A quarter-century ago, the total cost of every state Supreme Court race in the country reached an unprecedented $45.6 million, prompting the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University to warn “a new and ominous politics of judicial elections” posed a “threat to fair and impartial justice.”
Yet in 2025, spending on one Wisconsin Supreme Court seat reached $144.5 million, even more than the $100.8 million spent on 68 state high court contests in the nation in 2021 and 2022.
At the same time, this state’s two major political parties have become the largest donors to the candidates for an officially nonpartisan office. And the last two justices elected in Wisconsin received most of their individual campaign contributions from outside the state.
State Supreme Court races have become everything they were never meant to be — highly partisan, astronomically expensive national political battles in which candidate ideologies overshadow qualifications for an office requiring them to “administer justice … faithfully and impartially.”
Several factors are driving the massive spending in Wisconsin, one of 22 states that elect justices rather than appoint them. The factors include:
Some of those factors have pushed up spending in high court races in other states into the eight-figure range, but only Wisconsin — the first to see nine-figure spending on a court contest — has them all.
“It’s the whole picture that makes us so obscene,” said Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, which advocates for transparent and accountable government.
Voters could be in for more of the same, facing a high court election every spring for the next four years. And even if the 2026 race doesn’t break records, it’s shaping up to be another multimillion-dollar contest.
In Wisconsin, high court candidates in the 1990s typically spent around $250,000 each. The first million-dollar campaign featuring negative TV ads was in 1999, but the next year candidates pledged to run positive campaigns and it only cost $430,963.
Howard Schweber, professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called those earlier races “gentlemanly” and “low-key affairs.”
But such spending exploded after Justice Louis Butler wrote a landmark 2005 product liability decision, holding that a lead paint poisoning victim could sue product manufacturers without proving which company was responsible.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce spent an estimated $2.2 million to elect conservative Annette Ziegler in 2007 and $1.8 million to help Michael Gableman unseat Butler the next year. Both races set state records at almost $6 million apiece.
Similar story lines have played out nationwide as big-money donors target court races to influence specific cases or issues, said Douglas Keith, deputy director of the judiciary program at the Brennan Center. In the latest Wisconsin election, Elon Musk spent $55.9 million to boost conservative Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, who lost to liberal Dane County Judge Susan Crawford. Musk’s Tesla Inc. was suing to overturn the state law prohibiting auto manufacturers from owning their dealerships, a key part of Tesla’s business model.
Big spenders are rarely transparent about their agendas, instead pouring their money into television advertising with lurid accusations about how candidates handled criminal cases that have little connection to what the Supreme Court does.
Big donors are reinforcing a growing feeling among voters that “the court is just one more institution to obtain the policies that we (the voters) want,” said conservative former Justice Dan Kelly, who lost multimillion-dollar races in 2020 and 2023.
The stakes range all the way up to control of the White House. In 2020, President Donald Trump contested more than 220,000 absentee ballots from Milwaukee and Dane County. The state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to toss the suit.
The 2020 presidential election was part of a nationwide record five times in 24 years that Wisconsin was decided by less than one percentage point. The same swing-state energy pumps up both sides in high court races — even though only two of the last 12 contested court elections were that close.
And while conservatives ruled the court for 15 years after Gableman’s election, their majority was never more than five of seven seats, meaning that a change in ideological control could be just one or two elections away. That’s one of the most common factors driving big-spending court elections nationwide, Keith said.
Wisconsin has tried to keep partisan politics out of court elections since its founding. The first state constitution prohibited electing judges at the same time as most other state officials, aiming to discourage parties from nominating judicial candidates.
Wisconsin is one of only four states that hold judicial elections in the spring or summer. Candidates in other states running in the fall are competing for donations with many other high-profile races, Keith noted.
Another major factor that has supercharged spending in Wisconsin came in 2015, when a Republican campaign finance overhaul allowed unlimited donations to political parties and unlimited contributions from parties to candidates.
Donations from state and local Republican parties jumped more than fivefold, from $75,926 in 2016 to $423,615 in 2018. After fundraising powerhouse Ben Wikler took over as state Democratic Party chair in 2019, state, local and national Democratic parties gave their preferred candidates $1.4 million in 2020, $9.9 million in 2023 and $11.8 million in 2025.
Together, the two major parties spent $34.9 million on officially nonpartisan Supreme Court races from 2007 through 2025, almost all of it in the last three campaigns. Democrats outspent Republicans nearly 2 to 1.
In February, the Marquette Law School Poll found 61% of Wisconsin voters believe party contributions reduce judicial independence, compared with 38% who think partisan support gives voters useful information about candidates.
Party contributions represent less than one-quarter of the $161.5 million that special interests spent on the last 12 Supreme Court races. Conservative organizations and business interests spent $80.2 million supporting conservative candidates, while progressive groups and unions spent $46.4 million backing liberal candidates.
