The James H. Shannon Building (Building One), on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by Lydia Polimeni,/National Institutes of Health)

The Trump administration will review frozen grants to universities without using its controversial standards that discouraged gender, race and sexual orientation initiatives and vaccine research.

In a settlement agreement filed in Massachusetts federal court Monday, the National Institutes of Health and a group of Democratic attorneys general who’d challenged the new criteria for grant funding said the NIH would consider grant applications made up to Sept. 29, 2025, without judging the efforts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, or vaccines.

The settlement provides an uncontested path for the agency while courts decide whether the administration can use its controversial analysis. The administration did not agree to permanently ditch its campaign to evaluate health research funding decisions based on schools’ DEI programs.

NIH officials “will complete their consideration of the Applications in the ordinary course of NIH’s scientific review process, without applying the Challenged Directives,” the settlement said, adding that the agency would “evaluate each application individually and in good faith.”

The settlement was signed by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers and the attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

In a Tuesday statement, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said the agreement commits the Department of Health and Human Services to resume “the usual process for considering NIH grant applications on a prompt, agreed-upon timeline.” 

The 17 attorneys general sued in April over $783 million in frozen grants. 

A trial court and appeals court in Massachusetts sided with the states, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in August that the trial judge lacked the authority to compel the grants to be paid, especially in light of a similar decision involving the Education Department.

A U.S. Postal Service employee sorts packages inside the Los Angeles Mail Processing & Distribution Center in December. A new USPS rule on postmarks took effect on Dec. 24 that says mail might not be postmarked on the day it’s dropped off. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The U.S. Postal Service has adopted a new rule that could create doubt about whether some ballots mailed by voters by Election Day will receive postmarks in time to be counted.

A USPS rule that took effect on Dec. 24 says mail might not receive a postmark on the same day the agency takes possession of it. The postal service says it isn’t changing its existing postmark practices and is merely clarifying its policy, but some election officials have looked to postmarks as a guarantee that mail ballots were cast before polls closed.

The new rule holds implications for 14 states and Washington, D.C., that count ballots arriving after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before that day — commonly called a “ballot grace period.” In these states, ballots placed in the mail by voters before the deadline may not be counted if the postal service applies a postmark after Election Day.

The USPS rule says that “the postmark date does not necessarily indicate the first day that the Postal Service had possession of the mailpiece.”

The USPS rule comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to consider a case that could eliminate ballot grace periods nationwide. The court’s decision, expected late this spring or next summer, could render the issues raised by the postmark rule moot.

Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

While the vast majority of mail ballots were successfully cast last year, hundreds of thousands weren’t counted. During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.

The USPS defended the change in a lengthy response to criticisms published in the Federal Register. The agency emphasized that it does not administer elections and doesn’t advocate for or against voting by mail.

The postal service repeated its advice that voters mail their completed ballots at least a week before Election Day. And it noted that voters may request a manual postmark at their local post office free of charge.

“If customers are aware that the postmark date may not align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece, they will be better equipped to adjust their plans accordingly,” the response reads.

“And if policymakers or other entities that create rules utilizing the postmark date are aware of what the postmark date signifies, they are better equipped to determine whether their rules adequately serve their purposes.”

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

Medical bills are spread out on the kitchen table of a cancer patient in Salem, Va. (Photo by Don Petersen/The Associated Press)

This article first appeared on KFF Health News.

As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.

California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and five other states have set caps on health care spending in a bid to rein in the intense financial pressure felt by many families, individuals and employers who every year face increases in premiums, deductibles and other health-related expenses.

Hospitals and other health care providers are citing Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July, as one more reason to challenge those limits.

The law is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade, which mathematically should help the overall health care system meet the caps. But the law is also expected to increase the number of uninsured Americans, mostly Medicaid beneficiaries, by an estimated 10 million people. Health care analysts predict hospitals and other providers will raise prices to cover the double whammy of lost Medicaid revenue and the cost of caring for an influx of newly uninsured patients.

Whether regulators in some states will allow providers to justify higher prices and exceed the spending caps is unclear. Only California and Oregon can penalize providers financially if they fail to meet targets.

“Are we going to say, ‘That’s OK’? Or are we going to say, ‘Well, you exceeded the target. We’re still going to penalize you for that’?” said Richard Pan, a former state lawmaker and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability’s board. “That has not yet been decided.”

The California Hospital Association, the industry’s main state lobbying group, filed a lawsuit in October asking a state court to strike down the spending caps, which it argued fail to account for all the cost pressures hospitals face. Those pressures, it said, include an aging, sicker population; the rising cost of labor; expensive advances in medical technology; large capital outlays on required seismic retrofitting; and changes in federal policy, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The hospital group’s lawsuit also asserted that the state affordability office, by hastily imposing ill-considered cost-cutting targets, was undermining its other key mission of improving health care access, quality and equity.

California’s affordability office last year set a five-year target to cap statewide spending growth, starting at 3.5% in 2025 and declining to 3% by 2029. The annual caps apply to a wide range of health care entities, including hospitals, medical groups, insurers and other payers.

Earlier this year, it imposed much lower spending growth caps — starting at 1.8% in 2026 and declining to 1.6% by 2029 — for seven “high-cost” hospitals.

“The spending caps set by politically appointed bureaucrats could force cuts that result in many Californians traveling farther for care, facing longer emergency room wait times, experiencing more overcrowding and losing access to critical services,” Carmela Coyle, the hospital association’s president and CEO, said in an October press release.

The California attorney general’s office, which will represent the affordability agency, has not yet filed a response to the hospital group’s complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.

Hospitals’ pushback

California is not the only state taking a close look at hospital prices, which are widely considered a primary driver of health care costs.

“States, armed with information that points to payments to hospitals as a driver of what is way beyond affordable commercial premiums, have begun to take increasingly targeted actions focused on commercial hospital prices,” said Michael Bailit, founder of the Needham, Massachusetts-based consultancy Bailit Health, which has advised multiple states, including California, on ways to tame health care spending. “It is not surprising that the hospital industry is going to oppose such state actions.”

In its lawsuit, the California Hospital Association said the affordability office’s own report showed that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are largely responsible for high costs.

Hospitals in some states with cost growth limits, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have expressed objections similar to the ones raised in the California lawsuit. They could follow their counterparts in California if their lawsuit succeeds, said Peter Lee, who led California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, Covered California, for over a decade and is now a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.

Lee said the work of California’s affordability office and similar agencies in other states is just about the only systemwide effort being made to cut health care costs. They are basically saying, “‘Look, health care is taking money away from education, it is taking money away from the environment, it is taking money away from everything in the public sector, and in the private sector it is taking money away from wages,’” he said. “‘We don’t know how you, the health system, are going to do it, but it is your job not just to provide quality but to lower costs. Here’s the target.’”

