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Campaign finance records show Reid Hoffman is the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.
Hoffman, a venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder, has donated $15.4 million to the state party, according to campaign finance records.
The Wisconsin Ethics Commission confirmed in an email that online records reach back to 2008, though Hoffman only began donating to the state party in 2019. Wisconsin passed legislation in 2015 that allowed unlimited contributions to state parties.
State online campaign finance records show Hoffman’s name twice; he has profiles under different addresses.
Hoffman’s combined donations place him far above the second-highest donor, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, whose donations total about $5.9 million.
Hoffman’s name appeared hundreds of times in the latest release of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Hoffman apologized in 2019 for his role in rehabbing Epstein’s image.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Is Reid Hoffman the largest donor to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin? 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.
If we care about addressing alcohol addiction in Wisconsin, we must start thinking about it as a public health issue. Alcohol use is deeply embedded in Wisconsin’s history and has maintained its prevalence through the socialization and normalization of drinking culture.
Rather than focusing on an individual’s capacity to remain sober in a state known for its beer-battered you-name-its, pub crawls, wine walks, and pedal taverns, we need to shift our focus toward making our communities more welcoming spaces for sobriety.
To consider something a public health issue, it must pose a physical or mental health risk to populations rather than just individuals.
Alcohol use is a highly socialized activity and has been embraced by Wisconsin since its inception, due largely to its population of German immigrants in the 1800s. German-founded breweries laid the economic groundwork in Wisconsin’s early years, supporting farmers, employing families, fostering community and generating profit. With a culture that has prospered from the industrial, financial and social aspects of brewing throughout the years, it is no wonder that Wisconsin carries on this tradition.
In a state where drinking runs generations-deep, so do the health effects, and addressing a widespread issue calls for widespread changes.
Alcohol addiction must be considered a community risk rather than an individual’s shortcoming. The majority of Wisconsinites, more than six in 10 adults, reported consuming alcohol within the past month, and nearly 20% reported binge drinking. In 2024, alcohol-related hospitalizations in Wisconsin reached their highest number since 2015. Reports from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that more than 3,450 Wisconsinites die from excessive drinking each year.
Wisconsin is the only U.S. state in which every county has reported engaging in excessive alcohol consumption among at least 23% of its adult population. We are also home to 10 out of 20 of the “drunkest cities in America” as reported by 24/7 Wall St. last year.
The average number of alcoholic beverages consumed throughout Wisconsin has decreased in recent years, but people are consuming more ethanol over the same time span. This means people are tending to consume drinks with higher alcohol content. As the data illustrates, this is a statewide concern, not a private matter.
We can make our communities easier places to be sober, not only in the interest of addiction recovery, but for the sake of promoting community well-being. On a structural level, this looks like advocating for greater access to recovery facilities and services. It also looks like supporting and sustaining local third spaces that are sober-friendly.
Want to be part of the solution? Then consider hosting alcohol-free gatherings, socializing at a café or a mocktail lounge and welcoming conversations about your choice to do so. Setting the bar starts with us, and this time, it’s not a bar with alcohol.
Kayla Doege is a graduate student at University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Master of Social Work program. She lives in Neosho and has spent five years working in youth mental health and substance use intervention.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Opinion: To curb alcohol harm, Wisconsin must rethink its drinking culture 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 new study of Wisconsin data finds what some researchers and policy wonks have long suspected: The $2 billion Work Opportunity Tax Credit doesn’t work.
Congress created the credit in 1996 as it overhauled the country’s welfare system. It rewards companies for hiring people who often struggle to get jobs, including some people who receive government aid, have disabilities or felony convictions or have been out of work for a long time. Employers can typically claim up to 40% of the wages paid to qualifying workers, with a maximum credit of $2,400.
The credit subsidizes around 4% of all new hires, according to 2022 federal data cited in the study. Overwhelmingly, they’re low-wage, short-term jobs at large employers, including major retailers and temporary staffing agencies, researchers have found.
