A quarter-century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who are elderly or live with disabilities and need long-term care have a right to get those services at home instead of in a hospital or nursing home.

Now advocates fear that protection could be pulled away, and with it, government support for the care of people with disabilities in their homes or in the community.

The Supreme Court’s Olmstead ruling in 1999, combined with a series of federal laws going back to 1973, “have changed what it means to be a person with a disability,” says Jenny Price, executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities.

“People just went away, out of their family homes,” Price says. “It is because of these protections that are in place that that doesn’t happen now.”

The Olmstead decision’s author, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, wrote that “unjustified institutional isolation of persons with disabilities is a form of discrimination” under the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, and that the law  gives them the right to live in a “less restrictive setting.”

Then-President Bill Clinton called on states to adopt more community-based services and enable people with disabilities to obtain care and services outside institutions as much as possible. Subsequent administrations continued in that direction, including taking legal action to require states to expand community care options.

A June 18 opinion from the U.S. DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel reverses course. The opinion “concluded states may disregard decades of Supreme Court precedent and ensuing regulations mandating integration of individuals with disabilities into home or community settings,” Bloomberg Law reported.

Price says advocates are concerned that the opinion signals the Trump administration won’t enforce the right of people with disabilities to be integrated into the wider community that was underscored in Olmstead.

Along with that memo, the federal Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services has been focusing on Medicaid coverage for home- and community-based services, HCBS for short, and suggesting it is a source of fraud — a claim rejected by outside Medicaid experts.

“All of these things are happening at the same time,” Price says. With CMS warning states about fraud investigations, “a lot of states are figuring out how to limit home and community based services. It just kind of makes it more likely that there won’t be as much care at home.”

The DOJ memo, “says to states if you don’t have the home care people need to live in the community safely, the federal government isn’t going to care about that,” Price says — nor will it enforce the principle of community integration as it has in the past.

The two women who brought the 1999 Supreme Court case lived with intellectual disabilities as well as mental health diagnoses. Both of them “were in and out of a psychiatric institution but there was no dispute that their needs could appropriately be met in community-based programs,” American University law professor Robert Dinerstein wrote for the American Bar Association in 2025.  

“Needing help or support to live the life that you choose shouldn’t be a reason for the government to take you out of the community, or away from living the life you want,” Price says.

Lives changed for people with disabilities

Stacy Ellingen has a form of cerebral palsy, a result of complications during her birth, that affects all of her muscles. The 41-year-old uses a power wheelchair and technological aids to help her communicate.

Ellingen also has an active life in the community. She has a journalism degree, is a graphic designer and lives on her own in an apartment in Oshkosh. And she manages an online community for people with disabilities, the Self-Determination Network.

Wisconsin’s IRIS program, which enables her to hire caregivers and is covered through Medicaid, makes it possible for her to live in a home of her own where she receives daily care.

“Thanks to the services and supports I receive through Medicaid, I’m able to lead a successful life and be an active member of my community,” Ellingen told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message.

With her IRIS caregivers, she doesn’t have to depend on her parents, now in their 70s, although they are able to provide backup help.

“I need assistance with all of my basic needs such as eating, toileting, showering, and dressing,” Ellingen wrote. “I literally rely on assistance from caregivers for everything from getting out of bed each morning, to getting dressed, to using the restroom multiple times a day, to eating each meal, to showering and getting back into bed every night.”

Carl Schulze was 27 when he broke his neck in a fall in 2007 after a night of partying. Surgery and two months in the hospital enabled him to survive, but the injury left him a quadriplegic.

 Now 45, Schulze lives near Neenah in Winnebago County. In April he was elected to the Winnebago County Board.

“I can’t get in and out of my wheelchair on my own,” Schulze said in a phone interview. “I can feed myself, but I still need help having my food made.”

He’s been able to live independently thanks to home healthcare workers whom he hires through Medicaid.

The DOJ memo angered him. “The federal government wants to tell the states that they’re not going to enforce it if the states stop funding community-based services. That’s my home health aides,” Schulze said.

In August 2025 Schulze rode his wheelchair to Madison to call attention to home healthcare workers’ low pay and urge lawmakers to support increases in their wages. He said he worries now about having to go to an assisted living home because he’s had trouble finding enough home healthcare workers.

Better care at lower cost

Advocates and people with disabilities say care in the community helps the person thrive and have a more fulfilling life — its most important benefit

Ellingen has lived with disability from birth but has never had to live in an institution, and she can’t imagine having to do so now.

“I know that my needs are pretty high which is concerning when talk of putting people with disabilities back in institutions comes up,” she wrote, in response to a question about the DOJ memo. “Personally, after all the hard work my family and I have done to get me to where I am today, I can’t fathom being forced into an institution.”

In addition to being better overall for the person, Price says, “If we were providing that care the way we used to, it would cost a lot more.”

Advocates say there’s still another problem: There simply aren’t institutions available to house people who are now able to live in the community.

“It’s not as if tomorrow suddenly everyone could go someplace,” Price says. “Our concern always with all of these things going on is, does it mean some people have nowhere to go?”

Without services provided by the state, care would fall on the shoulders of family members.

“There’s so much unpaid caregiving that’s already going on,” Price says. “That burden might increase.”

Hundreds of people fill a downtown street for a protest, waving signs and chanting as they march past businesses and government buildings. Overhead, a police drone records video of the crowd. Nearby traffic cameras and license plate readers capture faces, vehicles and movements along the route.

With artificial intelligence, experts say, hours of footage can be analyzed in minutes, making it easier for police to track or target a participant long after the demonstration ends.

As law enforcement agencies increasingly embrace AI, some civil liberties advocates, legal scholars and policing experts warn that the technology could amplify surveillance, introduce hidden biases into investigations and make it harder to challenge evidence in court. They also worry about a future in which AI takes on a more active role in policing and criminal investigations.

“It’s especially concerning sort of the ways that these tools could supercharge that kind of surveillance and enforcement,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, the director of the liberty and national security program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy organization at the New York University School of Law. Levinson-Waldman has written extensively about the risks of police surveillance and the unregulated use of AI in policing.

Artificial intelligence in policing is not new. For decades, law enforcement agencies have used data-driven and automated tools, including facial recognition systems, automated license plate readers, predictive policing models and video analytics that can flag objects or activity in recorded footage.

What is changing is the speed, scope and complexity of those tools. As police departments accumulate growing volumes of digital evidence — from body camera footage and surveillance video to jail calls, social media records and case files — AI is increasingly being used to help sort, search and analyze that information.

“AI is going to basically be able to sort through otherwise overwhelming amounts of data in ways that we just haven’t seen yet, and give police and prosecutors and the government a lot more power over us in ways that I think will be deeply uncomfortable for many of us,” said Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University and the author of “Your Data Will Be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self-Surveillance,” a book published this year.

Cris Moore, a computer scientist and professor at the Santa Fe Institute, a research and education center, said the technology is advancing faster than agencies, regulators and courts are able to fully assess its implications, raising questions about transparency, accountability and the role automated systems should play in policing decisions.

“It’s fair to say that the speed at which technologically created evidence has been adopted, and the aggression with which it’s being pushed makes it hard for the legal community to keep up,” Moore said.

State legislatures and police departments are still developing rules to govern how AI can be used in public safety settings. While some agencies have adopted internal policies or vendor-specific guidance, there is no consistent national framework, and state-level approaches remain limited and uneven.

At least two states, California and Utah, have recently enacted laws regulating the use of generative AI in police report writing, requiring disclosure when AI is used and adding safeguards around accuracy and oversight.

More broadly, more than a dozen states have passed laws regulating related technologies such as facial recognition, drone surveillance and automated license plate readers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Emerging tech

Some of the major companies offering AI-powered tools for law enforcement include Axon, Motorola Solutions, TRULEO, Flock Safety, Clearview AI and others. Their products can search body-worn camera footage, analyze large datasets, review digital evidence and case files and identify potential suspects through facial recognition.

Some of these systems are built into centralized platforms that are able to pull and search for data from sensitive databases and police records.

Mark43, a cloud-based software company serving more than 300 public safety agencies, offers two AI-powered tools. ReportAI helps officers draft reports using information from dispatch records and body camera footage, while BriefAI summarizes case information for investigators and supervisors.

Police agencies can choose which AI features to enable and who can access them, and the system maintains audit logs of AI-assisted activity. Mark43 told Stateline that dozens of agencies are using, testing out  or evaluating the AI features.

“Our core mission is to help responders spend less time on administrative work, so that they can spend more time serving in their communities,” said Wendy Gilbert, Mark43’s senior vice president of product.

Some experts are wary of AI being used for decisions that could affect a person’s rights or freedom, such as identifying suspects, recommending enforcement actions or influencing arrests. Critics warn that AI-generated outputs can make mistakes, reflect biases in underlying data and create a risk that officers or investigators place too much weight on the technology’s recommendations.

They also argue that many AI systems operate in ways that are difficult for the public — and sometimes even officers — to fully understand.

One source of concern is the possible advent of “agentic policing.” Future technologies could integrate body-camera footage, camera networks and other data sources into a single system capable of generating investigative leads, identifying potential suspects or suggesting connections between cases.

Even if humans remain responsible for final decisions, critics say, such systems could shape investigative judgments in ways that make it more difficult to understand how conclusions were reached.

“All that data is going to be dumped into an AI model, and they’re going to query it to say who’s the most likely suspect,” said Ferguson of George Washington University. “The AI is going to be running the agentic analysis of it and come up with the answer, and then police and prosecutors have to kind of work backwards to see if it’s accurate.”

Ferguson warned that this flips the traditional investigative process on its head.

“We’ve never started with an answer and made people work backwards,” he said. “There are very real constitutional, statutory and practical risks with this new model of agentic policing.”

AI companies and some law enforcement agencies argue the technology is designed to assist officers, not replace them. They emphasize that officers are responsible for reviewing, verifying and approving AI-generated information, and that the tools are intended to reduce administrative work and help people navigate large volumes of data more efficiently.

“AI should increase accountability, not reduce it, and so we’re doing everything in our will to provide transparency, governance and human control,” said Zach Barden, the lead product manager for AI at Mark43.

In recent years, a growing number of police officers across the country have been accused of misusing AI-powered tools, including automated license plate reader systems, available through their departments to track people for personal reasons.

In April, a former Costa Mesa, California, police officer pleaded guilty to using law enforcement databases and Flock Safety cameras to monitor his wife, a mistress and several romantic rivals. Similar allegations have surfaced in Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Wisconsin.