To be sure, achieving the cost savings that California and those other states are seeking is no easy lift. It will ultimately require persuading large, financially powerful players that compete fiercely for health care dollars to adopt a different mindset and begin cooperating to reduce costs instead. And that, in many cases, will mean lower revenue.

But the status quo, as many people know all too well, means continued financial pain for millions.

In early 2020, Estevan Rodriguez, a bartender at California’s Monterey Beach Hotel, had surgery for a staph infection in his leg. The bill came to nearly $168,000. His insurance paid most of it, but he still owed $5,665, which took him two years to pay, more than $200 every month. “It may not be a lot to some people, but it was a lot to me,” Rodriguez said.

He said he dropped his Hulu subscription, switched to a lower-cost cellphone, and got cheaper car insurance. He started going to food banks rather than the grocery store, he said, and had a lot less time with his kids, because he was constantly working to pay off the hospital bill.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Rodriguez had his surgery, is one of the seven hospitals identified by California’s affordability office as high-cost. A study by the office attributed high hospital prices in Monterey County to a lack of market competition “rather than higher operating costs or superior quality of care.”

The Monterey hospital referred a request for comment about its “high-cost” designation to the California Hospital Association. CHA spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea declined to comment beyond the language of the lawsuit and Coyle’s press release statement.

Reduced competition

Health care analysts worry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce market competition even further by stressing already weak hospitals, leading some to shut services, merge with larger health systems, or close. One study estimates 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing nationwide.

Less competition, in addition to fewer Medicaid dollars and an increase in uninsured patients, will only strengthen the incentive of health systems with the requisite market clout to raise their commercial prices, increasing premiums for employers and individuals.

“We think commercial prices will continue to increase as health care providers, and hospitals in particular, will seek to preserve or increase their revenue,” said Rachel Block, a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation that focuses on health equity.

That in turn could pose a challenge to state affordability regulators tasked with overseeing compliance with growth targets for health care spending.

California’s affordability office is required to consider mitigating factors, including changes in federal and state laws. But some of its board members have expressed skepticism about letting hospitals offset Medicaid losses with higher commercial prices.

“There’s a lot of talk about using HR 1 and other federal policies as an excuse to raise prices on commercial payers,” Ian Lewis, an affordability office board member and policy director for UNITE HERE Local 2, a hospitality workers union in the Bay Area, said at the agency’s July board meeting, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s no more blood to be squeezed from this stone.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

A vacant hallway at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma, Alabama, on Tuesday, Sep. 3, 2024 in Selma, Alabama. (Will McLelland for Alabama Reflector)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled Monday hundreds of millions of dollars each state will receive this fiscal year as part of a massive $50 billion rural health fund baked into Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law. 

The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program — authorized under GOP lawmakers’ mega tax and spending cut package Trump signed into law in July — is designed to offset the budget impacts on rural areas due to sweeping Medicaid cuts.  

Half of the $50 billion will be distributed equally among each state between fiscal years 2026 and 2030, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the remaining $25 billion, doled out over the same time period, is being allocated to states based on several factors, such as steps states are taking to improve access to care in rural communities. 

Texas will get the highest first-year award at $281.3 million, followed by Alaska at $272.2 million, California at $233.6 million, Montana at $233.5 million and Oklahoma, at $223.5 million. 

New Jersey is receiving the lowest first-year award, at $147.2 million. 

“Thanks to Congress establishing this investment and President Trump for his leadership, states are stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care, and support the communities that keep our nation running,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement alongside the announcement. 

Oz added that “CMS is proud to partner with every state to turn their ideas into lasting improvements for rural families.” 

Meanwhile, the nonpartisan health research organization KFF found that the program would only offset a little more than one-third of the package’s estimated $137 billion cut to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas over the next decade.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report. 

Johann Teran, photographed in Minneapolis on Jan. 31, 2025, is among the Venezuelans living in the United States with temporary protected status who is likely to see his legal status expire. The Trump administration has canceled TPS for more than 1 million people from 11 countries. (Photo by Madison McVan/Minnesota Reformer)

WASHINGTON — Since Inauguration Day, more than 1.5 million immigrants have either lost or will lose their temporary legal status, including their work authorizations and deportation protections, due to President Donald Trump’s aggressive revocation of legal immigration.

It’s the most rapid loss in legal status for immigrants in recent United States history, experts in immigration policy told States Newsroom. The Trump administration curtailed legal immigration by terminating Temporary Protected Status for more than 1 million immigrants and ending Humanitarian Parole protections for half a million more individuals. 

“I don’t think we’ve ever, as a country, seen such a huge number of people losing their immigration status all at once,” said Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.  

The move to strip so many immigrants of their work authorization is likely to not only affect communities, but also batter the economy, both immigration and economic experts told States Newsroom. 

“Seeing well over 1 million people lose their work authorization in a single year is a really huge event that has ripple effects for employers and communities and families and our economy as well,” Gelatt said.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by immigrant rights groups and TPS recipients themselves challenging the terminations as unlawful. 

“This is the continuation of the Trump administration attack against the immigrant community, and specifically about the TPS program, a program that, for many of us has been a good program, a life-saving program,” said Jose Palma, a TPS recipient from El Salvador and coordinator of the National TPS Alliance, which is part of several TPS lawsuits.

Who is granted Temporary Protected Status?

A TPS designation is given because a national’s home country is deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, war, natural disasters or some other unstable condition. 

When Congress created the program in 1990, it was initially meant to be temporary, which is why authorizations can be as short as six months and as long as 18 months. 

Immigrants who are granted TPS must go through background checks and be vetted each time their status is renewed, but the program does not provide a path to citizenship.

Under the Biden administration, the number of TPS recipients grew, as did the category of humanitarian parole.

That policy decision was heavily criticized by Republicans, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem vowed to reevaluate TPS country designations for terminations during her Senate confirmation hearing this year.

“This program has been abused and manipulated by the Biden administration, and that will no longer be allowed,” Noem said during her hearing.

Before the Trump administration came into office in late January, there were more than 1.3 million immigrants in the TPS program, hailing from 17 countries. Under the first Trump administration, there were roughly 400,000 TPS recipients.

“Almost a million new people got onto TPS protections under President Biden, so we saw a really rapid expansion, and now we’re seeing a very rapid contraction, which is all to say that in the first Trump administration, there weren’t so many people who had TPS,” Gelatt said.

Noem has terminated TPS for immigrants from 11 countries, and the more than 1 million immigrants affected will lose their protections by February.

Noem extended six months’ protection for South Sudan earlier this year, but decided in November to terminate protections by January. She most recently terminated a TPS designation for Ethiopia on Dec. 12. 

The other countries with TPS termination are Afghanistan, Burma, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela. 

“We’ve never seen this many people lose their legal status in the history of the United States,” David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said. “This is totally unprecedented.”