Researchers have wondered for decades whether the credit pays off, but most states don’t offer the kind of records that would answer that question. Wisconsin does.
Thanks to an unusual collaboration between the state government and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers can track the earnings and employment status of participants in certain social safety net programs.
In a 2025 working paper, researchers from UW-Madison and the University of Southern California studied two decades of records of Wisconsinites who received food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the most common way an employee qualifies for the tax credit. Researchers compared SNAP recipients who were eligible for the credit with similar recipients who weren’t.
Their findings were unequivocal.
“We find that these subsidies do not increase hiring or earnings among eligible groups,” the authors wrote. In fact, they said, their findings rule out even so much as a 0.2 percentage point effect on hiring.
They estimate 97% of the hiring subsidized by the tax credit would have happened anyway, a phenomenon known as “windfall wastage.” It’s possible, they wrote, that every one of the subsidized jobs falls into that category.
The companies that take advantage of the credit are disproportionately large. In Wisconsin, they found, half of the subsidies go to just 48 businesses. Nationally, they estimate the credit costs more than $2 billion a year.
“Without reform, the program will continue as a costly transfer to firms with little benefit to the populations it is meant to support,” the researchers wrote.
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of federal lawmakers wants to increase the credit, which expired in December.
In November, legislators introduced a bill to extend the credit and expand eligibility to older SNAP recipients and spouses of military service members. The legislation would increase the amount companies can receive and automatically raise the credit amount with inflation.
In a statement, co-author Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., called the credit “a proven tool” that serves workers and employers. “WOTC is a bipartisan, commonsense approach that every Member of Congress should champion,” Smucker said.
Neither Smucker nor co-author Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., responded to a request for comment.
So why doesn’t the Work Opportunity Tax Credit work? The authors think one important reason is that hiring managers often don’t know which job applicants qualify.
To receive the credit, employers must certify that they knew the applicant was eligible on or before the day they hired the person. Researchers surveyed 170 companies that use the credit. Less than 1 in 5 screened for eligibility on job applications. At companies that do collect this information, it might stay in the human resources office, never reaching the person who decides who to hire.
That may well be intentional, said UW-Madison economist Corina Mommaerts, one of the authors of the study. Federal and state law bars employers from considering certain factors in hiring decisions. That includes age and, in some cases, criminal record. There are ways to screen applicants without violating such laws, Mommaerts said, “but you can see why employers might still be very concerned.”
In addition, she said, some job applicants may hesitate to tell a prospective employer that they’re eligible. People with felony convictions, for example, may prefer not to draw attention to their criminal records. In the last two years, Wisconsin authorities certified the hires of just over 3,000 people with a felony conviction as qualifying for the credit.
“The concern is that there might be this stigmatizing effect,” Mommaerts said, explaining that some employers try to minimize that by asking applicants to review all the WOTC eligibility categories and indicate whether any apply to them.
Melissa Riccio, director of inclusive hiring at the national re-entry nonprofit Center for Employment Opportunities, is an expert on that stigma. It’s her job to convince employers that hiring a formerly incarcerated person may not be as risky as they imagine.
Asked about the tax credit, she said such policies won’t singlehandedly make the kind of change she’s looking for, in part because many employers may see them as more work than they’re worth.
“You would never hear any of us say that it would be a bad thing,” Riccio said. “But I don’t think that that alone is enough to move the needle in encouraging employers to make a change in their hiring practices.”
Some policy experts say the new study proves that the temporary tax credit shouldn’t come back.
Until now, there was little evidence on how well the Work Opportunity Tax Credit works, said Jen Doleac, executive vice president of criminal justice at the philanthropy Arnold Ventures, who researches strategies to reduce recidivism and help formerly incarcerated people get jobs. She and former colleague George Callas penned an October op-ed in Tax Notes calling the credit “completely ineffective.”
“The evidence is clear: The WOTC does not serve its stated purpose and is a waste of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote. “Encouraging the hiring of workers from disadvantaged groups is a worthy goal. We must devote scarce public resources to solutions that actually achieve it.”
