gets because they would pre-position literally 365 days a year,” Perry said. “That having been said, with fast-moving disasters, like the one that occurred in Texas, it is not like a hurricane, which you can track, you can anticipate landfall or the location of the disaster to pre-position assets.”
Richardson defended staffing and wait times for FEMA’s call-in center during the two-hour hearing, rejecting reports that people were unable to get through to representatives following the Texas floods.
Stanton said that Noem’s sign-off policy on higher cost contracts caused issues here as well.
“On July 5, less than 24 hours after the tragedy, FEMA’s call center contract expired because of this $100,000 sign-off policy,” he said. “The result, the vast majority of calls from survivors went unanswered. Families desperate for shelter and aid were met with silence.
“Can you imagine losing a family member, losing your home and having your call go unanswered when you’re looking for a lifeline?”
Perry said that the subcommittee was told by another FEMA official that the call center prioritizes people in a disaster area when that disaster is ongoing, but emphasized the panel expected the correct information.
“So you might be getting calls into the call center from across the country, but the ones outside the disaster response area are put kind of behind the ones that are priority, which is the disaster that’s occurring now,” Perry said. “We don’t want to say that anybody is distorting the truth, but we got to make decisions on the correct information.”
Richardson testified that FEMA surged staff to the call center following the Texas flooding, but that Monday was an especially busy day for people contacting the agency.
“All calls were answered within three minutes … and no calls beyond 10 minutes. So it’s from three to 10 minutes,” Richardson said. “And the vast majority of phone calls were answered. The questions were addressed.”
Richardson declined to say whether the Trump administration will try to completely eliminate FEMA, saying that the president “wants a better emergency management capability.”
President Donald Trump launched a FEMA review council earlier this year to assess how the agency, which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, operates and where changes could be made.
Trump and Noem have repeatedly said they think the federal government could get rid of FEMA. Richardson said he expects the review council to issue its recommendations later this year.
When the 2023-25 budget bill made it to Gov. Tony Evers, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425 — an additional 400 years. Evers signed the 2023-25 budget bill on July 5, 2023. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
A handful of Republican lawmakers are seeking, again, to take away schools’ authority to raise their school revenue limits by $325 per pupil annually for the next four centuries, given to them through a partial veto by Gov. Tony Evers.
Reps. Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin) and Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus) alongside Sens. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said in a memo that the bill would put “property tax decisions back into the hands of local voters and taxpayers where they belong.”
“The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock 402 years before this veto,” the lawmakers said. “It is hard to justify locking in a funding increase for just as long into the future.”
In the 2023-25 state budget bill, lawmakers included a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for only two years, 2023-24 and 2024-25. When the bill made it to Evers, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425 — an additional 400 years.
In the last state budget, the Legislature allocated money to school general aid to support the revenue limit increase. The new state budget approved earlier this month did not include any general aid increase meaning that if school districts decide to use the $325 per pupil revenue increase, it will come solely from property taxes. The increase is not automatic and would need to be approved by individual school boards.
The partial veto was controversial at the time with Republican lawmakers complaining that property taxpayers would be burdened by the veto and Evers had broken the deal with lawmakers. Evers defended it, saying he was giving schools a reliable annual funding increase. Republicans sued, attempting to get the veto declared unconstitutional, but the state Supreme Court upheld it in April, saying it was within Evers’ constitutional powers.
Evers celebrated that decision, saying at the time that schools deserve “sustainable, dependable, and spendable state support and investment.”
“For over a decade, the Legislature has failed to meet that important obligation,” Evers said in April. “Importantly, this decision does not mean our work is done — far from it.”
The bill faces a difficult path to becoming law as it would need to pass the Assembly and Senate and not be vetoed by Evers.
The bill authors also complained about the governor’s vast veto power, which is one of the broadest in the nation.
“This use of that power has gone way too far,” the lawmakers said. They referenced the dissent from Justice Brian Hagedorn in the lawsuit, saying that the veto gives the governor “monarchical” powers.
The power has been curtailed in the past through state Supreme Court rulings, including recently when the Court unanimously ruled in another case that one of Evers’ partial vetoes was unconstitutional. Wisconsin governors have also lost some of their considerable partial veto authority through constitutional amendments.
