Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated for a bill to create a task force on to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

At a Tuesday hearing, Wisconsin Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), who has long advocated   creating a task force on missing and murdered Black women and girls, read testimony on behalf of Tanesha Howard, the grieving mother of Joniah Walker.

Walker went missing in 2022 at the age of 15 in Milwaukee and has not been found.

“They refused to issue an Amber Alert to allow the community to help search for her. They were telling me Joniah did not fit the requirement of anything,” Stubbs said. Howard sat next to her with her eyes closed. “What are the requirements to get help from your local police department when your Black… daughter [is] missing?”

SB 404, coauthored by Stubbs (D-Madison), Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) and Sens. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would establish a 17-member task force to examine the issue of missing and murdered Black women and girls and produce a report.

“To help prevent other families from experiencing what my family and countless other families endured … this bill for missing and murdered African–American women and girls … needs to be passed into state law,” Stubbs read on behalf of Howard. “Help us. Find us. Give our families closure. We matter.” 

This is the third legislative session in a row that Stubbs has introduced legislation to create the task force. She was inspired in part by the Department of Justice’s task force on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, which was established in 2020 by Attorney General Josh Kaul after the Legislature failed to pass a bill to create that task force. Kaul has said that the funds don’t exist to take a similar path with this task force. 

Stubbs said during the hearing in the Senate Mental Health, Substance Abuse Prevention, Children & Families committee that the bill is “necessary to improve the mechanisms for preventing, investigating and healing for all forms of gender-based violence in our state, which impacts women and kids of all racial backgrounds, but which affect Black women and girls at the highest rate.”

Members of the task force would include four lawmakers and other stakeholders, including law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations that focus on Black women and girls.

The task force would be responsible for examining a number of issues related to the violence that Black women and girls face including systemic causes, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data, policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes, measures that could reduce violence and ways to support victims and their families.

Under the bill, a final report would be due by 2027. It would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.

Stubbs highlighted a 2022 report from the Guardian that found that in 2020 five Black women and girls were killed every day in the U.S. Wisconsin had the worst homicide rate for Black women and girls in the nation that year. Stubbs said data on the extent of the issue is incomplete, and the task force could help fill in the picture. 

“We are lacking crucial data, especially in Wisconsin,” Stubbs said. “The data already gathered is insufficient and lacks critical detail to understand the circumstances of violence.”

Johnson said the bill is a “necessary step toward understanding why African-American women and girls are so vulnerable to violence and disappearance and where our public safety systems are falling short.”

Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year, also testified at the hearing. Johnson noted that both mothers are from her district.

“I think that speaks volumes to how serious the issue is and how it impacts communities, not just in the city of Milwaukee but across the state, but disproportionately it affects African-American women, especially in the city of Milwaukee,” Johnson said. 

The bill would provide one position in the Department of Justice to support the task force as well as $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27 to fund it.

Last session, the bill passed the Assembly but never received a vote on the Senate floor. It received a public hearing but not without encountering roadblocks due to opposition from former Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville). Stroebel said he didn’t support the legislation because he didn’t support passing laws based on race or gender. 

Snyder, who described himself as “the Republican who likes to do what is right” said the bill is “the right thing to do,” and expressed frustration with the bill getting hung up last session. 

“I get really irritated when one person thinks that because they don’t like it, that they can kill it. That bugs me a lot,” Snyder said. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) asked the lawmakers if there are other groups, noting Hmong and Indigenous groups, that face disproportionate amounts of violence and suggested changing the bill to include them. 

“Instead of focusing on just one specific group… I would really love to see each one of these groups kind of meld together, so there’s representation so information can be shared,” Wanggaard said. 

James, who is the only member of the Legislature actively serving in law enforcement, answered Wanggaard’s question by pulling from his own experience. 

“Back at home, I mean, we have a high Hmong population. I don’t recall ever taking any cases involving any missing Hmong individuals to be honest with you. …I’ve had more white and African-American missing type cases,” James said. He said that a “caveat” to the issue is that “the data collection hasn’t always been prevalent and adequate… especially if we have agencies where they’re not even taking cases on missing persons, that data is not going to be collected.”

“My concern is that if they’re targeting young women — just young women in general, I’m not concerned what race they are — if they’re targeting these young women, is there a connection between some of the missing… say on the Menominee reservation as opposed to Milwaukee County,” Wanggaard said. “I’m just thinking about getting the most information to as many people as we can to help the process.”

Supporters of the bill addressed questions about why it was important to have a task force specifically focused on Black women and girls. 

Madison Police Chief John Patterson was asked whether he saw any value in creating one big task force.

“We shouldn’t be afraid to be surgical at times when it comes to disparities that we’ve identified in our system and, certainly, I believe this is one,” Patterson said. “In my almost three decades, I can tell you work that started off being very focused and surgical in nature to try to address a disparate impact in our community has led to greater communication, greater collaboration across all communities.”

Barbara Sella, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, said it’s “so important to understand dynamics within communities and different communities have different dynamics.” 

“To just say, well let’s include everybody — could make the task almost impossible… It’s really important to have a laser focus,” Sella said.

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Student protesters shout during a “Hands Off Our Schools” rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in April. Students from several colleges and universities gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the department. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including plans to shift several of its responsibilities to other Cabinet-level agencies.  

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted a forum on the issue with several Democratic colleagues. The lawmakers, joined by education leaders, advocates and leading labor union voices, said the restructuring would lead to a loss of expertise, create more bureaucracy and weaken support for students and families. 

The administration announced six agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State as part of a larger effort from the administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department. 

Trump has sought to axe the agency in his quest to send education “back to the states” and tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fulfill that mission. Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.

Losing expertise

Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed the transfers as “illegal” because of federal laws assigning specific responsibilities to the Education Department.

“Congress already passed the laws on this,” she said. “Every one of the programs that’s moving out of the Department of Education specifically says we have allocated the money for a program in the Department of Education, not in whatever random other place Secretary McMahon decides to put it.” 

The Massachusetts Democrat said that if the transfers go through, “we’ve got now four federal agencies that have no experience with education suddenly in charge of more than 50 different educational programs, including ones that fund literacy, education for veterans, kids in rural school districts — you name it, it’s moving somewhere else.” 

Even before the announcements of interagency agreements, the Education Department had seen several changes since Trump took office, including layoffs of hundreds of employees that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July could temporarily proceed.

In a late Tuesday statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the transfers were part of a wider effort to initiate a sorely needed overhaul of the federal education bureaucracy.

“The opposition is protecting a system that produces dismal results for our students,” she said. “The Trump Administration demands better than the status quo.”

‘Nothing but chaos’

Under one of the agreements, the Education Department said the Labor Department would take on a “greater role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “nobody wins, the least of all, students and educators,” when the Labor Department takes on massive education programs, noting the current workforce at Education has the right experience.

“Our staff have decades of experience with the complicated programs we’re talking about today,” Gittleman said. “These moves will cause nothing but chaos and harm for the people they’re intended to help.” 

In general, the agreements “swap a highly efficient system for a chaotic, underfunded one spread across multiple agencies,” Gittleman said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also rebuked the administration’s efforts to gut the agency.

“What is happening here is not simply the dismantlement of the Department of Education,” she said. “It is taking away — it is abandoning the federal role in education.” 

Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country, added that “we should be, as a nation, expanding the federal role in public education, not supplanting states.” 

Rhode Island commissioner condemns Brown shooting

Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said the administration’s attempts to gut the agency are “already putting our nation’s education system and our students at a disadvantage.”

Communication from the Department of Education “lacks detail,” she added.

“We get these one or two sentences with edicts that often conflict with state and federal law. What do we do? The chaos has resulted in protracted legal battles across the country, raising serious constitutional questions,” she said. 

At the top of her remarks, Infante-Green also expressed her condolences for the victims, their families and the entire Brown University community after two students were killed and nine others were injured in a shooting on campus over the weekend. 

The federal courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Testimony from federal agents continued into the second day of Milwaukee Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan’s federal trial, where Dugan faces charges of obstructing immigration officers and concealing a man they were trying to arrest outside her courtroom in April. Prosecutors repeatedly asked agents about Dugan’s tone when she spoke with them, which they described as upset, angry, direct and stern. A colleague of Dugan’s, Judge Kristela Cervera, who was with Dugan when she confronted agents in the hallway outside her courtroom, also testified that Dugan’s demeanor during the encounter made her uncomfortable.

On Tuesday, FBI agent Jeffrey Baker testified about his encounter with Dugan as part of the six-man arrest team that entered the Milwaukee County Courthouse in April in search of Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican-born man who was in the country without legal authorization.

During Baker’s testimony, details emerged about a woman the agents encountered in the hallway whom they believed was a public defender and who noticed them and began taking  pictures of the agents before Dugan arrived and spoke with them. Images of a Signal Chat used by the arrest team which had been named the “Frozen Water Group,” a reference to ICE, revealed that agents texted that the woman had “been around for more than one of these before.” Another message stated “she was talking sh*t about us with another attorney about how we are not very covert.” 

The prior arrests the agents were referring to had occurred at the courthouse from late March to early April, fueling concern among Milwaukee County judges about how to ensure the courthouse remained a safe and orderly place to conduct business. Testimony and text messages suggest that the prior arrests had all been made by the same team Dugan spoke with on April 18. 

Defense attorneys highlighted the agent’s choice of profile images for the “Frozen Water Group” chat. One agent had chosen an image of a skull over a pill bottle crossed by two syringes with a thin blue line flag in the background. Brian Ayers, a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, who said that this was his account in the Signal chat, testified Tuesday that the logo belonged to the DEA opioid task force. Another showed a man licking the barrel of a handgun. Ayers testified that he followed Flores-Ruiz down the hall, and rode the elevator down with him and his lawyer without revealing that he was a federal agent. 

