A California Highway Patrol officer holds an evidence bag after taking a suspect into custody during a stop in Oakland, Calif. Many factors can influence a police agency’s clearance rate, including how quickly evidence is processed by crime labs. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Police departments’ “clearance rates” — the percentage of cases they declare closed — are one of the most widely cited benchmarks for how effectively they combat crime. Lawmakers reference clearance rates in hearings, mayors cite them during police budget debates, and community members often use them to judge how well their local department is functioning.

But the figures can be confusing — and in some cases misleading.

State lawmakers are pushing to better understand and improve clearance rates, as crime remains top of mind for many Americans and a defining issue in statehouses nationwide.

Efforts to help solve more crimes and support victims have become a rare area of bipartisan agreement. This year, lawmakers in Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania and Texas have considered or enacted measures that would boost police investigative capacity or improve crime data and clearance rate reporting.

A new law in Illinois will require all law enforcement agencies to publish routine clearance data on nonfatal shootings and homicides starting in July 2026.

Missouri enacted a similar law, which will go into effect in 2026, that directs the state’s Department of Public Safety to publish clearance rates statewide and create a new grant program to help police departments solve violent crimes. And Texas lawmakers established a pilot program to set up rapid DNA testing facilities in two counties.

Lawmakers and police officials in some of these states say raising clearance rates is both a public safety priority and a matter of providing closure for victims and families. Research suggests that the likelihood of being caught is one of the strongest deterrents to committing a crime — making clearance rates a closely watched indicator of how well the justice system is working.

Clearing crimes is critical for public safety because it takes repeat offenders off the streets, helps resolve cases that never made it into official reports, delivers justice for victims, and strengthens the community trust that helps police solve future cases, said Thaddeus Johnson, an assistant professor of criminal justice and criminology at Georgia State University. Johnson, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice, also served as a police officer in Memphis, Tennessee, for a decade.

“Clearance rate reflects police actions, but also the vibe and how the community feels –– the confidence and faith they have in the police,” Johnson said.

Across the country, clearance rates for violent crimes — including homicide, rape and aggravated assault — have declined for decades. The national homicide clearance rate, for example, has fallen from 72% in 1980 to 61% in 2024, the most recent year with FBI data available.

The decline is similar across other major crime categories. In 1980, police cleared 49% of rapes and 59% of aggravated assaults. By 2024, those figures had fallen to 27% and 49%, respectively. Robbery clearance rates also shifted over time, rising from 24% in 1980 to 30% in 2024.

But those figures reflect national averages. At the local level, clearance rates vary widely, with some departments solving a large share of cases while others struggle with consistently low numbers.

Police departments in Vermont, Delaware and Idaho had the highest violent crime clearance rates in 2024, while New Mexico, Georgia and Mississippi had the lowest, according to a 50-state crime data analysis by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Council of State Governments Justice Center.

Some experts say there are several reasons clearance rates can swing in either direction. Chronic staffing shortages, overwhelmed detective units, rising caseloads and strained community relationships can push rates down. Strong victim and witness cooperation, better investigative technology and clearance of older backlogged cases can push them up.

At the same time, clearance rates — like most crime statistics — have limitations and can be difficult to understand.

Clearance rates, explained

A clearance rate is meant to show how often police solve reported crimes in a given year. The formula is simple — cleared cases divided by reported cases — but the definition of “cleared” is broad.

Under federal rules, cases can be cleared either by arrest or by “exceptional means.” Arrest clearances are straightforward: Police make an arrest, file charges and hand the case to prosecutors.

Exceptional clearances apply when police say they have enough evidence to arrest someone but cannot do so for reasons outside their control — for example, when a suspect has died, fled the country, is being held in another jurisdiction that won’t extradite, or when prosecutors decline to bring charges or victims choose not to move forward.

Since agencies have wide discretion in using exceptional clearances, similar cases may be counted as “solved” in one community and remain open in another. High exceptional clearance rates can give the impression that more arrests have been made than actually have.

Timing also complicates the statistics. Clearances are counted in the year a case is closed, not the year the crime occurred. For crimes that routinely take months or years to investigate, such as homicides or sexual assaults, this is common.

As a result, departments that focus on long-term investigations or suddenly receive new evidence may clear a batch of older cases, making their current-year rate look higher even though more recent cases remain unresolved.

Most agencies do not publicly break down how many of their annual clearances involve older cases, but that doesn’t mean they are intentionally manipulating their statistics.

National reporting isn’t airtight either. The FBI’s crime reporting program is voluntary, and some police departments may submit crime data but skip clearance data altogether.

Other measures of effectiveness

A clearance does not guarantee that prosecutors filed charges or that a case resulted in a conviction — outcomes that often matter most to victims and their families. It also doesn’t capture whether the right person was apprehended.

“It’s an imperfect metric for the performance of our criminal justice system,” said Marc Krupanski, the criminal justice policy director at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic research organization.

Clearance rates also say little about investigative quality, how consistently police update families, how quickly officers respond or whether residents feel comfortable coming forward with information in the first place.

For these reasons, experts recommend looking at other measures, including prosecutorial outcomes, police response times, victim satisfaction and levels of community trust.

Some experts say clearance rates are most meaningful when analyzed over time — ideally 10 to 20 years — and adjusted per capita or per 100,000 residents. Breaking out clearances by arrest and exceptional means also adds important context, as does examining how many arrests lead to charges or convictions.

These outcomes, experts say, reflect both police work and community cooperation — from gathering witnesses to processing crime scenes and maintaining evidence — offering a clearer picture of investigative effectiveness.

Michigan’s proposal

Just last month, Michigan lawmakers introduced bipartisan legislation aimed at boosting the state’s clearance rates. Last year, Michigan police solved 48% of violent crimes, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center’s analysis.

The House and Senate versions of the Violent Crime Clearance Act are sponsored by Republican state Rep. Sarah Lightner and Democratic state Sen. Stephanie Chang. The legislation would create a statewide grant program for police departments, allowing them to use the funds to hire and train investigators or crime lab personnel, upgrade evidence-collection equipment or record-management systems and support witnesses in violent crime investigations. It would also establish strict clearance rate reporting requirements.

“Regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, I think there’s just a general belief that we want crimes to be solved,” Chang told Stateline.

Rural police departments, which often have fewer staff and limited investigative resources, sometimes face challenges in solving certain types of cases. To help address this, the bill would require that grants be distributed across the state, and that no single agency receive more than 20% of the total program funding in a given year.

Supporters, including Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, say the legislation would provide much-needed help for overburdened departments.

“These aren’t just statistics. These are people. … They were dragged into the criminal justice system as a victim, and so for us, each case — and trying to find and bring closure, whether it’s an armed robbery, a rape or a murder — is critically important,” Bouchard said.

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

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on March 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense announced on social media Monday it’s looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, one of several lawmakers who posted a video last week telling military members they are not required to follow orders that violate the law. 

The video spurred anger from President Donald Trump, who posted, also on social media, that he believed the statement from six Democratic lawmakers represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The claim led to safety concerns on Capitol Hill, especially after a year that included numerous acts of violence against lawmakers and key political figures. 

The Defense Department announcement didn’t detail exactly how Kelly may have violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice but stated that “a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

It was unclear how the military review and threat of court-martial proceedings would fit with the constitutional protections held by members of Congress for speech and debate.

Kelly wrote in a statement the Defense Department’s post was the first time he’d heard about the inquiry. 

“If this is meant to intimidate me and other members of Congress from doing our jobs and holding this administration accountable, it won’t work,” Kelly wrote. “I’ve given too much to this country to be silenced by bullies who care more about their own power than protecting the Constitution.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Kelly and the other senators in the video were encouraging “disorder and chaos within the ranks.”

“Not a single one of them … can point to a single illegal order that this administration has given down because it does not exist,” Leavitt said. “They knew what they were doing in this video and Sen. Mark Kelly and all of them should be held accountable for that.”

Kelly military background

Kelly served as an aviator in the United States Navy from 1987 until 2012. He was deployed as part of Operation Desert Storm during the first Gulf War. He received several awards throughout his military career, including the Legion of Merit and the Distinguished Flying Cross. 

Kelly reached the rank of captain before his retirement from military service. 

Kelly, who was also a NASA astronaut, was first elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2020. 

The Defense Department’s post announcing an investigation into Kelly said military officials wanted to remind people that “military retirees remain subject to the UCMJ for applicable offenses, and federal laws such as 18 U.S.C. § 2387 prohibit actions intended to interfere with the loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces.”

The statement added that all service members “have a legal obligation under the UCMJ to obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful.  A servicemember’s personal philosophy does not justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

The statement appeared somewhat similar to the one Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander gave in the video they published Nov 18. 

The Democrats, all of whom served in the military or worked in intelligence agencies, said they wanted “to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community who take risks each day to keep Americans safe.”

They said that Americans in those institutions “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Broad constitutional protections for Congress

Members of Congress are broadly protected under the speech and debate clause of the U.S. Constitution, which states that unless a lawmaker is involved in treason, felony and breach of the peace, they are “privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”

The annotated explanation of the clause on Congress’ official website says the Supreme Court has “broadly” interpreted its applications over the years to ensure an independent legislative branch. 

“Despite uncertainty at the margins, it is well established that the Clause serves to secure the independence of the federal legislature by providing Members of Congress and their aides with immunity from criminal prosecutions or civil suits that stem from acts taken within the legislative sphere,” it states. “As succinctly described by the Court, the Clause’s immunity from liability applies ‘even though their conduct, if performed in other than legislative contexts, would in itself be unconstitutional or otherwise contrary to criminal or civil statutes.’ This general immunity principle forms the core of the protections afforded by the Clause.”

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service states the judiciary’s “immunity principle protects Members from ‘intimidation by the executive’ or a ‘hostile judiciary’ by prohibiting both the executive and judicial powers from being used to improperly influence or harass legislators.”

Reporters in a press pool ask questions of President Donald Trump and Frank Bisignano, left, administrator of the Social Security Administration, in the Oval Office on Aug. 14, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A three-judge federal appeals panel grilled lawyers for a former White House official and The Associated Press Monday in a case that could significantly overhaul press access to the Oval Office and Air Force One.

The two sides sparred over whether the president, in this case President Donald Trump, has sole discretion over which reporters can take part in the press pool in certain White House spaces, based on a journalist’s or their employer’s viewpoint.

The dispute between the Trump administration and the AP erupted earlier this year after the wire service refused to use the term Gulf of America, designated by Trump, for the body of water the AP continued to call the Gulf of Mexico. 

Judges Robert L. Wilkins, Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao, for the U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit, poked holes in each side’s arguments on whether the First Amendment stops at the Oval Office doors or the tarmac outside Air Force One, and if the president can decide who’s included or excluded.

The press pool is a small, rotating group of reporters, specified in advance, who travel with or attend events hosted by the president. They then send dispatches to hundreds of other journalists, and often publish quickly about the president’s activities.

The Department of Justice’s Yaakov Roth argued that because of legal precedent, the administration cannot ban a larger group of “bona fide journalists” from using White House media passes to access the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, where press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other administration officials take questions from reporters.

However, he argued, the president is well within his bounds to exclude reporters from his “personal spaces,” including the Oval Office or Air Force One, which are strictly “by invitation only.”

Katsas, appointed during Trump’s first administration, asked, “Do you really want a room-by-room, space-by-space, jurisprudence? It’s really about access to the president. Is it really different if an event is moved from the Oval Office to the Rose Garden?”

“If the president did an event in the (Brady) briefing room, we wouldn’t be having the same argument,” replied Roth, principal deputy attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division.

Wilkins, appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama, pressed further and asked if the White House is permitted to “revoke” a journalist’s media pass.

Roth answered that “viewpoint discrimination is not permitted” when issuing passes and opening up access to the Brady room.

“The question here is does that carry over (to the Oval Office or Air Force One)? I think the answer to that is no,” Roth said.

The Oval Office door

In his opening statement, AP attorney Charles Tobin argued, “The First Amendment does not stop at the Oval Office door” and that a “system” has been established in which the president cannot ban a reporter from spaces where the press pool is permitted. 

For example, recent Cabinet meetings and Oval Office visits by foreign leaders have been open to the press pool.

“If it’s a pooled event, then the president cannot pick and choose,” said Tobin, of the firm Ballard Spahr.

Katsas pressed back, asking, “How does the president get to pick who will come to the Oval Office for (a private) event?”

Tobin replied with the hypothetical example of Trump inviting conservative media personality Tucker Carlson for a one-on-one interview. “It’s not a pooled event,” he said.

Tobin continued his argument that the pool system was established under President Dwight Eisenhower and has since become “a defined government program.”

Rao responded skeptically to Tobin, “you’re resting your whole argument” on the White House not having any say over the pool who follows the president.

“It’s not some fixed thing. It’s changed over time,” said Rao, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2019.

“It’s a government program. It must be administered in a viewpoint neutral (manner),” Tobin replied.

“Does the White House determine whether an event is a press pool event?” Katsas followed up.

“They do that all the time, your honor. It’s a defined government program,” Tobin replied.

Katsas pushed back: “If you win on that theory, then the next day the White House can stop designating events as pooled events.”

Wire service ban

The Associated Press sued the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich and other press staff for banning the wire service from events in the Oval Office and other spaces after Trump disagreed with an editorial decision by the wire service.

Shortly after Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, the AP issued style guidance instructing journalists to continue using the body of water’s established name, but to add a note that the president had changed it on U.S. maps and government documents.

The AP sets style standards for journalists across the industry.

The case has been winding through the federal courts since February.

Budowich left the administration in September.

The White House began denying the AP entry to the Oval Office, East Room and other places on Feb. 11.

Leavitt announced in late February that White House officials would take over pool rotation decisions from the White House Correspondents Association, a member organization that has self-governed journalist rotations and briefing seats placement since the Eisenhower administration.

Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A senior federal judge dismissed charges Monday against two public officials with long-running public disputes with President Donald Trump, saying the controversial appointment of the president’s former personal attorney as a prosecutor doomed the cases.

Senior U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie, whom former President Bill Clinton appointed to the bench in South Carolina, wrote in a Monday order that Attorney General Pam Bondi did not have the authority to make Lindsey Halligan the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. 

The judge said the deadline for an interim appointee to that position had lapsed.

Because that process was invalid, the prosecutions against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom had investigated or prosecuted Trump, must be dropped, Currie wrote.

Currie dismissed the indictments without prejudice, meaning they could be revived. But at least in Comey’s case, in which charges were brought on the eve of the statute of limitations expiring, that appeared unlikely.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Monday the administration would appeal the ruling.

“Lindsay Halligan was legally appointed, and that’s the administration’s position,” Leavitt said. “There was a judge who was clearly trying to shield Leticia James and James Comey from receiving accountability.”

120-day clock

U.S. attorneys are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but the attorney general can appoint someone on an interim basis for 120 days. After that, the judges in the district are responsible for appointing an interim prosecutor.

“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework,” Currie wrote.

Bondi appointed Erik Siebert as the interim U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in January, while his confirmation was pending in the Senate. After 120 days, the judges in the district allowed him to continue.

Siebert resigned in September, reportedly under pressure from Trump and Bondi to bring charges against Comey. Bondi then named Halligan, at the time a White House aide who had also worked for Trump in a private capacity, as the interim U.S. attorney. 

