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People participate in a naturalization ceremony last year at Liberty State Park in Jersey City, N.J. The Trump administration is encouraging states to use an online search tool to verify the citizenship of registered voters, alarming some Democrats and privacy experts. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
BILOXI, Miss. — The Trump administration is developing a powerful data tool it claims will let states identify noncitizens registered to vote. But Democratic critics and data experts warn it could allow the federal government to vacuum up vast quantities of information on Americans for unclear purposes.
Some Democratic election officials and opponents of the effort fear President Donald Trump wants to build a federal database of voters to target political opponents or cherry-pick rare examples of noncitizen voters to fuel a sense of crisis. Republican election officials allied with the president counter that he’s helping states to maintain accurate voter rolls.
The Trump administration has rolled out changes to the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, tool at the same time the U.S. Department of Justice is asking states for copies of their voter rolls. The timing, combined with questions about what happens to voter data uploaded to the program, has alarmed critics.
Trump wants Congress to pass a national proof of citizenship voter registration requirement and in March tried to unilaterally impose one for federal elections through executive order. But with the legislation stalled and the order halted by the courts, the citizenship data tool may offer a backdoor way to accomplish the same goal.
SAVE was originally intended to help state and local officials verify the immigration status of individual noncitizens seeking government benefits. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, this spring refashioned it into a platform that can scan states’ voter rolls if election officials upload the data.
The changes to SAVE, rolled out over just a few months and with little public debate, are “tinkering with sort of the bones of democracy,” said John Davisson, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based research and advocacy group that argues privacy is a fundamental right.
“You’re talking about the voting process and who will be eligible to vote,” Davisson said. “And to take a system that is not designed for use in that process and repurpose it, really on the fly, without a formal comment process, without formal rulemaking, without congressional intervention — that’s pretty anomalous and pretty alarming.”
Previously, SAVE could only search one name at a time. Now it can conduct bulk searches, allowing state officials to potentially feed into it information on millions of registered voters. SAVE checks that information against a series of federal databases and reports back whether it can verify someone’s immigration status.
Since May, it also can draw upon Social Security data, transforming the program into a tool that can confirm citizenship because Social Security records for many, but not all, Americans include the information. NPR reported earlier on changes to SAVE.
“It is incredible what has been done, really since March,” Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican who supports proof of citizenship requirements and the SAVE tool, told a gathering of state secretaries of state in Biloxi, Mississippi, last week.
Individuals registering to vote in federal elections must already sign a statement affirming they are citizens under penalty of perjury, and those who cast a ballot face criminal penalties and deportation. One study of the 2016 election placed the prevalence of noncitizen voting at 0.0001% of votes cast.
But as Trump has spread falsehoods about elections, Republicans have made purging noncitizens from voter rolls a central focus.
Nameplates at the National Association of Secretaries of State conference in Biloxi, Miss. The Trump administration wants state secretaries of state to use an online program to identify noncitizens on their voter rolls. (Photo by Jonathan Shorman/Stateline)
Democratic concerns were on display last week at the National Association of Secretaries of State conference, held at the Beau Rivage casino-resort in Biloxi. In interviews on the sidelines of the conference, Democratic secretaries of state voiced deep reservations — or outright opposition — about plugging their voter data into SAVE.
Maine Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said Aug. 6 that the federal government appeared to be trying to take over election administration. She formally rejected the Justice Department’s voter roll request two days later.
Bellows said the Department of Homeland Security told her in a recent phone call that it planned to retain SAVE data for 10 years for “audit purposes only.”
“Just like the [Justice Department] is asking us to hand over an electronic file of all the voters in our state, it seems like the Department of Homeland Security is through this backdoor system also asking us to share voter information about every voter in our state,” Bellows said.
At least one state appears to have granted the federal government sweeping authority over any voter data it provides to SAVE.
Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales announced in July he had reached an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to access the newly expanded system for voter list maintenance. Indiana’s agreement allows the federal agency to use information the state provides for any purpose permitted by law, including criminal prosecutions.
Morales, a Republican, said in a news release that SAVE represented “another step in safeguarding the rights” of eligible voters. His office didn’t respond to Stateline’s questions.
The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to encourage state election officials to use the expanded program. The White House hosted a bipartisan “fly in” event for state secretaries of state on July 29. Multiple secretaries of state told Stateline that USCIS Director Joseph Edlow, who was confirmed on July 15, spoke at the event.
“The president is very much keyed in on voter list maintenance,” Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, a Republican, said in an interview — echoing other GOP secretaries of state who released statements praising the Trump administration after the meeting.
When we disclose information, particularly personal identifying information, we need to have a handle on how it’s going to be used, by whom and under what circumstances.
– Minnesota Democratic Secretary of State Steve Simon
Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat who attended the meeting, said he questioned how the federal government would handle voter information provided to SAVE. He added that the Justice Department’s request for his state’s voter rolls raised his level of concern about how data would be used.
“When we disclose information, particularly personal identifying information, we need to have a handle on how it’s going to be used, by whom and under what circumstances,” Simon told Stateline.
The White House referred questions about SAVE and the event to the Department of Homeland Security and USCIS.
In response to questions from Stateline, USCIS didn’t directly answer whether the agency would share voter roll data with other parts of the federal government but confirmed it disposes of records after 10 years.
“The SAVE application is a critical tool for state and local governments to access information to safeguard the integrity of elections across the country. It’s no wonder many states have quickly adopted it, and we continue to promote the tool to other states and counties not using SAVE,” USCIS spokesperson Matthew Tragesser said in a statement.
“We look forward to continued optimization efforts and implementing more updates to SAVE.”
GOP pressure
Some Republican election officials and Trump allies have long wanted the federal government to take an expanded role in searching state voter rolls for noncitizens.
Last summer the Trump-aligned litigation group America First Legal, co-founded by Trump adviser Stephen Miller, encouraged states to submit to the Department of Homeland Security the names of individuals for citizenship or immigration status verification.
