A three-judge panel has rejected another lawsuit attempting to throw out Wisconsin's congressional map.
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State Appeals Judge Pedro Colón has entered the 2027 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, becoming the second liberal candidate to launch a campaign for the court this month.
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The Trump administration wants the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to return more than $20 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds provided to private schools during the pandemic.
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The number of people aging in Wisconsin prisons is growing rapidly, according to a new report. A Wisconsin physician who studies aging and care in prison systems talks about what this means for the system and the people in state care.
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The swift pace of the changes highlights how school district leaders rely on referendums to keep their budgets balanced — and how, for many, the ask to voters was a final effort before resorting to significant changes
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You might eat out to relax, but if you're not an active participant in your dining out experience, you could find yourself a glum gourmet. Adam Reiner, author of "The New Rules of Dining Out," stopped by WPR's "The Larry Meiller Show" to explain.
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Hundreds of area Muslims participate in Eid al-Fitr in Brooklyn's Prospect Park in April 2024 in New York City. Republican lawmakers and candidates across the country have escalated their anti-Islam rhetoric in recent months as the midterm elections approach. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Republican lawmakers and candidates across the country have escalated their anti-Islam rhetoric in recent months, a strategy aimed at energizing voters by claiming without evidence that Muslim culture and religious tenets threaten American political values.
Political observers say Republicans are seizing on anti-Islamic sentiment to gin up enthusiasm among their voters as they head into the 2026 midterm elections. It’s been a successful campaign strategy in the past.
Aggressive enforcement tactics have soured many Americans on hard-line immigration policies, once a winning issue for conservatives, and GOP victories on abortion and transgender rights have blunted the electoral power of those issues.
Instead, GOP candidates in some of the highest-profile political races in the country are putting Islam and the nebulous threat of Shariah at the center of their campaigns.
Shariah is a religious code derived from the Quran and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad that addresses moral, spiritual and daily life for Muslims. But the term has become shorthand, in some conservative circles, for anything having to do with Islam or with Islamic extremism.
Critics say conservative politicians have made Muslims a political bogeyman in their fight to hang onto power. Muslims say the rhetoric misrepresents their values and endangers their communities.
“I worry this will harm freedom, which is the very value some of these politicians are claiming to protect,” said Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Akyol is Muslim, and his research focuses on public policy and Islam.
“To think that American Muslims, which make 1% of the whole population, can enforce Shariah or force it on other people, that’s a very exaggerated claim.”
Up and down the ballot, Republicans have spent about $12 million since last year on ads that negatively mention Islam, Muslims or Shariah, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm.
I worry this will harm freedom, which is the very value some of these politicians are claiming to protect.
– Mustafa Akyol, senior fellow at the Cato Institute
Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell, now running for Alabama attorney general, recently released a campaign ad inviting supporters of “radical Islam” to “Allah Akbar your butt all the way back to the Middle East.”
In Georgia, Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, a candidate for lieutenant governor, released an AI-generated campaign ad last month depicting Muslim people invading a suburban neighborhood. In a post on X sharing the video, he described Muslims as “invaders who would rather pillage our generosity than assimilate.”
Officials in Alabama and Oklahoma have quashed efforts by Muslim groups to expand into larger facilities after those proposed developments attracted the attention and ire of conservative politicians. And Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature this year enacted laws allowing a handful of state officials to designate certain groups as domestic terrorist organizations.
At the federal level, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn released a $1.6 million political ad earlier this year that claims “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology” and says “Shariah law has no place in American courts or communities.”
There’s even a Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress, launched last December by Republican Texas Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy. It currently has more than 60 members spanning 25 states, according to Self. He called it “a noble cause to save Western Civilization and fight back against the threat of Sharia” in a January press release.
Akyol, of the Cato Institute, likens the furor to the American panic over communism in the 1950s that culminated in Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to root out communist infiltration in the U.S. government and other spheres of power.
Those efforts “led to the crackdown on public freedoms in America like civil liberties, freedom of speech,” Akyol said. “Luckily that ended, but this seems like a McCarthyism 2.0 era where the issue now is not communism, but Islam.”
Republicans say they’re responding to voter concerns and trying to preempt the possibility that religious or foreign political codes might creep into the U.S. legal system, jeopardizing free speech or due process.
Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard is working with fellow Republican state legislators on a constitutional amendment that would bar courts and municipalities in Oklahoma from using any foreign law or religious code that would undermine the U.S. or Oklahoma constitutions. Similar efforts have been made this year in Arkansas, Missouri and other states.
Bullard said he’s heard from constituents who are concerned about a growing threat of other cultures “trying to forcefully usurp” American culture.
“Those are definitely Eastern ideas that don’t mix with Western culture, and the Constitution is created wholeheartedly on that Western culture concept,” he told Stateline.
He notes that his amendment doesn’t mention Shariah and does not single out Muslims.
Conservatives have been pushing similar state legislation for more than a decade. Since 2010, at least nine states have enacted laws aimed at preventing courts from enforcing foreign legal codes, including a 2014 constitutional amendment in Alabama.
When asked about examples of the kinds of instances he’s trying to prevent, Bullard cited a 2009 case in New Jersey in which a judge refused to give a woman a protective order after her husband repeatedly assaulted her, saying the husband was acting on his religious interpretation of Shariah. The ruling was overturned the following year.
“I think more and more people in Oklahoma are calling on us to protect them from that,” he said.
But even the most vocal proponents of anti-Shariah measures have struggled to explain how it could replace the American legal system or why more laws are needed to curb it. The establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution already prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another, or forcing adherence to a religious code.
Standing at a podium with a sign emblazoned with a line through the words “Sharia Law,” Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis conceded during a news conference earlier this month that there isn’t an immediate threat of Shariah becoming the basis for Florida law.
“Of course that won’t happen any time soon,” DeSantis said. “But the more that we’re able to do to protect against that, I think, is going to benefit Floridians for many, many years.”
The Islamic Academy of Alabama has operated as a K-12 private school near Birmingham for nearly three decades. But in December, local leaders of a nearby suburb denied the school’s request to relocate to a larger facility there. Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican who’s running for governor and who has railed against Islam on the Senate floor and social media, called for the school to move out of Alabama.
School officials declined Stateline’s interview request but said they remain focused on supporting the education, well-being and safety of their students and community. They’ve dropped their current relocation plans.
In Oklahoma, Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond — who is running for governor — elevated a proposed expansion by the Islamic Society of Tulsa into a political issue when he announced an investigation into its funding. City leaders later denied the society’s application; Muslim leaders responded by hosting a community open house at their Tulsa mosque to connect with the community and promote a better understanding of their faith.
And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is challenging Cornyn for the GOP nomination in the state’s Senate race, sued over the proposed development of a large Muslim-centric community north of Dallas. He called it a “radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets” and claimed it was unlawfully reserved only for Muslims.
Although the group initially advertised that sales would be limited to certain people, representatives for the development have since said it is open to anyone.
While some lawmakers have made a distinction in their rhetoric between extremism and the Islamic faith, others have made sweeping, derogatory claims that denigrate and stereotype all Muslims.
Tuberville of Alabama has said: “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult.” U.S. Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has said, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican who’s cosponsoring an anti-Shariah bill in Congress, posted on X in February: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”
While politicians have invoked fears of extremism in their public comments, Akyol said American Muslims are the ones who are most worried.
“If the people who govern your state define you like that, what may come next?” he said. “Maybe a legal step against you, or some fanatic who really believes in that can take his machine gun and attack you.”
Much of the Islamophobic messaging has gone unchecked by other conservatives, a marked departure from previous leadership. In 2001, a few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush visited a mosque in Washington, D.C., and met with Muslim community leaders, declaring “Islam is peace” and condemning retaliation against Muslim Americans.
Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a Republican-sponsored bill into law that allows a few state officials to label certain groups “domestic terrorist organizations.” The new law also bans Florida courts from enforcing religious laws and bars state funds from going to schools affiliated with groups designated as terrorist organizations. It does not specifically mention a religion, but cites Shariah as an example of the kind of religious laws it covers.
“You can have these groups that may not be waging physical war-type jihad,” DeSantis said earlier this month. He warned groups could wage “stealth” or “financial” attacks.
“To me, that’s still jihad and we’ve got to stop it, and this bill provides the structure to be able to do it.”