Evers’ 400-year veto led Republican lawmakers to introduce constitutional amendment proposals that would limit the power further. A constitutional amendment would need to pass the Senate and Assembly twice in consecutive legislative sessions and get approval from voters before it would become law.
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Corrine Hendrickson addresses a gathering of parents and child care providers outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
For 18 years Corrine Hendrickson has been taking care of young children in her New Glarus home.
At the end of August she’ll send the last of those children home, shut the doors of “Corrine’s Little Explorers” and clean up for a final time. She hadn’t planned for it to be this way.
“It’s really difficult,” Hendrickson says. “I’m not closing on my terms. I’m not closing because I was ready to close. I’m closing because it’s the decision that I need to make for myself and my family.”
It’s a decision, she says, forced by what the 2025-27 state budget didn’t do for child care.
“It will affect our community as a whole,” says Devon Kammerud, whose children were among the first that Hendrickson had in child care when she began the business. “I knew a few of my friends who were having babies they were hoping to go there. Now they won’t have that.”
Hendrickson says that even with provisions that were hailed as an unprecedented state investment in care, the budget fell short of what would have been required for her to afford to stay in business.
In the months leading up to the budget’s passage, Hendrickson was one of the leading voices for a substantial state investment in child care. As a co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), she helped lead rallies and round tables to call on lawmakers to set aside nearly half-a-billion dollars to send directly to child care providers across Wisconsin.
Providers and advocates have been seeking an ongoing state budget line item for child care for years. Without that continuing outside support, they argue, it will either be impossible to pay child care teachers adequately or impossible for anyone beside affluent families to afford quality child care.
Child care wages have been historically low. A 2023 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that in Milwaukee, lead teachers’ pay averaged between $12 and less than $15 per hour — less than retail employees at big box stores or warehouse workers.
Parents, the policy forum report found, were paying in Milwaukee County more than $16,000 a year for infant care and more than $12,000 a year for a 4-year-old. Providers, teachers and families are all “struggling at the same time,” according to the report.
Elliot Haspel, a fellow at Capita, a family policy think tank, contends that child care should be considered a public good. He compares it to public schools, libraries, fire departments and park systems, because “the benefits are so widespread they go beyond the users of the service.”
In addition to providing children with early education opportunities, the availability of child care has benefits “for the overall health of families and the ability of families to stay in communities,” Haspel told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview in May.
The COVID-19 pandemic gave Wisconsin an opportunity for proof of concept for a state investment. Federal pandemic relief funds “gave us the most financial security we’ve ever had,” Hendrickson says.
She and Brooke Legler, who owns a group child care center in New Glarus, started WECAN about the same time. They had been traveling Wisconsin, hosting showings of the documentary “No Small Matter” about the importance of early childhood education. They started WECAN to bring activist muscle to advocating on behalf of providers and parents and increase respect and funding for child care.
Congress enacted the first COVID-19 pandemic relief funding programs in 2020. They culminated with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office. ARPA made it possible for Wisconsin to send $20 million a month to child care providers across the state for two years under the Child Care Counts program instituted by the Department of Children and Families under Gov. Tony Evers.
“We really pushed hard to get that funding to come to our state,” Hendrickson says. “And then we also pushed hard to make sure that our state did allocate it directly to all of us [providers] that were regulated.”
The monthly payments made it possible for providers to raise wages for child care teachers without having to further increase the fees parents were already paying.
After failing to persuade the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Legislature to extend Child Care Counts with state funds in 2023, the Evers administration extended the program with repurposed federal money for another two years, reducing the monthly payout to $10 million. The money ran out early this month.
When Evers introduced the 2025-27 budget in February, he once again proposed extending Child Care Counts, asking for $480 million over two years. A survey of providers found that as many as 25% said they could close without continued support.
The only way to stabilize the child care sector, providers and their allies argued, was to provide a sustained, substantial state investment. Hendrickson and countless other advocates — the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Democratic lawmakers, innumerable providers and some business leaders as well — spent most of the first half of this year advancing that message.