Some states did just that. Texas, for example, asked USCIS to verify the citizenship of some voters in September, and Indiana asked the agency to verify 585,774 voters in October. The same month, 16 Republican state attorneys general signed a letter criticizing Homeland Security, then under the Biden administration, for failing to work with states on verification.
After Trump took office, GOP state officials kept up the pressure. Twenty-one Republican secretaries of state urged Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in February to prioritize SAVE improvements.
On April 16, Indiana sued the department in federal court for not responding to its verification request last fall. USCIS announced an overhaul of SAVE less than a week later.
As the agency continues to remake SAVE, the tool will soon allow searches using the last four digits of a Social Security number, multiple state secretaries of state told Stateline. The agency confirmed the feature is under development and will be available soon but didn’t provide an exact date.
The change would mark another significant expansion of the program because most states collect the last four digits when individuals without a driver’s license register to vote.
Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane, a Republican, said SAVE represents a better way to verify citizenship than a state law requiring voters to produce documents. “I think there’s a real opportunity for us to do a lot of this through just sharing of information and I think that’s what we’re seeing happen,” McGrane said in an interview.
Unreliable data?
But some voting rights advocates and experts on government data caution against an overreliance on Social Security data.
The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a progressive policy nonprofit, has noted that Social Security only began tracking the citizenship status of all applicants in 1978 — meaning the database doesn’t include comprehensive citizenship information for older Americans. Additionally, Social Security may not always have up-to-date information on the status of naturalized U.S. citizens.
The nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government also warned in May that since SAVE hasn’t used Social Security numbers to verify citizenship in the past, its accuracy and effectiveness are unknown. The success of the expanded SAVE program may also partially depend on whether it has adequate staff and resources, it said.
A 2017 Government Accountability Office report found that between fiscal years 2012 and 2016, about 16% of the nearly 90 million SAVE searches required additional verification, which the institute says often translates into federal workers manually checking files. Now that SAVE allows bulk searches, the need for manual checking could rise dramatically.
Nick Doctor, director of implementation at the Institute for Responsive Government, said in an interview that a tool confirming the eligibility of registered voters in a way that doesn’t burden individuals can be a good thing. But he emphasized that it depends in large measure on SAVE’s implementation.
“The changes that have been made to SAVE happened very quickly and, to my knowledge, we haven’t seen releases on the level of accuracy of that information,” Doctor said.
During interviews, Republican secretaries of state stressed that voters aren’t kicked off the rolls because SAVE can’t verify their citizenship. Instead, an inability to verify would likely trigger a follow-up process with the voter.
“Just because we get something back from the SAVE database, it’s not a cut and dry, especially on those they’re not sure about,” Hoskins, the Missouri secretary of state, said.
Still, Arizona illustrates why some Democrats worry about any large-scale effort to ask voters — especially longtime, older residents — to prove their citizenship. After the state discovered errors in how it tracked voter citizenship dating back years, election officials are contacting some 200,000 voters seeking proof of citizenship documentation.
Some have been casting ballots for decades without incident and many feel targeted, Arizona Democratic Secretary of State Adrian Fontes said during a presentation at the state secretaries of state conference. “They feel insulted when they get that letter,” Fontes said.
There’s a lot of good-government reasons to believe that something like this, governed properly and governed with fail-safe mechanisms, could have an upside.
– Charles Stewart III, professor of political science at MIT who studies elections
Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies elections, said Arizona may actually point to the potential usefulness of SAVE. If Arizona runs its voter roll through the program, a list of 200,000 voters needing citizenship verification would perhaps drop into the hundreds, he suggested.
“There’s a lot of good-government reasons to believe that something like this, governed properly and governed with fail-safe mechanisms, could have an upside,” Stewart said.
Connecticut Democratic Secretary of State Stephanie Thomas told Stateline that every secretary wants tools to keep voter lists as clean as possible. But the details are important.
When she hears of something new, Thomas said she asks whether it’s the best option available and whether “the i’s are dotted, the t’s crossed.” She said she’s asked USCIS a series of questions about SAVE and is waiting on some responses.
“When it comes to voter lists,” Thomas said, “I don’t want Connecticut voters to be a guinea pig.”
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.
Protesters gather in Milwaukee's Cathedral Square to march and rally as part of the No Kings Day protests nationwide. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Voting rights activists continue to be divided over gerrymandering. Here in Wisconsin, members of the Fair Maps Coalition, who just recently succeeded in getting representative voting maps for our state, are understandably alarmed by escalating threats to gerrymander the whole country, as Wisconsin Public Radio reports.
“I just hate it at its core,” Wisconsin League of Women Voters Executive Director Debra Cronmiller told WPR of the gerrymandering duel between Texas and California, as each state seeks to carve out more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“We can’t save democracy by suppressing voters, and this has to be an opportunity to think about a new process and standards, especially in Wisconsin,” iuscely Flores, Wisconsin Fair Maps organizing director, told WPR.
But the president and CEO of Common Cause, the national organization dedicated to voting rights and fair elections, told members last week that the group “won’t call for unilateral political disarmament in the face of authoritarianism.”
The Common Cause position is tricky. On the one hand the group reaffirms its commitment to nonpartisan redistricting commissions. On the other hand it gives its blessing to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to suspend exactly the sort of nonpartisan commission the group endorses — and which Wisconsin fair maps advocates have long been fighting for. Supposedly, suspending the commission is a temporary measure while Democrats in the legislature draw up gerrymandered districts in time for the midterms. After they do that, Common Cause, Newsom and various Democrats claim California can undo the gerrymander later and restart the fight for fair maps. Really?
“Independent redistricting commissions are one way — and by far the best way — to draw fair maps and achieve fair representation for every single American,” Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause president and CEO wrote in a letter to the group’s members. But, a follow-up email from Common Cause reiterated the group’s non-opposition to Newsom’s plan in California, saying, “As the nation’s leading anti-gerrymandering advocacy group, we understand that Trump and Republican leaders’ attempt to lock in unaccountable power poses a generational threat to our ability to decide our own futures.”
