Several rounds of severe storms last week caused flooding in communities from Janesville to the Milwaukee area, as well as in northeastern and central parts of the state.
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Known as the “Bubble Lady of Wisconsin,” Michelle Hackett has built a business presenting interactive bubble shows around the state and beyond. She's presenting at the fifth annual Dane Arts: Business of Art conference about the growth of interactive events in the digital age.
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Early Thursday morning, the U.S. Senate adopted a Republican budget measure that would deliver as much as $70 billion for immigration enforcement. The vote is a step toward the GOP using a process known as “reconciliation” to circumvent Democrats and pass the measure with a simple majority.
The post Wisconsin US Sen. Tammy Baldwin says Republican tactic to fund DHS leaves agents without guardrails appeared first on WPR.
Communities across Wisconsin are still completing damage assessments from storms that ripped through the state last week.
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Two liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court justices will not step aside from an ongoing criminal case against one of President Donald Trump's ex-campaign attorneys who helped orchestrate the 2020 false elector scheme.
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Medical marijuana remains largely illegal in Wisconsin despite a order that eases restrictions on the drug when it's used medicinally in some states.
The post What does Trump’s new federal marijuana order mean for Wisconsin? appeared first on WPR.
The Center for Biological Diversity is suing federal wildlife regulators for their alleged failure to protect the rare salamander mussel, an endangered species at risk of extinction.
The post Group sues over lack of federal protections for rare mussel found in Wisconsin appeared first on WPR.
We have a bewildering amount of new hydrangea varieties to choose from here in the Midwest. Nobody knows this better than Natalie Carmolli, a public relations specialist for Proven Winners ColorChoice Flowering Shrubs. Carmolli joined host Jill Nadeau on WPR’s “Garden Talk” to share her hydrangea wisdom.
The post The secret to color-changing, lush hydrangeas? Your soil. appeared first on WPR.
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky isn’t known for his solo piano music, but this new disc from Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov is seeking to change that impression.
The post WPR Music new album of the week: Pianist Daniil Trifonov plays Tchaikovsky appeared first on WPR.
The looming reductions are the latest development in ongoing challenges the agency has faced with the state’s fish and wildlife account.
The post Wisconsin DNR will cut musky stocking by 70 percent, close fish hatcheries appeared first on WPR.
Election workers sort ballots at the Weld County Elections office in Greeley, Colorado, in June 2024. (Photo by Andrew Fraieli/Colorado Newsline)
President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting would shatter decades of U.S. Postal Service independence intended to shield it from partisan politics, postal experts and attorneys say.
Postal experts said Trump ordering the postmaster general to take any action — let alone on a matter as sensitive as elections — violates guardrails in federal law against presidential control of the mail. Multiple people with deep knowledge of Postal Service history said they couldn’t recall a similar order in the agency’s modern era.
“For the president to direct the postmaster general to do anything, including handling these ballots, is contrary to the statutes, contrary to law,” said James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law.
The order, signed March 31, attracted swift condemnation as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to control state-run elections. If it stands, the directive would also represent a White House power grab over the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.
Trump’s order directs the postmaster general, who acts as the Postal Service’s CEO, to set out rules that would require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to send ballots through the mail during federal elections. States that want to use the mail would be required to provide lists of mail voters to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to individuals not on a list.
A Board of Governors leads the Postal Service, and holds the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party.
While presidents nominate the governors and the Senate confirms them, they serve seven-year terms. The length, in theory, insulates them from political pressure.
S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton who served as its chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or a president directing the postmaster general to take certain actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.
“The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.
The board currently has only four members, all appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for the nominees.
Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the mail.
Last year, he floated the possibility of merging the Postal Service with the Commerce Department, a move that would require approval by Congress. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that Trump was expected to try to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.
The Trump administration takes a dim view of independent agencies. Many allies of the president subscribe to the unitary executive theory, the idea that the U.S. Constitution grants the president full power over the entirety of the executive branch — meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.
Trump has moved to assert authority over a number of independent and quasi-independent agencies since taking office, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project, widely seen as a pretext to target Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate policy has angered Trump.
The Postal Service is under tremendous financial pressure — potentially making it more vulnerable to proposals to bring it under White House control. Mail volume peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces that year. The Postal Service today handles 109 billion pieces annually.
The current postmaster general, David Steiner, told a U.S. House committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year without changes to its prices and operations. The Postal Service is generally funded through stamps and other forms of user revenue, not by tax dollars.
Steiner emphasized the independent nature of the Postal Service throughout his prepared testimony. He has laid out a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising its borrowing limit from $15 billion, a level that’s remained unchanged since 1992.
“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-financed, independent establishment of the Executive Branch,” Steiner wrote.
Congress approved sweeping legislation in 1970 reorganizing the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent corporation. Before that, the postmaster general was a Cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Trump’s order marks “a dramatic shift away from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the Postal Service from interference,” Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched mail history, said.
The White House didn’t directly answer States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the independence of the Postal Service or the legal justification for the executive order.
“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
“The President will do everything in his power to lawfully defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”
Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering.
The Postal Service didn’t answer questions about how it plans to respond to the order. A USPS spokesperson said only that the Postal Service was reviewing it.
Steiner has indicated he’s awaiting a court decision on how to proceed.
“If a court says that’s not what the law means, we’ll follow that,” Steiner told The New York Times after the executive order was signed. “And so from our perspective, we don’t get involved in policy or law, we just follow the law.”
The order on mail ballots faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials have all sued. The legal challenges emphasize the Postal Service’s independence in federal law.
The lawsuit filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups, asserts the Postal Service is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint calls the Postal Service “indispensable” to voting by mail, noting that it delivered more than 222 million pieces of ballot mail in 2024, including nearly 100 million general election ballots.
A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed motions in court this week seeking to defend the executive order from the Democratic legal challenges. The motions call the order an example of cooperative federalism to provide states with optional resources to help protect their elections.
The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service hasn’t finalized any new rules on mail ballots.
The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking—it does not regulate the States directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.
The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.
Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.