But Bondi could not do that because, after 120 days, the responsibility for naming an interim U.S. attorney fell to the district court judges, Currie wrote.

“The 120-day clock began running with Mr. Siebert’s appointment on Jan. 21, 2025,” she wrote. “When that clock expired on May 21, 2025, so too did the Attorney General’s appointment authority. Consequently, I conclude that the Attorney General’s attempt to install Ms. Halligan as Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia was invalid and that Ms. Halligan has been unlawfully serving in that role.”

Quick indictment

Halligan, after gaining office in September, quickly secured a two-count indictment against the former FBI chief from a grand jury in Alexandria. Comey was accused of lying to Congress about whether he had authorized a press leak of information related to an FBI investigation of Russian actors’ involvement in Trump’s first presidential campaign. 

However, U.S. District Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick wrote last week that issues with evidence, testimony and statements to the grand jury in the case outweighed the usual heavily guarded secrecy of proceedings. He said “profound investigative missteps” could result in the dismissal of Comey’s indictment.

Comey has pleaded not guilty.

James won a civil case against Trump related to business fraud, though a state appeals court later overturned the sentence as overly punitive.

Trump has publicly blasted James and Comey as using the mechanisms of legal proceedings to persecute him. 

In an extraordinary public message to Bondi just before Halligan replaced Siebert, Trump complained that the prosecutions against both were not developing faster.

The Justice Department did not respond to a message seeking comment Monday.

A farm employee works near Coachella, Calif., in 2024. A California union has sued to stop new, lower-wage guidelines for foreign worker visas. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

A California union and a group of farm workers from around the country are suing to stop new, lower-wage federal guidelines that save money for farmers but cut pay for temporary foreign agriculture workers — hurting local laborers as a result, the suit alleges. 

In a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court, the United Farm Workers and 18 individual workers sued the U.S. Department of Labor over the October guidelines for laborers who are in the United States under temporary, H-2A visas. The new guidelines set lower wages — differentiating them by state — including pay cuts to account for the value of free housing provided by law to foreign workers. 

“Farm workers, and the rural communities across America they sustain, need and deserve fair wages and job security, not a race to the bottom with an endless supply of cheap foreign labor,” Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. 

The new Trump administration rules are “drastically cutting the minimum wage that U.S. employers must pay foreign farmworkers, all while costs and wages in other sectors have sharply increased,” the lawsuit states, adding that the lower pay for foreign workers will also force cuts for American workers. The lawsuit asks a federal judge in California to halt implementation of the guidelines and recalculate wages. 

The lawsuit also objects to first-time pay differentials based on the value of employer-provided housing. It alleges violations of laws requiring that foreign visas not affect wages of U.S. workers with similar jobs. 

The cuts “will severely impact farmworkers — some of the most vulnerable members of our society and many of whom already live in poverty,” according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, not identified by name, works in Missouri with an H-2A foreign worker visa was formerly paid $17.83 an hour and will suffer a $4.08 pay cut, leaving him unable to afford food and essential protective clothing for his job helping with squash, eggplant and other vegetables, according to the lawsuit. 

One worker, Irene Mendoza, a U.S. citizen, said in the lawsuit that her wages could be cut by $3.22 an hour, to $13.78, because of the guidelines, even though she doesn’t need a foreign worker visa, forcing her to get a second job to pay for food, housing and transportation between jobs in some of the states where she works. Mendoza said in the lawsuit that she works picking and packing green beans and potatoes in Michigan, Minnesota, Texas and Wisconsin.

The lower wage guidelines vary by state and are subject to state minimum wage laws that could make them higher in some states. In North Carolina, for instance, the new hourly wage is $11.09 for less-skilled workers, compared with $16.16 last year, and $12.27 for local workers who don’t need housing, according to a Cornell University analysis.

The Department of Labor referred a Stateline request for comment to the Department of Justice, which declined comment. 

Some farmers and experts have hailed the new guidelines as lifesavers that will stave off bankruptcy as costs rise and some prices for their farm goods stay low. 

Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in a small group of states including Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000). The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule, on top of the nearly 420,000 a year issued in recent years. 

Public comments on the rule are open until Dec. 1.

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

The Waukesha County Sheriff Department. An audit of the department's use of data from the Flock surveillance camera system shows inconsistent reporting the reasons on the reasons investigators access the information, a problem common among police agencies. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Like other Wisconsin law enforcement agencies, the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department (WCSD) uses Flock cameras for many reasons, though department personnel don’t always clearly document what those reasons are. Audit data reveals that staff most frequently entered “investigation” in order to access Flock’s network, while other documented uses are raising concerns among privacy advocates. 

Flock cameras perpetually photograph and, using AI-powered license plate reader technology, identify vehicles traversing roadways. Flock’s system can be used to view a vehicle’s journey, even weeks after capturing an image, or flag specific vehicles for law enforcement which have been placed on “Be On The Lookout” (BOLO) lists.

As of March 2025, the company Flock Safety was valued at $7.5 billion, with over 5,000 law enforcement agencies using its cameras nationwide. At least  221 of those agencies are in Wisconsin, including the city of Waukesha’s police department as well as  the county sheriff . The Wisconsin Examiner obtained Flock audit data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department through open records requests, covering Flock searches from January 2024 to July 2025, and used computer programming to analyze the data.

Over that period of time, more than 6,700 Flock searches were conducted by WCSD using only “investigation”, as well as abbreviations or misspellings of the word. The searches, as they appeared in the audit data, offered no other context to suggest why specifically Flock’s network had been searched. Lt. Nicholas Wenzel, a sheriff’s department spokesperson, wrote in an email statement that “investigation” has a broad usage when Flock is involved. 

“A deputy/detective using Flock for an investigation is using it for a wide range of public safety situations,” Wenzel explained. “Flock assists in locating missing persons during Amber or Silver Alert by identifying their vehicles and has proven effective in recovering stolen cars. Investigators use Flock to track suspect vehicles in serious crimes such as homicides, assaults, robberies, and shootings, as well as in property crimes like burglaries, catalytic converter thefts, and package thefts. The system also supports traffic-related investigations, including hit-and-run cases, and enables agencies to share information across jurisdictions to track offenders who travel between communities.”

Widespread use of vague search terms 

Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that terms like “investigation” are too vague to determine whether or not Flock was used appropriately.  At least some responsibility falls on Flock Safety itself, Maass argues. “They’re setting up a system where it’s impossible for somebody to audit it,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I think that’s the big problem, is that there’s no baseline requirement that you have to have a case related to this…They say you have to have a law enforcement purpose. But if you just put the word ‘investigation’ there, how do you know? Like, how do you know that this is not somebody stalking their ex-partner? How do you know whether this is somebody looking up information about celebrities? How do you know whether it’s racist or not? And you just don’t, because nobody is checking any of these things.”

The audit also stored other vague search terms used by WCSD such as “f”, “cooch”, “freddy”, “ts”, “nathan”, and “hunt” which Lt. Wenzel would not define.“The search terms are associated with investigations, some of which remain active,” he wrote in an email statement. “To preserve the integrity of these ongoing investigations, no further description or clarification of the terms can be provided at this time.” 

In August, Wisconsin Examiner published a similar Flock analysis that also found agencies statewide entering only the word “investigation,” with no other descriptor, in order to access Flock. At nearly 20,000 searches (not including misspellings and abbreviations), the term “investigation” was in fact the most often used term in that analysis, which relied on audit data obtained from the Wauwatosa Police Department. 

While data from the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared in that first Flock story, that analysis focused on broad trends which appeared among at least 221 unique agencies using Flock in Wisconsin. This more recent analysis focuses specifically on the Waukesha County Sheriff Department’s use of the camera network. 

The August report found that the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department appeared among the top 10 Wisconsin law enforcement agencies that used Flock the most. The report also found that some agencies also only entered “.” — a period — in the Flock system field to indicate the reason for using the system. The West Allis Police Department led Wisconsin in this particular search term, followed by the Waukesha Police Department and the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office. 

In response to an inquiry from the Wisconsin Examiner, a Waukesha Police Department spokesperson  said that an officer who’d conducted nearly 400 Flock searches using only “.” as the reason had been provided extra training, and that the officer’s behavior had been corrected after the Wisconsin Examiner reached out. The West Allis Police Department,  on the other hand, did not suggest that its officers were using the Flock network improperly. 

Use of vague search terms is chronic across Flock’s network, Maass has found. He recalled  one nationwide audit that covered 11.4 million Flock searches over a six-month period. Of those some 22,743 “just dots” appeared as reasons for Flock searches. Searches using only the word “investigation” made up about 14.5% of all searches, he said. 

“So yeah, that’s a problem,” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. Reviewing a copy of Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department audit data, Maass saw the same vague search terms that have been reported by the Examiner. Although some terms can be reasonably guessed — such as “repo” perhaps meaning repossession, or ICAC, which usually stands for Internet Crimes Against Children — others aren’t so easy. 

“‘Hunt’ can mean anything,” said Maass, referring to a term which appeared 24 times within the Waukesha Sheriff’s data. Maass points to the search term “f”, which the Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis found WCSD used to search Flock 806 times. 

Maass highlights that each search touches hundreds or even thousands of individual Flock networks nationwide. “If I’m one of these agencies that gets hit by this system, how am I to know if this is a legitimate search or not?” Maass said. “Now, maybe somebody at Waukesha is going through their own system, and like questioning every officer about every case. Maybe they’re doing that. Probably not.” 

Wenzel of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department said that although some searches appear vague,  deputies and detectives are required by department policy to document their use of Flock in reports. Although a case number category does appear in the audit data, this column was rendered blank, making it impossible for Wisconsin Examiner to determine how often Flock searches had case numbers, or whether those case numbers corresponded with specific investigations the sheriff’s department had on file. 

“The Sheriff’s Office understands the concerns surrounding emerging technology and takes very seriously its responsibility to protect the privacy and civil rights of the community,” Wenzel said in a statement. “The use of Flock license plate recognition technology is guided by clear safeguards to ensure it is only used for legitimate law enforcement purposes.” 

The department’s policy, Wenzel explained, “prohibits any use outside of legitimate criminal investigations.” He said that deputies undergo initial and ongoing training to use the camera network. “All system activity is logged and subject to review,” said Wenzel.

Maass says the department can’t back-check the searches conducted by other agencies using the Waukesha Flock network, however. “Because when we’re talking about millions of searches coming through their system, you know, every few months…like hundreds of thousands at least every month…how are they actually quality controlling any of these?” Maass told the Wisconsin Examiner. “They’re just not.”

Wenzel said that “the technology is not used for general surveillance, traffic enforcement, or monitoring individuals not connected to an investigation.” The Wisconsin Examiner’s analysis, however, detected 43 searches logged as “surveillance” and 30 searches logged as “traffic offense.” The audit data also contained at least 357 searches logged as “suspicious” or variations of the word, as well as another 14 logged as “suspicious driving behavior,” 52 searches for “road rage” and 36 logged as “identify driver”.

There were also 62 searches related to evictions, which privacy advocates contend  go beyond the public safety roles that the cameras were originally pitched to serve.

“Evictions can be unpredictable and potentially dangerous situations,” said Wenzel. “The removal of individuals from a residence often creates heightened emotions, uncertainty, and sometimes resistance. For this reason, safety is the top priority for both the residents being evicted and the deputies carrying out the court order. Flock is utilized to determine if the former tenants have left the area or could possibly be in the area when the court order is being carried out.” 

Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock has extended “far beyond the public safety justifications for which these tools were originally sold.” McCray Jones told the Wisconsin Examiner, “These systems were introduced to the public as a means to reduce violent crime and aid in solving serious investigations. However, when they are used for non-criminal purposes, such as evictions, they cross a dangerous line.”  

Waukesha’s uses for evictions were particularly concerning for McCray Jones. “What’s happening here is surveillance technology, operated by taxpayer-funded public servants, being weaponized at the behest of private landlords and corporations,” he said. “That is exactly the kind of mission creep communities are most worried about when it comes to police surveillance. If Flock cameras can be repurposed to target tenants today, what stops law enforcement tomorrow from using facial recognition to track people who fall behind on rent, or phone location data to monitor whether workers are ‘really sick’ when they call off? We’ve seen documented cases where law enforcement misused surveillance systems to track down romantic interests. Once the floodgate is opened, the slide into abuse is fast and quiet.” 

Wenzel said that access to the Flock network is limited to personnel who are properly trained and authorized to use the software, and the department’s policy is regularly reviewed by those personnel. 

“Searches are limited to legitimate law enforcement purposes per department policy,” he wrote in an email statement. The department has conducted its own Flock audits, Wenzel explained, and no sheriff department staff have ever been disciplined or re-trained due to Flock-related issues. Although the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department is part of the federal 287(g) program, in which local law enforcement agencies participate in federal immigration enforcement, Wenzel said that Flock is not used as part of the program, and the Wisconsin Examiner didn’t find any clear examples of immigration-related uses by the sheriff’s department. 

McCray Jones considers the Waukesha Sheriff’s use of Flock to be an example of why “surveillance technology in the hands of law enforcement must be tightly limited, narrowly defined, and rigorously transparent.” He stressed that every use “must be clearly logged and justified — not with vague categories like ‘investigation’ or ‘repo’, but with meaningful explanations the public can actually understand and evaluate. Without strict guardrails, audits like this reveal how quickly tools justified in the name of ‘safety’ turn into instruments of convenience or even private gain.” 

With the growth of surveillance technologies and the civil liberties implications they raise, McCray Jones said that the public “deserves clear proof that it is being used only to reduce crime — particularly violent crime — and not to serve the interests of landlords or corporations. Accountability and transparency aren’t optional add-ons; they are the bare minimum to prevent abuse.”

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Health care providers march for abortion rights at a Madison rally in October 2022. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin State Senate passed SB 553 on Tuesday, Nov. 18, in their last floor session of the year. This bill, purportedly written to define abortion, is actually a covert attempt to exclude abortion from the broader scope of reproductive healthcare. 

Anti-abortion legislators pushing this bill are attempting to play to their religious base who voted them into office to promote an anti-abortion agenda. This is a failing strategy, however, when we’ve seen in countless elections around the country that abortion access is a winning issue, including in Wisconsin. 

The bigger problem, though, is how proponents of the bill are describing it as a way to allow physicians to safely provide care and clarify abortion restrictions, by excluding medical procedures intended to save a person’s life, such as C-sections, the removal of dead embryos, and treatment for ectopic pregnancy, to name a few, from the definition of “abortion.”

Lawmakers are misleading people into thinking that this bill will further define the nuances of care that physicians provide and actually allow, rather than restrict, the provision of care. 

This could not be farther from the truth. We have too many examples nationwide of physicians practicing in states hostile to reproductive rights who are unsure about what care is legal to provide, ultimately leading to unnecessary delays in caring for pregnant people. It is telling that physicians who provide miscarriage and abortion care were not called on to write the text of this legislation. 

Nationally, we have already seen pregnant people die preventable deaths while waiting for essential care for early pregnancy complications because lawmakers stirred confusion and meddled in healthcare decisions. This bill will amplify those dangers in our state, where 13.2 people out of 100,000 die in pregnancy, childbirth, or 42 days after termination of a pregnancy. A study by researchers at the University of Washington and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that these trends, across race, have been worsening in Wisconsin since 2010. 