The odds looked steep from the start. The Republican majority on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee pulled Gov. Tony Evers’ $480 million line item for child care along with more than 600 provisions from the draft budget at the committee’s first budget meeting in the spring.
As the budget debates dragged on, advocates kept up their demands. During that time, Hendrickson was weighing her own future. She asked herself, she says, “what were the odds of us getting what we needed in this budget, and what I would need to get put in the budget in order for me to be able to operate and not outprice my parents?”
Hendrickson almost closed her child care service in the fall of 2024, when three of the eight openings for kids were unfilled until the end of September. “And I didn’t want to have to go through that again this next year — and the prices were only going to be higher,” she says.
By June, it wasn’t looking good. Initially Hendrickson expected her program to have no openings in the fall. Then three families told her they would be dropping out.
One was a mom who qualified for the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program for low-income families. The subsidy is supposed to cover 75% of the cost of care, but as child care fees have increased Wisconsin Shares has not been able to keep up. The mother said she could no longer afford her part of the bill.
The woman moved with her child to another county, and Hendrickson said she’s heard from her that she’s “trying to work from home with her 2-year-old also there at all times, because she just can’t afford her child care anymore.”
Another family was moving out of state at the end of the summer — but then changed their plans and left in June.
Weeks before the budget negotiations concluded, Hendrickson had gotten word that a direct funding program was still possible, but that insiders thought it would get only about $100 million, less than one-fourth of what providers and Evers had been seeking.
With that in mind, Hendrickson calculated a rate increase and gave that estimate to a third family. They had been driving every day from Madison to New Glarus because her center was a good fit for their child and because her rates were lower.
The new rates were closer to what they would expect to pay in Madison, the family told her, and they decided to look closer to home.
Subsequent inquiries for care came from families who were expecting a child or who had a child under 2 years old. But Hendrickson was already at her limit for that age group under the terms of her family child care license and couldn’t add more.
On July 1, Evers announced a budget deal with funding for child care, including $110 million that would be distributed to providers along the same lines as Child Care Counts — not as a long-term program, but as a bridge to an undefined future. “A bridge to nowhere,” says Sarah Kazell, a child care teacher and advocate who has worked with Hendrickson.
Kazell says the failure of lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to follow through on the message throughout the last six months for child care funding has left her “deeply disappointed and angry.”
It’s not just the absence of funding, she says, but also the last minute addition of a pilot program to increase the ratio of children to providers, but only in the low-income subsidized part of the child care system. “It just seems specifically harmful to the kids that are most vulnerable,” Kazell says.
Hendrickson had already privately calculated that she could get by if the lawmakers approved about $240 million — half what Evers had sought originally. But with a single year at a still smaller amount, increasing her rates by $60 a week “just wasn’t going to work,” she says.
Taking into account the cost for property taxes, liability insurance, homeowner’s insurance and utility rate increases, “I just couldn’t continue to justify keeping my business open while struggling and hurting my own family,” Hendrickson says.
And she knew she would need to decide sooner rather than later, so families would have time to find a new provider.
“I didn’t want the families in my care to have to worry about where their kids would go if I continued to try and struggle — and then what would happen to those kids, and where would they go?” Hendrickson says. “And I didn’t want to feel guilty and have to stay open while also bankrupting myself.”
Corrine’s Little Explorers will remain open through the end of August. Working with Legler, Hendrickson arranged for the children to be able to transfer to Legler’s center, The Growing Tree, starting in September if their parents want that.
Hendrickson graduated from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2001 with a degree in early childhood education, but in the recession after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks there were no jobs, especially in early education, she says.
She went to work at a Bath & Body Works store, working her way up to store manager. After her oldest son was born in 2006, “I had three very pregnant friends who were talking about how they couldn’t find care and how they were trying to figure out who would have to quit their job,” Hendrickson says.
Chatting during a weekly get-together, she brought up her college degree. “I said, ‘What if I quit my job and I opened up a child care?’” she recalls.
“That was a way I could meet the needs of my community, use my teaching degree, and start a small business,” Hendrickson says. “How hard could it be? This can’t be that bad, right? Yeah, I was naive.”
She had been paying for child care herself and “saw how much I was paying,” she says — not understanding the costs that providers have to bear.