Flock Safety, one of the nation’s largest providers of automated license plate readers, uses roadside cameras to capture images and video of passing vehicles, including license plates and basic vehicle details, and store them in searchable law enforcement databases.

Some communities have reconsidered their use of automated license plate reader systems, with at least 30 cities ending or canceling contracts since early 2025 amid growing concerns about surveillance and data sharing, NPR reported in February.

A Flock Safety representative was not available for an interview with Stateline before publication. In a May blog post, the company said misuse of its system is rare and noted that permanent audit logs help identify and investigate improper access.

The company said the camera network has helped agencies recover missing people, connect cases across jurisdictions and identify suspects more quickly.

Reshaping public safety operations

While some law enforcement agencies have moved forward with early deployments, others are taking a more cautious approach as they assess potential benefits and risks.

In Maryland, the Montgomery County Police Department, one of the state’s largest law enforcement agencies, is in the early stages of exploring potential uses of AI, including tools to support non-emergency call handling, translation and transcription services, and report writing to reduce administrative workload and improve efficiency.

“We want to bring technology to policing, but we need to make sure that we do it safe(ly), we do it efficiently, and that when we do do it, we’re setting the community and ourselves up for success,” said Capt. Cody Fields, the director of the police department’s media and public information division.

In Arkansas, officials are developing the Arkansas Criminal Intelligence Network, a centralized cloud platform designed to connect data across police agencies in the state and support the use of advanced AI-powered analytical tools.

In Hawaii, the Maui County Council earlier this month approved a $1.7 million expansion of high-tech policing tools, including cameras and drones supported by AI to assist with real-time monitoring and emergency response. Last year, the Honolulu Police Department announced a pilot program with Axon, which offers a generative AI feature that helps draft police reports using video and audio transcriptions from body-worn cameras.

Legal and evidentiary concerns

Police reports often play a critical role in investigations and court proceedings, and some experts warn that errors introduced by AI systems could have significant legal consequences if they go undetected.

Errors introduced by AI systems, including inaccuracies, omissions or misinterpretations of context and language, could influence how evidence is understood by investigators, prosecutors and judges.

Experts and industry leaders generally point to a few safeguards: clear disclosure when AI is used in reports, mandatory human verification of all AI-generated text, regular independent auditing of tools, and training for law enforcement and legal stakeholders on how the systems function and how to trace outputs back to raw audio, video and other source evidence.

Those recommendations align with a framework released earlier this year by the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice, which calls for rigorous independent validation of AI systems, enforceable procurement standards, ongoing performance monitoring, and clear human oversight to ensure operators can override AI-generated outputs.

“The pace of change is really pretty dramatic, and there’s a lot of energy and churn and attention to these issues,” said Jesse Rothman, the director of the Council on Criminal Justice’s task force on artificial intelligence. “The opportunities and the risks are really serious.”

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

A new lawsuit challenging a logging project in Oregon threatens to unravel the management plans governing hundreds of millions of acres of federal public land.

At stake are thousands of leases and permits covering billions of dollars of economic activity — including mining, drilling, grazing, logging, ski resorts, wind and solar projects, outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. If successful, the lawsuit could throw the management of huge swaths of the West into chaos.

Some experts fear the new legal uncertainty around federal agencies’ management authority could unleash a tsunami of lawsuits targeting everything from mining to the conservation of wildlife habitat.

“They’ve opened Pandora’s Box here,” said Susan Jane Brown, the attorney who filed the lawsuit and serves as principal at Silvix Resources, a nonprofit environmental law firm.

“When you throw that whole system into chaos, it’s a problem whether you’re the oil and gas industry or the timber industry or someone who wants to take a fall hunting trip. There’s a lot at stake here.”

The legal battle stems from Republican lawmakers’ recent use of the Congressional Review Act, a previously obscure tool, to push for more mining and drilling on public lands overseen by the federal Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service.

Under President Donald Trump, Congress has aggressively used the review power granted by the 1996 law to revoke decisions made during the Biden administration, including financial regulations, energy efficiency standards and auto emissions rules.

Some legal experts contend that by using the law to target public land policy, Congress unwittingly invalidated hundreds of land use plans, along with decades worth of permits and management decisions. The Oregon lawsuit is the first to test that theory in court — but public lands advocates don’t expect it to the be the last.

“This is incredibly destabilizing for anyone that cares about public lands, whether you care about those as an industrial developer or a wilderness advocate,” said John Ruple, research professor of law at the University of Utah’s Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources, and the Environment.

Over the past year, legal experts, agency veterans, conservation groups and industry leaders have warned that Congress was using the Congressional Review Act in a way that could undermine land use plans across the country. Oil and gas drillers could have their permits challenged in court. Ranchers could lose their leases. And understaffed federal agencies would have to redraft hundreds of plans that typically take years to complete.

“This has been flying under the radar,” said Michael Carroll, a land management campaign director with the Wilderness Society, an environmental group. “[Congress] basically opened themselves up to multiple lawsuits from any number of stakeholders calling into question whether or not an agency has the authority to issue permits.”

The Congressional Review Act

The three-decade-old Congressional Review Act requires new regulations issued by federal agencies to be submitted to Congress before taking effect. Congress then has a review period of 60 working days during which it can vote to revoke them.

This review power was rarely invoked until Trump’s first term, when Republicans used it to overturn 16 regulations. The GOP has been even more aggressive in Trump’s second term, overturning 23 rules so far, including conservation standards for water heaters, overdraft lending regulations and restrictions on pollutants in tire manufacturing

Until recently, management plans for federal public lands were not considered “rules” subject to congressional review under the law. Agencies have issued well over 100 such plans since 1996 without ever submitting one to Congress. Those documents guide the work of agency officials who oversee specific areas of land, often covering millions of acres.

Created after years of public meetings and local feedback, they determine which landscapes will be leased for oil and gas drilling, protected for endangered species or open for off-road vehicles, along with a multitude of other uses.

But last year, Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan advisory agency for Congress, to affirm a sweeping new view of the Congressional Review Act. The office found that certain management plans were subject to review because their land use decisions “prescribed policy,” and determined that lawmakers’ queries about those plans had opened the 60-day review “clock” in each instance.

Using this new interpretation, Republicans in the past two years have revoked plans that restricted mining and oil production on federal lands in Alaska, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming.

But the repercussions could go well beyond those specific plans.

None of the plans issued by federal land managers over the past 30 years was ever submitted for review, because no one at the time considered them to be rules. In other words, hundreds of plans covering millions of acres of land could be deemed invalid under the new congressional interpretation.

Oregon lawsuit

Now, a lawsuit in Oregon will put that argument to the test. Cascadia Wildlands, a conservation group in the Pacific Northwest, has filed a complaint challenging a timber harvest on Bureau of Land Management land in western Oregon. That logging project was approved under a management plan that was issued in 2016.

Since Congress now considers such plans to be rules, the plaintiffs argue, the 2016 plan never took effect because it was never submitted to Congress.

Cascadia Wildlands has fought numerous legal battles over logging projects approved by the Bureau of Land Management. If the lawsuit over the management plan is successful, said Nick Cady, the group’s legal director, the same theory would give them leverage to block any logging project issued under the 2016 plan.

“They let the genie out of the bottle,” Cady said. “Instead of just letting [the Congressional Review Act] move forward with whatever Republicans choose to select, it’s worth curbing that by pointing out that it can point both ways.”

If the plan is struck down, activists of all types could use that precedent to challenge any activity on public land governed by a management plan that hasn’t been reviewed by Congress.

“It is a target-rich environment if our lawsuit is successful, and even if it’s not successful we’ve already demonstrated that there’s a lot of interest here,” Brown said. “This is what happens when you overturn longstanding precedent and throw spaghetti at the wall.”

Cady and Brown said they hope their case compels Congress to revise the Congressional Review Act to exempt public land management plans.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — Activists rallied, danced and marched in the nation’s capital Saturday as they laid out their vision for the future of the United States beyond this year’s semiquincentennial. 

 

Speakers and performers at the Next250 rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, June 27, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The Next250 demonstration, organized by a coalition of advocacy groups, featured a massive “Declaration of Interdependence” requiring more than a dozen people to hold it during a march past the northern barricaded perimeter of the White House, where President Donald Trump was present this weekend.

Event organizers scheduled the rally to counter the Trump administration’s Freedom 250 programming, which is taking place on the National Mall over several weeks.

The few hundred rallygoers convened for nearly four hours in McPherson Square before marching toward the White House via the former Black Lives Matter Plaza, a pedestrian-only zone created by the city in June 2020 during unrest after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

The plaza was repainted  in March 2025 under the order of Mayor Muriel Bowser after Trump took office and Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., introduced legislation in Congress saying it had to be redone or the district would lose federal funding. 

 

Causes represented ran the gamut: advocacy for stricter gun laws, a $25 federal minimum hourly wage, universal voting rights for the formerly incarcerated, and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

 

Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage and leader of the Living Wage for All coalition, said lobbying for higher wages is “maybe the biggest” priority of the Next250 platform.

“For the last several years, we’ve been thinking ahead about wanting to use the 250th anniversary of the country as a moment to declare our unity as a people around a set of values and policies,” Jayaraman said.

“We’re often told we’re too polarized to get anything done, but the truth is that we actually know that we agree as a people across red, blue, and purple states that everybody who works deserves to earn enough to feed their families. Everybody who sends their children to school should be able to do that without them being shot up by assault weapons. Everybody wants a planet to live on, and a climate we can live in.”

 

Jayaraman praised Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., for introducing a bill on June 25 to raise the federal minimum wage to $25 an hour. 

Murphy was joined in the legislation by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Andy Kim, D-N.J., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. A companion bill in the House is sponsored by U.S. Reps. Delia Ramirez, and Jesús “Chuy” García, both Illinois Democrats, Analilia Mejia, D-N.J., and Lateefah Simon, D-Calif.

Clara, a 56-year-old Mexican immigrant from Queens, New York, who did not want to share her last name for fear of being targeted, said she’s worried about the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on birthright citizenship. Trump ordered the end of birthright citizenship, a right granted in the Constitution, upon beginning his second term.

“As a mother of U.S. citizen children, that worries me about the future of the country. I have a U.S. citizen daughter, and I think that one of those federal changes could affect other immigrant families,” Clara said through an interpreter, Kimberly Vega, 27, of Staten Island, New York.

Both sat with Las Doñas, an advocacy group for women immigrants that has chapters throughout the U.S.