FBI agents Phillip Jackling, Customs and Border Protection agent Joseph Zurao, and ICE deportation officer Joseph Vasconcellos, who were all part of that Signal chat, described Dugan coming out to ask whether they were there to attend court hearings, and pointing them down the hall to Chief Judge Carl Ashley’s office. Jackling described Dugan as “very direct, and she seemed upset,” and said that leaving the rest of the arrest team in the hall “caused me to have a little bit of uncertainty about what was going to happen next.” Zurao said that Dugan told the agents to “get out” or “leave”. 

Vasconcellos said that he was unnerved by the attorney photographing them, and that because he’d been stabbed, shot, and suffered nerve damage in his neck over the course of  his career, he had concerns that their plan to use the courthouse as a “safe place” to arrest people had gone south. “I was honestly concerned that we had had our pictures taken and the staff knew who we were,” Vasconcellos testified. He’d texted in the group chat, speaking of the public defender photographing them, “this is going to be a pain in the d-ck.”

Vasconcellos described Dugan as “very stern and upset,” and said when Dugan told them to leave the hall and go to Ashley’s office, “I told her no.” Vasconcellos eventually went into the chief judge’s office, where he and other agents waited to get connected to Ashley over the phone. Ashley discussed the courthouse draft policy governing immigration enforcement in and around the building at length with the agents. When Vasconcellos left Ashley’s office, the rest of the arrest team had already followed Flores-Ruiz outside and arrested him. 

Vasconcellos testified that he was aware that judges could speak  sternly and that he was not familiar with Dugan and didn’t know if that tone was normal for her. Defense attorneys highlighted that only DEA Special Agent Ayers told FBI investigators that he heard Dugan yelling at the team, something none of the other task force agents described in their testimony. Ayers also refuted testimony from Zuaro, who claimed to have told Ayers to “get your ass out in the hallway in case he comes out,” an assertion that was not  documented in reports and interviews conducted by investigators. Nile Hendrix-Whitmore, a victim witness advocate with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, also testified that she did not hear any yelling or arguing when Dugan spoke with the agents. 

Judge testifies about discomfort with Dugan

Later in the day, Judge Cervera took the stand. Cervera recalled that she had a busy schedule on April 18, and had arrived to court early to begin working on her cases. She’d left the building to move her car and as she walked back she ran into Dugan who was presumably doing the same. Not long after she arrived back to her courtroom, Cervera testified that Dugan came in and beckoned her over. “I thought something bad had happened,” said Cervera. “It was embarrassing to be summoned in that way.”

Cervera testified that Dugan gave the impression that  “it was urgent” and that Dugan “seemed irritated.” When Cervera began to remove her robes, she testified that Dugan told her to keep them on, which she did because Dugan was a more senior judge. “I didn’t want to walk into the hallway with my robe,” Cervera testified, though she said she didn’t tell Dugan that she was uncomfortable. 

When the two approached the agents and Dugan asked whether they had a judicial warrant, Cervera said that “her irritation seemed to progress into anger.” Cervera said that Dugan was “expressing her views to the officer” and that she thought Dugan “could have been a little more diplomatic.” Nevertheless, Cervera testified that the interaction was “pretty straightforward and quick,” and that she had her own questions about the kind of warrant the agents had. Dugan told them that a judicial warrant signed by a judge, not an administrative warrant signed by an ICE officer, would be needed, Cervera testified.

Cervera escorted the agents to Ashley’s office and recalled looking back and not seeing Dugan follow them. “I felt abandoned,” she said on the stand. “I thought she left me.” As Cervera looked over the warrant herself, she noticed other agents coming into the hall leading to the chief judge’s office. When Cervera took a short cut through Dugan’s court to get back to her own room, Cervera noticed that Dugan was hearing cases. “I was irritated at that point,” she said, repeating that she felt “abandoned” by her fellow judge. 

Bits and pieces of what happened then made it to Cervera, including Flores-Ruiz being arrested outside, and attorneys pumping their fists telling her, “You go, Judge,” and saying, “Judge, you’re ‘goated’ now,” a reference to the term “Greatest Of All Time.” Cervera testified that one attorney, the same who took pictures of agents in the hall, told her, “We knew what you guys were trying to do.” The next day, she heard that the FBI would be getting involved. “I was shocked” and “mortified,” she testified. “Judges shouldn’t be helping defendants avoid arrest.”

Sometime after April 18, Cervera recalled running into Dugan in an elevator. “I didn’t want to run into her at this point,” Cervera testified. Dugan allegedly told Cervera that she was “in the dog house with Carl,” referring to the chief judge. “She seemed eager to tell me about what happened on Friday,” Cervera said. 

Defense attorneys questioned Cervera about whether she knew ICE agents were waiting outside her courtroom as well, which she denied. When she got home on April 18, she Googled Vasconcellos’ name, and warned her sister — who is also an attorney who had cases with clients at the Milwaukee courthouse coming up — that ICE was more active in the building. Defense attorneys noted that when she was called to a grand jury, Cervera did not reveal that she had warned her sister about the federal operations. 

Cervera said on the stand that she was talking to her sister about what appeared to be “sweeping arrests” happening around the country, and that she’d never heard of ICE arrests at the courthouse prior to March. Multiple members of the arrest team testified that they had only been transferred to ICE Emergency Removal Operations (ERO) duties in early 2025, after President Donald Trump took office. 

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Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio speak to reporters on Dec. 16, 2025, following a closed-door briefing with all senators about U.S. military action in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators left a closed-door meeting Tuesday with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio split over the Trump administration’s strikes on alleged drug-running vessels near Venezuela, particularly an early September follow-up strike that killed two survivors clinging to boat wreckage.

Hegseth and Rubio delivered the all-member briefings to Senate and House lawmakers on Capitol Hill as the death toll from U.S. military strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean has surpassed 90, and as U.S. Navy ships are amassed off the coast of Venezuela.

Controversy over the possibility of war crimes during the Sept. 2 follow-on strike that killed shipwrecked survivors drew attention after The Washington Post reported details last month, calling into question Hegseth’s orders.

Hegseth told reporters Tuesday he briefed members on a “highly successful mission to counter designated terrorist organizations, cartels, bringing weapons — weapons, meaning drugs — to the American people and poisoning the American people for far too long. So we’re proud of what we’re doing.”

Dems decry edited video

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Hegseth again refused to show unedited footage, which Schumer described as “deeply troubling,” of a second strike on Sept. 2 that killed two people who survived the initial strike. 

“The administration came to this briefing empty handed,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said. 

“If they can’t be transparent on this, how can you trust their transparency on all the other issues swirling about in the Caribbean? Every senator is entitled to see it. There is no problem with (revealing) sources and methods” because the senators will view it in the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a secure area of the Capitol where classified information is generally shared.

Schumer added that an “appropriate version” of the video should be disclosed to the public.

Senate Republicans downplayed loud concerns from Democrats, pointing to former President Barack Obama’s numerous counterterrorism drone strikes in the Middle East.

“We’ve been using the same technique for 24 years, and nothing has changed except the hemisphere,” said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla.

Public release called for

Hegseth told reporters the unedited video will be shown to members of the Senate and House committees on the Armed Services Wednesday, alongside Admiral Frank Bradley, commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, who oversaw the strikes.

Hegseth did not address why the department declined to show the unedited video to all 100 senators. 

He did say, “Of course, we’re not going to release a top-secret, full, unedited video of that to the general public.”

Several Democratic senators have called for the video to be publicly released.

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said he was told during the meeting that the video won’t be released because of “classification concerns.”

“It is hard to square the widespread, routine, prompt posting of detailed videos of every strike, with a concern that posting a portion of the video of the first strike would violate a variety of classification concerns,” Coons said.

Coons added “it’s increasingly important that the national security team of the Trump administration increasingly respect and recognize the role and power of Congress.” 

He highlighted a provision in Congress’s annual defense authorization bill that compels Hegseth to release the video or lose 25% of his travel budget. The massive defense bill is expected to pass this week.

Body count from boat strikes rising

U.S. Southern Command posted a video on social media Monday night of the military’s latest strikes on three boats “operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations in international waters” in the eastern Pacific. The strikes killed eight people, according to the post.

President Donald Trump has officially promoted his military actions in the Caribbean as a fight against drug trafficking and overdose deaths in the United States, particularly from illicit fentanyl. 

On Monday Trump issued an order declaring the powerful synthetic opioid as a “Weapon of Mass Destruction.”

The smuggling routes for illicit fentanyl and the chemicals used to make it follow the path from China to Mexico to the U.S., and is highlighted as such in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s 2025 National Drug Threat Assessment.

The administration has designated several drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, including “Cartel de los Soles,” an alleged Venezuelan group that the Department of State described as spearheaded by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump has hinted at a land invasion of the South American country.

When asked by States Newsroom on Tuesday whether Hegseth addressed during the meeting what type of drugs were alleged to be in the targeted boats, Mullin and Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said cocaine.

“We’ve always heard it’s mainly cocaine. It doesn’t matter. It’s drugs,” Mullin said.

Sullivan said “it’s the same groups” smuggling the cocaine as the ones smuggling fentanyl.

Cocaine mixed with illicit fentanyl has become “an increasing public safety concern” over the last eight years, according to the National Drug Threat Assessment. 

Overall, all U.S. drug overdose deaths have decreased in recent years, according to the assessment and latest data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Bad River in Mellen, south of the Bad River Band's reservation. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, challenging the corps’ decision to grant a permit allowing the oil company Enbridge to reroute its Line 5 pipeline around the tribe’s reservation in northern Wisconsin

The lawsuit, filed in the Washington D.C. federal circuit court, is another step in the long legal history of the Enbridge pipeline and the company’s effort to move it from its current route through the tribe’s land. The tribe is asking that the permit approval be vacated. 

In October, the corps approved Enbridge’s permit to reroute the pipeline off the reservation despite significant public opposition. 

The new route moves the pipeline south but it still runs across land on three sides of the reservation and crosses the Bad River upstream of the reservation. The permit was approved as the administration of President Donald Trump has moved to more aggressively support oil and natural gas projects. Earlier in the year, the corps approved a fast-tracked permitting process for Enbridge to construct a tunnel across the Straits of Mackinac so Line 5 can cross from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to its Lower Peninsula. 