Critics say such laws also have the potential to harm any organization that finds itself at odds with a current administration.
“That is the danger of these laws, because they are specifically designed to silence political dissent,” said Wilfredo Ruiz, communications director at the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights group. CAIR was one of two groups labeled as terrorist organizations by an executive order DeSantis issued in December.
The Biden administration criticized CAIR for statements made by its leadership after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, but the group denies that it supports terrorism.
CAIR Florida sued over DeSantis’ order, arguing it violated the group’s First Amendment right to free speech. In March, a federal judge blocked the order.
Ruiz said his organization has the resources to continue challenging such laws in court. But he said he worries about smaller groups, including those that aren’t Muslim but might be at risk of being declared a “terrorist group” by whoever is currently in power in Florida.
“Having that executive power with the capacity to name you a terrorist organization before you have been even accused criminally, much less convicted, this is an openly unconstitutional proposal.”
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The family of Alvin Cole and their attorneys outside the federal courthouse in Milwaukee. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Over six years after 17-year-old Alvin Cole was fatally shot by then-Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah, the two sides in a contentious civil case have confirmed that they are close to reaching a confidential settlement deal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
A third jury trial in federal court has been set for early May. Each of the first two trials — both held in 2025 — ended in hung juries, with jurors unable to unanimously decide whether Mensah used excessive force when he shot Cole in February 2020.
The shooting occurred at Mayfair Mall, after a group of teenagers got into an argument. One of the teens flashed a handgun and Wauwatosa police officers responded to a call and encountered the group outside the mall. The teens fled when they saw the police, Cole among them. As Mensah and other officers chased Cole, Cole accidentally shot himself in the arm when the handgun he was carrying went off. Cole fell to the ground as police surrounded him, shouting various commands.
Mensah told investigators that he shot Cole, believing that Cole was raising or pointing the handgun at him. Other officers’ accounts contradicted Mensah’s. An officer who was closer to Cole, David Shamsi, said that neither Cole nor the gun moved after Cole was on the ground. Another officer, Evan Olson said that the gun was pointed at him, even though he was in a different position from Mensah. After the shooting, Olson and Mensah — who said that they were friends on and off the job — went off alone together in a squad car, violating policies which state that officers need to be separated after shootings to avoid contaminating statements.
During the trials, Mensah said that he fired to protect himself and others around him, and that he didn’t want to die. Mensah also testified that he did not remember much of what happened that night. Cole was the third person Mensah had killed on the job during his five years as a Wauwatosa officer. Mensah resigned from the department in 2020 following months of protests over the shooting, and was hired by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department before he retired from law enforcement. Jurors in the case were not allowed to know about Mensah’s two other shootings in 2015 and 2016, less than a year apart.
The terms of the settlement, including the amount awarded to the family, will remain confidential, lawyers said. During the first trial, attorneys representing Cole’s family asked for $9 million, and then $22 million in the second trial.
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U.S. Vice President JD Vance and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., applaud as Britain's King Charles III and and Queen Camilla arrive before he addresses a Joint Meeting of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on April 28, 2026 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kylie Cooper-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — King Charles III did not name President Donald Trump Tuesday when he acknowledged before a joint session of Congress the transatlantic tension between the United States and the United Kingdom, but stressed “America’s words carry weight and meaning” as he reflected on decades of diplomatic ties.
The monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland told lawmakers that from “bitter division” 250 years ago, the two nations “forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential alliances in human history.”
“I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world,” he said.
Charles is the first British king to address a joint session of Congress, and only the second monarch to do so after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, spoke before lawmakers in 1991.
Charles was received with loud unanimous applause from both sides of the aisle — a notable difference from the usual one-party enthusiasm during the president’s annual State of the Union address.
He punctuated his roughly 27-minute speech with laugh lines, including a quip that 250 years for America is “just the other day” for the British.
To whoops and cheers, Charles nodded to the “bold and imaginative rebels with a cause” who declared independence but also “carried forward” the ideals of the Magna Carta, a 13th-century document outlining the protection of rights and property from the monarch.
