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Your citizenship, like mine, is an accident of birth. 

You were born here. So was I. The rub is I was born to immigrants who were not yet legal residents.

That makes me a birthright citizen under the 14th Amendment. That also allegedly makes me an “anchor baby.” I’m referring to the assertion that immigrants have come to the U.S. and have  babies only so they can gain  legal residency later.

Real life is more complicated than that for millions of immigrants who come to the U.S. for a variety of reasons — whether they are fleeing violence in their home countries or simply seeking a better life, as generations in our nation of immigrants have done. 

Does the immigration status of my parents really matter? How long ago  did your immigrant ancestors first step foot here? How many generations does it take for citizenship to be “deserved?”

The Constitution’s 14th Amendment says unequivocally that I’m as deserving as the accident of your birth makes you. If you are born here, you’re a U.S. citizen. Me, too. That’s birthright citizenship.

On Jan. 20, newly inaugurated President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending automatic citizenship for babies born to parents who don’t have lawful status in the U.S.  

In a recent 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court did not address  the constitutionality of Trump’s order. Instead, it ruled that lower courts have no power to issue nationwide injunctions,  voiding  district courts’  rulings that Trump may not deport people who have been U.S. citizens all their lives.  

After the ruling, some groups began the slow process to challenge the law in a nationwide class action lawsuit. But until the Court decides otherwise, the fundamental question whether someone is considered a U.S. citizen will have different answers in different states. 

Meanwhile, raids on immigrant communities continue.

The Trump administration is clearly emboldened. The Supreme Court’s ruling allows the ban on birthright citizenship to take effect in those 28 states that didn’t challenge the president’s initial executive order. And the administration is counting on the high court to see it his way on the constitutional question eventually.

At this point, I lack the confidence to say it won’t.

I understand the argument that  children born to U.S. citizens are more deserving than I am. “But my ancestors emigrated here legally,” say more “deserving” citizens. Never mind that the barriers to coming to this country legally have moved up and down. Today, even people with demonstrable asylum claims are being shut out.

Back in the day, if you showed up to these shores, you simply got in. It wasn’t until 1924 that the U.S. started enforcing quotas for national origin. Aside from immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe (deemed then as too foreign, i.e. not white enough), these quotas favored other white immigrants. And it specifically targeted Asians for exclusion.

This preference for white immigrants continues. White immigrants from, say, Canada and Ireland, don’t seem to be affected by this attempted purge.

So let’s be honest. Many of your immigrant ancestors were legal simply by default.

Other people will argue that ICE is targeting immigrants  who have committed violent crimes. A couple of big problems: according to the libertarian CATO Institute, 65% of those taken by ICE have no criminal record and 93% have not committed a violent crime. 

As a group, immigrants are a safer group than U.S.-born citizens. They commit fewer crimes.

The issue is not criminality. It’s race. All across the country,  Latinos are being detained because of the color of their skin.

Some folks insist that the 14th Amendment dealt only with the children of slaves freed after the Civil War. 

Here’s what the amendment says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof (my emphasis), are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

Clearly, even those here without documents are subject to U.S. and state laws. That puts them under U.S. jurisdiction. The courts have confirmed birthright citizenship as early as the late 19th Century (United States v. Wong Kim Ark.).

Is military service an indication of deserving citizenship?

Immigrants and their children are populations the military covets for recruitment. About 5% of active-duty personnel are children of immigrants and 12%  of living veterans are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Meanwhile, there is a shrinking pool of Americans able to serve, owing to their own criminality, fitness and, importantly, willingness.

So, maybe this ire for birthright citizens like me is about how much of a drain we are on government services and the economy.

But, bucking a trend for other Americans, the children of immigrants often surpass the economic success of their parents. That’s been true in my family and virtually everyone else with my background I’ve encountered.

So, who deserves to be a citizen?

I contend that a chief quality of those who  deserve citizenship is that they don’t take their citizenship for granted. They know their parents sacrificed much to make it happen. We are proud Americans. We belong here. And we deserve to stay.

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The U.S. Capitol as lawmakers worked into the night on the "big beautiful bill" on July 2, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans cleared the “big, beautiful bill” for President Donald Trump’s signature Thursday, marking an end to the painstaking months-long negotiations that began just after voters gave the GOP unified control of Washington during last year’s elections.

The final 218-214 vote on the expansive tax and spending cuts package marked a significant victory for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., who were able to unify centrist and far-right members of the party against long odds and narrow majorities.

But the legislation’s real-world impacts include millions of Americans expected to lose access to Medicaid through new requirements and slashed spending, and state governments taking on a share of costs for a key nutrition program for low-income families. If voters oppose Republicans at the ballot box in return, it could mean the GOP loses the House during next year’s midterm elections.

In the end just two Republicans in the House and three in the Senate opposed the measure, which the Senate approved earlier in the week with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.

Trump posted on social media numerous times in the days leading up to the vote, thanking supportive Republicans who were praising the bill during interviews and threatening to back primary challenges against GOP lawmakers who stood in the way of passage.

“Largest Tax Cuts in History and a Booming Economy vs. Biggest Tax Increase in History, and a Failed Economy,” Trump posted just after midnight when it wasn’t yet clear the bill would pass. “What are the Republicans waiting for??? What are you trying to prove??? MAGA IS NOT HAPPY, AND IT’S COSTING YOU VOTES!!!”

Trump told reporters while on his way to Iowa for an event that he would sign the bill at 5 p.m. Eastern on Friday, with military aircraft flying over the White House and Republican lawmakers in attendance.

Johnson said during a floor speech the legislation is a direct result of the November elections, when voters gave the GOP control of the House, Senate and the White House.

“That election was decisive. It was a bellwether. It was a time for choosing,” Johnson said. “And I tell you what — the American people chose, overwhelmingly, they chose the Republican Party.”

The package, he said, would make the country “stronger, safer and more prosperous than ever before.”

“We’ve had spirited debates, we’ve had months of deliberation and now we are finally ready to fulfill our promise to the American people,” Johnson said.

Republicans were spurred to write the tax provisions in the legislation to avoid a cliff at the end of the year, created by the party’s 2017 tax law. But the legislation holds dozens of other provisions as well, spanning border security, defense, energy production, health care and higher education aid.

The bill raises the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, a staggering figure that many fiscal hawks would have once balked at, but is enough to get Republicans past the midterm elections before they’ll have to negotiate another deal to raise the country’s borrowing limit.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s latest analysis of the measure projects it would add $3.4 trillion to deficits during the next decade compared to current law.

Jeffries: “It guts Medicaid’

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the health care provisions “reckless” during a speech that lasted nearly nine hours, forcing the vote to take place in the afternoon rather than early morning, and said the “bill represents the largest cut to health care in American history.”

“Almost $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid,” Jeffries said. “This runs directly contrary to what President Trump indicated in January, which was that he was going to love and cherish Medicaid. Nothing about this bill loves and cherishes Medicaid. It guts Medicaid.”

The speech broke the eight-hour-and-32-minute record that then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., set in 2021 when he sought to delay Democrats from passing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. House leaders are allowed to exceed normal speaking limits through a privilege called the “magic minute.”

The nonpartisan health research organization KFF’s analysis of the package shows it would reduce federal spending on Medicaid by nearly $1 trillion during the next decade and lead to 11.8 million people becoming uninsured.

Republicans made numerous changes to the state-federal health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities, including a requirement that some enrollees work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program for at least 80 hours a month.

Medicaid patients will no longer be able to have their care covered at Planned Parenthood for routine appointments, like annual physicals and cancer screenings, for one year. Congress has barred federal taxpayer dollars from going to abortions with limited exceptions for decades, but the new provision will block all Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, likely leading some of its clinics to close.

Overnight drama

House passage followed several frenzied days on Capitol Hill as congressional leaders and Trump sought to sway holdouts to their side ahead of a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.

The Senate, and then later the House, held overnight sessions followed by dramatic votes where several Republicans, who said publicly they didn’t actually like the bill, voted to approve it anyway. 

GOP leaders didn’t have much room for error amid a narrow 53-seat Senate majority and a 220-212 advantage in the House. That delicate balance hovered in the background during the last several months, as talks over dozens of policy changes and spending cuts in the bill appeared deadlocked.

Any modifications meant to bring on board far-right members of the party had to be weighed against the policy goals of centrist lawmakers, who are most at risk of losing their seats during next year’s elections.

The House passed its first version of the bill following a 215-214 vote in May, sending the legislation to the Senate, where Republicans in that chamber spent several weeks deciding which policies they could support and which they wanted to remove or rework.

The measure changed substantially to comply with the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill through the upper chamber. GOP leaders chose to use that process, instead of moving the package through the regular legislative pathway, to avoid having to negotiate with Democrats to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

In the end nearly every one of the 273 Republicans in Congress approved the behemoth 870-page bill.

Maine’s Susan Collins, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis voted against it in the Senate and Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick and Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie opposed passage in the House.

Fitzpatrick wrote in a statement that while he voted to approve the House’s original version of the bill, he couldn’t support changes made in the Senate.

“I voted to strengthen Medicaid protections, to permanently extend middle class tax cuts, for enhanced small business tax relief, and for historic investments in our border security and our military.” Fitzpatrick wrote. “However, it was the Senate’s amendments to Medicaid, in addition to several other Senate provisions, that altered the analysis for our PA-1 community.”

Massie posted on social media that he couldn’t vote for the measure because it would exacerbate the country’s annual deficit.

“Although there were some conservative wins in the budget reconciliation bill (OBBBA), I voted No on final passage because it will significantly increase U.S. budget deficits in the near term, negatively impacting all Americans through sustained inflation and high interest rates,” Massie wrote. 

GOP holdouts delay passage

Floor debate on the bill in the House, which began around 3:30 a.m. Eastern Thursday and lasted 11 hours, was along party lines, with Democrats voicing strong opposition to changes in the package and GOP lawmakers arguing it puts the country on a better path.

GOP leaders didn’t originally plan to begin debate in the middle of the night while most of the country slept, but were forced to after holdouts refused to give their votes to a procedural step.

When the House did finally adopt the rule, Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick was the sole member of his party to vote against moving onto floor debate and a final passage vote.

Fitzpatrick had posted on social media earlier in the day that he wanted Trump “to address my serious concern regarding reports the United States is withholding critical defense material pledged to Ukraine.”

“Ukrainian forces are not only safeguarding their homeland—they are holding the front line of freedom itself,” he wrote. “There can be no half-measures in the defense of liberty. We must, as we always have, stand for peace through strength.”

Tax breaks and so much more

House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., made significant promises to middle-class Americans during floor debate about the tax provisions in the bill that many voters will be watching for in the months ahead. 

“Households making under $100,000 will see a 12% tax cut compared to what they pay today. The average family of four will see nearly 11,000 more in their pockets each year,” Smith said. “Real wages for workers will rise by as much as $7,200 a year. A waitress working for tips will keep an extra $1,300, a lineman working overtime after a storm will keep an extra $1,400.”

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on the tax writing panel, said the legislation’s benefits skew largely toward the very wealthy.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to make a plus of $96,000 in the next tax filing season,” Neal said. “If you made under $50,000 last year, you’re going to get 68 cents a day in terms of your tax relief.”

The extension of the 2017 tax law would predominantly benefit high-income earners. The top 1% would receive a tax cut three times the size of those with incomes in the bottom 60% of after-tax income, according to analysis from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Some other tax incentives that critics say skew toward wealthier families include a $1,000 deposit from the federal government for babies born between 2024 and 2028, known as a “Trump account.” The program would track a stock index and gain interest accordingly and families with disposable income could contribute additional funding.

And while Republicans included an extension of the child tax credit to $2,200 per child, it requires the parents to have a Social Security number to claim the tax credit.

The bill will give the president more than $170 billion to carry out his campaign promise of mass deportations of people in the country without permanent legal status. The package would give the Department of Homeland Security $45 billion for the detention of immigrants and give its immigration enforcement arm another $30 billion to hire up to 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Food aid, higher education

The legislation will overhaul federal loans for higher education and how states pay for food assistance that roughly 42 million low-income people rely on, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

The bill would cap federal graduate loans to $100,000 per borrower and $200,000 per borrower who is attending law school or medical school. It would also cap the ParentPLUS loans to $65,000.

Under the SNAP changes, the package would require states to shoulder more of the burden in food assistance. Currently, the federal government covers 100% of the cost. The legislation tightens eligibility for SNAP, requiring parents with children aged 6 and older to meet the work requirements when they were previously exempt.

Current estimates from CBO show that changes in  federal nutrition programs including SNAP would reduce federal spending by roughly $186 billion over 10 years.

The GOP megabill cuts clean energy tax credits and claws back some of the funding in former president Joe Biden’s signature climate bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

Some of those cuts to clean energy tax credits include terminating at the end of September a nearly $8,000 rebate for the purchase of an electric vehicle, ending a tax credit by December for energy efficient home upgrades such as solar roof panels and heat pumps.

The package rescinds funds to help local governments and states adopt zero emission standards, and eliminates environmental justice block grants that communities used to address health impacts due to environmental pollution, among other things.

Gov. Tony Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers signed the $111 billion two-year state budget bill into law overnight following a marathon day of overlapping Senate and Assembly floor sessions where the bill received bipartisan support from lawmakers. The budget cuts taxes by $1.3 billion, makes investments in the University of Wisconsin system, boosts public schools’ special education reimbursement rate to 45% and allocates about $330 for child care. 

Evers signed the budget, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 15, at 1:32 a.m. in his office Thursday, less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. Just before signing it, he thanked legislative leaders for working with him and said the budget reflects the fair legislative maps that he signed into law in 2024 and that were in place during November elections. 

“We need to work together,” Evers said. 

As the Assembly and Senate prepared to meet for debate Wednesday evening, Evers was outside of the east wing of the Capitol for Concerts on the Square and telling people not to “drop meatballs” on themselves. 

“I was actually chatting with people about tonight outside,” he said. “Many of them were saying ‘How about that? Compromise.’ Compare that to what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and it’s significantly different, so I’m very proud to sign it.”

The passage and signing of the state budget comes two days after the end of the fiscal year.

Following months of negotiations and the announcement of a deal between Evers, Republican legislative leaders and Senate Democrats on Tuesday, the Legislature worked for about 15 hours Wednesday to get the bill over the finish line.

Their goal was to get the bill signed by Evers before the federal reconciliation bill made it to President Donald Trump’s desk.

One reason for the rush was a provision in the state budget that increases a Medicaid-related hospital assessment from 1.8% to 6%, the current federal limit, to supplement the state’s Medicaid resources. It’s estimated to result in over $1 billion in additional Medicaid revenue that will go back to Wisconsin hospitals, but the state’s ability to make that change is set to be restricted under the federal bill.

“We want our health care system to be in good shape, and in order to do that, we’re going to need help from the federal government,” Evers said. 

Governor uses partial veto

In addition to signing the budget, Evers exercised his partial veto on 23 items . He had agreed not to partially veto any part of the deal that he came to with lawmakers, but other pieces of the legislation were fair game. 

Evers vetoed language that set 2029 for closing Green Bay Correctional Institution. He said he supports closing the facility, but said more needs to be done before a date is set.

“We need more compromise on that. We need to get things going before we start taking people out of Green Bay,” Evers told reporters. “Saying that we’re going to do Green Bay by ’29 doesn’t mean a damn thing.”

He also partially vetoed $750,000 in grants to the Lakeland STAR Academy, a Minocqua charter school that specializes in serving students with autism and diverse learning needs; vetoed language excluding two of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes from a grant program; and vetoed $25,000 for a street project in the village of Warrens. 

In addition, he vetoed funds for five projects that would go through the Department of Natural Resource. 

“I object to providing an earmark for a natural resources project when the Legislature has abandoned its responsibility to reauthorize and ensure the continuation of the immensely popular Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program,” Evers stated in his veto message. 

Lawmakers said they are still working on legislation to continue the program. “Instead of renewing the program and helping the many, the Legislature has opted to benefit the politically connected few,” Evers wrote.  “The Legislature must do its job and renew the Warren Knowles-Gaylord Nelson Stewardship program.”

Evers said if he would change anything about the budget, he would have wanted “more in the area of specificity in child care.” The budget will spend about $330 million on child care including $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year, $65 million to a new program for providers serving 4-year-olds and $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program.

Evers also rejected the calls of some advocates that he veto the entire budget, noting the uncertainty that could result and the funding that could be put at risk by starting from scratch on a budget.

“Failing to reach consensus and vetoing this budget in its entirety was an untenable option, not just for me, but for the people of our state,” Evers wrote in his budget message. 

Evers told reporters he wasn’t caught off guard by the number of Democratic lawmakers who didn’t support the budget.

“They have to do what they think is right, and everybody’s kind of looking for what’s going to happen in a couple years, and so I’m not surprised,” Evers said. “But there’s a whole bunch of Republicans that supported it so God bless them.” 