People losing their status are also concentrated in certain areas. Florida has more than 400,000 TPS recipients, and Texas has nearly 150,000. Bier said he expects certain industries with high TPS workers to feel the impact, such as construction and health care. 

Haiti, Venezuela

Immigrants from two countries — Haiti and Venezuela – make up a majority of recipients set to lose their TPS protections, at nearly 935,000 people.

Venezuelans, who make up 605,000 of those 935,000 TPS recipients, were first granted protections during Trump’s first term. 

On his final day in office in 2021, his administration issued 18-month deportation protections for Venezuelans — known as Deferred Enforcement Departure, or DED — citing the country’s unstable government under President Nicolás Maduro.

“Through force and fraud, the Maduro regime is responsible for the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere in recent memory,” according to the Jan. 19, 2021 memo. “A catastrophic economic crisis and shortages of basic goods and medicine have forced about five million Venezuelans to flee the country, often under dangerous conditions.”

After the Trump administration’s 18-month DED designation, the Biden administration issued the TPS designation for Venezuelans who came to the U.S. in 2021 and again in 2023. The move created two separate TPS groups for Venezuelans.

“The bottom line is that removing the 935,000 Venezuelans and Haitians would cause the entire economy to contract by more than $14 billion,” said Michael Clemens, a professor in the Department of Economics at George Mason University. 

He added that not all the TPS recipients are in the labor market. Some are children or elderly dependents who cannot work. Clemens said the TPS workforce population of Haitians and Venezuelans is about 400,000.

Humanitarian Parole program

Separately, under the Biden administration, nearly 750,000 immigrants had some form of humanitarian parole, granting them work and temporary legal status due to either Russia’s war in Ukraine or efforts by the administration to manage mass migration from Central American countries. 

DHS has moved to end humanitarian parole for 532,000 immigrants hailing from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, opening them up for deportation proceedings. 

“The onslaught of attacks that we’ve been seeing on temporary forms of immigration status, specifically with a humanitarian focus, is truly saddening and concerning,” said Alice Barrett, a supervising immigration attorney at the immigrant rights group CASA. 

Not every recipient has been affected. The agency has kept humanitarian parole for 140,000 Ukrainians who came to the United States after Russia’s invasion in 2022, and 76,000 Afghans who were brought in after the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from their country. 

But since the National Guard shooting last month in Washington, D.C., allegedly by an Afghan national granted asylum, the program is under increased scrutiny and all immigration-related paperwork from Afghans has been halted. 

Court decisions influential

This is not the first time the Trump administration has tried to end TPS. 

During the president’s first term, he tried to end TPS for Haiti, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Sudan, but the courts blocked those attempts in 2018.

This time is different, said Palma of the National TPS alliance. 

“The only thing different right now is that the Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to continue with termination of TPS, even though lower courts are saying, ‘No, we should stop the cancellation of TPS for now, until it’s clear whether the decision was illegal or not,’” he said. 

So far, in emergency appeals, the high court has allowed the Trump administration to move forward in stripping legal status for the two groups of Venezuelan TPS recipients and individuals in the humanitarian parole program. 

Barrett at CASA, which is leading the legal challenge of TPS termination for Cameroon and Afghanistan, said when it comes to TPS termination, “what we are seeing in the second Trump administration is a supercharged version of what we saw in the first Trump administration.” 

“We are essentially seeing during this administration more actual terminations happening early on even while litigation is pending, which has certainly been disappointing for members of the community, because they’re still left in this limbo,” she said. 

Barrett added that even when TPS recipients try to apply for longer-term legal status they face multiple hurdles. 

“For example, we are seeing them questioned or denied relief at asylum interviews because they did not apply for asylum within one year of entering the United States, even though the Code of Federal Regulations clearly creates an exception to this one-year filing deadline for people who have been in other valid status before applying for asylum,” Barrett said. 

“These members of our community who have been in lawful status therefore now risk being placed in removal proceedings and even (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) detention, where conditions are increasingly inhumane and dangerous,” she continued.

TPS recipients are still continuing to fight in the courts and share their stories, Barrett said.  

“These cases are still in progress, and we remain hopeful that despite preliminary rulings leaving so many hardworking individuals and their families in a state of uncertainty, upon thorough review and litigation of these cases the courts will recognize the improper nature of recent TPS terminations and restore status for those seeking safety here in the United States,” she said.

Missouri Capitol Police officers conduct security checks on boxes of petition signatures submitted to force a referendum vote on the state’s new congressional map. State courts in Missouri and other states may decide whether new maps passed this year are used in the 2026 midterm elections. (Photo by Rudi Keller/Missouri Independent)

After Missouri lawmakers passed a gerrymandered congressional map this fall, opponents submitted more than 300,000 signatures seeking to force a statewide vote on whether to overturn the map. But Republican state officials say they will use the map in the meantime.

Missouri courts now appear likely to weigh in.

“If we need to continue to litigate to enforce our constitutional rights, we will,” said Richard von Glahn, a progressive activist who leads People Not Politicians, which is leading the campaign opposing the gerrymandered map.

As some states engage in an extraordinary redraw of congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, state courts may decide the fate of the new maps. President Donald Trump has pushed Republican state lawmakers to gerrymander their states’ congressional maps, prompting Democratic state lawmakers to respond in kind.

Nationwide, state judges are poised to play a pivotal role in adjudicating legal challenges to the maps, which have been drafted to maximize partisan advantage for either Republicans or Democrats, depending on the state. Maps are typically only redrawn once a decade following the census.

While some state courts have long heard map-related lawsuits, the U.S. Supreme Court has all but taken federal courts out of the business of reviewing redrawn maps this year. On Dec. 4, a majority of the court allowed Texas’ new map, which seeks to secure five more U.S. House seats for Republicans, to proceed. A federal lawsuit against California’s new gerrymandered map, drawn to favor Democrats, hasn’t reached the high court.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s brief, unsigned majority decision voiced concern about inserting federal courts into an “active primary campaign,” though Texas’s primary election will occur in March. Critics of the court’s decision have said it effectively forecloses federal challenges to this year’s gerrymanders. The justices could also issue a decision next year that makes it more difficult to challenge maps as racially discriminatory.

State courts are taking center stage after gerrymandering opponents have spent decades encouraging them to play a more active role in policing maps that had been drawn for partisan advantage. Those efforts accelerated after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 limited the power of federal courts to block such maps.

“Basically, every one of the 50 states has something in its constitution that could be used to constrain partisan gerrymandering,” said Samuel Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

State constitutions, which are interpreted by state supreme courts, typically have language that echoes the right to freedom of speech and association found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Wang said. They also include a right to equal protection under the law, similar to the 14th Amendment.