Maggie Daun brought up those same dire threats on her Civic Media radio show when she grilled me about my last column arguing that we can’t gerrymander our way back to democracy. What if this is the existential moment and Trump is about to send troops into cities across the U.S. and destroy democracy, Daun asked. I agree with her that we’re in an existential moment. But just because we want Democrats to do something to stop Trump, as so many people so passionately do, that doesn’t mean that gerrymandering to get a narrow Democratic majority in the House is the right thing to do. For one thing, a new House majority won’t be seated until 2027 and won’t fix the immediate crisis.
Trump is already sending troops into Democratic cities. And his plan to try more federal takeovers will likely unfold before the midterms. What we need right now is a massive popular movement to resist authoritarian overreach, local leaders who stand up to Trump, and courts that continue to hold the line on his administration’s assault on the rule of law.
The courts have played the biggest role in restraining Trump so far, issuing injunctions and blocking his orders Their power has been badly limited by the U.S. Supreme Court, which curtailed judges’ power to issue nationwide injunctions and greenlighted some egregious administrative actions. The current Supreme Court majority has also helped Trump’s larger project of dismantling democracy by gutting the Voting Rights Act and by allowing partisan gerrymandering — which delayed but ultimately did not derail Wisconsin’s efforts to get fair maps.
Common Cause has led the fight against both partisan gerrymandering and the destruction of voting rights. On Saturday, the group declared a National Day of Action, with rallies in communities across the country, including in Wisconsin, to resist Trump’s Texas gerrymandering scheme and his unprecedented deployment of federal troops to run roughshod over local communities. But the group’s message is somewhat muddled, mixing strong language about fairness and voting rights with tolerance for the prospect of blue-state counter-gerrymandering.
One good thing about the gerrymandering brushfire spreading across the nation is that it has provoked a bipartisan backlash. Republicans in New York and California, facing the prospect of being drawn out of their seats, have begun speaking out against the gerrymandering plan for Texas, Politico reports.
Some quick math suggests that Republicans are likely to win a nationwide redistricting war that pulls in Missouri, Indiana, Florida and other red states. But Republicans who are in a minority in California and New York are still worried about losing their seats. “Redistricting is not really an ideological exercise as much as a self-interest exercise,” California-based GOP strategist Rob Stutzman told Politico. Hence blue state Republican House members are calling for their colleagues to stand down in Texas and other red states, lest they lose their seats in the blue state counter-gerrymander.
Instead of looking to gerrymandering, which is unfair, diminishes democracy and escalates hyper partisanship, opponents of the Trump administration need to keep building a big, pro-democracy movement that unites a majority of the country against Trump’s authoritarian overreach.
Wisconsin could lead the way.
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who has been holding town halls in Republican districts, reports being deluged with worried questions from both his own and his GOP colleagues’ constituents who don’t like the cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and Social Security staffing in the unpopular “Big Beautiful Bill Act.” Most Americans don’t want to give away their health care, security and well-being so Elon Musk can get a tax cut.
Unfortunately, right-wing activists have played a long game, stacking the Supreme Court, blocking Democratic nominees, destroying the Voting Rights Act and putting the whole Heritage Foundation Project 2025 plan for authoritarianism in place. That won’t be undone in a single midterm election. But it is possible to leverage a broad-based populist movement of people who recognize it’s in their own interest to fight back.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered Madison election officials to follow several specific election procedures to ensure that ballots don’t go missing again in the capital city, rejecting arguments by the interim clerk that the orders may exceed the agency’s legal authority.
The commission’s 5-1 vote Friday came a month after it withheld a first set of proposed orders amid pushback from Madison and Dane County officials and asked the city to propose its own remedies. Madison interim Clerk Mike Haas said the specificity of the commission’s original proposed orders “would set a troubling precedent.”
The city did submit its proposals, but the commission rejected them as overly broad and finalized orders that were largely similar to the ones it proposed in July, with some minor revisions, including citations of the legal basis for each order.
The orders require Madison officials to create an internal plan detailing which election task is assigned to which employee; print pollbooks no earlier than the Tuesday before each election; develop a detailed record to track absentee ballots; and search through election materials for missing ballots before the city’s election canvassing board meets to finalize results.
The WEC action responds to lapses by the Madison clerk’s office, then headed by Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the November 2024 presidential election, when staffers lost track of 193 ballots and did not report finding them until well past the state deadline for counting. The commission launched its investigation into the matter in January.
Clerk’s cookie baking factored into commissioners’ discussion
During discussions ahead of the vote, Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican, cited Votebeat’s reporting that Witzel-Behl spent a long post-election vacation at home — not on an out-of-state trip, as he had believed — baking thousands of cookies when some lost ballots were discovered. That, he said, factored into his vote for stricter orders.
“She couldn’t be bothered to turn off the oven, to come to the office to figure out if the Ward 65 ballots could be counted,” he said. “The failure to mention that the clerk was readily available to address this issue, along with the fact that none of the city officials we depose felt it was their job to get the ballots counted, makes me even more determined that the Commission must impose the directions in our order.”
Similarly, commission Chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, said it was “peculiar” that clerk’s office staff never told commissioners during their monthslong investigation that they rented cars on city time to deliver cookies after the ballot discovery.
Those deposed “were all part of the cookie crew,” she said ahead of her vote. “Why didn’t they tell us about that? Why didn’t the city of Madison ever mention this? Why did nobody bring this up?”
In a memo circulated ahead of the meeting, commission staff said the scope of the error “warrants a detailed order from the Commission correcting (Witzel-Behl’s) office’s policies and procedures, and ensuring those issues are actually fixed before the next statewide election.”
Haas, who was formerly the commission administrator, disagreed with the original proposed orders. He said the commission’s authority “does not extend to requiring the future implementation of specific procedures in excess of those required in the statutes.”