Republican lawmakers also said throughout the day that the prospect of losing hospital funding if the budget wasn’t signed ahead of the federal reconciliation bill moving through Congress played a role in wanting to get the budget done as quickly as possible.

“That’s why we’re working really fast to get it done,” Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said during a press conference Wednesday morning. “We will get the bill to the governor’s desk prior to the President [Trump] signing the Big Beautiful bill.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said at a mid-afternoon press conference he expected Evers would sign the legislation late Wednesday or early Thursday.

“It’s about a billion dollars that will be able to flow to an awful lot of rural hospitals, people who are taking care of those with urgent needs,” Vos said. “We want to get it done and we want access to those dollars.”

Senate approves budget 19-14  

The Senate took action on the bill first, passing it 19-14 shortly after 9 p.m. Five Democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), joined 14 Republicans to pass the bill. Four Republicans, including Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), voted with the 10 Democrats against the legislation. 

Democrats’ votes were needed to pass the budget bill in the Senate after several Republicans expressed concerns about the legislation. Hesselbein was at the negotiating table as a result. 

The hospital funding, which led to lawmakers rushing work to pass the budget in one day, was also the top reason that Felzkowski voted against the budget.

Democrats voting yes, in addition to Hesslebein, were Sens. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D- Appleton), Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) and Jamie Wall (D- Green Bay).  Republicans voting no, in addition to Felzkowski were Rob Hutton (R- Brookfield), Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Steve Nass (R Whitewater).

Felzkowski said she felt bad because there were good things in the budget, but that she was appalled the budget didn’t address the cost of health care, noting Wisconsin has the fifth highest health care costs in the country.

Felzkowski said that there should be other health care reforms if hospitals were going to get a “windfall” of over $1 billion a year and blamed Evers and hospital lobbyists for opposing those, including additional hospital price transparency measures.

“Gov. Evers, you failed Wisconsin,” Felzkowski said. “You failed constituents. You failed employers.” 

Evers rejected the claims, calling them “bulls – – t.”

“The people that work in those hospitals are working real hard,” Evers said. “The last thing we need is to have hospitals going belly up in the middle of the pandemic or something.” 

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), who voted no, mentioned Evers’ previous vetoes of Republican tax cuts and said the current budget bill leveraged those vetoes “to hide the 12% increase in spending” as well as a structural deficit.

“In a time of economic uncertainty, when our spending decisions warrant further restraint and discernment, we need a budget that creates proper spending priorities and puts taxpayers first,” Hutton said. 

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) called the budget an “orgy” of spending in a statement explaining his “no” vote. Implicating fellow Republicans, he criticized lawmakers for spending the state’s $4.3 billion surplus on one-time earmarks and “funding for special interests” instead of larger tax cuts.

Despite the handful of opponents, the majority of Senate Republicans supported the budget, touting the tax cuts that they secured and some of the investments.

LeMahieu called it “a responsible budget that invests in core priorities” and touted the $1.4 billion tax cut. 

At the Senate GOP press conference Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) singled out some of the University of Wisconsin system funding that will “put the thumb on the scale…to help some of those campuses like UW Platteville that have had declining enrollment over the last decade.” The budget allocates $53 million for UW system funding, distributed through two formulas: one for declining enrollment and another for the number of credit hours undergraduates complete.

The University of Wisconsin system will also get $840 million for capital projects, $94 million for staff wage increases, $54 million for recruitment and retention and $7 million for virtual mental health services.

Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac), who voted yes, said the budget didn’t do everything he wanted it to do and included some things he didn’t support. 

“I always have, and always will, advocate for a smaller, smarter state government,” he said in a statement. “I’m glad to see that this budget cuts over 300 vacant positions from state government.”

Feyen highlighted his support for special education funding and child care provisions in the document. He said if people want a more “conservative” budget, then Republicans would need to expand their majority and elect a Republican governor in 2026.

Senate Democrats, whether they voted for or against the bill, all had a similar message: it doesn’t do enough. 

“What we have on the floor today is better than it would have been if Senate Dems had not been at the table, but let me be clear, it is not perfect,” Hesselbein said at a Wednesday morning press conference. She described the budget as a “bipartisan deal” where “everybody left the table wishing it was different, but this is something that we can agree on trying to move forward.”

Asked about the advocates who called for lawmakers to vote against the budget and Evers to veto it, Hesselbein said she knew some people were upset.

“I’m glad they’re making their voices heard,” she said. “That’s why today, we’re going to be fighting for every single Wisconsinite.”

Day of drama delayed

The Senate convened a little after 10:30 a.m., but didn’t pass the bill until after 9 p.m. 

The first several hours of debate centered on Senate Democrats’ 25 proposed amendments  that ranged from increasing funding for the UW system, K-12 education and child care to expanding postpartum Medicaid. The body got through about half of those amendments before pausing for several hours to caucus.

During the delays, Republicans were working on a 35-page “technical amendment” with several changes, including an added requirement that the UW system conduct an efficiency study on declining student enrollment and future operations. 

When the Senate reconvened around 7 p.m., it tabled the rest of the Democratic amendments and started debate on the full budget bill. 

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said Democrats helped improve the budget but that it l would not allow people in Wisconsin to thrive.

“We understand the urgency to act. Congress is actively restricting our future funding. This budget must move forward, but that does not make it a good budget,” Spreitzer said.

The budget broke the “rule of 17” — the Senate Republicans’ practice of making sure 17 members support a measure before it’s put on the floor — Spreitzer said, and criticized them for not breaking the rule to pass other measures, including postpartum Medicaid expansion or funding for the Knowles-Nelson Conservation program in a bipartisan way. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just get it done today?” he said. 

Spreitzer said the Democratic votes on the budget were not an endorsement, but were rather an acknowledgement that it was better than it would have been without bipartisan negotiations. Asserting that the budget didn’t deserve one more vote than was necessary to pass it, he voted against it.

Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said the optimism after Evers introduced his budget in February soon faded and criticized the governor for not fighting harder for his priorities.  The result is “grossly” insufficient and “will do more harm than good,” he said

“It’s a ‘failure to fight’ budget,” Larson said. “This budget is cowardice. We all deserve so much better.” 

Assembly passes budget 59-39 

“We have a guarantee that we’re going to have a transformation budget that works for everyone,” Vos said during the Assembly floor debate. “I assume, like in the state Senate where Democrats and Republicans are going to vote for the budget, we would have the same thing here in the Assembly, if people are serious about saying we want to work together.” 

The Assembly concurred in the bill 59-39 at around 12:40 a.m. Seven Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the bill: Reps. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse), Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska), Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire), Maureen McCarville (D- DeForest), Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee) and Tara Johnson (D-Town of Shelby). 

One Republican  — Rep. Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) — voted with Democrats against the bill. Rep. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) was not voting. 

Assembly Co-Chair Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the budget process this time was different from any other that he’s worked on. This is his fourth as co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee. 

“We did spend more time working with the governor’s office, the governor and Democrats,” Born said, and called the budget  “more conservative”  than the state’s 2023-25 budget, to his surprise. He noted that the $1.3 billion tax cut will get signed into law, unlike previous tax cuts that Evers has vetoed. 

The budget spends the state’s estimated $4 billion budget surplus down to about $800 million, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The budget also has a 6% increase in general purpose revenue spending and a 12% increase overall.

While Republicans highlighted the bipartisan nature of the budget and measures included, Democrats throughout the day focused on their critiques and the measures that didn’t make it in.

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said at a press conference Wednesday morning that she was appreciative of Evers and Hesselbein for being at the negotiating table and getting what they could — but it wouldn’t be enough to win her vote. 

“This proposal is a far cry from the budget that Assembly Democrats would have written,” said Neubauer. She said she was not at the table when the budget deal was made.  With a 54-45 majority, Assembly Republicans had the votes to pass the budget without the Democrats, Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said at a GOP press conference.

Neubauer said that as a consequence, the Assembly Democrats “were not part of those negotiations.”

School districts will get an increase in the special education reimbursement rate from about 32% to 42% in the first year of the biennium and 45% in the second year. It will be the highest that the rate has been in many years, but still lower than the 60% advocates and Democrats wanted.

Democratic lawmakers said that without increases in general aid or schools, districts will have to continue relying on property tax increases to keep up with costs.

“You didn’t set out to stop the cycle of [property tax increase] referendums, you set out to continue it,” Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa) said on the Assembly floor. “When 96 of 99 Assembly districts have gone to referendum recently and the statewide demand for public school funding increases isn’t partisan for our constituents, why are we fighting so hard to get Republicans to adequately fund our schools? This isn’t a Democrat versus Republican issue across the state, and it shouldn’t be a Republican versus Democrat issue in the state Capitol.”

The four-member Wisconsin Legislative Socialist Caucus — including Reps. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) and Francesca Hong (D-Madison) — voted against the bill. In a joint statement they called the agreement between Republican lawmakers, Senate Democrats and Evers a “catastrophic failure of leadership that surrenders to Republican austerity.” They cited the lack of a general school aid increase for public schools, the special education reimbursement not meeting 60% and the failure to expand Medicaid.

“This is not a compromise, this is capitulation,” the caucus said.

Assembly Republicans mostly focused on the parts of the state budget they were appreciative of but also took jabs at Democrats for saying they would vote against the bill. 

The Agriculture Roads Improvement Program, which was created in 2023 to support local agricultural road improvement projects statewide, will get an infusion of $150 million. 

“That’s a big deal in my community and up in the rural part of the northwest,” Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) said. “It helps our state’s largest industry by improving the quality of our roads to get their products and goods out and inputs and services that farmers need into the field as well.” 

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek) said lawmakers committed to providing tax cuts for seniors and Wisconsinites as a whole through the elimination of the utility tax, a policy Evers had advocated for. 

“I know that some people on the other side of the aisle said that people are not seeking tax relief,” Rodriguez said. “Yes, they have been. You just haven’t been listening.”

The Office of School Safety, housed in the Department of Justice, will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million in the budget.

The office provides training and grants to schools for safety and runs the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns. Funding for the office became a flashpoint of criticism in the 2023-25 budget debate. 

Rep. Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville) touted the new budget’s provision for the office and spoke about working with Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul on getting the funding in this year’s budget. He also credited lawmakers on the finance committee for helping to keep the office going.

“The process is ugly, but working together to get something done is a really great thing, so I will defend this budget. I will run on this budget,” Novak said.

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said on the floor that lawmakers who voted against the budget shouldn’t take credit for any of its accomplishments in the budget later  or attend groundbreakings for projects it funded.“If you vote against this, do not show your face,” Kurtz said. “You didn’t have the courage to vote yes.”

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Thousands of protesters marched up State Street and past the Wisconsin Forward statue at the state Capitol on Saturday. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

It was an encouraging week in Wisconsin. The state Supreme Court finally invalidated a cruel 1849 abortion ban, and Gov. Tony Evers declared victory after he and state legislative leaders reached a deal on the state budget he signed in the early morning hours on Thursday that adds back some badly needed support for schools and child care. The budget deal is not what a lot of Democrats and advocates wanted, but it’s better than the brutal austerity Republicans in the Legislature have imposed in the last several budget cycles. Most encouragingly, the end of gerrymandering forced Republicans to negotiate, since they needed Democratic votes in the Senate to get the budget passed.

Some Democrats still refused to vote ‘yes” on the budget. They pointed out that, while it includes a significant boost for special education, it leaves schools struggling with zero general state aid. A majority of school districts will see revenue go down, and most will have to beg local property owners to raise their own taxes. To make matters worse, the Trump administration is freezing billions in promised aid to K-12 schools. 

Child care advocates who fought for desperately needed state support got about one-quarter of the aid Evers had originally proposed. Some were relieved, but others told Examiner Deputy Editor Erik Gunn that it’s just not enough to save centers from going out of business and parents from losing access to care.

The health care outlook is also bleak. With the feds poised to make Medicaid cuts that could cause 60,000 Wisconsinites to lose health care, the state budget fails to expand Medicaid and won’t even cover postpartum care — making us one of only two states to refuse health care to low-income mothers of newborns.

The worrisome backdrop to all of this is the federal budget plan President Donald Trump and Republicans are pushing through Congress that simultaneously runs up giant deficits and takes an ax to safety net programs on a scale we’ve never before experienced. 

The massive bill that passed the U.S. Senate this week slashes health care and nutrition assistance and will lead to the closure of rural hospitals, decimate green infrastructure projects that have been a boon to Wisconsin and will make life harder and more expensive for most people — all to funnel millions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest Americans and to fund a chilling escalation of a militarized immigration police force. 

Our own U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson threatened to vote against the House version of the bill, which was projected to increase the deficit by $2.4 trillion, because, he said, the deficits it created were “mortgaging our children’s future.” But Johnson then voted for the Senate version, which ratchets up the deficit even more, to $3.3 trillion. So much for the self-described “numbers guy.” Kowtowing to Trump and making permanent the tax cuts Johnson personally benefits from was more important to him than his alleged concern about deficits.

It makes sense that much of the news about the Republican budget deal has centered around the devastating health care cuts and the ballooning federal deficit. But the $170 billion in the budget for immigration enforcement is sure to change the landscape of the United States — escalating raids, deportations without due process and a massive new system of private detention centers on the model of the detention camp in a Florida swamp that apparently thrilled Trump when he visited it during congressional budget deliberations.

Brace yourself for the impact of the supercharged ICE budget. Unlike Texas — where terrorized immigrant workers are staying home after raids, causing farmers to fear they’ll  go under as their labor force disappears — we haven’t experienced big workplace raids in Wisconsin. If ICE has a lot more manpower, that could change.

I spoke this week with a dairy farmer in the Western part of the state who reported that, despite the terrifying videos circulating online of violent arrests by masked immigration agents, his employees are carrying on as usual, coming to work, going out, not changing their plans. “We haven’t had any raids on dairy farms in Wisconsin,” he pointed out. 

It’s eerie how normal life continues to be in rural Wisconsin, where 70% of the labor on dairy farms is performed by immigrant workers, almost all of whom lack legal documents to live and work in this country, because Congress has never created a visa for year-round, low-skilled farmwork. The farmer I spoke with said he had just returned from watching a soccer match among immigrant workers and everyone was in a good mood.

He added that officials in Trump’s agriculture and labor departments have repeatedly reassured an industry group he’s part of that the administration understands how dependent employers are on their immigrant workers and that they don’t want mass deportation to harm them.

Wisconsin dairy farmers and other employers are hoping Trump continues to be influenced by the people in his administration who tell him he shouldn’t destroy the U.S. agriculture, construction and hospitality industries. They felt encouraged by Trump’s recent statement that “we’re going to take care of our farmers and hotel workers,” and his claim that he’s working on deportation exemptions for whole classes of immigrant workers who don’t have authorization, but on whom U.S. industries rely.

But the Stephen Miller wing of the administration doesn’t care about any of that. 

The whole narrative promoted by Miller, Trump’s anti-immigrant deputy chief of staff, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Trump himself, that the U.S. is suffering an “invasion” by a large number of immigrants who commit violent crimes is nonsense. Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S. born citizens. They are an absolutely essential part of the U.S. economy. And they are loved and valued members of our communities. Most of the people the Trump administration has been rounding up have never been convicted of any crime, let alone violent crime. They are landscapers, roofers, farmworkers, students, parents driving home from work — just like the  people Trump claims he is going to protect. As the administration ramps up its program to incarcerate and deport them, with a militarized push on a scale our country has never seen, Trump is trying to have it both ways — reassuring employers that he won’t target the “good” immigrants who work for them, while peddling the lie that there are tons of “bad” immigrants who deserve to be kept in cages in an alligator-infested swamp. 

The idyllic, peaceful atmosphere in Wisconsin, where we feel far away from violent kidnappings by unidentified, masked federal agents, could change in a dramatically dark fashion once the ICE receives the tens of billions of new dollars in the Republicans’ federal budget plan. We saw the showy arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan and immigrants who, trusting the legal system, showed up for their court dates in Milwaukee. We saw the needlessly cruel forced departure of Milwaukee teacher’s aide Yessenia Ruano and her U.S.-born little girls back to El Salvador — the country Ruano fled after her brother was murdered there by gang members and where she felt her life was threatened.

With tens of billions of dollars in new money to spend and quotas to meet for its mass deportation program, ICE could begin rounding up the hardworking immigrants who keep our dairy industry going, in parts of the state that overwhelmingly vote for Republicans.

That spectacle, along with the hideous cuts to health care, education, food assistance and other programs that make life livable in Wisconsin, will surely provoke a backlash against the politicians who enabled it. Let’s hope it’s not too late.

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Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported in March to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, endured “severe beatings, severe sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and psychological torture” while there, his attorneys wrote in a late Wednesday filing.