The tribe’s lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by not properly conducting required environmental reviews or following the proper procedures. 

“For hundreds of years, and to this day, the Band’s ancestors and members have lived, hunted, fished, trapped, gathered, and engaged in traditional activities in the wetlands and waters to be crossed by the Project,” the lawsuit states. “The Project would encircle the Reservation on three sides and damage areas the Band highly values for their ecological and cultural significance. The Corps’ failure to properly review and address the Project’s environmental impacts to wetlands and waterways harms the Band’s interest in maintaining its Reservation homeland and resources in the ceded territory.”

The lawsuit alleges that the corps violated the NEPA by not giving proper consideration to the “environmental effects of construction, maintenance, and operation of the Project,” including how it will harm the health of resources on and near the reservation. 

Under the Clean Water Act, the corps cannot approve permits until the state or tribal government responsible for water quality in the project area certifies the project won’t harm the local water. While the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources did previously approve the state permits for the Line 5 reroute, those permits are currently being challenged in a separate legal process. 

The tribe alleges in the lawsuit that the corps should not have moved forward with its permits until after the state process is complete.  

[The corps] violated the Clean Water Act by issuing the Permit without ensuring that construction and maintenance of the Project would not adversely affect Wisconsin and the Band’s water quality,” the lawsuit states. “This includes issuing a … permit while the required … state water quality certification is not yet final, pending state administrative proceedings; without addressing the inadequacies the Band identified with Wisconsin’s Water Quality Certification; or ensuring compliance with the Band’s water quality standards.” 

The lawsuit also states the permit approval does not address how the project construction will affect the tribe’s “ability to exercise treaty-protected rights to hunt, fish, trap, and gather in ceded territory,” “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of oil spills along the pipeline route” and “failed to evaluate the risks and impacts of blasting as a construction method.” 

In a statement, tribe chairwoman Elizabeth Arbuckle said the tribe would do whatever it can to protect the health of the Bad River, Lake Superior and surrounding watersheds. 

“For more than a decade, we have had to endure the unlawful trespass of a dangerous oil pipeline on our lands and waters,” Arbuckle said. “The reroute only makes matters worse. Enbridge’s history is full of accidents and oil spills. If that happens here, our Tribe and other communities in the Northwoods will suffer unacceptable consequences. From the Bad River to Lake Superior, our waters are the lifeblood of our Reservation. They have fed and nurtured our Tribe for hundreds of years. We will do everything in our power to protect them.”

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in an email that while the Army Corps made an initial permit decision, it has not been signed by the corps or the company and therefore isn’t a final decision that can be challenged in court. She said the company would intervene in the lawsuit to defend the permit approval. 

“Enbridge submitted permit applications to state and federal regulators in early 2020 to build a new segment of pipeline around the Bad River Reservation,” she said. “Enbridge’s permit applications are supported by thorough and extensive environmental analysis and modeling by leading third-party experts confirming project construction impacts will be temporary and isolated, with no adverse effect to water quality or wetlands.”

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U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he will not allow a floor vote this week on a bipartisan amendment supported by moderate Republicans that would extend the Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits. 

Johnson was confident that blocking the amendment would not lead centrist GOP lawmakers to oppose the Republican health care bill scheduled to get a vote Wednesday. 

“There’s about a dozen members in the conference that are in these swing districts who are fighting hard to make sure they reduce costs for all of their constituents. And many of them did want to vote on this Obamacare, COVID-era subsidy the Democrats created,” Johnson said. “We looked for a way to try to allow for that pressure release valve and it just was not to be.”

The enhanced ACA tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year, sharply increasing the cost of health insurance for the roughly 22 million Americans who purchase plans through the exchange and benefit from the subsidies. 

The House Republican health care bill wouldn’t extend those tax credits, frustrating GOP lawmakers in that chamber who are most at risk of losing their reelection bids during the November midterm elections. 

Johnson said he expects that GOP bill will pass, though he didn’t address its prospects in the Senate, where bipartisanship is needed for nearly all bills to advance under that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation’s analysis of the bill shows it would reduce the federal deficit by $35.6 billion during the next decade. 

An average of 100,000 people per year would lose health insurance between 2027 and 2035, while  gross benchmark premiums for health insurance would drop by 11% on average through 2035, according to the joint analysis. 

‘Idiotic and shameful’

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler said in a speech on the House floor that GOP leaders’ decision to let the enhanced ACA tax credits expire was “idiotic and shameful,” especially after changes were added to address fraud and reduce costs. 

“So we have been forced to sign onto two discharge petitions,” he said. “And yet my Democratic colleagues will not join us, but for those that were at the negotiation table.”

Lawler then criticized House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, for not encouraging Democrats to sign onto the bipartisan discharge petitions, noting that would likely get the 218 signatures needed to force a floor vote. He argued that’s because Jeffries “doesn’t actually want to solve the problem, he wants the issue.”

“This place is disgraceful,” Lawler said. “Everybody wants the upper hand.  Everybody wants the political advantage. They don’t actually want to do the damn work. This problem could be solved today if everybody who says they care about extending this signs the discharge.”

GOP-only bill in 2026?

When the House returns from its two-week holiday break next year, Johnson said, leaders may try to use the complex reconciliation process they used to enact the “one big, beautiful bill” to address health care. 

“What we anticipate going into the first quarter of next year is, possibly in a reconciliation package or in regular order a stand-alone, ideas just like this,” Johnson said after being asked a question about Health Savings Accounts. “We have a long list of things that we know will reduce premiums, increase access and quality of care.” 

President Donald Trump said Monday he wants Republicans to use the reconciliation process or to eliminate the Senate’s legislative filibuster to address health care and other policy priorities. 

“Republicans should knock out the filibuster and we should approve a lot of things,” Trump said. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., has said repeatedly he doesn’t intend to change or scrap the filibuster.

Direct payments or tax breaks

Trump also reiterated during the Oval Office event he would like to see Congress send direct payments to Americans to help them buy health insurance or afford health care. 

“I want all money going to the people and let the people buy their own health care. It’ll be unbelievable,” Trump said. “They’ll do a great job. They’ll get much better health care at a much lower cost.”

The Senate voted last week on two health care bills, one from Republicans and one from Democrats, but neither received the support needed to move toward a final passage vote. 

Republicans’ bill would have provided direct payments to some people enrolled in either bronze or catastrophic ACA marketplace plans with up to $1,500 in payments annually for 2026 and 2027. 

Democrats’ legislation would have extended the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits for three years. 

Cost most urgent issue, poll finds

A bipartisan group of senators is trying to find solutions that bridge the political divide, though they are unlikely to achieve consensus on the details before the end of this week.

Thune said during a press conference Tuesday he believes there’s a way to address the rising costs of health care if Democrats continue negotiations with Republicans. 

“Our views on health care and the Democratic views on health care are very different. And I think that’s a difficult challenge that we have to figure out how to overcome,” Thune said. “But if they’re willing to accept changes that actually would put more power and control and resources in the hands of the American people and less of that in the pockets of the insurance companies, then I think there is a path forward.”

Thune acknowledged that Congress cannot pass anything this week but said he believes “there’s a potential pathway in January if Democrats are willing to come to the table on things that will actually drive down the costs of health care.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., didn’t entirely rule out using the Jan. 30 government funding deadline to force a partial shutdown over health care, though he implied nothing can be done on the ACA tax credits after they expire at the end of December. 

“Once it expires, the toothpaste is out of the tube,” Schumer said. 

A poll released Monday by the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America shows that cost is the “most urgent” health issue facing the country, followed by access and then obesity. 

Just 57% of those polled said they were satisfied with how much they pay for their own health care and only 16% were satisfied with the total cost of health care.

Nearly two-thirds of those in the survey said they believe it’s the federal government’s responsibility “to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage,” while 33% said it’s not. 

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired U.S. Navy captain, speaks to veterans at a town hall in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Aug. 31, 2025. (Photo by Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline)

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department says it has upgraded its investigation into Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly over a video where he and other members of Congress told members of the military they didn’t need to follow illegal orders. 

“The Office of the Secretary of War, in conjunction with the Department of War’s Office of the General Counsel, is escalating the preliminary review of Captain Mark Kelly, USN (Ret.), to an official Command Investigation,” a spokesperson for the department wrote in an email Monday night. 

“Retired Captain Kelly is currently under investigation for serious allegations of misconduct,” the spokesperson continued. “Further official comments will be limited to preserve the integrity of the proceedings.”

Paul J. Fishman, an attorney at the Arnold & Porter law firm who is representing Kelly, wrote in a Monday letter to the secretary of the Navy that “there is no legitimate basis for any type of proceeding against Senator Kelly, and any such effort would be unconstitutional and an extraordinary abuse of power.”

“If the Executive Branch were to move forward in any forum—criminal, disciplinary, or administrative—we will take all appropriate legal action on Senator Kelly’s behalf to halt the Administration’s unprecedented and dangerous overreach,” Fishman wrote. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had set Dec. 10 as the deadline for the secretary of the Navy to recommend what to do about Kelly’s appearance in the video, but that came and went without any public announcements.

Hegseth also remained silent on the matter after rebuking Kelly weeks ago for posting the video where he and five other Democrats warned against illegal orders.

Kelly said on Dec. 9, one day before the deadline, he hadn’t received any information from the Navy or other administration officials. 

“Forget about an update. I haven’t heard anything from the guy,” Kelly told reporters. “That’s a good question for you guys to ask the Navy.”

The secretary of the Navy’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment from States Newsroom. 

The Department of Defense posted in late November that officials were looking into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly for appearing in the video. 

It didn’t detail how Kelly might 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.” 

Hegseth referred the issue to Navy Secretary John Phelan for any “review, consideration, and disposition” he deemed appropriate. Hegseth then asked for a briefing on the outcome of the review “by no later than December 10.”

Kelly said during a press conference in early December the military’s investigation and a separate one by the FBI were designed to intimidate the six lawmakers in the video from speaking out against President Donald Trump. 