Black birthing people in Wisconsin account for a disproportionate amount of the disparities in maternal mortality. Adding these racial and systemic inequities to a bill that will delay care for folks across the board, it’s nearly guaranteed that certain groups will have a greater share of these poor outcomes.

As a family medicine and obstetrics physician, I care for folks across the entire spectrum of pregnancy — including miscarriage and abortion. I want to emphasize the similarities in those two scenarios and how they significantly overlap. 

The procedure performed for abortion is identical to the procedure performed for a miscarriage. When a person has a miscarriage or an abortion in the first trimester, generally, a procedure called a “manual vacuum aspiration” or “MVA” can be performed to remove the pregnancy contents. For miscarriages or abortions that occur later in pregnancy, the procedure involves dilating the cervix and removing the pregnancy via a procedure called a dilation and curettage (D&C) or dilation and evacuation (D&E), based on gestational age. 

Additionally, when managing a miscarriage with medications, physicians use mifepristone and misoprostol — medications that lawmakers and anti-abortion activists are actively seeking to restrict because they’re used identically in first-trimester abortions. 

That is the underlying, root issue here: amplifying and reinforcing stigma and criminalization around abortion. 

Carving out the definition of abortion doesn’t actually create medical clarity for providers; instead, it creates a stigmatizing health care space where patients have to disclose and justify why they need certain essential health care. People deserve care and compassion, not judgment or punishment. 

Whether due to miscarriage, abortion, or self-managed abortion, pregnancy loss is not a crime. People should not fear jail time for getting the health care they need. SB 553 aims to differentiate abortion based on intent — a dystopian concept where politicians are in the private space of a doctor’s office. Wisconsinites currently have an opportunity to combat this stigma and call out politicians who are actively harming patients and the patient/provider relationship. 

In my practice already I have seen patients who are hesitant to disclose their pregnancy history for fear that sharing a history of needing abortion care could get them in trouble. Imagine how that influences future decisions to engage with health care providers around miscarriage, abortion and pregnancy complications. 

Wisconsin already heavily regulates how medications for miscarriage are prescribed, including a mandatory in-person dispensing requirement. Those of us who offer this care should not need to feel we must pit our medical expertise against legal jargon when it comes to providing normal, essential care. We need people to be able to trust their health care providers, and we need politicians to stop making laws that pigeonhole physicians into even narrower definitions of care. 

Now that this dangerous bill has been passed in the Senate, it will next head to the Assembly before ultimately landing on Gov. Tony Evers’ desk. In his seven years in office Evers has consistently vetoed anti-abortion legislation, and he has vowed to veto any bill that would limit access to abortion, including SB 553. 

As a physician, it’s devastating to rely on a single individual to preserve my ability to practice safe and necessary health care for countless people and families across the state without political interference. 

There is no other type of health care that is regulated in the unique, stigmatizing, harmful way that abortion care is. Our state politicians need to understand that health care decisions should remain between a patient and their trusted provider. SB 553 ignores that and should not become law. 

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As states continue to curb health insurers’ use of artificial intelligence, patients and doctors are arming themselves with AI tools to fight claims denials, prior authorizations and soaring medical bills. (Photo by Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline)

As states strive to curb health insurers’ use of artificial intelligence, patients and doctors are arming themselves with AI tools to fight claims denials, prior authorizations and soaring medical bills.

Several businesses and nonprofits have launched AI-powered tools to help patients get their insurance claims paid and navigate byzantine medical bills, creating a robotic tug-of-war over who gets care and who foots the bill for it.

Sheer Health, a three-year-old company that helps patients and providers navigate health insurance and billing, now has an app that allows consumers to connect their health insurance account, upload medical bills and claims, and ask questions about deductibles, copays and covered benefits.

“You would think there would be some sort of technology that could explain in real English why I’m getting a bill for $1,500,” said cofounder Jeff Witten. The program uses both AI and humans to provide the answers for free, he said. Patients who want extra support in challenging a denied claim or dealing with out-of-network reimbursements can pay Sheer Health to handle those for them.

In North Carolina, the nonprofit Counterforce Health designed an AI assistant to help patients appeal their denied health insurance claims and fight large medical bills. The free service uses AI models to analyze a patient’s denial letter, then look through the patient’s policy and outside medical research to draft a customized appeal letter.

Other consumer-focused services use AI to catch billing errors or parse medical jargon. Some patients are even turning to AI chatbots like Grok for help.

A quarter of adults under age 30 said they used an AI chatbot at least once a month for health information or advice, according to a poll the health care research nonprofit KFF published in August 2024. But most adults said they were not confident that the health information is accurate.

State legislators on both sides of the aisle, meanwhile, are scrambling to keep pace, passing new regulations that govern how insurers, physicians and others use AI in health care. Already this year, more than a dozen states have passed laws regulating AI in health care, according to Manatt, a consulting firm.

“It doesn’t feel like a satisfying outcome to just have two robots argue back and forth over whether a patient should access a particular type of care,” said Carmel Shachar, assistant clinical professor of law and the faculty director of the Health Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

“We don’t want to get on an AI-enabled treadmill that just speeds up.”

A black box

Health care can feel like a black box. If your doctor says you need surgery, for example, the cost depends on a dizzying number of factors, including your health insurance provider, your specific health plan, its copayment requirements, your deductible, where you live, the facility where the surgery will be performed, whether that facility and your doctor are in-network and your specific diagnosis.

Some insurers may require prior authorization before a surgery is approved. That can entail extensive medical documentation. After a surgery, the resulting bill can be difficult to parse.

Witten, of Sheer Health, said his company has seen thousands of instances of patients whose doctors recommend a certain procedure, like surgery, and then a few days before the surgery the patient learns insurance didn’t approve it.

In recent years, as more health insurance companies have turned to AI to automate claims processing and prior authorizations, the share of denied claims has risen. This year, 41% of physicians and other providers said their claims are denied more than 10% of the time, up from 30% of providers who said that three years ago, according to a September report from credit reporting company Experian.

Insurers on Affordable Care Act marketplaces denied nearly 1 in 5 in-network claims in 2023, up from 17% in 2021, and more than a third of out-of-network claims, according to the most recently available data from KFF.

Insurance giant UnitedHealth Group has come under fire in the media and from federal lawmakers for using algorithms to systematically deny care to seniors, while Humana and other insurers face lawsuits and regulatory investigations that allege they’ve used sophisticated algorithms to block or deny coverage for medical procedures.

Insurers say AI tools can improve efficiency and reduce costs by automating tasks that can involve analyzing vast amounts of data. And companies say they’re monitoring their AI to identify potential problems. A UnitedHealth representative pointed Stateline to the company’s AI Review Board, a team of clinicians, scientists and other experts that reviews its AI models for accuracy and fairness.

“Health plans are committed to responsibly using artificial intelligence to create a more seamless, real-time customer experience and to make claims management faster and more effective for patients and providers,” a spokesperson for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the national trade group representing health insurers, told Stateline.

But states are stepping up oversight.

Arizona, Maryland, Nebraska and Texas, for example, have banned insurance companies from using AI as the sole decisionmaker in prior authorization or medical necessity denials.

Dr. Arvind Venkat is an emergency room physician in the Pittsburgh area. He’s also a Democratic Pennsylvania state representative and the lead sponsor of a bipartisan bill to regulate the use of AI in health care.

He’s seen new technologies reshape health care during his 25 years in medicine, but AI feels wholly different, he said. It’s an “active player” in people’s care in a way that other technologies haven’t been.

“If we’re able to harness this technology to improve the delivery and efficiency of clinical care, that is a huge win,” said Venkat. But he’s worried about AI use without guardrails.

His legislation would force insurers and health care providers in Pennsylvania to be more transparent about how they use AI; require a human to make the final decision any time AI is used; and mandate that they show evidence of minimizing bias in their use of AI.

“In health care, where it’s so personal and the stakes are so high, we need to make sure we’re mandating in every patient’s case that we’re applying artificial intelligence in a way that looks at the individual patient,” Venkat said.

Patient supervision

Historically, consumers rarely challenge denied claims: A KFF analysis found fewer than 1% of health coverage denials are appealed. And even when they are, patients lose more than half of those appeals.

New consumer-focused AI tools could shift that dynamic by making appeals easier to file and the process easier to understand. But there are limits; without human oversight, experts say, the AI is vulnerable to mistakes.

“It can be difficult for a layperson to understand when AI is doing good work and when it is hallucinating or giving something that isn’t quite accurate,” said Shachar, of Harvard Law School.

For example, an AI tool might draft an appeals letter that a patient thinks looks impressive. But because most patients aren’t medical experts, they may not recognize if the AI misstates medical information, derailing an appeal, she said.

“The challenge is, if the patient is the one driving the process, are they going to be able to properly supervise the AI?” she said.

Earlier this year, Mathew Evins learned just 48 hours before his scheduled back surgery that his insurer wouldn’t cover it. Evins, a 68-year-old public relations executive who lives in Florida, worked with his physician to appeal, but got nowhere. He used an AI chatbot to draft a letter to his insurer, but that failed, too.

On his son’s recommendation, Evins turned to Sheer Health. He said Sheer identified a coding error in his medical records and handled communications with his insurer. The surgery was approved about three weeks later.

“It’s unfortunate that the public health system is so broken that it needs a third party to intervene on the patient’s behalf,” Evins told Stateline. But he’s grateful the technology made it possible to get life-changing surgery.

“AI in and of itself isn’t an answer,” he said. “AI, when used by a professional that understands the issues and ramifications of a particular problem, that’s a different story. Then you’ve got an effective tool.”

Most experts and lawmakers agree a human is needed to keep the robots in check.

AI has made it possible for insurance companies to rapidly assess cases and make decisions about whether to authorize surgeries or cover certain medical care. But that ability to make lightning-fast determinations should be tempered with a human, Venkat said.

“It’s why we need government regulation and why we need to make sure we mandate an individualized assessment with a human decisionmaker.”

Witten said there are situations in which AI works well, such as when it sifts through an insurance policy — which is essentially a contract between the company and the consumer — and connects the dots between the policy’s coverage and a corresponding insurance claim.

But, he said, “there are complicated cases out there AI just can’t resolve.” That’s when a human is needed to review.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity for AI to improve the patient experience and overall provider experience,” Witten said. “Where I worry is when you have insurance companies or other players using AI to completely replace customer support and human interaction.”

Furthermore, a growing body of research has found AI can reinforce bias that’s found elsewhere in medicine, discriminating against women, ethnic and racial minorities, and those with public insurance.

“The conclusions from artificial intelligence can reinforce discriminatory patterns and violate privacy in ways that we have already legislated against,” Venkat said.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

Federal regulations around mifepristone, which has provided abortion access across the United States, are being challenged in multiple lawsuits from opposing directions. (Getty Images)

Despite its strong safety record, the abortion and miscarriage drug mifepristone has been taken to court in several conflicting lawsuits, where some plaintiffs argue the drug should be easier to access, and others say it should be more restricted. 

The medication, sometimes prescribed through telehealth and sent to patients by mail, has provided abortion access across the United States and become a prime target for abortion opponents. 

A group of ongoing federal lawsuits challenges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 decision to maintain special requirements for the abortion pill, with a federal court in Washington upholding the FDA’s decision, a federal court in Hawaii asking the FDA to justify its decision, and a court in Virginia still to rule. Yet another lawsuit, filed Nov. 13 by the American Civil Liberties Union, challenges the FDA under the Freedom of Information Act, alleging the agency has, without giving a reason, refused to disclose the parameters of its mifepristone review and related communications with outside groups. 

For more information and updates on pending mifepristone cases, visit the Mifepristone Litigation and Federal Action Tracker from the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Heidi Purcell et al. v. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. et al.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii
• Claims: Originally named Chelius v. Wright and filed Oct. 3, 2017, by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a family doctor and several medical associations, this lawsuit challenges the FDA’s mifepristone restrictions as unduly burdensome and arbitrarily restrictive, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.
• Stakes: This case could determine whether the FDA can continue requiring special certifications for patients and providers, which plaintiffs argue deter and delay care, and present privacy risks for patients and providers post-Roe. If plaintiffs succeed, mifepristone could become easier to dispense and access throughout the country.
• Status: On Oct. 30, Judge Jill Otake, nominated by Republican President Donald Trump, ruled the FDA did not properly justify its 2023 decision or consider all of the evidence when it decided to maintain current restrictions on mifepristone. She ordered the agency to reconsider its decision. Plaintiffs did not seek to vacate the regulations in its lawsuit, so for now they remain in place pending the outcome of the FDA’s review and response to the court. A joint status report from plaintiffs and defendants on how the case should proceed is due Dec. 4.

Whole Woman’s Health Alliance et al. v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration et al. 

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia
• Claims: On May 8, 2023, abortion providers in Virginia, Montana, and Kansas challenged the FDA’s mifepristone rules as unduly burdensome and arbitrarily restrictive, similar to the claims in Purcell v. Kennedy.
• Stakes: If plaintiffs succeed in this case, mifepristone could become easier to dispense and access.
• Status: U.S. District Judge Robert S. Ballou, nominated by Democratic President Joe Biden, heard oral arguments on the motions for summary judgment in May but has not yet issued a decision.

Washington et al. v. FDA et al.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington
• Claims: On Feb. 23, 2023, Washington and initially 11 other states challenged the FDA’s mifepristone regulations as burdensome and unnecessary.
• Stakes: Expanding mifepristone access was on the line in this case.
• Status: Terminated. Judge Thomas O. Rice, nominated by former Democratic President Barack Obama, ruled this summer that the FDA’s review and decision regarding the mifepristone restrictions was reasonable, not arbitrary or capricious.  

American Civil Liberties Union v. FDA

• Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland
• Claims: On Nov. 13, 2025, the ACLU sued the FDA arguing it has not complied with the Freedom of Information Act. The nonprofit law firm in August sought  expedited records around the parameters of the FDA’s ongoing review of mifepristone and communications with outside groups. The ACLU alleges the agency has failed to provide a determination regarding the request.
• Stakes: Records released as part of this lawsuit could bring transparency to HHS’ review of the abortion pill.
• Status: The government has not yet filed a brief in response to the lawsuit, which has been assigned to Magistrate Judge Timothy J. Sullivan. 

 

Another group of lawsuits challenge state abortion pill restrictions, arguing that federal law, which allows medication abortions to be prescribed via telehealth and by the mail up to 10 weeks’ gestation, supersedes state laws.

GenBioPro v. Kristina Raynes et al.

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (on appeal from U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia)
• Claims: In 2023, mifepristone generic manufacturer GenBioPro sued West Virginia after the state criminalized abortion and explicitly banned prescription of mifepristone by telemedicine. The company argued federal law preempts West Virginia law and that Congress authorized only the FDA to impose restrictions on access to mifepristone.
• Stakes: A ruling in plaintiffs’ favor could have made abortion drugs easier to access in a state that has cut off access to pregnancy termination in most circumstances.
• Status: Terminated. District court Judge Robert C. Chambers, nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, found in 2023 that the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act did not preempt West Virginia’s abortion regulation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision in July. 

Amy Bryant v. Timothy Moore et al.