For the entire 2007-2025 period, spending on so-called “issue ads” — which try to persuade voters without explicitly endorsing a candidate — totaled $40.2 million, $31.8 million for conservatives and $8.4 million for liberals.
Out-of-state donors didn’t play a major role in high court elections until relatively recently. From 2007 through 2018, most Supreme Court candidates received more than 90% of their individual donations from state residents, with Gableman being the biggest exception at 32%, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a campaign finance watchdog.
But the out-of-state cash exploded for liberals after 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed each state to regulate abortions.
Milwaukee County Judge Janet Protasiewicz positioned herself as the abortion rights candidate and took in a record $3.6 million — 57% of individual contributions — from donors outside Wisconsin. Crawford, who had represented Planned Parenthood, received $14.6 million from out-of-state donors or 69% of her individual contributions.
Wisconsin has tried and failed to stem the tide of judicial spending.
After the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1976 decision saying campaign spending limits violate the First Amendment, the Legislature enacted the nation’s most comprehensive public financing law. Taxpayers could check a box on their income tax returns to designate $1 of their taxes for public financing.
That system “worked extremely well for over a decade,” according to a 2002 analysis by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. However, in 1986 the Legislature stopped adjusting maximum campaign grants for inflation. Taxpayer participation waned from 19.7% in 1979 to 5% in 2002.
After the record-spending 2007 campaign, all seven justices called for “realistic, meaningful public financing for Supreme Court elections.”
But the system Democrats passed in 2009 lasted for just one Supreme Court campaign before Republicans repealed it in 2011. New Mexico is now the only state funding judicial campaigns with taxpayer dollars.
State Sen. Kelda Roys, D-Madison, wants to revive the law, which she calls “really important to preserving judicial integrity.”
Roys, who is running for governor, said she’s considering amounts 10 times higher than what she called the “laughably low” original grants of $100,000 for primary candidates and $300,000 for general election candidates.
Public financing doesn’t stop special interests from spending big on issue ads or through independent expenditures on ads that clearly state who they favor or oppose, but strict recusal rules for judges could disincentivize such expenditures.
After the 2007 and 2008 elections, justices fielded four petitions asking them to clarify recusal rules. The petitions from groups such as the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin urged the court to set thresholds for when donations or outside spending by a litigant or attorney would require a justice to recuse. Conversely, WMC and the Realtors Association called for rules that would not require justices to recuse based only on how much a litigant or attorney had spent supporting their campaigns.
The court voted 4-3 in 2010 to adopt verbatim the rules backed by WMC. Explaining the new rules, the court majority argued that disqualifying judges based on legal campaign donations “would create the impression that receipt of a contribution automatically impairs a judge’s integrity.”
By contrast, several states and the American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct “require judges to recuse when a party or a party’s lawyer have contributed more than a specific amount to a judge’s campaign.” A few other states call for recusal based on campaign contributions but don’t set a specific dollar limit.
In 2017, 54 retired judges petitioned the high court to toughen recusal rules. When the 2010 rules were adopted, the petition noted, the majority contended that direct donations were too small to influence justices because contributions were capped at $1,000 from individuals and political action committees. But the 2015 campaign finance law boosted the donation limits to $20,000 for individuals and $18,000 for PACs.
Similarly, the petition said, the 2010 majority had argued that judicial candidates couldn’t be held responsible for groups making independent expenditures and running issue ads because at the time they were legally barred from coordinating with those groups. But the 2015 law also loosened the coordination rules.
The retired judges wanted to require litigants and their attorneys to disclose their contributions to the judges hearing their cases at each level. Supreme Court justices would be required to recuse if they received contributions or benefited from outside spending of more than $10,000, with lower amounts for lower court judges.
But the Supreme Court rejected the petition on a 5-2 vote along ideological lines. Most of the conservative justices in the majority said they trusted judges to decide when to recuse.
The issue could be revived. Liberal Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said at a WisPolitics event in October she is committed to holding an “open” and “transparent” hearing about establishing new court recusal rules.
In the current legal environment, holding down spending on Supreme Court campaigns could remain challenging as long as Wisconsin elects justices.
Not all of the other systems succeed in taking the politics out of choosing judges. The process of appointing federal judges is widely viewed as partisan, particularly for the U.S. Supreme Court. And even some retention elections have become multimillion-dollar contests, as activists try to change the ideological balance of state high courts.
However, 11 states have set up independent nonpartisan or bipartisan nominating commissions to choose justices by merit. Many other countries select judges through civil service systems. And 12 states use independent performance reviews of judges to help voters or appointing authorities decide whether judges should keep their jobs.