The filing, an amended complaint to the District Court of Maryland, provides the first disturbing details of what Abrego Garcia experienced at Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

His wrongful deportation has become the most high-profile example of the conflict between the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportations campaign and the judiciary’s call for the due process rights of immigrants.

The allegations of torture also raise questions about the U.S. State Department’s payment to El Salvador of up to $15 million to detain about 300 immigrant men at CECOT, a possible violation of the human rights law known as the Leahy Law.

The law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — such as military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations.

Hit with batons, forced to kneel for hours

When Abrego Garcia first arrived to CECOT, he was told by a prison official, “Welcome to CECOT. Whoever enters here doesn’t leave,” according to the filing from lawyers with Quinn Emmanuel, the firm representing Abrego Garcia in his immigration case.

Abrego Garcia was later kicked, hit with wooden batons and beaten by Salvadoran guards on his first day at CECOT on March 15, according to the new filing.

“By the following day, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia had visible bruises and lumps all over his body,” according to the complaint.

While in a cell, Abrego Garcia and 20 other incarcerated Salvadorans were forced to kneel from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. and guards would strike “anyone who fell from exhaustion,” according to the filing. During that time, Abrego Garcia was denied access to a bathroom and soiled himself.

“The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation,” according to the complaint.

At CECOT, the guards would threaten to put Abrego Garcia in cells with gang members “who, they assured him, would ‘tear’  him apart,” according to the filing. Abrego Garcia’s lawyers have denied he is a gang member.

During his first two weeks at CECOT, Abrego Garcia’s health deteriorated, and he lost 31 pounds, his attorneys said.

Transfers to two more facilities

On April 9, Abrego Garcia and four others were transferred to a different sector in CECOT, “where they were photographed with mattresses and better food—photos that appeared to be staged to document improved conditions,” according to his attorneys.

Around April 10, he was later transferred alone to a separate prison facility in Santa Ana, El Salvador. On April 10, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia — who had deportation protections from his home country of El Salvador since 2019.

But for months, the Trump administration has argued that Abrego Garcia is in the custody of El Salvador, and the United States could not force El Salvador to return him.

At the new location, Abrego Garcia “was frequently hidden from visitors, being told to remain in a separate room whenever outside visitors came to the facility,” according to the filing.

“During his entire time in detention in El Salvador, Plaintiff Abrego Garcia was denied any communication with his family and access to counsel until Senator (Chris) Van Hollen visited him on April 17, 2025,” according to the brief.

The Maryland Democrat traveled to El Salvador in an effort to bring back Abrego Garcia, who is a longtime Maryland resident.

Criminal charges

While Abrego Garica was returned to the U.S. last month, it was to face federal criminal charges lodged in Tennessee while he was detained in El Salvador. His attorneys have denied the charges of human smuggling and say they are nothing more than the Trump administration trying to save face.

Abrego Garcia’s criminal case is being handled out of a Tennessee court and he’s being kept in jail due to fears Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will deport him.

Department of Justice attorneys stated in the District Court of Maryland last week that the Trump administration plans to remove Abrego Garcia to a third country, but said the move was not immediate.

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia are trying to move forward with discovery to determine if the Trump administration flouted the district court’s order and the Supreme Court’s order in refusing to return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. after the Trump administration admitted his deportation was a mistake.

“Defendants’ disdain for the law and legal process, and their cruelty, shocks the conscience and demands immediate, sustained, judicial relief and oversight,” according to the complaint. “It also marks a profound constitutional crisis in which executive agencies have repeatedly and deliberately flouted the authority of multiple federal courts—including the Supreme Court itself.”

“This defiance undermines the foundational principles of our constitutional system by eroding the checks and balances and rule of law that protect individual liberty from government overreach,” the attorneys continued. 

The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine received federal tax credits for installing solar panels. Labor and environmental advocates are attacking the Congressional Republicans' tax cut megabill for rolling back clean energy programs enacted in the Biden administration. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The tax cut megabill in Congress with a historic rollback on Medicaid also includes provisions reversing U.S. clean energy policies, advocates warned Wednesday, harming not only the environment but the economy.

“This legislation will kill economic growth and jobs, raise energy prices, and cede clean energy technology manufacturing to other countries,” said Carly Ebben Eaton, Wisconsin Policy Manager for the Blue Green Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.

Eaton took part in two online news conferences Wednesday to draw attention to the federal budget reconciliation bill and its repeal of key portions of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

The budget bill has been the top priority of the Republican majority in Congress as well as the administration of President Donald Trump. It was drawn up to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during Trump’s first term that will expire at the end of 2025.

The package returned to the U.S. House for final action after a tied vote in the U.S. Senate that required Vice President JD Vance to pass the measure on Tuesday.

Steep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition programs have drawn the most attention during debate on the bill, along with the Congressional Budget Office finding that the wealthiest taxpayers will benefit most from its tax cuts.

The bill also includes measures that would undo several provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), one of the signature pieces of legislation enacted during President Joe Biden’s four years in office. After its passage the act was lauded by environmental advocates for provisions to address climate change by encouraging clean energy through tax credits as well as federal investments.

The House version of the GOP bill “already dealt a serious blow to clean energy tax credits and investments,” Eaton said Wednesday, “but the Senate took it even further, doubling down on cuts that will cost jobs, stall progress and raise energy costs.”

Consumer, business renewable energy incentives

The IRA’s tax breaks were designed to encourage consumers to move to energy-efficient and clean energy appliances and vehicles and encourage utilities and other businesses to increase their use of renewable resources such as solar energy and wind power.

Eaton said Wednesday that clean energy tax credits are supporting more than $8.6 billion in private investments in Wisconsin.

Garrik Harwick, assistant business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union Local 890 in Janesville, said that over the past three years more than 300 members have worked on solar projects in Southern Wisconsin. He spoke at a news conference with Eaton and several other union leaders.

The IRA tax breaks have encouraged those developments, Harwick said, and the investments have included increased apprenticeship slots, bringing in new trainees.

“These investments don’t just deliver clean energy,” Harwick added. “They create good paying union jobs that strengthen our local communities.”

He warned that repealing the tax credit will likely reduce the use of clean energy technologies and increase energy costs by 6% for homeowners and more than 9% for business customers.

The IRA’s provisions that encouraged apprenticeships helped “open doors that many didn’t even know existed,” said Andy Buck, government affairs director for the Wisconsin and Upper Michigan district of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.

He said the union has added a number of jobs, including apprentices, installing energy-efficient glass in buildings on projects that were facilitated by the Inflation Reduction Act.

“When someone enters a registered apprenticeship program, they aren’t just learning a trade,” Buck said. “They’re building a career, gaining self-respect, and finding a path to a better life.”

Another provision of the 2022 law opened up tax credits for renewable energy to nonprofit organizations and government agencies, allowing them to receive direct payments to the federal government comparable to the value they’d receive from the tax credit if they paid taxes.

A new middle school being built in Menasha will include solar panels and energy storage, said Matt VanderPuy, a business agent for the Sheet Metal workers union in Sheboygan. The direct pay program will reimburse the district $3 million, he said, while the energy savings is projected at $190,000 per year.

“This is money that they can reinvest into the students, the teachers and the school district,” while saving on property taxes, VanderPuy said.

‘Very ugly impacts,’ says advocate

At another news conference, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes observed that more than 90% of the jobs that IRA incentives helped create are in Republican congressional districts — although no Republicans in the state delegation voted for the bill. Barnes leads Forward Wisconsin, a nonprofit established during Biden’s term in the White House to inform people about the Biden administration’s infrastructure and climate investments and to defend them.

But business uncertainty this year, which Barnes blamed on GOP positions including Trump’s tariff executive orders, has led nationally to the cancellation of projects worth $15.5 billion, he said.

“The so-called big beautiful bill is going to have some very ugly impacts in Wisconsin, ripping away tax incentives for wind and solar farms, for rooftop solar, for farm sustainability programs, for clean cars and school buses,” said Amy Barrilleaux, communications director for Clean Wisconsin, at the event with Barnes. “And giving more tax breaks to big oil and gas companies does absolutely nothing to create jobs here or any opportunities here — it’s a gift to big oil at the expense of Wisconsin families and at the expense of our environment.”

Heather Allen, policy director for Elevate, an energy efficiency nonprofit, said as many as 11,000 clean energy and manufacturing jobs in Wisconsin could be at risk.

Plans for a $2.5 billion network of electric vehicle charging stations in the state have stalled, Allen said, and Wisconsin manufacturers that would have supplied components “are going to lose that opportunity now.”

“This legislation is going to strangle our solar businesses with red tape,” Allen said. “What you have here is an attack on small businesses that are delivering clean energy solutions to help families save money on their energy bills. And that includes solar installers, but it also includes other home energy contractors, other construction jobs.”

In four recent polls, a majority of those surveyed disapproved of the Republicans’  megabill — making it “more unpopular than any piece of major legislation that’s been passed since at least 1990,” Barnes said.

At the labor news conference, Emily Pritzkow, the Wisconsin Building Trades Council executive director, said advocates are urging people to contact their members of Congress.

“The polling on this is abysmal, and as long as people continue to call and deliver that message , that is what we need to do right now,” Pritzkow said. “Now is the time to weigh in, not once it’s coming to your front door, impacting you, your community, and people you care about.”

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Shelley Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., who was raised in North Dakota, protests outside the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, July 2, 2025, as House Republicans try to pass the "big beautiful bill." Feist said she's worried about effects on rural hospitals as a result of Medicaid cuts because her parents, in their 80s, depend on rural health care in Minot, North Dakota. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Protesters demonstrated against the “big beautiful bill” outside the U.S. Capitol Wednesday as House Republicans whipped votes to get the bill across the finish line and to President Donald Trump’s desk by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

Shelley Feist stood on Independence Avenue near the entrance to the House of Representatives holding signs above her head, one reading “Cruel Corrupt Cowards,” the other a Republican elephant with the word “Treason” written on it.

“I think they’re being cruel. I think cruelty is the point,” Feist, 61, of Washington, D.C., and originally from North Dakota, told States Newsroom. “It’s also extremely alarming that there’s such cowardice in the GOP.”

The massive budget reconciliation package, passed by Senate Republicans Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President JD Vance, extends and expands 2017 tax cuts at a cost of roughly $4.5 trillion over the next decade. It also yanks funding from federal food and health safety net programs.

The bill aggressively rolls back clean energy tax credits, as well as raising the nation’s borrowing limit to $5 trillion.

Latest figures from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office show the package would add $3.4 trillion to the nation’s deficit over the next decade, when the country is mired in record-breaking debt. That office’s earlier analysis of the House-passed bill found the package would reduce resources for low-income families while padding higher earners.

Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who chaired an hours-long final committee hearing about the bill overnight, said Wednesday the package is an “embodiment of the America First agenda and we would all do well to remember that.”

Medicaid cuts

Top of mind for Feist is the bill’s cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals and some with disabilities. The Senate version of the package, passed Tuesday, included a  $1 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, according to the CBO.

“I have parents in North Dakota who are 85 and 86. They already have difficulty seeing their doctor. For every doctor that leaves, he takes on 14 times more burden. Rural health care is already extremely difficult. I would expect there will not be a hospital near where my parents live if this bill is signed into law,” said Feist, whose parents live near Minot.

Rural hospitals rely on Medicaid payments. In a last-minute move before Tuesday’s vote, Senate Republicans doubled a fund to $50 billion to subsidize hospitals that will lose funding. Critics say that amount is not enough to fill the gap.

GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted no after voicing concerns over Medicaid cuts.

Nadine Seiler, 60, of Waldorf, Maryland, stood near a press conference by the Congressional Hispanic Conference protesting the bill. Seiler held a large spray-painted sheet above her head with a message on each side: “Free America from Big Bad Bill” and “Coming Soon Freedom in Name Only.”

“I’m concerned about my fellow citizens who are going to be losing Medicaid, food stamps, human health services. People are going to die,” Seiler said.

“And I know Joni Ernst says that we all gonna die, but we gonna die faster and unnecessarily and I care about that.”

Seiler was referring to Sen. Ernst’s response to her Iowa constituents who expressed concern about Medicaid cuts at a town hall on May 30.

SNAP and ICE

Mark Starr sang a protest song he wrote about the “big beautiful bill” as he played guitar and harmonica outside the Longworth House Office Building Wednesday.

The 39-year-old Albuquerque, New Mexico, native told States Newsroom he drove to the capital in late April to begin protesting the bill. He said he’s particularly focused on additional funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contained in the package as well as cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, which provides food benefits to low-income households.

“New Mexico is pretty poor, and so if these cuts to SNAP go, kids can go hungry in New Mexico,” Starr said. “It’s just, like, really gonna mess us up, and we’re just one of the many states that will be affected that way.”

New Mexico has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation.

A provision in the bill will shift food assistance costs to state governments for the first time in the federal program’s history. Critics worry that states could tighten eligibility requirements or drop the program because of the financial burden.

The left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates 55,000 teens age 14 and up, and adults up to age 64 could lose food assistance in New Mexico because of the bill’s cuts to state work requirement waivers. Children would remain eligible but households would overall see significantly decreased SNAP dollars.

The CBO found in late May that the House-passed bill would result in over 3 million people nationwide losing food assistance.

Starr said he’s also against additional funding provided for immigration enforcement.

“I think they have enough,” he said, pointing to Trump’s visit to a new detention facility in Florida that the White House is touting as “Alligator Alcatraz.”

The Senate-approved version includes an additional $45 billion for ICE detention facilities and $29.9 billion for ICE enforcement and deportation, among billions more directed toward the Southern border.

Clean energy to take a hit

Tiernan Sittenfeld, of the League of Conservation Voters, huddled just outside the House with a group wearing t-shirts that read “Hands off our air, land and clean energy.”

Sittenfeld, the organization’s senior vice president of government affairs, argues the rollbacks of clean energy tax credits in the Senate version will “kill clean energy jobs.”

“It is bad for our economy. It’s bad for jobs. It’s going to raise people’s energy bills. And of course, it’s bad for the planet,” she said.

Senate Republicans accelerated the phase-out of some residential, manufacturing and production credits at a faster rate than the House bill. A last-minute change loosened the timeline on some tech-neutral energy credits though, and removed a previously added tax on wind and solar projects.

Industry groups and energy companies small and large have warned early termination of the credits will have a major impact on growth.

The tax credits for solar, wind, batteries for energy storage, and electric vehicles, among others, were enacted under Democrats’ own 2022 budget reconciliation bill known as the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The majority of investment in new clean energy manufacturing and production has been concentrated in rural states and states that elected Trump to his second term, according to data collected since 2022 by the Clean Investment Monitor, a joint project by the Rhodium Group and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

“Any Republican who votes for this legislation is voting against the interest of their constituents, voting to kill jobs in their district, voting to kill clean energy projects, voting to make their constituents’ energy bills go up,” Sittenfeld said.

Far-right House members who as of Wednesday afternoon were withholding their votes maintain the rollbacks on the clean energy tax cuts, which they’ve dubbed the “green new scam,” do not go far enough.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., talks with reporters before heading to the House chamber for a procedural vote on the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act" at the U.S. Capitol on July 2, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON —  U.S. House Republican efforts to pass the “big, beautiful bill” hit a roadblock Wednesday, when leaders left the chamber in a holding pattern for more than seven hours before calling a procedural vote that stalled amid opposition from hard-right members and others.

The House must adopt the rule in order to set up floor debate and a final passage vote for the tax break and spending cut package. But with four Republicans voting against it and nine withholding their votes, the House remained at a standstill around 11 p.m. Eastern.

GOP Reps. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Keith Self of Texas and Victoria Spartz of Indiana had cast votes against approving the rule, though they could flip since leadership hadn’t closed the vote. Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris of Maryland was among the members withholding their votes in protest.

Far-right members of the House GOP objected strongly to the Senate version passed Tuesday, which reflected changes made during the past month compared to an earlier version passed in the House. Members of the House Freedom Caucus opposed provisions dealing with immigration and the repeal of clean energy tax credits, as well as the measure’s increase in the deficit.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an analysis after the Senate voted, showing the bill would increase deficits by $3.4 trillion during the next decade compared to current law.

‘We can’t make everyone 100% happy’

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said earlier in the day he felt ​​”very positive about the progress” made during ongoing negotiations, but didn’t commit to having the necessary votes.

“The thing about it is, when you have a piece of legislation that is this comprehensive and with so many agenda items involved, you’re going to have lots of different priorities and preferences among people because they represent different districts and they have different interests,” Johnson said. “But we can’t make everyone 100% happy. It’s impossible.”

Johnson said he would never ask lawmakers to “compromise core principles, but preferences must be yielded for the greater good.”

South Dakota Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson told reporters before the delay that “the rule going down would be a very unfortunate development.”

But he expressed confidence in Speaker Johnson’s ability to bring holdouts on board eventually, potentially by making commitments tied to future bills.

