Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler speaks at a climate rally outside of Sen. Ron Johnson’s Madison office in 2021. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

There is no clear frontrunner in the Democratic primary for governor of Wisconsin. Attorney General Josh Kaul, with his name recognition and two statewide wins under his belt, might have been the favorite, except that he decided not to get in. Now former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler has announced he won’t be using his star power and prodigious fundraising skills to take a run at the governor’s mansion.

I caught up with Wikler Thursday by phone while he was at home with his kids, working on a book about Wisconsin and national politics and fielding phone calls from reporters about his decision to stay out of the race. Despite his decision, Wikler is still involved in politics behind the scenes, raising money and helping create an infrastructure to support his party’s eventual nominee for governor as well as Democrats who are trying to win seats in the Legislature and in Congress.

Wikler deserves a lot of credit for the recent hopeful direction of politics in Wisconsin — culminating in the election of a liberal state Supreme Court majority that forced an end to gerrymandered voting maps which previously locked in hugely disproportionate Republican legislative majorities in our 50/50 state. His vision for a progressive political revival in Wisconsin and across the nation delighted a lot of grassroots Democrats as well as Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show”, who urged him to run for president after listening to Wikler describe what Democrats need to do to reconnect with working class voters and turn the political tide.

As Wisconsin Republicans coalesce around U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, a yes-man for President Donald Trump, the stakes in the Wisconsin governor’s race could not be higher. But Wikler says he’s not worried.

“I think there are multiple candidates who can absolutely win and could do a perfect job on our side,” he said on the phone. “I don’t see the same on the Republican side. I think Tom Tiffany is a real political misfire for the GOP in a moment like this.”  

“I have a real conviction that we have a very clear path to be able to win. Not without a fight — this is Wisconsin — but I would rather be Team Democrats and democracy and an economy that works for working people than Team MAGA and tariffs and authoritarian masked men grabbing people off the street.”

Still, on a recent weekend drive through the Driftless Area, I saw huge Trump banners flying over fields of soybeans farmers can’t sell because of Trump’s trade war with China. It might be hard for some voters, even those who are hurt by Trump administration policies, to switch teams as people’s core sense of identity is so tied to polarized political team loyalties.

“I think it’s true for all of us that it’s hard to come to the conclusion that it’s time to change after you’ve been going one way for a good while,” Wikler said. “But it’s also the case that in Wisconsin things don’t have to change very much to get a dramatically different result.”

Elections in this swing state will continue to be close. “But there’s every possibility of being able to energize and turn out several percentage points more people in a way that could generate a Democratic trifecta and help flip the U.S. House and shift power in local offices across the state,” he added.

In his unsuccessful bid for national Democratic Party chair, Wikler talked about how Democrats had lost working class votes and needed to reclaim their lost status as champions of working people. They needed to “show the receipts” for their work winning better health care, affordable housing, more opportunity and a better quality of life for the people that used to be their natural constituency, he said.

On “The Daily Show” he held up Gov. Tony Evers as an example, saying he ran on the promise to “fix the damn roads” and beat former Gov. Scott Walker. Then he fixed the roads and won a second time.

But a lot of progressives, especially public school advocates, were disappointed with the budget deals Evers struck with Republicans. This week DPI released final numbers showing that 71% of public schools across the state will get less money from the state under the current budget. Where are the receipts Wisconsin Democrats can show to make the case they will make things better?

Evers blocked a lot of bad things, Wikler noted. And in many ways things are better in Wisconsin, even as the national scene gets darker and darker under the current administration, he said. “The things that are going well are the kind of locally driven and state-level things that are not falling apart,” he said. He contrasted that with the Walker years when “there was a sense that core aspects of people’s personal lives were falling apart. People were leaving their careers in education and changing their whole life plans, because it felt like the pillars that supported their vision for how their lives were going to work were falling apart.”

There’s a “profound sense of threat” from Washington today, he added. But he believes that Democrats can stave off disaster in Wisconsin if they win a “trifecta” in state government, which he thinks is possible.

He draws on examples from the state’s history as a progressive leader, from the  famous 1911 legislative session that laid the groundwork for the New Deal to the first law protecting victims of domestic violence in the 1970s.

“There’s these moments when Wisconsin really leaps forward. And we have a chance for the first one in more than half a century in 2027,” he said. “And that’s the  moment where you have to deliver for people really meaningfully.”

He compares the chance of that happening in Wisconsin to the “Minnesota miracle,” when Tim Walz was re-elected governor and Democrats swept state government in our neighboring state. 

Trying to bring about a miraculous transformation in Wisconsin doesn’t mean Wikler is unrealistic. You don’t have to look any farther than Wisconsin’s southern neighbor, Illinois, to see the dystopian possibilities of our current politics. “I don’t think the way [Illinois] Gov. JB Pritzker is talking is alarmist at all,” Wikler says. “If you talk to people who fought for democracy in countries where it disappeared, the early days of the downfall look like what we’re seeing right now.”

To resist, we have to do multiple things, he said — fight in the courts, fight in downballot races, protect election administration “but also keep in mind that ultimately, the people whose votes you have to win are the people who already feel like democracy is not working for them. They think that all politicians are already corrupt, and warnings about the threats to democracy feels like just more partisan blather. And you have to connect with their lived experience and the things that they think about when they’re not thinking about politics. That’s where fixing the roads becomes the only way to get off the road to authoritarianism.”

Sounds like a good plan to me. 

GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.

SUBSCRIBE

(The Center Square) – A Wisconsin legal group is fighting against a transmission line being placed on a Saukville property to serve a new mega data center in Port Washington.

(The Center Square) – The leaders of Wisconsin’s Senate Committee on Education are demanding answers from the state’s Department of Public Instruction following a report showing that 200 investigations into teachers for sexual assault and grooming were shielded from the…

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s latest enrollment numbers show some good news for choice schools in the state, but there’s also a warning sign.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin has paid billions of dollars in recent years for outside investors to manage most of the state's retirement funds even though it has an expansive team of highly paid investment employees, according to state data.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Devin Remiker, the 33-year-old new chair of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party, has a plan to win it all in 2026, when voters will elect a new governor, state legislators, a state Supreme Court justice, and potentially flip seats crucial to Democrats’ efforts to retake the House.