Initially authorized for just one year, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit has stuck around far longer — in part because of a powerful lobby. Major backers include payroll processing companies, temp agencies and groups representing the hospitality and retail industries.
In 2022, a variety of industry groups seeking “solutions to the U.S. labor shortage” joined forces to form the Critical Labor Coalition. One of the coalition’s top priorities: lobbying for WOTC. The group spent $60,000 on lobbying last year, according to watchdog Open Secrets.
“Members of the Critical Labor Coalition — representing restaurants, retail, hotel and lodging, construction, food manufacturing, and other sectors — consistently affirm that strengthening and reauthorizing WOTC is essential both to their industries and to addressing the nation’s ongoing labor shortage,” Critical Labor Coalition Executive Director Misty Chally said in an email.
Asked about the new Wisconsin study, Chally questioned its “narrow” focus on SNAP recipients. She said her group places “greater confidence” in a 2025 study commissioned by multinational talent management company Allegis Group. The authors of that study estimate renewing WOTC would subsidize 131,000 jobs, but they note it’s not clear how many of those jobs would have existed regardless.
“The exact impact of WOTC on net new job creation is uncertain … While some studies find that WOTC leads to meaningful employment gains among eligible groups, a significant share of the cost may stem from subsidizing hires that would have occurred anyway,” Allegis Group wrote. For their analysis, they assume more than 85% of those jobs would have existed without the credit.
Sarah Hamersma has been worried about WOTC for more than 20 years.
In the early 2000s, she was an economics graduate student at UW-Madison interested in programs designed to reduce poverty and help people work. She wanted to study the much larger Earned Income Tax Credit. Her adviser suggested she instead examine the smaller, newer and unstudied Work Opportunity Tax Credit.
At the time, the credit was just 4 years old and limited to people who received cash welfare assistance. She asked state officials for access to the data. What she found matched what Mommaerts and her colleagues found decades later. Unlike the Earned Income Tax Credit, which gives money directly to low-income workers — and which studies show increases employment and boosts incomes — this tax credit seemed to just boost employers’ bottom lines.
“They’re not passing it along to the workers in the form of higher wages. They’re just sort of being like, ‘Awesome, I got more money,’” Hamersma said.
She wanted to do similar analyses on other places, but she couldn’t find any other states willing to share their data. Now an economist at Syracuse University, she researches programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
“I started studying other programs that seem to make more of a difference … but I always come back to this,” Hamersma said.
From time to time, reporters contact her to ask about it. Lawmakers, not so much.
“I still wait for them to someday call me and say, ‘What should we do, Sarah? Should we reauthorize this?’ Congress has never called,” Hamersma said.
She’s sure legislators didn’t read her research. But she hopes they might read the new study, and that it might sway them.
“They’ve checked every angle you could possibly check, and the program is not working,” Hamersma said, calling it an “ironclad case.”
The new research was enough to convince Elena Spatoulas Patel, co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, who saw the authors present their findings at a conference. “That really changed my mind about how we think about the credit,” said Patel, who co-authored a December op-ed calling for an end to WOTC.
But Congress has reauthorized the credit each time it lapsed before, and it will likely do so again this year, Patel said. It’s not just that there’s so much industry power behind the credit (“a classic case of lobbying versus good tax policy”), she said — it’s also that lawmakers like the idea of it.
“Unless and until something better is offered, it’s probably easier to renew the credit than to let it expire,” Patel said. “But again, it’s sort of ignoring the point, which is that we are spending taxpayer dollars on this by offering this credit, and it really isn’t helping employment.”
Exactly what the alternative might be is “the million-dollar question,” Patel said. Policy experts say options could include supporting evidence-backed job training programs or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.
“If you’re trying to reduce poverty, putting money in the hands of working people is a great way to do it, which is what the Earned Income Tax Credit does … Those low-income working families get more money to spend on the things they need, and we kind of cut out the middleman of the employer altogether,” Hamersma said.