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (on appeal from U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina)
• Claims: In 2023, North Carolina Dr. Amy Bryant sued her state over medication abortion restrictions, arguing the FDA’s mifepristone policy preempts state restrictions, which require in-person prescribing, dispensing and administering; prohibit providers other than physicians from prescribing mifepristone; mandate the scheduling of an in-person follow-up appointment; and require non-fatal adverse events reported to the FDA.
• Stakes: The case could limit states’ ability to restrict medication abortion.
• Status: Chief Judge Catherine C. Eagles, nominated by Obama, found that some restrictions were preempted by federal law but upheld other state requirements, including mandatory ultrasounds and waiting periods. The case is pending appeal.

Birthmark Doula Collective et al. v. Louisiana et al. 

• Court: Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court
• Claims: On Oct. 31, 2024, birth workers, medical professionals and a pregnant woman challenged a Louisiana law that classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances, even though the FDA does not. They argue the classification delays access to these medications during emergencies, risking the health and safety of patients experiencing miscarriages.
• Stakes: Drugs used for emergencies during pregnancy could become easier for providers to access if plaintiffs prevail.
• Status: Pending in state trial court. In May, the court held a hearing on a motion to dismiss and ruled the challenge can proceed.

 

Another group of lawsuits seek to reimpose more restrictions on mifepristone and argue the FDA erred in its decision to allow abortion medication prescribed through telehealth and sent through the mail. Both cases cite anecdotes of women being coerced or drugged by partners to argue in-person visits are in the best interest of abortion patients. 

Missouri et al. v. FDA et al.

• Court: U.S. District Court of Eastern District of Missouri
• Claims: Originally filed Nov. 18, 2022 by a group of anti-abortion doctors and groups that claimed that mifepristone is highly dangerous and the FDA unlawfully loosened restrictions. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case last summer, determining plaintiffs did not have standing to sue and remanded it to lower courts.
• Stakes: If plaintiffs prevail, the FDA could bar telehealth and mail delivery of medication abortion, which would curtail access throughout the country.
• Status: The lawsuit was resurrected by attorneys general in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri. It was transferred last month from Trump appointee Matthew Kascmaryk’s court in Texas to Trump appointee Cristian Stevens’ court in Missouri. 

Louisiana et al. v. FDA et al.

• Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana Lafayette Division
• Claims: Filed Oct. 6, 2025, the state of Louisiana and resident Rosalie Markezich are suing to vacate the FDA’s 2023 decision to remove the in-person dispensing requirement. Markezich says she was coerced by a former partner to take the abortion pill, which she says he ordered in her name and received by mail.
• Stakes: If plaintiffs prevail, the FDA could bar telehealth and mail delivery for abortion medication, which could curtail access throughout the country.
• Status: The case is pending in district court before Trump appointee Judge David C. Joseph.

Read more about the FDA’s high-stakes abortion pill safety review.

Tomorrow, a look at efforts to both reinforce and crack shield laws across the country.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., shown here in September, cited a white paper funded and self-published without peer review by anti-abortion groups as grounds for federal scrutiny of a key abortion medication’s safety. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is facing increasing pressure from abortion opponents and advocates over how it regulates a drug that has become central to abortion access since Roe v. Wade was overturned three years ago.

Abortion medication manufacturers, health care providers and state attorneys general have continued to petition and sue the agency to loosen regulations for mifepristone, a key abortion drug. At the same time, anti-abortion policy leaders have successfully lobbied the Trump administration — on the basis of a self-published white paper funded by anti-abortion groups — to review mifepristone’s safety again and consider reviving old restrictions.

On Thursday, Nov. 13, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the FDA under a federal public records law for refusing to disclose the parameters of its new review, as well as communications with outside groups. 

Abortion opponents have called on the FDA to ban telehealth abortion, which has allowed abortion rates to rise slightly nationally despite state bans. A shift in mifepristone regulation could dramatically change abortion access throughout the country, and health advocates and litigators on both sides of this dispute are closely watching how the agency justifies any changes. 

Abortion-rights advocates have also seized on a recent federal ruling from a Trump-appointed judge, which orders the FDA to justify its 2023 decision to maintain restrictions on the abortion pill and argues the agency excluded from its review, without explanation, a wealth of research and evidence that it previously accepted.

Reproductive health legal experts say the action could prevent the anti-abortion white paper from being the main thing the agency considers before modifying its policy. 

“This is where the debate, both in the courts and the FDA, is taking place, around how it is considering evidence, making sure it is reviewing valid evidence and not junk evidence, and getting really reasoned explanations based in that evidence, as opposed to politics or ideology,” said Diana Kasdan, the legal and policy director for the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. 

Where reproductive health legal experts say the abortion pill has been over-regulated for a drug with a high safety record, anti-abortion attorneys, like senior counsel Erik Baptist of the Christian-right powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, have been arguing that the drug’s risks are exacerbated by its increased availability. The law firm, which was integral to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, is also representing a Louisiana woman in an abortion medication lawsuit against the FDA. 

“The FDA’s actions have created an even more unsafe environment for women,” Baptist said. 
“We expect the Trump administration to zealously appeal this dangerous decision.”

‘It’s the same data set, essentially’

Putting pressure on FDA’s review team are national anti-abortion policy groups like Americans United for Life, one of several groups that criticized the agency for approving a new generic version of mifepristone this fall. The group is part of a coalition that helped produce and, at the end of April, publicize the white paper on mifepristone’s safety, which U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. soon after cited as the basis for ordering a new review of the drug. 

The Ethics and Public Policy Center’s self-published paper analyzed a commercially available data set of all-payer health insurance claims from 2017 through 2023 and found an 11% rate of severe adverse events — 22 times higher than the less than 0.5% rate that’s on the label for mifepristone. Reproductive health researchers have criticized the paper’s broad classification of serious adverse events while noting it also reports low rates of the most serious side effects associated with medication abortion, like sepsis (0.1%), transfusion (0.15%), and hospitalization related to the abortion (0.66%). Meanwhile more than 100 peer-reviewed studies have found low rates of serious adverse effects, including for abortion medication provided through telehealth.

The paper, which has also been cited by lawmakers like U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, did not go through a scientific peer review, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center would not disclose the exact data set used. Spokesperson Hunter Estes previously told States Newsroom the group was not legally permitted to provide the data set but that the paper’s description of it should be enough to replicate the study.  

Americans United for Life CEO John Mize said he hopes to see the paper peer-reviewed in the near future. But he said the coalition has for now achieved its goal of convincing the FDA to look at the same insurance claims data set analyzed by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and then do its own analysis.

“What we’ve been told is the FDA is doing their own internal analysis of the EPPC data,” Mize said. “It’s to be seen what the FDA does with methodology. That’s the important component, because the data is the data. It’s the same data set, essentially.”

HHS did not respond to questions about its ongoing mifepristone review or the federal judge’s recent order to review all of the safety data, instead directing States Newsroom to an Oct. 2 post on X from Kennedy defending both the FDA’s review of mifepristone and its approval of a second generic version. 

“Recent studies already point to serious risks when mifepristone is used without proper medical oversight,” Kennedy posted. “@US_FDA only approved a second generic mifepristone tablet because federal law requires approval when an application proves the generic is identical to the brand-name drug.”

But if the FDA’s review ultimately draws different scientific conclusions than the anti-abortion movement, Mize said his side won’t stop pursuing challenges to the drug. 

“If it comes out that it’s not nearly as dangerous as what EPPC is reporting, and the data appears to be quality and not skewed by politics, then personally, I might take a different perspective,” Mize said. “But I am still fairly confident that a drug that induces abortion at home without clinical oversight is probably something that needs a little bit more scrutiny. … We might continue to fine tune methodology and look at pursuing other avenues of peer review.”

Politicized science 

Anti-abortion policy and legal advocates have been lobbying for tighter restrictions on mifepristone since the drug was first approved in 2000, and especially since the FDA started dropping restrictions, such as allowing the regimen to be used until 10 weeks’ gestation instead of seven in 2016. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the FDA under President Joe Biden’s administration permanently dropped the in-person dispensing requirement, allowing people to obtain the abortion pill via telehealth and through the mail. 

But the FDA maintained other regulations, as part of the drug’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, such as requiring prescribers, pharmacists and patients to sign forms agreeing to meet certain qualifications and acknowledging the drug’s common side effects, like heavy bleeding and nausea, and potential severe risks, like infection. Abortion providers have argued that some of the rules are unnecessary and burdensome.

Of the more than 20,000 prescription drug products approved by the FDA, less than 100 have REMS, and many of those are injectables with serious side effects like coma and death. In a quarter century, the FDA has reported 36 deaths associated with, but not necessarily caused by, mifepristone.

U.S. District Judge Jill Otake on Oct. 30 ordered the FDA to review all the relevant safety data on mifepristone, ruling that the agency erred years ago when it failed to justify maintaining strict rules on the drug despite a strong safety record after 25 years on the market. One week later, the U.S. Senate Democratic Caucus sent a letter to Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary demanding the ongoing mifepristone review be based on science and evidence. 

“That court order reinforces that, in conducting this new review, FDA may not cherry-pick junk science serving an anti-abortion agenda, but must instead look at the full body of evidence both confirming mifepristone’s safety and underscoring the harms of the FDA’s onerous restrictions,” reads the letter obtained by NOTUS. The senators ask HHS to respond by Nov. 28, to questions about the evidence being considered and the methodology.

Anti-abortion research groups also produced new studies for their first legal attempt to reinstate restrictions on mifepristone in a lawsuit filed in 2022. The plaintiffs persuaded a Trump-appointed district court judge to order the FDA to change its policy on the basis of studies funded by the anti-abortion movement that were later retracted by the journal’s publisher because of their methodology. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case, not on the merits but because plaintiffs did not have proper standing. The high court is expected to consider similar questions again, as at least seven mifepristone-focused lawsuits work their way through the lower courts.

University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley said that to meet the FDA’s policy on approving new drug regulations, the agency will need more than one or two outlier studies as justification. 

“To survive arbitrary and capricious review, they have to provide a reasoned decision that’s based on the facts, and if the facts taken as a whole suggest that this is a safe and effective drug, even though there’s one new paper out there that suggests it’s maybe a little less safe than it was before, they’re going to have to justify why that one paper outweighs the 50 papers on the other side that were published in peer-reviewed journals,” Donley said. “I don’t know how they could explain that.”

Donley has studied mifepristone regulation closely and said she watched the science around the medication become increasingly politicized, much more than other drugs. While controversial medicine, like gender-affirming care, involve drugs with multiple purposes, mifepristone was approved for the explicit purpose of ending a pregnancy. 

The FDA’s medication abortion regimen involves another drug, misoprostol, which was approved to treat ulcers, and is used off-label for abortions and miscarriages. It has not faced the same scrutiny as mifepristone. Abortion providers have said they would likely pivot to a misoprostol-only regimen if mifepristone were to become much harder to access, which it has even for miscarriages in states that have banned abortion entirely, like Kentucky and Louisiana.

Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories last year confirmed ongoing efforts to add miscarriage management as an approved use to its drug label. Were that to happen, it could be a game changer for access, Greer said.  

“It actually would be a pretty huge deal if they added it,” she said. “Because all of these attacks against mifepristone for abortion, even if they succeed, then mifepristone would theoretically remain on the market for miscarriage care, and then it could be used off-label for abortion.”

Read the latest on legal cases over mifepristone winding their way through the courts. 

Tomorrow, a look at efforts to both reinforce and crack shield laws across the country.

President Donald Trump meets with New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani n the Oval Office on Nov. 21, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani turned around their heated criticism in remarks to the press after an Oval Office meeting Friday.

After months of attacking each other, Trump and Mamdani pledged to address the high cost of living for New Yorkers. The White House has tried to steer messaging toward affordability in recent weeks as Trump’s approval ratings on the economy have sunk. 

“Some of his ideas really are the same ideas I have,” Trump said. “You know the new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries. It’s sort of an old-fashioned word, but it’s very accurate. They’re coming down.”

Food prices have risen considerably in recent years. Groceries overall cost 3.1% more than they did a year ago, according to the government’s latest Consumer Price Index.

Mamdani campaigned on lowering the cost of living, including property tax reform, making buses free and floating the idea of city-run grocery stories.

The mayor-elect described the meeting as “a productive meeting focused on a place of shared admiration and love, which is New York City, and the need to deliver affordability to New Yorkers.”

“We spoke about rent, we spoke about groceries, we spoke about utilities, we spoke about the different ways in which people are being pushed out, and I appreciated the time with the president,” Mamdani said.

The pair fielded questions on housing costs, crime, whether either of them would retract their recent barbs and whether Trump would backtrack his threats to cut federal money to New York City.

“Well, I think if we didn’t get along, whether it’s cut off or just make it a little bit difficult, or not give as much, we want to see,” Trump said.

“We had a meeting today that actually surprised me. He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down. All things that I agree with. Now, we may disagree how we get there,” Trump added.

In response to a question about GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Trump ally, calling Mamdani a “jihadist” as she eyes the New York gubernatorial seat, Trump said “she’s out there campaigning, and you say things sometimes in a campaign.”

“I met with a man who is a very rational person. I met with a man who wants to see, really wants to see, New York be great again,” Trump continued, adding “I’ll be cheering for him.”

Mamdani will be the city’s first Muslim mayor, as well as the youngest ever elected.

Mamdani sought meeting

Mamdani said he sought the meeting with Trump.

“My team reached out to the White House to set up this meeting because I will work with anyone to make life more affordable for the 8 and a half million people who call this city home,” Mamdani said in a press conference Thursday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Thursday the meeting “speaks to the fact that President Trump is willing to meet with anyone.”

“It speaks volumes that tomorrow we have a communist coming to the White House.”

Trump and congressional Republicans have repeatedly referred to the 34-year-old Mamdani as a “communist.” Mamdani, who ran on the Democratic ticket, identifies as a Democratic Socialist, an organization that claims roughly 85,000 members nationally. The ideology as a movement received a boost after the 2016 presidential run of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who represents Vermont and caucuses with Democrats.

Mamdani beat out former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this month by a 50.4% to 41% margin, according to the New York Times election coverage. Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa took just over 7% of the vote. Cuomo, who ran as an independent, resigned from office in 2021 after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment.

Trump endorsed Cuomo, seemingly reluctantly, on the eve of the election, in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.

“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” he wrote. “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”

Threat to pull funding

As Mamdani’s campaign gained momentum, Trump threatened to cut off billions in federal funding to New York City, Trump’s own home city.

Trump repeated the threat on election eve, writing on Truth Social that if Mamdani won, New York City would be a “total economic and social disaster” and that NYC should not expect any federal dollars “other than the very minimum as required.”

In Mamdani’s victory speech, he referred to Trump as a “despot.”

In July, Trump threatened to arrest Mamdani if the incoming mayor does not comply with the administration’s mass deportation campaign, including sending an influx of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to New York City.

 

Farmworkers gather produce near Hemet, Calif. The Trump administration is making it easier for farmers to employ guest workers from other countries. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

In a tacit admission that U.S. food production requires foreign labor, the Trump administration is making it easier for farmers to employ guest workers from other countries.

At the same time, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in recent months appears to be refraining from conducting agricultural workplace raids, even as it scours Democratic-led cities for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

“We really haven’t seen agriculture targeted with worksite enforcement efforts, and early this year we did,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of U.S. immigration policy at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The shifts come as many Americans are concerned about the rising cost of food, creating political problems for a president who campaigned on lowering them. Last week, the administration also announced it would lift tariffs on some foreign food products, including bananas, beef, coffee and tomatoes.

