Community members replace a Pride flag that was torn down at an Appleton home on June 25, 2025 | Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner
APPLETON – Last week, toward the end of LGBTQ Pride Month, a crowd gathered outside the home of Benji Roe and Alex Frantz, where a Pride flag had reportedly been vandalized in late May.
In a press release, the advocacy group Citizen Action of Wisconsin said “their flag reading the word ‘HUMAN’ in pride colors and its mount was ripped out of the side of the home and torn off of its flagpole.”
“The flagpole had been bent, and the mounting bracket irreparably damaged,” Roe said at a press conference Thursday evening. “While we are grateful that no further property damage occurred, this incident reminds us that safety and dignity are still privileges not equally shared by all. This wasn’t just vandalism. This was a message.”
A local organizer told the Examiner that isn’t an isolated incident in the area, and speakers at the press conference talked about the impact of Pride flags on LGBTQ people. During the press conference, a new Pride flag went up at Roe and Frantz’s home.
“So today, on the 10-year anniversary of the federal legalization of same-sex marriage, we raise a new flag,” Roe said. “Not just in defiance, but in honor of all of those who have suffered because of hate, here in our community and everywhere that hate still exists.”
Police deemed what happened to Roe and Frantz a targeted attack, according to Citizen Action.
Reiko Ramos, statewide anti-violence program director for the group Diverse & Resilient, which has a program that serves LGBTQ survivors of violence, shared a story at the press conference about a youth seeking the help of someone flying a Pride flag outside his home.
“Complete strangers, they had never met,” Ramos said. “But they knew that his home was a safe place, that they could knock on their door. They were fleeing from their family, because they were experiencing domestic violence as a result of their identity… This youth actually knocked on the door and said, ‘I don’t know you, but I think you might be someone that I can ask for help.’”
“And that is how this young person got connected to our services,” Ramos said.
Mary Bogen, chairperson of the advocacy group Hate Free Outagamie (HFO), went to the press conference at Roe and Frantz’s home. She said she lives down the street.
“There’s a lot of people within this area that have had their Pride flags ripped down or had their houses vandalized for displaying pride flags,” Bogen said.
Bogen said that in some cases, she’s heard from people at Hate Free Outagamie events that they know who is responsible for stealing their Pride flag but don’t feel comfortable reporting it to the police.
Bogen told the Examiner that the LGBTQ+ community in Appleton is strong and thriving but that their resilience shouldn’t be necessary to walk down the street.
“We often face open hostility, whether at a recent vigil we held for victims of the Pulse shooting or simply leaving a Pride event,” Bogen said. “People scream slurs from cars, film us for harassment, and sneer as if bigotry is a civic pastime. And too often, it’s done under the banner of a certain kind of patriotism. This isn’t just incidents, it’s a pattern. We refuse to accept it as normal. Our community deserves safety, respect, and the freedom to exist without fear. That’s why Hate Free Outagamie is working to establish a Trans Sanctuary in Outagamie County.”
In September 2023, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors voted to become a sanctuary for transgender and non-binary people, and Dane County made a similar decision earlier that year, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
Under the Milwaukee resolution, if the state of Wisconsin passes a law “that imposes criminal or civil punishments, fines, or professional sanctions on any person or organization that seeks, provides, receives or helps someone to receive gender-affirming care such as puberty blockers, hormones, or surgery, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors urges the Milwaukee County Sheriff to make enforcement their lowest priority.”
Vered Meltzer, a local alder and reportedly the first openly transgender individual to hold elected office in Wisconsin, said there is “still so much work to be done in Appleton to make things better, but we are the ones who build the world into the community that we want it to be.”
The U.S. Capitol on Sunday, June 29, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate began floor debate on Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” Sunday afternoon, though there are several steps to go before the legislation can become law, and any one of those could lead to additional GOP opposition — potentially dooming the measure.
Senators must wrap up an ongoing review of the bill with the parliamentarian to ensure it meets the strict rules for using the reconciliation process and then run the gauntlet during a marathon amendment voting session.
Additional changes to the sweeping tax and spending cuts package, some of which were being worked on as debate took place, need to garner the support of nearly every Republican in Congress. Otherwise, it will never become law.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune signaled during a brief hallway interview there may be enough votes for a new twist in the Medicaid changes in the bill — an amendment reducing in some way how much the federal government spends on Medicaid in states that expanded the program as a result of Democrats’ 2010 health care law. The federal government currently pays 90% of the costs for enrollees in the expansion.
“We’re going to do what we can to support the effort,” Thune said, referring to an amendment offered by Florida Sen. Rick Scott that was not yet public. “It’s great policy and something that there’s a high level of interest in our conference in getting made part of the bill, and obviously scores a substantial savings.”
But Thune, R-S.D., sidestepped a question about whether making that change would create vote-count issues if Republicans in the House with affected districts object, potentially preventing the bill from reaching President Donald Trump’s desk.
“We have had some of these conversations with (Speaker Mike Johnson) and others over there, and then also with our colleagues for some time,” Thune said. “But I think the way this is designed, and the way that Sen. Scott has written it; it should be something that I don’t know how Republicans couldn’t be in favor of what he’s trying to get done here.
“So, you know, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. Obviously, we’ve still got to get into the debate over here and get through the amendment process and we’ll see what the fate of the amendment is on the floor.”
Currently 41 states, including the District of Columbia, have adopted the Medicaid expansion, according to the health care research organization KFF.
A Scott spokesperson told States Newsroom they would share his amendment once it was final.
Still fluid
Typically when a major piece of legislation comes to the Senate floor the text is set and amendment debate is closely controlled to ensure delicately negotiated deals don’t crumble in full public view.
That isn’t the case this time around and much could change before senators take a final passage vote later this week, potentially as soon as Tuesday.
GOP leaders using the complex reconciliation process to move their signature policy bill through Congress means every provision must have an impact on federal spending or revenue that is not “merely incidental.”
That involves Democrats and Republicans going before the Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official referee, to argue over dozens of provisions. She then decides if a given policy meets the strict and sometimes murky rules.
That process hadn’t yet wrapped up when debate on the megabill began and is expected to continue as the 20-hour clock ticks down toward a marathon amendment voting session.
Senate bill would add $3.2 trillion to deficits
There are also increasing concerns among Republicans, including those in the House Freedom Caucus, over how the bill will impact the federal government’s balance sheet during the next decade.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office announced Sunday morning the Senate’s revised tax and spending cuts package will add $3.253 trillion to deficits during the next decade compared to current law.
Trump appeared to try to assuage concerns through a social media post.
“For all cost cutting Republicans, of which I am one, REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected,” Trump wrote. “Don’t go too crazy! We will make it all up, times 10, with GROWTH, more than ever before.”
The latest score came just hours before senators officially began floor debate on the sweeping package that will extend the 2017 GOP tax law, rework how much state governments have to contribute to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, overhaul several aspects of Medicaid and cut its spending, restructure higher education aid programs and much more.
Senators voted mostly along party lines late Saturday to proceed with the legislation, though leaders had to hold the vote open for more than three hours as they worked to get the votes needed.
Even after taking that crucial procedural step, the bill continued to evolve.
The parliamentarian ruled Sunday morning that another six provisions must be revised to comply with the rules or be removed from the 940-page package.
One Alaska sweetener knocked out
GOP senators cannot include, or might need to restructure, language meant to bring Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski on board by enhancing the federal matching rate for Medicaid in two states with high poverty guideline levels: Alaska and Hawaii. The program for low-income people and some people with disabilities is run as a state-federal partnership.
Since Hawaii is represented in Congress by a Democratic delegation, the Republican benefit would largely have applied to Alaska’s two GOP senators.
Senate Republicans did receive some good news from the parliamentarian in her latest ruling, which cleared language that will steadily lower the maximum percent states can set for Medicaid provider tax rates from the current 6% to 3.5% in 2032.
The in-the-weeds policy has caused considerable frustration among GOP senators across the political spectrum, who argued a prior version would likely cause financial strain for rural hospitals by beginning the process one year sooner.
Planned Parenthood
The parliamentarian is still reviewing several other policy changes in the bill, including whether Republicans can prevent Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year, effectively blocking beneficiaries from receiving care there at all.
Federal law already bars federal taxpayer dollars from going toward abortions with limited exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient. So this change would prevent Medicaid patients, who may have few other options, from using Planned Parenthood for other types of health care, like annual physicals, contraception and cancer screenings.
A prior version of the bill blocked federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood for the next decade.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, did not immediately respond to a request from States Newsroom about how the rulings might impact the bill going forward.
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement the latest rulings show “that Republican attempts to give away goodies that benefit certain states will not pass muster under Senate rules.”
“Senate Democrats have also successfully challenged a giveaway to Big Pharma, as well as policies that make it harder for seniors and kids to get affordable health care through Medicaid,” Wyden wrote. “Republicans wanted to bring back the health care tactics of yesteryear, like waiting periods, lock-outs and annual limits on care, but Democrats have wrestled these out of the bill. I am disappointed that the Republican rewrite of the provider tax changes will remain in the bill: this policy will force states into devastating cuts to health care that seniors, kids and Americans with disabilities depend on. We will continue to fight any attempt to sneak through harmful health care policies in this morally bankrupt legislation.”
Amendment fights ahead
Republicans hope to pass the entire package before the Fourth of July, though they have several hurdles to jump over before they can meet that goal.
Senate floor debate can last up to 20 hours. After that, senators will begin a marathon amendment voting session where members of each political party can propose changing or removing certain pieces of the legislation.
GOP leaders generally like to avoid public disputes within the party but the rules of reconciliation don’t really allow that and several Republican senators are expected to offer amendments.
There is no time limit or cap on the number of amendments that can be offered during vote-a-rama, so that can last hours or even days in theory.
Whenever Democrats and Republicans decide they’ve debated their last amendment, they’ll move on to voting to approve the Senate’s version of the “big, beautiful bill.”
At least 50 Republicans need to vote to approve the measure, with Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote. More than four GOP senators objecting to the overall bill means it cannot pass as it’s written.
Thom Tillis, Rand Paul
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against moving forward with debate so it’s likely they will vote against final passage as well. Two more senators deciding not to back the bill would halt its momentum, at least until GOP leaders could make changes to get their votes.
Tillis on Sunday announced he would not run for reelection, after being attacked by Trump for voting against advancing the legislation.
Senate approval of the bill would send it back to the House for a final vote, though centrist and far-right members of the Republican Conference in that chamber have voiced concerns about changes made in the upper chamber.
Johnson, R-La., will need to keep nearly every one of the 220 House GOP lawmakers supportive if that chamber is to send the legislation to Trump for his signature before Friday.
U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., talks to reporters as he walks to the Senate Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis announced Sunday he won’t seek reelection when his term ends next year, opening up a seat that will become central to control of Congress during next year’s midterms.
Tillis’ announcement came just hours after he voted against moving forward with Republicans’ tax and spending cuts package, eliciting a wave of criticism on social media from President Donald Trump.
Tillis wrote in a statement that it “has been a blessing to go on a journey from living in a trailer park and making minimum wage as a young man to having the honor of serving as U.S. Senator for North Carolina.”
His proudest accomplishments, he wrote, were the “bipartisan victories,” including “working across the aisle in the Senate to pass the largest investment in mental health in American history, passing the Respect for Marriage Act and monumental infrastructure investments, and reestablishing the Senate NATO Observer Group.
“Sometimes those bipartisan initiatives got me into trouble with my own party, but I wouldn’t have changed a single one.”
Tillis wrote he looks “forward to continuing to serve North Carolina over the next 18 months. I look forward to solely focusing on producing meaningful results without the distraction of raising money or campaigning for another election. I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit and representing the great people of North Carolina to the best of my ability.”
Targeted by Trump over vote
Tills’ announcement followed several hectic days on Capitol Hill, where GOP leaders sought to sway him to support the party’s “big, beautiful bill,” though he ultimately voted against advancing the tax and spending cut legislation toward final passage on Saturday night.
That vote elicited a torrent of rebuke from Trump on social media.
“Numerous people have come forward wanting to run in the Primary against ‘Senator Thom’ Tillis,” Trump wrote in one post. ‘I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina and, so importantly, the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Tillis, 64, became a member of the state House of Representatives in 2007 before rising to become speaker in 2011. He held that position until 2014, when he was elected to the U.S. Senate.
Tillis secured reelection in 2020 with 48.7% of the vote compared to his Democratic opponent’s 46.9%. The two were separated by fewer than 96,000 votes out of more than 5.2 million cast.
His term will officially expire in January 2027, but the contest to replace him is expected to begin quickly.
2026 election
Republicans will want whoever emerges from their primary well positioned to fend off a general election challenge. Democrats will be just as focused on the state as they look to regain control of the Senate following the 2026 midterm elections.
Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate and while the map is highly favorable to the GOP, Democrats are expected to spend a considerable amount of time and money trying to flip seats.
North Carolina and Maine are the two most likely pick-up opportunities for Democrats and an open seat in North Carolina could help them a bit. But Democrats still face long odds to flip other seats in deeply red states like Alabama, Florida, Montana and West Virginia.
The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter had rated both Maine and North Carolina as leaning toward Republican wins next year, though its analysts moved North Carolina into the “toss-up” category a few hours after the Tillis retirement announcement.
Jessica Taylor, the Senate and Governors editor for CPR, wrote that Tillis’ retirement “officially makes the Tar Heel State Democrats’ top pickup opportunity.”
“The vulnerability of this seat, however, does not alter the overall Senate math for 2026,” Taylor added. “Even if Democrats were to win here in 2026, they’d still need to flip three more seats, including at least two in deep red states, in order to win a bare majority.”
Democrats not only need to pick up several seats to regain control of the Senate but will need to defend an open seat in Michigan and Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in deeply red Georgia.
The Cook Political Report rates both Georgia and Michigan as “toss-up races.”
Campaign committees react
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., wrote in a statement he expects North Carolina will stay red following the midterms.
“President Trump has won North Carolina three times, and the state’s been represented by two Republican Senators for over a decade,” Scott wrote. “That streak will continue in 2026 when North Carolinians elect a conservative leader committed to advancing an agenda of opportunity, prosperity, and security.”
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Maeve Coyle released a written statement just minutes after the announcement that “Tillis’ decision not to run for reelection is another blow to Republicans’ chances as they face a midterm backlash that puts their majority at risk.
“Even Tillis admits the GOP plan to slash Medicaid and spike costs for families is toxic — and in 2026, Democrats will flip North Carolina’s Senate seat.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin said during an interview with NC Newsline just a few days before Tillis’ announcement that the state represented “one of our best pickup opportunities in the Senate” in 2026.