In 1940, Missouri voters approved an appointment system in which a nominating commission screens judicial applicants based on merit. The governor then chooses a judge from a list of potential nominees presented by the commission. Newly appointed judges typically serve a relatively short first term before facing voters in a yes-or-no retention election to keep their jobs for a longer second term.
Some form of commission-based gubernatorial appointment is now in place in 22 states.
Wisconsin is one of 10 states that don’t require their governors to consult a nominating commission or seek confirmation for a high court appointee.
Although 57% of all Wisconsin Supreme Court justices were first appointed by governors to fill vacancies, past efforts to switch to appointing justices faced pushback.
Former Justice Janine Geske said that she had long supported elections because they “made justices more human and someone who people can identify with.” But her perspective has changed.
“People are so sick of these terrible ads that relate to issues that the court doesn’t decide,” Geske said.
Geske said she leans toward appointment if nominees are screened by a bipartisan commission and if the governor must choose from the commission’s list.
Kelly, the former conservative justice, also said he supports appointment with Senate confirmation. Kelly said judges “must reject politics entirely” in their rulings, and appointment offers “much more protection against politics” than elections.
February’s Marquette poll found 90% support for continuing to elect justices, with relatively minor differences by party.
Since 2000, all eight states with fully partisan elections have had million-dollar court contests, while only nine of the 13 states with nonpartisan elections — including Wisconsin — have had one.
In October, the Marquette poll found 56% of state voters thought high court races have become so partisan that candidates should run with party labels. Nearly two-thirds of Republicans backed the idea, with Democrats and independents almost evenly split.
After liberals won four of the last five Supreme Court races, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden called for moving all spring elections to the fall of even-numbered years.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, a GOP gubernatorial candidate, is calling for shifting only the statewide contests for Supreme Court and superintendent of public instruction to fall and moving primaries for fall races from August to April.
Schoemann said he didn’t have a strong feeling about whether high court elections should remain nonpartisan, but he added, “Everybody acknowledges that they’re largely partisan races anyway. … Let’s be honest about what they are.”
Most states with independent commissions skip the confirmation process and wait for voters to decide the justices’ future in retention elections. Altogether, 20 states use retention elections for at least some high court races.
As an alternative to incumbent justices facing voters the Brennan Center advocates for a single term of 14 to 18 years, and the State Bar of Wisconsin has called for a single 16-year term, compared with Wisconsin’s current 10-year terms.
Although no state restricts justices to a single long term, Rhode Island justices are appointed for life, like federal judges; Massachusetts and New Hampshire justices serve until mandatory retirement at 70; and Hawaii has an independent commission that decides whether to reappoint justices after an initial 10-year term.
Brennan Center data show four states with head-to-head judicial elections have escaped the national trend of high-spending races: Minnesota, Oregon, Idaho and North Dakota.
In Minnesota, candidates and their supporters spent just $637,011 to elect 10 justices from 2013 through 2022 — a period when Wisconsin candidates and their allies spent almost $33 million, according to the Brennan Center and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.
Both states share a history of nonpartisan elections, but unlike Wisconsin, Minnesota elects justices in the fall for six-year terms, with no restrictions on how many seats can be on the ballot in the same election.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Supreme Costs: A condensed version of our series on the ‘obscene’ spending on Wisconsin justices is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Wisconsin refugee support organizations and food banks are preparing for the worst as regulators in other states implement new rules barring many refugees and people granted asylum from federal food assistance programs.
But they haven’t yet seen the new restrictions take effect in Wisconsin.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services, which administers FoodShare — the state’s name for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — has continued to provide benefits to immigrants rendered ineligible under the new federal restrictions, support groups say. The agency has not said how long it will continue to do so.
Refugees, asylees and other immigrants who entered the country through humanitarian programs had long been eligible for SNAP before securing legal permanent residency. But President Donald Trump’s “big” bill-turned law, signed in July, rewrote SNAP eligibility rules to exclude such immigrants who have yet to obtain green cards.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture gave states until Nov. 1 to comply.
Refugee assistance groups and food banks across Wisconsin have sounded the alarm about the ban. Nearly 8,000 refugees and asylees have settled in the state over the past decade, federal data show, and resettlement organizations note many rely on FoodShare as they find their footing.
“SNAP is a lifeline for refugees and asylees as they rebuild their lives in the United States after traumatic and often dangerous circumstances,” said Matt King, CEO of Milwaukee food bank Hunger Task Force. “Food support is one of the first stabilizing resources they receive as they navigate an unfamiliar country and begin the process of resettlement.”
Hunger Task Force helped more than 1,600 refugees access food assistance in 2024 alone, he added.
Anticipating a benefits cutoff, Wisconsin aid groups have geared up for a surge in demand for services.