The job is “about building a bulwark against a hostile administration that seems intent on subverting democracy,” he told NOTUS. “That really places in me an immense sense of responsibility to help make sure that we can be that bulwark ahead of 2028.”

Remiker is one of 24 chairs of Democratic state parties elected since the party lost the presidency, Senate and most governor’s races in November. While that turnover for party chairs is not unusual, it leaves Democrats’ fresh-faced state leadership to chart the party’s new course at a time of unprecedented political upheaval. As the chair of one of the most fiercely competitive states on the map, Remiker has a significant role to play in that future.

“Devin matches what I would argue we need in a chair,” said Jane Kleeb, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, an organization within the Democratic National Committee that represents state parties.

Kleeb said professionalism and optimism are the “key characteristics” the party has sought in new chairs, in addition to exceptional fundraising skills and the ability to persuade donors that the party is making structural changes to win as far out as 2028.

Remiker is taking over the chair position from Ben Wikler, who grew the party’s fundraising into eight-digit territory each election cycle. Wikler created new virtual volunteer opportunities and expanded the party’s existing neighbor-to-neighbor organizing teams into a year-round campaign apparatus, Wikler said. When Wikler assumed the post in 2019, Remiker was a political director, later moving up to executive director before working as a senior adviser to Kamala Harris’ campaign in Wisconsin, according to the party site.

“Even if you’re taking the baton from a well-qualified chair who built up an incredible infrastructure like Ben Wikler … even that is daunting,” Kleeb said.

Remiker told NOTUS his job is to continue growing the bread and butter of Wisconsin Democrats’ campaigning.

“The core of the party’s work in Wisconsin is year-round organizing, both in traditional organizing — knocking on doors, getting neighbors to talk to neighbors about the issues that impact them most — but also year-round communications infrastructure,” he said. “Right now, where our party has the most room to grow is in communicating with folks in new, innovative ways that meet voters where they’re at.”

Remiker is working on ways to tailor the party’s messaging to voters in each of the state’s 72 counties — work that’s overseen by a new director for the all-county strategy, he said. Remiker is also looking to change how the party communicates with voters by putting more resources into relational organizing and social media outreach.

He emphasized getting the party’s message to rural voters by sending canvassers to parades, farmers markets and other public events that can help the Democrats build a community presence across the state and save time walking up long rural driveways.

“What we uniquely have here in Wisconsin is a foundation to build upon, and that’s really how I view my role coming into this job,” Remiker said. “I’m here to, yes, fix or tweak what wasn’t working or wasn’t working the best, but to really build upon the foundation” set by Wikler and Martha Laning, Wikler’s predecessor who expanded the party’s voter outreach.

That plan echoes what Wikler envisions for his successor.

“A lot of people are coming into these roles with a mandate for change. In Wisconsin, Devin’s mandate is to learn everything about what can be improved but it’s also really to keep building things that we know have had a huge effect that helped Tammy Baldwin win in 2024,” Wikler said.

Remiker’s approach could make inroads in rural Wisconsin, which overwhelmingly voted Republican in 2024. Wisconsin Democrats lost to President Donald Trump by less than a percentage point, but reelected Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.

The party followed that up in April by holding onto a liberal majority in the state Supreme Court — a race that drew over $53 million in spending by conservative groups and led Elon Musk to host a $1 million sweepstakes for voters. Remiker led the Democrats’ “People v. Musk” campaign in the months before his election as chair and will now preside over the party as a redistricting lawsuit winds its way through the state’s courts, a case that could help the Democrats flip seats if decided in time to redraw maps before the midterm elections.

The Wisconsin Democrats’ full-force organizing for candidates up and down the ballot in all corners of the state has been something of a blueprint for other state parties. Newly minted Democratic chairs of swing states told NOTUS they are working toward the year-round operation at the center of Wisconsin’s successful program.

Eugene DePasquale, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party who was elected last month, praised Wisconsin Democrats’ use of data to “help drive” strategy and their development of campaign infrastructure to last beyond any one cycle.

“What we’ve done in Pennsylvania is like Groundhog Day all over again, which is you build up an infrastructure, win or lose the campaign, then it goes away, then you start up again next summer,” he said. “I want to hopefully build with the team we’re putting together an infrastructure that lasts, where we’re basically going year-round.”

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

New Wisconsin Dems chair says he’s ‘building a bulwark’ against the Trump administration is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 12 minutes

Note: This article contains descriptions of sexual misconduct and grooming behavior toward children.

This reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

Click here to read highlights from the story

• The state Department of Public Instruction investigated more than 200 Wisconsin teachers, aides, substitutes and administrators from 2018 to 2023 who were accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students — information previously unknown to the public.  

• The department is dedicating scant resources to investigate educator misconduct, raising questions about the quality of its oversight and protection of children. 

• Licensing officials also allow educators under investigation to forfeit their credentials in exchange for avoiding in-depth probes.

After Shawn Umland took a group of his students on a field trip to Florida, licensing regulators at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction started investigating him. The inquiry followed a media report alleging Umland touched the tops of a student’s breasts during the trip while applying sunburn treatment in a hotel room, the agency’s records show. 

That was in 2019. Umland had previously been disciplined in 2005 for his behavior in a hotel room with a female student on a school trip, according to the department’s records. 

Umland, who worked at Lakeland Union High School in Minocqua, resigned in lieu of being fired. But he kept his Wisconsin teaching license. Officials at the Department of Public Instruction concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to revoke it, citing inconsistencies in witness statements. 

Michael Igl similarly resigned from the White Lake School District in northern Wisconsin but kept his license in exchange for taking a course on maintaining appropriate boundaries. The Department of Public Instruction opened an inquiry into allegations that he made sexual comments to students, communicated with students inappropriately on social media and gave them rides home unsupervised, department records show. 