Martin said he had spoken with former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper about potentially running for the Senate seat.
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, June 28, 2025. Hawley said he will vote for the budget reconciliation measure after a rural hospital fund was added. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted mostly along party lines late Saturday night to move forward with Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” that President Donald Trump wants on his desk in less than a week, after a dramatic three-hour pause when several GOP senators withheld their votes.
Republican Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against moving forward with the sweeping tax break and spending cuts package that contains many of the GOP’s campaign promises. All Democrats were opposed. Vice President JD Vance came to the Capitol in case a tie-breaking vote was required, but in the end was not needed.
Tillis, who is up for reelection in 2026, had told reporters earlier that he would vote “no” on what is called a motion to proceed and on final passage.
He said in a statement the legislation would result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding for North Carolina and force the state to make “painful decisions” about Medicaid. Trump in a post on social media later threatened to find primary candidates to challenge Tillis.
The 51-49 vote doesn’t guarantee the bill will make it through a final passage vote but does make it significantly more likely, even with Republicans’ narrow 53-47 majority.
The procedural vote kicked off a maximum of 20 hours of floor debate on the bill, with half of that time controlled by Democrats and the other half by Republicans — though Democrats after the motion to proceed vote forced a reading of the giant bill expected to take as long as 15 hours. That would mean floor debate would not begin until sometime Sunday.
Unlike regular bills, budget reconciliation packages are not subject to the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, so as long as at least 50 Republicans support the package, and Vance casts the tie-breaking vote if needed, the measure will go back to the House.
The U.S. Senate votes to advance the reconciliation package on June 28, 2025. (Screenshot from Senate webcast)
The vote on the motion to proceed that began at about 7:30 p.m. Eastern was held open for more than three hours, with the votes of four senators in suspense — Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida. All four eventually voted aye and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson switched his vote to aye after earlier voting against the measure.
Lee, however, just before the vote was over, announced he had pulled from the bill an extremely controversial proposal to sell some public lands that was opposed by other lawmakers from the West. He said because of the process being used for the bill, he was unable to obtain enforceable safeguards to ensure the land would be sold to American families and not China or foreign interests.
The latest version of the measure had set up the Interior Department to sell at least 600,000 acres of public land and up to 1.2 million acres of public land within 10 years, advocates said.
Critics, including hunters, anglers and other Western state constituents, have ripped the measure as a “land grab,” as put by Jennifer Rokala, executive director for the Center for Western Priorities.
A summary of the provisions by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee said the Bureau of Land Management “must sell a minimum of 0.25% and a maximum of 0.50% of their estate for housing and associated community needs. This will increase the supply of housing and decrease housing costs for millions of American families.”
Golfing with Trump
Senate GOP leaders released new bill text just before midnight Friday that satisfied rural state lawmakers’ worries about financial threats to rural hospitals posed by cuts in Medicaid. The bill also addresses concerns by Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska about access to food assistance for their constituents despite new restrictions on a USDA program for low-income people.
As talks continued on Capitol Hill Saturday afternoon, a handful of Senate Republicans, including Missouri’s Eric Schmitt and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, were on the golf course with Trump, according to the White House. Graham said on social media that Kentucky’s Paul also played.
Senate Democrats said a fresh financial analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the preliminary Senate text would result in $930 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the joint federal-state low-income health insurance and disability assistance program.
The CBO score was not yet publicly available but Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Finance, pointed to it and slammed the Medicaid provisions as “cruel” in a statement Saturday afternoon.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, ranking Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, also cited the preliminary analysis, pointing to the nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts.
Collins promises amendments
Senate Republicans planned to take their negotiations to the floor and push for amendments after the procedural vote that triggered official debate on the bill, which in its current public version runs 940 pages.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who voiced concerns throughout negotiations about rural hospitals and health cuts that would harm low-income individuals, said her vote on the motion to proceed “does not predict my vote on final passage.”
“I will be filing a number of amendments,” she told reporters as she headed into a closed-door working lunch before the Senate convened at 2 p.m. Eastern.
While Sen. Tim Sheehy wrote on social media Saturday afternoon that he was a “no” on the motion to proceed because of a provision to sell off federal public lands, the Montana Republican changed his mind nearly an hour later and declared he would propose an amendment to strip the provision — which was later removed by its sponsor.
GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma painted somewhat of a rosier picture of the mood in the Senate, telling reporters “we’re good.”
“We won’t bring it to the floor if we don’t have the votes,” said Mullin, who was the lead negotiator with House Republicans on state and local tax deductions, or SALT — a sticking point for Republicans who represent high-tax blue states like New York and California.
The lawmakers settled on a $40,000 deduction through 2029 for taxpayers who earn up to $500,000 annually. The level then reverts to $10,000, the current limit under the 2017 tax law.
Medicaid turmoil
Proposed changes to Medicaid have been strongly resisted by rural medical providers who say they are already financially strapped.
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley told reporters Saturday he would be a “yes” on both the motion to proceed vote and the final bill based on the new rural hospital “transformation program” Senate leadership included in the bill overnight. The measure has yet to be finalized.
The bill’s new version includes $25 billion in a stabilization fund for rural hospitals from 2028 through 2032. The amount is frontloaded to give more of the funds in the first two years.
Critics warn that amount will not fill the financial gaps that rural medical providers will face from losing a sizable portion of federal funding via Medicaid cuts.
While Hawley called the fund a “win” for Missouri over the next several years, he said his party needs to do some “soul searching” over the “unhappy episode” of wrangling over Medicaid cuts.
“If you want to be a working-class party, you’ve got to deliver for working-class people. You cannot take away health care for working people,” he said.
Senators had not yet agreed on other Medicaid provisions as of Saturday afternoon, including a phase-down of the provider tax rate from 6% to a possible 3.5% that’s become hugely controversial.
States use a combination of general revenues, provider tax revenues and in some cases local contributions to fund their Medicaid programs.
Advocates warn that it’s not a guarantee states would be able to backfill the lost revenue, and if they can’t, provider rate cuts and losses of benefits for patients could be on the horizon.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the House version’s provider tax changes — not as deep as the current Senate proposal — could lead to 400,000 people losing Medicaid benefits.
A full and final financial score for the Senate bill is not yet out as the several provisions remain up in the air.
Hawley also praised the inclusion of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act fund, or RECA, that revives payments for survivors and victims who suffered cancer as a result of U.S. atomic bomb testing and radioactive waste dumps.
Clean energy tax credits
In what clean power advocates dubbed a “midnight dumping,” Senate GOP leadership added language to accelerate the phase out of clean energy tax credits that were enacted under Democrats’ own massive mega-bill in 2022 titled the “Inflation Reduction Act.”
The language, which wasn’t yet finalized by Senate GOP tax writers as of 6 p.m. Eastern Saturday, tightened restrictions on foreign components in wind and solar projects — and added a new tax on those that don’t comply.
Senators largely targeted wind and solar credits, ending them for projects not plugged into the electricity grid by 2028. Additionally credits for wind turbine manufacturers would terminate in 2028.
Other tax credits would be phased out at a faster pace, including those for the production of critical minerals, though a credit for metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking, was added in.
Clean energy industry manufacturers and small businesses had hoped Senate Republicans would ease up rollbacks in the House version.
Kurt Neutgens, president and chief technology officer of Orange EV, told States Newsroom in an interview Friday that any further rollbacks would amount to “cutting our legs out from underneath us.”
Neutgens, whose Kansas City, Kansas-based company manufactures heavy duty electric trucks and chargers, was watching for changes to credits to the commercial clean vehicles credit. New Senate GOP text would terminate the credit in September of this year.
Jason Grumet, president of the Clean Power Association, said in a statement Saturday that imposing new taxes on the industry “will strand hundreds of billions of dollars in current investments, threaten energy security, and undermine growth in domestic manufacturing and land hardest on rural communities who would have been the greatest beneficiaries of clean energy investment.”
Alaska carve-outs
Proposed cuts to federal food assistance remained largely unchanged in the new text released Friday night except for a few carve-outs for Alaska.
If the bill were enacted as written, Alaska’s state government could request a waiver for its citizens from stricter work reporting requirements that critics say will result in some SNAP recipients losing their food benefits.
GOP lawmakers also slightly shifted the timeline for when states will have to begin shouldering SNAP costs — the first time states will be on the hook for the federal food assistance outside of administrative costs.
States would be required to pick up a portion of the costs depending on their “payment error rate” — meaning how accurate states are at determining who needs SNAP, including both overpayments and underpayments.
States that have error rates at 6% or above would responsible for up to 15% of the food program’s cost. According to SNAP error rate data for 2023, the latest available, only seven states had an error rate below 6%.
The new text delays the cost-sharing for states until 2028 and allows states to choose the lesser of their two error rates in either 2025 or 2026.
Starting in 2029, states will be required to use their error rate from three years prior to the current year.
The new text includes the option for Alaska and Hawaii to waive their cost share burden for up to two years if their governments implement an improvement plan. In 2023, Alaska had the highest payment error rate of all states, reaching just above 60%.
Advocates for low-income families worry the cost, which will amount to billions for most state governments, will incentivize states to tighten eligibility requirements for the program, or even drop SNAP altogether.
The left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates the cuts will affect up to 40 million people who receive basic SNAP assistance, including 16 million children and 8 million seniors.
The Senate bill would also increase a state’s share of administrative costs for the program to 75%, up from the previous 50% cost-sharing responsibility with the federal government.
Despite inaccurate public statements from Republicans as recently as in a bill summary released overnight, the bill does nothing to limit food assistance to immigrants without documentation because SNAP was never available to them.
SNAP benefits will remain available to legal permanent residents, and Republicans loosened some language to allow certain immigrants from Cuba or Haiti to access the program.
But if the bill passes, federal food assistance will not be available to refugees and asylees who are already in the U.S. — for example, people from Afghanistan, Ukraine and other war-torn places.
Education revisions
Republicans on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions revised or scrapped several measures that the parliamentarian deemed to not comply with the “Byrd Bath,” a Senate process named for the late Sen. Robert Byrd, according to a summary and new bill text out Friday.
Under the revised text, for any loans made starting July 1, 2026, borrowers will have only two repayment plan options: a standard repayment plan and an income-driven repayment plan. The original proposal would have applied these restrictions to existing borrowers, but the parliamentarian struck that down.
Republicans also nixed a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are not accredited.
The new plan also scraps a restriction that barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
‘Even worse than any draft’
Senate Democrats remain united in opposition to the bill and are expected to slow down final passage by introducing numerous amendments on the floor during what is called the vote-a-rama.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer continued to rally against the package during remarks on the Senate floor Saturday afternoon, saying it’s “hard to believe this bill is worse — even worse — than any draft we’ve seen this far.”
The New York Democrat said “it’s worse on health care, it’s worse on SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), it’s worse on the deficit.”
Schumer added that “if Republicans proceed, Senate Democrats will hold them to account.”
“We’ll gear up for another night of vote-a-rama very soon. We’ll expose this bill piece by piece. We will show how it cuts health care, raises costs, rewards the ultra rich.”
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities condemned the cuts to safety net programs as “all in service to tax cuts that are heavily skewed toward the wealthy and corporations.”
“None of this harm has anything to do with fiscal responsibility: our deficits and debts would soar under this bill,” said Sharon Parrott, the think tank’s president, in a statement Saturday.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog, released a new analysis Saturday finding the Senate version will add roughly $4 trillion to the national deficit over 10 years.
“If you thought the House bill borrowed too much — and it did — the Senate manages to make things even worse,” CRFB’s president Maya MacGuineas said in a statement.
House action
Senate Republicans have spent more than a month rewriting the bills that make up the measure in order to meet the strict rules for moving a budget reconciliation package and to earn support from enough Republicans to actually pass the legislation.
The lawmakers have been struggling to maintain spending cuts passed by House Republicans that will pay for the nearly $4 trillion price tag for extending and expanding the 2017 tax cuts.
The House voted 215-214 to approve its 11-bill version of the package in May. Many of that chamber’s GOP lawmakers hoped the Senate wouldn’t change much, though that hasn’t been the case.
The Senate has modified numerous proposals, including those addressing tax law; Medicaid; and SNAP. The Senate bill also raises the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, a full $1 trillion more than the House version.
The revisions have led to concerns among both centrist House GOP lawmakers and far-right members of the party, muddying the waters around whether Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., can cobble together the votes needed to clear the package for Trump’s signature.
Republicans hold a 220-212 majority in the House, so leaders there can only lose four members if all of the chamber’s lawmakers are present and voting.
Trump has encouraged Congress to approve the legislation before the Fourth of July, but with time running short and some tempers rising over how the legislation will impact the country’s deficits, that might not be possible.
“The Great Republicans in the U.S. Senate are working all weekend to finish our ‘ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’,” Trump posted on social media Friday.
“The House of Representatives must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th — We can get it done,” he added. “It will be a wonderful Celebration for our Country, which is right now, ‘The Hottest Country anywhere in the World’ — And to think, just last year, we were a laughingstock. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee's Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Subcommittee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., talks with ranking Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on June 3, 2025 before Education Secretary Linda McMahon testified to the panel about President Donald Trump's budget request for the Education Department. The proposal includes a reduction in the maximum Pell Grant award. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump wants to cut nearly $1,700 from the maximum Pell Grant award as part of his fiscal 2026 budget request — a move that would leave the subsidy for low-income students at its lowest level in more than a decade.
The proposal would have a devastating effect on college affordability and drive up costs for states because they’d have to fill in the missing federal dollars, education advocates and experts say.
The request — part of the president’s wish list for appropriations in fiscal 2026 — faces steep odds in Congress, where key members of both parties responded to the proposal with alarm.
“I don’t want to cut the Pell Grant,” U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, told States Newsroom.
“I’m concerned about that — I’m hoping that we’ll get that resolved,” she said.
Opposition from Capito, whose panel writes the annual bill to fund the Education Department, makes Trump’s wish unlikely to make its way into the upcoming legislation.
The Pell Grant is a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college and is the foundation of federal student aid in the United States.
Catherine Brown, senior policy and advocacy director at the National College Attainment Network, said the cut would be “absolutely devastating,” noting that “college is already out of reach for millions upon millions of low-income students.”
Funding gap
The Pell Grant program is seeing a projected budget shortfall of $2.7 billion heading into the next fiscal year, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The administration has cited the shortfall as a reason to decrease the maximum award.
The request calls for reducing the maximum Pell Grant for the 2026-2027 award year from $7,395 to $5,710. The last time the maximum award stood below this level was during the 2013-2014 award year, at $5,645.
Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request includes $12 billion in total cuts to the Education Department as he and his administration seek to dismantle the agency and dramatically reshape the federal role in education.