To ease labor shortages on farms and ranches, the administration last month made changes to the federal H-2A visa program, which allows employers to hire foreign workers for temporary agricultural jobs when there aren’t enough U.S.-born workers available. Under the new rule, the Department of Homeland Security will approve H-2A visas more quickly.

“Our immigration system has been broken for decades, and we finally have a President who is enforcing the law and prioritizing fixing programs farmers and ranchers rely on to produce the safest and most productive food supply in the world,” the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in an email to Stateline.

But the move to increase the supply of foreign agricultural workers conflicts with a July statement by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins that “the promise to America, to ensure that we have a 100% American workforce, stands.”

Rollins also said the administration was committed to the mass deportation of immigrants who are here illegally, but that it would be “strategic so as not to compromise our food supply.” Ultimately, she said, the solution would be increased automation of agricultural jobs.

The government has issued about 420,000 H-2A visas for agricultural workers every year since 2023, which amounts to about half of the 812,000 agricultural worker jobs. They are concentrated in states that grow fruits and vegetables as opposed to grains, which are increasingly planted and harvested using machines. The government expects an additional 119,000 visas to be issued under the new rule.

Almost half the H-2A visas in the 2025 fiscal year were in Florida (60,000), Georgia (44,000), California (37,000), Washington state (36,000) and North Carolina (28,000).

Lower wages

The new H-2A rule also includes new hourly wage guidelines that vary by state but are lower than previous wages, and allows employers to charge workers for housing that used to be free. In North Carolina, for instance, the new rate is $11.09 for unskilled workers compared with $16.16 last year. In California, the rate is $13.45 for unskilled workers compared with $19.97 last year, though minimum wage laws in California and some other states would apply to those jobs, according to a Cornell University analysis.

In North Carolina, farmers are looking forward to lower labor costs, said Lee Wicker, deputy director of the North Carolina Growers Association, a trade association that brought 11,000 guest workers to the state through the H-2A guest worker program last year.

“If you think farmers are making more money in these conditions, you’re wrong. They’re going broke,” Wicker said. Workers will take a pay cut under new guidelines and will have to pay for housing, but that may help farmers stave off bankruptcy, he said.

“I’m not saying the workers are going to be happy about this, but I think they’ll come back. Wages have gone down before and they kept coming,” he added.

Jeffrey Dorfman, an agricultural and resource economics professor at North Carolina State University, said the changes will be a boon to the state’s farmers.

“The move to lower the H-2A wages by the Trump administration will be very well received by growers in North Carolina and will save farmers tens of millions of dollars statewide,” Dorfman said. “For many farmers, it will turn money-losing crops into money-making crops, if prices stay about where they are now.”

Unionized California farmworkers are opposed to the pay cuts and loss of free housing in the new guest worker visa plan, said Antonio De Loera-Brust, a spokesperson for the United Farm Workers, which represents about 10,000 workers in California.

The union sued the administration over ICE raids in the fields earlier this year, but recently “it’s been pretty quiet,” he said.

“For us it’s been really a one-two punch,” De Loera-Brust said. “First came the raids, which hurt workers, and now in order to appease business interests, they make all these concessions on wages and the guest workers program.”

Fewer raids

The administration quickly walked back a June directive to avoid raids on the agriculture and hospitality industries. Nevertheless, ICE raids on those employers have been more infrequent in the months since.

In June, ICE raided a dairy farm in New Mexico and a meatpacking plant in Nebraska. Since then, the agency has raided only a handful of food and agriculture employers, such as a July raid on a California marijuana grower and an Arizona restaurant chain, and a September raid to arrest Wisconsin dairy workers.

Earlier this month, ICE agents descended on an onion farm in Northern California, arresting four immigrants on charges of illegally selling farmworker visas.

Even as ICE ramps up its activity in North Carolina cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh, Wicker, of the growers trade group, said farms in the state have not been targeted.

Gelatt, of the Migration Policy Institute, said that’s been true of farms and ranches in many states since June.

“In past administrations we’ve seen a very quiet de-emphasis of immigration enforcement at farms. You don’t need to make an announcement. You don’t need to fight in the courts,” Gelatt said. “It is possible just to direct enforcement activities away from farms. It’ll be hard to know if that’s happened now, but I would not be surprised.”

While farmworkers in California are seeing some relief from raids, life is still uneasy for them, De Loera-Brust said.

“Overall, they have clearly slowed down [raids] in ag areas, but that’s not policy. They could resume at any time. People are living with uncertainty,” he said.

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

A U.S. Department of Education regulation slated to take effect in July 2026 would give the secretary broad discretion to decide which organizations qualify for a program to forgive student loans for borrowers that enter public service. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A new U.S. Department of Education regulation to narrow eligibility for a key student debt relief program for public service workers has drawn strong opposition from advocates who argue the regulation is an attempt to target organizations whose missions do not align with President Donald Trump’s agenda. 

Under a final rule slated to take effect in July, employers that participate in “unlawful activities such that they have a substantial illegal purpose” would be excluded from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which is meant to encourage college graduates to pursue careers in public service.

The language of the final rule, which focuses on issues such as gender-affirming care and illegal immigration, has also raised concerns it meant to enforce the Trump administration’s priorities.

At least three lawsuits from Democratic attorneys general, cities, labor unions and nonprofit advocacy groups argue that the regulation is overly vague and exceeds the department’s authority. 

The rule would hurt not only the institutions that benefit from the program, but the public service workers themselves, Winston Berkman-Breen, legal director at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, told States Newsroom.

“It’s not just about the macro effect of whether these organizations, including governments, will be able to do the work they do,” he said. “It’s also the individual financial health and security of borrowers and their households that will be really, really detrimentally affected by this rule, and we’re already sort of seeing that happen.” 

The organization is representing a coalition of cities, nonprofit advocacy groups and labor unions in one of the lawsuits over the regulation. 

Here’s a closer look at the policy and what it would mean for borrowers and employers: 

What is Public Service Loan Forgiveness?

Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, or PSLF, in 2007 via the College Cost Reduction and Access Act to incentivize people to take on public service careers. 

PSLF forgives the remaining student debt for borrowers after they make 120 qualifying monthly payments while working for an eligible employer. 

How will the regulation work? 

The department’s final rule — which stems from a March executive order — is only forward-looking, meaning workers would not lose any credit earned prior to the July 1, 2026, effective date. 

Under the policy, the Education secretary can determine “by a preponderance of the evidence” that an employer has taken part in “illegal activities such that the organization has a substantial illegal purpose.” 

Affected employers can either reapply to serve as a qualifying employer after 10 years or try to regain eligibility in a quicker timeframe if they enter into a “corrective action plan” that needs the secretary’s approval. 

The activities that could disqualify employers, according to the department, include: 

• “Aiding and abetting” illegal immigration or “illegal discrimination”
• Providing gender-affirming care
• Supporting terrorism or “engaging in violence for the purpose of obstructing or influencing” federal government policy
• Trafficking children across states “for purposes of emancipation from their lawful parents”
• Violating state laws

What’s the debate about?

Though the administration has framed the rule as an effort to punish “criminal activity,” advocates and Democratic officials see it as a way to target organizations that are not aligned with the administration’s goals.

“The bases for the disqualification that are in the final rule for the secretary of Education are pretty clearly just proxies for being engaged in activities that this administration doesn’t agree with or that don’t align with its agenda,” Berkman-Breen said.

He pointed to supporting immigrant communities, gender-affirming care, transgender rights, diverse hiring, teaching an accurate portrayal of racial history in this country and the right to peaceful protest as examples. 

Berkman-Breen said these activities are “very clearly things that this administration in other parts of the government has already attacked in civil society and in the states and local communities, but they’re now bringing that sort of attack into the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program.”

In response to a request for comment, the department shared a statement from Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent, who said “it is unconscionable that the plaintiffs are standing up for” what he describes as “criminal activity.” 

“This is a commonsense reform that will stop taxpayer dollars from subsidizing organizations involved in terrorism, child trafficking, and transgender procedures that are doing irreversible harm to children,” he said. “The final rule is crystal clear: the Department will enforce it neutrally, without consideration of the employer’s mission, ideology, or the population they serve.”

How will employers be affected? 

Michele Zampini, associate vice president for federal policy and advocacy at the Institute for College Access & Success, said the final rule will divert nonprofits’ ability to focus on their mission and impede their ability to keep staff on and attract new workers.

The final rule “will have the effect of putting a lot of nonprofits doing a lot of really important work in their communities in a defensive position, whether they’re being preemptively defensive to try and avoid running afoul of the administration, or whether they’re already kind of in a position where the administration has identified them as a target,” she said. 

Zampini, whose group aims to advance affordability, accountability and equity in higher education, added that the program was crucial in attracting talent to service-oriented work. 

“PSLF is a big part of what … enables people to take on what may be lower-paying jobs in exchange for being able to manage their debt over time,” she said. “If people don’t have that option, or even if they feel like they don’t have that option or are afraid they won’t have that option, it becomes a lot harder to kind of attract people to those roles.” 

What legal challenges have come out against the policy? 

The administration is already facing a handful of lawsuits over the final rule, with critics urging federal courts to vacate the policy and deem it “unlawful.”

The challengers include a slew of cities, labor unions and nonprofit advocacy groups who filed suit in a Massachusetts federal court Nov. 3. 

Another lawsuit was brought the same day in the same federal court from Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin. 

Four nonprofit advocacy groups also filed a suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Nov. 4 against the administration over the rule.

Hemp plant at a farm in Minnesota. (Photo by Baylor Spears)

When Jacob Diener first heard that the status of hemp could be reviewed, he wasn’t too concerned. With his company, A Good Plug, the 32-year-old expected to continue producing small batch hemp products like gummies, brownies, and cheesecakes. 

“It seems around this time it happens every year that they want to re-assess the Farm Bill,” Diener told the Wisconsin Examiner. But 2025 was different and Diener, like others across the industry, was caught off guard when what amounted to a prohibition on his livelihood was discreetly attached to a deal to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. “It’s just weird and scary,” he said. 

Hemp businesses were allowed to flourish after the passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized the production and distribution of hemp products with no more than 0.3% THC on a dry weight basis. But under new rules that were included in the stopgap spending bill ending the federal government shutdown last week, products must contain no more than 0.4 milligrams of THC per container. 

Steve Hampton, owner of the Eau Claire-based company Steve’s Hemp, says that standard is biologically impossible to meet. “[The] hemp plant struggles to grow to meet that guideline before it’s even harvested,” Hampton told the Wisconsin Examiner. “So, we’re seeing upwards to 99% of the industry get wiped out from this.” 

THC is the primary psychoactive compound in the cannabis plant. Although hemp and the psychoactive variety commonly known as marijuana are the same plant species, they have different chemical compositions. Many cannabis varieties are cultivated with high levels of THC for markets in states where the plant has been legalized medical or recreational. 

Hemp, with far lower concentrations of THC, is mostly used for rope, paper and industrial products. It is also offered in states that do not have legal cannabis markets as an alternative — a source for  products containing delta-9 THC, THCa, THCp and other derivatives. 

The law reopening the government, however, effectively bans those products and gives the industry until next November to adapt or fizzle out. Erin Kelly, owner of the Wauwatosa-based hemp goods store Kelly’s Greens, told TMJ4 that even CBD products contain trace amounts of THC which make them effective medicine, and that the new rules would render that medicine ineffective. Wisconsin’s hemp industry is estimated to be valued at $700 million and accounts for at least 3,500 jobs, according to the Wisconsin State Journal. 

“Everybody’s frantic, you know, we’re all worried,” Hampton told the Examiner. Without an amendment to the new rules or legislative intervention, Hampton says the nation’s $28.4 billion hemp industry won’t survive, and that most of his own store’s inventory would be banned. 

More than just a cash crop

When he was a teenager in Fond du Lac, Diener was introduced to cannabis through his grandmother, who used it to manage her pain and chronic illnesses. He began using it to help with his stress and the early signs of Crohn’s disease he was experiencing

After years of working in the restaurant industry, Diener realized he wanted more out of life. “And so I started to get permission from my chef to start making candy in the kitchen behind the scenes, just learning the basics, but with the intentions that I wanted to make infused candy, gummy worms, stuff like that,” he said. “Stuff that I didn’t see on the market at the time.”

Hampton also became involved in hemp after experiencing the medicinal value of the plant. “I was a college student at the time,” he said, “and was looking for some relief with some back pain, some sore muscles from the gym. And my dad had actually bought me some CBD oil to test out for my birthday. And it was from a local farm up here in northern Wisconsin. That helped me a ton with what I needed it for.” 

Hampton realized that there were not many such products marketed to younger people like him. He grew his business online before opening a storefront during Small Business Week in 2021. Today Hampton, 29, owns and operates his business alongside his wife and five employees. People of all ages come into his store. “In-store, we have a lot of customers who come in just looking for relief,” he said. Many of the customers are seeking a remedy for anxiety, as well as “a large handful of customers that have chronic pain,” he said. 

Steve’s Hemp carries flowers, vapes, gummies, candies, topical ointments and other products. Diener, who specializes in culinary cannabis products, makes everything from Nerds-covered gummies (a popular product he calls “Stoney Bites”) to other sweets. Diener describes his customers as “such a community of oddballs and people who have unique personalities. And that’s what I’ve always hoped for, and that’s kind of what I come from and who I am a person. People authentic to themselves.” 

The cost of  prohibition

Before the federal ban on THC-derived hemp products was added to the bill to reopen the government, Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin were already working on bills to restrict or prohibit the industry in the state. Representatives Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls), Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus) and others introduced what they called “a common-sense corrective bill” to close the “loophole” that allowed what they called “dangerous, psychoactive THC-laced products to proliferate in Wisconsin.” 

The lawmakers pointed to health advisory warnings issued by federal agencies about the use of delta-9 THC, and issues with unregulated markets across the country. In Wisconsin, hemp products from CBD to delta-9, HHH, THCa, and others can either be found at dispensaries where employees are often knowledgeable about their products, or at gas stations and smoke shops where customers don’t receive information and guidance. Wisconsin lawmakers have raised an alarm about emergency room visits and poison center calls linked to delta-8 THC and similar compounds, as well as concerns that children could easily purchase the products. 

Hemp business owners say they often applaud common sense regulation. They also support fully legalizing cannabis in Wisconsin —  ending prohibition. To address concerns about health consequences and children’s access to cannabis, “what would really help that is regulation, not prohibition,” Hampton said.

Everything from clear packaging guidelines to age restrictions, lab testing and education about where the product comes from and what it does could be part of a legal regulatory structure, Hampton argued. Rather than allowing any gas station to carry hemp products, Hampton would like to see licensed facilities staffed by people who care about what they’re doing. “Our main goal with this business was to educate our customers, and know what’s in our product, and recommend what would work best for our customer,” he said. 

One 2024 study analyzing national poison data systems found that between 2021 and 2022, reports of exposure to delta-8 THC increased by 79%. The study also found that poison center calls for delta-8 were significantly lower in places where either delta-THC was banned, or where cannabis use was already legalized. “Consistent regulation of delta-THC across all states should be adopted,” the study recommended. Other poison center data shows that since 2022, exposures to delta-8 THC have plummeted, a trend which has continued into 2025. 

Prohibition also creates economic stagnation,  advocates contend. Tim Frey, of Ignite Dispensary and Cigar calls it “Wisconsin’s half a billion dollar loss.”