 

Reymane Sanders, 36, of New Haven, Connecticut, traveled to the rally with the organization Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People & Families Movement to advocate for restoring the right to vote across the U.S. for convicted felons. Sanders served 17 years in prison.

“Typically I definitely support (the cause) when it comes to filling out petitions, but this will be the first time that I actually put my body, my mind, everything all into the whole movement,” said Sanders. 

The Next250 demonstration was collectively organized by the separate organizations All of US, Next 250, Get Free and 50501.

A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.

A list obtained by Stateline of canceled grants includes those awarded to universities, community organizations, city and state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates in states such as Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Texas and West Virginia. The grants were canceled two years before their expiration dates because the programs did not align with agency priorities, according to one of the grantees who received a termination notice.

The program is part of the agency’s Office of Population Affairs and is a “national, evidence-based grant program that funds diverse organizations working to prevent teen pregnancy across the United States,” according to the HHS website. The agency provides funding to programs that develop and evaluate innovative approaches to prevent teen pregnancy as well as to prevent sexually transmitted infections among adolescents, and to promote positive behaviors.

Ayana Bradshaw, president and CEO of AccessMatters in Philadelphia, told Stateline her organization received the termination notice of its $1.2 million grant on Friday, and it was effective the same day. Bradshaw said the letter cited a misalignment with agency priorities, specifically that the program “normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.”

AccessMatters’ Adolescent Health Initiative is entirely funded by the federal grant and provides free sexual and reproductive health programs to more than 1,100 teens between the ages of 13 and 19. The program provides information, education and referrals for healthcare as needed.

“This is devastating for the youth that we serve,” Bradshaw said. “It also impacts us as an organization, our staff, and it impacts the partners that we had who supported us in implementing this program.”

During the first administration of President Donald Trump in 2017, HHS took the same action, ending grants for more than 80 recipients two years before they were set to expire. Legal advocacy organization Democracy Forward sued the administration on behalf of several grantees and won a permanent injunction after courts ruled the action violated agency regulations.

The Trump administration identified the teen pregnancy program as one to cut in its 2025 budget request, and it was included in the final 2026 appropriations bill. The language accompanying that bill said grants for sexual risk avoidance must use medically accurate information and teach youth about risky behaviors “without normalizing teen sexual activity.”  

Teen birth rates have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years, according to federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — about 72% since 2007. Experts attribute that decline to fewer teens deciding to have sex earlier, sex education and better access to contraception, especially for girls. 

The agency also released two new grant programs this week, one of which is titled “Replicating Effective Teen Pregnancy Prevention Programs,” with $63.4 million available to be awarded. The other is “Rigorous Impact Evaluation of Programs to Prevent Teen Pregnancy and Achieve Optimal Health,” with $8.3 million available.

Both opportunities tell applicants that they must pass an alignment review process to ensure they meet agency priorities. That language mimics Trump administration language in the 2027 Notice of Funding Opportunity for Title X grants, which a national family planning organization filed a lawsuit over last week, arguing that it violates Congress’ intentions and administrative procedure.

Tara Mancini, director of public policy at reproductive health advocacy organization Power to Decide, said she expects the administration’s decision to cancel the grants to be challenged again in court.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.

The Federal Communications Commission has approved new rules designed to improve the reliability of Next Generation 911 systems as states continue replacing decades-old emergency call infrastructure with internet-based networks.

The rules require companies that operate critical parts of Next Generation 911 systems, known as NG911, to adopt reliability and redundancy measures intended to reduce service disruptions. The commission also will require providers to report on their progress toward ensuring that the new systems can seamlessly transfer emergency calls and data between networks.

The FCC’s new rules come as states and local governments invest billions of dollars to modernize 911 systems, replacing legacy phone infrastructure with Internet Protocol-based networks capable of transmitting text messages, photos, video and other data to emergency dispatchers. 

Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced earlier this month that the state plans to complete its statewide rollout of NG911 by 2027. 

Kentucky appears to be the latest state to announce major NG911 upgrades. Several states, including California, Illinois, New York, Ohio and Virginia have completed the transition or announced upgrades in recent years.

Federal regulators say the transition has exposed new vulnerabilities. Major multi-state 911 outages have become more common over the past decade, according to an agency news release. Many of those outages have occurred in portions of newer NG911 systems that were not covered by the commission’s existing reliability rules, which were adopted in 2013.

Last July, Pennsylvania experienced a statewide 911 outage that officials attributed to an operating system issue with its NG911 system. 

Earlier this month, communities in Arizona, Iowa, Texas and Washington state experienced 911 outages, though the causes have not yet been publicly released. During the disruptions, residents were instructed to use alternative phone numbers to reach emergency services. 

Such outages can slow dispatch times and increase the time it takes first responders to arrive on the scene.

The updated FCC regulations extend reliability requirements to entities whose networks are essential to delivering NG911 calls. The FCC said in a news release that many recent outages could have been prevented or their impacts reduced if operators had implemented stronger safeguards.

The commission also issued a proposal seeking public comment on additional requirements, including interstate interoperability testing and ways to integrate advanced video calling into NG911 systems to improve accessibility for people with disabilities and others who could benefit from visual communications during emergencies.

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.

Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v. Johnson decision  — which allowed governments to enforce public camping bans without violating the Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment — more than 350 cities and 14 states have adopted laws or measures to crack down on street homelessness.

States have varied in their approaches toward street homelessness since the 2024 ruling, including imposing statewide camping bans on public lands, setting mandates for local governments to enforce those bans and, in some cases, allowing property owners to sue their local government if they do not comply with enforcement of statewide camping bans, according to details gathered by the National Homelessness Law Center.

This year, Louisiana made unauthorized public camping a crime and created a Homelessness Court program, where an unhoused person charged with a crime could seek treatment as an alternative to jail time. Indiana’s new law, which bans unauthorized camping, sleeping and sheltering on state or local public land, goes into effect in July. 

Georgia and Oklahoma enacted Safe Neighborhood laws, which allow property owners to seek compensation from local governments if they fail to enforce laws tied to public camping, loitering and panhandling. Some measures have been modeled after legislation drafted by groups such as the conservative think tanks Cicero Institute and the Goldwater Institute.

There were fewer homeless people in the United States on a single night in January 2025 than in January 2024, but homelessness increased in 28 states, according to the latest federal count. 

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

WASHINGTON — Visitors from across the United States traveled to the National Mall Thursday for the opening day of the Great American State Fair, a days-long event that is part of President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial.

States and territories showed off cultural and agricultural exports at exhibits stretching nearly a mile. Attendees snapped photos on the small Grand Ole Opry stage in the Tennessee booth, kids tried putt-putt at Indiana’s miniature golf course and cowboys rode horses at Montana’s rodeo. 

A 110-foot Ferris wheel slowly turned at the center of the freshly manicured lawn, framing the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol in the distance on either side. Nearby stood a model of Trump’s controversial “triumphal arch.”

People collected swag from each state — drawstring bags from Ohio, stickers from South Dakota, snacks from Tennessee — and could receive a stamp on state fair passports.

The fair is part of the larger Freedom 250 programming and kicked off Wednesday night with a rally on the mall featuring a speech from the president that closely resembled his remarks along the 2024 presidential campaign trail. The festivities will continue over Independence Day, when Trump will deliver a second speech followed by what is promised to be an impressive fireworks display. 

The president will visit North and South Dakota as part of his Freedom 250 tour for the opening of the Teddy Roosevelt presidential library and Independence Day eve fireworks above Mount Rushmore.

Freedom 250 then extends into August with a high school athletic competition in Washington, D.C., dubbed the “Patriot Games” and a Freedom 250 INDYCAR race around the National Mall.

The administration’s celebration is separate from the America250 commission, created by Congress a decade ago, and which has its own nationwide programming this year.

From Lake Erie to the Ohio River

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and first lady Fran DeWine greeted guests in Ohio’s pavilion. The couple posed for photos in front of a map of the Buckeye State.

“We wanted to see on the wall all the different things, from Lake Erie to the Ohio River, all the different fun things you can do in Ohio,” the Republican governor said, adding the state has local celebrations and initiatives planned for the 250th anniversary, including “Movies in Ohio” for community showings of films that feature the state.

Ohio’s first lady showcased a children’s literacy exhibit on the opposite wall and touted the roughly 427,000 participants in the state’s partnership with the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, a program that mails free children’s books monthly to households with kids under age 5. 

“We’ve mailed out 27 million books. We know that a child’s brain is 80% developed by age 3, so we want to get them those books early,” she said.

Reflecting on America’s milestone birthday, the governor said, “We’re always a work in progress, Ohio’s a work in progress, this country is a work in progress.”

“I think you know the thing we need to keep in mind, all of us, is there’s some essential core principles that we all believe in. … We may disagree about different policies, but the core principles are the same,” he said.

Cartwheels on the lawn

People from various states walked from exhibit to exhibit, while stopped in the nation’s capital during road trip vacations.

Tanya Geders, 43, of St. Louis, Missouri, did a cartwheel in the mall lawn, trying to persuade her son to join in. The family stopped at the state fair on their way to Virginia Beach.

“We’re like, well, if we go to the ocean, we can go to D.C. and what a better time to be here than the 250th anniversary,” Geders said.

Robyn Toman, 71, of Severn, Maryland, escorted her 12-year-old grandson Miles to meet DeWine and grab a photo with the governor.

Toman said she remembers the country’s bicentennial.

“I was a kid about his age, and I came in 1976. I said, ‘We’re gonna go, let’s go down to D.C. for a couple days and see this,’” she said. 

“We’ve enjoyed it. We went over to the archives yesterday, and saw the Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. And, oh, that was so nice, that was fantastic.”

Not all states are there. A spokesperson for Washington state’s lieutenant governor’s office told States Newsroom the administration declined to join because of “the costs to the state associated with participating.”

According to news reports, Connecticut, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont did not contribute exhibits, though many are still represented by flags outside the individual booths.

The state officials did not immediately respond to States Newsroom for confirmation.

All states that reportedly did not participate, with the exception of Vermont, are Democratic-led.

John Bolton, a national security adviser to President Donald Trump in his first term, pleaded guilty Friday to a federal charge of mishandling classified information, the Department of Justice said in a news release Friday.

The plea resolves an 18-count indictment against Bolton, who lives in Bethesda, Maryland. He has agreed to pay a $2.25 million penalty, the DOJ said. He could face up to five years in prison, according to the release.