Michael Hanson kept his license after he resigned from teaching in the Baraboo School District. School administrators concluded Hanson “did not recognize appropriate student-teacher boundaries and his behavior with two students constituted grooming,” licensing regulators wrote in their case notes. 

The notes say Hanson texted female students “excessively” and often visited their homes unannounced, to the point one student considered a restraining order against him. Again, officials at the Department of Public Instruction cited insufficient evidence to revoke Hanson’s teaching license. 

A yearlong investigation by the Cap Times found the state Department of Public Instruction investigated more than 200 Wisconsin teachers, aides, substitutes and administrators from 2018 to 2023 who were accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students — information previously unknown to the public.  

The department’s internal records show these allegations included educators sexually assaulting students, soliciting nude photos from children or initiating sexual relationships immediately after students graduated.  

Licensing officials also investigated educators accused of grooming behaviors like flirting with children, spending non-school time alone and isolated with students, or invading students’ personal space by rubbing their shoulders, thighs and lower backs. 

Child sexual abuse prevention advocates and researchers say these behaviors have lasting psychological effects on children, making it harder for them to succeed in school and have healthy relationships. The Cap Times interviewed seven academics and advocates about how the Department of Public Instruction investigates and documents educator misconduct. Each said the department’s practices are inadequately protecting students. 

“They need to change. That’s insufficient. That’s not going to keep kids safe,” said Charol Shakeshaft, who authored one of the most comprehensive reviews of teacher sexual misconduct for the U.S. Department of Education. 

Best estimates show one in 10 students experiences sexual misconduct from educators during their K-12 schooling, according to that federal report. In Wisconsin, that rate would amount to more than 93,000 school children. 

Sexual misconduct is a spectrum of physical, verbal and electronic behaviors that don’t belong in schools, according to Shakeshaft, a distinguished professor emeritus at Virginia Commonwealth University. 

Grooming, as Shakeshaft defines it, specifically consists of crossing boundaries to develop trust between the educator and student through gifts, attention, desensitization to touch in ways that appear harmless, as well as discussion of sexual or sensitive topics. 

The Cap Times found at least 44% of the Department of Public Instruction’s over 450 educator license investigations since 2018 have involved sexual misconduct or grooming allegations — a number researchers and advocates say is likely an undercount of these cases. 

“That’s what they’ve investigated. That doesn’t even take into account the full scope of prevalence,” said Shiwali Patel, an attorney with the National Women’s Law Center who focuses on gender and sexual harassment in schools. 

The Cap Times investigation also found: 

• The Department of Public Instruction is dedicating scant resources to investigate educator misconduct, raising questions about the quality of its oversight and protection of children. 
• The department, run by State Superintendent Jill Underly, relies on a rudimentary system to track its investigations, obscuring the scale of misconduct for policymakers and the public.  
• Licensing officials also allow educators under investigation to forfeit their credentials in exchange for avoiding in-depth probes.  
• Unlike a different agency that regulates hundreds of other state-licensed professionals — like nurses and accountants — the Department of Public Instruction doesn’t tell the public why an educator lost their license. Advocates say this lack of transparency makes it easier for educator misconduct to avoid detection and happen again. 
• Out of 461 teachers the state investigated from 2018 to 2023 for all forms of misconduct, 207 kept their credentials and could continue working in schools with children. 

Department of Public Instruction spokesperson Chris Bucher said the agency is always looking for ways to improve and that license misconduct investigations are critical to the safety of children. However, the agency is limited in funding and staffing because state lawmakers consistently cut their operating budget, he said. 

In the current two-year state budget, lawmakers approved a 10% annual reduction, a cut of about $1.3 million, to the department’s general operations from previous funding levels. 

“We do as much as we can with the resources and tools and authority that we have,” Bucher said. “That is an area of need.” 

Underly declined requests for an interview. Discussing the Department of Public Instruction’s investigations would create a “conflict of interest” since Underly oversees educator licenses, Bucher said. 

As state superintendent, Underly is Wisconsin’s highest ranking education official. Voters first elected her to office in 2021 and re-elected her in April to another four-year term. 

Ben Jones, the department’s former head of educator misconduct investigations, also declined requests for an interview, citing attorney-client privilege. Jones ran the department’s Office of Legal Services as the chief legal counsel for six years and left in July after Gov. Tony Evers appointed him to a Dane County judgeship. The department’s new head of legal services is Kyle Olsen, who took over in August.  

Umland, the Minocqua teacher, continues to work in education. He is the president of the Lakeland Union High School Board of Education. It’s unclear whether Igl is still working in education or has left the profession. Hanson has since stopped teaching and works at a private biochemical company in the Madison area. 

Umland didn’t respond to a request for an interview or written questions. In their case notes, licensing officials wrote he “generally denied the allegations.”  

Hanson told the Cap Times that during Baraboo’s investigation, school administrators weaved “a narrative that fit, in my opinion, what they wanted to see and what the parents wanted to see.” He said he resigned from his teaching position because the investigation harmed his reputation and he felt burned out from teaching.  

Igl was unable to be reached by social media, email or phone. In a letter to Department of Public Instruction investigators at the time, he said he “would never consider having inappropriate communication” with a student and resigned feeling he had no other option despite denying the allegations.  

Police also investigated Umland and Igl, according to Department of Public Instruction records, although the state’s online court records indicate neither was criminally charged. Hanson was not criminally charged either. 

Madison East graduate: ‘I stopped going to school’  

Students who are sexually abused, harassed and groomed by teachers, principals or coaches often experience lasting psychological and physiological harm, said Shakeshaft, who authored the book “Organizational Betrayal” on how schools enable sexual misconduct. 

“We see then long-term a sort of maladjustment in the world: drug and alcohol abuse, (self) cutting, failure to have the confidence to go forward and go for new jobs and speak out,” Shakeshaft said.  

The trauma affects children’s ability to succeed in school as well, said Jetta Bernier, executive director of the prevention advocacy group Enough Abuse.  

“Their learning is more difficult. They’re involved in more remedial classes. Their graduation rates are less,” she said.  

Lauren Engle and Sydney Marz each described wanting to avoid school and a deep distrust of teachers and school administrators after experiencing educator sexual misconduct. 