Frey lobbied against state Republican bills to restrict hemp, and he argues that hundreds of millions are essentially handed over to Michigan and Illinois every year when Wisconsinites make the sometimes difficult decision to travel across state lines to obtain cannabis. 

“Now that Minnesota is opening up, with the largest border, we’re probably going to be losing approximately up to $200 million,” Frey told Wisconsin Examiner. “And then if they came up with a small tax on hemp-derived stuff, that’s easily $100 million there, if not more, give or take. So it’s going to be around half a billion dollars that Wisconsin could use to give to law enforcement, get fentanyl off our streets, reduce property taxes, invest in roads” and other uses. 

Hampton fears that now customers will go to the black market or risk being pulled over after driving to a neighboring state. “I just don’t understand why they thought that prohibition would be the right answer,” he said. 

As some Wisconsin legislators are working to enact a new prohibition on hemp products, others are trying to legalize medicinal THC cannabis in the state. Earlier this year, two-thirds of registered voters polled by Marquette Law School said that cannabis should be legalized in Wisconsin. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have introduced what would be one of the country’s most restrictive medicinal cannabis programs. 

Frey is cautious of the medical-cannabis-only approach, however, “because it’s very hard to qualify with some ailments,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. He added that if Wisconsin passed a restrictive medical cannabis program, then it would open the door for the state’s indigenous tribal communities, as sovereign nations, to open their own recreational programs. “So then we would be a recreational state without the control, or the revenue,” he said.  

Diener said that when conservative lawmakers talk about cannabis, they sound at least 10 years behind the times. “I think that right now there’s such extreme viewpoints on it that are outdated, and really just don’t line up with today’s market or today’s values with the plant,” he said.

Frey believes that it’s past time Wisconsin had a serious discussion about legalization. “Limit the licenses,” he declared. “Control this, tax it, get licenses out there to responsible people that are going to do things the right way —  that card people, that do truth-in labeling, that care about the quality of their products.”

In addition to strict regulation, Diener said parents can protect their children from hemp products instead of the government banning them. “You have the responsibility just the same as if you have a gun in the home to keep your things in a safe space that your children cannot access,” Diener said. “You wouldn’t have your alcohol bottle sitting just, like, within reach or in a cupboard that your kids know they can access. Even growing up as a teen, when my mom knew that I was starting to go to parties and stuff, she would start to hide her alcohol.” 

After the federal hemp laws were changed, Piwowarczyk, in a television interview, said unsympathetically of hemp business owners that “you guys took a gamble when you decided to open up your hemp business.” 

Hampton counters that lawmakers like Piwowarczyk should “open their eyes, and look around, and actually meet with the constituents of their districts” who are the consumers driving the industry. 

Uneasy months ahead

For now, hemp distributors and their allies have until next November to adjust to the new federal restrictions. Frey said Wisconsin could provide some protection for the industry by enacting its own regulations for hemp products, similar to the way states have legalized cannabis industries despite the ongoing federal prohibition. 

There are already state-level legislative responses in the works, he said. One bill, AB 503, would redefine the definition of hemp to prohibit THC-derived products. Another, AB 606, would add hemp to the responsibilities of the agency in the Department of Revenue that regulates alcohol. A bill authored by Senate Democrats, SB 644, would create a regulated framework and age limits for hemp products, though it lacks Republican co-sponsors. Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) is circulating a draft bill for co-sponsorship that also regulates hemp products. 

“That bill is probably the best, most common-sense written bill that I’ve seen,” Frey told the Wisconsin Examiner. While the Democratic bill would be promising, he said, he thinks it won’t gain Republican support. 

“It’s more crucial to protect this industry in Wisconsin than it is to craft the most perfect bill,” said Frey, adding that he thinks the hemp industry will get behind Testin’s bill “full force”. 

At the same time, however, Frey wonders whether the federal regulations will change by next November. He points out that the new law gives the industry a year to adapt instead of imposing a ban immediately. 

Frey thinks that if Wisconsin passes hemp regulations but the federal laws remain the same, then the hemp industry would risk losing its federal task deductions and also lose the ability to conduct interstate commerce. 

If there is no change to save the hemp industry, a cascade of effects will ripple out. Earlier this year, Hampton  opened a new manufacturing facility just down the street from the Steve’s Hemp storefront. In the middle of next year, he will likely have to close that as well, he said. 

Once the new law takes effect, “our hands are pretty much tied,” said Hampton. “My wife and I will have to find new jobs for each other, continue to make ends meet. And then those families that work for us — those employees that work for us — will have to do the same.” Until then, Diener said, “I am going to continue to serve the people who need us the most and work to continue growing this dream and keeping this dream alive.” 

Hampton and his employees “are obsessed and passionate about this industry,” Hampton said. “We started this industry with hopes to run a legal dispensary out of Wisconsin, and hopefully transition into that. Now that plan is crushed. And so we don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re just going to try to keep our hopes up, and try to fight as much as we can to keep [hemp] legal, and if that isn’t possible, get recreational cannabis pushed through the state of Wisconsin.”

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DPI announced this week that initial special education payments would reimburse schools for their special education costs at 35%. A hallway in La Follette High School in Madison. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Initial special education reimbursement payments to school districts this year will be about 35% of their costs — about 7 percentage points below the estimated rate approved in the state budget.

When the 2025-27 state budget was passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers in July, policymakers boasted that their investments would bring the special education reimbursement rate to a historic 42% in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. 

While school districts will still receive more aid for special education costs this year than in previous state budgets, it appears that the state funding set aside probably won’t be enough to reach the rate that was estimated when the budget was signed in July.

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) announced in a bulletin on Monday that initial special education payments for November through March would reimburse schools 35% of their special education costs. While DPI uses a slightly lower rate to avoid overpayment and this is not the final reimbursement rate, Chris Bucher, DPI director of communications, said in an email that the agency has anticipated the rate falling below the estimate.

Special education reimbursement rates for public school districts can vary from the estimate because it is a sum certain allocation, meaning that payments come from a fixed pot of money.

During the budget process, public education advocates, DPI and Gov. Tony Evers called for that to change to a sum sufficient allocation, meaning that the amount of money provided by the state would be enough to meet the set reimbursement rate. Republican lawmakers rejected the request.

Bucher said having a lower reimbursement rate than what is estimated has been relatively typical with budgets, given that there is a fixed amount of state funding as well as a rising amount of unaided special education costs and a rising number of students with disabilities.

According to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo released Thursday, in 2024-25 the state had appropriated about $574 million to special education aid. When the 2023-25 state budget was passed, the appropriation was estimated to bring schools to a 33.3% rate in each year of the budget. In November 2024, DPI estimated a rate of 29.16%, and the final rate for that school year was 30.64%.

Based on cost increases in recent years, DPI projected costs would grow by 4% for its 2025-27 state budget request. It had estimated that aidable costs would be about $1.8 billion in 2025-26 and $1.9 billion in 2026-27. Those estimates were also used as Evers prepared his budget request and as the Legislature prepared the budget. 

According to the new memo, DPI now projects that aidable costs in 2024-25 increased by an estimated 9% — a rate more than twice the original projection when the 2025-27 budget was being drafted.

For the 2025-27 state budget, the DPI requested about $2 billion across the biennium to cover special education costs for school at a rate of 90% by the second year of the budget and to change the funding from “sum certain” to “sum sufficient.”

Gov. Tony Evers also requested the change from sum certain to sum sufficient, though he requested increasing it to a 60% rate by the second year. The Joint Committee on Finance denied those requests instead choosing to provide $207 million in the first year of the budget to cover an estimated 42% of costs and $297 million in the second year to cover costs at an estimated rate of 45%.

Advocates called attention to the reimbursement rate in statements this week, saying the funding system needs an overhaul.

Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, blamed the rate on lawmakers, saying that they “turned their backs on our most vulnerable children, failing to deliver on promised special education funding and leaving our students without the supports they need to succeed in school.” 

“This shortfall will mean even more communities forced into holding school referendums in 2026 just to meet basic needs, causing uncertainty and hardship for students who deserve better from their elected leaders,” Wirtz-Olsen said in a statement. 

Wirtz-Olsen said lawmakers have been “caught lying about the scant resources they are providing.” 

“It’s time for these politicians to fix Wisconsin’s school funding formula and fulfill what the state Constitution requires,” she said. “Taxpayers have had enough of picking up the tab on our property taxes to make up for their refusal to fund schools. If they won’t take action for the students who most need help, educators and families will.” 

Beth Swedeen, executive director of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, called on the state to change the way it funds school districts. 

“It’s time to build a budget that is rooted in real costs and can provide budget certainty to schools and parents that the promises made by the legislature will translate into real dollars schools can use,” Swedeen said in a statement. “We should not be in this position cycle after cycle where students with disabilities and schools are undercut by accounting codes.”

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Federal agents patrol the halls of immigration court in New York City in October. While arrests at federal immigration courts have received widespread attention, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have also arrested individuals at state courthouses, prompting some Democratic states to impose restrictions. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

A day after President Donald Trump took office, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a new directive to its agents: Arrests at courthouses, restricted under the Biden administration, were again permissible.

In Connecticut, a group of observers who keep watch on ICE activity in and around Stamford Superior Court have since witnessed a series of arrests. In one high-profile case in August, federal agents pursued two men into a bathroom.

“Is it an activity you want to be interfering with, people fulfilling their duty when they’re called to court and going to court? For me, it’s insanity,” said David Michel, a Democratic former state representative in Connecticut who helps observe courthouse activity.

Fueled by the Stamford uproar, Connecticut lawmakers last week approved restrictions on civil arrests and mask-wearing by federal law enforcement at state courthouses. And on Monday, a federal judge tossed a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice that had sought to block similar restrictions in New York.

They are the latest examples of a growing number of Democratic states, and some judges, pushing back against ICE arrests in and around state courthouses. State lawmakers and other officials worry the raids risk keeping people from testifying in criminal trials, fighting evictions or seeking restraining orders against domestic abusers.

The courthouse arrests mark an intensifying clash between the Trump administration and Democratic states that pits federal authority against state sovereignty. Sitting at the core of the fight are questions about how much power states have to control what happens in their own courts and the physical grounds they sit on.

In Illinois, lawmakers approved a ban on civil immigration arrests at courthouses in October. In Rhode Island, lawmakers plan to again push for a ban after an earlier measure didn’t advance in March. Connecticut lawmakers were codifying limits imposed by the state Supreme Court chief justice in September. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont is expected to sign the bill.

States that are clamping down on ICE continue to allow the agency to make criminal arrests, as opposed to noncriminal civil arrests. Many people arrested and subsequently deported are taken on noncriminal, administrative warrants. As of Sept. 21, 71.5% of ICE detainees had no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization.

Some states, such as New York, already have limits on immigration enforcement in courthouses that date back to the first Trump administration, when ICE agents also engaged in courthouse arrests. New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, in place since 2020, prohibits civil arrests of people at state and local courthouses without a judicial warrant. The law also applies to people traveling to and from court, extending protections beyond courthouse grounds.

“One of the cornerstones of our democracy is open access to the courts. When that access is denied or chilled, all of us are made less safe and less free,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director at Lawyers for Civil Rights, a Boston-based group that works to provide legal support to immigrants, people of color and low-income individuals.

But in addition to challenging the New York law, the Justice Department is prosecuting a Wisconsin state judge, alleging she illegally helped a migrant avoid ICE agents.

“We aren’t some medieval kingdom; there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Stateline. “Nothing in the constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them.”

Some Republican lawmakers oppose efforts to limit ICE arrests in and near courthouses, arguing state officials should stay out of the way of federal law enforcement. The Ohio Senate in June passed a bill that would prohibit public officials from interfering in immigration arrests or prohibiting cooperation with ICE; the move came after judges in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, imposed restrictions on civil arrests in courthouses.

“The United States is a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of law and order. To have a civilized society, laws must be respected, this includes immigration laws,” Ohio Republican state Sen. Kristina Roegner, the bill’s sponsor, said in a news release at the time.

Roegner didn’t respond to Stateline’s interview request. The legislation remains in a House committee.

Knowing where a target will be

Courthouses offer an attractive location for ICE to make immigration arrests, according to both ICE and advocates for migrants.

Court records and hearing schedules often indicate who is expected in the building on any given day. Administrative warrants don’t allow ICE to enter private homes without permission, but the same protections don’t apply in public areas, such as courthouses. And many people have a strong incentive to show up for court, knowing that warrants can potentially be issued for their arrest if they don’t.

“So in some respects, it’s easy pickings,” said Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island.

In June, ICE arrested Pablo Grave de la Cruz at Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal in Cranston. A 36-year-old Rhode Island resident, he had come from Guatemala illegally as a teenager.

“They pulled up on him like he was a murderer or a rapist,” friend Brittany Donohue told the Rhode Island Current, which chronicled de la Cruz’s case. “He was leaving traffic court.”

An immigration judge has since granted de la Cruz permission to self-deport.

McLaughlin, the Homeland Security assistant secretary, said in her statement that allowing law enforcement to make arrests “of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense” — conserving law enforcement resources because officers know where a target will be. The department said the practice is safer for officers and the community, noting that individuals have gone through courthouse security.

Still, ICE’s directive on courthouse arrests sets some limits on the agency’s activity.

Agents “should, to the extent practicable” conduct civil immigration arrests in non-public areas of the courthouse and avoid public entrances. Actions should be taken “discreetly” to minimize disruption to court proceedings, and agents should generally avoid areas wholly dedicated to non-criminal proceedings, such as family court, the directive says.

Crucially, the directive says ICE can conduct civil immigration arrests “where such action is not precluded by laws imposed by the jurisdiction.” In other words, the agency’s guidance directs agents to respect state and local bans on noncriminal arrests.

Trump administration court actions

But the Trump administration has also gone to court to try to overcome state-level restrictions.

The Justice Department sued in June over New York’s Protect Our Courts Act, arguing that it “purposefully shields dangerous aliens” from lawful detention. The department says the law violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, under which federal law supersedes state law.

New York Democratic Attorney General Letitia James argued the state law doesn’t conflict with federal law and sought the lawsuit’s dismissal.

U.S. District Court Judge Mae D’Agostino, an appointee of President Barack Obama, on Monday granted James’ motion. The judge wrote that the “entire purpose” of the lawsuit was to allow the federal government to commandeer New York’s resources — such as court schedules and court security screening measures — to aid immigration enforcement, even though states cannot generally be required to help the federal government enforce federal law.

“Compelling New York to allow federal immigration authorities to reap the benefits of the work of state employees is no different than permitting the federal government to commandeer state officials directly in furtherance of federal objectives,” the judge wrote.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The department is also prosecuting Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who prosecutors allege helped a person living in the country illegally avoid ICE agents in April inside a Milwaukee courthouse by letting him exit a courtroom through a side door. (Agents apprehended the individual near the courthouse.) A federal grand jury indicted Dugan on a count of concealing an individual and a count of obstructing a proceeding.

In court documents, Dugan’s lawyers have called the prosecution “virtually unprecedented and entirely unconstitutional.”

Dugan has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for December.

Lawmakers seek ‘order’ in courthouses

Rhode Island Democratic state Sen. Meghan Kallman is championing legislation that would generally ban civil arrests at courthouses. The measure received a hearing, but a legislative committee recommended further study.