“Speaker Johnson has not made any promises. He has been really good about talking about legislative vehicles that will exist in the months to come,” Dusty Johnson said. “Reconciliation is not the only tool in the Republican, or I should say in the congressional toolbox. Mike Johnson’s done a good job of making people understand there are other ways we can get things done.”

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said a few hours before the rule vote began that holdouts were “exploring all of the options legislatively and through the executive.”

“We were not happy with what the Senate produced,” Roy said. “We thought there was a path forward as of late last week, even though I had concerns. I’ve been public about them. But then they jammed it through at the last minute in a way that we’re not overly excited about.”

Roy said that “everything is on the table at the moment,” when asked by States Newsroom if he hoped to get concessions from leaders on this package or deals struck for future bills.

Trump presses House GOP

Several House GOP lawmakers traveled to the White House earlier in the day to meet with President Donald Trump, who was also attempting to assuage concerns through several social media posts.

“It looks like the House is ready to vote tonight,’ Trump posted minutes before the rule vote began. “We had GREAT conversations all day, and the Republican House Majority is UNITED, for the Good of our Country, delivering the Biggest Tax Cuts in History and MASSIVE Growth. Let’s go Republicans, and everyone else – MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

House Rules Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., urged support for approving the rule during floor debate, arguing it was essential for GOP lawmakers to deliver on campaign promises.

“This legislation is the embodiment of the America First agenda and we would all do well to remember that,” Foxx said. “Failure at this critical juncture is not an option. This clock is ticking, the president and the American people are waiting. ”

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern, ranking member on the panel, railed against the dozens of provisions Senate Republicans bundled together in the 870-page package, including some added just Tuesday.

“This process — an abomination, legislative malpractice,” McGovern said. “Final text of this bill came out less than 24 hours ago. We met in committee an hour after it was posted and now we’re here considering a rule that only allows for one hour of debate.

“This bill is within the jurisdiction of 12 different committees. One hour is ridiculous. And every minute we’re finding out new things that were snuck into the bill: a tax cut for whalers and now we’re learning about a gambling tax.”

Tax cuts favor higher incomes

The bill — which underwent weeks of revisions in the Senate after a prior version barely passed the House in May — will extend and expand the 2017 GOP tax law while overhauling several safety-net programs and slashing spending on Medicaid.

Those tax cuts skew toward wealthier income earners. The top 1% would receive a cut three times the size of those with incomes in the bottom 60% of after-tax income, according to analysis from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It also makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The package makes substantial changes to Medicaid, including requiring some people on the program to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program for at least 80 hours a month.

It will block any Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year, essentially requiring enrollees to find other health care options for routine appointments such as cancer screenings, birth control and sexually transmitted infections treatment and screening. Using federal taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage has been restricted for decades, with limited exceptions.

The legislation requires state governments to pay for a portion of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the first time if they cannot get error payment rates under a certain percentage. SNAP is the primary federal nutrition program that feeds low-income people and roughly 42 million rely on it.

It bolsters spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, including line items for the “golden dome” missile defense system and additional barriers along the southern border.

The measure would provide a substantial funding increase to federal immigration enforcement for detention and removal of people without permanent legal status, aiding the president in carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations.

The bill would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion, a figure designed to get Congress past next year’s midterm elections before the country would once again bump up against the borrowing limit.

Protesters milled about and held signs on street corners outside the U.S. Capitol as Republicans worked to pass the megabill. Several spoke out against cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, as well as rollbacks to clean energy tax credits contained in the budget reconciliation package.

Senate turmoil

The House voted 215-214 mostly along party lines to approve the first version of the package in late May.

Senate Republicans spent much of the last month reading through that, trying to determine what proposals their members supported and which elements would need to come out to comply with the strict rules that go along with writing a budget reconciliation bill.

The parliamentarian, that chamber’s referee, continued to issue rulings on whether various policies in the legislation were in bounds for days before the Senate officially began debating the measure and even after they launched into vote-a-rama Monday morning.

That “Byrd bath” process eventually wrapped up, allowing Senate GOP leaders to release updated text of the package shortly before the chamber took its final vote.

Even with near-constant negotiations among Senate Republicans, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was unable to get everyone on board.

3 Senate Republicans voted no

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis opposed the measure, which the Senate approved on Tuesday with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote.

Collins wrote in a statement that while she supported “extending the tax relief for families and small businesses,” her opposition to the legislation “stems primarily from the harmful impact it will have on Medicaid, affecting low-income families and rural health care providers like our hospitals and nursing homes.”

Collins also cited “additional problems” with how the legislation addressed tax credits for certain forms of energy production, which she wrote “should have been gradually phased out so as not to waste the work that has already been put into these innovative new projects and prevent them from being completed.”

Tills spoke about his opposition to the bill’s changes to Medicaid during a floor speech before the Senate’s vote, arguing its cuts to spending to the state-federal health program for low-income people and some people with disabilities weren’t in the best interest of GOP voters.

“I’m telling the president that you have been misinformed,” Tillis said. “You supporting the Senate mark will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid.”

Tillis said he supports a policy change in the bill that would require people on Medicaid to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program. But he was critical of other changes implemented by his Senate colleagues, and announced he won’t seek reelection hours after voting against advancing the package.

“I love the work requirement. I love the other reforms in this bill. They are necessary and I appreciate the leadership of the House for putting it in there,” Tillis said. “In fact, I like the work of the House so much that I wouldn’t be having to do this speech if we simply started with the House mark.”

Paul said he decided to vote against the legislation because it will increase federal deficits during the next few years. 

“To me the most pertinent question is, how will the bill affect the deficit in the next year?” Paul said. “Currently our deficit is estimated to be a little under $2 trillion this year. What will happen to the (deficit) in 2026 if this bill passes? Well, using the math most favorable to the supporters of the bill, referred to as the policy baseline, the deficit in 2026 will still be $270 billion more than this year.”

Paul added “that’s just not good if you profess to be fiscally conservative.”

Customs and Border Protection agents question families who have presented themselves at the Paso del Norte bridge to request asylum on May 11, 2023. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Wednesday ruled as unlawful an executive order by President Donald Trump that barred asylum by claiming an “invasion” at the southern border and the need to protect states.

It’s the first major blow to the Trump administration in its attempt to end the ability for asylum seekers to make asylum claims.

“The President cannot adopt an alternative immigration system, which supplants the statutes that Congress has enacted,” District of Columbia U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss wrote in his opinion.

“Here, nothing in the (Immigration and Nationality Act) or the Constitution grants the President or his delegees the sweeping authority asserted in the Proclamation and implementing guidance,” continued Moss, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

The order from Moss also prevents the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from enforcing the executive order.

He also agreed to certify a class for potential asylum-seekers, which comes after last week’s Supreme Court ruling that curtailed nationwide injunctions from lower courts. Certifying a class was suggested by the court to give judges an avenue to make an order broader.

Moss put his order on hold for 14 days, to give the Trump administration time to appeal his ruling. If the order is upheld by an appeals court and the Supreme Court, it would require the Trump administration to begin processing asylum applicants for migrants.

“(The executive order) is unlawful insofar as it purports to suspend or to restrict access to asylum, withholding of removal, or the existing regulatory processes for obtaining (Convention Against Torture) protection,” Moss wrote in his order.

Inauguration Day

The asylum order was one of several immigration-related executive orders that Trump signed on the Inauguration Day of his second term. The order proclaimed that the “current situation at the southern border qualifies as an invasion” and barred asylum-seekers from being able to claim asylum.

Trump characterized asylum-seekers seeking entry at the U.S.-Mexico border as an “invasion” and said that the states need “protection,” so the White House would suspend physical entry until the president deemed the “invasion” over.

Encounters at the southern border have been the lowest in several years.

The section Trump cited in his proclamation, section 212(f), is part of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Under that section, the president has the authority to “suspend the entry” of people who are not U.S. citizens under certain circumstances.

Complaint filed in February

The suit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other legal organizations, on behalf of Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, and other immigration legal service providers, argued the executive order unlawfully denies asylum and other humanitarian protections that are “expressly granted by Congress.”

“It is returning asylum seekers—not just single adults, but families too—to countries where they face persecution or torture, without allowing them to invoke the protections Congress has provided,” according to the initial complaint filed in February. “Indeed, the Proclamation does not even exempt unaccompanied children, despite the specific protections such children receive by statute.”

RAICES, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Florence Immigrant And Refugee Rights Project, which provide legal services to immigrants, argued that the proclamation harms the legal aid work of the individual plaintiffs.

Those individual plaintiffs in the suit include people who allege they fled persecution in Afghanistan, Ecuador, Cuba, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey and Peru. Some plaintiffs have either been removed to their home country, or to a third country such as Panama, according to the filing.

Gov. Tony Evers signed bills into law launching efforts to bring nuclear power to Wisconsin and creating and expanding programs to help children in crisis. Evers talks to reporters in March. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Ahead of floor sessions for the Senate and Assembly to vote on the budget, Gov. Tony Evers signed bills into law launching efforts to bring nuclear power to Wisconsin and creating and expanding programs to help children in crisis.

The bills passed the Senate and Assembly in floor sessions in June where debate centered heavily on the lack of funding attached to them. Evers had earlier told lawmakers to include the funding or he would veto the legislation, Democrats agreed the funding should be included, while Republicans said the funding would come in the budget if Evers signed the bills without any changes. State funding for the bills was included in the budget plan approved by the budget committee Tuesday.

One law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 11, will create a Nuclear Power Summit Board in Wisconsin responsible for putting on a summit in Madison to advance nuclear power and fusion energy technology.

The summit must be held within one month after instruction starts at the new engineering building at UW-Madison. Construction on the building, which is estimated to cost $419 million, started in April and is supposed to be finished in 2028. The funding for the building was approved by the Legislature and Evers in 2024.

Evers also signed 2025 Wisconsin Act 12, which requires the Public Service Commission to conduct a study to determine potential sites for a nuclear power plant. The state budget bill includes $2 million to fund the study.

Evers said the bills would help the state pursue an “innovative, clean energy future and bring more clean jobs to our state.”

Wisconsin currently has one active nuclear power plant. The Point Beach Nuclear Plant located in Two Rivers, which first came online in the 1970s, has two tractors and provides about 16% of the state’s energy, according to the conservative think tank the Badger Institute. A Kewaunee nuclear power plant shut down in 2013. 

“We can’t afford to choose between mitigating climate change and protecting our environment or creating good-paying jobs and building a strong economy, and by working toward clean energy options Wisconsinites can depend on in the future, we’re doing both,” Evers said. “We must continue our efforts to help lower energy costs and improve energy independence by reducing our reliance on out-of-state energy sources, and these bills are an important step in the right direction.”

Evers also signed Senate Bill 106, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 9, that will create psychiatric residential treatment facilities (PRTFs) in the state. The law is the result of a study committee on the emergency detention and civil commitment of minors and aims to reduce the number of  youth in crisis who are sent out of state for care by offering long-term mental health treatment closer to home.

The budget will include $1.79 million for grants to psychiatric residential treatment facilities.

Another law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 10, which is also a result of the study committee, instructs the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to create a statewide portal to facilitate the sharing of safety plans for minors with designated safety plan partners. The budget includes about $819,000 in state funding for the program and the agency will get one staff position to run the portal. 

Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), who served as chair of the study committee, has championed the legislation this session.

At a press conference ahead of the Senate floor session, James said his focus has been on supporting Wisconsin’s children and that the issues are personal for him as a father and a law enforcement officer.

“I believe there are real positive changes within our reach. It’s about recognizing the opportunities in front of us and taking decisive action when that moment comes,” James said. “This budget is packed with great projects. We increase funding for our child advocacy centers. We take care of our child victims in a safe environment. We establish funding for psychiatric residential treatment facilities to keep children with intense mental health treatment needs closer to home.” 

Another law, 2025 Wisconsin Act 13, officially recognizes new child advocacy centers in state statute and expands the number of them that are eligible for the Wisconsin Department of Justice’s child advocacy grant program. The centers work with law enforcement to investigate child abuse and neglect and provide children with resources and support. The budget will include $2 million to support the grants. 

The final piece of legislation is 2025 Wisconsin Act 14, to distribute hearing protection devices to state and local law enforcement and firefighters. The budget will include $2.6 million to fund the program.

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The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

In a 4-3 decision, Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state’s 1849 law banning abortion had been “impliedly repealed” by the Legislature when it passed laws over the past half century “regulating in detail the ‘who, what, where, when, and how’” of abortion. 

The Court’s majority opinion, authored by Justice Rebecca Dallet and joined by Justices Ann Walsh Bradley, Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz, finds that the Legislature could not have passed laws regulating abortion access if the 1849 statute was believed to remain in effect. 

“This case is about giving effect to 50 years’ worth of laws passed by the Legislature about virtually every aspect of abortion including where, when, and how health-care providers may lawfully perform abortions,” Dallet wrote. “The Legislature, as the peoples’ representatives, remains free to change the laws with respect to abortion in the future. But the only way to give effect to what the Legislature has actually done over the last 50 years is to conclude that it impliedly repealed the 19th century near-total ban on abortion, and that [the statute] therefore does not prohibit abortion in the State of Wisconsin.” 

Dallet wrote that when the Legislature passed laws restricting abortion under narrower circumstances, guiding “where, when and how” health care providers could perform an abortion and outlining how public money could fund abortion providers, it was repealing the 1849 law. 

The ruling comes three years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark Court ruling that found there was a constitutional right to abortion access and marks the conclusion of a legal dispute that helped Protasiewicz win election to the Court in 2023 and Susan Crawford win election this April. 

In response, the Court’s three conservative justices filed dissents, accusing the majority of “propaganda,” “smoke-and-mirrors legalese” and “pure policymaking.” 

“The majority’s smoke-and-mirrors legalese is nothing more than ‘painting a mule to resemble a zebra, and then going zebra hunting. But paint does not change the mule into a zebra,’” Justice Annette Ziegler wrote. “Those in the majority know better, but they do so anyway because they like the result and promised to deliver it.” 

In his dissent, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote that the majority failed to show when the law was presumably repealed by the Legislature, saying that the opinion doesn’t properly address the Legislature’s actions in 2011 and 2015 amending the 1849 law.  

“The majority does not say when over those 40 years the Legislature once and for all repealed [the statute],” he wrote. “Was it when the Legislature passed a postviability ban? A partial-birth abortion ban? A twenty-week ban? A waiting period? A physician licensing requirement? The majority fails to say.”

23AP2362 Mandate

Following the ruling’s release, the state’s Democratic elected officials and abortion access activists celebrated the decision as a “win” for reproductive health care in the state. 

“Thanks to our lawsuit, today’s decision affirms that access to reproductive healthcare will continue to be available, helping ensure Wisconsin women today are not forced to face firsthand what it’s like to live in a state that bans nearly all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement. “Today is a win for women and families, a win for healthcare professionals who want to provide medically accurate care to their patients, and a win for basic freedoms in Wisconsin, but our work is not over. I will continue to fight any effort that takes away Wisconsinites’ reproductive freedom or makes reproductive healthcare, whether birth control, abortion, IVF, or fertility treatments, any less accessible in Wisconsin than it is today. That is a promise.”

Attorney General Josh Kaul, who brought the lawsuit against the law, said at a Wednesday morning news conference that the decision was an important step toward ensuring all Wisconsinites have the freedom to access abortion care, but that the Legislature should step up and further clarify the law.

“I thought we were right on the law. The arguments we made have now been vindicated,” Kaul said. “But at a time when the rights of Wisconsinites and Americans are under threat, this case is a stark reminder of how important it is that we fight for our rights, that we advocate for what is in the best interest of the people of our state, and that we stand on the side of freedom. Here today, we were able to achieve a significant victory for the freedom of Wisconsinites.”

Wisconsin’s state and federal Democratic lawmakers responded to the ruling by saying it wasn’t enough, promising to continue working to codify abortion access in law. 

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she will continue to work to enact her proposal to ensure women across the country have access to abortion care. 

“Today’s ruling tells women across Wisconsin that we will not go back,” Baldwin said. “Today’s ruling tells women that our government trusts you to make decisions about your own body and your future. Today’s ruling tells women in our state that they are not second-class citizens. But, this fight is not over. Every woman, in every zip code, in every state deserves the same rights and freedoms. I will not stop fighting until we make that a reality and pass my bill to restore the right to abortion nationwide and allow women to make their own health care decisions without interference from judges or politicians.”

State Sen. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) said the Legislature must now pass a bill guaranteeing the right to an abortion. 

“Now that the courts have made it clear that Wisconsin does not have a total abortion ban, we must go further,” Subeck said. “It’s time to protect reproductive rights not just in practice, but in law. We must pass the Abortion Rights Restoration Act to guarantee the right to abortion and eliminate the medically unjustified, politically motivated restrictions that still exist in our state statutes. The people of Wisconsin deserve nothing less than full access to safe and legal reproductive health care without unnecessary barriers and free from judgement.”