Some state constitutions guarantee free and fair elections, language that doesn’t appear in the U.S. Constitution. Thirty states have some form of a constitutional requirement for free elections, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

At least 10 state supreme courts have found that state courts can decide cases involving allegations of partisan gerrymandering, according to a 2024 review by the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

So far this year, California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Utah have adopted new congressional maps. New maps also appear possible in Florida, Maryland and Virginia. A handful of other states — Alabama, Louisiana, New York and North Dakota — may have to change their maps depending on the outcome of court cases.

Some of those new or potential maps could face legal obstacles. Florida, New York and Ohio all have state supreme courts that have previously found problems with partisan gerrymanders. Maryland Democrats have so far not moved forward with a gerrymander, in part because of fears of an adverse decision from the state Supreme Court.

Four state supreme courts — including in Missouri — have determined that they cannot review partisan gerrymandering claims, though state courts may still consider challenges on other grounds, such as whether the districts are compact or contiguous.

In Missouri’s case, courts could also clear the way for a referendum vote over the new map, which is intended to force out U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who has represented Kansas City in Congress for the past two decades. Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight congressional districts.

The map already faces a bevy of lawsuits, most notably over whether state officials must count some 103,000 referendum signatures gathered before the governor signed the map into law; at least 106,000 signatures are needed to send the map to voters.

Opponents of the new map have also filed lawsuits asserting the Missouri Constitution prevents redistricting without new census data and that an area of Kansas City was simultaneously placed into two separate congressional districts.

Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ decision this month (relying on an opinion from Missouri Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway) to implement the new congressional map, despite a submitted referendum petition, is expected to become the latest legal flashpoint. Opponents of the map argue it is now paused under state law.

Hoskins spokesperson Rachael Dunn said in a statement to Stateline that local election officials have until late July to verify referendum signatures — months after candidate filing ends March 31 and days before the Aug. 4 primary election. At that point, blocking the new map would be all but impossible, even if map opponents have gathered enough signatures to force a vote.

“Once signatures are all verified, the Secretary will certify the referendum based on constitutionality and verification,” Dunn wrote.

Hanaway’s office didn’t respond to questions.

Breaking out of lockstep

As federal courts limit their review of gerrymandering because of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, some state supreme courts are reluctant to wade into the issue because of a practice called “lockstepping.”

State supreme courts often interpret their state constitutions in line with — or in lockstep with — how the U.S. Supreme Court views similar language in the U.S. Constitution. Because the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to limit partisan gerrymandering, some state supreme courts have also declined to impose limits.

Gerrymandering opponents have used a variety of arguments over the years to try to prod state supreme courts out of lockstep. They have emphasized differences in wording between state constitutions and the federal one, and provisions in state constitutions — such as the free elections requirement — not found in the U.S. Constitution.

Sometimes these arguments work — and sometimes they don’t. The North Carolina Supreme Court in 2022 ruled against partisan gerrymandering. But after two Republicans were elected as justices that fall, the court reversed itself months later.

“Across the country, we have seen advocates turn to state supreme courts, and state courts in general, for state constitutional arguments against gerrymandering or voter suppression more broadly. And it’s been met with mixed success,” said Sharon Brett, a University of Kansas associate professor of law. In 2022 as litigation director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, she unsuccessfully argued a case before the state’s high court challenging Kansas’ congressional map.

In states where legislatures draw congressional maps, some lawmakers argue that state constitutions shouldn’t be interpreted to curb legislative authority over mapmaking. Court-imposed limits amount to violations of the traditional separation of powers, they say, with the judiciary overstepping its authority to interfere in politics.

“We expect them to be nonpartisan. We expect them to be unbiased. We expect them to be fair. We expect them to read the constitution and to protect or at least respect the separation of powers,” said Utah Republican state Rep. Casey Snider, speaking of Utah courts during a floor speech earlier this month.

In Utah, state courts waded through a yearslong legal battle over whether state lawmakers must adopt a non-gerrymandered map. After the Republican-controlled legislature repealed and replaced an independent redistricting process, the Utah Supreme Court last year ruled lawmakers had violated the state constitution.

A Utah district court judge in November then adopted a congressional map that will likely lead next year to the election of a Democrat. The state’s four congressional seats are currently all held by Republicans.

“What we would like is them to redistrict based on population — fairly,” Katharine Biele, president of the League of Women Voters of Utah, said of state lawmakers.

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox called the Utah legislature into special session earlier in December to respond to the judge’s decision. Lawmakers pushed back candidate filing deadlines in hopes that an appeal to the Utah Supreme Court will result in a decision overturning the judge’s adopted map.

They also passed a resolution condemning the judiciary.

Constitutional concerns

As the Indiana legislature weighed a gerrymandered map to boost Republicans this month, some lawmakers were reluctant to constrain state courts. Democrats currently hold two of the state’s nine congressional districts.

The GOP-controlled Indiana Senate voted down the map in a major setback to Trump’s national redistricting push. The vote came after a floor debate where opponents raised concerns about limiting court involvement; the legislation included a provision sending any legal challenge directly to the Indiana Supreme Court, bypassing a jury trial.

Indiana Republican state Sen. Greg Walker said the measure violated the state constitution, which guarantees an “inviolate” right to a jury trial in all civil cases. “In legal terms, ‘inviolate’ has the implication of being sacred, as opposed to being just a piece of the law,” Walker said on the floor.

State Sen. Mike Gaskill, a Republican who sponsored the map, said during a speech that Indiana residents would benefit from a quick process to resolve legal challenges. “Both sides, in any case, want them to be settled quickly so that they don’t cause chaos and interruptions in the elections process,” he said.

If the map had passed, opponents would have likely attacked the measure using a provision of the Indiana Constitution that requires “free and equal” elections.

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

 

A person places flowers in front of a photograph of Mother Cabrini, patron saint of immigrants, during an interfaith service on behalf of immigrants in November in Miami. GOP reversals in this year’s elections, including in Miami, are setting off alarm bells for Republicans and could cause redistricting efforts to backfire. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

GOP reversals in this year’s elections, especially in some urban and immigrant communities, are setting off alarm bells for Republicans using redistricting to try to keep control of Congress in next year’s midterms.

Redistricting plans demanded by President Donald Trump in states such as Texas and Missouri — meant to capitalize on his stronger showing among certain urban voters in the 2024 election — could backfire, as cities in Florida, New Jersey and Virginia returned to Democratic voting patterns in off-year elections this past November.

Experts see the shift as a sign of possible souring on the administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, combined with disappointment in economic conditions.

Paul Brace, an emeritus political science professor of legal studies at Rice University in Houston, said Texas Republicans are likely to gain less than they imagine from new maps designed to pick up five additional seats for the party. He said minority voters’ interest in Trump was “temporary” and that he had underperformed on the economy.

“Trump’s redistricting efforts are facing headwinds and, even in Texas, may not yield all he had hoped,” Brace said.

Redistricting efforts in Texas spawned a retaliatory plan in California aimed at getting five more Democratic seats. Other states have leapt into the fray, with Republicans claiming an overall edge of three potential seats in proposed maps.