She started with the infants of two friends and her own son, 10 months old at the time. Three months later another infant joined the group. Wisconsin allows child care providers who are caring for three children unrelated to them to operate without a license.
In the midst of the Great Recession of 2008, her husband, Kevin got laid off from his job at a landscape contracting company. “We were trying to figure out how do I stay open,” Hendrickson recalls. “We went on food stamps. We went on BadgerCare … We did everything we could to keep my business floating and him trying to find a part-time job.”
A volunteer firefighter for New Glarus, her husband was able to take a part-time firefighting job in Verona and has since risen first to a full-time position and more recently to fire chief.
Within a couple of years, Hendrickson got licensed from the state as a family child care provider. “We weren’t really making a lot, but it was what I loved,” she says.
The couple renovated their home, adding a lower level that opens to the outdoors and serves as the child care space. Hendrickson qualified for the state’s highest quality rating, five stars, in 2012 and has maintained that since.
When she encountered a child with special needs, Hendrickson asked about help from state officials in the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker. She recalls one who told her that she could turn away the child. “I didn’t think that was right,” Hendrickson says.
All three of Bekah Stauffacher’s children have spent time in care at Corrine’s Little Explorers. “She’s had such a positive impact on all three of them,” Stauffacher says. “We feel so lucky that we got to know her and have our children with her.”
Stauffacher’s middle child, who’s now 12, has severe developmental delays due to a genetic disorder. Hendrickson threw herself into finding some additional support for the girl during her years in child care.
“It was impressive,” Stauffacher says of Hendrickson’s advocacy on behalf of her daughter. “It was more than we could have handled ourselves — we were grateful that she took it on.”
For a special needs child covered under the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program, a care provider can get additional funding for an aide, special materials or training. She got to know Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who later introduced legislation that would have expanded that additional funding for all special needs children in child care, whether they were part of Wisconsin Shares or not.
Although the bill died in committee, “going through that process really empowered me, and helped me understand what your representatives are supposed to do,” Hendrickson says.
Kazell has spent the last few years subbing for Hendrickson in the child care program when Hendrickson has gone on the road to press the case for child care support or lead workshops on advocacy. She’s also been active in WECAN’s advocacy and organizing work.
“She’s a mentor to me, and I think the most meaningful and most important mentor in my life,” Kazell says — both in early childhood teaching and in the work of organizing for change.
“She definitely was that person that helped me gain such a deep appreciation for the need for actual activism and organizing,” Kazell says — critical, she adds, to bring about the cultural change to elevate society’s value for child care and the political change to translate that value into concrete policy.
“She can talk a mile a minute and she knows a lot of stuff, but she’s also the type of person who’s keyed into where the other person is coming from,” Kazell says.
As she considers what she’ll do next, Hendrickson expects to stay involved in advocacy work, providing training in grass-roots organizing. It’s something she’s been doing already for several years.
She’s also contemplating whether to run for the state Legislature.
“We need people in there that actually care and understand the consequences of their inaction or their action,” Hendrickson said. “Taxes aren’t necessarily bad. It’s just we need to use them in ways that the people paying them feel that they’re getting something back for it.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
People listen to a sermon before being admitted to lunch at the Hope Center, which assists homeless and addicted residents in Hagerstown, Md. Experts say Medicaid cuts will exacerbate rural communities’ access to mental health care. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Across the nation, Medicaid is the single largest payer for mental health care, and in rural America, residents disproportionately rely on the public insurance program.
But Medicaid cuts in the massive tax and spending bill signed into law earlier this month will worsen mental health disparities in those communities, experts say, as patients lose coverage and rural health centers are unable to remain open amid a loss of funds.
“The context to begin with is, even with no Medicaid cuts, the access to mental health services in rural communities is spotty at best, just very spotty at best — and in many communities, there’s literally no care,” said Ron Manderscheid, former executive director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors.
Cuts over the next 10 years could force low-income rural families to pay for mental health care out of pocket on top of driving farther for care, experts say. Many will simply forgo care for depression, bipolar disorder and other illnesses that need consistent treatment.
“Not only do you have very few services available, but you don’t have the resources to pay for the services,” Manderscheid said. “That makes the problem even worse.”