In a concurring opinion, Karofsky wrote that interpreting the 1849 law as banning abortion gives the state the authority to “exert total control” over women and “strips women and pregnant people of the dignity and authority to make intimate and personal choices by exposing medical professionals who perform abortions to 15-year prison terms.” 

In her opinion, Karofsky details the history of abortion access in the U.S. and highlights four women who died because of restrictive abortion bans, including the recent deaths of two Black women in Georgia and a Honduran immigrant in Texas as well as the death of her own great-grandmother in Boston in 1929. 

“I tell the stories of Amber, Candi, Josseli, and my great-grandmother Julia to remind us that severe abortion restrictions operate like death warrants,” Karofsky wrote. “Under such restrictions women, children, and pregnant people are denied life-saving medical care while medical professionals are forced to sit idly at their bedsides, unable to do their jobs. Extreme abortion restrictions revive a time in our history driven by misogyny and racism, divorced from medical science; it is a world that must be left behind.” 

In her dissent, Justice Rebecca Bradley accused Karofsky of rewriting history to achieve a desired outcome in the case. 

“Not content with effacing the law, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky rewrites history, erases and insults women by referring to mothers as ‘pregnant people,’ slanders proponents of the pro-life perspective, and broadcasts dangerously false narratives about laws restricting abortion,” Bradley wrote. “Laden with emotion, steeped in myth, and light on the law, the concurrence reads as a parody of progressive politics rather than the opinion of a jurist.”

“This budget has involved an awful lot of compromise, both between the houses as well as with the governor's office,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting. “A budget is a compromise and this budget is certainly one of those.” (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee advanced the budget deal announced by lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers Tuesday, with the full Senate and Assembly scheduled to take up the budget Wednesday. The committee also passed a  $2.5 billion plan for capital projects, which included a measure to start work on a project that will allow for the  closure of the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029. 

The agreement announced Tuesday morning was negotiated by Evers, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein over the last several months and will invest over $1 billion in education and child care and cut taxes by about $1.3 billion. The deal also includes funding plans for the Department of Transportation, including funding for roads, and changes to the state’s hospital assessment to help cover Medicaid costs.

The committee’s action comes a day after the end of Wisconsin’s fiscal year. Wisconsin’s government continues to run under the current budget until a new one is signed into law. 

Legislators on both sides of the aisle had similar reactions saying the deal did not contain everything they wanted with some signaling support for the bill and others saying they will vote against it.

“This budget has involved an awful lot of compromise, both between the houses as well as with the governor’s office,” Joint Finance Committee Co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said at a press conference ahead of the meeting. “A budget is a compromise and this budget is certainly one of those.”

The committee voted 13-3 with Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) joining Republicans in favor of approving the deal. It also voted 12-4 along party lines to approve the entire budget bill to advance it to the Senate and Assembly floor.

Capital budget includes plan to close Green Bay prison 

The over $2.5 billion capital budget plan grants funding for projects at the UW system, within the Department of Corrections, Department of Health Services, Department of Military Affairs and the Department of Natural Resources.

Over $480 million — or about 18% — of the capital projects plan is for projects at campuses across the UW system and was negotiated as part of the budget deal. 

The plan also includes $225 million for the Department of Corrections, including $15 million for construction project planning for realignment of facilities and the closure of Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI) by 2029. 

Marklein said lawmakers were investing across Wisconsin and the DOC plans would help to start to “right-size” the state’s corrections system. 

As the state has faced a growing prison population and aging facilities, Evers had proposed a DOC capital budget of over $630 million that included renovating Waupun Correctional Institution and making it a “vocational village” as well as several other prisons. The plan culminates in the closure of the Green Bay facility. GBCI, which was originally opened in 1898, is one of the state’s oldest facilities and houses 381 more people than its intended capacity. 

Lawmakers have been interested in closing GBCI for years, but were skeptical of Evers’ plan to make that happen.

Co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) signaled that the action in the budget is just the beginning of a years-long process.

“I think that this stuff will all be figured out over several budgets,” Born said in response to questions about the capacity of the state’s prison and Waupun. “These fiscal capital projects don’t happen in two years, and they won’t in this case, either.” 

Lawmakers who represent parts of the Green Bay area said the inclusion of the GBCI closure date in the budget is a major step forward.

“Formalizing a decommissioning date into state law will ensure decisive action is taken to solve this long-standing issue and prevent the bureaucratic delays which have plagued this situation for far too long,” Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) said. 

Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) called GBCI “unsafe, unstable and unsustainable” and said he is thankful for the step forward.

Alluding to Evers’ plan, Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha), meanwhile, said there is a plan that lawmakers could have moved forward. He said the item in the budget seemed like a plan that was “kicking the can down the road.” 

The budget deal also includes $130 million for a Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County. The planned 32-bed facility is the second one meant to replace youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake — old facilities initially scheduled to close by 2021. The Department of Administration has estimated that with full funding ($124 million in bonding authority) the project could be completed by 2029. 

Lawmakers, advocates have mixed reaction to deal on K-12, higher education and child care 

Evers repeatedly said investing in Wisconsin’s K-12 and higher education systems as well as child care were his top priorities. Republican lawmakers said they were opposed to continuing state payments to child care facilities, supported cutting the UW budget and only supported incremental increases for the state’s public schools. The deal includes investment in each area.

Several Democratic lawmakers, nonetheless, had mixed feelings about the concessions Evers  and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) got from the majority party. During committee, Democrats proposed investing over $500 million in the UW system, $200 million in child care grants and expanding postpartum Medicaid coverage, though Republicans rejected those ideas. 

Under the deal, the University of Wisconsin system will get a $250 million increase, according to Evers’ office. The motion approved by the committee includes investments for general program operations, mental health, staff recruitment and retention and $94 million for staff wage adjustments.

The increase comes despite threats from Republican legislators to cut the UW system by tens of millions and as federal uncertainty, which has led some campuses to tell departments to prepare cuts

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said lawmakers were short-changing the UW system, despite it contributing heavily to the state’s economic successes.

“What they are getting is about 5% of what they said that they needed,” Roys said. Evers and the system proposed an $855 million budget increase over the biennium. “We’re going to continue to see tuition hikes, we’re going to continue to see campus closures. We’re going to continue to see the doors of opportunity closing for our kids here in Wisconsin, and they’re going to have to go out of state or go without access to higher education and I think that’s wrong.” 

Roys voted against the budget in committee, saying it would have needed to do more for the state’s kids to get her vote. “Ultimately, I want a Wisconsin, where every child, no matter who you are or where you’re from, have the opportunity to thrive,” Roys told reporters.

Stakeholders in the UW system also reacted to the budget deal on Tuesday. 

UW President Jay Rothman said on social media he is grateful for the support of Evers and the Legislature. 

“Today’s budget agreement marks the largest overall increase in investment in the UWs over two decades. For generations, Wisconsinites have invested in the UWs to provide affordable and accessible higher education. They should take great pride in what Wisconsin has built,” Rothman said. “With these new investments, the UWs can do more to provide the educational opportunities students deserve and parents expect.”

Public Representation Organization of the Faculty Senate (PROFS), the nonprofit organization of UW-Madison faculty, said it was “heartened” by the funding increase but worried about some of the concessions that Republican lawmakers got.

“We are concerned, however, that the agreement between Republican legislative leaders and the governor includes teaching-load requirements for faculty and instructional staff, which has always been the purview of the universities themselves, not the Legislature,” the organization stated. 

Under the agreement, faculty will be required to teach no fewer than 24 credits per academic year. The UW Board of Regents will have to develop a buyout policy for positions not meeting the minimum credit requirements. The budget will also include a similar policy for the Wisconsin Technical College System. 

The UW portions of the agreement will also include a cap on the number of positions that the system can have funded through general purpose revenue and program revenue and no institution will be allowed to designate more than 10% of its faculty and 10% of its academic staff to administrative duties.

Born said it was part of the compromise that Assembly Republicans made.

“It is a positive number, and most of our caucus on the Assembly side… is not happy about that because they know that there are major problems in that system that need work,” Born said. “We worked through that compromise and gave them $50 million as opposed to $800 million… to get some of those reforms.”

Child care providers will get a $330 million investment under the deal, including direct payments to continue once the Child Care Counts program lapses. A “Bridge” program will provide $110 million to help child care facilities stay open, though it will only last for a year. It also includes funding to kickstart a state-funded child care program targeted at supporting facilities serving 4-year-olds. 

“The reality is this is a small amount of money in terms of the need, and it is only for year one, so all that’s happening here is we’re kicking the can down the road on massive child care closures a year from now… I don’t count that as a huge victory,” Roys said. “To get that money there have been agreements to functionally deregulate child care, to increase ratios, to make it less safe to take away the important protections.”

Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), who said he plans to vote for the budget on the floor, said the investment would help make child care in the state more affordable and increase access. 

“While it’s not perfect, this is where we’re at with divided government,” Testin said “Maybe it’s not as far as some would like but it’s a step in the right direction.”

Funding for K-12 education will increase the special education reimbursement rate to  42% in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. Republican lawmakers initially approved a maximum increase of 37.5%, while Evers had proposed a 60% increase. 

There will be no general aid increase for public schools. School districts will only be able  to increase their school revenue annually by $325 per pupil by going to local property taxpayers through the referendum process.

Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said it was a “little sad” Evers “had to drag the Legislature kicking and screaming to a place that is frankly insufficient for our needs.” He said the increase to special education funding likely wouldn’t end school districts’ reliance on raising revenue through  property taxes increases.

Some Democratic lawmakers and advocates said Evers needed to negotiate higher increases for schools and said the lack of general aid increase in the deal is a reason to reject it. 

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) said no general aid increases for Wisconsin’s public schools is “unacceptable,” calling the budget “Republican-led” and urging people to call their Democratic legislators and Evers’ office to tell them to vote against it. 

“This budget fails to meet the needs of our children and working-class communities,” Hong wrote in all caps on social media. “This budget is guaranteed to raise property taxes and pit students and communities against one another.” 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said he would vote “no” on the budget for similar reasons. 

“The final product falls far short of what our neighbors need and frankly what they have demanded since the beginning of this process,” Larson said, noting the lack of general aid, the school revenue increase that doesn’t keep up with  inflation and the special education rate. “For these reasons and many more, I will be voting ‘no,’ unless massive changes are adopted,” Larson said. “Democrats will be offering several amendments in pursuit of a budget that meets this moment.” 

The Wisconsin Public Education Network sent out a similar message, and called for people to call Senate lawmakers and urge them to vote against the budget.

“The compromise on the table provides $0 (none, not one pencil’s worth) in new state aid for public schools in both years of the biennium — in exchange for a welcome but inadequate increase to the special education reimbursement rate,” the organization said. “A vote for this budget is a vote for widening our gaps. Public schools will close. We will see another two years of record rates of referenda.”

Asked about advocates’ desire to try to negotiate for a general aid increase for schools, Evers said on Tuesday that there were some policies that just weren’t going to happen. He spoke to the Wisconsin Examiner Tuesday afternoon after attending a Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. event in Middleton to announce a business expansion at Catalent, a bio-health company.

“We have the largest amount of money that we’ve ever sent to our public schools coming to them, and so I know there are people that wanted everything, and when you’re in a situation where you have Republicans and Democrats [who make up] about same size of part of the government, you’re going to you’re going to have to compromise,” Evers said. “I do wish we could have put another $5 billion into it of course, but that wasn’t going to happen.”

Democrats say new maps led to budget deal, pledge to do more in majority

The budget needs 17 votes to pass in the Senate and will likely find it from a bipartisan group of lawmakers. Marklein said he was “confident” that there would be enough votes.

Slim margins in the Senate and  several Senate Republicans who said they were inclined to vote against the spending package, even ahead of the announcement of a deal, led to Democratic Minority Leader Hesselbein becoming involved in negotiations, which previously have only involved Republican legislators. Republicans have passed the budget before with only votes from their caucus, but in the Senate this year, the caucus can only afford to lose one vote.

Several Senate Democrats, including several who are serving their first term, said the budget deal was the result of new legislative maps that took effect for the first time in 2024. Under those maps, Democrats in the Senate flipped four seats, trimming the Republican majority from two-thirds to a margin of 18-15.

Freshman Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) said the state would be moving in the right direction with the budget agreement and Senate Democrats helped make it “palatable.” 

“To be clear, this budget is not ideal, but in the spirit of bipartisanship and forward progress, I am pleased to be a part of what Senate Democrats were able to do on behalf of all Wisconsinites,” Keyeski said. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said the deal reflects “bipartisanship and progress.” 

“I am proud to see it move forward,” said Habush Sinykin, who is also in her first term. “What we are seeing playing out in this budget is the consequence of Wisconsin’s new fairer maps — legislators working together to find compromise and make meaningful progress for the people of Wisconsin.”

Two other Democrats in their first term highlighted local allocations in the budget. Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) celebrated $30 million that was included in the budget for a new railroad bridge at Red Maple Road between American Boulevard and Lost Dauphin Road in West De Pere and Sen. Kristin Dassler-Alfheim (D-Appleton) highlighted some of the items in the budget that will help her district, including the $137 million investment for UW-Oshkosh’s Polk Learning Commons.

“The new, fair maps created a balanced government, and this is the result: a government that can work together to reach an agreement where everyone walks away wishing they’d gotten more but no one leaves feeling kicked in the teeth,” Dassler-Alfheim said. “I’m hopeful that we can work together to get this over the finish line and move Wisconsin forward, together.”

Senate Democrats also said they would do more should they win a majority in future elections. 

“Because of the negotiations that we had for this budget, the outcomes were a lot better than they would have been had those individuals not been at the table, had our voices not been at the table,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee). “And I just want to say that going forward for every budget. It should be like that, and don’t worry, when we’re in the majority, it will be like that, which will be in 2026.”

She told reporters she is leaning towards voting for the budget, but added, “we’ll have to see.” 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) also said electing more Democratic legislators made a difference.

“I am thankful that Governor Evers and my Senate Democratic colleagues were at the negotiating table on our state budget and have gotten some real wins for the people of Wisconsin,” Neubauer said. “There are critical investments in education, child care and the priorities of Wisconsinites in this budget, but we also know that due to years of underfunding by the GOP majorities, there is a lot that remains to be done.”

Andraca praised the new maps in the committee meeting, saying that a nearly 50-50 split in the Senate and Assembly has spurred conversations in a new way.

“Congratulations on the bipartisanship. I think this budget does a lot of good,” Andraca said, but added,  “I’m not sure it does enough to earn my vote at this time.”

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Child care providers and parents attend a Wisconsin State Capitol rally on Wednesday, April 16, 2025. Advocates have mixed opinions about child care provisions in the new state budget released Tuesday. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The proposed Wisconsin state budget announced Tuesday offers child care advocates less than what they sought, and while some reacted with limited optimism, for others it adds up to little better than nothing.

The final deal will spend $110 million to extend direct payments to providers for another year. Starting in mid-2026 It will direct $65 million to providers who join a proposed “School Readiness Program” — similar to 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) but distinct from current 4K programs.

The deal also will add $123 million to increase the reimbursement for child care costs for low-income families under the Wisconsin Shares program. 

The agreement was reached Monday in negotiations involving Gov. Tony Evers, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton).

Kids Forward labeled the child care provisions “significant, but not sufficient, wins for Wisconsin’s working families.” Kids Forward is a policy and advocacy organization for low-income families and families of color.

“This deal doesn’t address the long-term needs of families and providers, but we look forward to working with legislators and the Governor to ensure sustained investment,” said Daithi Wolfe, senior policy analyst for Kids Forward, in a statement Tuesday.

‘Bridge’ payment program

The $110 million in direct payments to providers over the next 12 months will serve as a “bridge” after the end of Child Care Counts, the subsidy program funded with federal pandemic relief money that runs out this month.

Originally paying out $20 million a month, Child Care Counts helped stabilize the child care sector according to research reviewing the program, helping providers increase wages without having to charge parents more.

The money was cut in half two years ago, and since then providers have reported having to raise fees and, in some cases, reduce their capacity because they lacked enough child care workers. A survey report earlier this year found that 25% of providers said they might close if state payments stop.

The new payment program is intended to enable providers to plan and budget between now and July 2026 for the loss of Child Care Counts. It will be funded with interest income on the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the Evers administration received starting in early 2021.

“The disappointing part is it’s not permanent,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA). WECA has campaigned all year for Gov. Tony Evers’ original proposal, which sought $480 million including for continuing monthly provider subsidies.

“This is not going to be the sort of panacea for child care,” Schmidt said. “We will still see child care programs needing to raise rates. We will likely still see closures throughout the year. But I think we will see them at much lower rates, and I think that’s a really good thing for child care.”