“We’ve already been proactive,” said Donna Ambrose, executive director of The Neighbor’s Place, the largest food bank in Marathon County – a longtime hub for refugee resettlement. Her organization is extending its hours and offering an “evening market” on Thursday nights to accommodate rising needs.
In the Fox Valley, the nonprofit Casa Hispana recently received an anonymous donation to support food and fuel assistance. It plans to hold a giveaway in the coming weeks. CEO Carlos Salazar expects part will go to asylees from Latin America who stand to lose FoodShare benefits.
COMSA, a resource center for immigrants and refugees in Green Bay, faces a more difficult position. While the nonprofit will continue its core programs – job application support and English language classes, for instance – the center lacks resources to begin providing food assistance, Executive Director Said Hassan said.
Officials with refugee resettlement groups say their clients who lack green cards are still receiving FoodShare — for now. They haven’t heard details about what’s next.
“We’re supposed to find out any day” about benefits, said Sean Gilligan, the refugee services manager with Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Green Bay.
Last-minute guidance from the federal Agriculture Department adds to the uncertainty. The agency on Oct. 31 directed states to permanently block all immigrants who entered the U.S. through humanitarian pathways – including refugees and asylees – from receiving SNAP, even after obtaining green cards.
Wisconsin Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul and 21 other state attorneys general challenged the directive in a late-November lawsuit, arguing that the department’s instructions conflict with provisions of Trump’s new law. The lawsuit asserts refugees and asylees with green cards remain eligible for SNAP aid.
The attorneys general also argue that federal rules allow a 120-day grace period to implement latest guidance, meaning states shouldn’t immediately be held to its provisions. The Trump administration claims that period ended Nov. 1.
“Wisconsin and other states have already begun implementing the statutory changes enacted earlier this year, but USDA’s guidance now forces them to overhaul eligibility systems without sufficient time,” Kaul’s office said in a press release.
The state could face financial penalties if the Trump administration determines it is distributing aid to immigrants who are ineligible for SNAP. A provision of Trump’s landmark law will strip some funding from states with high SNAP “error rates” – a measure of over- and under-payments to recipients – beginning in fiscal year 2028. Wisconsin is among few states with an error rate below the bar for penalties, but Kaul’s office said confusion over the new eligibility rules could push the state’s error rate over the penalty threshold.
The new rules will “create widespread confusion for families, increase the risk of wrongful benefit terminations, erode public trust, and place states in an untenable situation where they must either violate federal law or accept severe financial liability,” Kaul’s office said in a press release.
The state health department declined to comment about its plans, and about what steps it has taken to implement the new eligibility requirements.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Refugee advocates brace for impact from federal limits on food aid 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.
A November fundraising email paid for and sent by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s Democratic campaign for governor included a message signed by “Team Taylor,” the campaign of Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor, who is running in the nonpartisan April race for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
The note describes the power the next governor will have and how the court can be a “check” on the person in that office. It ends with an appeal: “Will you split a contribution of $10 between our campaign and David Crowley to help elect Judge Chris Taylor and protect a fair, independent Wisconsin Supreme Court?”
The fundraising message is one of potentially thousands of emails Wisconsinites may receive from campaigns seeking donations ahead of pivotal elections next year. But it also raises questions about why asks from nonpartisan campaigns can appear in a partisan candidate’s fundraising materials and whether a message, like the one from Crowley’s campaign featuring Taylor’s team, can seem like an endorsement.
Taylor has not, in fact, endorsed Crowley, who is running in a crowded Democratic primary field for governor next August. Crowley has endorsed Taylor, a liberal who is running against conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar in the April election.
Though the joint fundraising belies Wisconsin’s nonpartisan-in-name — though increasingly partisan-in-practice — Supreme Court elections, the communication doesn’t raise ethical or legal issues, experts told Wisconsin Watch. Additionally, a fundraising email like this is not unusual in the context of Wisconsin’s recent Supreme Court elections, said Howard Schweber, a professor emeritus of political science and legal studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In fact, Wisconsin’s main political parties were the top donors to the campaigns of the liberal and conservative candidates in the record-breaking 2025 Supreme Court race, with Democrats giving $11.75 million to now-Justice Susan Crawford’s campaign and Republicans sending $9.76 million to the campaign of former Attorney General Brad Schimel.
“This is just yet another data point, number 115, demonstrating that these are, in fact, partisan campaigns run … at least in some cases, by candidates who present themselves as representatives of a party,” Schweber said.
Since its founding, Wisconsin has tried to keep judicial races nonpartisan. Justices are supposed to interpret the law and constitution like a referee, not side with one team or the other. But over the past 20 years, as hot-button political issues have come before the court and spending from political interest groups has reached astronomical heights, that tradition has eroded.