Both sides of the aisle stood applauding in unison as the king cited U.S. Supreme Court cases that laid the “foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”
But the king also delivered his speech against the ominous backdrop of a breakdown of American support for Ukraine and an ongoing war in Iran, initiated by the United States and Israel, that has disrupted energy supply in the United Kingdom and around the world.
The conflicts “pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own country,” he said.
As the king was still speaking on Capitol Hill, the White House shared on social media a photo of Charles and Trump together under the heading “TWO KINGS” and a crown emoji.
U.S.-U.K. relations have frayed as a result of Trump’s recurrent attacks on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to not join offensive operations targeting Iran.
Trump paused his scathing online screeds against the British government during the king’s first full day of his state visit, which included a 21-gun salute and ceremonial flyover after Charles and Queen Camilla arrived on the White House South Lawn.
Shortly before Charles addressed Congress, Trump took aim on his Truth Social platform at another European leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, accusing him of thinking “it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”
Just over one month into the U.S. campaign in Iran, Trump, on Truth Social, told the U.K. and other allied partners to “Go get your own oil!” from the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he wrote.
Two weeks earlier, Trump attacked NATO allies, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So … this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there.”
Charles recounted in his speech to Congress how the only time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, invoked Article 5 was to defend the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.
The king and Camilla are scheduled to visit the 9/11 Memorial in New York City on Wednesday.
“We stood with you then, and we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” Charles said.
Just under 460 British troops died fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan.
The king’s trip to the U.S. also comes after the high-profile release of millions of records related to the disgraced hedge fund manager and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to Charles’ brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
Mountbatten-Windsor settled outside of court in 2022 with the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and the former British prince of trafficking her for sex.
Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of his royal title of prince and is under investigation in Britain for allegedly sharing confidential government information with Epstein, which came to light in the publicly released files.
The king acknowledged victims of sexual abuse in his speech, according to a palace aide, when he remarked to lawmakers, “In both of our countries, it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives us our collective strength, including to support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”
Answering questions about the king’s address, the palace aide told reporters traveling with Charles, “It was certainly in (his majesty’s) mind to acknowledge victims of abuse, so they are naturally incorporated in this line.”
Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother who has become an activist following his sister’s death last year, was on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a roundtable about Epstein victims ahead of Charles’ visit.
Roberts and the king did not meet.
Charles, a vocal advocate for the environment, is also scheduled to visit Shenandoah National Park in Virginia Thursday to view America’s “extraordinary natural splendor.” The king emphasized to lawmakers the need for a collaborative effort to fight climate change.
“Even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature,” he said.
“We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security,” he said.
Charles also celebrated the shared financial economy between the United States and U.K., highlighting $430 billion in annual trade. Just over a year ago, Trump began a new tariff regime on British goods, and imports from many other trading partners.
Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed the king and queen on the White House South Lawn Monday morning for a ceremony full of pomp and circumstance, including a review of the troops, a distinguished honor for a visiting head of state.
During brief and mostly scripted remarks, Trump highlighted a tree planted on the White House grounds by Elizabeth II in 1991. Trump described the tree as a “living symbol” of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.
“In the centuries since we won our independence, Americans have had no closer friends than the British. We share that same root. We speak the same language, we hold the same values, and together our warriors have defended the same extraordinary civilization under twin banners of red, white and blue,” Trump said.
Trump and Charles met in a closed-door Oval Office bilateral meeting following the ceremony.
The first lady and the queen met with American schoolchildren at the White House tennis pavilion, where the students donned Meta Quest headsets to view several U.K. landmarks, including Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace. The event was part of the first lady’s effort to promote technology in education, according to the White House.
Charles and Camilla are scheduled to attend a state dinner at the White House East Room Tuesday night before heading to New York City Wednesday.
The king and queen are scheduled to visit the small town of Front Royal, Virginia, Thursday, as well as meet Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in Shenandoah National Park, according to the British embassy.
Democrats and pro-democracy organizations held a rally Oct. 16 to call for the creation of an independent redistricting commission. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges.
The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward.
For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections.
A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats.
This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats.
While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission.
Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.
The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal.
Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month.
Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin.
“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”
Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear.
The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.
“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.”
Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”
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The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. senators across the aisle pushed back Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate funding for programs serving disadvantaged students.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended those and other proposed cuts to her agency outlined in Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which calls for $75.7 billion in new discretionary budget authority for the department that would mark a $3.2 billion, or 4.1%, reduction from fiscal 2026 levels.
The administration has taken major steps to dismantle the 46-year-old Department of Education as part of the president’s quest to send education “back to the states.” That effort continues despite much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurring at the state and local levels.
“We’ve been clear: Shifting authority back to the states will not come at the expense of the central federal programs (and) support, much of which predate the department itself,” McMahon told lawmakers at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.
The panel shares jurisdiction over Education Department spending with the corresponding subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The president’s budget request is generally considered a starting point for negotiations, but Congress is responsible for deciding federal spending.
Republican and Democratic senators took particular aim at the administration’s proposal to eliminate Federal TRIO Programs in fiscal 2027.
The Federal TRIO Programs — funded at $1.19 billion this fiscal year — help support groups including low-income students, first-generation college students, individuals with disabilities and veterans.
Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, said she opposes the president’s proposal to eliminate TRIO, noting that these programs have “changed the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students in Maine and across the country.”
The Maine Republican added that TRIO “enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children.”
Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman also emphasized his support for TRIO, noting that in his state, these programs “have been a game-changer in helping low-income and first-generation students not only access higher education, but also succeed once they are there.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley was the first in his family to go to college and said he comes from a “very blue-collar, frontier, homesteading, timber background.”
The Oregon Democrat said it’s from that perspective he believes that “having conscious programs to help people overcome the cultural chasm that exists between blue-collar kids like myself and that college world that you have very little contact on is enormously valuable in America, and the stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive.”
The secretary told the panel that while “there are many instances where the TRIO program has been very beneficial … as we look across the country in how to spend these dollars and how to have similar results by maybe not necessarily focusing students towards college degrees, maybe there’s another way for them to have their path to success.”
McMahon said her agency was in the process of spending “about $2.1 million” for investigating and evaluating the TRIO programs.
In its summary of Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, the department said that TRIO “has failed to meet the vast majority of its performance measures, and studies of program effectiveness have shown that it has not increased college enrollment.”
Meanwhile, McMahon took heat from the leading Democrats on the subcommittee and the broader Senate Appropriations panel over the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the agency.
Part of those efforts include several interagency agreements between Education and the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer many of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the subcommittee, said Education “is transferring the vast majority of its programs to other federal departments, agencies with little experience or expertise or capacity to administer them.”
The Wisconsin Democrat said that instead of “reducing bureaucracy” — a major goal of the administration across the federal government and the department in particular — the transfers are creating “another layer of it.”
She added that “where states previously primarily dealt with the Department of Education, they will now have to deal with multiple federal agencies.”
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, pressed McMahon on the status of the administration mulling the transfer of special education services out of the Education Department amid its dismantling efforts.
The possible move to transfer programs out of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has stoked widespread concern from disability advocates.
McMahon said her department was “still evaluating where those programs would best be located, and we have not made that determination yet.”
“I can assure you that the intent of this administration is not to put these students at risk in any way whatsoever,” McMahon said.
But Murray was not satisfied with the secretary’s response, saying she is “deeply concerned that your answer sounds like you’re still moving ahead — let’s make it clear that will break the law, and it will make it a lot harder for these students with disabilities to get the education and understanding that their country will stand behind them with that.”
James Comey speaks onstage at 92NY on May 30, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday obtained a second grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, long a target of President Donald Trump’s anger for overseeing an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Comey related to a photo he posted on social media of seashells arranged to read “86 47.” Comey took the photo while vacationing in North Carolina last year. The indictment alleges that Comey threatened to harm the president and that he used interstate commerce to transmit the threat when he posted the photo.
An arrest warrant was also issued for Comey. The indictment alleges that a “reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances” would interpret the seashell photo as a serious expression of intent to harm Trump.
Trump supporters have interpreted the photo as a threat against the president, since “86” is a slang term for removing something and “47” could be seen as a reference to Trump as the 47th president. Comey has said the photo wasn’t intended as a call to violence and deleted the post.
“While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute,” acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a Justice Department news conference.
In a video posted online after the indictment, Comey said he was “still innocent” and wasn’t afraid.