But commission staff pushed back, calling it “unreasonable and absurd” to read state law as barring the commission from ordering specific remedies.
In some cases, the commissioners made the requirements more stringent than what Madison proposed, but more lenient than the commission’s originally proposed orders.
For example, one order the commission initially proposed would have required Madison to print pollbooks no sooner than the Thursday before Election Day, despite state law calling on officials only to have the “most current official registration list.” Haas requested an order more in line with what state law outlines, printing the ballots as close to Election Day as possible.
The final order sets the deadline for printing pollbooks on the Tuesday before Election Day — two days earlier than first proposed — and requires that they be delivered no later than the Friday before the election.
Witzel-Behl’s office printed pollbooks for the two wards that lost ballots on Oct. 23, nearly two weeks before Election Day. The commission said printing that early made it harder for officials to track absentee ballots returned before Election Day and harder for poll workers to see how many ballots went uncounted.
Interim clerk’s objections to the commission’s order
Haas, who took over as interim clerk after Witzel-Behl was suspended in March, told Votebeat on the Tuesday ahead of the meeting that it was “way too early” to think about whether Madison would appeal the commission’s orders in court. In a statement after Friday’s vote, he said he was grateful that the commission altered some orders after the city’s feedback.
“The question is which level of government is best suited and authorized to determine specific procedures that work for the municipality in going above and beyond what the statutes require,” he told Votebeat. “We look forward to working with the Commission to ensure compliance with state law.”
Mark Thomsen, a Democratic commissioner, said he wasn’t comfortable with the agency beating up on Madison over mistakes made under a former clerk when a new permanent clerk hasn’t yet been hired.
At the meeting, Thomsen said he was uncomfortable imposing burdens on a new clerk that “no one else has to follow.”
“This order seems spiteful, and I don’t want to go there,” he said, before casting the lone dissent. Republicans Millis, Bob Spindell and Marge Bostelmann joined Democrats Carrie Riepl and Jacobs in approving the orders.
State law allows the commission to “require any election official to conform his or her conduct to the law, restrain an official from taking any action inconsistent with the law or require an official to correct any action or decision inconsistent with the law.”
Many of the orders, such as assigning specific staff to each election task, are not explicitly mentioned in statute.
Addressing claims that the orders were too detailed, commission staff attorney Angela O’Brien Sharpe said, “If the Legislature intended for the commission to only be able to issue general orders, they would have written a law to say just that.”
In a statement following the vote, Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the city is reorganizing the office to improve efficiency and accountability.
“We appreciate the Wisconsin Elections Commission considering our input and amending its orders to reflect that feedback,” she said. “I hope the WEC’s investigation can help inform best practices for election clerks around the state.”
Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.
A recent law President Donald Trump signed July 24 cuts funding for public broadcast stations, including those that provide local emergency alerts.
The law rescinded $9 billion in previously approved funding – $8 billion for foreign aid and $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private nonprofit – for fiscal 2026 and 2027.
CPB, which announced it would shut down because of the rescissions, has funneled federal dollars to radio and TV networks such as NPR and PBS.
NPR, PBS and their member stations are mostly funded by private donations, but smaller stations, especially in rural areas, relied more on CPB funding. And people in those areas rely on local stations for emergency weather and other alerts.
Wisconsin stations received $8.5 million in CPB funding in fiscal 2024.
The rescissions don’t affect the Emergency Alert System, for national emergency announcements, or the Wireless Emergency Alerts.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many businesses closed or laid off workers, a massive influx of 8.8 million unemployment claims overwhelmed Wisconsin’s aging unemployment insurance system.
That created a backlog of hundreds of thousands of claims. Many potential applicants weren’t able to connect to the department’s call center to complete the process, and some Wisconsinites waited months without receiving a single unemployment payment.
Following those backlogs, the state has made strides to update the system and move away from outdated, decades-old computer systems, said state Department of Workforce Development Secretary Amy Pechacek.
She said DWD now has a digital portal for people to file unemployment claims and send documents online. The department also uses online chatbots to respond to questions in multiple languages, as well as uses artificial intelligence tools to assist with data entry.
“With these enhancements, the department is now paying 88% of all claims filed within three days or less,” Pechacek said. “That other 12% of claims that go a little bit longer are typically just because we have to do investigations if there’s some discrepancies between what the claimant and the employer are saying.”
In a letter to the Trump administration on Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers said the administration is blocking nearly $30 million in federal funding to Wisconsin, which could prevent the state from finishing the project and potentially leave it vulnerable to cyberattacks and fraud.
“If the Trump Administration does not reverse course and provide the $29 million Wisconsin expected to receive, the state will not be able to complete its UI system modernization project,” Evers wrote to U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer.
That funding was part of the American Rescue Plan Act, a pandemic recovery law signed by former President Joe Biden, and was being primarily used on anti-fraud measures, according to the governor’s office. Evers’ letter says the U.S. Labor Department “suddenly terminated” the funding in late May.
The termination halted work on identity authentication tools, a digital employer portal, artificial intelligence enhancements, fraud prevention and cybersecurity tools, according to Pechacek. She said the employer portal was the DWD’s next major rollout and would have made it easier for employers to provide information to the state.
“The employer portal is really one of the largest losses from this federal action,” Pechacek said. “Our employers … have to submit quarterly wage information (and) verify claim information, and some of those components are still very antiquated.”
Evers wrote that the Department of Labor “cited no objections” to those initiatives beyond “an unsupported assertion that they ‘no longer effectuate the Department’s priorities.’”
Pechacek said the state has already spent “slightly over half” of the $29 million. She said those grants were “reimbursement-based,” meaning the state first had to spend the money and then be paid back by the federal government.
“There are seven projects that have now been paused in a variety of different states of completion, so those are sunk costs,” she said. “Without realizing the full modernization effort, we can’t roll those projects out.”