Cuban-born Jose Arango, chair of the Hudson County Republican Party in New Jersey, said immigration enforcement has gone too far and caused a backlash at the polls.

“There are people in the administration who frankly don’t know what the hell is going on,” Arango said. “If you arrest criminals, God bless you. We don’t want criminals in our streets. But then you deport people who have been here 30 years, 20 years, and have contributed to society, have been good people for the United States. You go into any business in agriculture, the hospitality business, even the guy who cuts the grass — they’re all undocumented. Who’s going to pick our tomatoes?”

As immigration arrests increase this year, a growing share of those detained have no criminal convictions.

New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District, which includes urban Paterson, went from a surprising Trump win last year to a lopsided victory this year for Democratic Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. Trump won the district last year by 3 percentage points and Sherrill won by 16 points. The district is majority-minority and 39% immigrant.

There was a similar turnaround in Miami, a majority-immigrant city that elected a Democratic mayor for the first time in almost 30 years. Parts of immigrant-rich Northern Virginia also shifted in the governor’s race there.

In the New Jersey district, Billy Prempeh, a Republican whose parents emigrated from Ghana, lost a surprisingly close 2024 race for U.S. House to Democrat Nellie Pou, of Puerto Rican descent, who became the first Latina from New Jersey to serve in Congress.

Prempeh this year launched another campaign for the seat, but withdrew after Sherrill won the governor’s race, telling Stateline that any Republican who runs for that seat “is going to get slaughtered.”

Prempeh doesn’t blame Trump or more aggressive immigration enforcement for the shift. He said his parents and their family waited years to get here legally, and he objects to people being allowed to stay for court dates after they crossed the border with Mexico.

“We aren’t deporting enough people. Not everybody agrees with me on that,” Prempeh said.

Parts of Virginia saw similar voting pattern changes. Prince William County, south of Washington, D.C., saw support for Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger jump to 67% compared with 57% for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris last year. The county is about 26% immigrant and 27% Hispanic.

Asian American and Hispanic voters shifted more Democratic this year in both New Jersey and Virginia, said J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, expanding on a November post on the subject.

However, some of those Virginia voters might have sat out the governor’s race, Coleman said.

“I do think there is an element of Trump-curious minority voters staying home this year,” Coleman said. “There were many heavily Asian and Hispanic precincts in Northern Virginia that saw this huge percentage swing from Harris to Spanberger, but also saw relatively weak turnout.”

The pattern is “hard to extrapolate” to Texas or other states with new maps, Coleman said, “but Democrats are probably liking what they saw in this year’s elections.”

He said one of the redrawn districts in Texas is now likely to go to Democrats: the majority-Hispanic 28th Congressional District, which includes parts of San Antonio and South Texas. And the nearby 34th Congressional District is now a tossup instead of leaning Republican, according to new Center for Politics projections.

The pattern in New Jersey’s 9th Congressional District this year was consistent in Hispanic areas statewide, according to an analysis provided to Stateline by Michael Foley, elections coordinator of State Navigate, a Virginia-based nonprofit that analyzes state election data.

New Jersey Hispanic precincts “swung heavily” toward Sherrill compared with their 2024 vote for Harris, Foley said in an email. He noted that New Jersey and Florida Hispanic populations are largely from the Caribbean and may not reflect patterns elsewhere, such as Texas where the Hispanic population is heavily Mexican American.

Pou, who won the New Jersey seat, said economics played a part in this year’s electoral shift.

“The President made a promise to my constituents that he’d lower costs and instead he’s made the problem worse with his tariffs that raised costs across the board,” Pou said in a statement to Stateline.

Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics at Rider University, said immigration and pocketbook issues both played a role in places like the 9th District, as did an influx of Democratic campaign money.

“The biggest reason is a sense of letdown in President Trump,” Rasmussen said. “There were many urban voters who decided they liked what Trump was saying, they liked the Hispanic outreach, they bought into his economic message. And just one year later, they’re equally disillusioned.”

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

Then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Geoffrey Berman announces charges against Jeffrey Epstein on July 8, 2019, in New York City.  (Photo by Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors have sent a million more pages related to deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the Department of Justice, which plans to release them in the coming weeks, officials said Wednesday. 

Justice Department staff wrote in a social media post the documents came from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and that FBI agents plan to review the information before release “in compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, existing statutes, and judicial orders.”

“We have lawyers working around the clock to review and make the legally required redactions to protect victims, and we will release the documents as soon as possible,” the social media post stated. “Due to the mass volume of material, this process may take a few more weeks. The Department will continue to fully comply with federal law and President (Donald) Trump’s direction to release the files.”

A bipartisan group of U.S. House lawmakers used a discharge petition to force a floor vote in that chamber on legislation that required the Department of Justice to release all documents it had related to the Epstein investigation. The Senate approved the bill through the fast-track unanimous consent process. 

Trump signed the legislation and has repeatedly sought to distance himself from Epstein.

The Justice Department released the first batch of documents Friday and released 30,000 more pages Tuesday. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a social media post shortly after the DOJ announcement that he was disappointed in the process. 

“A Christmas Eve news dump of ‘a million more files’ only proves what we already know: Trump is engaged in a massive coverup,” Schumer wrote. “The question Americans deserve answered is simple: WHAT are they hiding—and WHY? Justice delayed is justice denied. Release the files. Follow the law.”

FBI Director Kash Patel, left, looks at photos of the two West Virginia National Guard soldiers shot in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 27, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The man accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House last month, killing one, was charged in federal court Wednesday, moving the case out of the local court system.

United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro wrote in a statement the “transfer of this case from Superior Court to District Court ensures that we can undertake the serious, deliberate, and weighty analysis required to determine if the death penalty is appropriate here.”

West Virginia National Guard members Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe were shot while on patrol in Washington, D.C., the day before Thanksgiving. 

“Sarah Beckstrom was just 20 years old when she was killed and her parents are now forced to endure the holiday season without their daughter,” Pirro added. “Andrew Wolfe, by the grace of God, survived but has a long road ahead in his recovery.”

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was already charged with first-degree murder while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed and two counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence. 

The federal charges now also include transporting a firearm in interstate commerce with the intent to commit an offense punishable by imprisonment for more than one year and transporting a stolen firearm in interstate commerce.

New details disclosed

A seven-page document submitted to the court details Lakanwal’s movements ahead of the shooting. But it doesn’t shed any light on his possible motives.  

FBI special agent Ahmad Hassanpoor wrote the .357 Smith & Wesson revolver used in the shooting was legally purchased by another person in Bellevue, Washington, in February 2008. But after that person, identified by the initials J.D., died in February 2023, the weapon was stolen. 