“I stopped going to school, and if I did go to school, I did not go into class,” Engle said. “I went to the student services, and I sat there for the entire day. It was so terrible to be around people who either knew or thought they knew and wanted to know more.” 

Both attended the Madison Metropolitan School District and were students of East High School teacher David Kruchten starting in 2016. Throughout their four years at East, Engle and Marz said they went on multiple overnight field trips with Kruchten.  

Kruchten pleaded guilty in 2021 to federal charges of attempting to produce child sexual abuse material. He had placed surreptitious recording devices in students’ hotel bathrooms and sleeping areas while on school trips, according to federal prosecutors.  

“I was just focused on obviously the criminal case and whatnot, and feeling like a shell of a human being basically and just really weird all the time,” Marz said. “I had a hard time focusing. I was always very stressed out, but also very disengaged.” 

Even if an educator’s conduct never escalates to sexual contact, boundary violations like spending time alone together outside of school, gift-giving and hand-holding are harmful to students, Shakeshaft said. These types of behaviors make students easier targets for exploitation. 

“They’re already groomed that this is normal behavior. This is OK,” she said. 

No consistent tracking, short on details 

Sexual misconduct and grooming by teachers is sometimes called education’s best-kept secret, a moniker Shakeshaft said rings true. A failure to track educators who abuse, harass and groom children allows it to go unchecked, she said. 

In Wisconsin, the state Department of Public Instruction is responsible for teacher licenses but doesn’t track data on how many educators have been investigated following allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming. 

Obtaining that information “would require a good deal of manual work to fulfill,” said Bucher, the department spokesperson. 

The lack of information makes it harder to stop sexual misconduct from happening again, said Billie-Jo Grant, a researcher and the CEO of McGrath Training Solutions, which provides instruction on educator misconduct prevention.  

“When we don’t have numbers for how often something is happening, it’s very difficult for the public and for legislators to understand the magnitude of the problem and to allocate funding and resources to solve the problem,” Grant said. 

The Department of Public Instruction routinely gathers and publishes data on other potential signs of student harm, such as how often students are chronically absent, experience homelessness or feel unsafe at school — but not the frequency of educator misconduct. 

Under Wisconsin open records laws, the Cap Times obtained and reviewed a Google spreadsheet used by the Department of Public Instruction to track its more than 450 misconduct investigations from 2018 through 2023. The Cap Times also obtained the department’s case notes showing summaries of misconduct allegations, investigation practices and outcomes from probes spanning 2019 through part of 2022. 

Over 204 of the investigations involved allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming, a Cap Times analysis of the records found. Another 158 investigations involved allegations of physical assault, drug use or discriminatory comments, among other unethical behavior. 

In almost a fifth of the total cases, the nature of the misconduct allegations is unclear from the records. The spreadsheet and case notes either lack enough detail or contain none at all to categorize. 

Parents would likely be outraged to learn the department isn’t more consistently tracking this information, said Charles Hobson, a professor at Indiana University Northwest and a board member of the advocacy group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation.  

“It’s appalling to me that these kinds of things continue to happen and that otherwise good people turn their back on this issue. I just, I don’t understand it,” Hobson said. 

Bucher said investigators attempted to “modernize our review process and use emerging technology” by implementing case tracking software from 2015 to 2018. But the department stopped using it. 

“The software did not work as well as we hoped and was expensive,” Bucher said. 

The current spreadsheet has worked well to serve the department’s investigation purposes, Bucher said. He did not specify any plans to change or update to a more comprehensive software. 

Over 100 investigations a year for two DPI employees 

The Department of Public Instruction faces challenges while investigating educator sexual misconduct and grooming, Bucher said. The state needs to ensure sensitivity toward victims while it deals with limited information in redacted police reports, reluctant witnesses, delays in reporting incidents and a lack of clear intent behind alleged inappropriate behavior, he said. 

The department has one full-time and one part-time investigator, which Bucher said isn’t enough staff to handle the 113 investigations opened on average each year. That figure includes misconduct investigations and additional background screenings for license applicants. Both employees also have other job duties outside of license investigations, Bucher said. 

Grant, the misconduct prevention trainer, called the department’s staffing levels “woefully inadequate” given the caseload size.  

“Doing an investigation requires time,” Grant said. “That means interviewing multiple parties and witnesses, and gathering information, and writing a report on how you know what you know, to know if you should (revoke) that license.” 

Bucher said one of the department’s investigations has contributed to a criminal case that put an abuser behind bars, underscoring the importance of their work. He blamed state lawmakers for underfunding the department rather than pointing to Underly or other agency leaders, who oversee how state funding is used internally. 

“The Legislature has consistently cut DPI agency operations instead of funding more staff to work on things such as educator misconduct investigations,” Bucher said.  

In Underly’s most recent state budget request, she sought over $600,000 for modernizing the agency’s online background checks and licensing platform.  

The proposal was rejected by lawmakers. 

Underly requested no additional funding specifically for educator misconduct investigations. 

Surrendering licenses to avoid investigation 

Glenn Buelow and Paul J. Mleziva are among more than 80 Wisconsin educators since 2018 who have given up their teaching licenses after the Department of Public Instruction opened investigations into allegations they had engaged in sexual misconduct or grooming. 

The department’s case notes show a colleague reported they caught Buelow “making out” with a student. Investigators wrote that Buelow also admitted to sending inappropriate images to the student, such as a meme saying, “Elmo loves anal.” 

Licensing investigators wrote Mleziva sent sexual text messages to a student and told her after she graduated that “he wanted to have a sexual relationship,” according to Department of Public Instruction records.  

In both of these investigations, the educators resigned from their jobs and voluntarily surrendered their teaching licenses. Mleziva denied any wrongdoing to licensing investigators, while Buelow did not respond to the department’s investigation notice.  

Buelow worked for the Racine Unified School District until 2019 and Mleziva for the Two Rivers Public School District until 2020. Neither was criminally charged. 

Reached by phone Sept. 24 for comment on the Department of Public Instruction’s investigation, Buelow confirmed he had kissed a Racine student while he was a teacher, but said the student started the interaction.  