American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a statement that the Postal Service doesn’t block mailers from sending letters or refuse to deliver letters because of the identity of the sender. Postal workers take extraordinary measures to ensure ballots reach their destinations promptly and securely, he said.
“Postal workers take the sanctity of the mail seriously, and every process and policy of the Postal Service ensures that mail is accepted, processed, and delivered, no matter who sent it or where it is going,” Smith said.
On Monday, more than 100 U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding he refrain from future actions that undermine the Postal Service’s independence and calling on him to rescind the executive order. The letter says the order sets “a dangerous precedent for political interference” in postal service operations.
Senate Democrats followed up with a letter to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors on Tuesday, urging the Postal Service to not implement the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.
“The Postal Service doesn’t care which politicians you may support,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said on the Senate floor last week. “Its only priority is to deliver the mail to every community in the country.”
“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees USPS, said. “If the president is successful in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in running elections, he will completely erode the trust of this storied institution.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, shown speaking at a 2023 news conference, announced Thursday that Wisconsin is suing online prediction market platforms for violating Wisconsin laws about betting on sporting events. Wisconsin recently enacted a law allowing online sports betting but restricting it to servers hosted on tribal lands. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin filed three lawsuits Thursday against online prediction market companies that the state Department of Justice accused of “working together to facilitate illegal sports betting throughout the state.”
“Except in limited circumstances, sports betting and other forms of commercial gambling have long been illegal in the state of Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “No company is above this law, no matter how creatively those companies try to disguise the activity that they’re engaged in.”
The lawsuits were filed as Wisconsin prepares to renegotiate 11 tribal gaming compacts to include online sports betting under a law Gov. Tony Evers signed earlier this month. The legislation legalized online sports betting on the condition that the required computer servers are housed on tribal land.
Sports betting has been legal in Wisconsin since 2021, but only in person at tribal casinos.
The state’s lawsuits target online prediction markets that allow users to put money on the outcome of everything from major world events to sports outcomes.
The emergence of prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket has prompted states across the country to enact legislation and file lawsuits, Stateline reported in March.
The online platforms have been estimated to generate more than $13 billion every month, with the bulk of those revenues coming from sports betting, Stateline reported.
Kaul said Wisconsin was filing its own lawsuit, but a handful of other states, including recently New York, have filed similar suits citing their own state regulations.
“These companies have chosen to flout Wisconsin law by thinly disguising the sports betting that they facilitate through what are called event contracts,” Kaul explained. “But our position in this case is that event contracts are no different than ordinary sports bets. The companies collect a fee, we allege, for every bet that’s made, leading them to earn significant revenue from Wisconsinites through violations of our state’s gambling regulations.”
The goal of the suits is to shut down the platforms in Wisconsin, Kaul said. The state isn’t currently seeking monetary damages, but he said that possibility hasn’t been ruled out should there be a legal basis to demand them and the facts to support such a demand.
He said the suit was filed in response to “a huge increase in this type of activity” in the last few years.
Each of the three lawsuits is filed in Dane County circuit court as a “complaint to abate public nuisance” and accuse the defendants of “facilitating illegal sports betting throughout the state.” They ask the court to find them in violation of state law and to issue an injunction against the companies for sports-related trading by Wisconsin users.
One suit names Kalshi Inc., along with four affiliates; Robinhood Markets and two affiliates; and two Coinbase companies. The second names three companies doing business as Polymarket or affiliates of Polymarket. The third suit names Foris Dax Markets and North American Derivatives Exchange Inc., doing business as Crypto.com.
All of the businesses in the lawsuits list an identical street address in Wilmington, Delaware, except for the three Robinhood companies, which list an address in Dover, Delaware.
All three suits also include as defendants unnamed private individuals or entities that “facilitate” the platforms’ transactions.
The lawsuits focus on sports betting, although the platforms also host transactions involving other kinds of events and predictions. Kaul said the state alleges sports-related gambling is “a very large part” of the activity on Kalshi and other platforms.
The suits describe transactions on the platforms as “indistinguishable from an ordinary sports bet” as defined in Wisconsin law.
Crypto.com, for example, “relabels its sports bets as ‘event contracts,’ meaning contracts traded between buyers and sellers at agreed upon prices that mimic the odds of a sports-related outcome,” the lawsuit naming Crypto.com states. “Parties to these ‘event contracts’ wager money on whether a given sports-related outcome will occur, just as when people bet on that same outcome using traditional casino-style sportsbooks.”
On April 3, 2026, the suit states, “traders could buy contracts taking the position that the University of Michigan would win its Final Four matchup with the University of Arizona for around $0.54, which reflected a roughly 54% projected chance of Michigan winning. When Michigan won, event contract holders who bet on that team winning received $1 per contract and those who instead bet on Arizona winning received nothing.”
Kaul said there was “no direct relationship” between the lawsuits and the enactment of the new law allowing online sports betting. “What we are alleging is violations of Wisconsin law, and the allegations would be the same whether or not there had been the new legislation passed.”
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Buds of marijuana on display inside Mother Earth Wellness in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)
Medicinal marijuana products that are legal at the state level will see looser federal regulation under an order the U.S. Department of Justice published Thursday, while a process that could remove the drug in all forms from the federal list of the most dangerous drugs is set to begin in late June.
The order, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, shifts many marijuana products from Schedule I — the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and least legitimate use — to Schedule III.
That will open the door to greater research and provide an effective tax break for businesses that sell medicinal marijuana that is legal under state law.
The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order last year directing the DOJ to move toward rescheduling.
“The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” Blanche said in a statement. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”
The order applies to state-licensed medical marijuana products in the states that allow medicinal use of the drug.
The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from their federal taxes and researchers have access to state-legal products. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federal facility could be studied, severely limiting the supply available to researchers.
The DEA also scheduled a hearing on broader reclassification to begin June 29 and end no later than July 15. That hearing will explore the possibility of rescheduling marijuana products that could include recreational use.
The order likely has no immediate impact on the difficulty marijuana businesses have had accessing the banking system. Institutions that lend to even state-legal businesses could be prosecuted on federal money laundering charges for offering banking services to businesses that violate federal drug laws.