The affidavit alleges that Lakanwal obtained it from someone identified as W-1 after originally trying to purchase an AR-15, a compact AK-47-style stockless pistol and a pistol in October of this year. 

Lakanwal told this person that he believed he needed a weapon since he was driving for the ride-sharing services Lyft and Uber, according to the affidavit. Hassanpoor, however, wrote that Lakanwal hadn’t driven for those services since May 25 and was unemployed when he sought the weapons. 

The person identified as W-1 in the affidavit was able to secure the .357 Smith & Wesson revolver and gave it to Lakanwal on Nov. 14. 

“W-1 explained that he gave the firearm to (Lakanwal) because he believed (Lakanwal) wanted it for personal protection while working as a rideshare driver. W-1 stated that W-1 was extremely nervous during the exchange and was visibly shaking,” Hassanpoor wrote. 

“According to W-1, (Lakanwal) observed W-1’s nervousness and placed an arm around W-1 in an effort to calm him. W-1 stated that it is common knowledge among his peers that firearms acquired ‘on the streets’ are typically stolen firearms.”

The revolver was loaded with five bullets at the time. Lakanwal went to a Big 5 Sporting Goods store the next day to purchase a box of ammunition. 

Route to D.C. tracked

The same day, Nov. 15, Lakanwal searched Google Maps for “Washington, D.C.” and “The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500,” according to the affidavit.

Hassanpoor wrote that Lakanwal’s Toyota Prius was in Washington state on Nov. 16, based on “license plate reader data that is made available to law enforcement through Customs and Border Protection.”

The car was in Idaho on Nov. 19, Illinois on Nov. 21 and Washington, D.C., on Nov. 23. 

Day of shooting

A few days later, on Nov. 26, Beckstrom and Wolfe were on patrol about two blocks from the White House when shot. 

Video footage from different locations near the shooting at 17th and I streets northwest showed Lakanwal “coming around the corner at the intersection with his hands raised in a firing stance.” He then “immediately began firing in the direction of Beckstrom and Wolfe, and they are both captured on video collapsing on the ground,” according to Hassanpoor’s affidavit. 

Two majors in the National Guard, identified as NG M-1 and NG M-2 in the affidavit, were talking with Beckstrom and Wolfe when the shooting happened. 

“NG M-1 reported that he heard gunshots; as he heard gunshots, he observed Beckstrom and Wolfe fall to the ground,” Hassanpoor wrote. “NG M-1 then observed (Lakanwal), who was dressed in a knee-length, dark-colored jacket and armed with a revolver, (fired) additional shots. NG M-1 pulled his issued service weapon and fired shots at (Lakanwal). (Lakanwal) fell to the ground where he was detained by NG M-2.”

Hassanpoor wrote that both “Beckstrom and Wolfe were unresponsive and suffering from gunshot wounds to the head.”

Beckstrom died as a result of her injuries at 5:58 p.m. the following day, Thanksgiving. 

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia charged Lakanwal with first-degree murder on Nov. 28, adding it to other criminal charges. 

Lakanwal pleaded not guilty in DC Superior Court during an arraignment on Dec. 2 and was denied bond in the case. 

West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey has requested Beckstrom and Wolfe both receive the Purple Heart.  

 

Banners from the group Save the Portage County Health Care Center. The group opposes which opposes the privatization of the county facility. (Photo courtesy of Karlene Ferrante)

As counties across Wisconsin sell off publicly-owned nursing homes to private companies, communities worry that privatization will bring understaffing, declining quality of care, and more regulatory violations, driving many residents to fight back.

After Karlene Ferrante broke her femur, she underwent major surgery and was transferred to a skilled nursing facility to recover. She spent a little over two months at the county-owned Portage County Health Care Center in Stevens Point, Wisconsin.

“​​I lucked out and got sent to the Portage County Healthcare Center. They took wonderful care of me for that whole summer and until I was able to go home,” Ferrante said. “Because of that great care that I got, I am able to walk. I have my leg. I didn’t get an infection and I didn’t fall. They were adequately staffed and they provided really good care.”

There are only two skilled nursing facilities in Stevens Point. The publicly-owned Portage County Health Care Center, which has served the community for nearly a century and has a five-star rating from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the privately-owned Stevens Points Health Services, which has a one-star rating from CMS. Ferrante was relieved to get into the county-owned facility, but the relief faded when she returned home and learned that the county was considering selling Portage County Health Care Center to a private company.

“When I found out that they were trying to privatize it, I decided then that I’m going to work on this,” Ferrante said. “I’m not going to let that happen, because other people should be able to get the same kind of care that I got.”

Across Wisconsin, County Boards have been voting to sell their skilled nursing facilities as local communities fight the sales, especially in rural counties. In Portage County, retired professor Ferrante, a two-time patient at the Portage County Health Care Center, has joined the Save the Portage County Health Care Center group, which opposes the privatization of the county facility.

“We are the only five-star skilled nursing facility in Portage County,” said Nancy Roppe, a lifelong resident of Portage County and one of the group’s organizers. “The quality of care is stellar… people clamor to get their care here, because they know when they press the call button, somebody will respond.”

In 2018, Portage County residents approved a four-year, $5.6 million referendum to support the facility’s operations. Then, in 2022, they passed another measure authorizing tax increases to fund the construction of a new facility.

Roppe said the referendums signaled public strong support for Portage County Health Care Center, but Portage County is trying to sell the health care center to The Ensign Group, a private company which has purchased other nursing facilities in the state.

In Lincoln County, Wisconsin, the County Board voted over the summer to sell the county-owned Pine Crest Nursing Home, which had been serving the county for over 70 years, to Ensign. Just a few months after the transition from county to corporate ownership, members of the Lincoln County community have seen noticeable changes in the quality of care.

“We are already seeing the changes,” said Pastor Mike Southcombe, the senior pastor at St. Stephen’s United Church of Christ in Merrill, the county seat of Lincoln County. “The staffing is less than it was when the county ran it.”

Research consistently shows that publicly-owned facilities not only maintain higher staffing and care standards but also serve as essential safety nets for vulnerable populations, ensuring access to long-term care for residents who might otherwise be turned away by for-profit operators.

A 2022 report by the Center for Medicare Advocacy warned that privatizing county-owned nursing homes often led to lower staffing levels and diminished quality of care, as for-profit operators prioritized revenue over residents’ needs. The report found that promised cost savings rarely materialized, while accountability and public oversight were significantly reduced.

An academic study also found that privatizing county-owned nursing homes increased regulatory violations and reduced residents’ quality of care and quality of life, while failing to improve access for Medicaid recipients.

Working Class Storytelling reported that during a February town hall in Lincoln County, data presented by LeadingAge Wisconsin indicated that publicly-owned nursing homes in the state provide higher-quality care than private or nonprofit facilities.