“It was taken totally out of context and it was not initiated by me,” he said.   

Also reached by phone, Mleziva said Sept. 24 that his messages with a Two Rivers student were “borderline at best” when asked if the messages were sexual in nature. Mleziva said the student misinterpreted his conversation after she graduated and that it wasn’t about initiating a sexual relationship.  

Voluntary license surrender is the most common way Wisconsin educators lose their teaching credentials across all types of misconduct, including physical assault, financial impropriety and criminal convictions, the Cap Times found.  

Department of Public Instruction investigators offer every educator the ability to surrender their teaching credentials at the start of a case to “resolve the matter,” Bucher said. Educators are also given other opportunities throughout the process.  

State investigators have written in some case notes that “no meaningful DPI investigation” happened because the educator surrendered their credentials. 

When licenses are forfeited, the department closes the investigation without an official finding of wrongdoing. On the Department of Public Instruction’s website showing the status of an educator’s license, no information is provided on why the credential was surrendered.  

Not publishing the circumstances of a surrendered license contributes to a culture of secrecy around educator grooming and sexual misconduct, said Hobson, the Indiana professor. 

“The harassers know that system inside and out. They know that it’s not reported. They know how to game the system,” he said.  

Making the information publicly available is important in case the former educator tries to work with children again, Grant added. 

“You only need a license to teach, but you can serve in other roles in a school or a youth-serving organization and not require a license,” Grant said. “By having information publicly about why your license was … revoked, it can help to deter youth-serving organizations from hiring someone that has a history of misconduct.” 

Bernier, the advocate with Enough Abuse, said public accountability is needed for educators who lose their credentials for misconduct. Officials at the Department of Public Instruction have to make a choice, she said. 

“They can either protect those who would abuse our children, or they can protect the children. But they can’t do both,” Bernier said.  

For hundreds of other state-licensed professions, disciplinary histories are published online by the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services. Misconduct records for doctors, accountants, manicurists and others are more publicly accessible than similar records for teachers.  

“I think that to kind of single out teachers and to not require that information to be available, especially given that they’re surrounded by kids and the high prevalence of … sexual misconduct, I mean that is concerning,” said Patel, the attorney.  

The Department of Public Instruction has tried to make the information available in the past but its licensing software isn’t equipped for that purpose, Bucher said. The agency would need new software, which would require funding.   

Hobson, an educator himself, said the fundamental mission of teachers is to safeguard the children under their care from harm. Despite that duty, educator sexual misconduct and grooming continues to happen.  

“My God, this is a flawed system, and it’s not protecting our children,” Hobson said.  

Hundreds of Wisconsin teacher misconduct cases shielded from public is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

As the government shutdown stretches on, Wisconsin's Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey employees say their research is being set back.

The post Wisconsin wood scientists say government shutdown is stopping vital research appeared first on WPR.

Forestry offers a unique glimpse into the natural beauty and evolving landscape of Wisconsin. A writer reflects on the tracks we leave in the woods and the legacy of conservation work.

The post ‘The tracks we leave’: A forester’s reflection on the legacy of conservation appeared first on WPR.

"We know there are gifted educators looking for a way to get back to the classroom," Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said. "This is an incredible opportunity to do just that."

The post Milwaukee Public Schools recruiting retirees to fill vacant teaching positions appeared first on WPR.

The town of Carlton board chair says most residents are comfortable with nuclear energy but leery of losing farmland to other projects.

The post Wisconsin town hopeful for return of nuclear power plant but fear data center may follow appeared first on WPR.

“Because of the dysfunction at the federal level, we do not know when we are going to be able to provide all of you the updated data," said DWD Secretary Amy Pechacek.

The post Wisconsin workforce agency warns federal shutdown cuts off most job program funding appeared first on WPR.

UW-Madison is considered a national leader in foreign language education. Now, campus leaders are working to keep these programs going without funding they relied on for more than 60 years.

The post Federal cuts threaten future of Wisconsin’s nationally recognized language programs appeared first on WPR.

Wausau Mayor Doug Diny caused an uproar last year when he donned a hard hat to cart away an absentee ballot drop box that had been placed outside City Hall.

The post Wausau board: Mayor violated ethics policy when he removed ballot drop box appeared first on WPR.

Ben Wikler, the former chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, will not run for governor in 2026.

The post Former state Democratic Party chair will not enter governor’s race appeared first on WPR.

The album comes from German violinist Isabelle Faust, who teams up with the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, one of the leading ensembles playing on instruments from the 18th century.

The post WPR Music new album of the week: ‘Telemann: Violin Concertos. Overture. Suite. Fantasie’ appeared first on WPR.

Charlotte Stone, 18, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, held a sign depicting President Donald Trump with a Hitler mustache, at the "We Are All DC" march Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025, in the District of Columbia to protest the deployment of National Guard troops in the nation's capital. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — House Democrats demanded Thursday that President Donald Trump rescind two ominous directives they say target protest and dissent in the United States, including directing federal law enforcement resources to investigate groups that are “anti-American” and “anti-Christian.”

In a letter to the White House the lawmakers sharply criticize a “complete and utter lack of any legal basis” for Trump’s Sept. 22 executive order “Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorism Organization” and his Sept. 25 memo directing federal law enforcement to investigate and disrupt a wide range of activities by groups or individuals with a vast array of beliefs.

“While protecting public safety and countering genuine threats are essential responsibilities of government, the sweeping language and broad authority in these directives pose serious constitutional, statutory, and civil liberties risks, especially if used to target political dissent, protest, or ideological speech,” states the letter led by Democratic Reps. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, Jared Huffman of California and Pramila Jayapal of Washington. 

The letter comes just two days ahead of thousands of nationwide demonstrations, dubbed “No Kings Day,” against the activities of the Trump administration, including the deployment of federal law enforcement and National Guard troops in major American cities.

“Regardless of whether the President agrees with someone’s political views, the Constitution guarantees their right to speak and assemble peacefully. Officials must not label individuals as ‘supporting Antifa’ or ‘coordinating with Antifa’ based solely on their protected speech,” according to the letter. 