Still, Hamersma doesn’t think Congress will follow her advice anytime soon.
“This is my cynical take: It’s kind of the perfect program because it benefits corporations, which Republicans historically like, and it seems like it’s supposed to be for poor people, which Democrats historically like,” Hamersma said.
“The facts are kind of irrelevant, the facts where nobody gets helped — it doesn’t quite make it to the top.”
Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.
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Tax credit meant to help struggling workers mostly helps employers, Wisconsin study finds 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 new correctional center for youth is set to open in Milwaukee County this month.
The post Milwaukee County opening new juvenile corrections facility appeared first on WPR.
Tiny shards of plastic called microplastics are all over the environment and even inside human bodies. Researchers have found a type of bioengineered algae that can clean up these pesky particles.
The post Algae is a ‘little vacuum’ for microplastics. Midwest scientists think it could clean up the problem appeared first on WPR.
"I'm what's called a 'pantser,' rather than a 'plotter,' author Nick Petrie said. "I don't outline before I start a book, I just write kind of by the seat of my pants. I'm trying to entertain myself."
The post Wisconsin thriller author shares the latest novel in his ‘Peter Ash’ series appeared first on WPR.
Perhaps no pathway to citizenship in the U.S. has changed more in the past year than the refugee program. The "Status Pending" podcast talked to refugees and the people helping them build new lives in Milwaukee.
The post ‘We don’t have choices’: The last-arriving refugees in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
U.S. Democratic senators in Wisconsin and Minnesota are urging Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to release a $1 billion federal grant for replacement of a major bridge connecting Duluth and Superior.
The post Democrats in Wisconsin and Minnesota urge release of funds for bridge replacement appeared first on WPR.
Scuba diver Paul Ehorn's recent discovery of the Lac La Belle was nearly 60 years in the making and is part of an overall uptick in Great Lakes shipwreck discoveries.
The post Shipwreck hunter discovers sunken 150-year-old luxury liner off the coast of Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin U.S. Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson couldn't be further apart on President Donald Trump's decision to launch military attacks on Iran.
The post Tammy Baldwin calls Iran war ‘illegal.’ Ron Johnson says strikes couldn’t wait for Congress. appeared first on WPR.
A population geographer at UW-Whitewater makes the case that state-based visa programs could boost Wisconsin’s declining population and fuel local economies as the workforce ages.
The post Wisconsin is on track for 200K population dip by 2050. Could immigration reform be the answer? appeared first on WPR.
Wisconsin is one of more than 20 states suing the Trump administration to try to block the administration’s most recent effort to impose new tariffs.
The post Wisconsin joins multi-state lawsuit challenging Trump’s most recent round of tariffs appeared first on WPR.
More Wisconsin students are attending school and graduating, according to data released Thursday by the state Department of Public Instruction.
The post Latest data shows more Wisconsin students graduating appeared first on WPR.
An advocate holds an SEIU sign protesting rising health care costs at a demonstration near the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
Attending the State of the Union Address last month as Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s guest was, in a word, surreal.
As a child care provider and small business leader in Wisconsin, I spend my days thinking about how rising costs affect my staff and the families whose children we care for. I never imagined I would one day sit in the Capitol for an address like this.
Watching at home does not capture the scale of it: the formality, the history, the gravity of the room.
Last year, for the first time in my life, I began speaking publicly about health care affordability. For years, I relied on Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits to afford my own coverage. When those credits expired, I watched members of my team face impossible decisions: pay dramatically higher premiums or go without health insurance altogether. That is not an abstract policy debate for us; it is a real and immediate stressor.
Congresswoman Moore invited me to share those experiences. She and I had many conversations about the realities facing working families, including how the expiration of those tax credits is affecting millions of Americans, particularly the educators and families I see every day. We talked about the pressure of rising rent, utilities, groceries, child care and other costs, and how health care is increasingly becoming the expense that pushes families over the edge.
So when I took my seat in the Capitol, surrounded by university presidents, members of the military and leaders from across the country, I listened carefully.