Democrats: Cut would be ‘crazy’
Democrats have raised strong opposition, while even the Republican chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees Education Department funding was noncommittal about pursuing Pell Grant cuts.
“We want to make sure that (Pell Grants are) serving the people they need to,” Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama said when asked about any concerns he has on the proposed cut.
Aderholt said he’s hearing “a lot” from his constituents about the proposed reduction, and that it’s “certainly something we’re going to look at.”
Meanwhile, the leading Democrats on the House and Senate education spending panels were quick to blast the proposed cut.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee and the education spending subcommittee, called the nearly $1,700 reduction “crazy.”
“People are not going to be able to do it, and that’s the tragedy of what they’re doing here is dismantling all of the constructs that are there to provide people particularly with public education and a pathway to success,” the Connecticut Democrat said.
“You take away Federal Work-Study, you lower the Pell Grant, that says to me, you want to destroy public education,” DeLauro said.
The budget request proposes slashing $980 million of Federal Work-Study funding and requiring employers to pay 75% of students’ hourly wages, with the government contributing 25%.
The program gives part-time employment to students with financial need in order to help cover the cost of college.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee, said she “strongly” opposes the proposed reduction.
The Wisconsin Democrat said she also recognizes that “there’s a looming shortfall in Pell funding that we need to address.”
“I am hopeful that we’ll be able to work together to do that,” Baldwin said.
Advocates, experts weigh in
Higher education advocates and experts are also sounding the alarm on the proposed reduction, both over the harm to low-income students’ access to higher education and the impact on states and colleges.
“This would just much further exacerbate that gap and drive millions of students out of pursuing post-secondary education or set them on a different path,” Brown, with the National College Attainment Network, said.
Katharine Meyer, a governance studies fellow at the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, described the proposed decline as “truly unprecedented.”
She added that when the Pell Grant is smaller, states have to spend more on higher education, creating a challenge for state officials potentially grappling with other cuts in federal support in the budget reconciliation package Republicans are scrambling to pass.
“States don’t necessarily have the flexibility to spend more money when they have budgets that they need to balance, and they’re facing other federal constraints, including potentially having to take on additional health care costs depending on what happens with health care negotiations in budget reconciliation,” she said.
Capito also said she thought a reduction to Pell Grants would ripple out to the state level.
At the institutional level, Meyer pointed out that if a state has a smaller bucket to allocate for higher education but wants to prioritize financial aid, it would “come at the cost of” the money appropriated to universities.
“Then institutions are not going to be able to spend as much on their operating funds,” she said. “They’re not going to be able to do capital improvement campaigns, which are often very necessary.”
Ties to reconciliation bill
House Republicans have also proposed major changes to Pell Grant eligibility as part of GOP lawmakers’ separate “big, beautiful bill.” The legislative package would slash billions of dollars in federal programs to offset the cost of other parts of Trump’s agenda, including extending the 2017 tax cuts and boosting border security funding.
GOP lawmakers are using the complex reconciliation process to move a package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber and avoid the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship.
The House narrowly passed its version of the reconciliation package in late May. That measure included a provision that would raise the minimum number of credit hours to qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award from 12 per semester to 15. The move would save $7.1 billion in federal spending over 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office estimated.
That new eligibility requirement is not included in the draft proposal for the reconciliation package that Republicans on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released in June.
The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled — to vote on a fraction of the budget areas it had originally planned and to release part of the literacy funding that is set to expire next week.
Legislative leaders have been working behind closed doors over the last week to negotiate with Gov. Tony Evers and work out the details of the state budget as the end of the fiscal year approaches next week.
Areas of the budget still left to take up are at the center of negotiations including the University of Wisconsin system, where Republicans have considered cuts, and the Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for the state’s Child Care Counts program. Evers has said he would veto a budget without funding for the program, which will run out of federal money soon. The committee also still needs to take up the Department of Health Services, the Department of Transportation, the capital budget and more.
The committee co-chairs did not take questions from reporters ahead of the meeting, but as the meeting started Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the other agencies “will be taken up at a later date.” He didn’t specify when that would be.
The budget committee did approve the budget for several state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, part of the Department of Justice, the Higher Education Aids Board, the Department of Administration and the Tourism Department. Each action the committee did take passed along partisan lines.
Portion of $50 million for literacy released
The committee voted unanimously to release $9 million of the nearly $50 million left in funding for literacy initiatives that was first allocated in the 2023-25 state budget. The majority of the money has been withheld by lawmakers since 2023 and is slated to lapse back into the state’s general fund if not released by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.
Lawmakers said action on the other $40 million will be taken soon.
“This has taken a long time to get here. One of the things that this bill was originally about was to make it so that kids could read. We want to help kids read. We want to give schools the tools to be able to do that,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. “Unfortunately, it’s taken this Legislature a tremendous amount of time to allocate the funds for that, and ultimately, that’s simply not acceptable.”
Born said he is glad lawmakers were releasing part of the money Friday and would have further motions on it in the future. He also said the delay on the funding was Evers’ fault. Lawmakers were holding the funding back due to a partial veto Evers exercised on a bill related to the literacy funding. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that partial veto was unconstitutional and restored the original language of the law.
“We’re glad that justice has been done, and we’re here now with the proper accounts and able to do these two separate motions here in the next couple of days in the committee to get this program that was a bipartisan program moving along,” Born said.
Certain projects funded in DNR budget, Knowles-Nelson not
Noticeably missing from the Republicans’ Department of Natural Resource motion was funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, which allows the agency to fund the purchase of public land and upkeep of recreational areas.
Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said lawmakers were missing an opportunity by not funding the program in the budget.
“There’s a lot of individual pet projects in here that seem to be of interest to individual legislators, but there aren’t a lot of park projects that are of interest to Wisconsinites, particularly Knowles-Nelson,” Andraca said.
The committee approved funding in the budget for an array of projects including $42 million to help with modernization of the Rothschild Dam, $500,000 to go towards the repair of a retaining wall for the Wisconsin Rapids Riverbank project, $2.2 million environmental remediation and redevelopment of Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, $70,000 for a dredging project in Manitowoc River in the Town of Brillion, $1.75 million for dredging the Deerskin River and $100,000 for assistance with highway flooding in the Town of Norway in Racine County.
Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), who is the author of a bill to keep the program going, said lawmakers are working to ensure it handles the program in the best way, which is part of why the funding is not in the budget as of now.
“We actually have until 30th of June of 2026 to work on this. It’s something that Sen. [Patrick] Testin and I have been working on along with our staff over the last six months. It’s something that is a bipartisan effort. We’ve met with so many different stakeholders, so many different groups, so many fellow legislators on getting this done,” Kurtz said. “We are committed to get it done.”
Kurtz said that the hearing on the bill was “good” and there will be “a lot more coming up in the future” when it comes to Knowles-Nelson.
The committee also approved raising nonresident vehicle admission sticker fees, nonresident campsite fees and campsite electricity fees.
Office of School Safety, VOCA grants get state funding
The Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million to continue its work. That’s about $700,000 less than what the agency had requested, but is about what Evers had proposed for the office.
The office serves as a resource for K-12 schools — helping them improve security measures by providing training on crisis prevention and response, grants for safety enhancements, threat assessment training and mental health training. It also operates the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns.
The Wisconsin DOJ will also get help filling funding gaps for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants left by federal funding cuts.
Wisconsin’s federal allocation for VOCA grants has been cut from $40 million to $13 million. Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations along with the state DOJ have been navigating the limited funding for over a year. The organizations that receive VOCA grants help people who are the victims of a crime by assisting them with finding housing, providing transportation to and from court appearances and navigating the criminal justice system.
The Republican-approved motion will provide $20 million to cover the federal funding loss. It will also provide $163,500 for two staff positions, which will expire in July 2027. The Wisconsin DOJ had requested an additional $66 million in the budget to make up for the funding gap.
McGuire noted the funding would be significantly less than what the state agency had requested and would essentially create a two-year program rather than an ongoing one.
“[This] maintains the Legislature’s level of input, but it doesn’t actually maintain the same level of service because of the declining revenues as a result of the federal government,” McGuire said. “While we can’t fix all the things that are the result of what the federal government is doing wrong … this is something that will have an impact on communities across the state. It’s going to have an impact on people who’ve had the worst day and the worst week in the worst month of their life. It’s gonna have an impact on people who have been harmed by violence who have been in toxic, abusive relationships. It’s going to have an impact on people who desperately need services through no fault of their own. These are really vulnerable people and they should receive our support.
Wisconsin Grants to get slight infusion, UW budget postponed
The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system. It’s been one of the key issues for debate as Republican lawmakers have considered cuts, while Evers and UW leaders have said the university system needs $855 million in additional funding. Evers has said that in negotiations he and lawmakers were discussing a “positive number.”
The committee did take up the Higher Educational Aids Board, which is the agency responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s student financial aid system, investing in the Wisconsin Grant Program. The program provides grants to undergraduate Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in degree or certificate programs.
The Wisconsin Grants program would receive an additional $5.6 million in 2025-26 and $11.9 million in 2026-27 under the proposal approved Friday. The UW system, private nonprofit colleges and Wisconsin Technical College System would receive equal dollar increases. It also includes a $75,000 increase for tribal college students.
Evers had proposed 20% increases for the Wisconsin Grants for the state’s public universities, private nonprofit colleges and technical colleges — a total $57.7 million investment.
The Wisconsin Technical Colleges System had requested $10.8 million in each year of the biennium, saying there has been a waitlist for the grants for the first time in 10 years and that list is projected to grow.
The committee also approved $3.5 million in 2026-27 in a supplemental appropriation for emergency medical services training costs to reimburse training and materials costs.
“Recruiting volunteer EMS personnel is a challenge all over the state of Wisconsin — certainly is in my Senate district,” Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. “We believe that this will remove one barrier to recruitment of volunteers in our EMS units all across the state.”
Other portions of the budget approved Friday evening include:
$30 million to the Tourism Department for general marketing, and an additional $1 million in the second year of the budget, as well as about $113,000 for state arts organizations and two staff positions and funding for the Office of Outdoor Recreation. The motion includes $5 million for Taliesin Preservation Inc. for restoration projects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home located in Spring Green supporting private fundraising for an education center, the restoration of visitor amenities and the stabilization of some buildings.
$193,700 to the Wisconsin Elections Commission with over $150,000 of that going toward information technology costs and the remaining going towards costs for the Electronic Registration Information Center.
$20.9 million and 147 positions for 12 months of personnel related costs for a Milwaukee Type 1 facility, which is meant to serve as a portion of the replacement of youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which the state had been working to close for years. The 32-bed facility in Milwaukee has a planned completion date in October 2026.
The WisconsinEye endowment received $10 million to continue video coverage of the Legislature.
The committee also approved $11 million for grants to nine of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes. The committee has been excluding two tribes — the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa — from the grant funding for several years due to disputes over roads. The exclusion “strikes me as inappropriate,” McGuire said. He added that it’s “an insult to those people.”
The Milwaukee County Courthouse (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution on Thursday, calling on the Milwaukee County Sheriffs Office (MCSO) to work with the community to create a regulatory framework for the use of facial recognition technology. MCSO is currently exploring an agreement with Biometrica, a data company that provides facial recognition technology to local police departments.
“Facial recognition technology has been proven to disproportionately affect communities of color and young women,” said Sup. Juan Miguel Martinez. “The more facial recognition technology, the more people are able to criminalize people executing their First Amendment rights. I feel this is an issue not left or right.” Miguel Martinez also expressed concerns about the use of facial recognition technology to aid immigration enforcement or to surveil protests.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Privacy concerns have been heightened during the Trump administration’s surge in immigration enforcement and crackdowns on dissent. In Milwaukee, several people were arrested by federal agents after attending regular hearings at the county courthouse. In April, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was arrested and accused of obstructing federal agents after she directed a man sought by immigration officers out a side door in her courtroom that led into a public hallway.
MCSO leaders said they aim to use the technology to identify people after violent crime incidents.
Nevertheless, members of the public and some elected officials raised concerns about the technology. The resolution contains language stating that facial recognition technology can be inaccurate and could negatively affect certain groups including people of color, LGBTQ people, activists, immigrants and people seeking reproductive health care.
The resolution states that the county board supports pausing any future acquisition of facial recognition until regulatory policies can be developed. It also calls on the county’s Information Management Services Division, Corporation Council and MCSO to collaborate with “relevant stakeholders” including privacy and free speech advocates, in developing that policy framework. Out of this collaborative effort will eventually emerge recommendations to the county board as to whether facial recognition technology:
Should be prohibited or strictly limited without the informed knowledge and consent of the individual being scanned, except under narrowly defined circumstances, such as during active criminal investigations,
Whether the types of data collected by the technology should be defined and limited, as well as strict retention periods for data,
Prohibit facial recognition data from being shared with third parties, unless authorized through a rigorous, transparent approval process which itself would be subject to oversight,
And whether departments using facial recognition should be required to submit annual reports detailing its use, including metrics of deployment, effectiveness, and analysis on the impact on communities of color, immigrants and other vulnerable groups.
The resolution passed by the county board calls for a final recommendation to be established no later than May 2026. By December 2025 the county board expects a status update, according to the resolution.
The U.S. Supreme Court, as seen on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday in a major decision reined in nationwide injunctions by some lower courts that had blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order barring birthright citizenship.
The high court declined to decide the constitutionality of birthright citizenship itself. But the justices said the Trump executive order rewriting the constitutional right to birthright citizenship could go into effect within 30 days after Friday’s ruling in the 28 states that did not initially sue.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision thus raises the prospect that a child born in some states would be regarded legally as a U.S. citizen but not in others until the overall question of constitutionality is settled, unless there is further legal action.
The sweeping ruling also likely could hamper other legal challenges against Trump administration actions in which nationwide injunctions are sought. Democratic attorneys general in the states have been successful in obtaining injunctions in the months since Trump was elected.
“GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court!” Trump wrote on social media shortly after the ruling.
Speaking at the White House later, Trump said his administration will move forward with several executive orders that have faced nationwide injunctions, such as suspending refugee resettlement and revoking federal funds from “sanctuary” states and localities.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with these numerous policies and those that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis, including birthright citizenship,” Trump said.
Liberals on the high court issued a strong dissent. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “Today, the threat is to birthright citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize firearms from law abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths from gathering to worship.”
Joining the dissent were Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Barrett writes ruling
In the ruling, the conservative justices found that nationwide “injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”
“The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue,” according to the ruling, written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.
While the dispute before the court related to Trump’s executive order to rewrite the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, the Trump administration asked the high court to instead focus on the issue of preliminary injunctions granted by lower courts.
