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Credibility is central to the criminal justice system.

Who is telling the truth? Who do jurors and judges believe? 

A year ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch published the Milwaukee County district attorney’s list of law enforcement officers with integrity violations, allegations of dishonesty or bias, and past criminal charges. 

It was the first time the full list had been made public. 

Prosecutors must share information about witness credibility, including that of police officers, with defense attorneys. Then the attorneys decide if they want to try to raise those credibility concerns in court. 

Often called the “Brady/Giglio list” because of landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, the list is meant to help ensure people get a fair trial and prevent wrongful convictions. 

Since the list was published last year, local defense attorneys say they’ve noticed prosecutors giving more frequent Brady notifications. But they argue that Milwaukee County’s criteria of what gets an officer on the list remains too narrow – excluding officers who should qualify – and that there is still too much inconsistency among county prosecutors about when and how they share Brady material. 

District Attorney Kent Lovern said his office has always fulfilled its legal and ethical obligations, but he acknowledged making changes to improve the list’s accuracy. The most significant was appointing two executive staff members to help maintain the list.

The first list his office released to reporters in September 2024 had inaccurate, incomplete and outdated information.

Some examples: an officer wrongly described as involved in a custody death, another listed for a criminal case that had been expunged, and others listed with the wrong agency. A handful of officers were deceased.

A new list, released in October 2025, did not have those kinds of problems.

“We put more eyes on the list that were beyond my two eyes,” Lovern said, adding: “We think that’s enhanced, at least, the information, making it as current as possible.” 

In the last year, the District Attorney’s Office added 13 officers and removed two. Most of those officers were added because of internal, not criminal, investigations, and about half remain employed with their agency, according to public records. 

For Caitlin Firer, a defense attorney, the public list has served as a backstop.  

“If I’m watching a body camera and it’s striking me as something’s not right, I will run that officer’s name on the Brady list,” she told TMJ4 News, later adding: “It’s a resource now where we see those names, and we know they’re on the Brady list.” 

Last year, the city’s largest police union, the Milwaukee Police Association, criticized the district attorney’s decision to release the list and news organizations’ decision to publish it. Others in policing praised the transparency. 

“We’re given so much more credibility and respect when we take the stand as opposed to the average citizen,” said David Thomas, a Maryland-based policing consultant and expert.

The Brady list, he said, “goes to the very question of integrity.” 

District attorney’s office using same strict criteria to add officers to the list

What has not changed is the strict criteria used to get an officer on the list. 

Officers are added only if they have a pending criminal charge, a past conviction or an internal investigation “that brings into question the officer’s integrity.” 

Experts told the Journal Sentinel last year the policy appeared improperly narrow and omitted other potential Brady material, including when a judge finds an officer not credible. 

Lovern stood by that practice. His office still does not track those judicial decisions, commonly known as adverse credibility rulings. 

“Credibility determinations, which are frequently made by courts, don’t constitute judgments of untruthfulness,” he said in a recent interview. 

When prosecutors are weighing whether to call an officer to testify, it makes sense to distinguish between overt dishonesty and credibility rulings, said Rachel Moran, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, in an interview last month. 

But an officer who was found not credible in court still belongs on the Brady list, she said.

“An officer who has misstated information in his police report, that’s exculpatory regardless of whether the officer intended to do it,” Moran said.

With long internal investigations, it can be years before an officer lands on the list

If an officer is referred to prosecutors for a potential criminal charge, he or she is placed on the Brady list immediately. 

But when it comes to internal investigations, police departments often notify prosecutors at the end of the process, if an officer is found to have broken any department rules.

That can leave a gap. 

Milwaukee police officer Eian West was added to the list in 2025, two years after he and three other officers came under investigation for their response to two domestic violence calls days apart that involved the same couple.  

The officers were accused of failing to make mandatory arrests or file prompt reports, despite the woman saying the man had threatened her with a gun and tried to set her on fire, according to department records. 

West and another officer went to the second call, on April 11, 2023, after two witnesses reported a man beating a woman in a front yard. The officers called her an ambulance.

Later that day, the woman woke up in the hospital and called Police District 4, prompting a sergeant to send two different officers to reinterview the woman and file a report.

Two days after that, the woman had a miscarriage.

Internal affairs asked West why he waited until his next shift, on April 12, after the other officers had been dispatched, to write his report. West’s report also listed the woman as the suspect and did not document the fact that she lived with the man, which is one of the elements of domestic violence, according to a summary from internal affairs.

West maintained he “was not trying to cover up that he was sent to a battery (domestic violence) and did not file it,” police records show.

Still, the officer agreed that he had violated the core value of integrity because he was not completely honest and accurate about all relevant facts in the case, the records say. 

The domestic violence calls took place in April 2023. Internal affairs interviewed West that July. But the internal investigation did not end until 2025, and only after that was West added to the Brady list.

During those two years, prosecutors did not know his integrity was under question in an investigation that ultimately resulted in a 20-day suspension. 

Since prosecutors did not know, they could not disclose it to defense attorneys. 

Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman acknowledged it sometimes takes years to complete internal investigations, depending on the complexity. 

“We are not trying to delay for delay’s sake,” Norman said in an interview. “It is unfortunate that we have a number of investigations on our plate.”

More urgent internal investigations, such as police shootings, can take priority, and the department must respect the officers’ due process and collective bargaining rights, the chief said.

Angel Johnson, a regional attorney manager with the State Public Defenders Office in Milwaukee, said that the office’s clients also have rights. 

“If there’s an officer that has credibility issues and they’re going to testify in a proceeding against my client, (my clients) have the same right to due process,” she said. 

Why some officers were removed from the Brady list

The Brady list is fluid. 

As officers come on, others come off. 

Kenton Burtch and Elric Erving, both of the Milwaukee Police Department, were removed in the last year. 

Erving was investigated for disorderly conduct in 2019. No criminal charges were filed, and his name came off the list, Lovern said. 

Burtch was accused of improperly filing his time card and claiming an estimated $1,700 he was not owed. He was demoted from sergeant and suspended for six days.

He appealed to the city’s Fire and Police Commission, which found the situation was a mistake related to the officer’s remote work arrangement and confusion over how to handle it. The commission overturned his discipline, finding “no indication or evidence of intentional misconduct,” and restored his rank. 

Because of that, Lovern said, his name came off the list. 

In the past, Lovern has removed officers who complete deferred prosecution agreements or who win appeals to get their jobs back. 

Some defense attorneys have argued that officers should only rarely, if ever, come off the Brady list.  