Taylor and Lazar are the likely candidates in the court race in April and are on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum. Taylor is a former Dane County judge who served as a Democrat in the state Assembly and was a policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. Lazar is a former Waukesha County judge who was an assistant attorney general under a Republican administration.
Wisconsin prohibits judges and judicial candidates from endorsing partisan political candidates or directly soliciting campaign donations. During the 2025 Wisconsin Supreme Court race, the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign filed an ethics complaint against Schimel after reports that he joked about buying knee pads to ask for campaign donations.
The message sent by the Crowley campaign is a different scenario, as the text is signed by “Team Taylor,” not Taylor herself. Taylor has not endorsed any political candidates or directly solicited donations in her campaign for the Supreme Court, Sam Roecker, a spokesperson for Taylor’s campaign, told Wisconsin Watch.
Messages Taylor’s campaign sends to its list of email subscribers can be shared by other political campaigns with their own fundraising lists, such as in the case of the Crowley email.
“Other campaigns, regardless of party, who believe in electing a justice who will protect our fundamental rights and freedoms, are welcome to amplify our messages to their supporters,” said Roecker, the Taylor spokesperson.
It’s not clear whether other Democrats running for governor may have shared fundraising messages from the Taylor campaign. Only Rep. Francesca Hong, D-Madison, responded to questions from Wisconsin Watch with a simple “nope.”
Lazar’s campaign has not sent fundraising messages with candidates running for partisan offices, a spokesperson said.
Ahead of the 2025 court race, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in a campaign email promoted Schimel’s candidacy. But the message was signed by Tiffany rather than anyone connected to Schimel’s campaign.
A spokesperson for Crowley’s campaign said Democrats believe it’s “critical” to elect Taylor to the high court — which was the reasoning behind the campaign message.
“The Crowley campaign sent a fundraising email to support her campaign and highlight the importance of this race, recognizing the natural overlap between the two candidates,” the spokesperson said.
Political activities during a Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign can resurface once a candidate is elected. Earlier this year, Crawford was criticized for attending a briefing with Democratic donors with a discussion on putting two of Wisconsin’s U.S. House seats “in play.”
In November the justice denied a request from Wisconsin’s Republican congressmen that she recuse herself from cases challenging the state’s congressional maps based on attending that meeting.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
As fundraising email shows, line between nonpartisan and partisan Wisconsin elections continues to erode 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.
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The Trump administration suddenly withdrew its federal policy change reducing funding for permanent supportive housing on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (Photo by Nadia Engenheiro, Half Street Group)
An hour before a scheduled court hearing on two federal lawsuits over recent changes to a key federal homelessness and housing funding program, the Trump administration withdrew the funding notice that prompted the litigation.
The move came as a surprise to the attorneys for plaintiffs who were initially scheduled to make their case for a temporary restraining order before Rhode Island Judge Mary S. McElroy.
“It feels like intentional chaos,” McElroy said.
In a message to Continuum of Care networks, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced Monday afternoon that officials rescinded its Nov. 13 Notice of Funding Opportunity for federal fiscal 2025 grants to “make appropriate revisions.” The notice had set Jan. 14 as the deadline for applications for Continuum of Care funds, which address homelessness.
Rhode Island’s Continuum of Care gave the state’s homeless care a deadline of Dec. 12 to get their applications done to give to HUD, according to one of the lawsuits.
“We received notice first through our providers and [electronic filing], not through opposing counsel,” Zane Muller, assistant attorney general for the state of Washington, said during the 25-minute virtual hearing that began at 3:30 p.m.
HUD’s policy rescission too was news for McElroy, who called it a “haphazard approach to administrative law.”
“There’s a process and procedure that’s laid out,” said McElroy, a first-term Trump appointee. “It’s not by tweets or by last-minute orders or last-minute withdrawals.”
Pardis Gheibi, a U.S. Department of Justice attorney representing HUD, told McElroy the notice was filed with the court as soon as it was published. She did not have the answer when McElroy wanted to know who at HUD made the decision to rescind the funding notice and when.
“We didn’t have the chance to confer with plaintiffs’ counsel — but the rescission happened this afternoon,” Gheibi said.
The Trump administration had planned to slash the amount of grant funds that can be spent on permanent housing — subsidized units that provide a stable residence for formerly homeless people, often those who have experienced mental illness or spent years on the streets — and instead focus on transitional housing.
There’s a process and procedure that’s laid out. It’s not by tweets or by last-minute orders or last-minute withdrawals.
– Rhode Island U.S. District Court Judge Mary S. McElroy
Grant rules also would have eliminated funding for diversity and inclusion efforts, support of transgender clients and use of “harm reduction” strategies that seek to reduce overdose deaths by helping people in active addiction use drugs more safely.
HUD wrote in its update that it still intends to make changes to the policy for awarding funds for addressing homelessness.