Moving a limited number of products from Schedule I, which includes drugs such as heroin and cocaine, to Schedule III, which includes highly regulated prescription drugs such as acetaminophen with codeine, does not satisfy advocates who have called for complete legalization.
But it does represent a major shift in the federal government’s official position on cannabis, several pro-legalization groups said.
“It’s historic because the federal government, historically, has denied the existence of medical cannabis, even as a concept,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the advocacy group the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an interview.
The federal government was in recent memory “outright hostile” to medicinal marijuana, Armentano added. The order “finally acknowledges and recognizes not only the legitimacy of marijuana as a medicine, but also the legitimacy of these state programs, and it is trying now to integrate these state programs into our own existing federal regulatory schemes.”
Forty states and the District of Columbia allow medicinal marijuana.
Jasmine Johnson, CEO of Florida-based cannabis company GŪD Essence, wrote in an email that the federal government’s acknowledgement of cannabis’ legitimate medical value was the most important part of the order.
“That shift alone helps move the industry out of decades of stigma and opens the door for expanded research, more institutional participation, and a more rational regulatory framework,” she wrote.
Recreational use will see no immediate changes from the order. In the 24 states in which recreational use, also called adult use, is legal, businesses that sell both medicinal and recreational products may experience confusion.
Chuck Smith, the CEO of Colorado Leads, an industry group, said in a statement that for Colorado cannabis businesses, “the immediate effects of this order are significant but relatively narrow.”
“Hybrid businesses should expect a transitional period in which federally covered medical activity and federally non-covered adult-use activity may be treated differently for registration, tax, and compliance purposes,” Smith said.
Such businesses would likely not see a tax benefit “when it comes to producing and selling, arguably, the products that consist of the majority of their business,” Armentano said.
Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer for Colorado-based marijuana company Spherex, called the DOJ order “a very silly announcement,” noting that it created a third regulatory category of a single plant species.
“Though this is all the same plant,” hemp and medical marijuana “are now considered Schedule III substances under the Controlled Substances Act (similar to Tylenol + Codeine),” while non-medical use is still considered Schedule I, he wrote in a statement. “My mind boggles at these arbitrary and artificial distinctions, but here we are.”
Johnson, the Florida CEO, said she expected regulators to eventually merge how they treat different uses of the drug.
“The distinction between medicinal and recreational use has always been more regulatory than practical. From an operator’s standpoint, the same plant, supply chain, and compliance standards exist regardless of how it’s categorized,” she wrote.
“Over time, we’ll likely see a continued shift toward a more unified framework that reflects how consumers actually engage with cannabis, rather than maintaining rigid distinctions that complicate operations.”
A couple from Venezuela, shown this month in Las Cruces, N.M., is preparing to self-deport after the Trump administration cancelled their asylum case without hearing testimony in July. New rules, likely to be challenged in court, will make it difficult or impossible for asylum-seekers to get legal work permission while their cases proceed in court. (Photo by Paul Ratje/Texas Tribune)
Amal Khalifa “felt human” for the first time after she fled Egypt in 2019 for the United States and found kind treatment from police when she reported being a victim of domestic violence.
“When I walked into that precinct I felt like a human being for the first time in my whole life,” Khalifa said. “I like the system here — it is there to help the people.”
Khalifa still faced a long road to asylum, which she gained last year, based on her fear of returning home to Egypt. As a government worker there she faced persecution for reporting corrupt activity by criminals and illegal pressure from the outlawed but powerful Muslim Brotherhood, she said.
But leaving her former fiancé after she got to the United States meant she had to support herself as her asylum case proceeded, and she was able to do that by working as an auditor for the New York State Department of Labor. She credits her ability to earn a living with legal work permission she could get after establishing her case.
That option to work could close soon for asylum-seekers for the foreseeable future.
Currently asylum-seekers must wait six months after filing an asylum request before they can work legally, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend that to one year. The new rule is open for comment until Friday. No effective date has been announced.
The proposal would also pause any new requests for work permission during times of high asylum case processing backlogs. Since the backlog is now 1.4 million asylum cases, that would effectively stop new and renewal work request applications for anywhere from 14 to 173 years, the administration estimates.
The rule would “make it impossible for asylum-seekers to work legally to support themselves,” and would result in more poverty and off-the-books workers competing with legal workers for jobs, according to a February statement from The Forum, a coalition of immigration-related advocacy groups.
At least half a million asylum cases would be affected immediately, if the rule takes effect, causing wage loss of $27 billion to $127 billion a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated.
Not only new requests are affected — renewals will have to go through the same process and, if they’re even granted, would be shorter based on a rule change from December 2025. That new rule limits employment authorization and renewals to 18 months instead of the previous limit of five years.
“This makes it harder for people to gain work authorization and also more arduous to stay work-authorized,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that researches immigration policy.
This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws.
– Amy Grenier, American Immigration Lawyers Association
The rule is meant to discourage “frivolous” asylum cases and “allow our asylum system to prioritize those actually seeking refuge from danger,” according to a February statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security.
“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy path to working in the United States, overwhelming our immigration system with meritless applications,” the statement said.
Amy Grenier, associate director for government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said there are less drastic ways to curb frivolous asylum claims. For instance, the Migration Policy Institute has proposed new policies such as posting asylum officers at borders who are trained to make quick decisions on cases before the applications clog immigration courts.
“This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws,” Grenier said. “The administration will cause hardship for American businesses that rely on these legal workers, worsen asylum backlogs and harm people already fleeing for their lives.”
The move is likely to exacerbate the number of immigrants not authorized to work, especially the millions who arrived earlier this decade and sought asylum.
A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis found that nearly 550,000 immigrants without legal status left the United States last year, including through deportations and voluntary departure. That has put a lid on job growth but has also kept unemployment stable, the report concluded.
Two groups that recruit asylum-seekers for jobs told Stateline they’re opposed to the proposed new rules. Many industries need immigrants such as Khalifa with valid asylum cases and professional experience in their home countries.