I hoped to hear a serious plan to address health care costs.
Instead, health care received only brief mention in what I later learned was the longest State of the Union address in American history.
The President spoke about a “golden age” and a booming economy. But for whom? And in what parts of the country?
That’s not the reality I see.
Certainly not in the everyday lives of the people who form the foundation of our workforce: the teachers, farmers, caregivers, service workers and small business owners I interact with every day.
A golden era for a select few does not make a golden era for a country.
Not for teachers standing in classrooms.
Not for farmers working their fields.
Not for the caregivers, service workers and small business owners whose work sustains our communities.
They are the threads in the quilt that holds this country together. When policies ignore their struggles or make basic necessities like health care more expensive, those threads begin to fray.
Nearly 44% of U.S. adults say it is difficult to afford health care right now. Premiums have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled for millions of families following the expiration of enhanced ACA tax credits, a policy decision now affecting nearly 22 million Americans.
More than one million Americans have already dropped coverage, including more than 20,000 Wisconsinites.
We all know there are people behind those numbers.
They are assistant teachers deciding whether they can risk going uninsured. They are kitchen staff weighing premiums against rent. They are parents of toddlers delaying doctors’ appointments because another bill is already overdue.
In child care, those decisions ripple far beyond a single household. When educators cannot afford health care, they leave the field, and when they leave, classrooms close and parents lose the care they rely on to go to work. In that way, health care affordability is not just a personal issue; it is a workforce issue and an economic issue for the entire country.
At the same time, proposed cuts of more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are putting enormous pressure on the health care system itself. Across the country, over 750 hospitals, maternity wards and nursing homes are facing service cuts or closure because of these changes.
Every closure, every service reduction and every essential worker lost means higher costs, longer delays for care and greater risk for families.
None of that made it into the speech.
Meanwhile, billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1 trillion, and pharmaceutical companies reported more than $130 billion in profits last year alone.
But the working families I know are making impossible trade-offs.
I attended the State of the Union hoping to hear that relief was coming — that health care affordability would be treated as the urgent economic issue it is for my family, the families we serve at the daycare and for all working families.
Instead, I heard a version of the economy that does not match the reality I see every day.
In our corner of America, parents are postponing appointments. Employees are calculating whether they can risk going uninsured. Small business owners are wondering how long they can keep absorbing rising costs.
Being present in the Capitol did not change that reality.
Because for those of us entrusted with caring for children and for the families who rely on us, health care affordability is not a political talking point.
It is basic survival.
And Americans do not need to be told that we are living in a golden era.
We need to feel it.
That means passing legislation, making real investments, and taking meaningful action that improves the daily lives of the people who hold this country together. It means proving, not just promising, that the American people are worth investing in.
Because a truly golden era is not measured in stock market gains or applause in a chamber.
It is measured in whether everyday families can afford to live, work and care for one another with dignity.
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Plumes of smoke rise following an explosion on March 5, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was confirmed killed after the United States and Israel launched a joint attack on Iran on Feb. 28. Iran retaliated by firing waves of missiles and drones at Israel, and targeting U.S. allies in the region. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the U.S. House Budget Committee sent a letter to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday, asking its experts to determine how much the war in Iran could cost.
“The Constitution grants Congress both the power of the purse and the responsibility of declaring war,” Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle wrote. “A timely and comprehensive estimate from CBO will support Congress in the conduct of its constitutional responsibilities.
“Congress should ensure we are spending taxpayer dollars to improve the quality of life for the American people, not paying for another endless war in the Middle East.”
Boyle asked the CBO to detail how much the war would cost “under several scenarios, including scenarios of the war lasting longer than 4 to 5 weeks and deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.”
He requested the CBO to look at possible unintended costs of the war as well, such as how would “moving an aircraft carrier from near Taiwan to off the coast of Iran impact the United States responding to potential Chinese aggression?”
And Boyle asked the CBO to detail how the war in Iran could affect prices within the United States.