A coalition of states co-led by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha filed suit over HUD’s latest Notice of Funding Opportunity on Nov. 25. On Dec. 1, a group of cities and nonprofits led by the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition filed a separate 85-page lawsuit.
Both complaints had similar requests for the court to declare the new conditions unlawful and reinstate language from prior funding notices, which is why McElroy opted to combine them into one hearing.
But with the funding notice now withdrawn, Gheibi argued there was no need for immediate relief.
Kristin Bateman, an attorney representing local communities and nonprofits and a senior counsel with Democracy Forward, argued court action is still needed. She said HUD’s rescission still leaves a critical funding gap for homeless services starting early next year since most federal fiscal 2024 grants start to expire in January.
“Those gaps in funding mean that they will not have the money to continue supporting the permanent housing that they fund for people to live in,” Bateman said. “People are going to be displaced, put back into homelessness in the middle of winter and face all the harms that come with that.”
McElroy scheduled the next hearing for 10 a.m. Friday, Dec. 19. She also tasked HUD with producing the administrative record on the grant funding policy, ideally within a week — though Gheibi had asked if it could wait until after the holidays.
McElroy said if the administration could work quickly to rescind the funding notice, they can work quickly to give the court the documents she requested.
“People can work overtime if they need to,” McElroy said. “I do, they do, I’m sure you do.”
This story was originally produced by Rhode Island Current, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
President Donald Trump participates in a roundtable discussion with farmers and lawmakers in the Cabinet Room of the White House on Dec. 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Left is Cordt Holub of Dysart, Iowa, and right is Meryl Kennedy of Monroe, Louisiana.(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The federal government will provide $12 billion to U.S. farmers who have been hurt by “unfair market disruption,” President Donald Trump said at a White House roundtable event Monday.
Trump said repeatedly the funding was available thanks to tariff revenues, framing his aggressive trade policy as a boon to farmers rather than a drag on their global market share as critics of the policy suggest.
“I’m delighted to announce this afternoon that the United States will be taking a small portion of the hundreds of billions of dollars we receive in tariffs… and we’re going to be giving and providing it to the farmers in economic assistance,” Trump said.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, though, told reporters following the event that the money came from the department’s Commodity Credit Corporation, which is funded through regular appropriations from Congress, according to a White House pool report.
The money, which the administration officials described as “bridge payments,” would be in farmers’ hands by the end of February, Rollins said.
While not officially marketed as a part of a series of Trump events spotlighting affordability issues, the president said several times he was addressing an affordability crisis he “inherited” from President Joe Biden, a Democrat.
“The Democrats cause the affordability problem,” Trump said. “And we’re the ones that are fixing it.”
The bulk of the funding, $11 billion, would go to row crop farmers who grow barley, chickpeas, corn, cotton, lentils, oats, peanuts, peas, rice, sorghum, soybeans, wheat, canola, crambe, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame and sunflower, according to a USDA statement. The department was planning to reserve $1 billion for unnamed specialty crops, Rollins said.
Trump, Rollins and other Cabinet-level officials said the payments were to be used as a “bridge” before policies enacted in Republicans’ massive spending and tax cuts law this year are implemented.
“This bridge is absolutely necessary based on where we are right now,” Rollins said.
They blamed the Biden administration for a more negative outlook for farmers. Biden failed to close trade deals and a focus on environmental policy led to increased costs for the agriculture industry, they said.
The package limits payments to $155,000 per recipient, USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Richard Fordyce told reporters on a conference call late Monday afternoon.
Iowa farmer Cordt Holub spoke at the White House event, where he thanked Trump for the package.
“I want to say thank you for this bridge payment,” he said. “It’s Christmas early for farmers.”
Louisiana rice farmer Meryl Kennedy said the industry was struggling, but thanked Trump for the aid funding and changes to reference prices in the Republican megabill.
“Our farmers can feed this nation and many nations abroad, but we need fair trade, not free trade,” she said.
But they did not mention the effects of tariffs, which critics of the president have said are responsible for diminishing agricultural exports and hurting farmers’ bottom lines.
House Agriculture Committee ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota said in a statement the package “picks winners and losers in the farm economy,” and would not provide certainty to farmers or reduce high operational costs.
“It will not bring U.S. agricultural exports back to pre-trade war levels,” she said. “It also ignores (the) fact that the president’s tariffs are responsible for the immense financial strain felt not just by America’s farmers, but also working people, manufacturers, retailers and small businesses. All Americans are tired of the affordability crisis created by this administration and congressional Republicans. We will be right back here a year from now unless the administration changes its policies.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, also slammed the program.