“Immigration is a vital part of the solution to labor shortages, especially in health care,” said Avigail Ziv, chief program officer at Upwardly Global, a company that helps legal workers get certified to do professional work in areas such as health care and engineering. The group helped Khalifa find her state job in New York.
“In the U.S. right now there’s over 270,000 underemployed immigrants that have been trained in health care in their home countries,” Ziv said.
Another group that helps asylum-seekers find jobs is Tent Partnership for Refugees, whose CEO Gideon Maltz said, “When the U.S. government curtails employment authorization for those who are already here and working, they’re not only hurting people seeking refuge, they’re undercutting the companies and communities that depend on their labor.”
Employers in manufacturing, hospitality and logistics need more workers, Maltz said, and “refugees and asylum-seekers have been helping keep those industries running, reliably stepping into the hardest-to-fill jobs and contributing from Day One.”
Many asylum-seekers waiting for work authorization work in low-paying gig economy jobs such as food delivery, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, which interviewed hundreds of asylum-seekers in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area for a research project.
The New York State Labor Department, in an attempt to clear clogged migrant shelters, set up a program in 2023 to connect asylum-seekers with valid work permission to jobs. Employers who participated included those in the industries of home health care, food processing, parking and building services, according to information the department sent to Stateline at the time.
The proposed federal rule suggests that American workers could benefit from the changes, and that employers would benefit by hiring available Americans. States could benefit as well, the department said, if lower immigration numbers reduce the strain on social services.
There were similar attempts by the first Trump administration to curtail work permission for asylum seekers, but they were all struck down in court, sometimes on technicalities.
A one-year waiting rule, as well as longer permitted processing times, were struck down in 2022 after a judge ruled that an acting Department of Homeland Security secretary did not have the authority to implement the rules in 2020. A 2018 court ruling also forced fast 30-day processing of work permission requests for asylum-seekers.
Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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.
A metal gangway leads to the floating pumphouse used to harvest water for Public Wholesale Water Supply District 20 outside Sedan, Kan. A new analysis found agricultural states including Kansas have seen drinking water systems record thousands of instances of elevated nitrate, a potentially dangerous byproduct of farming. (Photo by Kevin Hardy/Stateline)
Nearly one-fifth of Americans relied on drinking water systems with elevated and potentially dangerous levels of nitrate in recent years, according to a new study released Thursday.
The nonprofit Environmental Working Group examined test data collected by water systems across the country between 2021 and 2023, the most recent data available.
Water systems serving more than 3 million people exceeded the federal safety limit of 10 milligrams per liter over the three years, the research and advocacy organization found.
The analysis also found that thousands of water systems serving more than 62 million people reported nitrate levels above 3 milligrams per liter at least once during those years, which indicates human-caused drinking-water contamination.
Researchers are increasingly questioning whether the federal threshold should be lowered as more studies find links between even low levels of nitrate consumption and cancer and birth defects. Federal law limits nitrate levels in drinking water because of its association with blue-baby syndrome.
Nitrate is a natural component of soil, but has become a growing problem for drinking water systems because of crop farming’s use of nitrogen fertilizers and runoff of nitrogen-rich manure from livestock operations.
States with big agricultural industries recorded more reports of elevated nitrate levels. In fact, the report found that 64% of all water systems that recorded nitrate levels at or above the legal limit were in just five states: California, Texas, Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma.
But Anne Schechinger, the organization’s senior director of agriculture and climate research who authored the report, said the issue affects urban and rural areas alike.
“A lot of people have this idea that this issue is just a rural issue for small towns near farms. But we found with this analysis that that is not just the case,” she told Stateline. “Based on how watersheds work, you can live very far from a farm and still be drinking water contaminated with nitrate.”
The analysis relies on public records obtained from public drinking water systems in every state except New Hampshire, where data was not provided, she said. In addition to its report, the Environmental Working Group created a map showing community water systems with elevated nitrate levels across the country.
Elevated nitrate levels have befuddled water providers across the country for years. Not only are they expensive to remove from drinking water supplies, but nitrate levels can fluctuate with the seasons as heavy rains can quickly push remnants of fertilizer or manure into streams and rivers.
Iowa’s largest water provider last year asked residents to refrain from watering lawns, filling pools and washing cars as its nitrate removal system struggled to keep up with elevated levels.
Des Moines is home to one of the largest nitrate removal systems in the world, which costs about $16,000 per day to operate, officials said. Smaller communities that rely on groundwater have been forced to dig deeper wells, Schechinger said.
Climate change is further fueling the problem: Agriculture is a major driver of greenhouse gas emission. The heavy rainfalls and prolonged droughts from more extreme weather worsen nitrate runoff into lakes, rivers and groundwater.
“We know those climate conditions are going to make this problem worse,” Schechinger said. “And that’s likely to cost us all more and also (raise) more concerns for our health.”
Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@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.
Federal immigration officers were at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on March 23, 2026, to help with airport security during the shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security. (Photo by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans approved a budget resolution early Thursday intended to speed the way for billions for immigration enforcement, sending the measure to the House, where GOP lawmakers in that chamber need to adopt it to unlock the reconciliation process.
The 50-48 vote followed a marathon amendment voting session that Democrats used to highlight policy differences on cost-of-living issues and stalled federal emergency relief dollars for states.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul were the two Republicans to vote against approving the measure. Sens. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Mark Warner, D-Va., did not vote.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said just before the vote-a-rama began that Democrats would put Republicans on the record about the soaring cost of living and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“America will see even more clearly tonight where the Republicans are — not on the side of lowering costs, but on the side of masked agents occupying our streets,” he said.
Republicans plan to use the complex budget reconciliation process, which avoids the need for Democratic support in the Senate, to provide between $70 billion and $140 billion in additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol.
The money is supposed to cover those agencies for the next three years, avoiding the need for Republicans to negotiate constraints on immigration activities with Democrats, who have been calling for guardrails since federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.
When combined with the Senate-passed bill that funds the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security for the current fiscal year, the two pieces of legislation are expected to end the ongoing shutdown at that department, which began in mid-February.