The Trump administration has not publicly disclosed how much it’s spent on the war or what it expects the total price tag will be for what is dubbed Operation Epic Fury. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told States Newsroom, when asked about costs, that they “have nothing to provide on this at this time.”
President Donald Trump said during an afternoon appearance at the White House that Iranian leaders called to try to negotiate an end to the war, but didn’t say if he would begin talks.
“They’re calling. They’re saying, ‘How do we make a deal?’ I said you’re being a little bit late,” Trump said. “And we want to fight now more than they do.”
Trump launched the war on Saturday, killing Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other top officials in that country’s government. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have continued bombing in the days since.
Retaliation from Iran has, so far, led to the deaths of six U.S. troops, with top Defense Department officials expecting more casualties in the days and weeks ahead.
Trump has said he expects the war could last between four and six weeks, or go longer. He hasn’t ruled out sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, though several Republican lawmakers left classified briefings earlier this week saying boots on the ground would be a step too far.
Congress has not approved an Authorization for Use of Military Force or declared war against Iran, with both Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., saying they believe Trump’s actions are within his authority as commander-in-chief.
Democrats, and a couple of Republicans, tried unsuccessfully this week to pull back U.S. troops by forcing floor votes on War Powers Resolutions that would have directed Trump “to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force.”
Republicans in the House and Senate largely voted against the resolutions.
Congress approved $838.7 billion for the Department of Defense in January as part of its annual government funding process. Republicans approved another $150 billion for the Pentagon to spend on specific programs, like air and missile defense, as well as shipbuilding, in their “big, beautiful” law enacted in 2025.
But several GOP lawmakers said this week they expect the Trump administration will send a supplemental spending request to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks to bolster the military’s coffers.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say Wednesday if Trump will ask lawmakers for more funding for the Iran war, though she didn’t rule it out.
“I don’t have any updates for you on congressional asks from the president,” Leavitt said.
Any supplemental spending request would need to pass the House and move through the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster to become law.
That would require support from at least seven Democrats in the upper chamber if all 53 GOP senators vote to advance an emergency spending bill for the war.
Maine House of Representatives Speaker Ryan Fecteau, flanked by legislative Democrats, last month called for a state investment of $250 million to offset federal health care cuts. State Medicaid programs will lose a total of $665 billion over the next decade, after President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act reduces federal investment in the health insurance program, according to a new analysis. (Photo by Eesha Pendharkar/ Maine Morning Star)
State Medicaid budgets will be reduced by a total of $665 billion over the next decade, after President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts federal investment in the health insurance program, according to a new analysis.
Researchers from RAND Health, a policy and research nonprofit, analyzed state and federal data to estimate how much the loss of federal money will affect state Medicaid budgets, publishing their findings late last month. Medicaid is the public health insurance program for people with low incomes, jointly funded by state and federal money.
Overall, the net impact on state budgets, apart from their Medicaid programs, will be a reduction of $86 billion, according to the report. That number is lower than the total reduction in Medicaid budgets because while some states will have to spend more money from their general funds to cover Medicaid losses, others will have to spend less.
New federal rules such as work requirements for some Medicaid enrollees are designed to reduce the number of people on Medicaid, which means states that cover those people would no longer have to pay their share of those medical bills, saving them money. But many states use financial strategies, such as “provider taxes,” to qualify for extra federal Medicaid money. The new law limits their ability to do that, and that will force them to dip into their general funds to cover the loss of revenue.
“The effects of the law on Medicaid budgets and enrollment are substantial, but will vary widely across states, and in some cases may be at least partially offset by savings to the state general fund,” said Preethi Rao, a senior economist at RAND and lead author of the study, in a statement.
By 2034, Medicaid will have 7.6 million fewer enrollees, the authors estimated. The federal government will save about $714 billion from 2025-2034.
Arizona, Iowa and Nevada will see their Medicaid budgets reduced by more than 15%.
California and New York will see the biggest total drop in their Medicaid budgets, $112 billion and $63 billion, respectively.