“The applications do not raise—and thus the Court does not address—the question whether the Executive Order violates the Citizenship Clause or Nationality Act,” according to the ruling, referring to the practice of granting citizenship to babies born on U.S. soil.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared at the White House with the president, predicted the Supreme Court in its new term in October will take up the merits of the executive order that aims to redefine birthright citizenship.
The high court’s ruling instructs lower courts to “move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity.”
“The lower courts should determine whether a narrower injunction is appropriate; we therefore leave it to them to consider these and any related arguments,” according to the ruling.
A narrower injunction could refer to a class action suit.
Barrett argued that a nationwide injunction would not grant more relief for barring the enforcement of Trump’s executive order against a pregnant person who is not a U.S. citizen and fears their child would be denied citizenship.
“Her child will not be denied citizenship. And extending the injunction to cover everyone similarly situated would not render her relief any more complete,” according to the ruling. “So the individual and associational respondents are wrong to characterize the universal injunction as simply an application of the complete-relief principle.”
Stateless people
Trump ran on a reelection campaign platform promising mass deportations of people without permanent legal status and vowed to end the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.
During the press conference at the White House Trump said that birthright citizenship historically was only meant to benefit the children of the newly freed African Americans, not the children of immigrants.
“It wasn’t meant for people trying to scam the system and come into the country on vacation,” Trump said.
Under birthright citizenship, all children born in the United States are considered citizens, regardless of their parents’ legal status.
If birthright citizenship were to be eliminated, more than 250,000 children born each year would not be granted U.S. citizenship, according to a recent study by the think tank the Migration Policy Institute.
It would effectively create a class of 2.7 million stateless people by 2045, according to the study.
In last month’s oral arguments, Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who argued on behalf of the Trump administration, contended that it’s unconstitutional for federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions. Instead, he said, the injunctions should be limited to those who brought the challenges.
‘Consequences for the children’
New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin said during a briefing with reporters that one group of private individuals that challenged the executive order has already filed a class action suit.
“I suspect more will come,” Platkin said.
Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown said at the press conference of Democratic attorneys general that because of Friday’s ruling, the rights of future newborns who hail from states that have not directly challenged the order will be in question.
“In Washington and New Jersey and Massachusetts, Connecticut, your rights are much more strong, but in all those other states, including many of our neighbor states, not participating in this case is going to have consequences for the children born in those states,” Brown said.
With 22 states part of the initial suits challenging Trump’s birthright citizenship order included, that means the order could impact the 28 states that were not part of the initial suit.
Those 28 states are: Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
‘The gamesmanship in this request is apparent’
Sotomayor, in her dissent, argued that the Trump administration brought the question of nationwide injunctions before the high court because it would be “an impossible task” to prove the constitutionality of the birthright citizenship executive order.
“So the Government instead tries its hand at a different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop enforcing it against anyone,” she said. “Instead, the Government says, it should be able to apply the Citizenship Order (whose legality it does not defend) to everyone except the plaintiffs who filed this lawsuit.”
“The gamesmanship in this request is apparent and the Government makes no attempt to hide it. Yet, shamefully, this Court plays along,” she continued.
Sotomayor also questioned the irreparable harm the Trump administration would face.
“Simply put, it strains credulity to treat the Executive Branch as irreparably harmed by injunctions that direct it to continue following settled law,” she said.
She argued that the issue of birthright citizenship was ratified in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution in 1868, following the Civil War, to establish citizenship for newly freed Black people. It was meant to rectify a 1857 case in Dred Scott v. Sandford where the Supreme Court initially denied citizenship to Black people, whether they were free or enslaved.
“By stripping all federal courts, including itself, of that power, the Court kneecaps the Judiciary’s authority to stop the Executive from enforcing even the most unconstitutional policies,” Sotomayor said. “That runs directly counter to the point of equity: empowering courts to do complete justice, including through flexible remedies that have historically benefited parties and nonparties alike.”
Origins of birthright citizenship case
The case, Trump v. CASA, was consolidated from three cases.
George Escobar, the chief of programs and services of CASA, which brought the case, said in a statement that the ruling from the high court “undermines the fundamental promise of the Constitution — that every child born on U.S. soil is equal under the law.”
“Today’s decision sends a message to U.S.-born children of immigrants that their place in this country is conditional,” Escobar said. “But we are not backing down.”
The CASA case was on behalf of several pregnant women in Maryland who are not U.S. citizens who filed their case in Maryland; the second came from four states — Washington, Arizona, Illinois, and Oregon — that filed a case in Washington state; and the third came from 18 Democratic state attorneys general who filed the challenge in Massachusetts.
Those 18 states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has addressed the issue of birthright citizenship.
In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the 14th Amendment, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, extending birthright citizenship.
In that 19th-century case, Ark was born in San Francisco, California, to parents who were citizens of the Republic of China, but had legal authority to be in the United States, such as a temporary visa. While Ark was born in California, his citizenship was not recognized when he went on a trip to China. Upon his return to California, he was denied reentry due to the Chinese Exclusion Act— a racist law designed to restrict and limit nearly all immigration of Chinese nationals.
When his case went all the way to the Supreme Court, the high court ruled that children born in the U.S. to parents who were not citizens automatically become citizens at birth.
The Trump administration has argued that the 1898 case was misinterpreted and point to a specific phrase: “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
Government attorneys contend that the phrase in the 14th Amendment means that birthright citizenship does not apply to people in the U.S. without legal status or temporary legal status who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of their country of origin.
American Family Children's Hospital, part of the UW Health complex on Madison's west side. Nurses in the UW Health system have been seeking to restore union representation since 2019. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
This report has been updated with reactions from UW Health and SEIU.
Five and a half years after nurses launched a campaign to restore union representation at UW Health, the state’s highest court ruled Friday that the Madison-based hospital system has no obligation to collectively bargain with employees.
Act 10, the 2011 state law that stripped most union rights from public employees, also removed legal guarantees of union representation for University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics Authority’s employees, Justice Brian Hagedorn wrote for a unanimous Court.
“When we examine the statutory language along with the statutory history, it is clear that Act 10 ended the collective bargaining requirements formerly placed on the Authority,” Hagedorn wrote.
The Court rejected the argument from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that with the Act 10 changes, the hospital authority as a corporation fit the definition of “employer” under theWisconsin Employment Peace Act.
The Peace Act defines an employee as anyone working for hire other than an independent contractor and an employer as a person — including partnerships, corporations and some other legal entities — that engages the services of an employee.
The hospital authority doesn’t automatically meet that definition, however, Hagedorn wrote.
Hospital, nurses union respond
The hospital system affirmed the Court’s ruling “that the Wisconsin Peace Act does not apply to UW Health” in a statement Friday, adding, “UW Health appreciates the court’s deliberate, diligent and final review.”
In a statement, SEIU and the UW Health nurses said they would continue to seek union recognition.
“While we are disappointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, which found that UW Health nurses are not covered under the Wisconsin Employment Peace Act, we are not deterred,” SEIU and the UW Health nurses seeking union recognition said in a statement.
“Our fight to restore collective bargaining rights doesn’t end in the courtroom,” the union statement added. “We will continue to explore all possible pathways to restoring our full collective bargaining rights, including seeking voluntary recognition and passing legislation, to ensure that all of us, no matter who we are or where we work, have a seat at the table and a voice in our workplace.”
A 2022 agreement between the hospital and the union to discuss issues of concern is continuing, according to the nurses’ union statement.
Over the last three years, “hundreds of nurses have become official union members and have been meeting with top administrators to address critical issues around retention, safe staffing, and quality patient care,” the statement said. “Earlier this year, UW nurses and management mutually agreed to extend this agreement through 2027. All the while, we continue to leverage our collective voice to elect pro-worker leaders at every level of government.”
UW Health has in the past made statements declaring that Act 10 prevented the hospital system from engaging with the union.
“Based upon legal advice received from both internal and external counsel, UW Health is concerned about the lawfulness of engaging in collective bargaining, which is not authorized under any statute,” the hospital system’s press secretary, Emily Greendonner, told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message Friday.
“While today’s decision provided final clarity that we are not required to collectively bargain, the question of whether we are legally allowed to do so has not been decided by the courts,” Greendonner said.
Ruling relates Act 10, hospital system history
The hospital system was spun off from the University of Wisconsin in 1996 into a new “public body corporate and politic,” the UW Hospital and Clinics Authority. The hospital system’s employees were state employees represented by unions and with collective bargaining rights under Wisconsin’s state employment relations law.
The hospital authority “is not defined as a corporation,” Hagadorn wrote, “it is a ‘public body corporate and politic.’” He cited the Peace Act’s definition of “employer” that states the term does not include “the state or any political subdivision thereof.”
The 1996 law creating the new hospital authority removed its employees from the state employment relations law and added language specifying that the hospital authority was an employer under the Peace Act.
Act 10 changed that, Hagedorn wrote — repealing the hospital authority’s collective bargaining duty that was in the 1996 law as well as all other references to collective bargaining.
“In sum, Act 10 purged references to the Peace Act from the Authority Statute,” Hagedorn wrote.
“When it created the Authority, the legislature added the Authority as an employer under the Peace Act and imposed numerous other collective bargaining provisions. In Act 10, the legislature eliminated the Authority as a covered employer along with other collective bargaining requirements. We therefore hold that the Authority is no longer covered by the Peace Act and is not required to collectively bargain under the Peace Act.”
Friday’s ruling was the final stop for a case that started in September 2022. In an agreement brokered to avert a planned three-day strike by nurses demanding union recognition at UW Health, the hospital system and SEIU agreed to ajoint petition to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).
In the petition, the union argued that the hospital should be considered an employer under the Peace Act, while UW Health argued that Act 10 eliminated collective bargaining at the hospital system. WERCsided with UW Health, and Dane County Circuit Judge Jacob Frost subsequently affirmed the employment commission’s conclusion.
The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Republicans cannot exempt gun silencers, short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from being classified as firearms under a federal gun regulation law from the 1930s, according to the Senate parliamentarian’s latest ruling on the “big, beautiful bill.”
The provision addressing silencers, also called suppressors, was added to the House’s version of the bill by Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde. The Senate Finance Committee expanded it, adding in the other two classifications.
Also out of the bill is a sweeping private school voucher program that would have extended billions a year in tax credits to parents who move their children out of public schools.
The rulings mean those sections now will be dropped from the Senate version of the tax and spending cut measure, or rewritten in a way that meets the rules.
Friday morning’s disclosure of the latest parliamentary ruling came as the Senate continues to struggle with the massive legislation, which GOP leaders in Congress want to pass in time for a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline for President Donald Trump’s signature.
The Senate will likely stay in session throughout the weekend and possibly into early next week to finish negotiations on provisions and release the final text, take a procedural vote, debate the bill, hold a marathon amendment voting session and then vote on final passage.
The House, which is scheduled to be in recess all next week for the holiday, is expected to return to Capitol Hill about two days after the Senate approves the bill to clear the legislation for Trump’s signature.
Gun silencer debate in House
Clyde said during floor debate in May that because silencers were included in the National Firearms Act, they were also subject to a $200 tax that he argued violates people’s Second Amendment rights.
“Under the law, they are firearms and therefore are protected by another law enacted in 1791 called the Second Amendment of our beloved Constitution,” Clyde said. “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, and neither shall it be taxed.”
Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost spoke out against the House provision during floor debate, saying that during mass shootings, “silencers make it harder to identify and respond to the source of the gunshots.
“Earlier, I put forth an amendment to strip this tax cut for the gun lobby, and House Republicans wouldn’t even let it come up for a vote.”
Frost said that during 2023, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives “recovered over 400 silencers from violent crime scenes. For this reason, silencers have been highly regulated for nearly 100 years.”
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., released a statement Friday following the parliamentarian’s ruling, saying it eliminated Republicans’ “scheme to eliminate background checks, registrations and other safety measures that apply to easily-concealed firearms and gun silencers.”
“It’s no surprise that Republicans will jump at any opportunity to please the gun lobby by rolling back gun safety measures, but that kind of policy does not belong in a reconciliation bill,” Wyden wrote.
Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But the committee has been going back and forth with the parliamentarian on how to rework other provisions deemed noncompliant to get them into the final bill.
A summary of the provision from Crapo’s office says it would have resulted “in the elimination of the transfer and manufacturing tax on these devices” and preempted “certain state or local licensing or registration requirements which are determined by reference to the National Firearms Act by treating anyone who acquires or possesses these rifles, shotguns, or other weapons in compliance with federal statute to be in compliance with the state or local registration or licensing requirements.”
Private school vouchers scrapped
The parliamentarian struck down the private school voucher program tucked into the Senate Finance Committee’s portion of the package, marking a significant blow to Trump’s and congressional Republicans’ school choice push.
The umbrella term “school choice” centers on alternative programs to a student’s assigned public school. Though advocates say school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, critics argue these efforts drain critical funds and resources from school districts.
The committee proposed $4 billion a year in tax credits beginning in 2027 for people donating to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.
The tax credit provision mirrored a bill that GOP lawmakers — Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana along with Reps. Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Burgess Owens of Utah — reintroduced in their respective chambers earlier this year.
Immigration
Several provisions to reshape how immigrants apply for asylum were struck down by the parliamentarian Friday.
Those provisions would have required a $1,000 fee for an immigrant to apply for asylum – something that is currently free to people fleeing harm or persecution – and imposed a $5,000 fee for someone to sponsor an unaccompanied minor.
Some of the provisions would have added extra fees to immigration courts, which are already facing a historic backlog of millions of cases, for a mandatory $100 fee to continue a case.
The parliamentarian also struck out a policy that would have extended quick deportations, known as expedited removal, to immigrants arrested for a crime regardless of legal status.
Expedited removal is a deportation tool used to swiftly remove an immigrant near a U.S. border without appearing before an immigration judge. The Trump administration has already expanded its use of expedited removal to include the interior of the U.S., rather than just at borders such as Mexico and Canada.
State and local tax
Senate Republicans were still wrangling Friday afternoon over the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, that taxpayers can deduct from their federal tax bills. House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states are pressuring their counterparts in the Senate to agree on a $40,000 deduction cap for taxpayers who earn up to $500,000 annually.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent briefly stepped out of closed-door negotiations to brief reporters, telling them a deal was “very, very close.”
The handful of House Republicans who represent blue states, including New York and California, carry a lot of leverage over final passage of the bill because of the party’s razor-thin margin in the House.
Reconciliation process
Republicans are moving their sweeping tax and spending cuts bill through Congress using a special process called budget reconciliation that comes with complex rules in the Senate.