“Once you’re placed on the Brady list, if you continue to testify in court, you should not be removed,” Johnson said. 

As of September 2025, the list had 217 entries involving 190 individual officers. The district attorney’s office released the list in October in response to a public records request. Reporters filed records requests to gather more information about new individuals on the list. Some of those requests remain pending. 

In the months since, the list continues to change. For example, the district attorney’s office added a Milwaukee officer recently charged with accessing sensitive license plate data for personal reasons, despite tagging the purpose of his searches as “investigation.”

It was not the first time the officer, Josue Ayala, had been accused of dishonesty on the job, with one defense attorney even telling a federal prosecutor that Ayala exaggerated so much that it seemed to be a “compulsion,” the Journal Sentinel previously reported. Ayala has since resigned.

Defense attorneys continue to rely on media reports, decisions from the city’s Fire and Police Commission and civil lawsuit judgments to identify officers with questionable credibility – and that’s a problem, Johnson said. 

“It should be happening from the DA’s office, but we are still finding ourselves doing that legwork and it’s not our obligation or ethical duty to do so,” she said.

This story is part of Duty to Disclose, an investigation by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TMJ4 News and Wisconsin Watch. The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided financial support for this project.

Milwaukee County’s list of officers with integrity issues became public. What’s happened since? 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.

Nearly one-third of the nation’s private sector workers are covered by paid leave programs as more states require employers to provide medical and family leave, according to a new analysis released this week.

Currently, the District of Columbia and 13 states have passed laws requiring paid leave for many workers, according to a report from the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit that advocates for reproductive rights, health and economic justice, and workplace equality.

“States have shifted the paradigm now that more than 46 million workers across the U.S. are covered by paid family and medical leave programs, pointing the way forward for the rest of the country,” Jessica Mason, senior policy analyst at the organization, said in a news release. 

The programs vary in design, but generally guarantee paychecks while workers take time off for illness or to care for a child or other loved one. They’re funded through employer and employee premiums similar to unemployment insurance or payroll taxes that cover a portion of employee wages when they take leave.

The report cites research showing multistate employers often respond to local paid sick leave laws by providing paid sick leave to their workers even in places without such requirements.

This year, Delaware, Maine and Minnesota began or planned to start offering benefits through new paid leave programs. And the report cites growing momentum in six more states: Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia. If those states were to implement paid leave policies, 44% of workers nationwide would have access to paid family and medical leave, according to the analysis. 

In Virginia, lawmakers in both chambers have approved bills guaranteeing up to 12 weeks of paid family leave. While previous efforts were vetoed by former Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, current Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger is expected to sign a bill once a final version makes it to her desk, the Virginia Mercury reported. 

In a January address to the legislature, Spanberger said that “being pro-business and being pro-worker are not mutually exclusive.”

“We can support business growth and invest in our workforce. We can attract new companies and protect workers. … That is why we will create a statewide paid family and medical leave program.” 

Virginia is projected to spend about $116.51 million in startup costs over the 2027 and 2028 fiscal years. By 2031, the program is expected to spend $2.1 billion per year in benefits — funded by payroll tax collections. 

Opponents frequently cite the costs of paid leave programs and the burdens they place on businesses. Last month, Virginia Republican state Del. Michael Webert said large corporations may be able to afford new costs and administrative burdens, but not smaller employers. 

“The impact will not fall evenly,” he said ahead of the House vote last month.

Across much of the Midwest and South, state laws prohibit local governments from requiring employers to provide paid sick leave. In 18 states, cities are effectively stripped of the power to enact their own labor protections.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

Several Democratic states are moving to bar federal immigration agents from being near polling places and other election sites, amid persistent worries that President Donald Trump will use federal law enforcement or the military to disrupt the midterm elections.

Measures to restrict federal agents from operating at or near election-related locations have been offered in more than half a dozen states, according to a Stateline count. While the proposals vary, they broadly seek to combat the prospect of chaotic confrontations between federal agents and voters this November.

A federal law dating to the end of the Civil War already bans sending the military or other “armed men” to polling places, except to repel armed enemies of the United States. The U.S. Constitution also gives states — not the president or federal government — the responsibility for running elections.

But Trump’s calls to nationalize elections, his promise to impose voting restrictions with or without Congress, and his history of working to overturn the 2020 presidential election is prompting some Democratic state lawmakers to act. Adding to lawmakers’ fears is the FBI’s January seizure of ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, and U.S. Department of Justice lawsuits against dozens of states for copies of their voter rolls that include sensitive personal information.

The president’s party typically loses ground in Congress in midterm elections. Given that, Democrats fear Trump is laying the groundwork to block or cast doubt on a losing outcome.

“When the president says he’s going to break the law, I actually believe him,” said California state Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat who has introduced legislation that would prohibit federal immigration enforcement within 200 feet of polling places. He said Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections was the “triggering event” that prompted him to offer the bill.

Legislation to restrict immigration enforcement or the presence of federal forces near polling places and other election sites has been offered or announced in California, Connecticut, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington. A bill has also been introduced in Kansas, which has a Democratic governor, but the measure is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled legislature.

The bills focus on immigration enforcement, but the New Mexico legislation would go further, prohibiting the military or any armed federal personnel from polling locations.

The Trump administration and its supporters have suggested that the president might order U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to the polls. After former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in early February said ICE will surround polling places, White House press secretary Karolina Leavitt said she couldn’t guarantee an ICE agent wouldn’t be near a polling place

Trump allies have also circulated a draft executive order that Trump could sign declaring a national emergency and attempting to assert broad powers over elections, The Washington Post reported last week. Trump told reporters on Friday that he had never heard of the draft order.

But during a conference call last week for election officials from across the country, the Department of Homeland Security committed to not placing ICE agents at any polling places in 2026, according to both Republican and Democratic secretaries of state who were on the call.

Homeland Security told Stateline in a statement that ICE isn’t planning operations “targeting” polling places, but could arrest individuals if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location.

“There’s no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility,” ICE’s current leader, Todd Lyons, told Congress in February.

Democratic state lawmakers calling for election-related restrictions on ICE in state law say they don’t want to take any chances.

“I think this is just prudent, wise policy to do what we all know is right, which is to protect polling places,” said Virginia Democratic state Del. Katrina Callsen, the chief sponsor of a bill that would prohibit federal civil immigration enforcement within 40 feet of polling places and voting counting sites.