Schmidt praised Evers as a “champion for children” and also credited GOP leaders for being “willing to sit down” and negotiate. “I think bipartisanship has been at play in this,” she said.

A 4K-style program

The new Early School Readiness Program for 4-year-olds is a response to the impact that 4K expansion has had on child care providers. As 4K programs expanded in Wisconsin elementary schools, “that pulled a lot of 4-year-olds out of child care,” Schmidt said.

The new School Readiness Program will set curriculum standards and require child care workers who teach in it to have at least an associate degree. Schmidt said that for child care providers who participate, it will “ensure that child care has more opportunities to continue to serve 4-year-olds.”

Child care providers who take part will for the first time receive direct payments from state funds.

“Child care as an industry has long been very interested in finding out how to continue to do the services that they know are so important for 4-year-olds in their programs, and I think this is a mechanism that will allow for that,” Schmidt said.  “This is a net gain of $65 million in state general purpose revenue into child care. That’s a big thing.”

Providers view deal skeptically 

For some child care providers, however, the details of the budget deal fall short of what they contend their sector needs.

The $110 million bridge program “is less than we’re getting right now, and we can’t keep teachers and we can’t keep prices down the way it is,” said Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider. She doesn’t expect it to achieve its stated goal of increasing the number of teachers along with accessibility and affordability in child care.

Brooke Legler, another New Glarus provider, said the $480 million that Evers had originally sought translated to keeping child care workers’ wages at $13 an hour on average. “This doesn’t even do that,” she said of the bridge program.

Hendrickson and Legler are cofounders of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), a coalition of parents and providers that also campaigned actively for the original Evers proposal.

Hendrickson said she’s concerned that the School Readiness Program will be perceived by parents as “less academic, less school, less quality than the free option at the public school.”

Legler questions whether the new program as structured will succeed in drawing more families of 4-year-olds who would otherwise send their children to 4K. School districts have expanded their 4K programs to all day schedules in part because of a lack of child care, she said.

“I think that’s such a disservice that we have … closed door negotiations and that we’re not including the people at the table that need to be at the table, especially if we want to have effective and efficient policies that work for Wisconsin,” Legler said.

Both Legler and Hendrickson said they’re also concerned about a provision creating a “large family center” category with up to 12 children. Currently there are family centers with up to eight children and group centers with nine or more children.

Another provision would lower the minimum age for entry-level child care workers to 16. Both the age change and the large family provision were in bills that Republicans introduced in the 2023-24 legislative session and that providers mostly opposed.

“That’s not an answer. That doesn’t do anything financially” to help providers, Legler said.

“We have people making life-altering decisions for many people in Wisconsin, yet they have no experience or expertise on the matter,” she said. “This method does not work.”

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A Wisconsin nonprofit is pushing to get books back into prisons after a DOC directive ending the effort. | Getty Images Creative

The nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP) and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) are carrying out a pilot project that involves sending used books to prisoners. 

This might lead to the nonprofit regaining the ability to send used books to incarcerated people in DOC facilities around the state. Meanwhile, WBTP says it has experienced an issue with packages of new books, which were not banned, being sent back. 

Last year, the department enacted a used book ban. The DOC has cited concerns about drug smuggling, leading to scrutiny of how effective the ban might be and whether the impact on prisoners’ access to books was justified. Camy Matthay of Wisconsin Books to Prisoners told the Examiner in September that the ban hobbles the project. 

The agency said in late September that it used to make an exception for WBTP to send used books “due to the organization being based in Wisconsin with leadership who were responsive and willing to work with DOC.” Wardens and librarians could accept used books from certain trusted sources for donation to the institution libraries. 

In late September, the DOC said that under a  policy announced  in January, the department could no longer accept used books from anyone — including WBTP. The department said  “that policy is now being enforced when it comes to library donations as well as books sent to persons in our care.”

In March, the Examiner reported on concerns regarding mail between incarcerated people and attorneys, including the question of the accuracy of the drug tests used on materials coming into prisons.

According to incident reports and a statement from the DOC in late September, three separate shipments in February and March 2024 that were allegedly from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners had multiple items testing positive for drugs.  

In an email to Wisconsin Books to Prisoners in August, Sarah Cooper, former administrator of the DOC’s division of adult institutions, said the concern was not with WBTP but with people who would impersonate the nonprofit. 

“Unfortunately, those who wish to send drugs into the prisons do so under the guise of legitimate agencies, organizations and even legal entities,” Cooper said. 

WBTP said the group expects to be formally approved to resume shipping new and used donated books to people incarcerated throughout Wisconsin upon the successful completion of the second phase of the pilot. 

“We are cautiously optimistic that WBTP will be back or close to our full operations by September 2025,” the nonprofit said in a statement Friday. 

WBTP said it has participated in a pilot program at Oakhill Correctional Institution over the past few months. The nonprofit said that during phase one, it sent three packages of books, one third of which were used books. The books were added to the library collection, making them available for checkout by those who requested them. 

The pilot program aims to allow DOC to test and refine its screening process for donated reading materials to ensure safety, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke said in an email to the Examiner.

Starting July 1, WBTP will be able to send requested materials directly to individuals at Oakhill Correctional Institution instead of the institution library, Hardtke said. 

“The goal is to eventually allow WBTP to send reading materials to individuals at any DOC facility — safely,” Hardtke said. She mentioned a safety concern about people coming into contact with intoxicating substances. 

In a statement in late September, the department said staff reviewed contraband incident reports that facility staff had flagged as drug-related between Jan. 1 2019 and Sept. 19, 2024. 

The DOC said that not all incident reports flagged as drug-related turn out to be drug-related, and that “some drug-related incidents recorded through a medical record or conduct report may not be reflected in these numbers.” 

The department said there had been 214 incidents of drugs being found on paper from Jan. 1 2019 to Sept. 18, 2024  “including in books and letters shipped to DOC facilities.”

WBTP said it was told by DOC that it would continue mailing brand-new books to meet requests made by readers. Many of those packages have been returned to them, WBTP said. The status of some packages is not known, and the nonprofit is investigating the issue. In its statement, WBTP said it has “engaged in discussions” with DOC administrative staff, “in opposition to their policy banning the donation of used reading materials.”

“WBTP remains committed to pursuing every possible avenue to challenge this censorship,” the nonprofit said. 

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The U.S. Capitol on June 30, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The final “big beautiful bill” approved by Senate Republicans Tuesday included some last-minute changes on hot-button issues such as safety net programs and clean energy tax credits.

Senate Republicans had wrangled for weeks to deliver legislative text to satisfy concerns from lawmakers who objected to cutting Medicaid, the federal-state insurance program for low-income families and some individuals with disabilities.

Other sticking points included threats that the health cuts pose to rural hospitals, and tax revisions that hamper clean energy jobs and investment, most of which are in states that elected President Donald Trump to his second term.

The lawmakers debated amendments for more than 24 hours. Even with final changes, now under consideration in the House, three Republicans held out: Susan Collins of Maine, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie breaking vote.

Here are several rewrites that popped up in the bill’s final minutes and hours:

Rural hospital fund

Senate Republicans doubled the amount for a rural health “transformation program,” or money to compensate rural hospitals for the funds they would lose as a result of the proposed Medicaid cuts.

The latest proposal sets aside $50 billion, up from $25 billion, and moves up the distribution timeline to begin in 2026, up from 2028.

Collins had unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to bump the fund to $50 billion. Despite some support from GOP colleagues, the amendment was blunted by a technical budget point of order.

The Maine Republican still voted “no” Tuesday on the final bill.

SNAP

The lawmakers also made a late change to how and when states would begin to shoulder the responsibility for costs of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

According to the new version, if a state’s payment error rate in 2025 multiplied by 1.5 is equal or greater than 20%, then that state would be permitted to wait until 2029, rather than 2028, to begin footing a portion of the bill for food assistance.  A state’s accuracy rate is the annual measurement of over- or underpayments to recipients.

Nine states would hover in the territory of meeting that threshold, according to the Department of Agriculture’s latest error rates published Monday. They are: Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon.

Alaska had the highest payment error rate of all states in both 2023 and 2024. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s final decision on the bill was largely unknown until she cast a “yes” vote Tuesday.

A late amendment to strike the language offered by Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota failed 45-55.

Critics say the measure incentivizes states to keep the payment error rates high this year.

Solar energy

GOP senators late Friday added a clean energy excise tax into the bill, taking the industry by surprise. Then it vanished.

The tax that would have been imposed on new solar and wind projects was no longer in the legislation that senators voted on around noon Eastern Tuesday.

Other text loosened a squeeze on tech-neutral tax credits meant to incentivize the installation of energy systems that do not use fossil fuels. Senate Republicans added a year of leeway for new projects to break ground and avoid cutting short two of the tax credits.

President Donald Trump speaks to reporters after signing executive orders in the Oval Office on April 23, 2025. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)  

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has put on hold $6.8 billion in federal funds for K-12 schools, according to an Education Department notice obtained by States Newsroom.

The agency informed states on Monday that it would be withholding funding for several programs, including before- and after-school programs, migrant education and English-language learning, among other initiatives.

But the agency notified states just a day ahead of July 1 — the date these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year.

“The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities,” the Education Department wrote to states.

The notice, which did not provide any timeline, said the funds are under review and “decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year.”

The affected programs, according to the Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, include:

• Title I-C, on migrant education
• Title II-A, on improving the effectiveness of teachers and school leaders
• Title III-A, on English language acquisition
• Title IV-A, on STEM education, college and career counseling and other activities
• Title IV-B, on before- and after-school programs and summer school programs
• Grants geared toward adult education and literacy programs

States have been on the lookout for these funds. For instance, just last week, Oklahoma’s Department of Education reported that it had yet to get money from the federal government for migrant education, English language acquisition and other programs, according to Oklahoma Voice. 

‘Winding down’ the department

Adding fuel to the fire, Trump is looking to eliminate all these programs as part of his fiscal 2026 budget request. That wish list, according to a department summary, calls for $12 billion in total spending cuts at the agency.

That proposed $12 billion cut “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down,” the document notes.

Meanwhile, a coalition of 16 states is also suing the Trump administration over the cancellation earlier this year of roughly $1 billion in school mental health grants — a different piece of school funding — to try to restore that money.

The lawsuit was filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. The states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin.

Uncertainty created

In a Tuesday statement, Washington state U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate spending panel, urged the Trump administration to immediately release the frozen funds.

“President Trump himself signed this funding into law — but that isn’t stopping him from choking off resources to support before and after school programs, help students learn, support teachers in the classroom, and a lot more,” Murray said. “The uncertainty he has created has already forced districts to delay hiring and other initiatives to help students. The only question left now is how much more damage this administration wants to inflict on our public schools.”

“Local school districts can’t afford to wait out lengthy court proceedings to get the federal funding they’re owed — nor can they make up the shortfall, especially not at the drop of a pin,” Murray added.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, blasted the administration’s actions, saying this is “another illegal usurpation of the authority of the Congress” and “directly harms the children in our nation.”

“K-12 public school leaders across the country who should have been able to start planning months ago for the summer and the upcoming school year are instead left mired in financial uncertainty,” added Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country.

Approved by Congress

Carissa Moffat Miller, CEO of the Council of Chief State School Officers, said “the administration must make the full extent of title funding available in a timely manner,” in a statement shared with States Newsroom on Tuesday.

“These funds were approved by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March,” Miller said. “Schools need these funds to hire key staff and educate students this summer and in the upcoming school year.”

In response to a request for comment on the frozen funds, the Education Department referred States Newsroom to the Office of Management and Budget, which is responsible for administering the federal budget and overseeing the performance of departments throughout the federal government.

Administration comment

In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Wednesday, a spokesperson for OMB said “this is an ongoing programmatic review of education funding” and “no decisions have been made yet.”

The spokesperson noted that “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.” 

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, shown here in a June 17, 2025, committee hearing, proposed paring down the moratorium on state-based AI laws included in the budget bill, but the provision still proved unpopular. On Monday, Blackburn cosponsored an amendment to remove the measure. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

A moratorium on state-based artificial intelligence laws was struck from the “Big Beautiful Bill” Monday night in a 99-1 vote in the U.S. Senate, after getting less and less popular with state and federal lawmakers, state officials and advocacy groups since it was introduced in May.

The moratorium had evolved in the seven weeks since it was introduced into the megabill. At an early May Senate Commerce Committee session, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said it was in his plans to create “a regulatory sandbox for AI” that would prevent state overregulation and promote the United States’ AI industry.

GOP senators initially proposed a 10-year ban on all state laws relating to artificial intelligence, saying the federal government should be the only legislative body to regulate the technology. Over several hearings, congressional members and expert witnesses debated the level of involvement the federal government should take in regulating AI. They discussed state’s rights, safety concerns for the technology and how other governmental bodies, like the European Union, are regulating AI.

Over the weekend, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Cruz developed a pared down version of the moratorium that proposed a five-year ban, and made exceptions for some laws with specific aims such as protecting children or limiting deepfake technologies. Changes over the weekend also tied state’s ability to collect federal funding to expand broadband access to their willingness to nullify their existing AI laws.

Monday night, an amendment to remove the moratorium from the budget bill — cosponsored by Blackburn and Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat — was passed 99-1.

“The Senate came together tonight to say that we can’t just run over good state consumer protection laws,” Cantwell said in a statement. “States can fight robocalls, deepfakes and provide safe autonomous vehicle laws. This also allows us to work together nationally to provide a new federal framework on Artificial Intelligence that accelerates U.S. leadership in AI while still protecting consumers.” 

The “overwhelming” vote reflects how unpopular unregulated AI is among voters and legislators in both parties, said Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO of the tech policy organization, Center for Democracy and Technology, in a statement.

“Americans deserve sensible guardrails as AI develops, and if Congress isn’t prepared to step up to the plate, it shouldn’t prevent states from addressing the challenge,” Reeve Givens said. “We hope that after such a resounding rebuke, Congressional leaders understand that it’s time for them to start treating AI harms with the seriousness they deserve.”

Republican Sens. John Barrasso of Wyoming, John Thune of South Dakota, Mike Crapo of Idaho and Lindsey Graham of South Dakota speak to reporters after passage of their sweeping tax break and spending cut bill on Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans approved their signature tax break and spending cuts package Tuesday with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President JD Vance, following days of tense, closed-door negotiations that went until the few last minutes of a marathon amendment voting session.

The 51-50 mostly party-line vote sends the legislation back to the House, where GOP leaders hope to clear the bill for President Donald Trump’s signature this week. But frustrations throughout the conference over changes made in the Senate could delay or even block final approval. 

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against approving the legislation over concerns it would not benefit the country’s finances or Republican voters.

Changes made in final negotiations were not immediately clear or publicly available.

Majority Leader John Thune said the passage marked “a historic day.”

“We’re very excited to be a part of something that is going to make America stronger, safer and more prosperous, and it really starts with the agenda that President Trump laid out when he was running last year.

“He talked about modernizing our military, securing our borders, restoring energy dominance in this country, bringing tax relief to working families and low income taxpayers in this country, and doing something about the runaway, spiraling spending and debt,” the South Dakota Republican said minutes after the vote.

“So this was an incredible victory for the American people, and we as a team are delighted to be a part of it.”

The bill now heads back to the House. The chamber’s Committee on Rules is expected to meet Tuesday afternoon, which will be the final stop for the bill before it reaches the House floor.

Thune said he believes Senate Republicans have given the House “a really strong product.”

“I think we took what they sent us and strengthened and improved upon it. And so I’m hopeful that now, when it gets sent over there, as they deliberate about how they want to handle it, we’ll find the votes that are necessary to pass it and want to put it on the president’s desk,” he said.

Trump praised the Senate’s passage on his Truth Social media platform, saying “Almost all of our Great Republicans in the United States Senate have passed our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL.’”

He added: “We can have all of this right now, but only if the House GOP UNITES, ignores its occasional “GRANDSTANDERS” (You know who you are!), and does the right thing, which is sending this Bill to my desk. We are on schedule — Let’s keep it going, and be done before you and your family go on a July 4th vacation.”

Several House conservatives have railed against the Senate version, including Reps. Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Ralph Norman of South Carolina and others.

House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a joint statement with House Republican leaders saying the chamber “will work quickly to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill that enacts President Trump’s full America First agenda by the Fourth of July. The American people gave us a clear mandate, and after four years of Democrat failure, we intend to deliver without delay.”

“Republicans were elected to do exactly what this bill achieves: secure the border, make tax cuts permanent, unleash American energy dominance, restore peace through strength, cut wasteful spending, and return to a government that puts Americans first,” the Louisiana Republican said in the statement that included House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Majority Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota and conference chair Lisa McClain of Michigan.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski , whose support had been unclear until the vote, and Majority Whip John Barrasso, of Wyoming, left the chamber to catch an elevator together just after 9:30 a.m. Eastern.