While some Lincoln County officials said that the county did not have adequate funding to continue the operation of Pine Crest, Eileen Guthrie, a retired accountant who lives in Lincoln County and regularly volunteered at Pine Crest, crunched the numbers and found that Pine Crest was bringing in a profit.

“I started looking at all of the public records, whether they were from the finance committee or the county board, or online… I kept digging and digging,” said Guthrie, who was an active member with People for Pine Crest. When she looked through all the 2023 and 2024 financial statements, she found that Pine Crest had a positive balance upwards of $400,000 in 2023 and a positive balance above $550,000 in 2024. Guthrie said part of this positive balance was due to the state’s Medicaid reimbursement policies.

Lincoln County officials said the sale of Pine Crest would help relieve the county’s deficit, though they did not clarify what expenses were driving that deficit.

“I know not everybody’s happy about it. I understand that all of us, most of us, have people in Pine Crest, and I understand that, but I’m comfortable with Ensign, that they’ll be here and they’re going to serve the community properly,” said County Supervisor Greg Hartwig at a July County Board meeting, according to WXPR.

As the county pushed forward with the sale, many residents felt their voices were ignored. Among them was Scott Doerr, a Lincoln County resident who had worked in local factories for more than 30 years before retiring. Frustrated by the way local officials handled the Pine Crest sale, he filed paperwork to run for County Board Supervisor.

“I just felt that the county board wasn’t listening to the citizens,” Doerr said. “I’m probably going to be campaigning on giving the voice back to the people.”

The sale has raised deeper concerns about the future of the facility.

“Being county-owned was a comfort and now we have to wonder, year to year, if they’re going to sell it for profit and make things worse instead of better.” Doerr said.

That concern about the future of nursing care is shared by others who see the facility as more than just a business, but as a vital community resource.

“People have been paying taxes on [Pine Crest], volunteering at it, supporting it, all those years, with the expectation that it would be around for them when they needed it, or be around for family members when they needed it,” Southcombe said. “The population up here, as it is everywhere, is aging. The elementary schools are shrinking. The need for nursing homes in home care and just general health services is just going to increase. And we’re also going to need people to work at those places.”

For Guthrie, the sale of Pine Crest is not necessarily the end of the fight for better community services.

“The loss was significant, but there is a win in there,” Guthrie said. “All of these people worked together for the good of the community, for the good of the employees and the residents. And maybe that’ll be enough to say, okay, yeah, we lost, but there are other things that we can do, so I’m hoping that there will be more to come.”

As the Save the Portage County Health Care Center group has watched other sales, like those in Lincoln County, happen, they are working to get creative about spreading the word across the county ahead of deciding votes. They have started sharing information in newspaper ads, billboards, and online videos.

“We’ve had to go and reinvent the wheel. We’ve come up with new ways to reach the public. And how does the public react when they know? They are angry,” Ferrante said. “They’re surprised. After voting twice to support the referendums and paying the taxes to have the nursing home continue and be rebuilt, people have been shocked to learn that the current administration in the county is just selling it.”

With the county’s vote looming this week, local community advocates said the stakes feel like a matter of life and death, and they aren’t slowing down.

“Where do we find the energy to fight [for Portage County Health Care Center]? For me, I feel like I owe them,” Ferrante said. “They kind of saved my life.”

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin are pushing for the release of Jaciel Cirrus Rojas, who has been held in immigration detention since June. Rojas, a Mexican-born man who has lived in the U.S. since 2018, has no criminal record, Urban Milwaukee reported, and was arrested by immigration officers despite not being the target of their operation. 

An immigration judge ordered  Cirrus Rojas  released on  bond in July. But the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appealed his release and Cirrus Rojas remains in the Dodge County Jail. 

The judge’s order was vacated by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), followed by the denial of a federal court petition challenging the legality of Cirrus Rojas’ detention. Cirrus Rojas has had no contact with his wife and infant daughter for the 200 days during  which he has been detained. 

ACLU attorneys working for his release, say  Cirrus Rojas has a pending asylum claim and is  at risk of being tortured if deported to his home country. The hearing for Cirrus Rojas’ asylum claim has been rescheduled. Earlier this month, ACLU attorney Jennifer Bizzotto filed an emergency motion in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals pushing to overturn previous denials to release Rojas. 

“We have seen hundreds of cases nationwide in which federal judges have ruled that [immigration enforcement] cannot hold people in Cirrus Rojas’ position without bond hearings, and that has not deterred [immigration enforcement] from continuing to lock up people while flagrantly violating the law,” ACLU staff attorney Hannah Schwarz said in a statement.

An ever larger portion of ICE arrests involve people like Cirrus Rojas  who have no   criminal record 

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Members of the Texas National Guard are seen at the Elwood Army Reserve Training Center on Oct. 7, 2025 in Elwood, Illinois. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump for now has not met the requirements to send National Guard troops to Chicago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday afternoon in a major setback for the president.

The court’s majority rejected the Trump administration’s request to stay, or halt, a lower court’s order barring federalization of National Guard troops to assist federal immigration enforcement officers in Chicago. 

The president is only empowered to federalize National Guard units when the troops are enforcing laws that regular military forces are legally allowed to enforce, the court said in a ruling from its emergency docket that will apply while the merits of the case are argued.

The Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, generally prevents the military from participating in civilian law enforcement.

The decision on the eve of a five-day holiday weekend for the federal government appeared to be 6-3, with three conservative justices, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissenting. The ruling represented the first time the high court has weighed in on Trump’s use of the guard in several cities, though other legal fights continue.

The administration had not shown why the situation in Chicago, in which residents have protested aggressive immigration enforcement, should present an exception to the law, the court majority said.

“At this preliminary stage, the Government has failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois,” the majority opinion said.

In an emailed statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the ruling would not detract from Trump’s “core agenda.”

“The President promised the American people he would work tirelessly to enforce our immigration laws and protect federal personnel from violent rioters,” Jackson wrote. “He activated the National Guard to protect federal law enforcement officers, and to ensure rioters did not destroy federal buildings and property.”

Protecting federal officers

In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump appointed during his first term, wrote that he agreed with the decision to deny the motion for a stay, but would have done so on narrower grounds.

The majority opinion was overly restrictive and would block the president from using National Guard forces to protect federal property and personnel, Kavanaugh said.

Alito wrote in a dissent, joined by Thomas, that their interpretation of the majority’s order could have far-reaching consequences that undermine the traditional role of the guard.

It would free National Guard members to enforce immigration law, but not to provide protection to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who are assigned that function, Alito wrote. 

“Whatever one may think about the current administration’s enforcement of the immigration laws or the way ICE has conducted its operations, the protection of federal officers from potentially lethal attacks should not be thwarted,” Alito wrote. “I therefore respectfully dissent.”

Implications for other cities

The ruling is only in effect while the case, in which Illinois is challenging the administration’s deployment there, proceeds. 