The chamber’s parliamentarian combs through the bill, hears from Republicans and from Democrats before determining whether each provision has an impact on spending, revenue, or the debt limit.
There are several other aspects to the Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, including that a provision cannot have a “merely incidental” impact on the federal ledger. Reconciliation bills also cannot touch Social Security.
The parliamentarian has ruled severalotherprovisions in the GOP mega-bill don’t comply with the guardrails for a reconciliation bill, though some committees have been able to rework certain policy changes to fit.
Republicans chose to move the bill through reconciliation because it allows them to get around the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which typically forces bipartisan negotiations on major legislation.
The process is time-consuming and opaque, but Republican leaders in Congress are still pushing forward with their self-imposed Fourth of July goal.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 24: New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) speaks to supporters during an election night gathering on June 24, 2025. Mamdani was announced as the winner of the Democratic nomination for mayor in a crowded field in the City’s mayoral primary to choose a successor to Mayor Eric Adams, who is running for re-election on an independent ticket. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The run-away success of 33-year-old Democratic Socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayor’s race shook the political establishment across the country. In Wisconsin, where Democrats are hoping to regain control of at least one legislative chamber in 2026, and where Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has not yet announced whether he’ll seek a third term, Mamdani’s overthrow of the uninspiring establishment candidate and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo should trigger some serious thinking about how Democrats win in the Donald Trump era, and who they represent.
On Wednesday, the morning after the New York City primary, the Republican Party of Wisconsin put out a press release attempting to connect Mamdani to Rebecca Cooke, the Democrat planning to run in a rematch race against U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District. The through-line between Mamdani and Cooke is that Sen. Bernie Sanders has endorsed both candidates. The Wisconsin GOP seized on what it saw as a political opportunity to defend Van Orden in a statement bashing “radical Rebecca” and asking: “Does Democrat political operative Rebecca Cooke agree with her fellow Bernie endorsed candidate on his radical positions? … Keep in mind, President Trump carried WI-03 by 8 points just last year.”
Cooke, contrary to Republican campaign propaganda, is a middle-of-the-road Democrat who earned the endorsement of the Blue Dog Coalition, the most conservative Democratic group in the U.S. House. She certainly agrees with Mamdani that the housing crisis and high prices are key issues for working class voters, but she’s unlikely to support his bolder proposals like publicly owned grocery stores. And Wisconsin Republicans are wrong to think they can easily beat Democrats by accusing them of being “radical” and tying them to Mamdani and Bernie Sanders.
The real radical in the 3rd Congressional District is Van Orden, a MAGA diehard who voted to take away medical care and nutrition assistance from his own constituents, and who likes to make a spectacle of himself, yelling at pages in the U.S. Capitol and mocking Democrats who expressed grief after the assassination of a state legislator in Minnesota.
It seems likely that by 2026, when the “big, beautiful” destruction of public goods from Medicaid to the Forest Service to infrastructure and education to pay for tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy have begun to bite, voters will have had more than enough of that brand of radicalism.
Wisconsin voters have a strong independent streak.
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential primary here by 13.5 percentage points. Sanders’ anti-establishment, progressive populist message resonated particularly strongly with voters in the 3rd District, in the same counties that ultimately went for Donald Trump that year and again in 2024.
As Democrats in our swing state try to figure out how to win again, they should take a lesson from the voters in New York City who rejected the arrogant and deeply compromised Cuomo and chose an inspiring progressive populist, catapulting him to leadership of a new generation of Democrats.
That doesn’t mean Mamdani would win in the 3rd District, or that he’s the model for Democratic candidates everywhere. But it does say something that he triumphed over his detractors from both political parties despite their money and clout, by connecting directly with voters who were worried about housing and high prices. Like both Sanders and Trump, Mamdani presented an alternative to the political establishment and listened actively to voters’ actual concerns. He bravely stood up to big money and stale conventional wisdom. He recognized the urgency of the moment. He leveraged the enthusiasm of young people and beleaguered working people who feel overlooked. He inspired people. He was a breath of fresh air.
What does that mean for Wisconsin?
This week the latest Marquette Poll reported that 55% of voters don’t want Evers to run for a third term as governor. Various political commentators have compared Evers to ex-President Joe Biden, warning that at 73 (almost a decade younger than Biden) he might be too old to win. The poll helped fuel a new round of that sort of speculation.
But the question for Democrats is not whether Evers should run again. Presented with no alternative, 83% of Democratic voters told Marquette pollsters they want Evers.
The real question is, what is the party’s vision for its own future and the future of our state? For a long time, Democrats in Wisconsin have lacked a bench. If Evers decides not to run, there is no obvious candidate to take his place. Meanwhile, Evers is currently engaged in backroom negotiations with Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on the state budget. Embarrassingly, Democratic leaders in the Legislature are not included in those talks and appear not to know what’s being traded behind closed doors.
Asked whether she thinks the closed door sessions are OK, Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein told reporters, “I think this is probably normal. I’ve talked to other majority and minority leaders in the past, and this is kind of how it’s happened in the past.”
That’s it?
As legislative Democrats conduct what some have called a dress rehearsal for real power, preparing to step into the majority for the first time in more than 15 years, it’s not clear how they will govern. Will they still let a Democratic governor call all the shots in budget negotiations? Will they play hardball if a Republican takes Evers’ place — following the example of the current Republican majority and blocking every initiative the governor proposes and seizing his powers whenever they get a chance? What are their bottom-line issues? How will they transform the lives of the people of our state?
We badly need a more functional government and a more cohesive Democratic Party in Wisconsin.
More than anything, we need bold, progressive leadership that articulates a strong vision for a government that serves the interests of the majority of voters, not just rich people and insiders. Mamdani showed that there is real hunger for that in the electorate. That should be an inspiration to Wisconsin’s future leaders.
Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), a member of the Joint Finance Committee, urged Republicans to work to ensure families have access to child care. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Joint Finance Committee is planning to return to its work on the state budget Friday. It will be the committee’s first meeting since early last week when work halted due to a breakdown in negotiations between Republican Senate and Assembly leaders and Gov. Tony Evers.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said then that his caucus objected to the amount of spending being considered in the budget negotiations. Two members of his caucus — Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) — have both publicly expressed their concerns about the budget being negotiated by Evers and Republican leaders, presenting a challenge in the Senate where Republicans hold an 18-15 majority. To pass a budget without winning Democratic votes, as they did last time, Senate Republicans can only lose one vote.
Assembly Republicans have been calling this week for their Senate colleagues to come back to the negotiating table and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said he was still in conversation with Evers and, according to WisPolitics, is optimistic the budget could be completed next week. Assembly and Senate Republicans met in a joint caucus Thursday.
The committee plans Friday to take up 54 sections of the budget, including ones related to the University of Wisconsin system, the Wisconsin Elections Commission, the Department of Children and Families, Department of Health Services and the Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Tourism as part of its work wrapping up the budget. The budget would then need to pass the Senate and Assembly before it could go to Evers for consideration.
Child care is a critical piece, as Evers has said he would veto the budget without investment in the state program to support child care providers known as Child Care Counts. The COVID-era program was launched using federal funds to subsidize child care facilities and help them pay staff and keep costs down for families, but the funds will run out in July and the program would end without state money. Republican lawmakers have said they oppose “writing checks out to providers.”
Democratic lawmakers joined child care providers Thursday morning to echo calls for investing state money to continue the Child Care Counts program.
Brooke Legler, co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said Republican lawmakers’ proposals are inadequate to meet the crisis and Republican arguments opposing subsidies don’t make sense.
“They subsidize farmers. They subsidize the manufacturers,” Legler said. “Last [session] when they denied the funding for Child Care Counts … they gave $500 million to the Brewers, so I have an issue with them saying they can’t subsidize.”
Legler said that if lawmakers don’t make the investment in child care, they need to be voted out of the Legislature next year.
“The $480 million needs to happen, and if it doesn’t, then we need to help Sen. [Howard] Marklein and Rep. [Mark] Born find new jobs in the next election,” Legler said. “This is not OK, and we need to stop this from happening.”
Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), a member of the Joint Finance Committee, urged Republicans to work to ensure families have access to child care, saying the state’s economy relies on parents being able to work and that children are better off when they have a reliable, safe place to stay and learn.
“We cannot allow these critical centers to close their doors and opportunities to be lost to our children forever,” Johnson said. “If the families don’t have quality, dependable child care, if they have to remain at home, or even worse… these are all options that we don’t want to face… and these are all options that our children don’t deserve.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said her caucus is prepared to work on the state budget and she has “continually” been in conversation with Evers and is open to conversations with LeMahieu.
“As of right now, I have not heard from Sen. Devin LeMahieu yet, but my phone is on,” Hesselbein said.
When it comes to negotiations happening behind closed doors, Hesselbein said it’s “probably normal.”
“I’ve talked to other majority and minority leaders in the past, and this is kind of how it’s happened in the past,” Hesselbein said.
In order for Democrats to vote for the budget, she said, they would need to see significant investments in K-12, special education funding, child care and higher education.
“These are the three things we’ve talked about — improving lives, lowering costs for everyday people,” Hesselbein said.
The UW system with the support of Evers has requested an additional $855 million in the budget. Vos said last week his caucus was instead considering $87 million cuts to the system, though Evers recently said that they were discussing a “positive number” when it comes to the UW budget.
Democrats were critical of the K-12 budget that the committee approved earlier this month for not investing in a 60% reimbursement rate for special education and for not providing any general funding increases to schools.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), a member of the Joint Finance Committee, told reporters on Wednesday that a budget agreement between Evers and Republicans won’t necessarily guarantee Democratic votes.
“I think all of us are going to have to make our own decisions about whether or not the budget is one that we can support or that meets the needs of our districts, and that’s as it should be,” Roys said.
The committee will also take action on the nearly $50 million for literacy initiatives that has been stuck in a supplemental fund since 2023 and withheld by lawmakers because of a partial veto Evers exercised on a related law. The state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday the partial veto was an overstep of Evers’ powers, striking it down and restoring the language in the law passed by the Legislature. The money is set to expire and return to the state’s general fund if not released by Monday.
Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin's East Side Madison clinic. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
A union organizing campaign has turned into a contentious conflict at a Madison-based health care nonprofit.
The organizing drive at Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin has gotten mired in a mountain of litigation before the National Labor Relations Board.
There have been disputes over who should be included in a union representation vote as well as dozens of unfair labor practice charges that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has filed against Group Health management.
Most recently, the NLRB’s regional director has issued an order blocking the election after the union argued that the charges against the co-op would taint the outcome. Group Health is denying the charges, and co-op executives say they want a vote to take place as soon as possible.
The Group Health co-op was founded nearly 50 years ago as a health maintenance organization. Members, who include its employees, say the nonprofit’s focus on primary care and wellness has been central to its appeal. Those who support the union contend that the co-op’s response to the union drive is betraying its progressive roots.
“Everyone involved are gut-wrenched by the animosity that has developed,” said Susan McMurray, a former public employee union lobbyist and Group Health member for nearly 20 years. McMurray spoke at a union rally outside Group Health’s clinic on Madison’s far East Side on June 20.
“There’s a multitude of reasons many of us chose a cooperative model over a for-profit shareholder model for our health care and insurance over the past almost 50 years,” said retired state employee Ruth Brill, a Group Health member, at a May 13 rally for the union.
“Some of our fellow GHC members have chosen to form a union. A union is like a cooperative in almost every way,” Brill said. “I’m calling on GHC to uphold the cooperative principles that it was founded on.”
In an interview, Marty Anderson, Group Health’s chief strategy and business development officer, rejected the accusation that the co-op has engaged in union-busting.
“GHC is not opposed to a union here at the cooperative,” Anderson said. “I think our position all along has been that we want our employees to have a voice — all of our employees, to have a voice in that choice.”
But Group Health co-op members who support the union see the management’s response — challenging the union’s proposal for who would vote as well as distributing messages to workers criticizing the union — more critically.
Paul Terranova, a community organizer, said he got involved in trying to persuade the co-op’s board to take a different approach earlier this year after a conversation with his Group Health doctor.
Terranova put together a group of members and asked for a board meeting in March.
“They gave us 20 minutes on the agenda to speak,” he told the Wisconsin Examiner. “It was just us making a presentation to them and them saying ‘thank you.’”
Terranova said his group asked the board and the management to “stop the anti-union messaging [and] anti-union activity” and to “get a second opinion” from other nonprofits that work cooperatively with union-represented employees.
“They refused to engage and they denied that there was any anti-union activity or messaging going on,” he said.
Terranova is also part of a member campaign that has endorsed, with the union, four candidates for the Group Health board in elections that concluded this week.
Update: All four were elected to the board. Election results were announced at the co-op’s annual meeting Thursday evening.
Staffing struggles
The pro-union employees and SEIU filed a petition in December 2024 for a union representing Group Health clinic doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and nursing staff in three departments: primary care, urgent care and dermatology. They also included physical therapists, occupational therapists and health educators.
According to union supporters, nearly 70% of the workers in those jobs and departments had signed cards asking for union representation.
Dr. Ira Segal speaks at a rally for Group Health Co-op employees seeking union representation. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Union supporters say that in those departments, issues including employee turnover and increased workloads prompted the campaign.
“We’re calling for equitable wages, safe provider-to-nurse ratios, meaningful ways to ease the crushing workloads we face and real strategies to improve retention,” said Dr. Ira Segal at the June 20 rally.
“There’s been a lot more turnover in our staffing, and that has increased over the years, which negatively impacts our ability to provide excellent care,” said Dr. Nisha Rajagopalan, a family physician. “The increasing turnover in our staff is unsustainable.”
Staffing crunches in health care have been widespread in the last five years, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“There just aren’t enough care providers and folks that assist those care providers within the [health care] system in total,” said Anderson, the Group Health executive. “We’ve had to flex with the changing health care environment.”
Julie Vander Werff, a physician assistant and union supporter, said she understands the health care workforce challenge. Despite that, she said, she’s experienced a shift in the co-op’s culture that is contributing to the problem.
“They used to be a very respectful employer, and they’ve really gotten off track in terms of how respectful they have been,” Vander Werff said in an interview. “And they’re being really punitive, and we’re losing staff as a result with high, high turnover rates.”
Who’s in, who’s out
The bargaining unit called for in the union’s original petition did not include other Group Health departments: optometry, behavioral health, radiology and pharmacy. It also did not include physical therapist techs, lab techs and interpreters, social workers, receptionists and maintenance staff.
Group Health physician assistant Julie Vander Werff, speaking at a union rally June 20. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Addressing the June 20 rally, Vander Werff explained that “other departments who are not under primary care leadership are happy with their jobs” and not interested in unionizing. “But primary care is not.”