Asked if the bill was in the hands of the parliamentarian, Murkowski quipped, “I think it’s in the hands of the people that operate the coffee machine.”

Barrasso said “Yes” when asked if it would pass this morning.

Murkowski: ‘difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period’

Flooded by reporters after the vote, Murkowski said “we do not have a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination.”

“My hope is that the House is gonna look at this and recognize that we’re not there yet, and I would hope that we would be able to actually do what we used to do around here, which is work back and forth in the two bodies to get a measure that’s gonna be better for the people in this country and more particularly, for the people in Alaska,” she said.

“This is probably the most difficult and agonizing legislative 24-hour period that I have encountered, and I’ve been here quite a while, and you all know I’ve got a few battle scars underneath me,” Murkowski added. “But I think I held my head up and made sure that the people of Alaska are not forgotten in this, but I think that there is more that needs to be done, and I’m not done.”

“I am gonna take a nap, though,” she said.

When asked about Murkowski’s decision to vote for the bill, Thune said, “She, as you know, is a very independent thinker and somebody who studies the issues really, really hard and well. And I’m just grateful that at the end of the day, she included what the rest of us did, or at least most of the rest of us did, and that is that this was the right direction for the future of our country.”

Democrats react

Senate Democrats walking off the floor seemed somber, a sentiment that Senate Leader Chuck Schumer said also extended to Republicans after the bill’s passage.

“On the Republican side, when the bill passed, there was a bit of somberness that I don’t think was expected, and that’s because they knew deep in their hearts how bad this bill is for them, their states and the Republican Party,” Schumer said.

“When people start losing their Medicaid, when they start losing their jobs, when their electric bills go up, when their premiums go up, when kids and parents lose SNAP funding, the people of America will remember this vote,” the New York Democrat continued.

Criticism poured in from others as well, including the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which likened the Senate’s bill passage to jumping “off a budget cliff.”

“The level of blatant disregard we just witnessed for our nation’s fiscal condition and budget process is a failure of responsible governing. These are the very same lawmakers who for years have bemoaned the nation’s massive debt, voting to put another $4 trillion on the credit card,” the organization’s president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement.

CRFB estimates the Senate version of the bill would add $600 billion to the national deficit just in 2027.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released a calculation Sunday showing the bill would add $3.25 trillion to deficits over 10 years.

Trump weighs in ahead of vote

Trump told reporters on Tuesday morning before leaving for a Florida visit to the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention site that “it’s very complicated stuff” when asked about Senate Republicans’ debate over spending cuts.

“We’re going to have to see the final version. I don’t want to go too crazy with cuts. I don’t like cuts. There are certain things that have been cut, which is good. I think we’re doing well,” Trump said. “We’re going to have to see, it’s some very complicated stuff. Great enthusiasm as you know. And I think in the end we’re going to have it.”

The heart of the nearly 1,000-page legislation extends and expands the 2017 tax law to keep individual income tax rates at the same level and makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The bill would also put in motion some of Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on qualifying tips, overtime or car loan interest, but only for a few years.

And it slashes spending on the Medicaid program for low-income people and some people with disabilities as well as shifting significant costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states for the first time. It also overhauls federal education aid.

It would also bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, including line items for the “golden dome” missile defense system and additional barriers along the southern border.

The measure would provide a substantial funding increase for federal immigration enforcement for detention and removal of people without permanent legal status, aiding the president in carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations.

The Senate version of the bill also would revive the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act fund, a bipartisan measure championed by Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. The fund provides money to victims of certain types of cancer and surviving family members in several states affected by the United States atomic bomb testing program and radioactive waste left behind. 

Uranium miners would also be eligible under the measure. While reviving the fund has received wide bipartisan approval in the Senate, the House has not shown the same support.

The Senate bill would raise the debt limit by $5 trillion, a figure designed to get Congress past next year’s midterm elections before the country would once again bump up against the borrowing limit.

On to the House

House approval is far from guaranteed.

Johnson can only lose four Republicans if all lawmakers in that chamber attend the vote. Several GOP members have voiced frustration with how the Senate has reworked the legislation, signaling an uphill climb for the bill.

House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith said as he left the Senate cloakroom just after 9:20 a.m. Eastern that lawmakers are “getting closer to a bill signing on July Fourth.”

“If you followed this journey over the last six months, over and over, people said that we could not accomplish a budget (reconciliation bill). We did. They said we would never pass it out of the House. We did. The Senate is going to pass it. The House is going to pass it, and the president’s going to sign it into law,” the Missouri Republican said.

Three amendments succeed

The Senate had adopted three amendments to the bill following an all-night amendment voting session, known as a vote-a-rama.

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn was able to remove language from the package that would have blocked state and local governments from regulating artificial intelligence for five years if they wanted access to a $500 million fund. That vote was 99-1 with only North Carolina’s Tillis voting to keep the language in the package.

Blackburn said the change was necessary because lawmakers in Congress have “proven that they cannot legislate on emerging technology.”

Senators approved an amendment from Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst by voice vote that would disqualify “anyone making a million dollars or more from being eligible for unemployment income support.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy was able to get an amendment adopted by a voice vote that would move up the date when Medicaid administrators must begin checking the Social Security Administration’s death master file to determine if a new enrollee is alive before adding them to the health program. It was set to begin on Jan. 1, 2028, but will now begin one year earlier.

Senators rejected dozens of amendments offered by both Democrats and Republicans, some of which deadlocked on 50-50 votes. Maine’s Collins and Alaska’s Murkowski broke with their party several times to vote with Democrats.

National private school voucher program

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono tried to eliminate a sweeping private school voucher program that’s baked into the reconciliation package, but that vote failed 50-50. Collins, Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer and Murkowski voted in support.

The original proposal called for $4 billion a year in tax credits beginning in 2027 for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

But the parliamentarian last week deemed the program to not comply with the “Byrd Bath,” a Senate process named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, forcing senators to rework the program.

Details on the finalized version of the program remain unknown as the final bill text has not been released.   

Safety funding for Virginia airport across from D.C.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner tried to add language to the bill that would have increased safety funding for airports near Washington, D.C., and established a memorial for the victims who died in a crash this January. The vote failed on a tied 50-50 vote, with Collins, Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran and Murkowski voting with Democrats in support.

“Colleagues, we all know that on January 29 of this year, 67 individuals lost their lives when a military helicopter and a passenger jet collided near Reagan National Airport. This tragedy underscores the need for more safety improvements at National Airport,” Warner said. “The reconciliation bill increases, actually doubles, the amount of rent that National and Dulles pay the government but doesn’t use any of that money to make those airports and the people who use them any safer.”

He argued there was “no good rationale for increasing those rents and not using them for aviation safety.”

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz spoke against Warner’s amendment, saying the rents for the two airports in Virginia near the nation’s capital haven’t been updated in decades.

“The federal government originally calculated the rent in 1987 at $7.5 million dollars, massively below market rates,” Cruz said. “This bill increases that to $15 million, still dramatically below market rates.”

Cruz — chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation — said the legislation includes $12.5 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration to “transform the air traffic control system” and said his panel is looking into the collision in order to prevent something similar from happening again. 

Trump budget director’s office targeted

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen also got within one vote of having an amendment adopted when he tried to remove a section from the bill that would increase funding for the White House budget office by $100 million.

“This is at a time when (Federal Emergency Management Agency) grants to many of our states have been canceled, grants for law enforcement have been frozen, grants for victims of crimes are on hold,” Van Hollen said. “That is not efficiency. That is creating chaos and uncertainty. And I ask my colleagues, why in the world would we want to send another $100 million to OMB?”

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson opposed the efforts, saying “the Office of Management and Budget needs to identify budgeting and accounting efficiencies in the executive branch. They need the resources to do it.”

The amendment was not added to the bill following another tied 50-50 vote with Collins, Murkowski and Paul voting with Democrats in favor.

Had GOP leadership wanted either of those proposals added to the package, they could have had Vance break the tie, but they did not.

Collins loses vote on rural hospital fund

Maine’s Collins tried to get an amendment added to the legislation that would have increased “funding for the rural health care provider fund to $50 billion dollars and expand the list of eligible providers to include not only rural hospitals but also community health centers, nursing homes, ambulance services, skilled nursing facilities and others.”

Collins said the additional $25 billion in funding for the fund would be paid for by “a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate, equal to the pre-2017 rate for individuals with income above $25 million and married couples with income above $50 million.”

Collins’ amendment was subject to a Senate procedural limit known as a budget point of order. She was unable to get the votes needed to waive that on a 22-78 vote.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden spoke against Collins’ proposal, calling it “flawed,” and introduced the budget point of order against her amendment.

“The danger Senate Republicans are causing for rural hospitals is so great, Republicans have had to create a rural hospital relief fund so they can look like they are fixing the problem they are causing,” Wyden said. “It is a Band-Aid on an amputation. It provides just a tiny fraction of the nearly $1 trillion in cuts the bill makes to Medicaid. It would be much more logical to simply not cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in the first place.”

Collins received a mix of support from Republicans, including West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, Utah’s John Curtis, Nebraska’s Fischer, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, Ohio’s Jon Husted and Bernie Moreno, Mississippi’s Cindy Hyde-Smith and Roger Wicker, Louisiana’s Kennedy, Kansans Roger Marshall and Moran, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, Alaskans Dan Sullivan and Murkowski and Indiana’s Todd Young.

Also voting to waive the point of order and move forward with the amendment were Georgia’s Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and Virginia’s Warner, all Democrats, and independent Maine Sen. Angus King. 

A Flock camera on the Lac Courte Orielles Reservation in Saywer County. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

The Lac du Flambeau (LDF) Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Tribal Police Office in Vilas County has a resource most rural law enforcement wouldn’t imagine: a surveillance room with approximately two dozen screens that are monitored by a full-time staff of four and two part-time workers.

Feeding images to those monitors are 160-plus cameras overlooking the central village area, less than one square mile of the reservation, including tribal administrative and commercial businesses.

There’s a good chance there isn’t another northern Wisconsin public space with such a high concentration of cameras or a staff to monitor the live images that are also recorded and stored for a minimum of 30 days.

A post on the tribe’s Facebook page by Clinton D. Isham, first revealed the extent of the tribe’s surveillance capabilities to the Wisconsin Examiner. 

“Bro, all those cameras that the Tribal police put up better pay off. Police want to do surveillance on Indians to lock us up, but can’t use them to protect us,” Isham wrote.

Isham’s comment was directed at why those 160-plus cameras at LDF didn’t record any image of Melissa Beson, 37, a tribal member who was last seen on the reservation on March 17 – the site where Beson was last seen was just outside the area of the cameras.

LDF Tribal Police Chief T.J. Bill said there’s another tribe in the Midwest interested in replicating what LDF has created as a way to improve safety for tribal members.

The significant investment at LDF in surveillance prompted the question of whether other Wisconsin tribes have also secured surveillance systems to address safety concerns and whether they are considering acquiring additional surveillance technology.

The Examiner reached  out to most of the other 11 federally recognized Wisconsin tribes about their surveillance, and along with LDF, three others responded: Oneida, Lac Courte Oreilles (LCO), and St. Croix.

Police chiefs of the four tribes said it appears that there is a high interest in using surveillance technology among the tribes, particularly a technology called Flock. 

Overall, the police chiefs said tribal members are supportive of using surveillance technology, including a reported survey by one tribe that tallied over 80% support by its members.

While law enforcement officials said the use of surveillance technology and implementation of the Flock system was broadly popular among tribal members, the expansion of surveillance capabilities has drawn controversy elsewhere in Wisconsin. 

The Milwaukee Police Department and Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Department have recently been at the center of a debate about the use of surveillance cameras and Flock. 

“It is critical that our community has a say in if and how invasive surveillance technologies are used, how they are deployed against residents, if and how their data is stored and shared with third parties, and whether spending our limited tax dollars on surveillance technologies is the best way to promote public safety,” the ACLU of Wisconsin wrote in a May letter to the Milwaukee Common Council. 

Lac du Flambeau

Bill, the LDF tribal police chief, who began working with the tribe in 2013, stated that the surveillance system was already in place when he joined the department. He said that employees of the tribe’s IT department did the wiring and placement of the cameras, mostly between 2010 and 2011.

“It was directed by the tribal government, the tribal council, who wanted it for the protection of the people, for the safety of the public,” said Bill.

Bill said he didn’t know the motivation behind the creation of the surveillance system but noted that the LDF police department has been at the forefront of using technology and was one of the first law enforcement agencies in the area that had officers wearing body cameras.

“We don’t have 24/7 coverage,” he said of the cameras being monitored by staff, “but we strategically place them (staff) during the busy times, so it all depends on what’s going on, what our crime statistics tell us.”

Besides the 160 cameras, the tribe’s casino has its own internal surveillance system, which the casino monitors, a typical feature for casinos. The nearby LDF K-12 school also has its own surveillance system, which the police department can access and monitor.

With all the cameras in the LDF police department’s inventory, Beson wasn’t recorded because she was last seen in an area where there are no cameras. Bill said there have been efforts to put up remote cameras to monitor using cellular coverage, but cellular coverage is poor in the reservation and the county.

“We can’t rely on cellular-based equipment, especially during the summertime when our population goes from 4,000 individuals to 50,000 (including tourists and seasonal residents) because everyone is on their cell phones,” he said. “The cell service is horrible here in the Northwoods, so we have to rely on something else because we tried cameras in remote locations outside of the community where we can’t hook up electricity or fiber, and it doesn’t work.”

The Wisconsin Department of Criminal Investigation (DCI) helped LDF set up a surveillance camera on Highway 70 near a former hotel that was being used for drug sales and possible human trafficking, but because that camera used a cellular connection, it wasn’t reliable.

Bill said the tribe has used recorded surveillance video to prosecute several offenses, including a string of burglaries.

“We went through the surveillance cameras and we found a couple of different vehicles, and we located one vehicle of interest and were able to track that vehicle through town, even though it was nighttime, and we were able to make an arrest for the burglaries,” he said.

They’ve also made several drug arrests using surveillance images.

“We’re able to watch individuals who make transactions,” he said. “The cameras are so good that we’re able to see into the cars where they’re doing the deals and catch them. We see the money exchanged in the car and a package delivered to the other person.”

A live feed from the convenience store showed a man lifting his wallet out of his pants and a small baggie with a white substance falling out, which alerted one of the monitors.

“He walked out of there and didn’t realize he had dropped it,” said Bill. “We went over there and we picked it up and it was a bag of cocaine.” Later, the man was charged with possession.

The big question is, do all the cameras make people safer, and do they deter crime?

Bill said the serious drug dealers know about the cameras and stay out of that area, but there are still some who forget about the cameras or think they hide their actions, but that’s pretty difficult when there are 160-plus cameras in such a concentrated area.

“For the most part, in my opinion, it is a deterrent,” he said. “To those we have arrested and interviewed, they’ll say they are doing the crimes, the transactions, outside the area of the cameras because they are everywhere, so it is a deterrent for them not to do their activity directly in the community, so they take their criminal activity outside that area.”

Having recorded digital evidence, said Bill, helps prosecute offenses.

“You go to court and you provide the evidence, that’s a huge part, not only to help with the investigation but also to protect the officer from allegations.”

Bill said there is support for expanding the surveillance system. This summer, the tribe is looking at using recently laid fiber optic lines to expand the system, allowing cameras to provide coverage of the more rural areas of the reservation such as where Beson was last seen.

Bill said there haven’t been complaints from tribal members over a lack of privacy or a “Big Brother” complaint about being observed by authorities when they are in the village area of the reservation.

“You get a complaint here and there, but it’s very few,” he said. “We don’t get the Big Brother concern. Overall, the community is in support of it.”

Oneida Nation

Eric Boulanger is the chief of police for the Oneida Nation in Northeast Wisconsin near Green Bay.

According to Boulanger, Oneida has a Security Department that is part of the tribe’s gaming commission that monitors cameras in parking lots outside the casino and several different businesses and buildings, and the school has a security department that monitors cameras within the school that the police also have the ability to access.

Over two years ago, Oneida also invested in four Flock cameras for use by the police department, which uses cameras and computers to record and track license plates. With Flock, Oneida has also integrated with the larger Flock system, which allows for searching and tracking vehicles in other communities.

Boulanger said what drove the investment in Flock is the positive reports from other local law enforcement.

“It’s a great law enforcement tool in general, not just for Oneida but any community that uses them,” said Boulanger. “It’s a fairly advanced system, and you’re able to search for vehicles and plates and that sort of thing. It lets you know if what you’re looking for is in your area.”

He added, “If you have an incident and you have any sort of vehicle description or if you have a suspect and you know their vehicle information, you can enter that into the system and then it’ll give you feedback on whether or not that vehicle was in your area.”