Rural communities are already at higher risk of suicide, with rates almost doubling over the past two decades. Already, rural communities are grappling with a shortage in mental health professionals, making them more vulnerable to losses compared with more urban areas, experts say.
Paul Mackie, assistant director of the Center for Rural Behavioral Health at Minnesota State University, Mankato, studies rural mental health workforce shortages.
“If it [coverage] goes away, what would then be the person’s next option if they already don’t have the resources?” said Mackie, who grew up on a rural Michigan dairy farm. “You can have a rural psychologist or a rural clinical social worker working under a shingle, literally alone.”
Small rural hospitals often provide critical behavioral health care access, he said. One analysis found the cuts next year would leave 380 rural hospitals at risk of shutting down.
States such as Mackie’s Minnesota, which expanded Medicaid eligibility under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, would suffer significant slashes in federal matches as a result of President Donald Trump’s signature legislation. The law, which includes tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, cuts the federal government’s 90% matching rate for enrollees covered under expansion to anywhere from 50% to 74%.
States will have to redetermine eligibility twice a year on millions enrolled under Medicaid expansion. Some Medicaid recipients also will have to prove work history. The new law creates work requirement exceptions for those with severe medical conditions — including mental disorders and substance use — but experts say proving those conditions may be convoluted. The exact qualifications and diagnoses for the exceptions haven’t been spelled out, according to a report by KFF, a health policy research organization.
Not only do you have very few services available, but you don't have the resources to pay for the services. That makes the problem even worse.
– Ron Manderscheid, former executive director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors
“You can’t work when your mental illness is not treated,” said Dr. Heidi Alvey, an emergency and critical care medicine physician in Indiana. “It’s so counter to the reality of the situation.”
Alvey worked seven years at Baylor Scott & White Health’s hospital in Temple, Texas. As nearby rural critical access hospitals and other mental health centers shut down, the hospital became the only access point for people hours away, she said.
“People who just had absolutely no access to care were coming hours in to see us,” she said. Many had serious untreated mental health conditions, she said, and had to wait days or weeks in the emergency department until a care facility had an open bed.
She’s concerned that Medicaid cuts will only make those problems worse.
Jamie Freeny, director of the Center for School Behavioral Health at advocacy group Mental Health America of Greater Houston, worries for the rural families her center serves. The organization works with school districts across the state, including those in rural communities. Nearly 40% of the state’s more than 1,200 school districts are classified as rural.
She remembers one child whose family had to drive to another county for behavioral health. The family lost coverage during the Medicaid unwinding, as pandemic provisions for automatic re-reenrollment expired. The child stopped taking mental health medication and ended up dropping out of school.
“The child wasn’t getting the medicine that they needed, because their family couldn’t afford it,” Freeny said. “The catalyst for that was a lack of Medicaid. That’s just one family.
“Now, you’re multiplying that.”
Family medicine physician Dr. Ian Bennett sees Medicaid patients at the Vallejo Family Health Services Center of Solano County in California’s Bay Area. The community health clinic serves patients from across the area’s rural farm communities and combines primary care with mental health care services, Bennett said.
“When our patients lose Medicaid, which we expect that they will, then we’ll have to continue to take them, and that will be quite a strain on the finances of that system,” Bennett said. The center could even close, he said.
“The folks who are having the most difficulty managing their lives — and that’s made worse by having depression or substance use disorder — are going to be the folks most likely to drop off,” said Bennett, a University of Washington mental health services researcher. “The impacts down the road are clearly going to be much worse for society as we have less people able to function.”
The psychiatric care landscape across Michigan’s rural western lower peninsula is already scarce, said Joseph “Chip” Johnston. He’s the executive director of the Centra Wellness Network, a publicly funded community mental health care provider for Manistee and Benzie counties. The network serves Medicaid and uninsured patients from high-poverty communities.
“I used to have psychiatric units close by as an adjunct to my service,” he said. “And they’ve all closed. So, now the closest [psychiatric bed] for a child, for example, is at least two hours away.”
Those facilities are also expensive. A one-night stay in an inpatient psychiatric facility can be anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 a night, he said.
Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
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