The New Mexico legislature in February passed a measure that largely mirrors restrictions in federal law against armed federal personnel at polling places. The bill is now before Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The bill says officials generally cannot order or bring troops or other armed federal agents to polling places or parking areas for polling places beginning 28 days before Election Day, when early in-person voting begins. It also would prohibit officials from changing who is qualified to vote contrary to New Mexico law or from imposing election rules that conflict with state law. Violators would be guilty of a felony.

New Mexico lawmakers offered the legislation the day after Trump’s initial remarks about wanting to nationalize elections. New Mexico Democratic state Sen. Katy Duhigg, the bill’s lead sponsor, said she wanted a measure that wouldn’t run into issues with the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which says federal law supersedes state law.

“I think a lot of states, frankly, are trying to figure out what to do right now,” Duhigg said, adding that courts will likely be asked to sort through new state-level limits on federal forces. “This seems like a reasonable approach to try.”

Republican lawmakers opposed

Some Republican state lawmakers are dismissive of the Democratic measures, casting them as unnecessary.

“I just cannot imagine the president, as much as you might dislike him, ordering federal troops to seize New Mexico elections by armed force,” New Mexico Republican state Sen. William Sharer, the minority leader, said during debate. Sharer didn’t respond to an interview request from Stateline.

In Washington state, one bill would require local election officials to block anyone from accessing areas where ballots are processed or counted for the purposes of immigration enforcement. Law enforcement could be allowed access with a judicial warrant or court order, however.

Washington state Rep. Jim Walsh, a Republican who also chairs the state party, characterized the proposal as “fearmongering” and a solution in search of a problem — unless its supporters acknowledge that people in the country illegally are voting. And he claims Washington doesn’t have the authority to legally bar ICE from areas of an election office.

Washington Democratic state Sen. Drew Hansen, the bill’s lead sponsor, said election workers counting ballots deserve to be able to perform their task without interference from federal immigration authorities. Hansen noted that ICE “does not have a perfect track record, to say the least, of only detaining extremely dangerous, violent noncitizens.”

More than 170 U.S. citizens have been held by immigration agents during Trump’s second term, ProPublica reported in October. A December report by Democrats on the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations identified at least seven U.S. citizens who were held for more than 24 hours.

In Arizona, some Republicans want to encourage an ICE presence at the polls. In February, Republican state Sen. Jake Hoffman offered a bill that would require counties to sign an agreement with ICE to provide a federal law enforcement presence at polling places.

Hoffman didn’t respond to an interview request from Stateline. A scheduled committee hearing on the measure was canceled in February, likely killing the bill. Still, the underlying proposal could be resurrected, Arizona Mirror reported.

“Arizonans deserve to know that election laws are not just written in statute but actually enforced in practice,” Hoffman said in a news release.

Existing federal laws against federal election interference are specific and straightforward, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the Voting Rights and Elections program at the left-leaning Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. States such as Arizona don’t get a “free pass” to violate federal law, either, he said.

Options exist to hold people accountable under federal law, Morales-Doyle said. If ICE agents deployed to polling places, federal prosecutors would have five years to bring charges against ICE personnel under the statute of limitations. While the Justice Department under the Trump administration would be unlikely to bring charges, he noted, the time limit extends into the next presidential administration.

Still, Morales-Doyle said he understands why people are skeptical, given how ICE and other elements of the Trump administration have behaved.

“So it is, I think, important to think about what state legal mechanisms there are for holding people accountable,” he said.

Local enforcement

Some of the state legislative proposals would place local election workers on the front lines of resisting federal interference.

The Washington state measure would instruct multiple election workers, when possible, to document incidents in which they deny permission to enter areas that are off limits to immigration enforcement. The New Mexico bill would allow county clerks and voters who experienced intimidation to sue over alleged violations, in addition to state officials.

The California legislation goes perhaps the furthest in empowering local election officials. It would allow county election officials to keep polls open if they determine that voting was disrupted because of violations of a ban on federal immigration enforcement nearby.

Some local election officials appear hesitant to discuss the proposals and whether they are preparing for the possibility of federal interference. The president of the California Association of County Clerks and Elected Officials and the clerks chair of New Mexico Counties, a statewide advocacy group for county officials, didn’t respond to requests for interviews. The Washington State Association of County Auditors declined to comment.

More broadly, other election officials have said the possibility of federal interference is informing their preparations for the midterm elections. Scott McDonell, the Democratic clerk of Dane County, Wisconsin, which includes Madison, told Stateline in February that while Trump’s desire to “nationalize” elections isn’t possible under the Constitution, he is paying attention to agencies that answer to Trump.

“What does the president actually control? The FBI, National Guard, ICE, DOJ in general. That’s far more concerning,” McDonell said. (State national guards can be federalized by the president.)

Barbara Richardson Crouch, the Republican registrar of voters in the Town of Sprague, Connecticut, said she prefers no law enforcement at polling places — whether local, state or federal.

In Connecticut, legislators plan to offer a measure to restrict federal immigration enforcement within 250 feet of a polling place or other election site. Crouch, who has been involved in election administration for nearly two decades, said she has long dealt with concerns surrounding law enforcement at voting sites, but that those fears in the past centered on state and local police.

Crouch said a state trooper typically comes through her polling place in the early morning as election workers are setting up, and then again when polls close. Law enforcement is on call, but Crouch said she believes that if someone sees law enforcement, it sends a message that the area isn’t safe.

“I personally have never liked police at election places, even local police,” Crouch said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Online prediction markets allow users to put money on the outcome of almost anything — this weekend’s NBA game between the Warriors and the Thunder, the next supreme leader of Iran, whether the government will confirm the existence of aliens.

But those markets have no state oversight and operate even in states that ban gambling.

The platforms are raising bipartisan alarms, especially related to sports gambling. As states have legalized sports betting in recent years, they’ve required legal sportsbooks to jump through multiple hoops — from age verification procedures to protections for gambling addiction to tax collections. Online prediction markets circumvent all those rules.

Platforms including Kalshi and Polymarket say they are offering contracts similar to commodity markets that speculate on the future price of corn or oil — not outright gambling. But a growing number of states are rejecting those justifications, arguing the platforms are offering a backdoor to skirt state gambling regulations, particularly on sports.

The issue has sparked action from state regulators, new legislation, and lawsuits from both states and prediction markets. Complicating matters are the federal government’s moves to block state regulation of prediction markets, which see more than $13 billion in transactions each month.

Most activity on those platforms revolves around sports. And in national ads, Kalshi even marketed itself as the first national legal sports betting platform — even though states approve and regulate sports gambling since a 2018 Supreme Court decision. In 11 states, sports gambling remains illegal.