“Antifa” is not one group. Rather, it’s an ideology that disapproves of the fascist style of governance.

The letter continues: “In fact, neither the memo nor the executive order clearly defines ‘Antifa’ as a specific entity. Instead, the executive order conflates nonviolent protest and activism with doxing and violent behavior. Without clear definitions and limits, this vague framing could subject lawful political expression and assembly to the same treatment as terrorism.”

Twenty-eight other Democratic lawmakers signed alongside Pocan, co-chair of the Congressional Equity and Labor caucuses; Jayapal, former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus; and Huffman, founder of the Congressional Freethought caucus.

When asked about the letter, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded to States Newsroom: “The only thing Democrats love defending more than criminal illegal aliens is Antifa.”

Trump memo

Trump’s Sept. 25 national security memo orders the National Joint Terrorism Task Force and its local offices to create a comprehensive national strategy to not only disrupt and prosecute political violence but also to investigate funders and employees of organizations “that aid and abet” those who commit violence or who are “recruiting and radicalizing” people to do so. 

There are about 200 such task forces in the U.S., including at least one in each Federal Bureau of Investigation’s 56 field offices and the rest in local, state and other federal agencies, according to the FBI.

The memo states that “Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”

Such conduct, according to the memo, is organized “through a variety of fora, including anonymous chat forums, in-person meetings, social media, and even educational institutions” and then escalates “to organized doxing.”

The directive also instructs Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, who also happens to be Bessent after Trump fired his original pick two months into the job, to be on the lookout for suspect funding streams and ensure no tax-exempt entities “directly or indirectly” finance political violence or domestic terrorism. 

‘Fever dream of conspiracies’

The memo does not create any new parts of the criminal code or grant any new powers to federal law enforcement, including the FBI and agents who work in the criminal investigations units at the Department of Treasury and IRS.

The American Civil Liberties Union described the memo as “a fever dream of conspiracies, outright falsehoods, and the president’s distorted equation of criticism of his policies by real or perceived political opponents with ‘criminal and terroristic conspiracies.’”

“Through the memo, the president instructs federal departments and law enforcement agencies to use authorities they already have and focus them on investigations of civil society groups — including nonprofits, activists, and donors — to ‘disrupt’ and ‘prevent’ the president’s fever-dream version of ‘terrorism’ and ‘political violence,’” the ACLU’s Hina Shamsi wrote in an Oct. 15 article posted on the organization’s website.

A U.S. National Park Service lock keeps John Brown's Fort shut and secured in the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Lower Town on Oct. 2, 2025 in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, during the government shutdown. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Bare-bones staffing during the government shutdown across the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service is leaving America’s treasured natural assets vulnerable to lasting damage, according to advocates for public lands, including current and former agency employees.

National parks and most public lands remain accessible to visitors, including those run by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and Fish and Wildlife Service. 

But the lack of staff already has led to reports of bad behavior, like illegal camping and BASE jumping at California’s Yosemite National Park, and parks advocates and workers told States Newsroom they fear more to come as the shutdown that began Oct. 1 continues with no end in sight.

Adjustments to park staff meant to “front-load visitor services” hide some of the long-term harms, said John Garder, the senior director of budget and appropriations at the advocacy group National Parks Conservation Association. 

The NPS furloughed more than 9,000 of its roughly 14,500 workers, according to a planning document published just before the shutdown began on Oct. 1. 

That has left the people responsible for protecting “irreplaceable resources” and trail management workers needing to instead clean visitor centers and oversee parking, Garder said.

“What that’s done is created this facade for the visitors, so that in many cases they don’t see the damage that’s happening behind the scenes,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Should parks be closed?

The NPCA, a nonprofit that advocates for national parks, has called for parks to close during the shutdown to avoid lasting damage. Others in the conservation community have joined in.

Aaron Weiss, the deputy director of the conservation advocacy group Center for Western Priorities, likened the situation to allowing visitors to ramble through an unstaffed Smithsonian museum.

“The national parks are effectively museums,” he said. “This would be like the Smithsonian saying, ‘Well, you know, we don’t have the staff to keep the Smithsonian museum staffed, but we’ll go ahead and leave the gates, the doors open, and come in and take a look, do what you want.’ 

“That would be horrifically irresponsible of the Smithsonian, but that is exactly what the National Park Service is saying.”

The nature of many park sites makes closing difficult. 

The largest parks, comprising sprawling lands, often lack comprehensive fencing or other ways to keep people out. Public lands outside the Park Service, including those managed by BLM and the Forest Service, are even less likely to have barriers to entry.

Still, the Interior Department under President Donald Trump has prioritized keeping parks open to an extent other administrations have not planned for during shutdowns, by transferring funds meant for park maintenance to be used for operations.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has downplayed reports of improper behavior in the parks while blaming the closures on congressional Democrats who have mostly opposed a stopgap spending bill that would reopen the government. Democrats want Republicans to negotiate on expiring health care tax credits.

“Of course, all of our many sites…. would be better operated and better staffed if the Senate would just get us back in the government,” Burgum said in a Fox News interview Tuesday. “Way to go, Senate Democrats.”

Spokespeople for the NPS did not return messages seeking comment this week. Many communications staff across the federal government have been furloughed during the shutdown and are not legally allowed to respond to messages.

BLM spokeswoman Alyse Sharpe said in an email that the agency would “keep public lands as accessible as possible” during the shutdown. 

“Critical functions that protect life, property, and public health will remain in place, including visitor access in many locations, law enforcement, and emergency response,” she wrote.

Sharpe did not respond to questions about the concerns over lands’ long-term health.

‘Demoralizing’ atmosphere

Meanwhile, the shutdown has accelerated a drop in morale for the federal workforce responsible for public lands, at least some of whom are exasperated by what they see as the Trump administration’s failure to value their work. 

More than half of Interior’s nearly 60,000 employees have been furloughed during the shutdown. That reality, on top of staff reductions earlier this year and threatened additional layoffs by Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought, have added to a sense for many resource managers that the administration doesn’t place a priority on their jobs.