“Well, they’re back,” he says at the start of the video.
“It’s really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be,” Comey said. “The good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.”
A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted Comey in September, accusing him of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The allegations relate to his testimony in 2020 about the FBI’s investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. The indictment came days before the statute of limitations ran out.
Comey pleaded not guilty before a federal judge dismissed the case in November, finding the prosecutor in the case had been illegally appointed. The judge also dismissed a separate case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letita James.
The new indictment marked another escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to prosecute Comey and other political enemies. Last week, the Justice Department obtained an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has long angered conservatives.
Hours before the Justice Department announced the indictment, a federal judge in New York ruled that a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by Comey’s daughter, former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, could proceed. Maurene Comey claims she was improperly fired from the Justice Department because of her father or for political reasons.
The new prosecution also comes as Blanche, a personal defense attorney for Trump, leads the Justice Department following the departure of Pam Bondi. Trump has not yet nominated a permanent attorney general.
The Tuesday indictment was signed by Matthew Petracca, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“This is a ridiculous indictment against James Comey. The Department of Justice will lose in court, again,” U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, wrote on social media.
At the news conference, Blanche fielded skeptical questions from reporters about how the case came together and why the criminal case wasn’t brought until nearly a year after the post. He refused to discuss evidence in the case, saying that would be unfair to Comey and prosecutors.
“You are not allowed to threaten the president of the United States of America,” Blanche said. “That’s not my decision, that’s Congress’ decision.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a press conference at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, April 28, 2026. Standing center is Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and at right is Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make changes to a Senate-passed bill that would end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, a move that will further delay funding and prolong the stalemate that began in mid-February.
The holdup could again interrupt paychecks for workers at the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which are part of DHS. Huge backups in airline security lines resulted in March when TSA officers went without pay for weeks until the administration scrambled to reprogram funds.
Johnson, R-La., has chosen not to negotiate potential tweaks in the funding bill with Senate Democrats, who will be needed to advance it if the House makes alterations.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference the bill that’s stalled in the House doesn’t “need tweaks.”
“They’re just stuck. So they come up with, ‘We need some technical changes,’” he said. “Hold up national security for technical changes? It’s absurd. They can pass the bill right now.”
Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during a brief interview she was “flabbergasted” by Johnson’s comments.
She added during the press conference she has “no idea what technical changes they’re looking at.”
The Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security in late March and again in early April. Johnson hasn’t put it to the House floor for a vote, blocking it from becoming law.
The legislation doesn’t include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, a compromise negotiated after Republicans and Democrats were unable to broker agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement operations.
Republicans plan to provide upwards of $70 billion in additional spending for ICE and Border Patrol in a party-line budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming weeks.
Johnson said last week he believes the “sequencing is important” on when each of the two bills becomes law. But time is running out for the tens of thousands of federal workers, who are about to miss out on their paychecks once again.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement the executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this month to pay all DHS employees despite the funding lapse can only stretch so far.
“That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May,” Mullin said. “My pay roll through DHS is just over 1.6 billion dollars every 2 weeks so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens there is no emergency funds after that.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he’s working with House GOP leaders to “massage” the DHS funding bill in hopes it will become law sometime soon.
“I’m very sympathetic,” he said. “We talked last night and he’s got to manage his challenges there. We have to manage our challenges here. But one way or the other, we’ve got to get these agencies funded.”
The disconnect between House Republicans and their Senate GOP counterparts on when to fund DHS is just one of several challenges party leaders are attempting to address this week.
“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House. But, you know, it’s a unique situation. We’ve got very narrow margins and people with real strong opinions,” Thune said. “So it’s going to take, obviously, I think, the heavy involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose. But we’re trying as best we can to ensure that we can get all of these issues across the finish line and ultimately on the president’s desk.”
Republican leaders will need the support of their own members as well as at least some Democrats in order to get major legislation, including the DHS funding bill, to Trump.
But as of midday Tuesday, it didn’t appear they’d looped in key negotiators on possible changes to the Senate-passed spending bill.
Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of funding DHS, said she didn’t know what changes House GOP leaders wanted to make.