“This is sports wagering. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably sports wagering, in this situation,” said Kentucky state Rep. Michael Meredith, a Republican.

Meredith, who sponsored a 2023 law that legalized sports betting in Kentucky, called for states to regulate prediction markets during a webinar hosted by the National Conference of State Legislatures. That organization, representing state legislators across the country, has urged Congress “to act swiftly to address the rapid growth of unregulated sports‑related event contracts.”

State leaders argue their longstanding authority to oversee gambling should allow states to regulate or ban prediction market platforms. But those companies maintain they are not beholden to state regulations.

“I think it’s very clear that this authority should be vested in our state governments,” Meredith said last month.

In New York, lawmakers are considering legislation that would ban prediction markets from offering contracts on sports events, in addition to natural disasters, acts of terrorism and deaths. In Nevada, where gambling and tourism are top economic drivers, regulators are involved in a protracted legal fight after the state sought to stop prediction market activity on sports.

“To me, this is clearly gambling,” Thomas Reeg, CEO of Caesars Entertainment, which operates casinos and sports betting, said during a company earnings call in January.

But states are also fighting an obscure federal agency seeking to protect the emerging marketplace. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates derivatives such as futures contracts on stocks, has asserted it has “exclusive jurisdiction” over prediction markets and promised to fight state regulatory efforts in court.

The CTFC did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment. Neither did Kalshi or Polymarket, two of the leading prediction market companies.

A new wave of betting

Unless Congress passes legislation, experts say the courts will ultimately decide what role states can play in regulating prediction markets.

The standoff has led to litigation between the platforms and states in at least eight states, and officials in 11 states have sent cease and desist orders to prediction market companies, according to the American Gaming Association, an industry group representing casinos and sports books. A bipartisan group of attorneys general from 39 states and the District of Columbia recently urged a federal court to uphold state authority to regulate sports gambling.

The American Gaming Association says prediction markets should either get out of the sports betting business or follow the same regulations and rules that apply to sportsbooks such as DraftKings and FanDuel.

“They don’t want to pay the taxes, they don’t want to undergo the compliance and provide all of the consumer protections that are required by states of operators who operate legal sports betting,” said Tres York, the vice president of government relations for the association.

The organization estimates states have lost out on more than $570 million in sports gambling tax revenues since prediction markets began offering sports events contracts.

Many state leaders and experts are already concerned about the societal effects from the meteoric rise of sports gambling, which has transformed collegiate and professional sports, and the potential for manipulation by players.

“If you already have what I would call an epidemic of sports betting addiction in this country when you have regulated sports betting, imagine what it’s going to be like when you have essentially unregulated sports betting,” said Benjamin Schiffrin, director of securities policy at Better Markets, a nonprofit watchdog group advocating for consumer and investor financial protections.

The wide range of available bets also is raising alarms over election integrity and insider trading. In addition to individual elections, prediction markets have allowed wagers on the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the timing of the U.S. strike on Iran. Last week, hundreds of thousands of dollars were bet the day before the Iranian strikes, and more than 100 accounts cashed in $10,000 or more from successful predictions, according to a New York Times analysis.

“It’s a huge change to all of a sudden allow betting on elections, and it really threatens the underpinnings of our democracy,” Schiffrin said. “It just seems like there’s tremendous potential for wrongdoing.”

On its website, Kalshi says it operates under a “strict regulatory framework” with a suite of market integrity, surveillance, financial safeguards, and anti-manipulation protections.

Federal-state conflict 

Citing what it called “an onslaught” of state litigation, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission last month filed a court brief underscoring its authority to regulate prediction markets.

“To those who seek to challenge our authority in this space, let me be clear: We will see you in court,” Commissioner Mike Selig said in a video posted on social media. Selig is the only member of the presidentially appointed commission, which currently has four vacancies.

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, immediately vowed to oppose the federal agency and the prediction platforms in court. Gambling has been banned under the Utah Constitution since the state’s founding, and Cox posted on social media that prediction markets are “destroying the lives of families.”

Kalshi swiftly sued the governor and the state in federal court in anticipation of enforcement efforts and pending legislation in Salt Lake City. The company’s lawsuit cited the governor’s post and a column penned by Republican Attorney General Derek Brown explaining why he joined Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, a Democrat, “in urging Congress to address offshore gambling operations that disregard state law and target young Americans.”

Prediction market exchange Kalshi sues Utah over proposed prop betting ban

Utah Republican state Rep. Joseph Elison sponsored the legislation cited in Kalshi’s lawsuit. The bill, which has passed both chambers, would expand the state’s definition of gambling to include proposition betting — bets on the performance of an individual player or team that don’t necessarily affect the outcome of a competition. While Elison acknowledged the courts will ultimately determine the issue, he said prediction markets are essentially offering proposition betting without authorization.

”We’re 50 independent sovereigns that gave centralized government to the federal government to do certain things,” he told Stateline. “But the rest, we want those things to be under our purview. And this is one of those.”

The legal landscape 

In early rulings on the matter, courts have issued a mix of opinions: States have found initial success in state courts while results have been more mixed in federal courts, said Daniel Wallach, a gaming and sports gambling attorney tracking the issue.

But federal law has long affirmed state authority to oversee gambling, he said.

Despite attempts to cast transactions as investments, Wallach says courts will look at the substance of bets, which he said are almost indistinguishable from those made in state-regulated betting markets.

“The argument that this is investing rather than gambling is essentially elevating form over substance,” he said. “Plain and simple, this is wagering on the outcome of a sporting event.”

Wallach said state efforts such as cease and desist orders are counterproductive, as they essentially invite federal lawsuits from prediction market firms. He said states are better off pursuing gambling enforcement efforts in state courts, where several have won preliminary injunctions halting operations of the platforms temporarily.

For now, he said the federal agency has applied almost no scrutiny of the platforms, noting that the president’s family has a financial interest in the industry.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, has a business interest in two of the largest online prediction markets, and the president’s social media platform Truth Social announced it would start its own prediction market, according to The New York Times.

Journalist Dustin Gouker, who authors newsletters on gambling and prediction markets, noted that the CFTC rules that currently regulate prediction markets were built for financial products — not gambling. He said prediction markets have moved into the gaming market because “nobody said no.”

“It’s a bit of a mess,” he said. “If we’re going to have betting in 50 states for everyone 18 and over, shouldn’t we have thought about that a little bit more?”

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

Amid a slew of proposed changes scaling the federal government’s role in broadening assistance in federal rental programs, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to rescind a 2024 regulation requiring public housing agencies and certain federally subsidized landlords to give 30 days’ notice before filing for eviction based on unpaid rent. 