From the start, Group Health challenged the bargaining unit described in the petition, according to a letter that employees leading the union drive sent to the Group Health board of directors on Feb. 10.
“Federal labor law says that to form a union, workers need petition only for ‘an’ appropriate bargaining unit — not ‘the’ most appropriate bargaining unit (however that would be determined), and certainly not the unit their employers would most prefer,” the employees wrote. “Rather than accepting a unit of GHC workers’ rightful choice, however, administration and counsel have chosen to contest our bargaining unit.”
Still at an impasse after two days of hearings before an NLRB hearing officer, the union amended its election petition to focus on a single Group Health facility, the Capitol Clinic on Madison’s near West Side. The employees wrote in the Feb. 10 letter that the change was made at the NLRB official’s suggestion.
Group Health challenged that, too. After an additional hearing, the Minneapolis-based NLRB regional director rejected the union’s petition for a single-clinic vote. The decision directed an election covering all clinical departments at Group Health — the bargaining unit that the co-op management sought.
Group Health’s position is that the bargaining unit the employees sought “didn’t include classes or employees that do go between our clinics,” Anderson said. “And because we are an integrated care delivery system, we need to make sure that all the appropriate employees are in the bargaining class.”
While some Group Health members see the response to the union drive as a turn from the co-op’s roots, Anderson defended it.
“We were formed by a vote of our members, our board is elected by our members, and I think this goes right along with our ethos as a cooperative to allow our employees the opportunity to vote,” he said.
Pro-democracy, or diluting support?
Employees involved in the union campaign and their allies among the co-op’s members argue that the management claim is disingenuous, however.
“While the administration claims they’re fighting us in order to give everyone a voice, this is a union-busting tactic to prevent workers from winning in a fast and fair election of our choosing,” the Group Health workers wrote. “Anti-union organizations do this to flood the unit with people that they hope will vote against our union.”
According to an NLRB report on union representation elections in 2023, 89% of employers didn’t challenge the workers’ proposed bargaining unit.
Group Health member Paul Terranova rejected the idea that expanding the vote to include people in jobs and departments who weren’t interested in the union was “just trying to be democratic.”
“If folks in Madison decided we wanted to put something on a referendum, and the state Legislature said ‘No, everyone in the state has to vote on it,’ everyone would know right away what they were doing,” Terranova said. “People would call BS. It’s the same thing here, right?”
“The right of workers to unionize and to decide what our union looks like . . . doesn’t belong to administration,” Sarah Spolum, a physician assistant, said at the May union rally. “It doesn’t belong to lawyers. It belongs to us, the workers.”
Anderson said Group Health stands by its position. “We have no idea how our employees are going to vote,” he said. “That’s why we want to get to a vote — because we want that certainty and we want to know what our employees are feeling.”
Unfair labor practice charges
Throughout the campaign, the union has filed charges with the NLRB accusing Group Health management of numerous unfair labor practices. The allegations include changes in pay practices due to union organizing, surveillance of employees for union activity, prohibiting employees from displaying union-related materials, firing union supporters and a variety of other actions.
Group Health has denied all the charges.
After the co-op management’s bargaining unit petition was granted, however, the union petitioned the NLRB to block an election. The agency’s regional director granted the petition, ordering the election to be suspended until all the unfair labor practice charges are resolved.
The union, wrote regional director Jennifer Hadsall, “provided sufficient offers of proof which describe evidence that, if proven, would interfere with employee free choice in the election.”
Group Health, through its lawyer, has demanded a hearing on the allegations in the blocking charge, contending that it’s a smokescreen for diminished support.
Susan McMurray, speaking June 20 to supporters of a union at Group Health. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
At the union’s June 20 rally, Susan McMurray read from a letter she sent to Group Health’s CEO.
“Nothing good will come of this decision,” she said of the co-op’s stance during the union campaign. “It will in my view ruin GHC’s reputation in our community, cause irreparable harm to staff, as well as jeopardize patient care.
“And it didn’t and it doesn’t have to be like this,” she added. “In the past few weeks, I have communicated to management repeatedly that we could find a way through the strife and give everyone a graceful way out, a path going forward and something positive to announce at the annual meeting.”
Bad timing? Campaign comes as federal environment turns against unions
The Group Health union campaign is taking place under conditions that are expected to be more hostile to unions in President Donald Trump’s second term.
In NLRB filings, the co-op’s legal team has staked out an agenda to roll back past NLRB decisions that were seen as more favorable to union organizing.
Federal labor law precedents tend to shift with whichever party holds the White House, as National Labor Relations Board appointments are made by the president.
A 2011 NLRB ruling during the first term of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, held that it was mostly up to workers organizing a union to define their bargaining unit, as long as it was appropriate and reasonable.
That presumption was overturned by the NLRB when the White House was held by a Republican during Trump’s first term, then reinstated in 2022 in a subsequent case under Democratic President Joe Biden.
In a footnote, Group Health’s legal brief for its preferred bargaining unit states that the 2011 and 2022 decisions favoring how workers define a unit “were wrongly decided and, as necessary, [Group Health] will seek to overturn those decisions.”
This report was updated Friday, 6/27/2025, with the outcome of board elections at Group Health that were announced Thursday evening.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., right, meets with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident who was erroneously deported to El Salvador by ICE agents. (Photo courtesy Van Hollen's office)
This report has been updated.
GREENBELT, Maryland — The Trump administration plans to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a third country once he is released from federal custody, a Department of Justice attorney disclosed during a Thursday emergency court hearing.
Attorneys for the unlawfully deported Abrego Garcia had made an emergency request Thursday to bring him back to Maryland while his criminal case continues.
The move by the lawyers followed earlier public statements from Trump administration officials that they would deport Abrego Garcia to El Salvador upon his release from a Tennessee federal court as soon as Friday. But Thursday, plans appeared to have shifted to deportation somewhere else.
DOJ attorney Jonathan Guynn, under questioning by District of Maryland Judge Paula Xinis, said the Trump administration planned to deport Abrego Garcia, and “to a third country is my understanding.”
“He will be taken into (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) custody and removal proceedings will be initiated,” Guynn said of Abrego Garcia’s release. “There are no imminent plans to remove him to a third country.”
Xinis declined the request to return him to Maryland, arguing that Abrego Garcia has not been released and that she’s not clear if she has the jurisdiction to fulfill such a request.
She added that Guynn said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security does not have “imminent plans” to deport Abrego Garcia to a third country, while holding out that possibility.
The Supreme Court this week, ruled that it will allow, for now, the Trump administration to continue carrying out deportations to third countries, after a Massachusetts judge barred removals without proper notice. In such cases, immigrants are deported to countries that are not their native countries and may be far from them.
Jonathan Cooper, a partner of Quinn Emmanuel, the firm representing Abrego Garcia in his immigration case, tried to ask Xinis if she would require the Trump administration to notify Cooper and his team before deporting him to a third country.
“We have concerns that the government may try to move Mr. Abrego Garcia quickly over the weekend,” Cooper said.
Xinis said she would not because Guynn said that the Trump administration had no “imminent plans” to remove Abrego Garcia.
Cooper laid out the same concerns in the written emergency request to Xinis Thursday.
“The Government’s public statements leave little doubt about its plan: remove Abrego Garcia to El Salvador once more,” according to the complaint written by attorneys from Quinn Emmanuel.
“If this Court does not act swiftly, then the Government is likely to whisk Abrego Garcia away to some place far from Maryland,” it says.
Federal prosecutors in Tennessee court have said that should Abrego Garcia be released, he would be immediately arrested by ICE agents and could face deportation back to El Salvador, despite having protections from such removal since 2019.
Tennessee case
Abrego Garcia was returned from El Salvador earlier this month to the United States to face federal criminal charges lodged in Tennessee that accuse him “of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.”
The indictment occurred while Abrego Garcia was housed in a Salvadoran prison.
The human smuggling charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee when police pulled Abrego Garcia over for speeding. Eight other men were in the car, but neither Abrego Garcia nor the passengers were arrested.
DHS opened an investigation into the three-year-old stop and Attorney General Pam Bondi held a press conference on the day Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. to face federal charges.
She argued that the traffic stop was part of a years-long human smuggling scheme where Abrego Garcia was paid by members of the MS-13 gang to transport migrants who entered the country without legal authorization to destinations across the country.
His attorneys have denied the charges and Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty in federal court in Nashville.
Stephen Miller, the chief architect of many of the president’s immigration policies and a senior White House adviser, has written on social media that Abrego Garcia would be deported back to El Salvador if released. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have pointed to that statement as to why they want him brought back to Maryland.
The Trump administration has alleged that Abrego Garcia is a leader of the MS-13 gang, and President Donald Trump has made those same allegations. During an interview, the president held up a photo of Abrego Garcia’s knuckles that were digitally altered to type MS-13 on his fingers.
House Democrats pressed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in May about the doctored photo and she sidestepped questions about whether the photo was real, until she eventually said she was unaware it existed.
She added that even if Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. that he would be immediately deported.
Maryland arguments
In Maryland, Abrego Garcia’s lawyers said in their complaint they want to ensure he is not deported again.
“This motion does not ask this Court to adjudicate Abrego Garcia’s custodial status in the Tennessee criminal proceedings; that is for the Tennessee district court to resolve,” they wrote.
“Nor does this motion seek to alter any of the conditions of release set by the Tennessee district court or otherwise interfere with the Tennessee criminal proceedings. This motion simply seeks to ensure that when Abrego Garcia is released from criminal custody, he returns to, and remains in, this District (other than to travel to Tennessee as needed), until further order from this Court.”
Abrego Garcia lives with his family in Maryland. “Maryland is where he was on March 12 at the moment his unlawful removal saga began, when ICE agents with ‘no warrant for his arrest and no lawful basis’ arrested him and locked him up at an ‘ICE facility in Baltimore, Maryland,’” the complaint said.
“Returning Abrego Garcia to Maryland implements the Supreme Court’s directive and safeguards this Court’s jurisdiction in this matter,” it added.
Clashes between administration and judges
Abrego Garcia’s wrongful deportation drew national attention to the Trump administration’s aggressive mass deportations campaign that some judges have found skirted due process rights for immigrants. The White House has clashed with the judicial branch with some frequency over immigration decisions.
The Trump administration this week has, in an unusual move, sued the entire judicial bench of the District Court of Maryland, including Xinis, over a standing order to require a two-day pause for deportations due to a high volume of habeas corpus claims from immigrants challenging their detention in the state. A habeas corpus claim allows immigrants to challenge their detention.
Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections from his home country since 2019, but in March he was arrested in Maryland by federal immigration officials while driving his son home and informed his status had changed. Days later, he was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, a move the Trump administration admitted was a mistake.
In April, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration had to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States, but stopped short of requiring it.
For the next two months, administration officials would testify in a Maryland court that Abrego Garcia’s return was out of their hands and up to the government of El Salvador.
Xinis has accused the Trump administration of stonewalling information and is allowing for discovery in the civil case to continue to determine if the Trump administration violated her court order to return Abrego Garcia.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., left, listens as Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House on June 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C. after a meeting with President Donald Trump. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Thursday told his supporters to call members of Congress and lobby them to support the “big, beautiful bill,” a crucial push with just days to go before a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
Trump’s plea follows several tumultuous days on Capitol Hill as GOP leaders struggled to find consensus on multiple policy disagreements, especially after the parliamentarian ruled core elements of the package don’t meet the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.
Trump during an event in the White House’s East Room that was attended by several GOP lawmakers also cautioned Republicans against voting down the tax and spending cut package.
“We don’t want to have grandstanders,” Trump said. “Not good people. They know who I’m talking about. I call them out. But we don’t need grandstanders. We have to get our country back and bring it back strong.”
Some Republican senators remain optimistic they can work through the weekend and that the House votes will come together next week, despite growing opposition from members in that chamber.
Sen. Eric Schmitt said he doesn’t think the parliamentarian’s rulings will delay the votes “outside the weekend window, which has been the goal all the time.”
“We’re probably voting into the weekend, though. That’s probably my guess — Saturday and I suppose even Sunday — but, that’s the goal, I don’t think that materially changes too much,” the Missouri Republican said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., however, appeared a bit less definite, telling reporters in the afternoon that he didn’t know when the chamber would take the procedural vote that kicks off floor consideration.
“I’ll get back to you on that,” he said.
Medicaid provisions tossed
Earlier Thursday, Senate Republicans suffered a significant setback when the parliamentarian ruled several changes to Medicaid in the bill don’t comply with the rules, which means billions of dollars in savings are no longer available for the GOP to offset the cost of tax cuts.
Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo. R-Idaho, must rework or completely eliminate nine changes the committee proposed to the health care programs, though more of the panel’s proposals are still under review.
Republicans can no longer reduce the amount of federal matching funds for state governments that use their own tax dollars to provide Medicaid coverage for immigrants in the country without proper documentation.
The GOP bill cannot bar gender-affirming care for Medicaid patients.
And Republicans need to change or scrap a proposal to reduce states’ Medicaid provider tax credits, an issue that is relatively in the weeds of health care policy but has sharply divided the GOP and drawn fierce opposition from states.
The changes or eliminations will have a major impact on how much in savings the GOP tax and spending cut bill will generate during the next decade and will likely make the overall package’s deficit impact higher than before. The legislation is intended to extend the 2017 tax cuts and make spending reductions.
The ruling might make it more difficult for Trump and GOP leaders in Congress to get the votes needed to pass the bill at all, let alone before their self-imposed Fourth of July timeline. Senate GOP leaders had said they wanted to begin procedural votes as soon as Friday.
Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., who released the parliamentarian’s rulings, wrote in a statement that Democrats will continue to advocate for removing dozens of proposals from the bill that they believe don’t meet reconciliation rules.
“Republicans are scrambling to rewrite parts of this bill to continue advancing their families lose, and billionaires win agenda, but Democrats stand ready to fully scrutinize any changes and ensure the Byrd Rule is enforced,” Merkley wrote.
A staffer, who was granted anonymity to discuss the chairman’s plans, said the Finance Committee will “rework certain provisions to address the Byrd guidance and be compliant with reconciliation.”
The Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, includes several guardrails for reconciliation bills.
Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., wrote in a statement that the parliamentarian’s ruling will lead to “more than $250 billion in health care cuts removed from the Republicans’ big bad bill.
“Democrats fought and won, striking health care cuts from this bill that would hurt Americans’ walking on an economic tightrope. This bill is rotten to its core, and I’ll keep fighting the cuts in this morally bankrupt bill until the end.”
The parliamentarian is still deciding whether several health provisions meet reconciliation rules, including language that would block all Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from visiting the organization for routine health services.