Chris Tollefson, a former communications official at the BLM and the Fish and Wildlife Service who took a buyout this year after a nearly 27-year run at the Interior agencies, said the administration’s posture was “demoralizing” for the agencies’ career employees who consider their work on behalf of public lands a calling.

“The people I know get into this because they care passionately about the land and about the resources they protect,” he said. “Most of them have deep roots in the communities they come from, and it’s really demoralizing to feel like your life’s work has been devalued and that what you’re doing doesn’t matter, that the people in charge feel like it doesn’t matter. So it’s been really hard.”

One furloughed Interior Department worker, who requested her identity be withheld because she is not authorized to speak to reporters, said the department may have trouble attracting qualified employees in the future.

“I came to the government to get a little bit more stability, thinking that it was going to be a safer bet,” the furloughed worker said. “And that has definitely not been the case. It’s not felt as stable as other positions. … I think a lot of folks that are with the federal government are there because of the perception of stability. When you take away that perception of stability, those positions aren’t going to be quite as attractive to talent that you would have attracted.”

Oil and gas permitting continues

Further irritating advocates of conservation, the shutdown has not slowed oil and gas development despite furloughs of staff responsible for science and recreation.

As of Oct. 15, the BLM had issued an average of 19.8 oil and gas permits per day since the shutdown began at the start of the month. That’s roughly on par with a typical month during Trump’s second administration, and represents the highest per-day average since May, according to an analysis of publicly available data by Weiss.

“It’s a statement of values,” Weiss said. “The Interior Department is telling the agency and telling America, ‘The folks who manage drilling on public lands are more important than the folks who actually do the day-to-day caring for our public lands.’ You don’t have the biologists, you don’t have the land managers, you don’t have the folks doing the trail maintenance. Those folks have all been furloughed, but the folks doing the oil and gas permitting are somehow essential.”

Agencies and departments can list some workers as exempt from furloughs. Those employees are kept on the job, though they generally do not receive paychecks until the government is reopened. 

In a post to Instagram on the first day of the shutdown, the Interior Department said it would continue issuing permits “and other efforts related to American Energy Dominance” despite a lapse in appropriations.

A lab tech uses equipment employed for in vitro fertilization. (Photo by Getty Images)

President Donald Trump said Thursday his administration had negotiated a lower price for a major fertility drug and would issue a regulation allowing employers to cover part of employees’ fertility coverage.

Pharmaceutical company EMD Serono will offer the popular in vitro fertilization drug Gonal-F at an 84% discount, Libby Horne, the company’s senior vice president of U.S. fertility & endocrinology, said in the Oval Office. 

The drug will be available on TrumpRX.com, a new website the White House has created to spotlight Trump’s work to reduce drug prices, Trump said.

The departments of Labor and Health and Human Services would issue guidance late Thursday, Trump said, to be followed by a regulation creating “a legal pathway for employers to offer fertility benefit packages” similar to vision or dental plans.

Sen. Katie Britt praised

The initiatives “are the boldest and most significant actions ever taken by any president to bring the miracle of life into more American homes,” Trump said. 

He credited U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican, for bringing the issue to his attention. 

“She’s the first one that told me about this,” he said. “I had not known too much about it, and we worked very rapidly together.”

Britt advocated for IVF after an Alabama Supreme Court ruling last year made the treatment illegal in the state. The state Legislature soon passed a law to ensure IVF remained legal.

At the Oval Office event Thursday, Britt offered high praise for Trump, saying he had prioritized the issue since the first time the pair spoke by phone.

“IVF is what makes the difference for so many families that are facing infertility,” she said. “The recommendations today that President Trump has set forth are going to expand IVF coverage to nearly a million more families, and they’re going to drive down cost significantly. Mr. President, this is the most pro-IVF thing that any president in the history of the United States of America has done.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. added that Trump was also “addressing the root causes” of infertility through a Make America Healthy Again agenda that seeks to avoid exposure to chemicals. 

Warren calls moves ‘broken promises’

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren minimized the announcements, saying they fell short of providing the free IVF coverage Trump had pledged to work toward. 

The Massachusetts Democrat added that private employers would likely not choose to offer fertility coverage and said other cuts to health coverage would more than offset any positives.

“Trump’s new genius plan is to rip away Americans’ health insurance and gut the CDC’s IVF team, then politely ask companies to add IVF coverage out of the goodness of their own hearts — with zero federal investment and no requirement for them to follow through,” she wrote on social media. “It’s insulting, and yet another one of Trump’s broken promises to American families.”

Trump, asked about potential opposition from religious conservatives who oppose IVF, said he was unconcerned. 

“This is very pro-life,” he said. “You can’t get more pro-life than this.”

A sign with a notice of closure is seen pinned on the fence to the National Zoo on Oct. 12, 2025, in Washington, D.C. . The closure affects all the Smithsonian's 21 museums, its research centers and the National Zoo. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate left for its customary long weekend Thursday afternoon, following a brief three days in session despite the ongoing government shutdown. 

The House remained on an extended break from Capitol Hill, where neither Democrats nor Republicans seemed motivated to talk to each other despite mounting repercussions from the funding lapse.

Federal courts, for example, reported just as the shutdown began Oct. 1, they could use “fee balances and other funds not dependent on a new appropriation” to keep up and running through Friday, Oct. 17. 

“If the shutdown continues after Judiciary funds are exhausted, the courts will then operate under the terms of the Anti-Deficiency Act, which allows work to continue during a lapse in appropriations if it is necessary to support the exercise of Article III judicial powers,” the announcement stated. “Under this scenario, each court and federal defender’s office would determine the staffing resources necessary to support such work.”

A spokesperson for the courts wrote in an email to States Newsroom there were no updates to offer on funding or operations as of Thursday but signaled there could potentially be an announcement Friday. 

Trump spending cuts, layoffs 

The shutdown has had widespread ramifications across all three branches of government, including the Trump administration’s decision to cut spending approved by Congress and lay off thousands of federal employees, though that was temporarily halted by a federal judge this week. 