The lawmakers in the video, who have backgrounds in the military or intelligence agencies, told members of those communities they “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.”

The other Democrats in the video — Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander — are not subject to the military justice system. 

Trump railed against the video a couple days after it posted, saying the statements represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The first deadline for people to sign up for health insurance in 2026 through the federal health care marketplace passed Monday. With the loss of enhanced federal subsidies coverage is forecast to decline after rising for several years. (FS Productions/Getty Images)

When Chiquita Brooks-LaSure stepped into her job overseeing the federal health insurance marketplace in 2021, about 12 million Americans were purchasing their health coverage there.

By the start of 2025, that number had doubled.

Brooks-LaSure served as the administrator for the federal Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services in the Biden administration. In addition to managing the federal health insurance programs for people over 65 and people living at or below the federal poverty guidelines, CMS also manages HealthCare.gov — the health insurance marketplace created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

The purpose of the marketplace was to make it easier for people who had neither employer-provided  health insurance nor  Medicare or Medicaid to purchase a policy that would cover them.

 The ACA set standards for what the insurance plans are required to cover, and it established a system of nonprofit navigators to guide buyers as they sought to match their own health needs with the coverage that was available to them on the marketplace.

Early during President Joe Biden’s term, Congress passed and Biden signed legislation that increased tax credit subsidies making insurance plans purchased at HealthCare.gov much more affordable. Those enhanced tax credits brought in a flood of new insurance coverage.

“By the time we left, there were 24 million people who were enrolled” in marketplace health plans purchased through HealthCare.gov, Brooks-LaSure said during a video call with reporters last week. The call was organized by Opportunity Wisconsin, an economic issues messaging and organizing group aligned with the Democratic Party.

The federal move to give people on marketplace health plans larger  tax credits drove that increase in enrollment, health policy watchers agree.

Now the enhanced tax credits are due to expire at the end of this year. So far attempts in Congress to extend them, whether permanently or even temporarily, have gone nowhere.

On average, Brooks-LaSure said, premiums for 2026 have gone up by 26%. “For many people, they will choose to not buy health insurance coverage at all,” she said. “But others may choose to buy coverage that doesn’t cover all of their health care needs.”

Monday was the first of two red-letter days in the current history of the ACA and the health care marketplace. People hoping to get coverage starting Jan. 1 were required to sign up by the end of the day.

People can still sign up between now and Jan. 15, but policies won’t take effect until Feb. 1.

After four years of increases in the population with health insurance, the Congressional Budget Office has forecast about 4 million people will drop their coverage in 2026 without the higher subsidies.

“For 275,000 Wisconsinites, these tax credits have saved them on average almost $600 every month,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin in another call with reporters. “Without them, these Wisconsinites will pay double, triple, or even worse for their premiums next year. And for 30,000 Wisconsinites, the price will be just too high. And they’ll choose to go without insurance.”

That was a decision that Shana Verstegen of Madison said she and her husband briefly considered. Verstegen spoke on Baldwin’s call about the choices the couple is having to make on behalf of themselves and their two sons, ages 7 and 10.

She and her husband both work for a small community gym, Verstegen said. Their employer has too few employees to be able to purchase a group health policy, so they went to the ACA marketplace.

This year they pay $460 a month, already a squeeze, but that will increase to more than $700 a month in 2026, she said.

“It’s an amount we just simply can’t afford,” Verstegen said. Realizing that they could not risk the family’s health by going without coverage, they’ve looked at other options — including possibly giving up work that has been a long-term career in order to find a job with employer-sponsored health insurance.

In the end, Verstegen said, the couple decided to increase their work hours and cancel some events in 2026 to save money to afford their higher-priced health plan.

“These are really tough and frustrating emotional and scary choices,” Verstegen said. “We’re a middle-class, healthy, hard-working family and like so many others we’re simply struggling to keep up.”

Forecasts are murky

The most recent “snapshot” from CMS on HealthCare.gov enrollment covers Nov. 1-29 this year. In Wisconsin, it shows enrollment down by almost 4,000 people compared to Nov. 1-30, 2024.

Nationally, however, the numbers are up — 5.76 million in November this year compared with 5.36 million a year ago. There isn’t enough data to confidently forecast a trend, however.

Of the people signing up in November, “a lot of those folks were probably people who already had coverage and were either renewing it or picking a new plan, but there were also likely some new enrollees,” said Louise Norris, a health policy analyst at healthinsurance.org, an insurance information website.

Norris said there could be a large upswing in enrollment ahead of Monday’s deadline for coverage starting Jan. 1. “Then again you’ll see another sort of surge as we get to mid-January” — the Jan. 15 deadline for coverage starting Feb. 1, Norris said.

Both Norris and Brooks-LaSure said that initial enrollment numbers also don’t tell the whole story.

“The people who are enrolling right now are people who absolutely know they need to have coverage,” Brooks-LaSure said. “But the number always drops when people have to pay their premiums. And so, it’s really the number in January, once people are enrolled, that we think that will be the important number to know about coverage.”

People who are not changing plans may be automatically renewed in their current plans, which can explain some of the initial signups, said Brooks-LaSure. In addition, she said, some people signing up may be opting for less expensive — but also less generous — health insurance than they purchased in the past.

HealthCare.gov classifies health plans as Gold, Silver or Bronze. Gold plans have costlier premiums but more generous coverage with lower deductibles and less cost-sharing required of patients. Bronze plans have lower premiums with higher deductibles and more cost-sharing, and Silver plans are in between.

Brooks-LaSure said she has heard anecdotally from people stepping down from Silver to Bronze plans, for example.

“Coverage is really important, of course, but your ability to actually pay when you go to the doctor is equally, if not more, important,” she said. “It may be that we don’t see the drop in the uninsured rate. We see people shifting to less generous coverage.”

Kelley Bruns, a Sawyer County resident who spoke on Baldwin’s call, said she and her husband took that route for 2026.

Bruns said her husband, a veteran and career firefighter, had to end his career early due to work injuries and resulting disabilities.

When the premium for the policy they had in 2025 rose to more than $1,600 a month — 40% of their monthly income — they opted for a less expensive plan for 2026. That plan, however, has copayments of up to $100, a $15,000 deductible and a cap on out-of-pocket expenses of more than $21,000.

“We have to pray we don’t need surgery or any other major medical procedure,” Bruns said, “since our out-of-pocket maximum is almost half of our annual income and would be a catastrophic expense for our family.” 

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Judge Hannah Dugan leaves court in her federal trial, where she faces charges of obstructing immigration officers. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The gallery was packed shoulder-to-shoulder Monday morning as Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan entered the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman not as a judge, but as a criminal defendant. Dugan is accused of obstructing federal agents in their efforts to arrest a Mexican-born man who was in the country without legal authorization, and who appeared in Dugan’s misdemeanor criminal court back in April. If convicted in what Adelman signaled would be no more than a week-long trial, Dugan could face six years in prison.

Attorneys on both sides of the trial painted very different pictures of Dugan during their opening statements, which can include statements which do not have to be demonstrated by evidence. 

Opening statements from prosecutors lasted nearly an hour, with the lawyers saying that Dugan “knew what she was doing was wrong.” Repeatedly, prosecutors pointed to courtroom audio transcribed by the FBI which captured Dugan saying, “I’ll get the heat,” when talking to her courtroom staff about how to respond to the fact that immigration agents were waiting in the hallway to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a man appearing before her on misdemeanor charges of battery and domestic violence. 

Prosecutors called the Milwaukee County Courthouse “a safe place where arrests are routine,” allowing federal agents to confront targets who have passed through security screening and are unarmed. An arrest team of six federal agents from the FBI, DEA, Border Patrol, and ICE wearing plain clothes and carrying concealed weapons were attempting to blend into the normal hustle and bustle in the courthouse. Prosecutors said that an FBI agent told a Milwaukee sheriff’s deputy, who was serving as a bailiff for Dugan’s courtroom, that they were there to arrest Flores-Ruiz. “Everything was proceeding in a routine way,” prosecutors told the jury, until the court clerk told Dugan that agents were in the hallway for an immigration arrest. 

Jurors watched mute video compiled from security cameras showing Dugan, accompanied by fellow Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera, walking down the public hall in their judge robes to find out what the agents waiting outside the courtroom wanted. Both judges can be seen pointing to the chief judge’s office, with agents then following Cervera to consult with Chief Judge Carl Ashley. 

When Dugan returned to her courtroom she called Flores-Ruiz first out of the at least 33 cases she had on the docket, setting a court date and telling Flores-Ruiz he was welcome to attend remotely over Zoom. After that, prosecutors allege that Dugan and her court staff directed Flores-Ruiz to an exit in the courtroom which led to a non-public hallway. At the end of the hallway Flores-Ruiz could either take a staircase leading down to the fifth floor, or go through a door which led back out to the public hallway where agents were waiting. 

Flores-Ruiz and his attorney exited through the door and walked  right past the federal agents. Some of the agents trailed Flores-Ruiz to the elevator, while the rest of the arrest team left Ashley’s office. Cameras outside the courthouse captured agents running down a sidewalk after Flores-Ruiz and his attorney. 

Dugan is accused by prosecutors of “dividing” the arrest team by directing them to the chief judge. They say that Dugan had “strongly held views” about immigration enforcement in courts which led her to “cross the line,” and that the now-suspended judge had “orchestrated” Flores-Ruiz’s “escape from federal law enforcement.” 

Prosecutors claimed Dugan told Cervera to keep her robes on during the interaction, and that Cervera and Flores-Ruiz’s defense attorney Mercedes De La Rosa were both uncomfortable with Dugan’s wishes to confront the agents. 

Dugan’s defense team emphasized that the door Flores-Ruiz used to exit the courtroom was just 11 feet from the courtroom’s main entrance. They also discussed the upheaval the Trump administration’s deportation operations had caused at the Milwaukee County Courthouse before the interaction with Dugan. ICE arrests had occurred in late March and early April, alarming county judges. The defense displayed emails from courthouse personnel they said demonstrated the “paranoid” atmosphere at the courthouse and which described concerns about people not showing up to court and suspicious vehicles parked outside that looked like they belonged to federal law enforcement. 