The state appealed the Labor Department’s termination and received a letter from the federal government in late July that “acknowledged the appeal while restating the Department’s earlier basis for termination,” the governor’s letter states.
“The people of Wisconsin deserve systems that function, state of the art, with high integrity and accuracy,” Pechacek said. “We are also going to pursue litigation to reclaim the funds which were rightfully awarded to us already and improperly rescinded.”
In addition to the $29 million in lost funding, the project was using $80 million from a different program under the American Rescue Plan Act, according to a report sent to the Legislature’s budget committee. The document states that the $80 million has not been impacted but is “insufficient to support the full modernization work.”
Pechacek said DWD has also asked the state Legislature to allocate additional state funds toward finishing the effort but said there hasn’t been much movement on that front.
Wisconsin isn’t the only state that’s had federal funding to upgrade unemployment systems clawed back by the Trump administration. In May, Axios reported the White House terminated $400 million of that funding across the country. A July report from state agencies said $675 million in grants awarded to unemployment programs in over 30 states and territories had been terminated.
The U.S. Department of Labor did not immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment. In May, the federal agency told Axios in a statement that the unemployment modernization funding was “squandered” on “bureaucratic and wasteful projects that focused on equitable access rather than advancing access for all Americans in need.”
In the letter, Evers also said failing to complete Wisconsin’s modernization effort would put the state’s unemployment system at risk of becoming overwhelmed again during any future economic downturn. He says that would “create acute hardship for Wisconsin families.”
“It is our obligation to prevent this scenario from coming to pass,” Evers wrote. “I urge you to reverse the decision to defund these critical government efficiency and fraud prevention initiatives.”
Pechacek said the state isn’t reverting back to old technology in the pieces of the modernization that have already been completed in “major areas.” But she said failing to fully finish the effort poses a risk to Wisconsinites because there are still aspects of the system running on an outdated coding language.
“Any time we don’t fully invest in upgrading and reach the programmatic goals that we have set to get fully off of the antiquated systems, we are at risk to be overwhelmed again,” she said. “All of that leads us to be more vulnerable, in a time of significant increase of accessing the system, to the cyber attacks, to fraudulent efforts, to being compromised.”
Thousands of people have filed claims after flood waters inundated homes or swamped vehicles. But flood damage to buildings is not covered by home or renters insurance unless they have purchased flood policies, said Sarah Smith, spokesperson with the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance.
An absentee ballot drop box in Madison, where officials lost and failed to count nearly 200 absentee ballots in the 2024 presidential election.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted 5-1 on Friday to institute its order against the city of Madison requiring that city officials make a number of changes to absentee ballot processes after the city lost and failed to count nearly 200 ballots during the 2024 presidential election.
The Madison city clerk’s office told the elections commission in a memo Dec. 20 about the lost ballots from two Madison wards. A bag containing 68 unprocessed absentee ballots from two wards was found Nov. 12 in a tabulator bin, the memo stated. During reconciliation of ballots on Dec. 3, clerk employees found two sealed envelopes containing a total of 125 unprocessed absentee ballots from another ward. The discovery of the missing ballots was announced to the public Dec. 26.
The missing ballots were not enough to change the result of any local, state or federal elections.
WEC launched an investigation into the error. In a report released last month, WEC found that “confluence of errors” and a “complete lack of leadership” in the city clerk’s office led to the ballots going missing.
The investigation report also proposed a number of requirements for the city to improve its systems for tracking and counting absentee ballots. Those requirements constituted the order the commission approved on Friday.
Among other things, the order requires the city to develop an internal plan delineating which employee is responsible for statutorily required tasks, print poll books no earlier than the Thursday before elections, change the absentee ballot processing system so bags and envelopes aren’t lost, update instructional materials for poll workers and complete a full inspection of all materials before the scheduled board of canvassers meeting after an election.
Commissioners followed through with enacting the order after interim City Clerk Michael Haas had sent a letter to the commission, requesting that the provisions of the order be made more broad and suggesting that the commission does not have the authority to enforce such changes to local election practices against just one municipality.
“Individually-tailored orders for jurisdictions across the state also runs the risk of increasing, rather than decreasing, inconsistency of local election practices,” Haas wrote in an Aug. 6 letter to the commission. “If the Commission truly wishes to dictate the staffing, workflow, and procedures of municipal clerks at such a granular level, a regulatory guidance or rule-making that applies to all jurisdictions and that allows for thoughtful input by local election officials makes far more sense and is likely required.”
In the letter, Haas wrote that the requirements of the WEC order were drafted in a vacuum from the city’s already existing election processes; that they give no end date or flexibility to election law changes made by the courts, Legislature or WEC itself; don’t address the logistic specifics of running an election in the state’s second largest city and don’t provide statutory reasons for the required changes.
At the meeting Friday, Democratic Commissioner Mark Thomsen was the only member to vote against enacting the order. Thomsen argued that the order seemed “spiteful.” He said the city administered the 2025 spring election with no issues and that it still doesn’t have a permanent city clerk, so whoever is hired will be hamstrung by an order made because of actions they had nothing to do with.
“I don’t think it’s fair to burden the new clerk with a set of orders that all the other clerks recognize no one else has to follow,” Thomsen said. “It is absolutely tragic that 193 people’s votes weren’t counted. They have separate legal remedies now. We have done what we needed to do. We’ve done an investigation, we’ve laid it out, and I do not think we should do a power grab and create burdens on the new clerk, whether or not we can exercise it.”
But the supporters of the order said that not imposing it would mean letting the city off without being held accountable. Commission chair Ann Jacobs, a Democrat, noted that even though former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl resigned after the incident, many staff involved in losing the ballots remain in the clerk’s office.
“I think we need to order it also so that clerks across the state understand the level of seriousness that this commission takes with this,” Jacobs said. “The city needs to straighten out what happened here. And I don’t think there’s been sort of that reckoning yet.”
Administrative rules
The commission on Friday also reinstituted the administrative rulemaking process on a number of proposed rules that had been held up by a legislative committee.
The Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) had previously suspended emergency rules written by WEC on a number of topics, including instructions for absentee voting and challenges to candidate ballot access.
Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in Tony Evers v. Howard Marklein that JCRAR’s suspension of administrative rules amounted to an unconstitutional legislative veto. Under previous law, state agencies weren’t allowed to promulgate a permanent rule on a topic in which the committee had previously struck down an emergency rule. After the court’s ruling, WEC can once again start the rulemaking process.
The commission voted to restart the process of establishing rules for challenging candidate nomination papers, challenging declarations of candidacy and mandating that local clerks use a uniform set of rules for absentee ballots.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland has struck down the U.S. Education Department’s attempts to do away with diversity, equity and inclusion practices in schools.
The Thursday ruling marks a blow to President Donald Trump’s administration as it continues to take significant strides to try to crack down on DEI efforts across the federal government.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie A. Gallagher found both an agency Dear Colleague letter threatening to yank federal funds for schools from K-12 through colleges and universities that use race-conscious practices in aspects of student life and a memo ordering state education leaders to certify compliance to be “unlawful,” vacating the two.
Gallagher’s ruling follows a lawsuit from the American Federation of Teachers union and its affiliate, AFT-Maryland, as well as the American Sociological Association and a public school district in Oregon.
She noted that both the letter and certification requirement are “unconstitutionally vague.”
Gallagher is one of three federal judges who blocked different parts of the agency’s initiatives back in April, which brought enforcement of the letter and the memo on certifying compliance to a halt.
“The administration is entitled to express its viewpoints and to promulgate policies aligned with those viewpoints,” wrote Gallagher, who was appointed by Trump. “But it must do so within the procedural bounds Congress has outlined. And it may not do so at the expense of constitutional rights.”
Feb. 14 letter to states
The department drew swift legal action after sending a Feb. 14 letter to school districts that threatened to rescind federal funds for schools that use race-conscious practices in programming, admissions, scholarships and other aspects of student life.
The letter gave a sweeping interpretation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2023, which struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions.
The four-page letter raised a myriad of questions for schools over what exactly fell within the requirements. The department in March issued a Frequently Asked Questions document on the letter in an attempt to provide more guidance.
Adding fuel to the fire, the department in April gave state education leaders just days to certify all K-12 schools in their states were complying with the letter in order to keep receiving federal financial assistance.
Reaction from department, union
“While the Department is disappointed in the judge’s ruling, judicial action enjoining or setting aside this guidance has not stopped our ability to enforce Title VI protections for students at an unprecedented level,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Friday.
“The Department remains committed to its responsibility to uphold students’ anti-discrimination protections under the law,” the spokesperson added.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said “the court agreed that this vague and clearly unconstitutional requirement is a grave attack on students, our profession, honest history, and knowledge itself,” in a Thursday statement.
Weingarten added that “it would hamper efforts to extend access to education, and dash the promise of equal opportunity for all, a central tenet of the United States since its founding.”
Federal Bureau of Investigation and Metropolitan Police Department officers conduct a traffic stop near the U.S. Capitol on Aug. 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice will rewrite an order from Attorney General Pam Bondi that initially placed a Trump administration official in charge of the District of Columbia’s police force, after an emergency hearing late Friday afternoon on a lawsuit filed by the district.
Attorneys on behalf of the Justice Department told District of Columbia Judge Ana C. Reyes they would rewrite Section 1 of Bondi’s order by a deadline the judge set of 6:30 p.m. Eastern Friday.
In that section, Bondi’s late Thursday order named Terry Cole, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as head of the Metropolitan Police Department.
District of Columbia Attorney General Brian Schwalb called that move a “brazen usurpation of the district’s authority” in his suit filed early Friday against the Trump administration.
Reyes, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, said if she did not receive the new order by the deadline, she would issue a temporary restraining order against the DOJ. She said she found that section of Bondi’s order “plainly contrary to statute” of the district’s Home Rule Act of 1973.
The exact changes to the order were not immediately available.
District filed suit Friday
Schwalb early Friday sued the Trump administration for taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department’s 3,400 officers.
The suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia argued that President Donald Trump’s Monday executive order to federalize the district’s police force “far exceeded” the president’s authority under the Home Rule Act of 1973 that allows Washingtonians to elect their local leaders, but gives Congress control over local laws and the district’s budget.
Trump has warned he may pursue similar action in other Democratic-led cities that he sees as having “totally out of control” crime, though experts have questioned the legality and mayors already have raised objections.
“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” Schwalb, a Democrat elected in 2022, wrote on social media. “The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful. They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD.”
District Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back on Bondi’s order, and wrote on social media that “there is no statute that conveys the District’s personnel authority to a federal official.”
“Let us be clear about what the law requires during a Presidential declared emergency: it requires the mayor of Washington, DC to provide the services of the Metropolitan Police Department for federal purposes at the request of the President,” she said. “We have followed the law.”
The suit asks for a judge to vacate Bondi’s order and an order to prevent the Trump administration “from issuing any future orders or directives or taking any other action that attempts to place MPD under the control of anyone other than the Mayor and the Chief of Police, otherwise assert operational control over MPD, or otherwise attempt to direct local law enforcement activities.”
The suit does not challenge Trump’s decision to deploy 800 National Guard members to the district. Because the district, home to more than 700,000 residents, is not a state, the president has the sole authority over the National Guard members.
Carjacking preceded Trump order
Trump earlier this week declared a “crime emergency” after a former U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, official was injured on Aug. 3 in an attempted carjacking incident around 3 a.m. Eastern near the Logan Circle neighborhood. Two Maryland teenagers were arrested on charges of unarmed carjacking in connection with the incident.
Violent crime in the district is at a historic 30-year low.
The suit notes Trump’s previous comments about his plans for the district, from his time as a 2024 presidential candidate to his most recent remarks about taking over control of the district while at a February press conference.