During his stint as national security adviser from April 2018 to September 2019, Bolton recorded “highly sensitive classified information” from his official duties in a personal diary. He shared the diary entries with two family members who were not cleared to have access to the information, which included top secret material, according to the indictment.

“John Bolton held a position of extraordinary public trust as the country’s top National Security Advisor, and he betrayed that trust, jeopardizing our nation’s security,” Hayden O’Byrne, the acting deputy assistant U.S. attorney general for the National Security Division, said in the statement. “Today’s resolution ought to send a message to other public officials whom the public has entrusted with classified, national defense information.”

Bolton and Trump

Bolton’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell, said in a statement Friday that Bolton’s plea took responsibility for a mistake, which was “what real leaders do,” and contrasted that approach with Trump’s conduct while the Department of Justice secured similar federal charges against the then-former president in 2023.

“By contrast, President Trump thumbed his nose at the classified information laws, took actual classified documents to his Florida mansion, interfered with the investigation of that conduct, and has never accepted any accountability for his conduct,” Lowell wrote. “Ambassador Bolton, whose offense was only keeping a diary which contained classified information, kept a record to preserve history, but Donald Trump kept secrets to serve himself.”

Since leaving the White House, Bolton has been a consistent critic of Trump’s foreign policy. 

That has continued even after he was indicted last year. Bolton, who also held roles in President George W. Bush’s administration and is associated with the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party, has repeatedly slammed on social media Trump’s deal with Iran as recently as this week.

WASHINGTON — Republicans have one more opportunity to use the complex process they relied on to enact their “big, beautiful” law and provide tens of billions in additional funding for immigration enforcement — a chance that becomes less likely the more divisions over a voter identification bill splinter the party. 

Debate over a third reconciliation bill has been simmering in the background for months, though GOP lawmakers have yet to reach consensus about whether they should draft another massive package, like they approved last year, or a more narrow one that could help the party boost defense spending.

That budget reconciliation process gives Republican leaders a way to get around Senate rules that would otherwise force bipartisanship, giving them a loophole out of negotiating major legislation with Democrats. 

But it comes with several hurdles in order to get that special treatment, including that each provision in the bill have an impact on federal revenue or spending that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. 

Those in-the-weeds restrictions aren’t especially important to President Donald Trump, who wants Republicans in Congress to prioritize a voter identification bill, which cannot move through reconciliation, over everything else.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., tried to find middle ground in late June, proposing lawmakers use reconciliation to create a grant program for states that implement voter identification requirements. 

Johnson acknowledged the challenges to using reconciliation amid narrow majorities in each chamber, but said he thinks Republicans can accomplish their goals if they “stick together.” 

He, however, didn’t have details to share. 

“Stay tuned. We’re working through that,” Johnson said. “Doing a reconciliation bill is a very complicated process of consensus building, where we have a collection of ideas that, I think, every Republican, certainly, agrees with in principle.”

A few hours later, sitting in the Oval Office, the president batted down the idea of any compromise on the elections bill, creating more public disagreement between the top Republicans in the country. 

“Not really. No,” Trump said when asked whether he’d “be open to a compromise measure” moving through the reconciliation process. 

Hardball tactics

Lobbying for the full bill, which would require people show proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID when casting a ballot, isn’t only coming from the president. 

Far-right Republicans in both chambers are using hardball tactics to cajole their leaders to get the legislation to Trump’s desk, even if it means delaying work on their colleagues’ priorities.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is one of several Republicans posting on social media and holding press conferences. He recently called for Americans to “encourage your senators to resume debate on the Senate floor—with a plan to keep debating it until it passes.”

“Tell your senators: Pass the SAVE America Act,” Lee wrote in another post. “Accept no excuses or half measures.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has become somewhat frustrated with constant pressure from some of his members, who are diverting time and resources to a bill that cannot pass. 

“At the end of the day, I have to deal with reality,” Thune said. “And sometimes the alternative universe that is X doesn’t reflect the facts on the ground.”

Thune said it’s been “very clear” for some time there isn’t enough support among Republicans to change the Senate rule that requires at least 60 lawmakers vote to limit debate on most bills. That legislative filibuster forces bipartisanship and gives the minority party, which could be Republicans as soon as next year, a seat at the table. 

“There are not the votes to nuke the filibuster and there aren’t going to be 10 Democrat votes to all of a sudden support the SAVE America Act,” Thune said. “Those are just hard realities and I think people at some point have to come to grips with that.”

Trump cancels signing for housing bill

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that despite months of effort, the voter identification bill doesn’t have the votes to become law. 

“If you can’t get to 60, you can’t pass it. I mean, that’s pretty simple,” she said. “Now, he says talk it to death and people will change their minds. I don’t think that’s a strategy that’s going to be in success. We tried that earlier this year to keep talking, we didn’t get to the end.” 

Capito said voters want to see Republicans focus on issues that can improve people’s lives, like the broadly bipartisan housing affordability bill both chambers approved this month. Trump was set to sign that bill during a ceremony on Capitol Hill but canceled at the last minute to try to push through the election bill. 

“So, yeah, they want to see us do something,” she said. “They don’t want to see us sitting up there yakking all the time.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wants to use the time to avoid another government shutdown when the next fiscal year begins Oct. 1 — no easy feat following three shutdowns over the last year. 

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., hopes to reach final agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead after years of delays and stopgap measures for those agriculture and food safety net programs. 

He brushed aside demands from some other GOP lawmakers to use the budget reconciliation process to pass another party-line package.

“We had trouble with the one that we just did and that was very, very narrow. I mean, that was strictly Homeland Security,” Boozman said. “When you start doing a bigger package, like they’re talking about and you start involving various committees, it becomes a lot more issues involved that you have to work out. And so it just gets very complex.”

Boozman added that working through the several steps of that process takes weeks, which lawmakers may not have. 

Other priorities

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the party needs to focus on legislation that would lower “the cost of everything,” in part, by eliminating taxes on gasoline and health care.  

“That’s something that would be a huge benefit to every working person out there immediately,” he said. “Let them take all health care costs off of their federal taxes, so they paid no taxes on it.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said he thinks lawmakers should use the budget reconciliation process to significantly bolster defense funding. But he said “duh” when asked by States Newsroom whether the limited number of days in session would make that difficult. 

Lawmakers are set to be out of session for nearly all of August and September.

“I think if we want to get more money for defense, we have to do it through reconciliation, which means we need to start immediately,” he said. 

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno has a lengthy list of issues he wants to see Republicans address before November, including a bill he’s set to release later this summer with Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren that would shore up the Social Security trust fund. 

“It’s not really a third-rail issue, because what we’re saying is that everybody should pay the same amount of money for Social Security,” he said. “When you have something that literally 90% of Americans support, I think we should be able to get something on that across the finish line.”

The two lawmakers wrote in an op-ed published in The New York Times the bill would raise the cap that ensures people don’t pay into Social Security on earnings more than $184,500.

“Since the vast majority of Americans make less than that, most people are paying Social Security taxes on 100 percent of their earnings while the highest earners are paying on only part of theirs,” they wrote.

“Why should a middle-class nurse pay a larger share of her paycheck — than a wealthy corporate lawyer?” they added. “This is doubly unfair in an economy in which top earners’ wages, over time, have pulled far ahead of those of the average worker.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley said he’d like lawmakers to ensure E15 gasoline, a blend that includes 15% ethanol and is usually unavailable in summer, can be sold year-round, though he hadn’t thought about any other issues the party should press for ahead of November. 

“I guess I can’t answer your question,” he said. “I just haven’t thought about it.”

David Crowley is no stranger to crowded political races. Before becoming Milwaukee’s first African American county executive in 2020, he had to emerge from a hotly contested primary that included Democratic Sen. Chris Larson (D-Madison), former state Sen. Jim Sullivan, Glendale Mayor Bryan Kennedy and then-county board chairman Theodore Lipscomb. Both Larson and Crowley advanced to the general election, which Crowley narrowly won. Over six years later, Crowley again finds himself in a Democratic primary, this time for the governor’s office, packed with experienced policymakers. 

Crowley’s opponents this time  include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), former Department of Administration chief Joel Brennan, and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. In a straw poll at the Democratic Party convention in mid-June, Crowley placed fourth, with Rodriguez and Hong finishing first and second and Roys placing in third.

“Even though they’ve done great work in their respective roles, the one thing they’ve never done is actually run government,” Crowley said of the other Democratic candidates during an interview at Pilcrow Coffee in Milwaukee. “I’m the only executive in this race. And what’s also different for me is that I know what it means to be accountable and responsible for my actions and decisions, and how they’re going to affect the masses and the people that I represent.” Another key difference, he added, is that he’s got the  “receipts.”

Crowley highlighted how under his tenure, close to 1,000 units of affordable housing have been created across Milwaukee County. The past four years have also seen drug overdose deaths decrease by 40% with the expansion of harm reduction strategies. In 2023, the county also saw the largest property tax cut in its history, totalling $21 million. 

“What sets me apart is the fact that I’ve delivered for folks,” said Crowley. “And I continue to deliver for folks, and I’ve been able to do it in some of the most contentious times, if you will — especially with how partisan we are nowadays — as a lead Democrat representing the largest and most diverse community in the state of Wisconsin.”

In his first statewide race, Crowley said he wants to avoid labeling himself. “I’m a voting Democrat,” said Crowley. “I’m a Democrat that gets things done.” Crowley scoffs at ideological purity tests and the buzz about a rift among Democrats who identify as Socialists versus those who see themselves as moderates. “This is about how do you fight back against the Trump administration, but more importantly not just reacting, but how do we become more proactive when it comes down to Democratic policy that we need to push so we can actually win?”

Crowley is leaning on his  track record in his campaign. His platform is laid out in what he calls his  “Badger Basics Plan” which includes:

• Bringing universal childcare to Wisconsin, and working to cap childcare costs at 7% of household income 
• Establishing universal K-4 across Wisconsin, giving kids a better foundation of learning before entering the school system 
• Making sure that school districts have the funding, staff and resources that they need
• Expanding Badgercare as a public health option, and increasing reimbursements 
• Repealing Act 10 and restoring the collective bargaining rights for workers 
• Implementing restrictions on data centers and Artificial Intelligence (AI), while making sure AI enhances productivity rather than replacing job opportunities 
• Supporting programs for vulnerable people, especially the victims of domestic violence

When he’s not busy with his full-time day job running the county, he has been campaigning all over the state. “We have been everywhere,” he said. “I think we’ve done 40-plus forums around the state already, whether we are in southeastern Wisconsin, or Taylor County, or in Brown County, or in Marinette County, or Wausau, La Crosse. We’re traveling everywhere not only to spread the message, but more importantly to listen.” When he was a young organizer, Crowley likes to say, he learned that “if you don’t have a seat on the table, you’re on the menu.” 