Federal law already bars funding for abortions with exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the pregnant patient.
The parliamentarian will also decide later whether Republicans’ bill can block the Department of Health and Human Services from implementing a Biden-era rule that would require nursing homes to have a nurse working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Higher ed provisions axed
The parliamentarian also struck down several attempts from congressional Republicans to overhaul the higher education system.
GOP lawmakers cannot streamline student loan repayment options for current borrowers to just a standard repayment plan or an income-driven repayment plan, making such restrictions apply to only new borrowers.
Republicans have to nix a proposal that opened up the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college — to institutions that are for-profit and not accredited.
The parliamentarian scrapped a proposal that would have barred payments made by students enrolled in a medical or dental internship or residency program from counting toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The federal program eliminates remaining debt for borrowers when meeting certain requirements, including working for a qualified employer within the government or nonprofit sector.
The parliamentarian rejected GOP lawmakers’ proposal to end federal student aid eligibility for certain immigrants who are not U.S. citizens.
‘Too many Medicaid cuts’
Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said the parliamentarian’s ruling on the Medicaid provider tax rate will give lawmakers “a chance to get it right.”
“This is a chance for the Senate to fix a problem that they created and not defund rural hospitals,” Hawley said, later adding he supports the House language that would freeze the rate at 6% instead of decreasing it to 3.5% over several years.
Hawley said hours before Trump’s event that he expects the president to get more involved in negotiations now that he’s back from a NATO conference in Europe and said Trump was in a “terrific mood” during a recent phone call.
“I think he wants this done. But he wants it done well. And he does not want this to be a Medicaid cuts bill,” Hawley said. “He made that very clear to me. He said this is a tax cut bill, it’s not a Medicaid cuts bill. I think he’s tired of hearing about all these Medicaid cuts, you know. As am I. It’s because there are too many Medicaid cuts.”
Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy early Thursday night called on leaders to put the House’s language regarding Medicaid back into the bill, wiping out changes made by the Finance Committee.
“My position is that cuts, and especially drastic cuts, to Medicaid have to be avoided. The Senate bill cuts Medicaid too much,” the influential chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote in a social media post. “I agree with President Trump, the House version is better.”
SNAP cuts
The Agriculture Committee also is reworking parts of its bill, some being closely watched by states, to meet the rules that govern reconciliation.
Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said he expects to hear from the parliamentarian before the end of Thursday about whether a revised state cost share provision for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that’s based on error rate payments will be in the final bill.
“It was thrown out the first time, so we actually gave her revised text. If she rules the revised text is fine, then we’ll release it,” Boozman said.
The committee released a statement later in the day announcing the parliamentarian had cleared the revised state cost share for SNAP that’s based on a state’s error payment rate.
States that have SNAP error payment rates higher than 6% will have to contribute some of the cost of the program. The updated proposal will give states the option of choosing between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026 to determine their match, which will begin during fiscal 2028. After that, a state’s match will be determined by its error payment rate for the last three fiscal years.
State and local tax, ‘revenge tax’
Senate Republicans also remained stuck on finding a deduction level for state and local tax, or SALT, that passes muster with House Republicans who represent high-tax blue states.
The House version would allow taxpayers making under $500,000 to deduct up to $40,000 in SALT from their federal tax bill. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000. The deduction cap phases down for higher earners.
Senate Republicans and the White House sought to lower the income threshold but were shot down Thursday by House Republicans, according to multiple reports.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the lead negotiator on SALT for Senate Republicans, said he remained optimistic.
“We’re gonna be in a good spot. We’re gonna find a landing spot,” Mullin said.
A Senate Finance Committee spokesperson declined to comment on current negotiations, including any proposed income level changes.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also weighed in on another tax provision: the so-called “revenge tax” on investments from countries whose trade policies the president views as unfair to U.S. businesses.
Bessent asked lawmakers to remove the up to 20% tax from the mega-bill following an agreement made with G7 partners, he wrote on social media.
“This understanding with our G7 partners provides greater certainty and stability for the global economy and will enhance growth and investment in the United States and beyond,” Bessent said.
The retaliation tax would have raised roughly $116 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Timing on votes
Republican lawmakers don’t have much time left to rework all of the ineligible provisions, clear them with the parliamentarian, read through final bill text, slog through a marathon amendment voting session in the Senate and then move the bill through the House before their self-imposed deadline.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing before Trump’s event that the president is “adamant” Congress must pass the “big, beautiful bill” within the next week, despite the latest ruling.
“We expect that bill to be on the president’s desk for signature by July Fourth. I know there was a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian this morning,” Leavitt said. “Look, this is part of the process, this is part of the inner workings of the United States Senate. But the president is adamant about seeing this bill on his desk here at the White House by Independence Day.”
The Wisconsin Supreme Court issued two orders Wednesday, declining to hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the state’s congressional maps.
Democrats had hoped that the liberal wing of the court retaining majority control of the body in this spring’s election would give them an opportunity to change the congressional lines. Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats, and Democrats hoped they could flip the 1st and 3rd CDs under friendlier maps.
Before Republicans drew new congressional lines in 2010, Democrats controlled five of the state’s seats. The current maps were drawn by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and approved by the state Supreme Court when it was controlled by conservatives. That Court had required that any proposed maps adhere to a “least change” standard that changed as little as possible from the 2010 maps.
While Evers’ maps made the two competitive districts slightly closer contests, they’re still controlled by Republican U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil and Derrick Van Orden.
The two lawsuits were brought by the Elias Law Group representing Democratic candidates and voters and the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of a group of voters. The cases argued the maps violated the state’s constitutional requirement that all voters be treated equally.
The challenges against the maps drew national attention as Democrats hope to retake control of the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s midterm elections.
This is the second time in as many years that the Supreme Court, under a liberal majority, has declined to hear challenges to the congressional maps.
In both cases, the Court issued unanimous decisions without any explanation as to why they weren’t accepting the cases.
Aside from declining to hear the cases, Justice Janet Protasiewicz issued an order denying requests that she recuse herself from the case. Republicans have called for her recusal from redistricting cases because of comments she made during her 2023 campaign about Wisconsin’s need for fairer maps. Previously, after Protasiewicz joined the Court, as part of a new liberal majority, it declared the state’s legislative maps, which locked in disproportionate Republican majorities in the Legislature, unconstitutional.
“I am confident that I can, in fact and appearance, act in an impartial manner in this case,” she wrote. “And the Due Process Clause does not require my recusal because neither my campaign statements nor contributions to my campaign create a ‘serious risk of actual bias.’”
Like the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), the sheriff's office is considering acquiring facial recognition applications from the company Biometrica, but civil liberties advocates are raising concerns about the technology. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin is calling on the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to reconsider plans to adopt the use of facial recognition technology. Like the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), the sheriff’s office is considering acquiring facial recognition technology from the company Biometrica. The company has offered MPD free access in exchange for 2.5 million images, jail records, and other related data of people who have passed through Milwaukee’s criminal justice system, including many who presumably haven’t been convicted of a crime.
“Given all the public opposition we’ve seen to the Milwaukee Police Department’s push to expand their use of facial recognition, the news of the Sheriffs office’s interest in acquiring this technology is deeply concerning,” Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, wrote in a statement for an ACLU press release. “Law enforcement’s use of facial recognition software poses a number of serious threats to civil rights and civil liberties, making it dangerous both when it fails and when it functions.”
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Just days ago, Milwaukee County Sheriff Denita Ball revealed that her office was looking into adopting facial recognition software. Ball told county supervisors during a June 17 meeting of the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee Urban Milwaukee reported, that she was assessing a data-sharing agreement for the technology. MCSO did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Like MPD, the sheriff’s office is exploring an agreement with Biometrica, a company which has pushed back against concerns about privacy and the use of its surveillance tools. Biometrica offers a third-party facial recognition algorithm to agencies like the Milwaukee police and the sheriff’s office. The sheriff’s office states that rather than using the technology for untargeted surveillance, it aims to use facial recognition software to identify people once investigators have an image of a criminal suspect. Ball says that facial recognition would never be the sole basis for an arrest or charges, Urban Milwaukee reported.
On Thursday, the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution requiring the creation of a regulatory process for adopting facial recognition technology. Both at the county and city government meetings, however, law enforcement agencies have been met with public skepticism about their exploration of facial recognition technologies.
Tension bubbled up during a hearing before the Milwaukee Equal Rights Commission last week. Police department Inspector Paul Lough said that facial recognition could provide important leads for investigations similar to those derived from confidential informants and information databases used to run names. During the hearing, MPD officials presented examples of cases in which facial recognition technology helped solve crimes. “Whether or not they would’ve…may or may not have been solved without the use of facial rec., it’s hard to say,” said Lough. “Some probably would have been, some might still be open. But the important part of it is that all of the ones that we’re going to go over are very predatory in nature where there’s exigent circumstances to solve them quickly.”
MPD Capt. James Hutchinson went over two investigations from March 2024 which utilized facial recognition technology. One involved a drive-by shooting, where a passing car opened fire on a pedestrian, who died on the scene. Hutchinson explained that MPD obtained images from surveillance cameras, which were then sent to partner agencies with the ability to run facial recognition requests. Within 16 hours, the police captain told the commission, a potential suspect had been identified.
“We don’t know who they are when we get those pictures back, but we have ways of vetting that information, confirming the identification provided to us,” said Hutchinson. “And that’s what we did in this case.” Unique tattoos helped narrow the search to a man who was wearing a GPS bracelet. When officers went to conduct an arrest, they found two alleged shooters, their guns and the car they are believed to have used. Hutchinson said that a trial is pending for both suspects arrested in that case.
Facial recognition was also used in a sexual assault case, which occurred two days before the shooting. A victim had been followed home in the rain by a man offering her his umbrella, and asking for money. He mentioned that he’d already tried asking for money at a nearby gas station. As they walked, he held a gun to her head and forced her into a garage where he assaulted her. Officers were able to locate the garage with the victim’s help using Google Maps, and later the gas station the man had mentioned before. Surveillance camera photos potentially capturing the man were sent to other agencies for facial recognition assistance, which came back with images of a man who was on probation for sexual assault. He was identified both by the probation agent and the victim, and was sentenced to 20 years of incarceration.
MPD listed 13 additional cases where it used facial recognition, including a string of taco truck robberies on Milwaukee’s South Side involving a group of masked assailants. Although they appeared careful to cover their faces, one suspect let his mask down briefly, which was seen by a camera, and sent to a partner agency for identification. In that case, three to four potential suspects were identified by the technology, each with a certain percentage of certainty such as 97%, 95% and so on. After further investigation, detectives identified those responsible for the taco truck robberies as people flagged by the facial recognition search with the lowest percentage of certainty.
The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. A surveillance van, or “critical response vehicle” is in the background. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
During public testimony, several people expressed concerns about the accuracy of facial recognition technology. Facial recognition software has been shown to have trouble identifying non-white faces, and is prone to errors particularly when identifying people of color. Some feared that defendants might have trouble learning how facial recognition was used in their cases, and felt that police oversight was lacking. Others pointed to the 2.5 million images MPD would give to Biometrica in exchange for the software licenses, and argued that such a move would only further harm community trust in the police. Because the images include mugshots, it’s possible that people whose images were included in that transaction will not be convicted of a crime after being arrested or detained at the jail for a period of time. Other questions included what access federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), would have to MPD’s facial recognition system.
“As we recently found, MPD has been using facial recognition technology on the faces of Milwaukeeans for years, without being transparent with the public or the FPC,” Krissie Fung, a member of the Milwaukee Turners and Milwaukee’s Fire and Police Commission (FPC), said during public testimony. “Because there’s no standard operating procedure to provide guidelines around their process, relying on MPD to follow their own gentlemen’s agreements and internal process is just not how oversight works.”
Fung also said MPD Chief Jeffrey Norman acknowledged when he was reappointed that there is no way to guarantee the safety of the data and faces of Milwaukeeans, and that the data would be going to a third-party company the city does not oversee and which uses algorithms the city will not be able to access. “MPD’s proposal is to trade 2.5 million mugshots in exchange for this license which, by the way, includes my mugshot,” said Fung. “I believe that there are serious legal concerns that have not yet played out in the courts, and that would open us up to significant lawsuits.”
The Milwaukee County Courthouse. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“I cannot help but wonder if the reason Biometrica is so thirsty to trade 2.5 million ‘jail records or mugshots’ in exchange for free access to this technology, is that they assume that those jail records are Black faces, and they clearly need more Black faces to train their inaccurate algorithm,” Fung added. “But we don’t need to let them get those Black faces from Milwaukee.”
“I don’t know a single person in this city that trusts the police,” said Ron Jansen, who has testified about law enforcement at previous city and county meetings. “So the last thing Milwaukee needs to do is hand this department a tool that creates even greater opportunity to harm the people of this city.”
“This is not free,” Jansen added. “… the cost is 2.5 million mugshots of residents, non-residents, whatever. Anybody who’s been through the system here in Milwaukee…2.5 million human beings…Human beings, maybe half of which or more, were never convicted of a crime. This includes people who were wrongfully arrested, or accused, or just anyone who was ever booked into their custody. And while I was writing this, I thought, ‘that also includes people who’ve already been victimized by this department.’ People who have been beaten by the police. People who have been wrongfully accused by the police. This is your biological data, my biological data, everyone’s biological data, and it is being sold to a private company without your consent, all so that they can expand their surveillance network.”
Jansen asserted that the millions of images could include protesters, teachers, even state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who was wrongfully arrested by MPD during a curfew. “His arrest record is likely in there,” said Jansen. He also raised the 2025 case of officer Juwon Madlock, who used his access to police databases to pass intelligence about confidential informants and the home addresses of targets to gangs searching out rivals. “If this is already happening, imagine what will happen when their abilities get expanded,” said Jansen.
The U.S. Senate is currently working on its version of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—a deeply misleading attempt to dismantle the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and derail America’s clean energy future.
Let’s be clear: This isn’t just political posturing. This bill, backed by fossil fuel interests and already passed in the House, would strip away the very tools Wisconsin families, businesses, farmers and communities are using to lower energy costs, create jobs and build a more resilient future. The damage to our state would be both immediate and long-term.
In Wisconsin alone, 82 clean energy projects are currently in the pipeline. These projects represent not just thousands of jobs and billions in investment — they’re the backbone of a 21st-century economy. From wind turbine manufacturing in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley to solar installations in rural communities, Wisconsinites are hard at work powering our future.