“I think that we should govern the District of Columbia … I think that we should run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely flawless … And I think we should take over Washington, D.C. … We should govern D.C. The federal government should take over the governance of D.C.,” Trump said in the court document.
Advocates and local leaders have criticized the president’s decision, arguing that the move is nothing more than an extension of the administration’s immigration crackdown. Checkpoints have popped up all over the city in communities with a high immigrant population.
Additionally, the district’s police chief Thursday issued a new order to allow local police to aid federal officials in immigration enforcement for immigrants not in police custody.
Trump praised Thursday’s order, calling it “a very positive thing,” especially at checkpoints in the district.
“When they stop people, they find they’re illegal, they report them, they give them to us,” he said.
Mural depicting workers painted on windows of the Madison-Kipp Corp. by Goodman Community Center students and Madison-Kipp employees with Dane Arts Mural Arts. (Photo by Erik Gunn /Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin’s jobs and employment numbers showed a slightly softening economy in July, following national trends, the state labor department reported Thursday.
“The Wisconsin labor market has cooled a bit along with the national economy. Unemployment remains historically low,” said Scott Hodek, section chief in the office of economic advisors for the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD), in a briefing on the July numbers.
Private-sector jobs dropped slightly in July from June, DWD reported. Employment and labor force participation edged down slightly, too, as did the state’s unemployment rate.
“What we’re seeing is that Wisconsin seems to be following the national trend,” Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner. While the economy is cooling down, “we’re actually still seeing historically low unemployment rates,” Hodek said. “So you’ve got kind of a mix of up and down indicators.”
He pointed to national economic uncertainty as well as the longstanding challenge of Wisconsinites aging out of the workforce faster than younger residents are entering it as likely contributors to the economic cooling.
DWD pegged the number of Wisconsinites working in July at 3.05 million, a drop of 4,500 from June and down 32,500 from July 2024.
The number of people who were unemployed in July was projected at 98,600 — down 2,200 from June, but up 5,400 from July 2024. The unemployment rate for July was 3.1%.
The labor force shrank in July to just under 3.15 million, a decline of 6,700 from June and a decline of 27,000 from July 2024. The labor force is defined as people 16 or older who are working or seeking work, excluding people in the military or who are in institutions such as nursing homes or prisons.
Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate was 65% of the state’s population 16 or older in July — down 0.1% from June and down just under 1% from July a year ago. Labor force participation remains ahead of the U.S. as a whole, while unemployment is lower, DWD reported.
Employment and labor force participation numbers are projected from a monthly survey of households. A separate survey, polling employers, produces data on the number of jobs in the state.
Wisconsin counted just under 3.06 million nonfarm jobs — an increase of 1,800 over June and 20,200 over July a year ago. Private sector jobs in July totaled more than 2.6 million, a decrease of 3,800 from June but still 15,100 ahead of July 2024.
Construction jobs fell by 500 from June, Hodek said, but remained 3,100 ahead of July 2024. Manufacturing jobs fell by 500, and are down 1,800 from a year ago.
Rosier picture in Wisconsin than broader U.S.
Wisconsin’s jobs report Thursday lacked the drama of the national jobs numbers reported two weeks ago that prompted President Donald Trump to fire the nation’s chief statistician.
On Friday, Aug. 1, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)reported the U.S. gained 73,000 jobs in July, below analysts’ estimates. The BLS also updated national job numbers for May and June, dramatically reducing both: in June, a gain of 14,000 jobs instead of previously reported 147,000, and in May, an increase of 19,000 instead of the previously reported 125,000.
The national unemployment rate of 4.2% was in line with economic forecasts, CNBC reported. Other indicators nationally added up to “a slow but persistent cooling trend,” the North America regional president at Manpower Group, Ger Doyle, told CNBC.
Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to declare without evidence that the numbers were “RIGGED.” He summarily fired the director of the BLS,replacing her this week with an economist from the far-right Heritage Foundation who has called for a broad overhaul of the agency.
Hodek told the Wisconsin Examiner Thursday that DWD has not received any communications about changes in procedure from the BLS.
“We’ve certainly seen the news and we’re monitoring the situation, of course,” Hodek said. “But we do have confidence in our data and we can’t really speculate on what could possibly happen. We’ll just need to wait and see what the Bureau of Labor Statistics actually does down the road.”
Hodek said that revisions of previous months’ reports are “a normal part of the data process.” The first round of data isn’t inaccurate, but “as you take more time, the data become more accurate,” he said.
“Ideally you want a combination of both — something that kind of gives you the current edge of where you’re headed, and then as more and better data come in, you get a better sense of what has been happening,” Hodek said.
For example, a quarterly collection of information from the unemployment insurance system “actually covers most employers and it’s very solid data,” he said. “But it lags by half a year.”
Information from that report can be used to further refine the calculations and assumptions that go into the state’s monthly reports.
The monthly numbers for the nation as a whole and for each state go through different calculations and formulas, Hodek said, so it’s not possible to draw direct connections between the state jobs numbers and the national jobs numbers.
It’s also too soon to explain the seemingly dramatic differences between the national jobs picture and Wisconsin’s, he added: “We’ve only got a couple of data points where we saw those large revisions, so that doesn’t really make a trend necessarily yet.”
Hodek doesn’t think Wisconsin is somehow “diverging from the national economy,” however, he said. “In fact, it’s fairly unlikely in general, just because what happens to the national economy and the global economy is going to impact us as well. We tend to follow the national and global trends.”
Gov. Tony Evers implementing pay raises for state employees that were approved in the state budget without additional approval from the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Employment Relations. Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Gov. Tony Evers is implementing pay raises for state employees without additional approval from the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Employment Relations, citing a recent state Supreme Court ruling.
The state budget, which was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Evers last month, included about $385 million to provide state and University of Wisconsin employees with a 3% pay increase in the first year of the budget and a 2% increase in the second year.