Confronting questions about race

In his travels, Crowley said, he believes he can overcome negative racial perceptions some voters have about him and  the county he represents. “It’s not a real concern for me,” he said of the history-making task of becoming Wisconsin’s first Black governor. “They already trust me to deliver because I’ve been doing it as a county executive and I’ve done it as a state representative.” 

In fact, Crowley feels that the question of race comes up mostly in the state’s more diverse communities. “We have been conditioned, because we have been listening to the Republican talking points for so long, to where we have internalized it more and we use it as a reason as to why we can’t get certain things done,” he said of all the conversation about Wisconsin’s racial divide. “And honestly, I think it stops us from getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. Building those relationships, going outside of our geographic comfort zone to talk about the things that we have done here, in one of the largest urban centers in the entire country, and how we can bring those best practices to communities across the state. What’s good for Milwaukee is good for every single town, village, and city in the state of Wisconsin.” 

Crowley points out that Wisconsin elected Tammy Baldwin, its first openly LGBTQ U.S. Senator. Wisconsin voters also elected “a skinny kid with a funny name by the name of Barack Obama,” he said. “We have been put into a box. It’s our job to think outside that box. It’s our job to shatter that glass ceiling and focus on how we’re going to deliver. Because people don’t care where you’re from. People don’t care what you look like. People don’t care who you love. They care about whether or not you’re going to care for them, and deliver real results moving forward.” 

The fact that he performed well in his election to his current post in suburban areas built up Crowley’s confidence. “I know they’ll vote for me, because they voted for me twice already,” he said. “That’s the type of experience that we need to not only stand up to Donald Trump, but that’s going to be proactive and be on the offense to deliver for the 6 million people that call Wisconsin home.”

Going around the state, Crowley has met people who want their voices heard on important issues from childcare and healthcare to lowering utility costs and making housing more affordable. He said he’s learned that even in a divided state like Wisconsin, people agree on more than they realize. “I think that in this particular political climate, as things become more polarized, no matter if you’re the far left or the far right, I think we can all agree that government isn’t working,” he said.  “And right now, we need to make sure that we are electing individuals who are not just going to fight back against policies that are going to leave families behind, but how are we going to be proactive in making sure that we’re pushing policies to make sure that when the tides rise, all of us rise.”

Data centers

One of the hottest issues in local communities around the state is the rise of giant data centers, proposed in communities across Wisconsin, and needed to feed the energy demand of a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence infrastructure. By 2023, a United Nations report found, global data centers will require the same amount of water annually as the 1.3 billion people who live in Sub-Saharan Africa, and require enough electricity to equal the annual needs of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria combined. Communities in Wisconsin have been pushing back on data centers due to concerns about increased utility costs, environmental fallout and the trajectory of AI. 

Crowley said “it’s asinine” that the Legislature ended its recent session without doing anything to regulate data centers. 

Crowley, who is not opposed to data centers, said it’s crucial that the state develop a “framework” to protect natural resources and the people of Wisconsin.

Earlier this year, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission approved an energy rate, requiring data centers to pay 100% of their own energy costs. Data centers should also have to pay 100% of the cost of the energy grid upgrades they require, Crowley said, as well as any infrastructure upgrades. He also wants to tie their development to investments in renewable energy. “I want to see more energy opportunity that doesn’t cost us any money,” he said. “Wind doesn’t cost us. Sunlight doesn’t cost us.” If Wisconsin invests in renewables, “moving forward it won’t be a huge drain on resources for ratepayers, or for these utility companies.” 

Crowley also said that as governor he would require data centers to use union labor, project labor agreements and community benefit agreements. He added he wants to explore  how data centers could be leveraged to benefit public schools, communities and already existing industry.

As the leader of a county that has experienced the rise and fall of heavy industry, he said he thinks about  how to plan ahead 50-100 years with data centers, to prevent them becoming empty shells, like abandoned Rust Belt factories, in the communities where they are built. He also feels that moving forward, Wisconsin needs to be “intentional” when it comes to giving out tax exemptions and tax credits for data centers, which have already been given $2 billion in tax exemptions. Crowley said that it’s not just the surge of up-front jobs which build the data center to consider, but also the smaller number of long-term jobs on the back-end. Protections need to be put in place to make sure communities are getting ahead, Crowley said. 

Education and school choice

Crowley describes himself as a strong advocate for  public schools. He, his wife, and his three daughters are all public school graduates But, he said, he also doesn’t believe in eliminating Wisconsin’s entire private school choice system outright. Half of the kids enrolled in school in Milwaukee go to public school while the other half go to private or charter schools. If charter schools were eliminated, that would create a strain on an already stressed public school system, Crowley said. He said he believes in accountability for choice schools and recognition that public schools have a greater responsibility and level of accountability, since they are required by law to serve every child who comes in the door. 

Working across the aisle

Crowley is optimistic that, as a Democratic governor, he can work with Republicans in the Legislature, especially since, he says, new voting maps will help depolarize the state. He believes that the old maps forced people into separate corners. “We have to focus on partnerships and collaboration if we want our state to move forward,” said Crowley. He also feels that Democrats need to be prepared to play offense and be proactive. He said voters will need to be patient with a Democratic governor as the party adjusts to its new identity after this year’s elections. With the new voting maps, Democrats have an opportunity to gain a majority in the Legislature as well as the governor’s office for the first time in almost 30 years. 

“We have a lot to prove as Democrats,” Crowley said. “We have a lot to prove as leaders of our community, to show that we can govern, we can win elections moving forward, and we can plan for the long term.”

Editor’s note: The Examiner is running periodic profiles of the contenders in the Aug. 11, 2026 gubernatorial primary as well as the candidates in the general election Nov. 3. 

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the U.S. Department of Education’s new definition of “professional” fields of study, which set stricter borrowing caps for graduate students pursuing certain degrees.

The ruling from U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell specifically halts the department’s new definition of “professional” degrees, which was limited to 11 fields and would impose lower loan caps for groups not included in its definition, including nursing, teaching and social work. 

The ruling, which covers two consolidated lawsuits, came just a week before the provision was slated to take effect July 1. It marks a setback for a key part of President Donald Trump’s administration’s forthcoming overhaul of the federal student loan system. 

The department finalized regulations, published May 1, that implement sweeping changes outlined in the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law, including new caps on federal student loans, with different limits based on whether a degree was “professional.” 

But it overreached by narrowing what degrees qualified as professional, Howell wrote, saying Congress intended to keep the definition in place when the law passed in July 2025.

“The Rule is likely contrary to law,” Howell wrote. “The Rule’s definition of ‘professional degree,’ and thus the category of students benefiting from the high loan caps, is likely narrower (than) what Congress intended.”

But she declined to halt the department from enforcing the forthcoming loan caps because they were written into the law. 

Howell wrote that “this litigation cannot remedy plaintiffs’ primary frustration over the elimination of uncapped borrowing to pursue graduate education and the concomitant benefits of enabling more students from working families to earn a graduate degree in a chosen career field and attracting students more broadly to enter the American workforce in fields understaffed and in areas underserved.” 

Challenge from health professionals

Wednesday’s ruling stems from a pair of combined challenges by associations representing people in fields that do not fall under the new “professional” definition and would thus face lower annual and lifetime borrowing caps. 

One suit was filed in May by the American Association of Nurse Practitioners; the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners; the American Association of Colleges of Nursing; the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health; the National Education Association; and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. 

The other lawsuit was filed earlier in June by the PA Education Association and the American Academy of Physician Associates. 

In the May suit, the challengers argued that “the final rule’s definition of ‘professional degree’ excludes many degree programs that prepare students for a specific profession, and that may qualify as a professional degree under the 2007 regulatory definition adopted by Congress, including degrees in nursing, education, public health, and marriage and family therapy.” 

Unlimited borrowing eliminated

Part of the regulations eliminate a key loan program for graduate and professional students that allowed for unlimited borrowing and establish new annual and aggregate loan limits for those students.  

Graduate student loans will be capped at $20,500 annually and have a $100,000 aggregate limit, while professional student loans would have a $50,000 annual limit and $200,000 aggregate cap. 

But the programs within the department’s “professional” category and thus subject to the higher loan cap are limited to: pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, chiropractic, law, medicine, optometry, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, theology and clinical psychology. 

In response to a request for comment, the department said in a statement it was “reviewing the order and will take appropriate action,” adding that “we look forward to implementing the RISE student loan provisions and offering new, affordable repayment plans on July 1.” 

A group of Ashland residents held a protest Wednesday against the use of municipal water for constructing the controversial reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

The reroute has been protested and challenged in court by locals, members of the nearby Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and environmental groups for years. 

“Michels Construction, a subcontractor of Enbridge, is taking precious water from Lake Superior out of the City of Ashland municipal water supply to build Line 5,” the protesters said in a joint statement. “This sacred water is being used to devastate our wetland and forest ecosystems and being returned with unknown contaminants for our community to deal with. This is a violation of the Great Lakes Compact and a direct threat to Anishinaabe Treaty Rights. Ashland needs to stand by their resolution of support to the Bad River Tribe and demand a halt to Michels’ water usage.”

Locals have seen Michels construction trucks being filled with water at the Ashland water station. Ashland municipal water comes from Lake Superior. Locals argue the public hasn’t been notified of a contract with Michels for the water use nor has there been a discussion over how much water would be used. 

Enbridge plans to use a process called horizontal directional drilling to pass 30,000 feet of pipe underneath 23 bodies of water in the region, according to the project’s environmental impact statement. About 15% of the relocated pipeline is being installed using this process, through a contract with Michels Construction. 

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in a statement that using city water helps the company make sure it comes from a clean source.

“Buying water from a municipal source, instead of permitting water taken from area lakes or rivers, ensures the water is properly treated – and compensates the city fairly,” she said.

HDD involves drilling a hole underneath the body of water through which the pipeline is then fed. The drilling process requires water to be mixed with clay and other additives to use as lubricant for the drills and other tools. The other additives are contain “proprietary ingredients” that are kept from public view, however the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources documents show the company agreed that any ingredients used will comply with state standards. 