Under the proposed HUD changes, those 30 days would give way to older standards, which vary by housing program and state law, and which can be as little as a few days’ notice. 

The proposed HUD rule also would eliminate requirements that landlords include detailed information about rent charges or available assistance in eviction notices.

Many states and localities already require 30-day or longer notices before a landlord can proceed with an eviction for nonpayment of rent, though some are far shorter. California, for example, generally requires at least three–day “pay or quit” notices for nonpayment of rent, meaning tenants have three days to pay the rent or move out. 

The current HUD rule also requires that landlords provide tenants with a ledger showing how their balance was calculated and information about how to obtain a rent decrease if they have lost income. Tenants’ advocates argue the detail allows transparency over how much is owed and when. Without the rule’s protection, advocates say, HUD tenants in some parts of the country could be evicted for being as little as one dollar short or one day late on rent. 

Several tenants’ rights groups have already filed legal challenges, arguing that the rollback was issued without proper public notice and comment. If the rule remains in effect, housing providers and tenant advocates say its impact will depend largely on states’ eviction laws. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

(The Center Square) - A Wisconsin bill would ban student cell phone use throughout the school day, expanding on a previous law that requires all school districts to approve a plan to prohibit cell phones during instructional time by July…

(The Center Square) - Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed bills Friday to define grooming as a crime and requiring school districts to define appropriate communication between staff and students.

(The Center Square) – School leaders in New Richmond, Wisconsin could soon be answering questions from federal investigators about their school bathrooms.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race could have spurred another bank-breaking election cycle. Instead, national super donors have kept their pocketbooks closed, and with only a month until the election, the liberal candidate appears to be sailing ahead in contributions.

Wisconsin Court of Appeals Judge Chris Taylor, the liberal candidate, has raised more than $3.8 million over the past year, compared to the $438,000 conservative candidate Maria Lazar, who is also an appellate judge, has brought in. 

The low-key nature of this year’s race is a sharp reversal from the 2025 state Supreme Court contest, in which the candidate campaigns, political parties, outside interest groups and mega billionaire Elon Musk combined to spend a record $144.5 million on the contest. Brad Schimel lost to Susan Crawford, maintaining the liberal majority on the court.

But the financial landscape of the election is not a done deal, both camps say.

“We can’t take anything for granted on our side,” said Sam Roecker, a Taylor adviser. “We know that there are supporters of (Lazar’s) who have the capacity to dump a lot of money in this race, and we saw what happened last time around when tens of millions of dollars got poured in.”

And as more voters start paying attention to the race, Lazar has a “window of opportunity” in the weeks leading up to the April 7 election, Republican strategist Bill McCoshen said.

“The truth is a lot of folks on the conservative side thought that our candidate wasn’t going to have a very strong chance a month ago. Now we think she could actually win,” McCoshen said.

Without big spending, this year’s state Supreme Court campaigns aren’t breaking through to voters like they did in 2025. Just 6% of voters said they had heard a lot about the election, compared to 39% at the same time last year, according to a Marquette Law School Poll released last month.

Despite Taylor’s wide fundraising advantage and outsize TV advertising, about two-thirds of voters are undecided, the same poll found. Taylor polled 5 percentage points higher than Lazar among voters who have made a decision, narrowly outside the margin of error.

“The real point is it’s not getting through to voters, or voters haven’t tuned into it. But you know, that’s more than a six to one greater awareness a year ago than it is today,” said Charles Franklin, the director of the Marquette Law School Poll. “I’m not saying that we’ll go into election day without anybody having heard anything, but it was an earlier campaign last year and with more resources behind it.”

Generally, liberal candidates have an advantage in spring judicial elections, Franklin said. College graduates and older voters, who have shifted leftward over the past several decades, are the primary voting blocs in spring court elections.

The stakes are different this cycle. The court’s liberal majority is secure. The winner will replace retiring conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley. Still, losing this race would make it even harder for conservatives to regain power on the state’s high court. If they lose this year, they would have to retain the seats held by conservatives Annette Ziegler next year and Brian Hagedorn in 2029 and then flip seats held by liberals Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky in 2028 and 2030.

“Last year’s was to determine which ideological faction will have control of a majority of the court, and this year’s won’t change that. This year’s is to replace a conservative on a court that leans liberal already,” said Jeff Mandell, the co-founder of the progressive organization Law Forward.

Janine Geske. a former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, said that liberal voters have been galvanized to turn out for judicial elections by hot-button national issues like abortion and gerrymandering that have taken center stage in the state’s highest court. 

“Those issues became really the issues on the ballot versus the candidates themselves. As a result, I think we had more progressive candidates,” Geske said.

It’s a playbook that was adopted by Supreme Court Justice Janet Protasiewicz, who won Wisconsin’s high-profile race in 2023 on a platform of sharing her “values” regarding political issues that were likely to come before the court.

Lazar just might find success with that strategy, too, McCoshen said.

“Judge Lazar is doing a better job of at least tipping her hat to what her conservative leanings may be so that voters have a better understanding of what they’re voting for,” McCoshen said.

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

One year after Elon Musk’s Wisconsin spending blitz, the state’s Supreme Court race falls quiet 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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• After a federal appeals board barred most detained immigrants from seeking bond, court filings challenging their confinement have surged in Wisconsin and nationwide.

• Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have asked federal judges to review the legality of their detention — a legal strategy rarely used here in recent years. Judges have ruled in their favor in more than half the cases.

• Two forces are driving the influx: an ICE enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota and a ruling that makes nearly all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody ineligible for bond.

• A federal judge in California has since invalidated that bond restriction everywhere except Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the rule. Immigration attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts and out of the South, home to some of ICE’s largest detention facilities.

Over the past six months, dozens of immigrants held in Wisconsin jails awaiting deportation have challenged their detention in federal court. Judges ruled in their favor in more than half the cases, pushing back on new federal immigration enforcement practices.

Wisconsin’s federal courts have not seen comparable volumes of immigration-related habeas corpus petitions, which challenge the legality of a person’s detention, in at least a decade. More than a third of the petitions heard in Wisconsin since 2016 were filed in the past six months.

Two forces are driving the influx: the Trump administration’s effort to halt bond for virtually all detainees and its enforcement surge in neighboring Minnesota. 

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals ruled last September that all unauthorized immigrants in ICE custody are ineligible for bond, meaning they must remain in custody while their case plays out.

The ruling reversed a long-standing practice that previously enabled many immigrants to continue their cases while out on bond. In its wake, habeas petitions became one of few remaining paths to an exit.