“I fought hard in our bipartisan budget negotiations to secure much deserved pay increases for our talented state workers,” Evers wrote in a letter to state employees on Monday, adding that he was proud to sign the budget last month and it was important to him that state workers receive the wage adjustment as soon as possible.
Eligible employees will receive the 3% base pay adjustment to their current pay rate with their Sept. 4 paychecks, including a lump sum back pay from June 29. The second year of raises is supposed to be implemented June 28, 2026.
“The work that we do together every day on behalf of the people of Wisconsin is so important — perhaps never more so than it is today,” Evers wrote. “With Washington creating continued uncertainty through devastating cuts to investments and programs that so many across our state rely on, Wisconsinites will continue looking to us to lead, support them and build upon the work we’ve done together over the last six years. There is, as always, much hard work ahead of us. Having committed and exceptional partners like you in this good work will make all the difference.”
The Joint Committee on Employment Relations has been tasked by state law with holding hearings on changes to state employee compensation and approving those changes. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and Co-chairs of the Joint Committee of Employment Relations have not responded to requests for comment on Evers’ announcement.
In a bulletin about the raises, the Department of Administration cited the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in the case Tony Evers v. Howard Marklein, which addressed the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program and the ability of the Joint Finance Committee to hold up already appropriated funds. The Evers administration asserted that the decision clarified its authority to implement the raises without the additional approval of the committee.
The Court ruled 6-1 in July 2024 that the ability for the committee to withhold funds was unconstitutional and a violation of the separation of powers.
Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote for the majority that a statute that authorizes lawmakers to “exercise core powers of the executive branch violates the constitutional separation of powers and cannot be enforced under any circumstances.”
“While the constitution gives the legislature the power to appropriate funds, the power to spend the funds the legislature has appropriated for a specific project belongs to the executive branch,” Bradley wrote. “While the legislature has the power to create an agency, define its powers, and appropriate funds to fulfill the purpose for which the legislature established it, the power to spend appropriated funds in accordance with the law enacted by the legislature lies solely within the core power of the executive to ensure the laws are faithfully executed. We conclude these statutes interfere with the executive branch’s core function to carry out the law by permitting a legislative committee, rather than an executive branch agency, to make spending decisions for which the legislature has already appropriated funds and defined the parameters by which those funds may be spent.”
The original lawsuit filed by Evers in October 2023 included the Knowles-Nelson program and two other issues: JOCER’s ability to withhold raises approved in the budget and the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules’s block on administrative rules related to conversion therapy. At the time, JOCER was withholding pay raises approved in the budget for University of Wisconsin employees, so the raises could be used as a bargaining chip in Republican lawmakers’ efforts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the system. The pay raises, approved in the budget in July, were released by JOCER in December 2023.
The majority decided in February 2024 that it would only take up the Knowles-Nelson issue and leave the other two “held in abeyance pending further order of the court.” Conservative justices were critical of the majority allowing original action in the case and separating the issues from each other at the time.
Justice Annette Zeigler wrote in her dissenting opinion in the case that taking all of the issues at once could have produced consistency.
“Selecting an issue that only impacts the Republican-controlled legislature and the longstanding Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program should raise eyebrows,” Zeigler wrote. “Determining all issues at the same time could serve to hold my colleagues to application of the same principles in the same way, even when it comes to a Democratic-controlled branch of government. Unfortunately, we will wait to see if that consistency will be forthcoming, as the majority handpicked and now limits only the legislative branch’s longstanding, statutorily authorized practice.”
The Court dismissed the compensation and Joint Committee on Employment Relations issue in October 2024 when it decided to take up the conversion therapy and Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules issue. The Court issued a ruling in July limiting the committee’s ability to block administrative rules.
The University of Wisconsin system will also be implementing the general wage raises.
“We are grateful to Governor Tony Evers and the Wisconsin State Legislature for their continued support of our workforce and recognition of the vital role our faculty and staff play in education, research, and public service,” UW President Jay Rothman wrote in a memo to employees on Monday.
The implementation of the raises is not the first time the administration has moved ahead with releasing funds following the ruling. The administration announced funding for 12 Department of Natural Resources projects under the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program in October of 2024.
Public comments are open now through August 18 for Porchlight Solar, a 163.8 Megawatt (MW) solar project paired with a 50 MW battery system. If approved, it is planned for completion in the latter half of 2028. Projects like this have a wide range of local and statewide benefits. Show your support for this project and tell the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (PSC) why you support this vital solar project!
You can use some of the listed benefits below to help you craft your message. You can also review RENEW’s public comment here –RENEW Wisconsin’s Public Comment
Porchlight Solar isn’t just about the clean energy it will produce. The 163.8 MW facility in Portage County has many benefits:
Economic Growth: Porchlight Solar will create between 200-300 jobs during construction, as well as good-paying, long-term operations and maintenance positions.
Community Benefits: Once in service, Porchlight Solar will contribute more than $800,000 in utility-aid payments each year. Over $460,000 of this will go to Portage County, $273,000 will go to the town of Buena Vista, and just over $80,000 will go to the town of Pine Grove. During its 30-year life, the project will contribute a total of $24.4 million in utility-aid payments.
Landowner Engagement: Porchlight Solar has signed land leases with farmers who produce primarily potatoes, corn, and soybeans, according to the application from the developer. When farmers and landowners sign 25-plus-year leases to host solar projects like Porchlight, they are able to rely on long-term, stable revenue.
Emissions Reductions: Porchlight Solar will reduce energy production emissions by 530 million pounds of CO2 in the first year of operations. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, this is the equivalent of taking more than 53,000 vehicles off the road for a full year. These emissions reductions will result in health, economic, and environmental benefits.
Submit your comments by August 18 to tell the PSC you support the approval of Porchlight Solar. Feel free to use some of the bullet points above to craft your own unique message.
(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s new changes to its 1–5 star school ratings leave parents unclear on local school performance, according to a report by the Institute for Reforming Government.
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