At the other end of the spectrum, states that don’t rely as heavily on financing strategies like state-directed payments and provider taxes, won’t see such a significant impact. Florida is likely to see less than half a percent change to its Medicaid budget, the report found. North Dakota and Nebraska are also likely to see minimal impacts because their losses are expected to be offset by increased federal rural health funding.
State general funds in Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Kentucky could see more than a 2% savings due to lowering Medicaid enrollment or reducing the types of care covered, the report found.
A few states with small Medicaid populations are expected to see an increase in their budgets due to that rural health program funding, including Wyoming and South Dakota.
“As states plan for the upcoming changes in funding and eligibility, understanding these state-specific differences will be important,” Rao said.
Stateline reporter Anna Clare Vollers can be reached at avollers@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.
President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House Feb. 20, 2026, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against his use of emergency powers to implement international trade tariffs. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Two dozen states asked a federal court to block the tariffs that President Donald Trump instituted last month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his previous tariffs.
The lawsuit, filed in the federal Court of International Trade, aims to strike down the president’s latest attempt at imposing tariffs, calling them illegal and requesting refunds to states. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority implementing sweeping tariffs last year.
Immediately after the ruling, Trump announced a new set of tariffs based on a different law. The new tariffs use Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and set the global tariff rate at 10%, though the administration has suggested that they intend to increase it to 15%.
“The President is using his authority granted by Congress to address fundamental international payments problems and to deal with our country’s large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told States Newsroom. “The Administration will vigorously defend the President’s action in court.”
The lawsuit contends that the statute the White House is relying on has never been put into use — and the Trump administration is applying it improperly.
“This statute has never been used ever at all in the history of this country,” Oregon AG Dan Rayfield said on a conference call with reporters about the lawsuit. Rayfield called the law “archaic,” adding that it was originally intended to be used when the country still operated on the gold standard, which the country moved away from for a fiat system.
In their lawsuit, the 24 states said Trump’s justification for using the law “is fatally flawed” because he redefines key terms to force the statute to authorize tariffs. Specifically, they argue, the term “balance of payments” refers to a currency crisis “that was of great concern” in the early 1970s when U.S. currency was tied directly to gold — but that doesn’t apply since the nation ended the gold standard in 1976.
Since the 1974 law was crafted to deal with issues relating to the country’s economy under a different monetary system and does not address tariffs, the AGs contend that its use is wholly illegal.
“A trade deficit is not a ‘balance of payments’ deficit. These are not the same thing at all. The president doesn’t know the difference or he doesn’t care,” Arizona AG Kris Mayes said. “Either way, he is breaking the law again.”
The lawsuit also contends that Trump’s tariffs violate the Constitution’s separation-of-powers principle, which was a core argument in the first tariffs lawsuit — one with which the Supreme Court agreed.
“If he had the support of Congress, he could have legally passed his tariffs by now,” Rayfield said. “But the truth is he doesn’t have the support of Congress, nor does he have the support of the American people, and he is doing an end run.”
Although the first tariffs lawsuit took nearly a year to resolve, Mayes said the AGs are confident the recent Supreme Court ruling means they will swiftly win injunctions against the implementation of Trump’s second round of tariffs.
“We are hoping to get a quicker decision based on the very resounding, we think, victory we achieved in the Supreme Court,” she said, adding that they are hoping for a preliminary injunction against the tariffs being implemented in the near term as the case works its way through the process.
“I think we’re pretty confident or we would not be here,” New York AG Letitia James said, letting out a small chuckle, when asked if they believe they will be successful in this second lawsuit.
James herself has had her own personal legal battles with Trump whose Department of Justice indicted her on two counts of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution.
The indictment was thrown out and two grand juries declined separate efforts by the DOJ to bring the charges back.
“At the end of the day for us this is not about political gamesmanship — this is about making sure our communities don’t pay the price for President Donald Trump’s inability to take an L,” California AG Rob Bonta said.
Attorneys general from the states of Arizona, Oregon, California and New York are leading the charge on the new lawsuit. They are joined by the AGs of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. The governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania are also part of the new lawsuit.