“The drilling fluid would consist primarily of water (approximately 95%) and bentonite, which is a type of clay,” according to the environmental impact statement. “Water for the drilling fluid would be obtained from a known safe source free of bacterial and chemical contamination. Additives could be included in the drilling mud to improve its ability to transport cuttings to the surface, provide a stable hole, and lubricate the drilling tools. Enbridge has stated in its Construction Site General Permit application that the company will only use additives that are considered pre-approved for use in potable well drilling or are listed on the DNR’s Approved Horizontal Directional Drilling Products List.” 

However the HDD process can often cause inadvertent releases of the lubrication slurry, raising concerns among residents. 

As a community on one of the Great Lakes, Ashland is subject to the Great Lakes Compact, an agreement among the American and Canadian governments dictating how the lakes’ water can be used. The compact requires that any water taken be returned in a clean state. 

The Ashland city administrator did not respond to a request for comment about the approval of the water usage.

Catron County, New Mexico, may be seeing the future of an aging population today. It has beautiful landscapes that draw retirees who fall in love with the area and want to stay among soaring rock formations and bright stars in dark skies. 

But it’s a tough place to get even minimal medical care. And employees are hard to find, with few young people to hire and support the tax base. It’s a microcosm of the national trend:  By 2034 the whole country may have more older adults than children; Social Security’s retirement fund could be exhausted by 2032, and the nation will depend on an ever-shrinking workforce of young people. 

“For quality healthcare, if you need even an X-ray, you are driving an hour and a half,” said Catron County Manager Deborah Mahler. “We have 900 miles of dirt roads that are not passable when it rains, so you have to have a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a high profile.” 

Some hospital systems send shuttle buses, but it’s not enough and the county would like to offer more medical transportation and attract a local medical practice. But there is little tax base to support either, Mahler said.

Local parks and ranches in the county, which abuts the state line with Arizona, provide world-class elk hunting and beautiful scenery such as the Cosmic Campground’s dark sky sanctuary for stargazers and the Catwalk National Recreation Trail through desert rock formations.

But with parks taking up so much land, there’s not much space for industry that might provide jobs for young families or provide a tax base to help older people, she said. 

There are now 17 states with more people over 65 than children under 18 as of last year. That’s up from 13 states in 2024 and just five in 2020, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates to be released Thursday. 

Michigan, New Mexico, South Carolina and Wisconsin are new to the list, which reflects ages as of mid-2025. 

Others may soon see some of the challenges already familiar to places like Sumter County, Florida, where there are almost 8 older adults per 1 child. In McCormick County, South Carolina; Catron County, New Mexico, and Jefferson County, Washington, the ratio is more than 4 to 1. 

Many states are enacting or considering legislation to support older residents: Wisconsin passed laws this year aimed at elder scams and easing the transition from hospital care to rehabilitation, and last year enacted a support program for dementia caregivers. 

New Mexico enacted a Medigap law in March allowing Medicare users to switch plans without insurers denying coverage or charging higher rates based on health status.

South Carolina’s state Senate passed a bill to give larger property tax breaks in February, but the measure stalled in a state House committee. 

Michigan is working on a state plan to help older residents and their families starting next year with a report due July 1 and taking effect in October. 

In 2020, the only states where older adults outnumbered children were Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and West Virginia. Since then, besides the four states added in 2025, these states are also on the list: Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Montana, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

The majority of U.S. states will soon have to pay 5% to 15% of federal nutrition assistance benefits in their state, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s release Wednesday of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payment error rates. 

House Resolution 1, commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was enacted in 2025, stipulated that states with SNAP payment error rates greater than 6% would be required to foot 5%, 10% or 15% of SNAP benefits costs in their state. 

Wisconsin’s error rate was 5.72% in 2025, USDA reported, making it one of nine states with an error rate below 6%. The nine will not have to match a portion of the SNAP benefits they pay out starting in October 2027.

The finding means that Wisconsin will avoid federal penalties of up to $205 million in the 2027-28 fiscal year in the state’s FoodShare program, which is part of SNAP, Gov. Tony Evers said Thursday.

Evers wrote members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation earlier in June, urging them to eliminate or delay implementing the federal penalty fees imposed in HR 1.

According to USDA, SNAP payment error rates measure the accuracy of states in determining who is eligible for SNAP and how much they receive. The rate is calculated via a series of reviews from state and federal agencies where instances of overpayments and underpayments are identified. 

USDA’s SNAP quality control page says errors are “largely unintentional” and might be the fault of a state agency or a SNAP household. 

Earlier this year Evers signed legislation appropriating an additional $72.7 million for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services to bolster staffing and other resources for operating FoodShare and avoid errors. The appropriation was attached to a bill introduced by Republican lawmakers that authorizes the state to ask USDA to allow Wisconsin to ban using FoodShare dollars to buy soda or candy. A federal judge this week blocked such restrictions in Nebraska, Colorado, Iowa, Tennessee and West Virginia.

Eighteen states had payment error rates above the national average of 10.62%. Per the quality control process, these states will have to either pay USDA a determined amount, or invest 50% of that amount into activities that will fix the root causes of the payment errors. 

USDA said that while the 2025 average payment error rate is a “modest” decrease from the 2024 average error rate of 10.93%, it represents $10.1 billion in improper payments. 

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said the latest payment error rates show that “state accountability is severely lacking” in SNAP. 

“USDA has taken historic action to help interested states curb SNAP waste, and I hope other states, regardless of political leadership, prioritize needy families and the American taxpayer over politics,” Rollins said in a news release. 

An analysis of H.R. 1 from the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the law, which included several changes to SNAP benefits in addition to the error rate cost share, would reduce federal spending on the SNAP benefits by $255 billion between 2025 and 2034. CBO also estimated that state spending on SNAP benefits would increase during the same period by $85 billion. 

Critics of the bill said the cost shift to states would endanger the SNAP program and stress state budgets. 

According to the 2025 error rates from USDA, 41 states had payment error rates above the 6% threshold set by the 2025 law. South Dakota had the lowest error rate at 2.47%. Idaho and Wyoming had error rates below 4%, and Iowa, Kentucky, Nebraska, Utah, and Vermont were the other states with rates below 6%. Alaska had the highest error rate of 23.15%. 

The higher the error rate, the greater the share, up to 15%, the state will have to pay of its SNAP benefits, which are otherwise 100% footed by the federal government. 

In addition to the cost share, states with a payment error rate in excess of 6% are required to submit a corrective action plan to the Food and Nutrition Administration, formerly known as the Food and Nutrition Service, to explain the root cause of the payment errors and how the state plans to correct the errors. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court sided Thursday with the Trump administration’s request to turn away asylum seekers who present themselves at ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The question the justices considered was whether migrants have to fully cross into the United States in order to have the right to apply for asylum and be processed, or if they can apply for asylum when they appear at a port of entry while on Mexico’s side of the border. 

In a 6-3 decision, the conservative justices agreed with the Trump administration that a noncitizen who is standing in Mexico doesn’t arrive in the U.S. “by attempting, and failing, to set foot in this country.” 

The justices held that a noncitizen only arrives in the U.S. “when he crosses the border,” and that the Immigration Nationality Act does not entitle that noncitizen who is standing on Mexico’s side of the border who wants to apply for asylum to be inspected by an immigration officer. 

James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, said in a statement that the Supreme Court’s “decision opens up an important tool to continue securing our southern border.”

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority, said the case before the justices presented a “straightforward question.”

“The phrase ‘arrives in the United States’ … carries its ordinary meaning: A person arrives in a geographic location only when he enters it,” he wrote. “A person arrives in a destination when he enters within its area—not before—and that conclusion does not change because someone or something blocks entry. Everyday examples of how people ordinarily use the phrase ‘arrives in’ confirm this understanding.”

The policy requiring a full crossing, known as metering, is defunct, but Vivek Suri, assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, argued before the high court that it was a policy the federal government should be allowed to have in its toolbox for future uses at the Southern border. 

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing 35-page dissent saying the ruling will allow the Trump administration to turn away asylum seekers, a policy she said violates Congress’ refugee law.

“Because the Court today blesses the Executive Branch’s decision to slam the door shut on all who are fleeing persecution, despite the detailed inspection and asylum system that Congress enacted and commands, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote. 

During oral arguments in March, the justices seemed ideologically split, with the six conservative justices agreeing with the Trump administration. The three liberals of the Supreme Court — Sotomayor and Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson —  questioned whether the policy violated federal law protecting refugees. 

‘More people will die’

Sotomayor argued that Congress specifically passed the Refugee Act of 1980 to not repeat the “mistakes of the past,” where the M.S. St. Louis, a ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees during World War II, was prevented entry to the U.S. and turned back to Europe. 

While some passengers were able to find refuge in other countries, 254 died in the Holocaust.

Sotomayor said based on the majority’s ruling, if those passengers on the St. Louis “were to walk up to a port of entry on our southern border today, the majority’s interpretation would allow immigration officers to refuse even to consider their asylum applications by physically blocking them from stepping foot onto U.S. soil.” 

“The majority’s interpretation permits the Government to do that even if the refugees complied with all applicable laws and regulations, even if the port had ample capacity to inspect them, and even if turning them back would result in the very persecution from which they narrowly escaped,” she wrote. 

Sotomayor said the consequences of the ruling will be predictable.

“More people will die. More people will attempt to cross the border illegally, and some will make it while others will not,” she said. “More people will be forced to walk along the U. S.-Mexico border in dangerous conditions, trying to find a port that will inspect them. More people will turn back and be subjected to violence because of something they cannot or should not have to change about themselves, such as their race, religion, nationality, or political opinion.”

Jackson wrote a separate dissent, arguing that the case should have never been brought to the justices because the Trump administration is not even using the policy. 

“The absence of a current metering policy has plainly infected the Court’s ultimate analysis, too,” she wrote. “No one knows how, if at all, the reasoning drawn from these metaphors will map on to the realities of a future metering policy. All we can do now is guess.

“But the Court is not a law student puzzling through a difficult cold call,” she continued. “When we issue opinions, we create legal rules with real-world impact. It is for this very reason that our precedents require ‘a concrete factual context conducive to a realistic appreciation of the consequences of judicial action.’ Because we so obviously lack that context here, we should not have decided this case.”

A blow to asylum seekers

Nicole Ramos, the co-founder of the immigrant legal aid and humanitarian group Al Otro Lado that challenged the Trump administration, said during a press conference that she was not surprised by the decision, “but quite devastated.” 

“This is not the first time the Supreme Court has gotten something wrong,” she said. “I do believe the pendulum will swing back in the direction of justice.”