“The reason farmers need relief at all is largely because Donald Trump betrayed them and decimated their businesses with his disastrous tariffs,” Schumer said in a floor speech Monday. “Now, Donald Trump is patting himself on the back, acting like a hero to farmers while using taxpayer dollars to clean up the mess he created. It’s textbook Donald Trump incompetence.”
Asked by a reporter during the roundtable if he would be open to another round of relief for farmers, Trump said it would depend on how international trade develops and said farmers would not want further aid.
“It depends on where we go,” he said. “China is buying a lot. Other countries are buying a lot. And you know, the interesting thing about the farmers, they don’t want aid. They want to just have a level playing field.”
He later indicated it would be unnecessary.
“We’re going to make the farmers so strong — and I’m not even talking about financially, because they just want to be able to produce what they can produce,” he said. “We’re going to make them so strong that it will be, indeed, a golden age for farmers.”
Rollins told reporters following the event that Trump was “open to more.”
Nurse practitioner Carol Biocic treats a Marine Corps veteran at a podiatry clinic for veterans in 2023 in Chicago. New professional student loan caps might make it more difficult for people to pursue advanced nursing degrees. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Zoe Clarke became a hospital registered nurse two and a half years ago, following in the footsteps of her mother and grandmother.
Clarke, an ICU nurse in Asheville, North Carolina, wants to get her master’s degree to become a nurse practitioner or a certified registered nurse anesthetist — occupations in high demand — and eventually work toward a doctoral degree.
But new borrowing limits on federal student loans may hinder her from reaching that goal.
A provision in the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax and spending law enacted this summer, overhauls the federal student loan program for graduate students in an effort to simplify the loan process and discourage colleges from raising tuition.
To comply with the new law, the U.S. Department of Education recently issued a draft rule that would impose limits on how much graduate students can borrow — up to $20,500 per year and $100,000 in total for most students, but up to $50,000 a year and $200,000 in total for students in a new “professional” category. The category includes people studying to be medical doctors, dentists, veterinarians, pharmacists and lawyers.
Students pursuing advanced nursing degrees, however, are not included in the professional category.
Advanced practice nurses, hospital associations and other health groups say the rule will make it unaffordable for many nurses to advance their careers — disproportionately affecting communities, especially rural ones, that rely on them amid physician shortages.
Advanced nurses can provide primary care, deliver babies as nurse midwives and anesthetize surgery patients where there aren’t enough physicians to go around. They can also write some prescriptions. Advanced practice nurses also serve as college faculty in community colleges and nursing schools.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the nation will employ an additional 134,000 nurse practitioners, nurse midwives and nurse anesthetists in the next decade, 35% more than there are now. In high demand, nurse practitioners are one of the fastest-growing occupations in the nation, the bureau says.
“We depend heavily on nurse practitioners,” said Sandy Reding, a president of the California Nurses Association and vice president of National Nurses United. “But if they don’t have access to getting further education, we’re not going to see additional nurse practitioners come into the field.”
Tuition, combined with living expenses, can far exceed $50,000 a year for many post-bachelor’s nursing programs.
“Potentially, this could devastate a whole generation of nurses getting their advanced practice degrees,” Clarke said.
Some education advocates fear that losing a pipeline of advanced nursing practitioners to serve as college faculty also could lead to fewer registered and advanced nurses and other caregivers with two- and four-year degrees, because there would be fewer people to teach them.
It’s a slap in the face to the nurses that go to work every day doing our very best to care for our patients.
– Sandy Reding, a president of the California Nurses Association
Many advanced-degree nursing faculty are retiring. Nursing schools reported more than 2,100 full-time faculty vacancies in 2022, according to the American Nurses Association — leading to roughly 80,000 students being turned away.
States are already grappling with workforce shortfalls caused by exhausting work conditions that have led many nurses to burn out and leave the field, or leave bedside care to teach, nurses told Stateline.
In response to an uproar from nursing associations and others in health care, the Department of Education released a rebuttal last week defending its proposal, saying it is not a “value judgement about the importance of programs.”
It also said it may make changes in response to public comments. The new limits would take effect July 1, 2026.
Advanced practice registered nurses, known as APRNs, fill gaps in rural communities where there aren’t enough clinicians. For example, nurses needed for surgeries — nurse anesthetists, or CRNAs — make up 80% of anesthesia providers in rural counties. About a fifth of APRNs nationwide worked in rural areas in 2022, according to one survey of more than 18,800 APRNs.
“The nurse practitioners, APRNs, are a needed lifeline to help fill those gaps,” said Heidi Lucas, executive director of the Missouri Rural Health Association and former director of the state’s nurses association. “Putting barriers in the way to keep [nurses] from getting degrees — that’s just going to exacerbate the problems that we already have.”
She said Missouri will be short about 2,000 physicians next year.