“I am not aware. I just know that we need to find a pathway forward,” she said. “And nobody should be leaving here, or certainly flying off to (congressional delegation trips), until we do.”
Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to leave on Thursday for a week-long break.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the DHS funding panel, said House Republicans hadn’t reached out to him or his staff.
“I don’t know why he’s making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said. “Our bill, which passed the Senate 100 to zero, would pass the House easily.”
Jute Lake in Wisconsin's Northern Highland-American Legion National Forest. The children who brought the lawsuit argued they were being deprived of their constitutional right to enjoy Wisconsin's natural areas. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
A Dane County judge dismissed a lawsuit from 15 Wisconsin children who had challenged laws they argued made climate change worse and violated their constitutional rights.
The lawsuit was filed in August by the groups Our Children’s Trust and Midwest Environmental Advocates against the state Public Service Commission and Legislature.
The suit argued that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening.
The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination.
Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require.
In a decision issued last week, Judge Julie Genovese said she’s sympathetic to the children’s argument but that the lawsuit was asking her to weigh in on a fundamentally political, not legal, question.
“While the court is sympathetic to the youths and admires their willingness to access the courts in their quest to protect the planet, I conclude that the case must be dismissed because environmental policy is a nonjusticiable political question,” she wrote.
Attorneys for the Legislature had also argued that the children didn’t have standing to bring the case, pointing to a federal court decision in a similar case in California.
But in other states similar cases have had more success. A group of Montana children successfully sued to protect their right to a clean environment in 2024.
Tony Wilkin Gibart, MEA’s executive director, told Wisconsin Public Radio he believes there’s a strong case for the ruling to be appealed.
“Youth plaintiffs are frustrated,” he said. “They’re also incredibly determined and have expressed a lot of resolve to continue this fight.”
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Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colon announced Tuesday he's running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2027. (Photo Courtesy of Pedro for Supreme Court)
Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón announced Tuesday he’s running to replace retiring Justice Annette Ziegler on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year.
Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico when he was 10 years old. He was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Assembly and to sit on the state’s appeals court.
He was appointed to the Milwaukee County Court by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2010 and then reelected three times. He was appointed to the District I Court of Appeals by Gov. Tony Evers in 2023.
Colón said in a news release that his experience moving to Wisconsin and decades in the law make him qualified to sit on the Supreme Court.
“I came to Milwaukee at ten years old, not speaking a word of English. I know what it feels like to stand before a system that was not built for you,” Colón said. “For 15 years on the bench, I have made sure every person who walks into my courtroom gets the same thing: a listening ear and a fair shot. That is exactly what I will do on the Supreme Court.”
Colón got his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and has two daughters.
He is the second liberal-leaning judge to enter the race to replace the conservative former Chief Justice Ziegler, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced her candidacy earlier this month.
A liberal victory in 2027 would establish a 6-1 majority on the Court, leaving Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally been a swing vote and sided with the Court’s liberals, as the lone conservative on the bench.
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Milwaukee Ald. Peter Burgelis, shown here in a photo from his campaign site, has announced he'll seek the Democratic nomination to run for Congress in Wisconsin's 1st District. (Campaign website photo)
A Milwaukee alder is throwing his hat in the ring to seek the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, saying that he’s been told he’ll get aggressive financial support in challenging the Republican incumbent.
The announcement is getting pushback from a Democratic Party-aligned union group that has endorsed another Democrat in the district.
The newest entrant, Peter Burgelis, said that he was first approached a few months ago by Democratic “party members, not party leadership, but people that care about our state” who didn’t think any of the other 1st District Democrats could beat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville). He formally entered the race Sunday.
“What it will take to get him out of office is someone who can raise attention nationally, raise money on a national level and attract national attention to the race, that makes this the top 10 race for Democrats to support,” Burgelis told the Examiner Monday.
Burgelis is a mortgage loan officer who was elected to the Milwaukee County Board in 2022, then ran for and won a Milwaukee Common Council seat in 2024. He doesn’t live in the 1st CD and acknowledged in an interview Monday that could make him a target in attack ads.
He said he decided to enter the race after looking at the fundraising data for the other Democrats who will be competing in the August primary to challenge Steil.