Senators ultimately debated 16 amendments, 12 offered by Democrats and four proposed by Republicans. The only one adopted was from South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, which senators approved on a 98-0 vote.
The proposal would create a reserve fund to bolster federal immigration agents’ ability to detain and deport adults who entered the country without proper documentation and were then convicted of rape, murder, or sexual abuse of a minor.
“Everybody in this body should be for this,” Graham said. “These people need to be caught, put in jail, or kicked out of our country.”
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said he supported the amendment because “under current law, undocumented immigrants who are convicted of rape, murder, or sexual abuse of a minor are subject to mandatory detention and deportation.”
“What we object to is what is happening in the streets of Minneapolis and Chicago,” he added.
Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy tried but was ultimately unable to convince his colleagues to add a new set of instructions to the budget resolution that would have allowed the Rules & Administration Committee to write a voter identification law.
Kennedy said he wanted that bill to have three provisions.
“Require that in federal elections, you have to be an American citizen to vote and provide for the provisions to enforce that. Number two, it would require that in federal elections, you have to prove you are who you say you are in order to vote, and it would provide provisions to enforce that,” he said. “Number three, it further instructs the Rules Committee that we’re going to go back to having an Election Day and not an election month, and it instructs the Rules Committee to provide the provisions to enforce that.”
California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla, the ranking member of the rules panel, opposed the amendment during debate, saying he couldn’t believe lawmakers were once again experiencing a “partisan attempt to rush through what I refer to as a solution in search of a problem.”
“Despite the president’s claims, there is zero evidence of massive voter fraud across the country, which is the premise of these proposals,” he said. “So not only is it a solution in search of a problem, to paraphrase a wise man, this measure is all foam and no beer.”
Padilla added that a provision in Kennedy’s amendment would have required states to count ballots within 36 hours of an election, a new mandate he said could cause considerable problems for larger states with millions of voters.
“It’s unfortunate elections administration has been turned into a partisan issue,” he said. “I actually ask our colleagues to protect the early voters, not just in my state but in yours. Protect vote-by-mail opportunities, not just in my state but in yours. Let’s protect women who are married and change their name and their right to vote, not just in my state but in yours.”
Senators did not agree to waive a point of order against Kennedy’s amendment on a 48-50 vote. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Murkowski and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted with Democrats.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley tried unsuccessfully to create a pathway to extend the one-year prohibition on Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood that the GOP included in its “big, beautiful” law. That funding ban expires on July 4.
Hawley didn’t speak about abortion access during debate but focused his criticism of the organization on gender-affirming health care services for transgender youth.
“Under no circumstance should Medicaid money dedicated to the poor and the needy be used for transgender surgeries and treatments for minor children,” he said. “It is a moral outrage. This body has a duty to stand against it.”
Planned Parenthood’s website states the organization provides surgery referrals as well as hormone therapy, puberty blockers and “transition support.”
Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden argued the amendment represented “Republicans’ latest attempt to strip women of the health care they need and depend on so that they can go score some political points.”
Senators didn’t agree to waive a point of order against the amendment, which would have allowed it to move forward, by a vote of 50-48. Collins and Murkowski voted with Democrats.
Senators rejected an amendment from Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley that would have addressed the rising cost of housing after he invoked comments President Donald Trump made during his State of the Union address.
“We have an opportunity tonight to send a message that we agree with the president, that we have a challenge in home ownership, because home ownership is dying,” Merkley said. “And one of the factors is private equity buying up the homes.”
Ohio Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno spoke out against adopting the amendment, saying lawmakers have already addressed it in a bipartisan way.
“I obviously urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, because we’ve already passed it,” he said. We’ve already solved this problem. In fact, congratulations to all of us. 89 to 10. We banned institutional ownership of single-family homes. I think that’s fantastic.”
The Senate voted in March to approve a bill designed to increase the country’s housing supply, according to reporting from NPR. But since the House has approved a bill of its own, the two chambers will need to work out their differences before any housing bill becomes law.
Senators did not agree to adopt Merkley’s amendment following a 46-52 party-line vote.
California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff proposed an amendment that would have addressed stalled funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which he said is “holding more than $3 billion in disaster relief funding for California.”
“But as we debate this budget resolution, I know our state of California is not alone,” he said. “North Carolina is waiting on millions in relief designated for Hurricane Helene in 2024. Kentucky saw landslides and flooding just weeks after Los Angeles County burned. Florida and the Gulf Coast have also been battered. Texas communities under siege from last year’s floods have still not seen the federal relief their communities need and deserve.”
Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford opposed the amendment, saying that while he agrees FEMA funds need to get to communities, the best way to do that is for the House to pass the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, which the Senate already approved.
House GOP leaders are holding on to that bill instead of putting it on the floor as they wait for the reconciliation process to play out. That Senate-passed DHS bill funds FEMA and all of the agencies that make up the department except ICE and Border Patrol.
“Our challenge has been, we’ve been in a government shutdown on DHS now for two months,” Lankford said. “We’ve got to be able to get those funds released. That means we’ve got to get DHS funding completely done for all of DHS. We have FEMA employees that are being paid but they don’t have program dollars that they can actually release.”
The Senate rejected the amendment following a 49-49 vote. Collins, Florida Sen. Ashley Moody and Murkowski voted with Democrats.
Enbridge Line 5 reroute work north of Mellen, Wisconsin (Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) held a public information hearing on four permit applications by Enbridge for streambank erosion control on the 41-mile reroute of Line 5, a light crude oil and natural gas pipeline. The 16 people who spoke all voiced opposition, either specifically to the permits or to the reroute itself, and many cast aspersions on the Canadian pipeline corporation.
In addition to ongoing legal challenges, the four permits are among the last hurdles in Wisconsin that Enbridge needs to clear to reroute its pipeline around the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians Reservation, which borders Lake Superior.
Enbridge is under a court order that has been stayed in a federal appeals court to remove the existing Line 5 pipeline from the reservation by June. The Bad River Band has rejected several offers from Enbridge to keep the line on the reservation, and after Enbridge was ordered to remove the line from the reservation, the Band redirected its opposition to the reroute, arguing that it poses an environmental threat to its watershed.