This story was originally produced by Arizona Mirror, 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.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — House Republicans and a handful of Democrats followed the Senate in blocking a measure Thursday to stop President Donald Trump from furthering the war in Iran without authorization from Congress.
The joint war with Israel that began six days ago has already claimed the lives of six U.S. troops and injured and killed dozens of civilians across Israel and the Persian Gulf nations. Iranian officials say more than 1,000 have been killed since Saturday, according to multiple reports.
The War Powers Resolution sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., failed in a 212-219 vote. Massie was the lone Republican to sign on to the measure.
Massie and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, broke ranks with Republicans to vote in favor of limiting Trump’s hand in Iran. But Democrats Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, Jared Golden, D-Maine, Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Juan Vargas, D-Calif., joined the majority of Republicans in opposing the War Powers Resolution.
Golden issued a statement following the vote saying he is reluctant to support a halt to the current fighting, despite Trump’s lack of clarity.
Servicemembers are “actively engaged in hostilities, our allies are under attack and the Iranian regime is more desperate than ever to reassert its power. While I do not believe that an abrupt about-face is a good course of action given the reality on the ground, that should not be construed as my approval,” Golden said.
Davidson wrote on social media Monday that he wants to “review the intelligence behind the Iran strikes. I’m open to being persuaded these strikes were necessary. But I do not support a regime-change war, and any boots on the ground or prolonged conflict requires authorization from Congress.”
House lawmakers otherwise split along party lines, with Republicans offering resounding support for the intervention.
Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., described the War Powers Resolution as a “a terrible, dangerous idea.”
During debate on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., said Trump “is utilizing his constitutional Article II authority to defend the United States of America against that imminent threat that we agree upon.”
Mast sponsored a separate, symbolic resolution reaffirming Iran as the largest state-sponsor of terrorism. The measure passed Thursday in a 372-53 vote. Two members voted present. All who voted “no” or present were Democrats.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., who argued for the War Powers Resolution on the floor Wednesday, said the U.S. is now involved in a conflict with Iran “at President Trump’s own behest.”
“What is the strategy for preventing regional escalation, and what is the plan for the day after? What will this cost the American people? Because the American people deserve those answers, and Congress deserves a vote,” Meeks said.
A similar War Powers Resolution failed in the U.S. Senate Wednesday when all but one Republican, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, voted against it. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to join Republicans in opposing the measure.
Republicans, joined by Fetterman, have blocked other attempts to rein in Trump’s military interventions during his second term. A War Powers Resolution to stop Trump from further operations in Venezuela failed in the House and Senate in January.
The U.S. apprehended Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 on drug trafficking and weapons charges. Maduro remains in U.S. custody while awaiting trial. His arrest followed months of a U.S. bombing campaign on alleged small drug boats in the Caribbean Sea that have killed more than 130 people, according to the human rights-focused Washington Office on Latin America, which has joined a chorus of critics who argue the strikes are illegal.
Congress overrode a veto by President Richard Nixon in 1973 during the ongoing Vietnam War to pass the War Powers Resolution as a check on presidential power
U.S. and Israel continued strikes on Iran Thursday.
Trump urged all Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members and police to lay down their arms and “accept immunity.” Otherwise, they’ll face “absolute guaranteed death,” he said at an unrelated White House event Thursday afternoon.
“We also urge Iranian diplomats around the world to request asylum and to help us shape a new and better Iran with great potential,” Trump said.
The war widened its reach as Azerbaijani officials said two drones from Iran struck an airport and other civilian targets inside the NATO ally’s borders.
“These acts of aggression will not remain unanswered,” according to a statement Thursday from Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News Wednesday night that if the U.S. launches a ground invasion, “we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”
White House press secretary told reporters Wednesday American ground troops are “not part of the current plan” but did not rule out that it’s an option “on the table.”
All six U.S. troops killed by an Iranian drone in Kuwait Sunday have been identified by the Pentagon.
Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.
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