He added, “If you’re looking for a white Ford Bronco, you can put those parameters in there, and then they’ll show you pictures of those vehicles in a particular area.”

He was asked if the four Flock cameras are sufficient to cover the reservation.

“In the future, we may expand it,” he said. “Everything comes with a cost. They’re not real affordable, but you know where we have them placed, and with the other agencies in the area and the ability to use theirs, there’s pretty good coverage right now of our main thoroughfares, and highly trafficked areas.”

Asked if the surveillance cameras and Flock cameras help deter crime at Oneida, he said, “Well, you would think they would, but there are still plenty of people doing stuff they shouldn’t be doing.” 

“The cameras aren’t hidden, so it’s quite obvious and it’s posted, the areas under surveillance, “but people still do what they’re going to do. So, I mean, I would imagine it would deter some people, but obviously, it doesn’t deter everybody.”

He noted that recorded footage is very useful in the prosecution of a crime.

“Jurors and judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys like to have video,” he said. “It’s kind of hard to dispute a claim on either side if there is video.”

Boulanger hasn’t heard objections to the surveillance cameras or Flock.

“I haven’t heard any specific comments, nobody has directly addressed concerns with me about it, but I feel our community is pretty public safety cautious, so I think they’re probably more on the side of in favor of it than anybody would be against,” he said.

Lac Courte Oreilles

The Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indian Tribal Chief Susie Taylor said the tribal police doesn’t have a surveillance system of cameras operated by the police department or a special security department. Still, police have used footage from the casino for investigations, and the K-12 school does have its own surveillance system of cameras.

She notes that former chief of police Tim DeBrot was instrumental in securing Flock cameras for the tribe, which were placed earlier this year.

Taylor said the Flock cameras record and track information about vehicles, but they will not be used for speeding violations. She said the primary use is in the investigation of crimes.

In March, Taylor put out a press release about the Flock cameras that was printed in the Lac Courte Oreilles News:

“Flock cameras are designed to enhance public safety by capturing objective evidence, including license plate information, to help law enforcement prevent and solve crimes. These cameras do not use facial recognition and are not intended for traffic enforcement. Instead, they serve as a valuable investigative tool to identify stolen vehicles, locate missing children and adults, and deter criminal activity.”

In the press release, Taylor noted that the data from the cameras is stored and then deleted after a certain number of days if it is not being used in an investigation, and access to the information is limited to “authorized personnel” and not used for “surveillance or tracking individuals without cause.”

She also noted to the Wisconsin Examiner that the Flock cameras, by tying into the larger network of cameras, allow for the sharing of information across jurisdictional boundaries.

“Many other law enforcement agencies across the country have implemented Flock cameras due to their effectiveness in reducing crime and enhancing community safety,” she said.

She noted there are Flock cameras off the region’s major highway, Highway 53, located in Washburn County, that would be very effective in helping track a vehicle that had been on the reservation in Sawyer County.

Joe Morey, public relations director for LCO, said a survey of tribal members had been conducted regarding the use of surveillance technology, and over 80% of respondents were in support.

St. Croix

Of the four tribes, the St. Croix Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians has the least investment and deployment of surveillance equipment.

According to police chief Donnie Holmes, in 2014-15, the St. Croix Tribal Police Department began using body cameras.

Holmes said his office will place stand-alone cameras to address individual complaints or for investigations.  As an example, he mentioned that there were complaints at the Sand Lake basketball court and parking area, where robberies had occurred, so cameras were installed on the assumption that the criminals might return.

Individual tribal businesses have their own security system for recording video that could be used for an investigation or prosecution.

“Super expensive,” Holmes said of the cost of implementing a surveillance system for St. Croix similar to LDF’s or even Oneida’s. He said for St. Croix it would be even more of a challenge in that the reservation is located in pockets of land over four different counties: Burnett, Barron, Douglas and Polk.

However, St. Croix is exploring the acquisition of Flock cameras. The biggest factor against proceeding is the cost.

Holmes appreciates the capability of Flock cameras, especially for integrating with other Flock cameras to track a suspect’s vehicle. If a vehicle can be identified, Holmes believes Flock cameras would be helpful locating a missing person.

“The nice thing about Flock is they can alert to car movements with other cameras tied to the system,” he said.

Holmes was asked if tribal members would have any objections to having a more advanced surveillance system, and he noted that there is some interest in investing in technology, but he also wonders if there would be objections over privacy rights if a surveillance system became too expansive.

Flock

Holly Beilin, director of communication for Flock, said in Wisconsin three tribes are using Flock cameras and in the United States 24 tribes have it, but because of confidentiality, she cannot identify which tribes have it.

Boulanger, the Oneida Nation chief, was asked why he thinks tribes are showing an interest in Flock cameras.

“With technology it’s a useful investigative tool,” he said, “And if you know any tribal agencies or tribal nations that have independent police departments and can fiscally handle the cost, it is probably going to look towards some sort of Flock or surveillance system just because that’s the trend right now in law enforcement, using technology.”

Beilin objected when told that at least two of the police chiefs said the Flock system is pricey.

“We typically hear it is much more cost-effective than other solutions,” she responded.

One of the big issues across Indian Country is missing and murdered indigenous women and relatives. The Flock cameras can be especially helpful for missing persons because they are automatically tied to Amber Alerts for children and Silver Alerts for seniors.

Beilin said Flock is working on incorporating the new federal alert for Native Americans, called Missing and Endangered Persons (MEP), which will be implemented later in 2025 and will be known as Turquoise Alerts.

“If a vehicle is associated with an Amber Alert, the license plate passes a camera in real time and will alert local law enforcement, so that law enforcement know, like, OK, that vehicle just passed this camera and is going in this direction, so it’ll be, you know, at this location, in five minutes,’” she said, “and they can actually go, hopefully, and apprehend that person.”

However, she noted that those who use the Flock system don’t have to tie into the larger network of Flock cameras and instead can  just use them locally. She also noted the local user is responsible for how long information is stored.

“No customer has to share,” she said. “So if a tribe wanted to share with local law enforcement nearby, they could, and if they wanted to just have their own police get those alerts and use it for investigations. That would also be fine,”

She was asked what is Flock’s appeal for tribes.

“It actually works,” she said. “It solves crime, and it helps find missing persons. I mean, we just really see that as soon as the cameras are installed, it starts to actually help these agencies or these tribes. You know, the vast majority of crime has some kind of a vehicle involved, right? Which makes sense. We all literally drive daily, and as do folks who commit crime.”

As for whether the Flock system infringes upon privacy rights,“We don’t own the data, the agencies or the tribes do, so they can choose what to do with it,” she said. “We can never sell it or share it without their permission. They can set or legislate their own retention period, so maybe they only want to keep the data for. Our default (to erase data collected) is 30 days, but it could be even less.”

Cameras in the Southwest 

Sergio DeSoto is a consultant from Arizona who works with tribes in the Southwestern areas of the United States on surveillance systems. He said that most tribes he has worked with invest in camera security after an incident has raised safety concerns.

“We hear, ‘we want to make sure our people are safe,’” he said.

DeSoto said surveillance cameras are typically requested for housing, administration, courts, and border security, and most tribes have staff who live-monitor cameras.

The safety concern can be over external issues like sex trafficking on the reservation, or internal issues of domestic disputes or alcohol or drug-related issues.

He said the No. 1  motivation for the tribal nation he deals with is personal safety.

“They’re not interested in the assets; they’re more interested in the people,” he said.

Typically, he said, there is an issue or an incident that drives a discussion about how to raise safety at a particular location, such as a homicide in tribal housing. Once the surveillance system has been in place for a while, the tribe often requests help focusing on other areas on the reservation.

DeSota said the tribal councils are also learning the importance of educating tribal members before implementing a new surveillance system.

“With the elder center in Quechan (Fort Yuma Quechan Tribe in Yuma, Arizona), the tribal council did a super good job communicating with them that we want to make sure everybody’s safe,” he said.

Regarding the question of whether surveillance cameras help deter crime and increase safety, DeSota said he doesn’t have any data to support that contention. However, he noted that when tribes consistently seek to expand their systems, it would indicate that they are receiving positive feedback.

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Rachel Castor, a single mom of two and teacher, stands outside her home in Sandpoint, Idaho. Castor’s son could not be admitted to the local hospital during an asthma attack because Bonner General Health lost its pediatrician coverage at the same time it closed the labor and delivery unit in 2023 following the Dobbs decision. (Photo by Erick Doxey for States Newsroom)

Editor’s note: This report examines the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down the federal right to abortion three years ago.

Of all the outcomes Rachel Castor could have predicted from Idaho’s abortion ban, her teenage son being denied hospital admission during an asthma attack wasn’t on the list.

Bonner General Hospital in Sandpoint announced its decision to end obstetric services in March 2023, roughly six months after the near-total ban took effect. Among the stated reasons were the state’s legal and political climates concerning health care, and the loss of pediatrician staffing.

Castor saw the fallout from that decision on a night in early April. Her 17-year-old son spent several hours in the Bonner General emergency room, before the staff informed her if his breathing didn’t improve enough for discharge by the morning, he would need to be transferred an hour south to the hospital in Coeur d’Alene. Bonner General had no pediatricians.

“And I was like, ‘Excuse me?’” Castor said.

Elaine Gloeckle, a 66-year-old Boise resident, said she started having trouble with urinary tract infections and hormonal balances recently and found it hard to get an appointment to see a specialist, even with a referral. It was even more difficult to see a doctor for gynecological care. That wasn’t always the case in the more than 30 years she’s lived in the area — she used to have no trouble seeing doctors.

But now for the gynecology visits, along with care for diabetes management and kidney issues, she has seen physician assistants, who are supervised by the doctors within a practice. While she has had good experiences with the assistants, it’s sometimes difficult to feel confident in their assessments when she isn’t sure how much they are consulting with doctors. And the wait times are still long — at least six weeks, usually, in her experience.

“I have no idea who the doctors are, I’ve never met them,” Gloeckle said. “And I don’t know if that means anything, or if it’s just peace of mind that there is a doctor in the mix.”

It’s been three years since the U.S. Supreme Court issued the Dobbs ruling that ended federal abortion protections and allowed more than a dozen states to implement abortion bans. States that were already struggling with physician shortages say they’re getting worse, especially in rural areas, where many labor and delivery units have also closed their doors. Clinics have closed and resources become more strained with every passing year.

Patients and providers have been left to adjust to barriers accessing abortion care; legal battles that continually redraw access lines; and heartbreak and tragedy as women die from easily treatable conditions like miscarriage and infection.

In places like Florida, Kansas and Louisiana, patients have had to find other providers who will help them with miscarriage complications, often requiring them to travel to a neighboring state with legal access because doctors in states with bans are afraid to see them. Other patients experiencing miscarriage or the threat of miscarriage have reported waiting hours in emergency rooms to be seen while hospital staff consult with attorneys about their legal exposure before taking any action. A Florida Republican lawmaker who opposes abortion said recently that she waited hours to receive treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, which is dangerous and nonviable.

Besides Texas, few states that implemented abortion bans after Dobbs have been as much of a spectacle as Idaho. Between a so-called “abortion trafficking” law that first passed in Idaho, the very public loss of many OB-GYNs and maternal-fetal medicine specialists, and a legal fight with the federal government over whether abortions should be permitted in emergencies — a lawsuit that made its way before the U.S. Supreme Court — the state has been a testing ground of sorts for how a near-total abortion ban can play out for communities.

Many health care providers and advocates warned it wouldn’t just be abortion care, or even pregnancy-related care, that would be affected by the Dobbs decision. Dr. Stacy Seyb, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Boise, said in July 2023 that the near-total ban would lead to more consequences as time went on.

“It feels like a step backward in improving the health of women and children in the state,” he told The Guardian. Soon, he warned, the state would “see a collapse in women’s health care.”

‘It makes me wonder what else we’ve lost that we don’t know about’

Bonner General Health’s obstetrics unit was one of many rural hospitals that was already struggling before Dobbs with changing community demographics that meant lower birth rates and difficulty recruiting and retaining physicians. Among its population of about 10,000, the hospital admitted fewer than 10 pediatric patients in 2022 and delivered 265 babies, a decrease from prior years.

It’s a familiar situation nationwide. More than 100 hospitals across 26 states have closed labor and delivery services since 2020. To be sure, the reasons for those closures include many more factors than abortion bans, such as low reimbursement rates from Medicaid programs for obstetrical services and difficulty recruiting and retaining physicians.

In its announcement, Bonner General representatives said they tried to recruit active and retired pediatrics providers in the area, but no long-term sustainable solutions were available.

At that time, it didn’t sink in for Castor that having no pediatrician coverage at the hospital would mean no admission to the hospital for minor children.

Sandy Brower, director of quality and risk management at Bonner General Health, told States Newsroom via email that their staff is well-equipped to see pediatrics patients, who are always seen, treated and stabilized in the emergency department. But she confirmed that the hospital does not admit minors because they have no pediatricians on staff.   

“This approach is not unusual in rural health care,” Brower said. “Around the country, critical access hospitals often rely on stabilization and transfer protocols to ensure that patients …  are seen in the most appropriate setting.”

Faced with the prospect of driving her son to Coeur d’Alene herself or guessing what a 44-mile ambulance ride might cost, Castor — a single mom of two and a teacher — decided to drive to the hospital she’d never been to before. But with little information to go on about the transfer process, she was left wandering around the hospital looking for the right place to go while her son’s condition deteriorated.

“He’d already been away from the hospital for an hour for the drive, and he was starting to not do OK, and it was really stressful because I didn’t know what we were supposed to do,” Castor said. “He had his arms wrapped around himself and he just didn’t look good.”

Once she found her way, Castor said everything went well and they were discharged after one more night. But she was left shaken by the experience and her sense of stability about where she lives. She shares custody with a former partner who lives nearby, so it’s difficult to consider moving.

“I think everyone at the hospital is lovely, but it does seem like we don’t have all the services we need,” Castor said. “It makes me wonder what else we’ve lost that we don’t know about.”

Physician recruitment difficult for pediatrics in populous areas too

Amid the implementation of the abortion ban, Idaho’s population exploded. Between 2020 and 2024, more than 152,000 people moved in and the total number crossed 2 million statewide for the first time in its history. On top of all that, at least three clinics that provided labor and delivery services closed, including two in the Boise area, the most populous portion of the state. The combination created longer wait times and more complicated staffing scenarios.

Christine Myron, spokesperson for Idaho’s largest health care system St. Luke’s, told States Newsroom via email that the time to get an appointment with an OB-GYN has increased over the last two years in all of their service areas, which include every region of the state.

Myron also said in recent weeks, a candidate for a pediatrician position declined their offer because of the restrictive obstetrical care environment in Idaho. She said the difficulties in recruiting extend to every specialty of physicians because young families hesitate to move in.

As of Wednesday, St. Luke’s had 10 pediatric physician vacancies, including specialists for pediatric nephrology, oncology, infectious disease and endocrinology. 

Shifting providers, delays frustrating while trying to conceive

For women like Cynthia Dalsing, who has lived in Sandpoint for more than 30 years, it’s difficult because of her age and location. She is 71, and a recent exam showed a polyp in her uterus that needed to be biopsied and removed. That type of exam and procedure could have been done 3 miles away from her house a few years ago, she said, before Bonner General closed its labor and delivery services.

Instead, she drove back and forth to Coeur d’Alene to complete pre-operative steps, including X-rays, blood work and an EKG, then to have the procedure, then to go back again to talk about the results.

“It’s taken weeks to get care that normally would be pretty routine,” Dalsing said. “It’s a 20-minute procedure.”

The procedure was dilation and curettage, Dalsing said, often referred to as a D&C, which is the same treatment sometimes used for an early abortion or miscarriage where pregnancy tissue needs to be removed from the uterus. When she mentioned the upcoming appointment to a friend, Dalsing said they asked if that was still allowed, given the abortion ban, not knowing it’s a common procedure for many other conditions.

“That’s how clueless and confused people are about all this,” Dalsing said. 

Younger women like 36-year-old Danielle Young, who has lived in Boise since the early 2000s, report issues receiving care as well. Young said since 2016, she has switched providers five times because they kept leaving — three of those were within the past three years.

Young said she had to wait eight months for an annual gynecological wellness appointment with a nurse practitioner, and when the time came, the exam felt rushed and chaotic. After that, she decided to switch practices. Young said it took another six months to be seen by the doctor she chose, but it has been worth the wait.

At the same time, Young said she and her husband are trying to conceive, and he has had difficulties finding a clinic where he can get fertility testing. She said most of the past year has been wasted just trying to reach someone on the phone who can tell them where he should go and when he can get an appointment.

“It’s been frustrating for us, because we would like to have children or a child, and I’m getting older,” Young said.