The new rule cutting options for federal student loans would only worsen staffing shortages amid tenuous rural hospital budgets, said state-level observers. Hospitals already are grappling with millions of dollars in looming Medicaid cuts over the next 10 years, said Rich Rasmussen, president of the Oklahoma Hospital Association.
Nurse practitioners often serve as primary care providers, writing prescriptions and managing patient care. About 80% of them see Medicaid and Medicare patients, according to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, citing federal data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The proposal to deny advanced practice nurse practitioners the more generous loan options ignores the nation’s needs, said nurse practitioner Valerie Fuller, president of the association.
“At a time when America needs more health care providers, we can’t afford to put more obstacles in place for nurse practitioner students who want to go on and further their education and take care of the patients that need care,” said Fuller, former president of the Maine Nurse Practitioner Association. “We know it’s going to harm our workforce.”
Rasmussen, of the Oklahoma Hospital Association, said he is concerned about the effect the rule will have on the pipeline for certified nurse midwives and the state’s already dwindling rural maternal health care options.
“We are clipping the wings of rural [obstetrics] to be able to blossom in our state if we’re going to put these types of restrictions on the borrowing capability of nurses who want to pursue obstetrical services in nursing as well,” he said. He added that the rules will force nurses to seek private sector loans — which don’t qualify for federal loan forgiveness programs that encourage clinicians to come work in rural areas.
Teshieka Curtis-Pugh, executive director of the South Carolina Nurses Association, is also concerned about nurse midwives. South Carolina is expected to see a shortage of 3,200 physicians by 2030.
“We also live in a state that has very poor maternal outcomes, especially for women of color. So think about, how does that impact them?” she said. “That means we don’t get the certified nurse midwives who are masters prepared, some of them are doctorally prepared, who are able to fill that gap for birth in that area.”
Diversity and opportunity for students from marginalized groups could also take a hit, said Curtis-Pugh, a registered nurse with a master’s of science in nursing. And for those going back to school while juggling parenting, federal loan dollars can help beyond tuition, she noted.
“They help that mom be able to supplement child care for their child, so that they can have child care while they go to school,” she said. “There’s tuition, there’s books, there’s keeping the lights on. They’re feeding the family they’re getting to and from.”
The exclusion from the higher, “professional” category of student loan options is especially galling after nurses’ work during the COVID-19 pandemic, said Reding, of National Nurses United.
“We were all heroes in 2020. Now, what are we?” Reding asked. “It’s a slap in the face to the nurses that go to work every day doing our very best to care for our patients, even under very adverse conditions and even facing deadly viruses.”
Clarke, the registered nurse considering a post-bachelor’s degree, said nurses’ pandemic-era devotion influenced her own career path.
“When I saw the nurses and the health care workers really working hard for their communities and sacrificing a lot, I was really inspired by that,” Clarke said. “And that’s why I went to school.”
Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department is bringing back hundreds of employees in its Office for Civil Rights who were placed on paid administrative leave earlier this year, according to a Dec. 5 email to those employees obtained by States Newsroom.
The effort came as the Office for Civil Rights, or OCR — which is tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — has seen a growth in its massive backlog of those complaints.
A spokesperson for the department confirmed the effort and said the staffers would resume work starting Dec. 15.
More than 200 OCR employees targeted as part of a larger Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort at the Education Department in March were placed on administrative leave amid legal challenges against President Donald Trump’s administration.
Since taking office in January, Trump has sought to dismantle the 46-year-old agency in his quest to move education “back to the states.” He tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fulfill that mission.
“The Department will continue to appeal the persistent and unceasing litigation disputes concerning the Reductions in Force, but in the meantime, it will utilize all employees currently being compensated by American taxpayers,” Julie Hartman, a spokesperson for the department, said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.
In the email to employees, the department said “it is important to refocus OCR’s work and utilize all OCR staff to prioritize OCR’s existing complaint caseload.”
“In order for OCR to pursue its mission with all available resources, all those individuals currently being compensated by the Department need to meet their employee performance expectations and contribute to the enforcement of existing civil rights complaints,” the email notes.
The agency did not respond to States Newsroom’s separate requests to confirm the text of the email. It is unclear how many of the more than 200 will return, or if some have taken other jobs.
Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said that “for more than nine months, hundreds of employees at the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) have been sidelined from the critical work of protecting our nation’s most vulnerable students and families.”
“Instead of following court orders and federal law, the Trump Administration chose to keep these civil rights professionals on paid administrative leave — a decision that has already wasted more than $40 million in taxpayer funds — rather than letting them do their jobs,” she said.
Gittleman pointed to “severe” consequences, noting that “by blocking OCR staff from doing their jobs, Department leadership allowed a massive backlog of civil rights complaints to grow, and now expects these same employees to clean up a crisis entirely of the Department’s own making.”
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