Melissa Crow, an attorney who first brought the challenge in 2017, said the decision “deals a devastating blow to the rights of people seeking asylum.”

Crow, who now leads the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, said that many migrants who were turned back “died in the process,” such as from heat stroke or drowning in the Rio Grande.

“They don’t have a Plan B, so when we turn them away, we put them in even greater danger,” she said.

Illinois Democratic Rep. Delia Ramirez said during the press conference that Congress needs to pass legislation to reaffirm U.S. asylum and refugee law.

“I know today is a dark day,” she said. “But it is also a moment for Congress to exert its authority. We cannot go into despair.” 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday allowed the Trump administration to move forward with its plans to strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that opens them up to deportation.

The 6-3 conservative court ruled that the Haitian and Syrian immigrants are not “entitled” to orders postponing an end to their temporary protections while litigation is pending, arguing those are non-constitutional claims. It means their work permits and deportation protections are stripped, but the ruling won’t go in effect for 32 days. 

It was one of two favorable decisions Thursday for the Trump administration’s policy goals to curtail legal immigration and humanitarian protections for its mass deportation campaign. The high court also ruled that immigration officials could turn away asylum seekers on Mexico’s side of the U.S. border. 

The two rulings greatly expand the president’s executive power to curtail migration at the 

Southern border and strip deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of immigrants in the interior of the country. 

The final immigration-related case before the Supreme Court – the highly anticipated decision on the president’s efforts to redefine birthright citizenship – is expected by late June or early July.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote for the majority, said that the Haitians’ arguments — that their equal protection claim that their Temporary Protected Status was terminated on a racial bias — are unlikely to prevail in court.

“None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications,” Alito wrote.

The liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined in a dissent that argued the president made clear racial comments about Haitians for the purpose of terminating protections. 

“Haitians are Black. The references—of filth, disease, and primitiveness—are shot through with racial stereotypes and tropes,” they wrote. “It is hard to imagine the statements being made today of any White community.” 

Protections ended for Venezuelans earlier

This is not the first time the high court has allowed the Trump administration to strip TPS protections for immigrants. 

Last year, the conservative justices allowed for the government to end deportation protections for more than half a million Venezuelans. Coupled with Thursday’s decision on Haitians and Syrians, it brings the total loss of legal protections to nearly 1 million immigrants amid the president’s mass deportation efforts. 

James Percival, the Department of Homeland Security’s general counsel, praised the decision.

“The T in TPS stands for TEMPORARY, yet many of these designations became de facto amnesty,” he said in a statement. “This is a win for the rule of law and common sense.”

The architect of the White House’s immigration crackdown, Stephen Miller, said the Trump administration would move to deport any immigrants who lose their TPS status.

“Of course,” he said late Thursday, outside the White House. “If you no longer have status in this country you’re supposed to be deported.”

The decision is likely to impact multiple lawsuits across the country in which federal judges have halted President Donald Trump’s efforts to strip legal protections granted to more than 1.3 million immigrants with TPS because they hail from countries the U.S. initially deemed too dangerous for return. 

It also opens hundreds of thousands of immigrants with TPS up to deportation, part of the president’s broader efforts to curtail immigration and strip legal status from immigrants. 

‘The saddest day in my life’

TPS holders and lawyers who argued before the high court said the decision will have devastating consequences not only for TPS holders but their families. 

“We don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Jose Palma, a TPS recipient from El Salvador whose protections are set to expire in September, at a press conference. 

Viles Dorsainvil, a Haitian TPS holder and one of the plaintiffs in the case, said the decision was “shocking news.”

“It’s the saddest day in my life,” Dorsainvil, of Springfield, Ohio, said during the press conference. 

While on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump, along with his running mate Vice President JD Vance, falsely accused Haitian immigrants of eating people’s pets, and vowed to end TPS for Haiti. The three liberal justices point to those comments as evidence that the president has racial animosity toward Haitians.

Ahilan Arulanantham, who represented the Syrians, said during the press conference that the justices in their majority opinion did not wade into the legal argument over whether the Homeland Security secretary, at the time Kristi Noem, took the proper administrative procedures to consult with the State Department on country conditions before making a decision to end or extend TPS protections. 

Congress created TPS in 1990, and since then a country receives a TPS designation after the Homeland Security secretary consults with the State Department to determine if the country meets certain conditions to qualify for the status.

A TPS designation is made if it’s too dangerous to return to the country based on violence, natural disasters or other extraordinary conditions. Protections can last from six to 18 months unless renewed. 

“The court doesn’t say that what the Trump administration has done in TPS decision-making is lawful. It doesn’t say that these decisions comply with the TPS statute,” Arulanantham said of ending TPS for Haiti and Syria. “Instead, what it says is that the statute doesn’t give the courts any power to correct illegal decisions made under the TPS statute.”

That includes determining whether the Department of Homeland Security actually consulted with the State Department in reviewing country conditions. The State Department advises against any travel to Haiti and Syria.

“Instead they say the courts have no role to play in reviewing whether or not the decisions are lawful,” Arulanantham said.

He said the decision “hands to the administration and to the far right wing of the anti-immigrant movement an important victory that they have struggled with for a number of years.”

Democrats decry Trump, high court

Congressional Democrats condemned the decision. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the ruling “cruel and inhumane.”

“TPS exists for exactly this reason: to protect people when returning home is unsafe,” the New York Democrat said in a statement. “Haiti and Syria remain unsafe today. Instead of showing basic humanity, Donald Trump and this Court have chosen fear, chaos, and cruelty.”

Congress has tried to extend legal protections for Haitians. In April, the House in a rare bipartisan move passed a bill to extend TPS for Haiti for three years, but it’s unlikely to overcome the 60-vote threshold in the GOP-controlled Senate. 

During a press conference following the decision, Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who pushed for that bill’s passage in the House, said “this fight is not over.”

“Ending TPS for Haitians, ending TPS for Syrians, in this ruling endangers all TPS holders,” she said. “Todays ruling is lawless, unjust and should not stand.”

She said the Senate should take up her bill that passed the House “immediately, and save lives.”

Debate over race as a factor

Alito noted that while the plaintiffs can still move forward on the arguments of equal protections, charging that the decisions to end TPS were based on racial animus, those arguments were unlikely to succeed. 

He argued that there is evidence that Noem’s decision to end the designation was not based on race and instead “simply opposes the TPS program.”

“For example, one may oppose TPS and favor tighter restrictions on immigration for economic or other reasons that have nothing to do with race,” Alito said. “And a person without racial bias can provide a harshly unfavorable description of living conditions in some of the countries with TPS designations. The criteria for TPS designations guarantee that many, if not most, designated countries have such characteristics.”

He argued that “Haiti is no exception,” and that many Americans would describe its condition as “intolerable.”

Trump has frequently described Haiti as a “sh*thole country.”

Kagan noted that language in her dissent and criticized the majority for not considering those comments as “overtly racial,” but also refusing to acknowledge some of them. So she made a list. 

She referenced Trump’s comments on how Haitians were “poisoning the blood” of the U.S.; how they “probably have AIDS;” and how Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.”

“The statements fairly shout, in their racial undertones and overtones alike, that race entered into the President’s resolve to remove Haitians from this country,” she wrote. “And here, the President’s own statements show that race did enter in — that, within what was surely a multi-cause decision, it was a motivating factor.”

State courts cannot find liability for labeling shortcomings in pesticides and similar products because such products are covered by federal law, the U.S. Supreme Court said Thursday in a decision backing agricultural giant Monsanto. 

The justices, in a 7-2 decision, threw out a $1.25 million verdict a Missouri court awarded to a man who said long-term use of the weedkiller Roundup caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. 

The herbicide, produced by Monsanto, does not include any warning of carcinogenic material. Monsanto and parent company Bayer deny there is any link and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has routinely found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, does not likely cause cancer. 

Consumer and health advocates, though, said the decision provided companies immunity from health-related claims.

The decision created an unusual split for the conservative-dominated court, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh writing the majority opinion and his fellow conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joining a dissent written by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Federal law trumps state

The majority ruled that the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, or FIFRA, which governs herbicide use, explicitly preempts state claims like the one awarded to John Durnell of St. Louis. 

Roundup’s label complied with EPA regulations, to which states cannot add requirements, Kavanaugh wrote. Placing a cancer warning would open the company up to civil and criminal penalties for using a label the EPA did not approve, he said.

“In sum, federal law requires Monsanto to sell Roundup with the label that EPA approved at the initial registration and that EPA has subsequently re-approved on multiple occasions—that is, the label without a cancer warning,” he wrote. 

“Durnell’s state tort claim, by contrast, would require Monsanto to add a cancer warning to its labels. That Missouri-law requirement is ‘in addition to’ and ‘different from’ Monsanto’s federal-law labeling obligations.”

In a statement, Bayer CEO Bill Anderson praised the ruling for providing regulatory certainty to farmers and the herbicide producer.

“This decision is good for American farmers who help feed the world,” he said. “It provides the regulatory clarity necessary for innovators like us to develop the agricultural tools that guarantee an affordable food supply.”

Closing the courthouse doors

In her dissent, Jackson wrote that the majority’s decision improperly prioritized national uniformity over consumer protection.

While the federal law does include a preemption clause, it also includes a provision against “false or misleading” statements. That provision covers the absence of a warning necessary to protect health and the environment, she wrote.

“Ultimately, the effect of the majority’s interpretation is both remarkable and regrettable, for it unjustifiably closes the courthouse doors to state tort plaintiffs like Durnell,” she wrote.

Advocates also criticized what they said was the ruling’s creation of legal immunity for manufacturers. 

Bill Jordan, whose 40-year EPA career included three years as the deputy director of the Office of Pesticide Programs during the Obama administration, said in a statement distributed by the Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of former EPA officials, that the decision leaves people “with fewer tools to protect themselves.”

“When people are exposed to pesticides, they deserve honest warnings about the risks,” Jordan said. “If federal protections aren’t enough, states should be able to act before people get sick. This Supreme Court decision favors companies and takes away one of the important ways states can require stronger health warnings for the public.”

Farm bill amendment

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker said on a press call the decision reversed thousands of jury awards to people who said they were harmed by herbicides like Roundup.

The court “sided with the wealthy, powerful multinational corporations, reversing years and years of precedent, dismissing, ultimately, effectively hundreds and hundreds, in fact thousands, of cases,” the New Jersey Democrat said. “They sided with the big multinational corporations against the people.”