If the “Big, Broken Bill” becomes law, it threatens to cancel or delay many of these efforts. Clean energy tax credits would vanish. The Solar for All program and clean manufacturing investments would be eliminated. Tax incentives for electric vehicles, energy-efficient buildings, and sustainable agriculture would be repealed. These aren’t just policy tools — they’re direct investments in our people, places and potential. Many Wisconsin communities have used these credits to launch local projects that reduce taxpayer dollars through direct pay for solar, geothermal and clean vehicles.
And we can’t afford to go backward. Energy demand is skyrocketing — especially with the rapid expansion of AI and data centers. Experts warn electricity bills could jump by 70% in the next five years if we don’t act. Clean, renewable energy remains the cheapest and fastest option to deploy. Gutting these investments would lead to higher prices, more power interruptions and less energy reliability — leaving Wisconsin families and businesses to bear the cost.
Without these programs, household energy costs could rise by up to $400 a year. That’s a hidden tax hike on working families — piled on top of rising costs from tariffs and supply chain disruptions already straining our economy.
Even worse, the bill guts EPA pollution standards and allows major polluters to sidestep environmental compliance. It’s a taxpayer-funded giveaway to fossil fuel interests, trading our health, air and water for short-term corporate profits.
Let’s not forget Wisconsin’s farmers, who were just beginning to benefit from billions in IRA investments for conservation, renewable energy and carbon-smart agriculture. With grant contracts abruptly canceled, many family farms are left holding the bag, having made plans in good faith only to be blindsided.
We can do better. Wisconsin has the talent, tools and environmental leadership tradition to lead the clean energy economy. Clean energy already supports more than 71,000 jobs in our state. With the right investments, we could add 34,000 more and grow our economy by $21 billion by 2050.
We’re also home to over 350 clean energy supply chain companies. With support from IRA tax credits and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), we can expand local manufacturing of batteries, solar panels, wind components, EV systems and smart grid technology — positioning Wisconsin as a national clean energy hub.
This is the kind of forward-thinking, common-sense investment we need. It creates good jobs, lowers energy bills, strengthens supply chains and revitalizes communities.
The Senate still has time to act. Let’s urge our lawmakers, regardless of party, to reject this harmful bill and stand with the workers, innovators and families building a cleaner, stronger Wisconsin. Our policies should reflect our shared values of fairness, innovation, resilience and stewardship — not special treatment for polluters.
This isn’t about partisan politics. It’s about economic survival, energy independence and the future we want to leave our children.
It’s time to move forward, not backward, with a smarter stronger, and more sustainable Wisconsin.
U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters at the Capitol as lawmakers work on the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans appeared deeply divided Wednesday over how to establish a fund for rural hospitals to offset the budget impacts of Medicaid cuts in the “big, beautiful bill.”
The hospitals, which are generally already hurting financially, rely heavily on Medicaid, a state-federal partnership that provides health insurance for low-income households and for some people with disabilities.
GOP senators haven’t yet reached agreement on how to structure the fund, or on dozens of other unresolved provisions in the sweeping package, even though leaders hope to begin voting as soon as Friday. Still up in the air were agreements on major provisions of the measure involving the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s food aid program for low-income people and a proposed selloff of certain public lands.
Republican leaders continued to project optimism. “We’re well on our way to getting this bill passed this week,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a floor speech, continuing to press ahead toward a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline.
Others saw it differently. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson cast doubt on the short timeframe leaders have set to reach final agreement and move the bill through both chambers.
“We’re still discussing some pretty fundamental issues,” Johnson said. “I’m just laying out the reality of the situation. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
‘The only person up here that’s ever ran a rural hospital’
Dueling plans to establish the rural hospital fund to ease the threat of Medicaid cuts circulated among senators working to finalize the massive tax and spending cut measure, but an agreement had not surfaced by late afternoon.
Unofficial details showed Senate Republicans eyeing the inclusion of a $15 billion fund — $3 billion a year between fiscal 2027 and fiscal 2031 — to help rural hospitals, according to multiplereports.
But Sen. Roger Marshall, who sits on the Senate Committee on Finance, said he wants to increase that fund to $5 billion annually, with “half of that going to rural hospitals, and half of it going to primary care and prescription drugs and throw in physical therapy and occupational therapy, all the others as well.”
The Kansas Republican and physician said “we should probably only do it for four or five years and then regroup and see where we are.”
“I’m the only person up here that’s ever ran a rural hospital — I actually know something about them,” he added.
While Marshall said he loves “90%” of the broader bill, he said not nearly enough is being cut.
“But I can’t get the votes to do that, so it’d still be the largest cut in spending in my lifetime anyway,” he said, noting that “it’s going to be hard for the House to vote against it.”
Fund size criticized
On a midday call with reporters, Traci Gleason with the Missouri Budget Project said the stabilization fund being batted around by lawmakers “would fall well short of addressing these problems.”
“Forty-three percent of Missouri’s rural hospitals are at risk of closing, and 17% are considered to be at immediate risk,” said Gleason, who spoke during a virtual press briefing organized by the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.
“Those figures don’t account for all of the other health care providers in rural communities, like federally qualified health centers and others that operate on these incredibly thin margins. So the massive cuts to Medicaid are what is creating the problem and the only real way to address it is for Congress to not make these massive cuts,” she said.
‘Problematic’ Medicaid cuts
Sen. Susan Collins was advocating for a much bigger rural hospital stabilization fund, at $100 billion.
“I don’t think that solves the entire problem,” the Maine Republican and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee said.
“The Senate cuts in Medicaid are far deeper than the House cuts, and I think that’s problematic as well.”
Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia said that the $15 billion “is better than zero.”
“You know, naturally, I’d want it to be as high as it possibly can,” he said, adding that rural hospitals are the “lifeblood” of his state.
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a loud voice against Medicaid benefit cuts, said a stabilization fund is a “good idea but we’re still going to have to address the longer term effects of this.”
When asked for a dollar figure, Hawley said “it depends on the structure of it.”
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn said he keeps hearing the Senate will take a procedural vote on Friday, though that isn’t set in stone.
“Should be a fun weekend for all of us,” Cornyn said. “Can’t wait.”
Once the Senate votes on what is called a motion to proceed, there’s a maximum of 20 hours of floor debate before the chamber must begin its marathon amendment voting session and eventually a passage vote.
SNAP provisions
Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, an Arkansas Republican, said a revised version of his committee’s bill had not yet been reviewed by the parliamentarian.
The updated text alters a section restructuring the cost-share of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a key food assistance program for low-income people.
The provision would require states for the first time to shoulder some of the cost of the program’s benefits. The amount a state owes would be determined by its error payment rate, with greater error rates requiring a higher state share.
Complex rules govern what can and can’t be included in the measure. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the language in the initial proposal did not comply with the chamber’s reconciliation rules.
The updated proposal would allow states more flexibility during the policy’s phase-in in fiscal 2028, allowing them to choose either the error rate in fiscal 2025 or fiscal 2026.
Boozman told reporters that change sought to respond to the parliamentarian’s ruling.
The parliamentarian “asked us to allow them (states) to use a different time frame — essentially gave them more time to understand what their error rate would be and to plan for it,” Boozman said. “And so we adjusted for that and I think we satisfied it.”
Lee and public lands
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee of Utah reportedly narrowed a provision that would mandate the sale of Bureau of Land Management lands. He has not publicly said where it stands with the parliamentarian.
A committee spokesman did not return messages seeking clarification Tuesday and Wednesday, but a version of the changes obtained by news media shows changes consistent with what Lee proposed Monday.
Those changes include limiting the mandated sales to only the BLM — and not U.S. Forest Service lands, as Lee had initially proposed — and lowering the percentage of the agency’s lands that must be sold to between .25% and .5%. The initial proposal required between .5% and .75%.
The updated provision would also only require lands located within 5 miles of a population center to be sold and exempts lands that are currently used for grazing or another “valid existing right that is incompatible with the development of housing,” according to a copy of the changes obtained by hunting and angling publication Outdoor Life.
The provision has sparked opposition from Western lawmakers, including a handful of conservatives.
But it also has its share of supporters. Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan told reporters he had not seen the updated text but remained supportive of the idea.
“I’ve been supportive of what Sen. Lee is trying to do,” he said. “We have a lot of public lands in Alaska that the federal government abuses. But we’re in a good discussion on that, so I need to see the update.”
The National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s request to claw back $9.4 billion in previously approved spending on foreign aid and public media ran into significant opposition Wednesday, potentially dooming its path forward in the Senate.
Numerous GOP lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee, including Chairwoman Susan Collins, expressed concern at how the proposed rescissions would affect American “soft power” as well as local radio and television stations that rely on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — many in rural America.
Collins, R-Maine, highlighted opposition to cutting already approved funding for CPB, which goes toward National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service and hundreds of local stations outside the nation’s larger metropolitan areas.
“The vast majority of this funding, more than 70%, actually flows to local television and radio stations,” Collins said. “In Maine this funding supports everything from emergency communications in rural areas to coverage of high school basketball championships and a locally produced high school quiz show. Nationally produced television programs such as ‘Antiques Roadshow,’ ‘Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,’ are also enjoyed by many throughout our country.”
Collins said she understands objections to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting providing funding to national NPR operations, given what she called its “discernibly partisan bent.”
“There are, however, more targeted approaches to addressing that bias at NPR than rescinding all of the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,” Collins said.
Effect on Alaska
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski appeared to signal she also opposes cancelling funding that Congress previously approved for public media and told White House budget director Russ Vought that she wanted him to understand the ramifications on her home state.
“I hope you feel the urgency that I’m trying to express on behalf of people in rural Alaska, and I think in many parts of rural America, where this is their lifeline, this is where they get the updates on that landslide, this is where they get the updates on the wildfires that are coming their way,” Murkowski said.
“And so how they will be able to not only get the emergency alerts that they need, but also the weather reporting to make sure that fishermen … can go out safely. So that these communities can be connected when a deadly landslide has come through,” she said.
Rural radio in South Dakota, Nebraska
South Dakota GOP Sen. Mike Rounds pressed Vought to ensure uninterrupted federal funding to local radio stations in rural areas of his home state, even if Congress rescinds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s appropriation.
“First of all, we have Native American radio stations in South Dakota. They get their funding through NPR – 90 some percent of what they use. They will not continue to exist if we don’t find a way to take care of their needs,” Rounds said. “It’s not a large amount of money, but would you be willing to work with us to try and find a way for these places where, literally, they’re not political in nature?
“These are the folks that put out the emergency notifications. They talk about community events and so forth. But they’re in very, very rural areas where there simply isn’t an economy to support buying advertising on these stations.”
Vought appeared to agree to work with Rounds, before saying that if Congress approves the rescissions request for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the administration wouldn’t pull back funding until the next fiscal year, which starts on Oct. 1.
Vought also pledged to work with Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer to ensure people in rural areas will have a way to learn about emergency alerts if the rescissions request is approved.
“I am very concerned also about the emergency alerts that come to many places in Nebraska only through that rural radio,” Fischer said. “We’re a state of vastness, very sparsely populated areas that don’t receive cell service in many cases. It’s difficult even with landlines in many areas of my state.”
Reductions to AIDS relief
Chairwoman Collins also said during the nearly three-hour hearing that cutting funding on certain global health programs, including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, “would be extraordinarily ill-advised and short-sighted.”
“PEPFAR has saved more than 26 million lives and enabled 7.8 million babies to be born HIV-free to mothers living with HIV,” Collins said. “This program remains a bipartisan priority of Congress. After years of commitment and stable investment the finish line is in sight. The United States has the tools to fulfill PEPFAR’s mission and get the job done while transitioning HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention to country ownership by the year 2030.”
Collins argued that the Trump administration is unlikely to spend foreign aid dollars on the same “questionable projects” that were part of the Biden administration.
“Unless the current administration plans to continue these controversial projects that it has identified — which I very much doubt — those projects alone cannot be used to justify the proposed rescissions,” Collins said.
Just before Vought began giving his opening statement to the committee, a group of protesters in the room stood up and began to yell in an attempt to preserve PEPFAR funding. They were escorted out by U.S. Capitol Police.
Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell, chairman of the Defense spending subcommittee and former majority leader, appeared to reject some of the proposed foreign aid cuts, arguing they eroded American influence around the world.
“There’s plenty of absolute nonsense masquerading with American aid that shouldn’t receive another bit of taxpayer funding. But the administration’s attempt to root it out has been unnecessarily chaotic,” McConnell said.
“In critical corners of the globe, instead of creating efficiencies, you’ve created vacuums for adversaries like China to fill. Responsible investments in soft power prevent conflict, preserve American influence and save countless lives at the same time. So if we’re concerned about spending, and we should be, it’s important to remember what wars cost.”
Protesters are escorted out of the hearing by U.S. Capitol Police. (Video by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, however, announced that he will vote for the rescissions package, arguing that some ways the Biden administration spent funds in the PEPFAR account deserved rebuke.
“No more preaching to me. I’m going to vote for this package. And do you know why I’m going to vote for this package? Just as a statement that PEPFAR is important but it’s not beyond scrutiny,” Graham said. “That how you run the government has consequences. Don’t lecture me about being mean or cruel.”
How rescissions work
The Trump administration sent Congress the $9.4 billion rescissions request in early June, allowing the White House budget office to legally freeze funding for the various programs included in the proposal for 45 days while lawmakers decide whether to approve or reject it.
The request called on lawmakers to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during the next two fiscal years, a total of $1.1 billion in previously approved spending.
It proposed more than $8 billion in cuts to numerous foreign aid accounts run by the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, including health programs, initiatives that promote democracy, economic development, peacekeeping activities and refugee assistance.
One of the rescissions proposed lawmakers claw back $500 million of the $4 billion that Congress previously approved for “activities related to child and maternal health, HIV/ AIDS, and infectious diseases.
“This proposal would not reduce treatment but would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ LGBTQI+ activities, and ‘equity’ programs.”
The House voted mostly along party lines in June to approve the request in full, sending it to the Senate, where it has been on the sidelines for weeks as Republicans instead work toward an agreement on the party’s “big, beautiful bill.”
The rescissions bill isn’t subject to the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, so it only needs the support of 50 Republicans and Vice President JD Vance’s tie-breaking vote to become law. That, however, must happen before the 45-day clock runs out on July 18.
If Senate leaders do not schedule a floor vote, or that vote does not get the necessary support, the Trump administration would have to spend the funding as previously planned. And the White House budget office would be blocked from sending up a rescissions request for the same accounts for the remainder of President Donald Trump’s time in office.
Senate floor consideration also comes with unlimited amendment debate, giving senators from both parties the chance to call for votes on whether to keep or eliminate each proposed rescission.
Any changes to the bill would require it to go back across the Capitol for a final vote in the House before the deadline.
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