Courthouse was developing a policy on ICE

At the time of Flores-Ruiz’s arrest, Chief Judge Ashley was drafting a policy on how to respond to immigration enforcement coming inside the courts. Judges had been invited to a training presentation on the matter which Dugan was unable to attend, but she had been briefed on its main points. 

The draft policy noted that administrative warrants of the type federal agents presented to arrest Flores-Ruiz are not treated the same way as judicial warrants. Whereas a judicial warrant would give the agents full access to the building, administrative warrants limit them to the public areas of the courthouse. Court staff were also instructed to direct immigration officers to their immediate supervisors, which Dugan appeared to be doing by directing them to Ashley, her attorneys said, adding  that the chief judge needed to be notified if a warrant is executed. 

Ashley had also issued a press release after the rash of ICE arrests saying in part that “the court must remain a safe haven,” Dugan’s attorney Steven Biskupic noted, as images of courthouse emails, messages, and press releases were presented  to jurors on two screens. Dugan did not obstruct the agents, or give direction to anyone else to do so, her attorneys argued. 

Federal agents testify

Three federal agents took the stand Monday and gave lengthy testimony, starting with Erin Lucker of the FBI. Lucker was not involved with the immigration arrest, but helped gather and analyze video and evidence to charge Dugan. Using audio from courtroom microphones, Lucker created a transcript and timeline of events from the time Dugan first approached the agents until Flores-Ruiz was arrested outside. 

The audio was very poor in places, and Judge Adelman reminded the jury that the audio is evidence, not the transcript, and that if they could not understand what is said on the audio, they were not allowed to rely on the transcript instead. In a portion of the audio, Dugan can be heard talking to court staff about the exit to the hallway, with a voice saying “down the stairs,” though some of what’s being said was inaudible. Prosecutors also said that the alleged victims of the domestic violence and battery charges Flores-Ruiz faced were kept waiting in the courtroom to wonder what happened after he left. 

In response to questions from Dugan’s defense attorneys, Lucker said she had no firsthand knowledge of the courthouse itself or what business there usually looks like. She had not participated in an arrest team like the one assembled for Flores-Ruiz, she said. She also responded to the defense that she wasn’t aware that before January 2025 immigration enforcement officers did not, as a matter of policy, target people for arrest at courthouses. 

Defense attorneys also pointed out that a video Lucker helped produce shows a walkthrough of Dugan’s courtroom and the non-public hallway outside ends with the filmer walking down the stairs, not taking the entrance to the hallway which Flores-Ruiz took. Lucker said she hadn’t walked down those stairs, and was unaware that to get out of the building you’d need to pass by multiple security checkpoints. 

Testimony revealed that federal agents had been surveilling Flores-Ruiz at his home and followed him to the courthouse. Defense attorneys questioned why a traffic stop wasn’t made. The task force agents used an encrypted Signal chat which they’d named the “Frozen Water Group” to communicate about the ICE operation. 

FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Baker,  one of the plain-clothes agents on the arrest team, testified that he  had only been on the ERO team since February when the team came for Flores-Ruiz in April. Baker said Dugan “divided” the arrest team by leading members into the chief judge’s office, and that when he talked to Dugan “she seemed to be angry at that point.” When he went to Ashley’s office, Baker said he wasn’t told where he was going or why. He was informed that Flores-Ruiz had left the building either by a text or phone call from another agent.

On Tuesday, Baker will be questioned by defense attorneys.

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Voters walk to a polling place at a school gym in New Orleans. Republicans could gain scores of state legislative seats if the U.S. Supreme Court weakens a federal voting rights law, a new analysis finds. (Photo by Stacy Revere/Getty Images)

Republicans could gain nearly 200 state legislative seats across the South if the U.S. Supreme Court guts a key provision of the federal Voting Rights Act, a new analysis finds.

The bulk of the gains would be concentrated in 10 GOP-controlled state legislatures in Southern states, according to the analysis, produced by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, in partnership with Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters.

The analysis, featured in a report released by the groups on Monday, underscores the alarm among progressives over the potential consequences of the Supreme Court’s looming decision in a case known as Louisiana v. Callais. While the case centers on the constitutionality of Louisiana’s congressional map, the effects of the decision could extend into statehouses across the country.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears likely to severely weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark 1965 civil rights law that bans racial discrimination in voting access. Section 2 restricts racial gerrymandering, and until now has limited the power of lawmakers to draw districts that dilute the voting power of racial minority voters.

A sweeping decision by the court could give state lawmakers a freer hand to draw congressional and state legislative districts that dilute the power of minority voters — as well as districts for local governments, such as county commissions, city councils and school boards. The justices held oral arguments in October; a decision could come at any time.

At the state legislative level, a court ruling that strikes down Section 2 could lead to Democrats losing about 191 seats, according to the analysis, which examined how state legislative districts could be redrawn if Section 2 is no longer in place. Most of those seats are currently held by Black lawmakers in districts where minority voters make up a majority of residents.

“What that is doing is providing a fatal blow to Black representation in the South,” Fair Fight Action CEO Lauren Groh-Wargo said in an interview.

The total number of state legislative districts in 10 Southern states where Black or Hispanic voters comprise a majority could fall from 342 to 202. Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.

Some Republican states argue that courts have interpreted Section 2’s protections too broadly and in the process wrongly restrained the ability of lawmakers to draw favorable maps.

Alabama and 13 other GOP states said in a brief filed with the Supreme Court earlier this year that Section 2 has been turned into “the proverbial golden hammer, wielded by plaintiffs and courts in a never-ending search for a nail.”

If the Supreme Court weakens the Voting Rights Act, it’s unclear whether state legislatures would pursue mid-decade redraws of state legislative districts. Redistricting typically occurs every 10 years following the census.

At the federal level, a previous analysis by Fair Fight Action and Black Voters Matter Fund projected Republicans could draw an additional 19 U.S. House seats if Section 2 protections were removed.

While a few states have passed new congressional maps already this year, those efforts have proven highly controversial. Some states, such as Indiana and Kansas, have abandoned or rejected them for now.

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

Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Supreme Court declined Monday to throw out Wisconsin’s religious exemption from the state’s unemployment insurance system and affirmed that Catholic Charities organizations in Wisconsin are exempt.

The state’s highest court acted in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June reversing the Wisconsin Court’s decision in 2024, which found the organizations didn’t qualify for the state law’s UI religious exemption.

Monday’s unsigned order made no statements for or against any of the numerous briefs that were filed with the Wisconsin Court after the Supreme Court ruling.

In a 4-3 ruling in March 2024, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held that Catholic Charities’ work was secular rather than religious, and that the organization therefore was not entitled to an exemption in Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance law.

The religious exemption is reserved for employees of churches, their parent organizations, employees of organizations “operated primarily for religious purposes” and controlled by churches or church associations, church ministers or members of a religious order.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously June 5, 2025, that the Wisconsin Court’s ruling “grants a denominational preference by explicitly differentiating between religions based on theological practices” and therefore violated the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution’s religious freedom provision.

After that ruling, both Catholic Charities and the Wisconsin Department of Justice filed proposed remedies with the Wisconsin Court. The Wisconsin DOJ called on the court to throw out the state law’s religious exemption to restore “equal treatment.”

Catholic Charities rejected that proposal, declaring it showed “animus” toward the charity, and urged the court instead to affirm the exemption.

In the decision Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court sent the case back to Douglas County Circuit Court. The order directs the lower court to vacate earlier Labor and Industry Review Commission decisions denying the religious exemption and to direct LIRC to declare Catholic Charities “eligible for the religious purposes exemption to unemployment taxation.”

Victor Forberger, a Wisconsin unemployment lawyer who has written about the case on his blog, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the state high court’s action Monday was not a surprise in light of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

The federal ruling, however, did not address calls by outside groups seeking a more sweeping religious exemption, Forberger said. “How this is going to play out with other entities and their claim for religious exemptions are all to be determined,” he added.

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Holstein milking cows at an Idaho dairy on July 20, 2012. (Photo by Kirsten Strough/U.S. Department of Agriculture.)

WASHINGTON — School cafeterias got a step closer to seeing whole milk again after the U.S. House passed a measure Monday to restore the dairy staple to school lunches. 

The bill unanimously passed the Senate back in November, and now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk. 

The bipartisan effort — which passed the House by voice vote — came after whole milk was barred from school meal programs for more than a decade amid a broader push to curb childhood obesity. 

Under the bill, schools that participate in the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National School Lunch Program would be allowed to offer “flavored and unflavored organic or nonorganic whole, reduced-fat, low-fat, and fat-free fluid milk and lactose free fluid milk” as well as “nondairy beverages that are nutritionally equivalent to fluid milk and meet the nutritional standards established by the Secretary.” 

The bill also would exempt milk fat from being considered saturated fat as it applies to schools’ “allowable average saturated fat content of a meal.” 

The measure allows parents and guardians, on top of physicians, to offer a written statement for their student to receive a nondairy milk substitute.  

GOP Sens. Roger Marshall of Kansas and Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania, along with Democratic Sens. Peter Welch of Vermont and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, introduced the measure in the Senate in January. 

Republican Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson of Pennsylvania and Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier of Washington state brought corresponding legislation in the House.

‘An essential building block’

During floor debate Monday, Thompson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee, said the bill’s purpose is to “restore students’ access to a wide variety of milk options, ensuring students have the necessary nutrients to learn and to grow.” 

Thompson said “milk is an essential building block for a well-rounded and balanced diet, offering 13 essential nutrients and numerous health benefits,” but that “unfortunately, out-of-touch and outdated federal regulations have imposed restrictions on the types of milk students have access to in school meals.” 

Thompson pointed out that the bill “does not require any student to drink or any school to serve whole milk” and instead “simply gives schools the flexibility to serve a broader variety of milk in the school lunchroom.” 

But Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, voiced his opposition, saying that while the bill “does make some improvements to the whole milk debate with its inclusion of better options for students seeking non-dairy alternatives,” he remains “disappointed that the bill overall would make school meals less healthy.”

The Virginia Democrat said the bill “goes against the dairy industry’s stated commitment to ensure that students have access to the healthiest dairy options” consistent with USDA’s and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

Milk industry praise

The top five milk-producing states in 2023 were California, Wisconsin, Idaho, Texas and New York, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service.

Michael Dykes, president and CEO of the International Dairy Foods Association, celebrated House passage of the bill, which he dubbed a “defining victory for children’s health and for the dairy community that has fought for more than a decade to restore whole and 2% milk for our nation’s students.” 

Dykes urged Trump to sign the bill into law so that USDA “can begin working with state governments and school districts across the country to make this law a reality.” 

A small cannabis plant. (Photo by Getty Images)

President Donald Trump’s administration is looking “very strongly” at reclassifying cannabis from the strictest category of controlled substances, Trump said Monday.

In a brief affirmative response to a reporter’s question in the Oval Office, the president confirmed he is considering a reclassification of marijuana to unlock research funding.

“A lot of people want to see it — the reclassification — because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can’t be done unless you reclassify,” Trump said. “So we are looking at that very strongly.”

Marijuana is considered a Schedule I drug under the Food and Drug Administration’s classification of controlled substances. The FDA defines drugs on the list, such as heroin and cocaine, as lacking any medicinal value and carrying a high likelihood of abuse.

The designation carries a host of consequences, including a virtual ban on funding research for medicinal or other uses of the drug.

While marijuana use, both medicinal and recreational, is legal in many states, it remains illegal to possess or use in any amount for any reason under federal law.

Advocates have sought for decades to legalize or decriminalize the drug, which many see as less harmful than other Schedule I substances.

The growing split in recent years among many states and federal law has ramped up pressure on federal policymakers to alter the drug’s legal status.

Marijuana businesses in states where it is legal lack access to financial institutions, which cannot lend to businesses considered illegal by federal authorities.

States, meanwhile, have had difficulty regulating the environmental and health aspects of their industries.

And lawmakers, especially Democrats, have increasingly highlighted the frequent injustice of marijuana prosecutions that disproportionately affect communities of color and poor communities, though the drug is widely used across race and economic status.

The suspected shooter is shown taking a right on Waterman Street after leaving the Barus and Holley engineering building Saturday. Police say they cannot tie this man to the man detained at a Coventry hotel. (Screenshot from Providence police video)

Providence police will release the man apprehended at a Coventry hotel early Sunday morning as part of their investigation of the mass shooting at Brown University’s engineering and physics building.

The surprising news came at a twice delayed press conference that began shortly after 11 p.m. at the Providence Public Safety Complex. The press conference was originally slated to begin at 10:30 p.m. and then 10:45 p.m.   

“I’ve been around long enough to know that sometimes you head in one direction and you have to regroup and go in another and that is what has happened over the last 24 hours or so,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said.

The press conference came hours after national news outlets had already named a 24-year-old Wisconsin man, citing law enforcement sources speaking on condition of anonymity. The Associated Press had reported that police had seized two handguns and two loaded 30-round magazines when the man was detained at the Hampton Inn in Coventry.

“What is really unfortunate is that this person’s name was leaked to the public,” Neronha went on. “It’s hard to put that back in the bottle.”

Neronha declined to say what eliminated him as a person of interest.

Meanwhile, officials are still not releasing the names of the victims in the shooting, which killed two students and wounded nine others. Eight students remain hospitalized at Rhode Island Hospital.

Providence Mayor Brett Smiley said that the search will continue for additional video evidence. Residents living near the Brown University campus, particularly along Hope and Waterman streets, who have doorbells that record motion, are asked to upload any videos recorded after the shooting happened Saturday around 4 p.m. to a designated page on the FBI website.

Smiley said residents and business owners in the area who have video from that time can also call police at (401) 272-3121.

When a reporter asked Neronha if the person of interest would be exonerated in writing, after having his name nationally broadcasted in relation to a mass shooting, Neronha opted to sketch “a clear picture” of case law and the duration of forensics.  

“We can detain someone for a reasonable period of time if there is evidence as such that points to that person being involved in criminal activity,” Neronha said. “So you know, evidence doesn’t appear on your doorstep and you have answers to it within the first 15 minutes.”

Evidence, Neronha added, takes time and testing to confirm. Some tests can take an entire day to perform. 

“So over the course of the day, while we’re following up leads elsewhere, those initial leads may come back positive or may come back negative,” Neronha said. “Here they came back negative.”

Neronha got testy once more when a reporter asked about the availability of any additional video evidence. Smiley was at the podium, but Neronha’s voice boomed forward in reply. 

“If we had that video, you’d have it,” Neronha said. “Obviously, if there was, if there was a piece of video [where] we can show you a face and say, ‘This is our person of interest, or suspect,’ you’d have it.”

Asked about the possibility of additional video — whether from cameras at Brown or in the surrounding area, like homes or businesses — the AG offered a more resigned reply. 

“We’re not holding back video,” Neronha said. “We’re not holding back video that we think would be useful, and I don’t think I should even have to say it.”

The Barus and Holley engineering building where the shooting occurred is an older building with few cameras, Neronha said.

Still, Neronha said, officials cannot divulge everything. “We have a murderer out there, frankly,” he said. “And so we’re not going to give away the game plan.”

Smiley said the individual would “shortly be released” from the Providence Police but did not give a specific time.  

Smiley pledged to provide additional updates as the investigation continues.

“The community deserves to know the progress we are making in this investigation,” Smiley said. “I imagine that the Providence community feels a little bit more anxious than they did an hour ago, and I understand that.”

At a press conference Sunday morning, Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez was cautious in choosing his words to describe the status of the person of interest as being detained and not in custody. Perez had stopped short of saying the man apprehended in Coventry was the same man wearing all black shown walking on Hope Street and taking a right on Waterman Street in the video police released Saturday night.

Asked by a reporter if the man detained was the same man in the video, Perez was clear. “We do not have enough evidence to corroborate that,” the chief said. 

WisconsinEye shut down its website on Monday due to a lack of funding. Emilie Amundson, secretary of the Department of Children and Families at the time, testifies during a hearing in the state Capitol in October 2023 as a WisEye microphone and camera record the session.(Screenshot/WisEye)

WisconsinEye, the independent, nonprofit service that provides video coverage of legislative hearings, floor sessions and Wisconsin state government business similar to C-Span, shut down its website on Monday due to a lack of funding. 

The organization, which launched in 2007, first warned in November it was at risk of halting live coverage as well as pulling its video archive of more than 30,000 hours of state government proceedings, candidate interviews and other programming offline. 

“Due to extreme competition and a complete collapse in private funding — marked by donor fatigue, competing nonprofit campaigns, record-breaking political fundraising and economic uncertainty — WisconsinEye’s website is unavailable,” a message on the WisEye website states. “Without consistent annual funding…. citizens, legislators, legislative staff, the governor’s administration, agency leadership and staff, trade associations, attorneys and the courts, local government officials, journalists and all print, cable, television and radio news outlets, businesses, nonprofit organizations — all lose the only reliable and proven source of unfiltered State Capitol news and state government proceedings.”

Jon Henkes, the president of WisconsinEye, told the Examiner last month that, similar to other nonprofits, the organization has faced a tough fundraising environment since the COVID-19 pandemic. He said then that the organization has made “well qualified, well cultivated” donation requests totaling more than $9 million with none of those requests leading to donations.

Henkes said that the organization was still making donor inquiries and that raising at least $250,000 could get the organization through the first quarter of 2026. 

WisconsinEye has also turned its attention to the state Legislature for help, sending a letter to lawmakers in November asking them to make state funds available for its operational costs. 

The Wisconsin Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers set aside $10 million in matching funds in the 2023-25 state budget to help WisconsinEye build a permanent endowment. After the organization failed to raise sufficient funds to access that money, the current state budget changed provisions so that $250,000 of the $10 million was available with no match, which helped cover expenses through Dec. 15. The rest of the funding was made to be available on a dollar-by-dollar match basis, meaning as WisconsinEye raises its own funds it would be able to get an equivalent amount of state funds. The opportunity for the organization to access the funds expires in June 2026.

The organization is asking for the state to modify the match requirement and make funds available.

“We’re simply asking for release of those funds, or part of those funds, in a way different from the endowment,” Henkes told the Examiner in November. “The best case scenario would be if the Legislature would release a minimum of one year, so $1 million, essentially to carry us forward, and we can focus 100% over the next several months through June, to really hammer down and see if we can’t raise some endowment dollars. We think that’s a very viable option, and we’re hopeful.”

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People gather to sing and show support for Judge Hannah Dugan ahead of her federal trial. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A federal jury will begin hearing the case against Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan, 66, on Monday in a lawsuit that has drawn national attention, weighing how far the Trump administration can go in squashing resistance to its nationwide crackdown on immigrants. 

The case revolves around events in  April, when Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a 30-year-old Mexican immigrant who had  been charged with battery, appeared in Dugan’s courtroom. Federal agents also arrived at the courtroom that day, seeking Flores-Ruiz, whom they said entered the country illegally over a decade ago. 

Dugan confronted  the federal agents as they waited outside her courtroom. Later, she led Flores-Ruiz  and his attorney out of her courtroom through a side door which led  into the same hallway where the federal agents were waiting. Flores-Ruiz was followed into the elevator and outside by the agents, who chased and then arrested him. 

Days later, Dugan was arrested and handcuffed by FBI agents and charged with obstruction and concealing an individual. FBI Director Kash Patel posted photographs of Dugan in handcuffs and celebrated her arrest, writing on X, “No one is above the law.” 

In early April, prior to Flores-Ruiz, ICE arrested two other people at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Officials expressed concerns that the arrests were causing defendants, witnesses and victims to avoid coming to court or cooperating with law enforcement. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley objected to what he characterized as intimidation tactics in enforcing its immigration crackdown and wielding the power of the state against  “anyone who opposes these policies.” In a statement, Crowley said, “we have an obligation to administer our courts in a safe, efficient manner that delivers due process for anyone.” 

Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of the immigrant rights group Voces de la Frontera, said that the Trump officials  “basically want to be unleashed to do whatever they want to commit these raids in courtrooms across the country.” Milwaukee-area Democratic Sens. Chris Larson and Tim Carpenter and Reps. Christine Sinicki, Darrin Madison, Supreme Moore Omokunde, Angelito Tenorio, and Sequanna Taylor issued a joint statement calling the county courthouse “a sanctuary for justice and peace where the accused come forward willingly in a fair an unbiased process”, and warned that “arresting people out of a courtroom will lead to a breakdown of civil society.” 

At the end of April, the Wisconsin Supreme Court suspended Dugan with pay. Her case catalyzed protests outside the Milwaukee FBI Office, and was repeatedly mentioned at the summer’s No Kings protests. In July, Republican lawmakers introduced a bill to withhold pay for suspended judges. 

“In these rare circumstances, these judges’ actions and alleged misconduct rose to such a level that suspension was warranted,” the bill’s authors, Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) and Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) wrote in a memo.  “Simply put, Wisconsin taxpayers must be protected from the misconduct and/or commission of a crime by rogue judges.”

If convicted, Dugan, who has pleaded not guilty, faces six years in prison. Her legal team initially attempted to have the case thrown out,  t arguing that Dugan is covered by  judicial immunity. That argument was rejected by U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph of the Eastern District of Wisconsin, who wrote that judges have civil immunity for official actions, but not criminal immunity, and that the case should go forward.

“As she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court,” Dugan’s defense attorneys said in a statement.

On Thursday night, a crowd gathered outside the federal courthouse to support Dugan. 

Therese Heeg, 66, told the Wisconsin Examiner that she felt a responsibility to attend the rally to “protect our democracy for my children, my grandchildren, my son-in-law who’s unable to live in the U.S. because he’s from Africa, my best friend’s children who are Hispanic who are afraid for their lives, even though they’re citizens.” Heeg said she’s worried about immigration enforcement coming to the city to take people away. “Every single day there’s more and more atrocities happening right here,” said Heeg. “We are trapping people in camps…I used to wonder what it was like to live under the Nazis, and now I know, I’m living it. It’s shocking, it’s hard to comprehend at the same time that it’s happening every single day. 

Jury selection on Thursday was  closed off from the public and media by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman, who is hearing the case. Adelman was responding to concerns from both the prosecution and defense that public questioning would taint the jury. An audio feed allowing media to listen to the jury selection process was restored following a legal   challenge by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Sister Barbara Pfarr, who is among the leaders of the faith-based social justice group MICAH, said that the national attention on Dugan’s case shows that the judge struck a nerve by standing up to the  Trump administration. Pfarr was disturbed by the effort to restrict press access during jury selection, and wondered whether anything similar would happen during the trial. “That’s the other big reason that I’m here, we’ve lost our democracy.”

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The Madison Social Security Administration field office. The federal Administration for Children and Families is calling on states, including Wisconsin, to stop diverting Social Security and other federal benefits that are supposed to be made available to foster children. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Federal officials are urging 39 states, including Wisconsin, to quit hoarding federal benefits that are supposed to go to children in foster care, but that agencies instead take to help pay for their foster care expenses.

The practice has been going on in various states for two decades or more, according to advocates who have been calling to ban it for nearly as long.

Wisconsin is among the states that received letters last week from the federal Administration for Children and Families, calling on them to stop diverting Social Security survivor’s benefits that are supposed to go to foster children.

“Every earned benefit dollar belongs to these foster youth, not the government agencies or bureaucrats,” said Alex J. Adams, the ACF assistant secretary, in a press release from ACF and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“ACF has notified all 39 governors who allow this practice and aims to work with states to end it,” the press release stated. “The goal is to ensure these earned benefits are no longer taken from foster youth and are instead preserved to support them as they transition out of state care.”

In Wisconsin, the office of Gov. Tony Evers pointed to a provision Evers included in his proposed 2025-27 state budget to end the practice, but that Republican lawmakers removed without comment at the start of budget deliberations.

“It’s been a long-time issue now, but unfortunately it has been largely under the radar,” said Daniel Hatcher, a University of Baltimore law professor and an early critic of the practice. Hatcher has advocated on behalf of affected foster children for more than two decades and written extensively about the issue, including in the Wisconsin Law Review.

A Marshall Project-National Public Radio project in 2021 found that 49 states at the time were rerouting foster children’s federal benefits to cover some of their costs. Hatcher said that has helped raise more attention to the issue.

“I think most people, when you talk to them about this practice, when they  understand what’s going on, they’re outraged,” Hatcher told the Wisconsin Examiner.

Foster children who would qualify for Social Security survivors’ benefits or veterans’ survivor benefits because their parents have died, as well as foster children who themselves have disabilities and qualify for Social Security disability payments (SSI) have all been affected, Hatcher said.

Hatcher first publicized the practice in a 2006 law review article that documented how state and local child welfare agencies, or the private contractors that they engage to manage their programs, were intercepting federal benefits that are supposed to go to foster children.

“The agencies identify foster children who are disabled or have deceased or disabled parents, apply for Social Security benefits on the children’s behalf, and then take the children’s benefits to reimburse foster care costs for which the children have no legal obligation,” Hatcher wrote.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 upheld the practice, but advocates have been fighting to end it ever since.

In Wisconsin, Hatcher wrote in a 2018 op-ed article for the CapTimes, the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker signed a contract in 2011 with Maximus Inc. that the management company used to “increase the number of children classified as disabled and to locate children with deceased birth parents — not to provide more services to the children, but so the state can take their resources.”

Drawing on public records, Hatcher estimated that the contract yielded at least $3 million “in survivor and disability benefits from foster children each year” in Milwaukee County alone, “and the state has been taking millions more from foster children in other jurisdictions.”

Earlier this year the Evers administration estimated that about $3.2 million each year was being diverted from foster children’s SSI or Social Security survivors’ benefits, with about 95% going to fund the foster care system. The figures were cited in a Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s March summary of Evers’ proposed 2025-27 budget.

The governor’s budget proposal included a provision to end the diversion and instead deposit the benefits in trust funds for each child in foster care.

The proposal also included language to prohibit the Department of Children and Families or county child welfare agencies from using those funds to pay for foster care. DCF officials said the department would seek additional funding in the state budget to replace what counties lost as a result, according to the fiscal bureau’s summary.

The proposal to stop diverting the benefits was one of more than 600 items in Evers’ draft budget that the Republican majority on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee deleted on the first day of budget deliberations.

Asked whether the Evers administration had any comment on the federal notice last week, the governor’s communications director, Britt Cudaback, replied in an email message, “Nothing beyond the fact we already tried to address this, but Republican lawmakers rejected the effort.”

Before his confirmation as ACF assistant secretary, Adams was director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. In May, he directed the department to stop diverting foster children’s survivor benefits, the Idaho Capital Sun reported.

Idaho is one of 11 states that have ended the diversion of survivor benefits, according to the DHS/ACF press release.

The Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego has identified at least eight states and the District of Columbia that have completely banned the diversion of all benefits designated for foster children. A number of other states have attempted to stop the diversion of selected benefits.

The federal notice marks an important step in the campaign to end the practice, said Amy Harfeld, the institute’s national policy director.

“We’re very excited about what this does,” Harfeld told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It doesn’t fix the whole problem but it sets a really solid marker in the ground that not only keeps states moving forward but leads toward the next changes that need to be made to actually put an end to it.”

The Children’s Advocacy Institute acknowledges Wisconsin’s unsuccessful attempt to curb the practice in the 2025 budget.

With the failure of that effort, however, “Wisconsin isn’t looking so good right now,” Harfeld said. “It’s one of only 11 states that haven’t done anything.”

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There were 105 immigration arrests in October at a horse racetrack in Wilder, Idaho. Idaho saw one of the country’s largest increases in immigration arrests this year through mid-October compared with the same period in the Biden administration. (Photo courtesy of ACLU of Idaho)

Immigration arrests under the Trump administration continued to increase through mid-October, reaching rates of more than 30,000 a month. But, rather than the convicted criminals the administration has said it’s focused on, an ever-larger share of those arrests were for solely immigration violations.

In 45 states, immigration arrests more than doubled compared with the same period last year, during the Biden administration. The largest increases: There were 1,190 arrests in the District of Columbia compared with just seven last year under the Biden administration. Arrests were also more than five times higher in New Mexico, Idaho, Oregon and Virginia.

“The result stands in contrast to the administration’s objective of arresting the ‘worst of the worst,’” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Heightened enforcement is likely increasing “collateral” arrests of people found during searches for convicted criminals, he said.

Comparisons between the Trump and Biden administrations were calculated by Stateline in an analysis of data released by the Deportation Data Project, a research initiative by the universities of California at Berkeley and Los Angeles. About 93% of arrests could be identified by state.

While more people were arrested this year, a lower percentage are convicted criminals.

The share of arrested immigrants who had been convicted of violent crimes has dropped from 9% in January to less than 5% in October. The share under Biden was consistently between 10% and 11% during the same period in 2024.

The same trend applies to people arrested solely on immigration violations: Immigration violations alone were behind 20% in April, then rose to 44% of arrests in October, according to Stateline’s analysis.

In some states and the District of Columbia, a majority of arrests were for immigration violations alone: the District of Columbia (80%), New York (61%), Virginia (57%), Illinois (53%), West Virginia (51%) and Maryland (50%).

States with high immigrant populations also saw the most arrests this year. The largest numeric increases were in Texas (up 29,403, triple last year’s figure), Florida (up 14,693, a fourfold increase) and California (up 13,345, a fourfold increase).

The two states with the largest arrest rate increases have responded very differently to President Donald Trump’s deportation mission.