Booker said he would introduce an amendment to the farm bill to strip out the preemption clause.

He also suggested that corporate lobbying and campaign contributions influenced the decision.

“We have seen hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars pouring into our political system, corrupting all three branches of government,” Booker said.

Missouri verdict

Durnell sued Monsanto and parent company Bayer in 2019, claiming that exposure to Roundup over two decades led to his cancer diagnosis. A Missouri trial court awarded him $1.25 million, and a state appeals courts affirmed the ruling.

The Supreme Court was the first federal court to hear the case. 

Federal law typically trumps state law, which Monsanto and the Justice Department emphasized during April oral arguments. Industry groups across the economy tend to support federal supremacy because it saves companies from complying with 50 separate regulatory schemes across states.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked major portions of President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting voting by mail, finding he had exceeded his constitutional authority.

The decision halts, at least until a nearly certain appeal is heard, efforts by the U.S. Postal Service to require states to submit the names of likely mail voters before it delivers ballots. It also stops the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from compiling lists of voting-age citizens in each state.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of President Barack Obama in Massachusetts, is the first judge to block the March 31 executive order. State and local election officials have raised concerns that its requirements would inject chaos into preparations for the November midterm elections.

Talwani ruled that Trump had asserted too much control over elections in several parts of the order as he directed federal officials to quickly take actions that he argues are needed to prevent noncitizen voting, which rarely occurs.

“The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections,” Talwani wrote.

Order overpowered states

The executive order directed Postmaster General David Steiner to put forward a rule requiring states, at least 90 days before a federal election, notify the Postal Service whether they intended to allow ballots to be sent through the mail. States would then have to submit to USPS a list of voters planning to vote by mail at least 60 days before the election.

Talwani wrote that the Postal Service lacks any authorization by Congress to put forward binding regulations on mail-in voting. The Constitution, she wrote, “reserves the power to determine voter eligibility to the States alone.” 

The executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security, with help from the Social Security Administration, to compile a list of voting-age U.S. citizens living in each state and then provide that information to state officials at least 60 days before each federal election. The order does not tell states how to use the data.

The list of citizens would be drawn from naturalization and Social Security records, according to the order. It would also include data from SAVE, a powerful computer program maintained by Homeland Security that verifies citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases. 

The executive order pointed to no relevant constitutional or legal authority supporting the compilation of the citizenship lists, Talwani wrote. Trump “lacks any authority to compile voter lists for each State,” she wrote.

A day before the decision, Steiner told a U.S. Senate committee that a proposed Postal Service rule to implement the executive order would lead to non-delivery of ballots in states that don’t provide lists of anticipated mail voters — a position condemned by Democrats.

“Today’s decision is a very significant victory for free and fair elections and a defeat for Donald Trump’s vile efforts to make it harder for people to vote,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement.

“Once again, the courts have reaffirmed that Trump’s efforts to subvert the election are patently unconstitutional.”

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that the Trump administration remains confident the executive order will be implemented by the November election.

“The entire Trump Administration will continue lawfully enacting the agenda President Trump was elected to enact – which includes the safety and security of American elections,” Jackson said.

Latest setback

Trump has suffered a series of setbacks in recent days in his efforts to influence the administration of state-run elections. 

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the Department of Justice wasn’t entitled to state voter rolls. Senators also continues to rebuff the president’s attempts to pressure them into passing the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to show documents proving their citizenship.

Talwani’s decision came in a lawsuit brought by Democratic state attorneys general. It is the second major district court ruling over the executive order, after a judge in Washington, D.C., declined to stop the order because the Trump administration hadn’t taken enough action to implement it.

Under Thursday’s decision, federal officials must notify their employees within a week that sweeping portions of the executive order are void.

And on Monday, a judge blocked the use of SAVE to search for noncitizen voters.

Recent polling from the Democracy Defense Project found that three out of every 10 Wisconsin voters aren’t confident this year’s elections will be conducted accurately. 

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the presumptive Republican nominee for governor, has often been a vocal election conspiracy theorist — including voting against the certification of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021 and appearing at events with people who insist that election was stolen. 

Republicans in control of Congress have spent months debating bills to add restrictions to voting while President Donald Trump has signed  executive orders demanding states turn over voter data, sent FBI agents to Democratic cities across the country — including Milwaukee — to investigate the 2020 election and uses the bully pulpit of the White House to rehash the debunked theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and that Democrats are unfairly winning elections because large numbers of immigrants who are ineligible to vote are illegally casting ballots. 

Since Trump’s return to office last year, fears that he will send armed federal agents to polling places have percolated across the country. 

With less than 50 days until Wisconsin’s primaries for governor, congressional and state legislative seat and four months until the Nov. 3 midterm election, the past six years of Republican efforts to reduce faith in the country’s election systems have created a whirlwind of headlines, social media rumors, court rulings and fearmongering.

All of that is set to collide this summer with Wisconsin’s actual election administration system — which involves thousands of clerks, volunteers and state officials managing the polls, counting ballots and certifying the results. 

Ann Jacobs, a Democrat on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said that getting too worked up about the potential risks can turn people off from voting, even if they wouldn’t have been affected. 

“There’s a lot we can prepare for, and scaring people in advance of the election is the worst thing we can do, because we don’t need to depress our own turnout,” she said.

TR Edwards, staff counsel at the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, told the Wisconsin Examiner that people’s fears often don’t exactly match with what happens on the ground. 

“A lot of it is just fear-based and not necessarily rooted in what’s possible, but that being said, I am understanding of that,” he said. “I recognize why people are concerned, and I do think, particularly with some of the actions the administration has taken over the last six months, that they have every right to be concerned. I just don’t know if the level of concern matches either the level of preparation or the reality on the ground.” 

Edwards said that he and Law Forward are focused on three areas ahead of the elections: the threat of the federal government seizing 2020 election ballots, building trust between election clerks and local law enforcement and working to prevent Trump’s election-related executive orders from taking effect. 

Ballot seizures

The FBI over the last year has been re-investigating long debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 election. Agents have already seized ballots and documents in Fulton County, Georgia and Maricopa County, Arizona. They’ve also been conducting interviews in the Milwaukee area, raising worries that ballots there will also be seized. 

In Milwaukee County, nearly 180,000 absentee ballots from the 2020 election have yet to be destroyed because of ongoing efforts from election deniers to obtain the ballots through the state’s open records law. 

Under normal Wisconsin election law, ballots and other election materials are destroyed 22 months after an election is held. But because of the ongoing litigation, the county’s ballots still exist. 

State officials have raised concerns that the federal government could seize those ballots, revealing how thousands of Milwaukee residents voted up and down the ballot in 2020. 

Don Millis, a Republican member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told WISN’s UpFront on Sunday that the ballots need to be destroyed as soon as possible. 

“Those ballots should have been destroyed. No one’s entitled to see those,” he said. “Our Constitution was built on the idea of a secret ballot, and I’m just frustrated that this hasn’t happened. I just wish the decision makers who are in charge of this would see that and move more quickly.”

But the discussion of the 2020 ballots has raised fears that the administration will attempt to do the same with this year’s ballots. 

Jacobs told the Examiner there isn’t much an individual voter can do if that’s what happens — but that local elections officials and voting rights advocates are preparing for the possibility and planning to head off any attempts in the courts. 

“I am thoughtful and cautious about how I talk about things that might affect an election, right, and in part it’s because there’s only certain things we can or cannot affect going into an election,” she said. “You know, ‘Donald Trump’s going to come in and steal all our ballots.’ Well, there’s absolutely nothing a voter can do about that if that’s in fact what’s going to happen, right? An individual voter has nothing they can do about that, so I don’t want them to not vote, thinking that that’s going to happen with me, and so I’m concerned that there’s a certain amount of fearmongering around what might or might not happen in a fall election.” 

She added that with proper planning — having court documents pre-written, knowing which local judge will be on duty to hear a case right away — challenges to these kinds of actions can be made “in minutes instead of hours.” 

Cops and feds 

Edwards pointed to Riverside County, California, where the local sheriff — a Republican candidate for governor — seized ballots and opened an investigation into the state’s recent primary election, as an example of the risk posed by law enforcement intrusion into elections. In Wisconsin, Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling has often been at the center of the state’s election skeptic circles. 

Edwards said that the goal this summer is to build trust between cops, outside groups and local clerks ahead of the election so everyone knows what the law says and where it’s appropriate for law enforcement officers, local, state or federal, to be. 

“We are less concerned about law enforcement being present, as long as they are in compliance with applicable law,” Edwards said. “But I am more concerned with ensuring that voters can cast ballots free from intimidation. Our goal is to make sure clerks and voters understand their rights and that any conduct that violates state or federal law, or could reasonably be viewed as voter intimidation, is identified and addressed appropriately.”

If law enforcement is entering areas of polling places that they shouldn’t be, the remedy would be filing lawsuits to get a judge to remove them. 

Jacobs said this threat again comes down to planning. 

“Certainly I can contemplate the possibility that a goal would be to go into a minority community and essentially stand around with guns and try to intimidate voters,” she said. “Unfortunately, our nation has a history of that, and it wouldn’t be the first time that has happened. That said, we can also plan ahead for that. … if that is something where a person is like, ‘Boy, if that happens, I would be really scared to go to a voting place.’ That person should be encouraged to vote absentee, right?”

In addition to voting by mail, voters can cast absentee ballots in person at drop boxes or at their local clerk’s office.

Executive Orders 

Trump has signed executive orders that aim to require additional proof of citizenship to register to vote, restrict absentee ballot use and more tightly manage how the U.S. Postal Service handles absentee ballots. All of the orders have been hung up in the federal court system. 

At a Senate hearing Wednesday, U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner said that under his agency’s proposed rule, the post office won’t deliver mail-in absentee ballots in states, including Wisconsin, that have refused to comply with Trump’s order to turn over voter data to the federal government.

Since Trump returned to office, his administration has been working to obtain voter registration lists in a number of states, including Wisconsin. So far, the state elections commission has resisted these efforts, arguing the administration is trying to gain access to personal voter data that can’t be released. 

Jacobs said that the executive orders and any proposed rules from the USPS are going to be challenged in the court and are unlikely to be in effect by the fall election. 

Edwards said that Law Forward has filed amicus briefs in the lawsuits against the orders and is working to help overworked local election officials digest information about potential changes. 

“There’s no way [clerks] can keep up with the velocity of everything that’s going on, so we’ve been trying to do what we can to partner with people to help make sure they have all the information they need,” he said.