Enbridge is seeking four streambank erosion-control permits for four waterways in Ashland County: an unnamed tributary to the Brunsweiler River, Beartrap Creek, Bay City Creek, and Little Beartrap Creek.
Joe McGaver of Enbridge Environment Projects detailed the work proposed for each of the four sites. He noted that Lake Superior Consulting identified the erosion issues, and the measures to address them are intended to “stabilize the streambanks and prevent continued erosion” below the ordinary high-water marks.
He also noted that Enbridge and the riparian landowners — those owning the land along the waterways — are “co-applicants” and also “co-permittees.”
At a recent Bayfield County Court hearing on April 16 requesting a stay of ongoing work on the reroute, pending a judicial review of approved permits, lawyers representing Bad River and environmental groups contended that under state statute only the riparian owner can seek a permit for modification of the shoreline. But the legal counsel for the DNR responded that it was its practice to use “co-applicants” in similar projects.
Ashley Guardado of Hempstead, New York, representing Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network, urged the DNR to deny the four permits because they would jeopardize the waterways and the “pristine ecosystems that depend on them.”
“Approving these permits would also enable construction activities that pose long-term risks to water quality, habitat, and the broader watershed,” she said, and noted beyond the local creeks and river, the larger concern is the Great Lakes, which hold 20% of the world’s fresh water.
“So I urge you to consider what it really means to jeopardize these waterways and the ecosystems at both a local and a global level, be it encroaching on the tribal sovereignty and the rights of Indigenous nations that are within this territory to exacerbating the climate crisis and deepening our dependence on fossil fuels that move us only further away from the just transition that Wisconsin, the United States and the world very urgently need,” she said.
Gracie Waukechon, a Wisconsin resident, said the DNR shouldn’t approve the permits out of concern for the environment, and also because Enbridge isn’t legally qualified to seek the permits regarding riparian ownership and Enbridge’s history of environmental damage, including the 2010 crude oil spill of nearly 1 million gallons into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.
Skylar Harris, representing Midwest Environmental Advocates (MEA), said her organization would submit detailed written objections to the specific permit application, but addressed the DNR’s interpretation of Wisconsin’s Public Trust Doctrine.
“Riparian ownership language in Section 30.12 of the Wisconsin statutes was created in 1949 pursuant to the public trust doctrine to give landowners the ability to live along navigable waters and engage in limited construction activity that would improve navigation or protect the property from erosion and other hazards,” she said. “Because the Legislature was trying to limit the types of construction that could occur in navigable waters, non-riparians were explicitly excluded from permit eligibility. Enbridge has filed these applications for project permits, which is a non-riparian claiming that easements and co-applicant agreements with landowners are sufficient to get around the clear statutory prohibition against construction by non-riparians.”
She said the DNR supports Enbridge’s position and had “tentatively” made the determination to grant the permits, which, she said, would be “a blatant violation of explicit statutory mandates and a violation of the public’s constitutional right to use and enjoy Wisconsin’s navigable waters,” and would set a precedent for other commercial development and environmental damage.
Jadine Sonoda of Madison said Enbridge had raised concerns for Wisconsin because of issues during its Line 3 construction in Minnesota, where it had pierced an aquifer in Northern Minnesota and had agreed to a $2.8 million legal settlement.
Matthew Bourke of Michigan wondered if the DNR investigated any concerns raised in prior hearings, and he questioned why Enbridge had been allowed to pursue permits when it had been found to be trespassing on the Bad River reservations, and a court case in Michigan is challenging the closing of a section of the pipeline under the Straits of Mackinac.
Patricia Hale, an attorney from Antigo also argued Enbridge didn’t have a right for the permits.
“This is not their (Enbridge) property,” she said of the waterway banks, adding that Enbridge shouldn’t be allowed to request permits based on the easement, because the public has voiced its opposition to Enbridge’s latest permit application for a Line 5 reroute.
Joe Bates, a Bad River tribal elder from Odanah, said Enbridge is endangering Wisconsin waterways by operating a pipeline originally built in 1953.
“This reroute also violates our treaty of 1854,” said Bates. “It (1854 treaty) guarantees us a permanent homeland.”
Bates said the reroute would surround the reservation, requiring members to seek permission from Enbridge to cross it to gather, hunt, or fish in the ceded territories, lands off the reservation where tribal members have rights to pursue resources. At the April 16 court hearing, legal counsel for Enbridge said the corporation would allow permission to tribal members to cross its pipeline for those who have a legal reason to do so.
“I urge you to please deny permits to Enbridge,” said Bates.
Jennifer Boulley, a Bad River member living in Washburn, also noted that just that morning the US Supreme Court ruled the case in Michigan regarding Line 5 under the Straits of Mackinac will stay in a state of Michigan court and not a federal court as Enbridge had requested.
“Were just hoping that the DNR will continue to listen to the people and not the money, so we can save this water for future generations,” she said.
RJ Claire of Ashland County said the focus of the hearing is on specific technical issues, but she encouraged the DNR to consider a broader perspective on potential harm and environmental impact, and she accused the DNR of being complicit in enabling Enbridge to commit “violence” against the environment.
“Again and again and again and again, tribal members have been expressing to the rest of us that what’s happening right now is an act of violence,” she said. “The DNR is participating in enabling the violence of Enbridge. Who among you is willing to start breaking that pattern? Again, I know this is a technical hearing, but I think it’s really, really, really, really important and crucial that we are looking at this in a holistic way. Because I would argue that from when we focus on the technical parts, that’s a form of just dismissing the violence that is occurring.”
Melanie Conners, a Bad Rivers member who said she lived near Bad River and the Kakagon Sloughs, a wetland that has received international recognition due to its environmental niche and wild rice bed for the band, read a definition from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of “environmental justice” as “fair treatment and meaningful involvement of people, regardless of color, race, national origin or income, with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement and environmental law, regulations and policies.”
She questioned why Bad River members had to “bear the weight” of potential oil contamination.