“We’re going to resist like all of the Democratic states,” New Mexico Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said in an interview with The Santa Fe New Mexican after last year’s election, referring to mass deportation plans. She proposed legislation to ban U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in the state. The legislation failed this year, but Lujan Grisham urged the state legislature to reconsider next year. The state has three privately run ICE detention centers with the capacity for 2,000 people.

Idaho’s Republican governor, Brad Little, is helping ICE under a 287(g) agreement by transporting what his office calls “highly dangerous illegal alien criminals” from county jails to federal custody. The 53 men pictured on the governor’s website have charges ranging from drug possession to sexual assault.

In a news release, the office says the program is intended to take people “after the completion of their sentences,” though an October review by the Idaho Capital Sun found some were transported despite dismissed or still-pending charges.

Nationally, arrests have increased this year from around 17,000 in February, the first full month of President Donald Trump’s current term, to more than 30,000 in September and October. The share of convicted criminals has dropped from 46% to 30%, though the number of convicted criminals arrested still has been higher each month than under President Joe Biden.

Some of the policies that have fed increased arrest numbers face new court battles. This month, a federal judge blocked the administration from making immigration arrests in the District of Columbia without warrants or probable cause.

In August, a federal court blocked the administration’s expansion of expedited removal, which itself allows fast deportations without judicial review. The administration has appealed, arguing that immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years without legal authorization are not guaranteed due process.

Such fast deportations could be used on 2.5 million people, according to a Migration Policy Institute estimate published in September, including 1 million people released at the border with Mexico with court dates and 1.5 million people with temporary protections such as humanitarian parole.

This fall, the share of arrested immigrants with criminal convictions continued to decrease just before and during the federal government shutdown, with only 3% of those arrested and detained having convictions between Sept. 21 and Nov. 16, according to national information analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data research organization at Syracuse University.

“While ICE is detaining more and more individuals, targeting has shifted sharply to individuals without any criminal convictions,” the TRAC report noted.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify a reference to October detention statistics analyzed by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

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

Federal and local law enforcement officers arrest a man in Washington, D.C., in August. The number of arrests nationwide fell sharply in 2020 and have stayed down since then, according to a new report from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

Arrests in the United States have fallen to levels not seen in decades, according to a new report that reconstructs national arrest trends in the absence of federal data.

The Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, on Thursday released the first comprehensive national analysis of arrests since federal authorities stopped publishing detailed arrest statistics in 2020.

Arrests plunged during the first year of the pandemic and have remained low, according to the analysis. The national arrest rate in 2024 was 30% below the 2019 level and 71% lower than the peak in 1994. 

Drug arrests have fallen even faster, with adult and juvenile drug-offense arrest rates dropping to about half of what they were in 2019.

In 1980, juveniles made up nearly a fifth of arrests nationwide, but by 2018, their share had fallen to 7%. While adult arrest rates declined 7% between 2020 and 2024, juvenile rates rose 14% over the same period.

Gender patterns have shifted as well. With arrests of men falling more steeply over time, women now account for a larger portion of arrests. Adult women’s share nearly doubled between 1980 and 2020, rising from 14% to about 27%. Girls’ share of juvenile arrests grew from 18% to roughly 31%.

Between 2020 and 2024, arrest rates for Black and Asian juveniles surged 48% and 45%, respectively, compared with an 11% increase among white youth. Rates for American Indian and Alaska Native juveniles fell 4%. 

Among adults, arrest rates increased by 12% for Black people and 18% for Asian people, but declined by 10% for white adults and 17% for American Indian and Alaska Native adults.

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

A billboard advertises an artificial intelligence company in San Francisco in September. California is among the states leading the way on AI regulations, but an executive order signed by President Donald Trump seeks to override state laws on the technology. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

State lawmakers of both parties said they plan to keep passing laws regulating artificial intelligence despite President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop them.

Trump signed an executive order Thursday evening that aims to override state artificial intelligence laws. He said his administration must work with Congress to develop a national AI policy, but that in the meantime, it will crack down on state laws.

The order comes after several other Trump administration efforts to rein in state AI laws and loosen restrictions for developers and technology companies.

But despite those moves, state lawmakers are continuing to prefile legislation related to artificial intelligence in preparation for their 2026 legislative sessions. Opponents are also skeptical about — and likely to sue over — Trump’s proposed national framework and his ability to restrict states from passing legislation.

“I agree on not overregulating, but I don’t believe the federal government has the right to take away my right to protect my constituents if there’s an issue with AI,” said South Carolina Republican state Rep. Brandon Guffey, who penned a letter to Congress opposing legislation that would curtail state AI laws.

The letter, signed by 280 state lawmakers from across the country, shows that state legislators from both parties want to retain their ability to craft their own AI legislation, said South Dakota Democratic state Sen. Liz Larson, who co-wrote the letter.

Earlier this year, South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed the state’s first artificial intelligence law, authored by Larson, prohibiting the use of a deepfake — a digitally altered photo or video that can make someone appear to be doing just about anything — to influence an election.

South Dakota and other states with more comprehensive AI laws, such as California and Colorado, would see their efforts overruled by Trump’s order, Larson said.

“To take away all of this work in a heartbeat and then prevent states from learning those lessons, without providing any alternative framework at the federal level, is just irresponsible,” she said. “It takes power away from the states.”

Trump’s efforts

Thursday’s executive order will establish an AI Litigation Task Force to bring court challenges against states with AI-related laws, with exceptions for a few issues such as child safety protections and data center infrastructure.

The order also directs the secretary of commerce to notify states that they could lose certain funds under the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program if their laws conflict with national AI policy priorities.

Trump said the order would help the United States beat China in dominating the burgeoning AI industry, adding that Chinese President Xi Jinping did not have similar restraints.

“This will not be successful unless they have one source of approval or disapproval,” he said. “It’s got to be one source. They can’t go to 50 different sources.”

In July, the Trump administration released the AI Action Plan, an initiative aimed at reducing regulatory barriers and accelerating the growth of AI infrastructure, including data centers. Trump also has revoked Biden-era AI safety and anti-discrimination policies.

The tech industry had lobbied for Trump’s order.

“This executive order is an important step towards ensuring that smart, unified federal policy — not bureaucratic red tape — secures America’s AI dominance for generations to come,” said Amy Bos, vice president of government affairs for NetChoice, a technology trade association, in a statement to Stateline.

As the administration looks to address increasing threats to national defense and cybersecurity, a centralized, national approach to AI policy is best, said Paul Lekas, the executive vice president for global public policy and government affairs at the Software & Information Industry Association.

“The White House is very motivated to ensure that there aren’t barriers to innovation and that we can continue to move forward,” he said. “And the White House is concerned that there is state legislation that may be purporting to regulate interstate commerce. We would be creating a patchwork that would be very hard for innovation.”

Congressional Republicans tried twice this year to pass moratoriums on state AI laws, but both efforts failed.

In the absence of a comprehensive federal artificial intelligence policy, state lawmakers have worked to regulate the rapid development of AI systems and protect consumers from potential harms.

Trump’s executive order could cause concern among lawmakers who fear possible blowback from the administration for their efforts, said Travis Hall, the director for state engagement at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit that advocates for digital rights and freedom of expression.

“I can’t imagine that state legislators aren’t going to continue to try to engage with these technologies in order to help protect and respond to the concerns of their constituents,” Hall said. “However, there’s no doubt that the intent of this executive order is to chill any actual oversight, accountability or regulation.”

State rules

This year, 38 states adopted or enacted measures related to artificial intelligence, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures database. Numerous state lawmakers have also prefiled legislation for 2026.

But tensions have grown over the past few months as Trump has pushed for deregulation and states have continued to create guardrails.

In 2024, Colorado Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed the nation’s first comprehensive artificial intelligence framework into law. Under the law, developers of AI systems will be required to protect consumers from potential algorithmic discrimination.

But implementation of the law was postponed a few months until June 2026 after negotiations stalled during a special legislative session this summer aiming to ensure the law did not hinder technological innovation. And a spokesperson for Polis told Bloomberg in May that the governor supported a U.S. House GOP proposal that would impose a moratorium on state AI laws.

Trump’s executive order, which mentions the Colorado law as an example of legislation the administration may challenge, has caused uncertainty among some state lawmakers focused on regulating AI. But Colorado state Rep. Brianna Titone and state Sen. Robert Rodriguez, Democratic sponsors of the law, said they will continue their work.

Unless Congress passes legislation to restrict states from passing AI laws, Trump’s executive order can easily be challenged and overturned in court, she said.

“This is just a bunch of hot air,” Titone said. “It doesn’t hold any water and it doesn’t have any teeth because the president doesn’t have the authority to supersede state law. We will continue to do what we need to do for the people in our state, just like we always have, unless there is an actual preemption in federal law.”

California and Illinois also have been at the forefront of artificial intelligence legislation over the past few years. In September, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the nation’s first law establishing a comprehensive legal framework for developers of the most advanced, large-scale artificial intelligence models, known as frontier artificial intelligence models. Those efforts are aimed at preventing AI models from causing catastrophic harm involving dozens of casualties or billion-dollar damages.

California officials have said they are considering a legal challenge over Trump’s order, and other states and groups are likely to sue as well.

Republican officials and GOP-led states, including some Trump allies, also are pushing forward with AI regulations. Efforts to protect consumers from AI harms are being proposed in Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.

Earlier this month, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis also unveiled a proposal for an AI Bill of Rights. The proposal aims to strengthen consumer protections related to AI and to address the growing impact data centers are having on local communities.

In South Carolina, Guffey said he plans to introduce a bill in January that would place rules on AI chatbots. Chatbots that use artificial intelligence are able to simulate conversations with users, but raise privacy and safety concerns.

Artificial intelligence is developing fast, Guffey noted. State lawmakers have been working on making sure the technology is safe to use — and they’ll keep doing that to protect their constituents, he said.

“The problem is that it’s not treated like a product — it’s treated like a service,” Guffey said. “If it was treated like a product, we have consumer protection laws where things could be recalled and adjusted and then put back out there once they’re safe. But that is not the case with any of this technology.”

Stateline reporter Madyson Fitzgerald can be reached at mfitzgerald@stateline.org.