Wisconsin’s growing tally of habeas petitions pales in comparison to national figures. Federal district courts nationwide have received more than 24,000 habeas petitions from detained immigrants since January 2025, with numbers surging after the Board of Immigration Appeals decision, overwhelming federal prosecutors tasked with defending the legality of ICE detentions.

Soon after the board’s ruling, the Trump administration targeted Minnesota in its immigration crackdown, deploying thousands of federal agents to patrol the Twin Cities and nearby rural communities. The White House claimed in early February that the campaign resulted in the arrests of more than 4,000 immigrants.

Since January 2025, ICE has transferred at least 108 immigrants from Minnesota to the Douglas County jail in Superior, Wisconsin. The sheriff’s office contracts with ICE for detainee housing, as do three other Wisconsin counties.

At least 15 immigrants held in Douglas County have filed habeas petitions in Wisconsin’s Western District Court since September 2025. Judges have thus far sided with immigrants four times, including two Ecuadorian men arrested in a raid on a construction site in a Minneapolis suburb. Five of the cases remain pending.

Those detained in the Douglas County jail made up two-thirds of the Western District’s immigration-related habeas petitions between September 2025 and February 2026. 

While arrest locations were not available for every case, available data indicates that 60% of immigrants who passed through the Douglas County jail between January and October 2025 were arrested in Minnesota.

The Madison-based court had not previously handled an immigration-related habeas case in over a decade. 

Habeas petitions in the recent past were a “hodgepodge,” said Milwaukee immigration attorney Benjamin Crouse, and were often dismissed or denied by judges in Wisconsin’s Eastern District.

Prior to last September, many habeas petitions challenged the legality of detaining immigrants for months at a time without a clear end date. A Colombian man transferred into ICE custody after a drug arrest in 2014 filed a habeas petition after spending more than 20 months at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Juneau, arguing his detention had stretched beyond reasonable time limits. 

Judge William Griesbach denied the man’s petition in 2016. Griesbach has ruled on 17 habeas petitions in the past decade, granting only one: a 2018 petition filed by a Mexican asylum seeker who spent more than two and a half years in the Kenosha County Detention Center without a bond hearing.

In some cases, Griesbach and other federal judges had no choice but to deny or dismiss habeas petitions: In at least 10 cases filed in Wisconsin’s Eastern District Court since 2016, federal immigration officials deported immigrants before the court could fully consider their petitions. 

Nearly as many immigrants left ICE custody through other routes, including community supervision and asylum, before a judge could rule on their habeas petitions.

Despite the influx of new cases in the Western District, the Eastern District has still heard roughly two-thirds of the immigration-related habeas petitions filed since September. 

Most federal district court judges who have considered habeas petitions since September have ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ decision prohibiting bond hearings for detained immigrants. 

Wisconsin’s Eastern District judges are split. Griesbach called the board’s position “persuasive” in December, rejecting a habeas petition filed by a Venezuelan man arrested alongside his wife during a routine check-in at the Department of Homeland Security’s downtown Milwaukee office earlier that year. That man, Diego Ugarte-Arenas, left ICE custody after receiving asylum in January.

Judge Brett Ludwig also sided with the Trump administration’s position on detaining immigrants without bond. Trump appointed Ludwig to the Eastern District bench in 2020; then-President George W. Bush appointed Griesbach to the court in 2002. 

Eastern District judges Byron Conway, a Biden appointee, and Lynn Adelman, a Clinton appointee, have both criticized the board’s ruling. “Courts have nearly universally rejected the conclusion of the Board,” Conway wrote in an October order granting the habeas petition of a Nicaraguan man arrested during an incidental run-in with ICE agents.

Western District judges have uniformly ruled against the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond decisions.

Keeping cases in courts like Wisconsin’s Western District is a high priority for attorneys representing detained immigrants.

“It’s less about jurisdictions where you’re successful and more about avoiding jurisdictions where it’s more problematic,” said St. Paul immigration attorney Solomon Steen, who has represented two clients detained in the Douglas County jail.

Many of ICE’s largest detention facilities are in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi — states within the jurisdiction of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which last month backed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ bond eligibility decision.

When a client arrested in Minnesota lands in a Wisconsin jail, Steen said, attorneys can find them within “hours or days.” Tracking clients’ locations becomes tougher once they are transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere, he added.

With thousands of immigrants now bouncing between distant detention centers, Steen said many face pressure to give up on their legal cases. “You won’t know if you’ll be able to contact a lawyer if you get detained,” he said. “So wouldn’t it be easier to just take a voluntary departure or take a removal order in immigration court just so that you will know where you are and what’s happening?” 

Steen and other attorneys are now working to keep clients’ cases in Midwestern courts — and out of the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction — even when their whereabouts are unclear, preserving their chances of a successful habeas petition.

Even before the Board of Immigration Appeals blocked most detainees from seeking bond, voluntary departures — wherein an immigrant leaves the U.S. to avoid a deportation on their record — increased 21-fold between January and September of last year. 

Meanwhile, an order from a federal district court judge in California has opened the door for many of Wisconsin’s current ICE detainees to request bond for the first time in months. 

Judge Sunshine Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California initially ruled in November that the Department of Homeland Security’s practice of denying bond hearings to most immigrant detainees ran afoul of federal law. 

DHS didn’t budge, maintaining that the Board of Immigration Appeals’ rulemaking authority takes precedence over a ruling in federal district court. Chief Immigration Court Judge Teresa Riley, a Department of Justice employee, later directed judges in immigration courts nationwide to continue denying detained immigrants’ requests for bond hearings. 

Sykes doubled down last week, rebuking DHS for ignoring her earlier order. 

“It is not the executive department’s province and duty to say what the law is,” she wrote. 

Sykes vacated Board of Immigration Appeals bond rules in all states outside of the 5th Circuit, which still leaves most immigrants in ICE’s largest detention centers unable to request bond hearings. 

Crouse recently observed one Chicago immigration court judge notify immigrants about Sykes’ latest order.

 “They’re taking this a little more seriously now, but we still don’t know exactly what this looks like,” he said. 
He and other Milwaukee-area immigration attorneys are again filing bond motions for their clients. “We’re getting hearings,” he added.

Aissa Olivarez, an attorney with the Community Immigration Law Center in Madison, confirmed that immigrants detained in Dodge County are receiving notice that they are eligible for bond. So far, she said, there is no indication federal immigration authorities are rushing to move Wisconsin detainees to holding facilities farther south.