Federal workers who are categorized as essential will not receive their paychecks until after the shutdown ends. Furloughed employees may never receive the back pay authorized in a 2019 law if the Trump administration reinterprets it, as officials have said they might. 

None of the consequences produced any real sense of urgency this week on Capitol Hill, where West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice organized a birthday party for his dog, or at the White House, where President Donald Trump held a ball for donors to his ballroom and focused on foreign policy. 

Just as they have for the last several weeks, members of Congress and administration officials continued holding separate press conferences and TV news appearances, lambasting their political opponents, none of which will help move the two sides closer together to reopen government. 

Failed vote No. 10

Senators failed for the 10th time to advance the stopgap government spending bill on a 51-45 vote, short of the 60 needed to move forward under the chamber’s legislative filibuster. Republicans control the chamber with 53 seats.

The Senate was also unable to move past a procedural hurdle on the full-year Defense Department funding bill after a 50-44 vote. The Senate Appropriations Committee approved the bill this summer on a broadly bipartisan 26-3 vote. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters ahead of the vote that Democrats want some of the other annual appropriations bills added on to create a larger bill, though he didn’t say which of the dozen he prefers. 

“It’s always been unacceptable to Democrats to do the Defense bill without other bills that have so many things that are important to the American people in terms of health care, in terms of housing, in terms of safety,” Schumer said. 

He added later that leaders from both political parties “have always negotiated these appropriations agreements in a bipartisan way. Once again, they’re just going at it alone.” 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, appeared to offer a package of bills negotiated between the parties before the vote on the defense bill. 

“We want this to be an open process with an opportunity to add additional bipartisan bills that address vital domestic priorities, including biomedical and scientific research and infrastructure,” Collins said. “And we want members to have a voice in the funding decisions that affect all of our states and constituents back home.”

Stopgap bills in 2025

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said during a floor speech earlier in the day the short-term government funding bill is needed to give lawmakers more time to negotiate final versions of the full-year spending bills. 

“We’re simply asking them to extend current funding bills for a few weeks while we work on full-year appropriations,” Thune said. 

Congress is supposed to work out a bipartisan agreement between the House and Senate on those bills by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, but hasn’t finished on time since the 1990s. 

So every September, once back from their August recess, the House and Senate write a stopgap spending bill that typically keeps the lights on until mid-December. 

Those short-term measures, sometimes called continuing resolutions or CRs, were traditionally negotiated among Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers until earlier this year. 

House Republicans, bolstered by a sweep in last year’s elections, decided in March to write a six-month stopgap spending bill on their own, after two bipartisan short-term bills were approved earlier in the fiscal year. 

Senate Democrats voiced frustration with the process but ultimately helped Republicans get past a procedural vote that required the support of at least 60 lawmakers, allowing the March stopgap to advance toward a simple majority passage vote. 

House Republicans repeated their previously successful maneuver last month, writing a stopgap spending bill on their own that would fund the government through Nov. 21. 

Senate Democrats, however, changed tactics and have voted repeatedly to block the House-passed stopgap bill from advancing. 

Health care standoff

Democrats maintain that Republican leaders must negotiate to extend the enhanced tax credits that are set to expire at the end of the year for people who buy their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace. 

Republican leaders have said publicly over and over that they will, but cannot guarantee Democrats a final agreement will be able to pass both chambers. They also say talks will only begin after the stopgap bill becomes law and the government reopens. 

“Despite the fact we’re only in this position because of Democrats’ poor policy choices, Republicans are ready for that discussion,” Thune said. “But only once we’ve reopened the government.”

Thune also raised concerns over what message it would send for GOP leaders to negotiate during the shutdown, which he said would endorse the use of funding lapses to achieve policy or political goals. 

Shutdowns in history

Republicans forced the last two government shutdowns; the first in 2013 over efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and the second in 2019 over Trump’s insistence lawmakers approve more funding for the border wall. Both were unsuccessful. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a floor speech Thursday that Republicans drafting the stopgap spending bill on their own is a stark contrast to how things have worked for years and that they can’t expect Democrats to vote for something in which they had no say.  

“For the last month, the Republican leader’s favorite number has been 13. He keeps citing 13 CRs that we passed when I was majority leader. Of course we did,” Schumer said.  

“What he fails to mention — I’m not sure if he forgets, or he’s deliberately trying to ignore it — is that those 13 CRs were the product of bipartisan negotiation, of serious conversation. We had to make changes in those bills when our Republican colleagues suggested it,” he added. “They were in the minority, but they had the right to be heard, a right that has been completely shut out for Democrats under this new Republican majority.”

Schumer warned Republicans about open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act Marketplace beginning on Nov. 1, saying tens of millions of Americans will soon realize what congressional inaction means for their family budgets. 

He said Republicans’ unwillingness to negotiate before the shutdown began or since shows they “either don’t understand it or they’re brutally callous.” 

‘I want to be happy Mike’

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Thursday morning press conference that Republicans “have no idea” how the government shutdown will end, and blamed Democrats in the Senate for not voting to advance the stopgap bill. 

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Andrew R. Garbarino of New York said the government shutdown is undermining the day-to-day operations of the Department of Homeland Security.

“This shutdown is making our country less safe,” he said. 

Garbarino said roughly 90% of federal employees at the Department of Homeland Security are required to continue working because they have essential roles such as vetting customs at ports of entry and monitoring air space at airports. 

He said those working without pay include 63,000 U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees; more than 61,000 Transportation Security Administration agents; and 8,000 Secret Service agents. 

Garbarino added that he was grateful Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was using funds from the “One Big Beautiful Bill” to pay the roughly 49,000 Coast Guard personnel. 

In a statement to States Newsroom, DHS said it would be able to continue hiring U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and “deploy law enforcement across the country to make America safe again” due to funding from the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Amid the government shutdown, the Trump administration has continued its aggressive immigration crackdown.

Johnson expressed his frustration that some Homeland Security employees were working without pay.

“We should not have Border Patrol agents not (being) paid right now because Chuck Schumer wants to play political games to cover his tail,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I don’t like being mad Mike, I want to be happy Mike … but I am so upset about this.”