“It’s Bad River tribal members who will be directly impacted,” she said, and added, “I harvest rice every year to sustain my family. How are you allowing this? This is environmental racism. Enbridge cannot guarantee that it will not contaminate our waters, our Kakagon Slough.”
Additional comments will be accepted until May 2. Comments should be either emailed to macaulay.haller@wisconsin.gov or left via voice message at (608) 347-0240 or sent by mail to Macaulay Haller, 101 S. Webster Street, Madison, 53707-7921.
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The Wisconsin Legislature ended its session without taking up proposals to help homeless youth. (Photo by Getty Images)
Among the proposals that died when the Wisconsin Legislature wrapped up its regular session work in March were efforts to help homeless youth get medical care, among other support services. Advocates said at a briefing Wednesday that they will keep pushing for the changes in the next session.
Sen. Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Fox Crossing) and members of the Wisconsin Association for Homeless and Runaway Services (WAHRS) held a press conference in the state Capitol to call attention to the issue.
Joli Guenther, the WAHRS executive director, said that expanding outreach and easy access to resources and support is important for helping homeless youth, adding that youth homelessness is different from adult homelessness. She said WAHRS was started in 1982 to raise awareness and provide for the needs of young people.
“We don’t necessarily see young people visibly on the street. They tend to disappear,” Guenther said. “Often when they find informal resources that allow them to find temporary shelter, so even when their families are not able to provide for their needs, we don’t necessarily see them and meet the needs that are there.”
A 2025 Wisconsin Policy Forum report found that student homelessness hit an all-time high after the COVID-19 pandemic. According to DPI data, there were 20,195 students in Wisconsin public schools who identified as homeless during the 2023-24 school year. That marked a 9.1% increase over the previous year even as the number of enrolled students declined by 1.1% that year.
Guenther said that unaccompanied youth tend to be under-identified in her experience. In 2021, during the pandemic, the number of homeless students recorded by DPI hit a low of 13,449. She said this was partially due to fewer students going to schools.
“My hope for today in having this discussion as we reach the end of the legislative session is that maybe we can start to present a package to help people to understand the needs better,’ Guenther said. “If we have this package of interrelated bills related to the needs of unaccompanied homeless young people… maybe people will get it. Maybe people will understand that we don’t see this population but at the end of the day we’re not meeting the needs of our children.”
Guenther highlighted previous successes, including the passage of 2019 Wisconsin Act 22, which allowed 17-year-old unaccompanied minors to consent to shelter.
“That has been very, very successful in opening up some of our limited resources and removing young people from the immediate dangers of the street,” Guenther said. “We know that if we don’t have ways of better providing for their needs, there are definitely those out there who will do so, and young people will become vulnerable to crime and exploitation as a result of that.”
However, advocates said, there is still work to be done.
Tim Baack, President and CEO of Pathfinders, said Wisconsin has been falling short for years when it comes to dedicating state funds to address youth homelessness. Pathfinders is a Milwaukee-based organization that provides emergency housing and support for homeless youth.
“We pale in comparison to the states that surround Wisconsin in our region, and we know we can do better,” Baack said. Focusing on “legal policies and legislation” is necessary, he added, but “what accompanies that is the resources.”
Gov. Tony Evers proposed $10.5 million to expand independent living services for youth who are aging out of the out-of-home care system and a $7.4 million increase in funding for programs that serve runaway and homeless youth in the 2025-27 state budget. However, the proposals were not included in the bill that passed the Legislature.
“We hope the Legislature will continue to give serious consideration for those recommendations either when the next biennial budget is considered or looking for alternative ways to support the governor and his team to support the runaway youth service providers across the state,” Baack said.
When policymakers return in January 2027, there will be a new governor and the makeup of the Legislature could look quite different. Many Republican lawmakers are retiring, including both top leaders, and Democratic lawmakers hope to win control of the Senate and Assembly.
Advocates highlighted four failed bills this session that they want to see brought back in the next session.
SB 70 would have allowed unaccompanied minors age 14 or older to get medically necessary care without a parent or guardian’s permission if they aren’t under the supervision of a public welfare agency or the Department of Corrections. It received a public hearing in the state Senate this session but did not advance further.
Katie Van Groll, the Home Base director for the Boys & Girls Club of the Fox Valley, said many homeless youth are navigating unstable and unpredictable situations that can make it difficult to access medical care.
“Some youth have left unsafe environments that can involve abuse and neglect. Others could be couch-surfing, staying with a relative or a friend and a shelter or a host home,” Van Groll said. “Requiring parental consent assumes access to that adult, which is often not the reality for these young people. When youth can’t consent to the care that they need, they may delay or avoid seeking medical attention altogether, and then minor health concerns escalate to serious conditions and preventable issues.”
Van Groll noted medically necessary care is not referring to elective procedures, but rather to addressing illnesses and chronic conditions, including asthma, diabetes and immune disorders. She said a lack of access to care can increase emergency room use, long-term health complications and lead to increased public assistance costs.
Van Groll said her organization serves about 70 to 80 youths one-on-one each year and between 2,000 and 4,000 each year in prevention and awareness including providing information at schools.
“Not a single one of those youth is able to access the medical health care,” Van Groll said. “And one thing that we can’t ever speak with them about [in school] is the medical care because they can’t access it, and we don’t want to create more frustration.”
Cabral-Guevara, who coauthored the bill, said she could not speak for her colleagues, but she thinks a lack of understanding and knowledge of the legislation was partially to blame for the failure this session. She said there was not enough support from within her caucus to get it over the finish line in part because some members did not understand what constituted “medically necessary.”
“That legislation is common-sense legislation for me, but what we find is there’s a lot of individuals within this building that don’t do health care,” Cabral-Guevara told the Examiner. “I would like to bring it back again, and I feel that with more education, I think people would be more apt to support this because it is just basic fundamentals.”
The other bills highlighted during the briefing include:
“Some of these solutions don’t cost us anything,” Guenther said, “but they remove barriers that make all of the difference in young people’s lives.”
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The U.S. Capitol on the evening of Sept. 30, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
The race by each party to redraw U.S. House districts in their favor could be headed for a draw after Tuesday’s big win for Democrats in Virginia, though major shifts are still possible before crucial midterm elections in November.
Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that clears the path for the state’s legislature, controlled by Democrats, to redraw congressional district lines to benefit Democrats in 10 of the commonwealth’s 11 U.S. House districts.
That could net the party four new seats in Virginia, though state court cases challenging the proposal are still to be decided.
Former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Florida Democrat who now leads the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University, said the results showed a dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump and the nation’s capital in general.
“It sends a clear message to the administration, to the White House, to Washington, D.C., that they’re not happy with the status quo, with the policies that are coming out of Washington, that they want to see a change,” she said in an interview Wednesday.
After 10 months of bitter back-and-forth that began with Trump urging Texas Republicans to revise their congressional map to help gain seats in the House, neither party has netted a significant advantage.
But the tit-for-tat may have a lasting harmful effect on U.S. democracy, experts said.
If Virginia’s proposal goes into effect, Democrats would be favored in one more House district nationwide than they had been in 2024, according to the nonpartisan election research organization Ballotpedia.
Further changes, including the Florida Legislature potentially redrawing its House map and a U.S. Supreme Court decision to gut the federal Voting Rights Act’s protection of majority-Black districts in Southern states, could tilt the advantage back to the GOP.
Republicans narrowly control the chamber now, 217-212, with one independent and five vacancies after Georgia Democrat David Scott died Wednesday.
The president’s party typically loses House seats in midterm elections, and Trump’s sagging poll numbers and the results of special elections do not suggest anything different this year.
Elected Democrats largely framed the Virginia results as a win for free and fair elections.
“Virginia voters have spoken, and tonight they pushed back against a President who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, wrote on X.
But the entire cycle could deepen political polarization, leading to less compromise and policymaking in Congress and ceding power to the executive branch, Erik Nisbet, the director of the Center for Communication & Public Policy at Northwestern University, said Wednesday.
“There were some quotes today from some leading Democrats about how you can’t bring a knife to a gunfight, and this is the only way to, like, save democracy, and sort of rationalizing it,” he said. “It’s still bad for democracy long term… It means that Congress, long term, is even more polarized and ineffectual.”
Mucarsel-Powell, who represented one of the country’s few competitive House districts, also said redistricting would make legislating more difficult.
“Redistricting doesn’t necessarily help the country overall,” she said. “As we continue to become more polarized, I think that having these maps being redrawn to favor one or the other party is just going to deepen the polarization. I think it makes it more difficult for members to be able to reach consensus. I’ve seen it, right? When you represent a solid red or a solid blue district, there’s really no incentive to compromise.”
Republicans, from Trump on down, complained Wednesday that the result was unfair because it could give Democrats 91% of the U.S. House seats in a state where the party’s most recent presidential candidate gained only 52% of the vote.
In a post to his social media site Wednesday afternoon, Trump said the result was illegitimate — repeating, without evidence, his frequent assertion in elections he has lost that mail ballots were fraudulent — and called for courts to “fix” the result.
“A RIGGED ELECTION TOOK PLACE LAST NIGHT IN THE GREAT COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA!” Trump wrote. “All day long Republicans were winning, the Spirit was unbelievable, until the very end when, of course, there was a massive ‘Mail In Ballot Drop!’ Where have I heard that before — And the Democrats eked out another Crooked Victory!”
But the proposed Virginia map would only even the playing field after Trump initiated a rare mid-decade redistricting cycle last year by asking Texas officials to redraw the state’s districts.
Texas’ new map could net Republicans five more House seats. But its creation kicked off an arms race that included California drawing five new Democratic-leaning districts, effectively neutralizing Texas’ move.
Legislatures in Missouri and North Carolina then voluntarily redrew their maps, while an Ohio constitutional amendment and a Utah Supreme Court decision led to new district lines in those states.
Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, bemoaned the Virginia results but called them a self-inflicted wound. States should stick to redistricting once a decade after a census, he said, blasting the GOP strategy to attempt mid-decade redistricting in some states.
“The GOP will now lose net seats across the country. If you’re going to pick a fight, at least win it. The other side will always fight back,” he wrote. “All this was foreseeable and avoidable. We should not have started this fight.”
Fleischer linked to a post he’d written in August criticizing the GOP effort in Texas as that state geared up for a vote on the new map. “Mid-census change” was not the way to win more seats in the House, he’d said.
National Democrats celebrated.
“House Democrats have crushed Donald Trump’s national gerrymandering scheme,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York wrote on social media Tuesday night. “Maximum warfare, everywhere, all the time.”
Two more decisions could further alter the landscape for U.S. House races before November.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last year in a case challenging a Voting Rights Act provision that has been interpreted to require majority-Black districts in Southern states equal to their population. Louisiana is challenging a lower court ruling that threw out a map in which only one of the state’s six districts was majority-Black, though Black people make up about one-third of the state’s population.
Depending on the scope and timing of the conservative court’s ruling, several safe Democratic seats in the South could be in jeopardy.
And in Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis called the state legislature into a special session, scheduled to begin next week, to consider a redistricting effort and other issues.
Florida Republicans have not fully endorsed a redistricting push, which could ultimately make some incumbents’ districts less reliably red. Gerrymandering relies on spreading a party’s voters across more districts, making some individual races more difficult, especially in a potential wave election year.
“Republicans are pushing back, saying that it’s going to actually lessen the power that they have in some of these districts,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “Because if you have (a district favoring Republicans by five points), with all the overperformance that we’ve seen, including here in the state of Florida, it’s very likely going to favor the Democrats.”
Jeffries in a Wednesday morning news conference practically dared Florida Republicans to dilute their U.S. House districts, comparing the effort to the Texas map that he said was not as Republican as they thought and calling the entire GOP effort a “dummymander” that would backfire.
“F around and find out,” Jeffries said. “If they go down the road of a DeSantis dummymander, the Florida Republicans are going to find themselves in the same situation as Texas Republicans, who are on the run right now.”
“The Republicans are dummymandering their way into the minority before a single vote is cast,” he added. “They started this war, and we’re going to finish it.”
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