Immigrants fight ICE detention in federal court — and increasingly win 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.

Two large-scale commercial poultry farms in southeastern Wisconsin have been hit with avian flu, each with roughly 1.5 million birds that will be culled.

The post ‘We’ve seen this before’: Bird flu again hits Wisconsin poultry farms appeared first on WPR.

Milwaukee Public Schools announced Friday it plans to cut 263 non-classroom staff positions to help reduce the $46 million budget gap the district is facing.

The post Milwaukee Public Schools planning to cut 260 positions to balance budget appeared first on WPR.

A Wisconsin early childhood literacy nonprofit is helping parents and children make reading part of their daily routine, teaming up with libraries and clinics to give out “prescriptions to read” during medical checkups.

The post Program aimed at nurturing infant-parent reading expands in Milwaukee appeared first on WPR.

The U.S. Department of Education has launched an investigation into the New Richmond School District in western Wisconsin for allegedly "allowing biological men to use female restrooms."

The post Trump administration investigating New Richmond School District’s gender policy appeared first on WPR.

As word spread across Brookfield that the U.S. Department of Education would arrive on Friday with its History Rocks! tour, some parents feared the event was part of what they see as a larger effort by the Trump administration to indoctrinate children. 

The post Department of Education assembly at Brookfield high school rocks community appeared first on WPR.

A 20-year-old man has been sentenced to seven years in prison and seven years of extended supervision for setting fire to a Wisconsin congressman’s Fond du Lac office last year.

The post 20-year-old sentenced to 7 years in prison for setting fire to Wisconsin congressman’s office appeared first on WPR.

Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bills into law Friday that make grooming a crime and require school districts to adopt policies on appropriate communications. 

“Keeping our kids safe, especially while they’re in our schools, must be a top priority for us, whether it’s addressing grooming, gun violence, bullying or other harmful behavior,” Evers said in a statement.

The bills were introduced last year after a report from the CapTimes that found there were over 200 investigations into teacher licenses stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023, though bill authors, including Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), said they had worked on the legislation for longer.

“After nearly two years of working to strengthen protections for children in Wisconsin, I’m grateful to see these two important bills signed into law,” Nedweski said in a statement. “This is a major step forward in protecting kids, supporting victims and ensuring that those who prey on children are held accountable.”

AB 677, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 88, defines grooming as “a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of producing, distributing or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.” 

Some of the behaviors that could fall under the law include verbal comments, suggestions or conversations of a sexual nature directed toward a child, inappropriate physical contact or attempts to initiate such contact and communication via texts, emails, social media, or online platforms, meant to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child.

Under the law, a person convicted of a grooming charge would be guilty of a Class G felony. The charge would increase to a Class F felony if the person is in a position of trust or authority, to a Class E felony if the child has a disability and to a Class D felony if the violation involves two or more children. A convicted person would need to register as a sex offender.

SB 673, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 89, requires public, private and independent charter schools to adopt appropriate communication policies for employees, volunteers and students. Policies will need to be in place by Sept. 1. 

The policy will need to include a range of consequences for policy violations, apply to communications during and outside of school hours, including standards for appropriate content and methods of communication. 

The Department of Public Instruction will need to develop and provide free training on professional boundary violations and identifying, preventing and reporting grooming. School boards will need to provide annual training to employees starting in the 2026-27 school year.

“We have an important obligation to make sure our kids can feel secure, supported, and cared for by educators and staff in our schools — adults they should be able to trust and depend on — while also providing more clarity about what interactions with students are inappropriate and unacceptable and enhancing punishments for adults who violate that sacred trust,” Evers said. 

Evers also signed SB 466, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 93, that expands the Missing Child Alert program to include alerts about 10- and 11-year-olds.

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A St Croix County school district that has become the target of right-wing politicians and activists for allowing students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity is now being investigated by the Trump administration Department of Education over the practice.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced in a press release Thursday it was investigating the New Richmond School District “based on reports that the District is allowing biological men to use female restrooms.” 

The head of a Wisconsin LGBTQ+ rights group Friday called the administration’s action an attempt to “bully” school children. 

“The law protects trans girls and their ability to use the girls’ bathroom,” said Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin. “A federal department’s press release does not, and cannot, change law. However, a federal administration can bully our kids, and that is exactly what this announcement of an investigation is.”

The New Richmond district superintendent, Troy Miller, was not available for comment early Friday afternoon. 

New Richmond policy attacked, defended

The Trump administration’s action follows its increased targeting of states that allow students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, including threatening to withhold federal funding. It also follows increasing attention on the New Richmond district’s policy from right-wing advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty and Wisconsin Republican political campaigns.

A public discussion of the district’s policy arose at a Jan. 29 meeting of the district’s school board, the Hudson Star Observer reported, with community members speaking for and against allowing students to choose the restroom they use. Opponents of the policy included a school board candidate, the newspaper reported.

Videos posted from a meeting in February to the Facebook page NR Students Against Moms for Liberty show a handful of students speaking in favor of allowing students to use the restrooms they are comfortable with. 

“I’m a woman at New Richmond High School who uses the women’s bathroom, and I ask that you hear my perspective. As a woman, I’m not afraid to use the bathroom with someone who is transgender,” one student said. “While fear around potential violence in bathrooms is totally valid, potential worries about what can happen in the bathroom are misplaced. Trans people are not scary or pedophiles. They are our community members.”

In a presentation prepared for that Feb. 10 meeting, legal counsel for the school board defended the policy respecting gender identity. A 2017 federal appeals court ruling

in the case Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education “defined ‘sex’ under Title IX to include gender identity,” according to the presentation slide — meaning that schools must allow students to use bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity.

At a meeting in late February, Board President Bryan Schafer said district lawyers have told the board that the district is following current law and following case law, the Hudson Star Observer reported. School board members voted at that meeting to look into adding more school restrooms and rejected a call for an internal investigation.  

Republican politicians, candidates weigh in

A week after the issue first arose in January, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany posted on Facebook a demand that the district reverse its policy. Michael Alfonso, who is running in the 7th Congressional District race to succeed Tiffany, has posted on his campaign Facebook page at least five times in the last month about the policy, directing increased national attention to the district. State lawmakers from the area have also weighed in. 

Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, who previously represented the 7th District, and recently was endorsed by President Donald Trump. 

“I would expect this from Madison or Milwaukee or some crazy liberal place but not northern Wisconsin,” Alfonso said in a video he filmed with his wife, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, on the way to a school board meeting. “This is why it’s so important for conservatives to remember that elections have consequences. There’s no reason that we should have liberal lunatics on our school boards. We need to make sure we’re getting out to vote in April and August and November because we have a very good chance to take our state back.”