Kallman hopes the bill will go further next year. The sense of urgency has intensified, she said, and more people now understand the consequences of what is happening.

“In order to create a system of law that is functioning and that encourages trust, we have to make those [courthouse] spaces safe,” she said.

Back in Connecticut, Democratic state Rep. Steven Stafstrom said his day job as a commercial litigator brings him into courthouses across the state weekly. Based on his conversations with court staff, other lawyers and senior administration within the judicial branch, he said “there’s a genuine fear, not just for safety, but for disruptions of orderly court processes in our courthouses.”

Some Connecticut Republicans have questioned whether a law that only pertains to civil arrests would prove effective. State Rep. Craig Fishbein, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, noted during floor debate that entering the United States without permission is a criminal offense — a misdemeanor for first-time offenders and a felony for repeat offenders. Because of that, he suggested the measure wouldn’t stop many courthouse arrests.

“The advocates think they’re getting no arrests in courthouses, but they’ve been sold a bill of goods,” he said.

Stafstrom, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said in response that he believed the legislation protects many people who are in the country illegally because that crime is often not prosecuted.

“All we’re asking is for ICE to recognize the need for order in our courthouses,” Stafstrom said.

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

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on Oct. 31, 2025, in Washington, D.C. The House speaker's office held the news conference on the 31st day of the government shutdown to discuss food stamp programs running out of funding. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ call for a close reexamination of the 42 million people who receive federal food aid has befuddled advocates and lawmakers, coming mere days after recipients began to see benefits that had been stalled during the government shutdown.

Details remain scant a week after Rollins during an interview on the right-wing Newsmax network first publicly broached the startling idea that every beneficiary would have to reapply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, often called food stamps.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, asked for an explanation, referenced existing requirements and suggested more changes in SNAP rules could be in store.

“Secretary Rollins wants to ensure the fraud, waste, and incessant abuse of SNAP ends,” a USDA spokesperson wrote Wednesday. “Rates of fraud were only previously assumed, and President Trump is doing something about it. Using standard recertification processes for households is a part of that work. As well as ongoing analysis of state data, further regulatory work, and improved collaboration with states.”

The 2008 law governing SNAP leaves states responsible for administration. Part of that role includes periodically making sure that the low-income people in the program meet the qualifications for inclusion, but the law allows states to determine how often that occurs.

“It’s not clear what she would be proposing that is different from what is already happening,” said Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst for food assistance at the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

One interpretation of Rollins’ comments is that she would remove all 42 million individuals from SNAP’s rolls and ask them to resubmit applications. Bergh said that would lead to people losing money they need for groceries. About 40% of those enrolled in SNAP are children.

“If she’s suggesting that they’re going to somehow redo that process for more than 40 million people who already demonstrated their eligibility and who already have to periodically recertify their eligibility, that would be pretty duplicative and would likely create pretty significant paperwork backlogs that would cause people who are eligible to lose the food assistance that they need,” Bergh said.

Administration critics have suggested that, while the comments are unlikely to lead to policy changes, they introduce even more confusion for a program that was used as a political token during the record government shutdown that ended this month. 

Making people reapply would underscore the Trump administration’s opposition to the nearly $100 billion program, which accounts for 70% of federal nutrition assistance. USDA says the average SNAP household in fiscal 2023 received a monthly benefit of $332, or $177 a person based on the average SNAP household size of 1.9 people.

“Secretary Rollins and the Trump administration have cut food assistance for 42 million Americans multiple times this year,” U.S. House Agriculture ranking member Angie Craig said in a Wednesday statement to States Newsroom. “Now, they’ve once again shown that they do not understand the program.”

What did Rollins say?

In the Nov. 13 interview on Newsmax, Rollins said SNAP was beset by widespread fraud, citing data that 29 mostly Republican-run states submitted to the department. Acquiring data from the 21 other states would give the department a way to wholly remake the program, she said.

“Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data, what we’re going to find?” she said. “It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program, have everyone reapply for their benefit, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through SNAP or food stamps that they literally are vulnerable, and they can’t survive without it. And that’s the next step here.”

In an interview Monday on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Rollins about the move to have recipients “reapply.”

“Business as usual is over,” Rollins answered in part. “The status quo is no more. We know that the SNAP program is rife with fraud.”

She added that guarding against fraud would help those the program is meant to serve.

The comments touched off widespread confusion about what specifically Rollins meant. 

Asked about the initiative during a Thursday press conference, Craig, a Minnesota Democrat, said she was unclear about how it would work and predicted that Rollins would take credit in the future for the existing low rate of fraud.

“We’re hearing off the record that, you know, maybe people don’t know what the hell they’re talking about,” she said. “In fact, I think they’re trying to take credit for the already very strict standards and the actual low fraud rate in the SNAP program … So we can find no real plan there. Not even sure there’s concepts of a plan there.”

In response to a States Newsroom request this week for details about the initiative, USDA provided the statement that did not answer how the department would proceed or under what authority, but said Rollins was seeking to reduce fraud in the program.

Spokespeople did not respond to follow-up questions, or a request to respond to Craig’s remarks Thursday.

Low fraud rate

Program experts say fraud is not a widespread problem for SNAP.

An April report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found that retailers illegally trafficked about 1.6% of SNAP benefits from fiscal 2015 to 2017.

Fraud by households applying for SNAP, which appear to be the main target of Rollins’ proposal, is even lower. 

According to a USDA report, about 26,000 applications were referred for an administrative review or prosecution on suspicion of fraud. That number accounts for about 0.1% of the 22.7 million households enrolled in the program, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Long-standing data sources indicate that intentional fraud by participants is rare,” Bergh said.

At Thursday’s press conference, Craig called Rollins’ comments “bullsh*t” and “propaganda.”

“Secretary Rollins goes on TV and talks about all the fraud,” she said. “This most effective anti-hunger program in our history has a fraud rate of 1.6%. It’s actually one of the most effective, well-run programs in the country … The bullsh*t this administration is peddling is egregious.”

More targeted reforms

Even experts who advocate for reforms to SNAP say eligibility fraud is not a major issue.

Romina Boccia, director of budget and entitlement policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said high-net-worth individuals can receive SNAP benefits, but aren’t committing fraud by doing so.

“Some of the issues with SNAP … aren’t because of fraud or abuse, but they are because of bad program rules,” said Boccia.

Boccia also cited an “incentive misalignment” inherent in the state-federal program. States have little incentive to control payments because the federal government funds the program, she said.

Forcing all beneficiaries to reapply would likely reduce the cost of the program by reducing the number of its beneficiaries, including by forcing out higher earners who may not consider the benefits they don’t actually need to be worth the onerous reapplication process, Boccia said. 

But it would also result in a percentage of low earners dropping off the program, as well as many who would be affected by the administrative backlog that would come with processing tens of millions of new applications, she said. 

Shutdown, the big beautiful bill, and confusion

Bergh said Rollins’ comments “add insult to injury” because they come after congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump signed a major tax cuts and spending law that is expected to shrink federal SNAP spending by $187 billion over 10 years. The law added work requirements for many SNAP recipients and shifted some costs to states.

That was followed by the six-week shutdown that saw a dizzying back-and-forth over whether November SNAP benefits would be paid.

“There has been huge amounts of chaos and confusion and disruption for both states and participants in recent weeks, largely due to the shutdown, but also because simultaneously, the administration has required states to implement many of the reconciliation bill’s SNAP cuts,” Bergh said.

Craig, in her statement, also said Rollins’ comments would hurt the people who need the program.

“I am astounded by the secretary’s careless disregard for the hungry seniors and children who can afford to eat because of this program,” she said.

Sara Naomi Bleich, a public health policy professor at Harvard University, said in a phone interview the confusion from Rollins’ comments compounded hardships produced by the Republican reconciliation law, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“Big picture with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is that there’s basically this tidal wave coming to families that have low income,” Bleich, who worked at USDA during the Obama and Biden administrations, said. “They’re going to lose Medicaid. They’re going to lose SNAP. There could be collateral impacts on the school meals. This is going to be a really hard time for families to navigate.”

Natali Fani-González, a Democrat who serves on the Montgomery County Council, speaks during a rally on Nov. 20, 2025 outside the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland in support of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had a hearing in court. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

GREENBELT, Md. — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials detailed to a federal judge Thursday plans for the Trump administration to again remove the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, this time to the West African country of Liberia.

U.S. District of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis is considering whether to lift her order that barred Abrego Garcia, a longtime Maryland resident, from being removed from the United States. The case and its months of wrangling in courts in two states has generated huge publicity, both in Maryland and nationally, and has brought attention to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Separately, as the Trump administration tries to deport Abrego Garcia, the Justice Department is moving forward with criminal charges against him of human smuggling in Tennessee.

Xinis specially requested the Trump administration provide John Cantú to testify because he is a top official at ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations and previously submitted a declaration to the court regarding the State Department’s deliberation with Costa Rica’s government about accepting Abrego Garcia as a refugee. 

Abrego Garcia, whose deportation due to an “administrative error” cast a spotlight on President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown, is challenging his detention on the grounds that the Trump administration is using his imprisonment as punishment rather than for the purpose of removal. He is currently detained at an ICE facility in Pennsylvania.

Abrego Garcia has agreed to be removed to Costa Rica, but the Trump administration last month argued before Xinis to allow him to be removed to Liberia. In August, Costa Rica’s government stated it would accept him as a refugee. 

As he challenges his removal to any country other than Costa Rica, Abrego Garcia has also pleaded not guilty to the criminal case in Nashville, which accuses him of the human trafficking of immigrants in an incident stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee. 

Rally outside

Similar to previous hearings at the Greenbelt courthouse, the immigrant advocacy group CASA led a rally in support of Abrego Garcia. The event included a singing group called the Rapid Response Choir.

George Escobar, who will become CASA’s new executive director on Jan. 1, said it’s important for people to stand up against a “corrupt government” that seeks to take away immigrant rights, especially as the Trump administration tries to ship Abrego Garcia to various third countries.

“We want to make sure that we stand here united. We want to make sure that Kilmar (and) his family understands that we are by his side,” Escobar said. “We will not let this go silently into the night.”

Maryland Del. Gabriel Acevero, a Montgomery County Democrat who’s from Trinidad and Tobago, and who has a family background in Venezuela, said his state colleagues will be working on legislation to improve immigrant rights, such as ending the 287(g) program in the state.

Currently, about eight local enforcement agencies in the state have agreements with ICE that delegate certain immigration enforcement abilities to local police. But Acevero’s colleague, Del. Nicole Williams, a Prince George’s County Democrat, plans to reintroduce legislation to terminate all ICE agreements. Law enforcement agencies would have a year to do so.

After the rally ended, CASA leaders handed out green postcards for participants to write down words of support for Abrego Garcia.

Jacki Gilbert of Baltimore wrote on her postcard: “Dear Kilmar, We stand with you and your family. You are both a friend and a neighbor.”

“This impacts my community. My culture in Baltimore City. My economy there. You got to stand with your friends and neighbors. Respect them,” Gilbert said as she choked up and shed a tear.

Abrego Garcia has deportation protections that should have prevented his deportation to his home country of El Salvador, but earlier this year he was still removed to a brutal Salvadoran prison. 

Because of those protections granted by an immigration judge in 2019, the Trump administration must find a third country that is willing to accept Abrego Garcia and a country where he believes he will not face harm or persecution. 

The Trump administration so far has floated sending him to Liberia as well as one of three other nations in Africa — Ghana, Eswatini and Uganda.

Worries about return to El Salvador

Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have raised concerns that if he is sent to a third country, that country will then send him back to El Salvador. 

Cantú said that the government of Liberia has given the State Department assurance that Abrego Garcia will not face torture, persecution, and will not be sent back to El Salvador. 

The assurances from Costa Rica’s government accepting Abrego Garcia were “nonbinding,” Cantú said. 

The State Department informed him that Abrego Garcia’s removal to Costa Rica is “not an option at the moment,” he said.

Cantú was pressed by one of Abrego Garcia’s attorney’s, Sascha Rand, about communications with the State Department and Costa Rica regarding Abrego Garcia.  

Cantú said he had a five-minute virtual meeting with an attorney from the State Department, during which he was given a statement that Costa Rica was no longer an option for Abrego Garcia. 

But he could not give the judge any additional information on further communications between the State Department and Costa Rica’s government since August.

“This witness has zero information about the content of the (Costa Rica) declaration,” Xinis said. “No shade on you, Mr. Cantú, you’ve been very candid with the court. The point has been made.”

Rand pointed to how the assurance from Costa Rica granted Abrego Garcia refugee status and citizenship, and he asked if Liberia made those same assurances. 

Cantú said he did not recall. 

Rand asked Cantú if in his career at the Department of Homeland Security, which dates to 1997, if he has had any experience of removing someone from Latin America to Africa. 

Cantú said he has in the past six months under the Trump administration. Rand asked about any scenarios prior to that time.

“I cannot recall,” Cantú said.

Rand said that Abrego Garcia has “no objection to him being removed to Costa Rica.” 

He argued that the Trump administration, and its witness, have not proved that Abrego Garcia cannot be removed to Costa Rica. 

Order of removal

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys also requested that DOJ provide the order of removal for Abrego Garcia. 

Cantú said he had not seen such a document.

“If there is no order for removal, then there is no basis for detention,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, another attorney for Abrego Garcia, who specializes in immigration law. 

DOJ attorney Drew Ensign said he does “believe there is a final order of removal.”

Xinis rejected that, because no document was provided to her and the document Ensign produced for her only mentioned that Abrego Garcia’s 2019 asylum claim was rejected.

“I am just interested in finding the order of removal,” she said. 

Ensign argued that because Abrego Garcia has a withholding of removal, meaning he cannot be removed back to his home country of El Salvador, that should be treated as a final order of removal. 

Ensign added that it’s odd that Abrego Garcia would agree to be removed to Costa Rica if he didn’t believe there was a final order of removal.

“No, it’s not,” Xinis said. “It’s a concession because he’s been to CECOT and back.”

While at the notorious mega-prison known as CECOT, Abrego Garcia detailed how he was psychologically and physically tortured by Salvadoran officials. 

Abrego Garcia tried to make another application for asylum, after he was brought back to the U.S. this summer, but an immigration judge denied it. He has appealed the decision.

The case before Xinis is a habeas petition, which is how immigrants challenge their detention. Immigrants cannot be held longer for six months in detention if the federal government is not actively making efforts to remove them, a precedent set by the Supreme Court. 

Xinis pressed Ensign about why the “government (is) standing in the way” of allowing Abrego Garcia to be removed to Costa Rica. 

“It’s so odd and that’s me being really polite,” Xinis said, adding that “there is no evidence that Costa Rica is withholding their prior” stance to accept Abrego Garcia.  

Xinis said Thursday would be the last hearing before she makes her decision. She said she will first decide Abrego Garcia’s habeas petition and then address the injunction that bars his removal from the U.S.

“It’s not going to be a quick decision,” Xinis said. “These are weighty issues.”

President Donald Trump prepares to speak after watching as members of the U.S. Army participated in the 250th birthday parade of the U.S. Army June 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump accused six Democratic lawmakers of sedition on social media Thursday and threatened them with punishment as severe as death, after they appeared in a video message encouraging U.S. armed forces to refuse “illegal orders.”

Trump also shared another social media post that said the Democrats should be hanged.