“What I was hoping to see in the first quarter financial report is one of the candidates break out strong with a war chest that would be able to go to bat against Bryan Steil, attract national attention, attract national money, and there just wasn’t anyone that did that,” Burgelis said.
This year’s 1st CD Democratic contest has drawn more hopefuls for the nomination than any year in recent memory. Until Burgelis’ entry, the contest had appeared to coalesce around four people.
Among those four is emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman, who announced his candidacy in August.
John Drew, a retired United Auto Workers union leader who chairs the UAW’s statewide political action council, told the Examiner Monday that the council endorsed Berman after distributing questionnaires, conducting interviews and assessing the campaigns of the Democratic hopefuls.
Berman’s background as an ER nurse and as a union member helped drive the endorsement. “He’s somebody who cares deeply about the issues that affect working people,” Drew said. “And we saw that he was running a strong campaign. He was raising more money than any of his opponents, and we felt he was the best candidate to take on Bryan Steil.”
Federal Election Commission reports filed through March 31 show that Berman has collected a total of $426,671 and spent $286,071, with $146,600 on hand. The nearest competitor, Randy Bryce, has collected $45,618 and spent $36,854.
Burgelis, however, told the Examiner Monday that he considers Berman’s fundraising and cash on hand too far behind Steil, who has more than $5.5 million on hand, to make him competitive in the November election.
Burgelis’ opening campaign salvo largely echoes the issues that the rest of the Democratic field in the 1st District — as well as in Wisconsin and nationwide — have been centering in the approaching midterm elections
“Gas is up, groceries are up, healthcare, utilities — everything’s more expensive because of Bryan Steil’s votes to promote the Trump agenda,” Burgelis said. “They’re cutting Medicaid and food assistance in exchange for trillion-dollar tax cuts. That’s not something Wisconsin voters support. Bryan Steil is in it to benefit his billionaire buddies.”
Burgelis said he was first approached a few months ago, by “a number of people,” including former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.
He said initially he was asked if his aldermanic district overlapped with the 1st CD. Burgelis said the congressional district is about a mile away.
“Months later the conversation came back to — ‘We need someone who can win and beat Bryan Steil. No one’s coming out of the pack,’” Burgelis said. He added that he was told that the upcoming quarterly fundraising reports “aren’t going to be strong enough,” was asked, “would you consider running?” and decided to enter the race.
“I had conversations with many Democrats and other political leaders before making my decision to run,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “I got broad agreement that someone with a successful political record and who could attract national attention and national money would be needed to beat [Steil].”
He said, “The opportunity to flip the seat and attract national attention and national money is now. Nobody running now can do that.”
Asked about his role in recruiting Burgelis, Tate said in an email message, “Peter asked me about running a while back and I encouraged him to do so. He’s a hard worker, a good progressive, and we need a strong candidate to take on Steil. I don’t have any other color or the like to add.”
Burgelis said his review of past election results gave him confidence that the seat could be flipped to the Democrats.
“The residency thing, I think, is certainly something that a GOP campaign ad is going to harp on in November and October,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “But right now, the goal for Democrats is to get the best candidates through the primary.”
An Urban Milwaukee report April 21 that Burgelis was considering the race noted that Wisconsin law requires members of Congress to live in the state, but does not require them to live in their district.
“The congressional district is a mile from my aldermanic district, and people and neighbors in my district care about the same things that everyone else in Southeastern Wisconsin cares about — life is unaffordable anymore,” Burgelis said.
He said the absence of local elected officials or state lawmakers from the district in the race tells him that “no one sees that they can bring in the national attention or national money needed to have a successful race against an incumbent Republican.”
Drew, the UAW leader, said he spoke with Burgelis after first learning he might run and asked the alder to walk through his reasoning. Burgelis didn’t convince him, however.
“I thought it was a terrible idea,” Drew said. “It seemed like for party insiders a chance to install a manufactured candidate instead of looking at people in the 1st CD — like Mitch Berman — who live there, who are organic candidates, who have a great profile.”
Berman has “dedicated time to campaigning for that office,” Drew added. Ignoring that is “an indication that there are people in the Democratic Party that have not learned anything from our defeats — that a working class candidate who is fighting for bread and butter economic issues is the type of candidate we need to win, not only the 1st CD but in general.”
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