The Department of Education press release Thursday said the agency’s Civil Rights Office “will determine whether the District violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) by allowing students to access intimate facilities based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” The press release states that an unidentified student in the district has “fear, embarrassment, and anxiety” and no longer uses the restrooms while in school due to the district policy.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that the department will investigate the complaint fully and address any violation promptly.

“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” Richey said. “School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve.” 

Defending students’ choices, gender identity

Swetz of Fair Wisconsin said in a statement to the Examiner Friday that the Whitaker v. Kenosha decision is “very clear when it comes to accessing bathrooms in schools” in its finding that Title IX protects gender identity. 

“Wisconsinites and Americans are tired of this relentless bullying campaign against kids, families, educators, and schools,” Swetz said. These attacks are not only wrong, but also a significant misdirection of resources and focus.”

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), who is the mother of a transgender adult child and a co-chair of the state Legislature’s Transgender Parent and Nonbinary Advocacy Caucus, issued a statement Friday defending respect for students’ gender identity.

“Every student deserves to feel safe, respected, and supported at school. Schools have a responsibility to create safe and welcoming environments where all students can learn without fear of discrimination,” Ratcliff said. “Policies that recognize and respect students’ gender identity are consistent with the spirit of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the values of fairness and inclusion we strive to uphold in Wisconsin schools.”

Ratcliff said the local school board’s decision should be respected. 

“Local school boards are best positioned to make such decisions that reflect the needs of their schools while ensuring every child is treated with dignity and respect,” Ratcliff said. 

Nevertheless, there have been ongoing legal challenges over school bathroom policies in Wisconsin, and some school districts in Wisconsin have adopted policies that restrict transgender students. 

Just before Trump took office in January 2025, a federal judge overturned a Biden administration order extending Title IX to include protections for gender identity. On his first day in office, Trump reversed other Biden administration orders protecting gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Since then, the Trump administration has systematically erased references on federal websites to gender identity, labeling the concept as “gender ideology” and substituting “sex” in its place. 

In addition to Moms For Liberty, the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has also called attention to the New Richmond district. WILL recently put out model policies that would separate bathrooms based on sex.

“This is a welcome decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title IX and protect girls’ privacy,” WILL Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer said in a statement. “For too long, school districts in Wisconsin have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males.”

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WASHINGTON — The United States lost 92,000 jobs in February, edging unemployment up slightly according to the latest employment figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The report showed, for the third time in the last five months, losses among nonfarm jobs and highlighted a continued “trend down” in the information sector and federal government employment. The federal workforce is down by 11% from its peak in October 2024, according to the bureau. The report also noted a decrease in health care jobs, “reflecting strike activity.” 

Unemployment ticked up to 4.4% from 4.3% in January, and rates remained higher for women, teenagers and non-white workers.

Administration officials blamed the job losses on winter weather on the East Coast and labor strife among West Coast health care workers.

But Democrats faulted President Donald Trump’s policies, including military action in Iran and reimposing tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court said many of Trump’s taxes on foreign goods were illegal.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday’s report is a “blaring alarm that Donald Trump’s economy is deteriorating rapidly,” and speculated the nearly week-old war in Iran will only make things worse.

“Now we’ve seen job losses in two of the last three months and an economy teetering on the edge of recession,” Schumer said in a Friday morning statement. “Tariffs are increasing costs, gas prices are spiking, and jobs are evaporating: The Trump Republican agenda is failing the American people and without immediately changing course the economy may go over the cliff.”

The unexpected report, combined with uncertainty over the war with Iran, rattled U.S. markets Friday morning, sparking a drop across all indexes, according to a daily update from the New York Stock Exchange’s Eric Criscuolo. 

Economists had estimated a February jobs gain for the U.S. to land around 59,000, according to Criscuolo. Additionally, the report is in stark contrast to January’s figures, which showed the economy gained 130,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trump officials project optimism

But the administration is brushing off negative headlines, and attributing the weak report to ice and snow storms in February and a month-long strike by Kaiser Permanente health care workers. 

“While record-breaking strikes and bad winter weather dragged down February nonfarm employment, the unemployment rate held steady, and there are several positive signs for our economy that continue to show American workers are recovering from the mess left behind by Biden,” Labor Secretary Lorie Chavez DeReemer said in a statement.

She added that the administration’s massive tax and spending cuts law enacted in July is positive for the economy.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNBC Friday, “I think what we need to start doing with these jobs numbers, at least on the payroll side, is take the average over a few months.”

“And if you take the average over a few months, we had a surprisingly positive one last month and a surprisingly negative one this one. But on average, it’s about what we expect to be seeing,” he said, adding that the sharp fall in immigration is leading to “break-even employment” in the U.S.

No growth

Economists cautioned the jobs report builds on a negative economic outlook for the country.

“While it’s never sensible to read too much into one month of data, this morning’s report showing a decline in nonfarm payrolls and an increase in the unemployment rate comes at a difficult moment, with inflation still above target and an oil price shock threatening to raise inflation further,” said Daniel Hornung, a fellow at Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research.

“The report complicates the Fed’s efforts to keep both unemployment and inflation low, and it makes it difficult for the Administration to argue heading into the midterms that their policies are leading to the kind of growth or improvement in living standards that they’ve long promised,” Hornung, the deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, said.

David Kelly, JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist, described the report as “weak.”

“We’re not seeing any job growth at all, really, in this economy,” Kelly told CNBC Friday morning. “But because immigration has done such a 180 here, and we’ve got a huge drop in the labor force — and that’s keeping the unemployment rate from spiking here — but it’s a very, very slow economy.”

Flocks of poultry in Dane, Jefferson and Walworth counties have been infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. 

The virus has been circulating across North America since 2021, infecting both wild and domesticated birds. The birds on the affected properties will be killed to prevent the further spread of disease, and DATCP has established a 10 kilometer control area around the infected premises in which the movement of poultry is restricted. 

The infected birds in Dane County were in a backyard poultry flock while in Jefferson and Walworth counties the affected birds were in commercial flocks, according to DATCP. 

Officials and farmers in Wisconsin have been managing avian flu infections since spring 2022 when outbreaks across the state shut down poultry shows, exhibits and swap meets. Last year, a dairy herd was quarantined after an infection was discovered. 

DATCP said it is monitoring farm workers at the affected facilities for signs of infection and recommends biosecurity measures to protect flocks and herds near where the current infections were found.

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