The video’s distribution online by Democrats comes as the Trump administration is mired in multiple legal cases objecting to the president’s deployment of National Guard troops to cities across the country, including a challenge to Guard troops in Chicago which is now before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In several morning posts on his own social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote, “This is really bad, and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP??? President DJT” 

“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!,” he added a couple of hours later.

Prior to writing and publishing his own, the president reposted several messages from users on Truth Social, including one by a user with the handle @P78 who wrote, “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!” 

Trump and his social media supporters were referring to the video, which featured Democratic U.S. lawmakers who served in the military telling current members of the military and the intelligence community to “refuse illegal orders.”

Each line in the video is alternately delivered by Sens. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, Maggie Goodlander of New Hampshire and Jason Crow of Colorado.

“We know you are under enormous stress and pressure right now. Americans trust their military, but that trust is at risk. This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens. Like us, you all swore an oath to protect and defend this Constitution. Right now, the threats to our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but from right here at home. Our laws are clear: You can refuse illegal orders,” the lawmakers said.

The video was titled “Don’t give up the ship.”

Does Trump want to ‘execute’ Democrats?

When asked by a CBS News reporter during the daily press briefing Thursday whether the president wants to “execute” members of Congress, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt answered, “No.”

Leavitt said Trump was reacting to sitting members of Congress who “conspired” on the video message to encourage active duty service members and national security officials to “defy the president’s lawful orders.”

Leavitt singled out the participation of Slotkin and Kelly, who respectively served as a CIA intelligence officer and a Navy captain. Leavitt also highlighted  Goodlander’s marriage to former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who served under President Joe Biden.

“They were leaning into their credentials as former members of our military, as veterans, as former members of the national security apparatus, to signal to people serving under this commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, that you can defy him, and you can betray your oath of office. That is a very, very dangerous message, and it perhaps is punishable by law,” Leavitt said.

During the ongoing exchange, CBS’s Nancy Cordes pressed back, saying the lawmakers specifically say “illegal order” in the video.

“They’re suggesting, Nancy, that the president has given illegal orders, which he has not. Every single order that is given to this United States military by this commander in chief and through this chain of command, through the secretary of War, is lawful,” Leavitt responded.

Democrats decry political violence 

Democratic lawmakers sounded the alarm Thursday over Trump’s social media posts, accusing him of encouraging political violence.

“Let’s be crystal clear: the president of the United States is calling for the execution of elected officials. This is an outright threat, and it’s deadly serious. We have already seen what happens when Donald Trump tells his followers that his political opponents are enemies of the state,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Thursday.

“Every time Donald Trump posts things like this, he makes political violence more likely. None of us should tolerate this kind of behavior,” Schumer said, highlighting political violence in recent years, including the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and political assassinations just this past year.

House Committee on the Judiciary Chair Jamie Raskin, D-Md., called on Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to “immediately denounce these reckless statements.”

The six Democratic lawmakers featured in the video issued a joint statement, saying they “love this country and swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

“That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. No threat, intimidation, or call for violence will deter us from that sacred obligation. What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” the lawmakers said.

“Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic," Assembly Minority Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Assembly met for its final floor session of 2025 Wednesday, where Democratic lawmakers sought to pass a bill that would extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers for one year after the birth of a child, though Republicans blocked it. Bills to encourage school district consolidation and make changes to elections laws passed.

Republicans block Democratic efforts to get a vote on postpartum Medicaid bill 

Wisconsin is one of two states in the U.S. that have not taken the federal government’s postpartum Medicaid expansion, and Democratic lawmakers hoped to begin the process of changing that during the floor session. 

The bill, which passed the Senate in April on a 32-1 vote, would allow eligible mothers to keep their Medicaid coverage for a year postpartum. Currently in Wisconsin, mothers only get 60 days of coverage if they don’t otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Assembly Democrats planned to employ a rarely used Assembly rule to pull the bill out of committee and bring it up for a vote. Under the rule, if 50 lawmakers sign a petition, a bill can be brought to the floor. Democratic lawmakers hoped to have the chance to convince some of the Republican cosponsors of the bill to sign on.

Before that could come to fruition, however, the Assembly clerk notified Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) of the plan, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told reporters. 

Republicans moved the bill from the Assembly Rules Committee, where it had sat since May, to the Assembly Organization Committee — triggering a rule that says a  withdrawal petition on the bill cannot be circulated for 21 days. 

“This is a great effort by the Speaker to prevent this important bill from getting a vote on the floor,” Neubauer said. 

Neubauer said she didn’t know why the clerk notified the Assembly Republican leaders.

“There had been some conversation with staff about the timeline for [the petition], but I’m not really sure why it happened the way it did,” Neubauer told reporters. She said that Rick Champagne, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, told the lawmakers that notification should have happened when they turned the petition in with the 50 signatures, not prior to the petition circulating.

All 45 Democratic lawmakers are cosponsors of the bill as are over 20 Republicans, but the bill has been hung up in the Assembly due to opposition from Vos, who has said in the past that he doesn’t support expanding “welfare.” The bill only needs a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Assembly.

Neubauer read out the names of the Republican cosponsors during the press conference. 

“These are legislators who believe that this bill should become law, so they say, but they have been bullied by their speaker into not pushing for a vote on this bill on the floor,” Neubauer said. “Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic, and when moms in Wisconsin and their babies are put at risk, their health and well-being is put at risk, because they do not have adequate health care in the year after they have given birth, it will be Robin Vos’ fault.” 

The Republican lawmakers on the bill include Reps. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), Scott Allen (R-Waukesha), Elijah Behnke (R-Town of Chase), Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc), Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield), Cindi Duchow (R-Delafield), Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere), Rick Gundrum (R-Slinger), Nate Gustafson (R-Omro), Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah), Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Rob Kreibich (R-New Richmond), Scott Krug (R-Rome), Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin), Paul Melotik (R-Grafton), Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville), Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), David Steffen (R-Howard), Rob Tusler (R-Harrison), Chuck Wichgers (Muskego), Rob Wittke (R-Caledonia), Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Calvin T. Callahan (R-Tomahawk), Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Joy Goeben (R-Hobart). 

Democratic lawmakers also tried to introduce amendments to a bill on the floor that would have extended postpartum Medicaid coverage, but those were also blocked by Republicans.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to get Republicans to do the right thing. Wisconsin women deserve access to quality, affordable health care and that includes postpartum care,” Vining said before she was cut off by Speaker Pro Tempore Kevin Petersen who said she wasn’t on topic.

“This is a disgrace,” Vining yelled out.

School district consolidation 

Democratic and Republican lawmakers split over a package of bills that would encourage school districts to consolidate. Republican lawmakers argue the bills are necessary due to falling enrollment, which they say is the reason for school districts’ financial struggles. 

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said at a press conference that the bills would address declining enrollment and the cycle of repeatedly going to referendum to raise money from local taxpayers that school districts are in. Schools in Wisconsin have seen a drop of about 53,000 students over a decade, from the 2013-14 to 2022-23 school years.

Of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts, about two-thirds are struggling with declining enrollment with preliminary numbers from the Department of Public Instruction showing that enrollment for public school districts in the 2025-26 school year fell by about 13,600 students. Total enrollment across Wisconsin school districts is about 759,800 this year. 

“Districts with declining enrollment receive less in state aid and to make up for that revenue loss. We’ve seen a growing cycle of constant referendums with varying degrees of success,” Nedweski said. “Wisconsin taxpayers are frustrated with our public school system… They are frustrated with districts continuously asking them to raise their own taxes, frustrated that their generous investments have not produced matching results.”

Democrats blamed Republicans for school districts having to go to referendum, noting that state aid has not kept pace with inflation in nearly two decades. They also said Wisconsinites have not been asking to close schools. Neubauer said Republicans were “proving how disconnected they are from our constituents.”

“Wisconsinites do not want to close school buildings, break up their communities, force their kids to ride on the bus for hours a day, or lose their local sports teams. Wisconsinites want us to fund our public schools,” Neubauer said. “Republicans’ push to close schools misses the mark completely, and Wisconsinites deserve better… Don’t close schools, fund them.”

According to the Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin is spending the least, proportionally, in state revenue that it has ever spent on schools under the current funding formula. About 32.1% of state general purpose revenue goes to state general aid to schools, while that percentage used to be around 35%.

Rep. Angelina Cruz (R-Racine) noted during floor debate that many school districts lost state aid this year. Data from DPI for the 2025-26 school year shows that of 421 districts, 71% — or 301 districts — will receive less state aid this year compared to the prior year and 26% will receive more.

“For 15 years, Wisconsin has intentionally divested in our public schools while expanding privatization through voucher schemes,” Cruz said at a press conference, adding that Racine Unified School District has felt the loss of revenue acutely.

According to DPI data, about 15% of Racine’s revenue limit — or $43 million — goes to pay for voucher program participants.

“Since 2011, our community has gone to referendum three times —  in 2014, 2020 and 2025 — asking residents to raise their own property taxes to provide what the state has refused to fund,” Cruz said. “Even after those referendum paths, our district has been forced to close and consolidate schools including… the school where I grew up as a teacher. This is not about a lack of community commitment. It is about the state failing its constitutional obligation to provide free and as nearly uniform as practicable schools to children… Let me be clear, if there is money to close public schools, there is money to fund public schools.”

Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) rejected claims that the choice program is to blame.

“That’s a tiny little percentage of this,” Kitchens said. “It’s happening because of declining birth rates, of people choosing to have less kids, waiting long to have kids. I can’t imagine how anybody can look at our 421 school districts that we have right now and think that in 30 years, that’s going to be sustainable.”

Kitchens also emphasized that the bills are voluntary.

“Let’s trust our communities to work through these things and decide for what’s best for themselves,” Kitchens said. 

Republicans also rejected Democratic lawmakers’ insistence that the state needs to invest more money in its public schools. 

“[Democrats] want us to believe that if we simply spend more on K-12, people will flock to Wisconsin and increase enrollment,” Nedweski said. She compared Wisconsin to New York, which according to the New York Focus spends more per public school student than any other state. “Their outcomes are no better than ours, and they are losing students even faster than Wisconsin. As they elect more communist leaders like [New York City Mayor-elect] Zohran Mamdani, I suspect more New Yorkers will rapidly leave tax-and-spend Democratic Socialist policies. More spending is not a strategy, it’s denial.”

Nedweski said the bills are a “lifeline” for school districts that can use it and will encourage savings and “invest in increasing opportunities for students who may not otherwise have access to things like AP classes, world languages, advanced tech ed and specialized learning services.”

The six bills in the package:

• AB 644 would increase additional state aid to schools that consolidate in 2027, 2028 and 2029 to $2,000 per pupil in the first year. Under current law, school districts receive additional aid when they consolidate. For the first five years after consolidation, a consolidated school district gets $150 per pupil. In the sixth year, the aid drops to 50% of what the school district received in the fifth year and in the seventh year, the aid drops to 25% of the fifth year. It passed 53-44 with Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) joining Democrats against the bill. 

• AB 645 would provide grants of up to $25,000 to groups of two or more school district boards for the costs of a feasibility study for school district consolidation or whole grade sharing agreements. It passed on a voice vote.
• AB 646 would launch a study of Wisconsin’s school districts, looking at current school district boundaries, potential school district consolidations, existing school district facilities, staffing levels and salary scales, the population of school-age children in each school district, and revenue limits and current overall spending. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 647 would create a four-year grant program for school districts that enter into a whole-grade sharing agreement, agreeing to educate students at one location. School districts would get up to $500 per pupil enrolled in a single grade. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 648 would help create new supplemental state aid for consolidated school districts to  address differences in school districts’ levies when they merge. The measure is meant to address concerns of higher property taxes for residents of low-levy districts when a consolidation takes place. It passed 54-43 along party lines.
•  AB 649 provides the funding for the bills, including $2.7 million for grants to schools that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, $3 million to provide state aid to offset levy limit differences and $250,000 for feasibility studies. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

Vote on online sports betting bill delayed

After being fast tracked through the public hearing process, a vote on a bipartisan bill that would legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin was postponed. 

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that gambling in the state must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Following that requirement, sports betting has been allowed in Wisconsin since 2021, but bets have had to be made in person at tribal casinos. 

AB 601 would expand this to allow for online sports betting anywhere in the state by placing servers running the betting websites and apps to be housed on tribal land; this is known as a “hub and spoke” model. It was introduced in October and received hearings in the Assembly and Senate earlier this month. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said that he still would have had the votes on the bill if it had come up for a vote, but he had conversations with members of his caucus over the weekend that brought new issues to his attention. He would not provide details on what the concerns were, though he said they didn’t deal with issues of constitutionality.

“I’m not going to get into the details of the conversations that I’ve had with members,” August said. “We’re just working through some of that right now, and I’m confident that there’s no rush on this. It’s the right thing for the state, and I’m confident that we’ll get there.”

Neubauer said she planned to support the bill. 

“We know that our tribes in Wisconsin have the right to control gaming in our state, and right now, that’s not happening with online sports betting,” Neubauer said. “I do hope that we pass a bill that puts control of that industry back in their hands.”

The Assembly passed and concurred in a total of over 50 bills. Others include:  

• AB 596 and AB 597, which passed unanimously, would direct $1.9 million to be used for a state grant match program for veterans’ housing. A nonprofit group would need to be participating in the federal program, which currently provides about $82 per day per veteran housed to groups that offer wraparound supportive services to homeless veterans, to be eligible for a state matching funds of $25 per day per veteran. While no one voted against the bills, Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns that the bill would not fill the gaps that currently exist due to the closure of two Veterans Housing and Recovery Program sites earlier this year. 
• AB 602, which would instruct Evers to opt into a federal school choice program, passed 54-44 along party lines. 
• A pair of bills meant to help address students who are disruptive in class passed in 54-43 votes. AB 613 would require principals to provide written notification to parents every time a student is removed from a class and “the quality or quantity of instructional time provided to the pupils in the class is diminished.” AB 614 would add language into state law to say that teachers are allowed to maintain order in the teacher’s classroom, establish and enforce classroom rules, call 911 in an emergency, take immediate action if a pupil’s behavior is dangerous or disruptive and request assistance from school administrators during a disruptive or violent incident.
• AB 207, which would provide information about constitutional amendments to voters including their potential effects, passed on a voice vote.
• AB 312  passed on a voice vote. It would require absentee voting sites to be open for at least 20 hours during the period for voting absentee in-person.
• AB 385 passed in a 55-42 vote with Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh) joining Republicans in favor. The bill would prohibit a political committee, political party or conduit from accepting contributions that are made with a credit card online unless the contributor provides their credit card verification value (CVV) or code and the billing address associated with the card is located in the United States. Republican state lawmakers introduced the bill following efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to target ActBlue — a Massachusetts-based platform that processes donations to Democratic campaigns.
• AB 617 passed 53-44. Rep. Paul Tittl joined Democrats voting against the bill. It would make a number of changes to elections law, including requiring that alternate absentee ballot sites must be in a building or facility constituting a fixed location and requiring absentee ballots with faulty or missing certifications be returned to voters if they are received seven days before the election. It is similar to a bill introduced last session, but it does not include a provision that would have allowed for Monday processing of absentee ballots. Rep. Scott Krug (R-Rome) said that he is speaking with the Assembly Elections Committee chair about potentially having an informational hearing on Monday processing.

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