But it marks a rebuke, including from a Trump appointee, of the administration’s strategy of deploying National Guard troops to assist in its aggressive immigration enforcement.

Trump has ordered troops to Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon, to either counter crime generally or assist federal immigration officials. Governors of Democratic-led states have strenuously pushed back against those deployments. Republican attorneys general have argued their states are harmed by the protests in Chicago and other cities that impede federal ICE officers from doing their jobs.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzer in a statement praised the ruling. “Today is a big win for Illinois and American democracy,” he said. “I am glad the Supreme Court has ruled that Donald Trump did not have the authority to deploy the federalized guard in Illinois. This is an important step in curbing the Trump Administration’s consistent abuse of power and slowing Trump’s march toward authoritarianism.”

The U.S. Education Department said it will start garnishing wages from student borrowers in default. (Catherine Lane/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration will start garnishing the wages of student loan borrowers in default beginning early next year, the U.S. Education Department said Tuesday. 

In an email, the department said it expects the first notices to be sent to roughly 1,000 borrowers in default the first full week of January and that the number of notices would increase each month. Wages could be garnished as early as 30 days after borrowers receive notice.

The agency noted that collections activities would be conducted only after borrowers were given sufficient notice and the opportunity to pay back their loans.

Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel for the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, blasted the decision as “cruel, unnecessary, and irresponsible” in a Tuesday statement. 

“As millions of borrowers sit on the precipice of default, this Administration is using its self-inflicted limited resources to seize borrowers’ wages instead of defending borrowers’ right to affordable payments,” Yu added. 

The agency resumed collections for defaulted federal student loans in May, following a pause that started during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As a consequence of defaulting on one’s student loans, a borrower can have their wages garnished, and the “loan holder can order your employer to withhold up to 15% of your disposable pay to collect your defaulted debt” without being taken to court, according to Federal Student Aid, an office of the Education Department. 

With wage garnishment, borrowers have the right to “be sent a notice that explains ED’s intention to garnish your wages in 30 days, the nature and amount of your debt, your opportunity to inspect and copy records relating to your debt, your right to object to garnishment, and your option to avoid garnishment by voluntary repayments,” according to FSA.

A photograph of President Donald Trump and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is displayed after being unofficially installed in a bus shelter. (Leon Neal/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Justice early Tuesday released thousands more files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with several referencing President Donald Trump. 

The latest trove — which features nearly 30,000 more pages of documents related to Epstein — includes a note implicating Trump purportedly written by Epstein that the department later declared to be fake and an email from a prosecutor claiming Trump flew on Epstein’s private jet more times than previously reported.

In a social media post announcing the Tuesday release, the department issued a blanket denial that Trump was involved in Epstein’s crimes, saying the evidence included in the files was discredited.

“Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” the post said.

The agency added “the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”

The department has faced backlash for its piecemeal rollout of the files beginning Dec. 19, despite a legal mandate to release the full set on that date. 

Trump had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, but has maintained he had a falling out with the disgraced financier and was never involved in any alleged crimes. 

Flights

A 2020 email from an assistant U.S. attorney in New York says flight records indicate that Trump “traveled on Epstein’s private jet many more times than previously has been reported.” 

The email notes that Trump was “listed as a passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996” and that this includes “at least four flights” on which Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell “was also present.” 

The files also include a letter that Epstein appeared to have sent to convicted serial sex offender Larry Nassar in 2019 but that the Justice Department declared to be “fake,” pointing to several discrepancies. 

The Justice Department said the handwriting did not match Epstein’s, noted it was postmarked after his death in Northern Virginia, not New York, and did not include Epstein’s jail name or inmate number — a requirement for outgoing mail. 

The department said the “fake letter serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the Department of Justice does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual.” 

The letter, which appeared to have been sent from Epstein to Nassar, a disgraced former USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University doctor, said Trump shared their interest in young girls.

The letter was postmarked Aug. 13, 2019, just three days after Epstein died in his jail cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. 

Another email in the Tuesday release references more potential co-conspirators, according to U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Schumer called on the Justice Department to release more information on a note he said indicates the DOJ “was looking into at least ten potential Jeffrey Epstein co-conspirators.”  

The New York Democrat said the department “needs to shed more light on who was on the list, how they were involved, and why they chose not to prosecute.” 

He added: “Protecting possible co-conspirators is not the transparency the American people and Congress are demanding.”

DOJ takes heat 

The Justice Department has faced heat for opting to release the files in batches instead of adhering to the congressionally mandated full release of the files by mid-December. 

The requirement comes from a bill Trump signed into law in November, which requires the agency to make publicly available “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein,” including materials related to Maxwell.

The measure — co-sponsored by GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California — gave the department 30 days after the bill was enacted into law to release the files, or Dec. 19. 

Under a settlement in a federal lawsuits a northern Wisconsin town has agreed to make voting machines available that can help people with disabilities cast a ballot. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A Rusk County community that more than two years ago rejected the use of electronic voting machines has agreed to provide them so people with disabilities can vote in federal elections.

The agreement, signed in federal court in Madison earlier this month, ends a lingering legal dispute over voter access in the northern Wisconsin town of Thornapple that prompted a federal investigation.

The case underscores the importance of provisions in the federal Help America Vote Act, enacted in 2002, which includes voting rights guarantees for people with disabilities, according to Lisa Hasenstab, public policy manager for Disability Rights Wisconsin.

“Access to accessible voting is something that is not always a top priority in the mix of everything that has to happen for elections,” Hasenstab told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday. “But it is the law. It’s federal law. and state law as well, that accessible means of voting be provided at every polling place. If at even one polling place that option is not provided, that is a violation of voters’ rights.”

Hasenstab said a variety of voting machine systems include provisions tailored to people with disabilities who have difficulty marking paper ballots. Systems also include headphones for voters who can’t see, so they can  listen to the names of candidates on their ballots.

The Help America Vote Act requires every polling place to include such machines for people who need them, and any voter is able to use them, Hasenstab said.

Thornapple Town Chairman Tom Zelm declined to tell the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone conversation Tuesday why the town had stopped using voting machines and said he would have no comment on the settlement that the town and the U.S. Department of Justice signed in federal court on Dec. 12.

According to a May 13, 2024, report in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the  Thornapple town board voted in June 2023 to stop using electronic voting machines and use only paper ballots.

That same summer, Douglas Frank — profiled in the Los Angeles Times as a purveyor of “baseless claims about suspicious voting trends and secret algorithms used to steal elections” — visited the area, giving talks that stoked conspiracy theories about voting machines, according to several published reports.

After the April 2024 Wisconsin presidential preference primary, a local Democratic Party activist called another town board member to complain about the absence of voting machines that could be used by some people with disabilities. She recorded the call, in which the board member repeated false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump and blamed voting machines. The activist then posted the recording on YouTube.

DOJ lawyers wrote to the town’s chief election officer on May 7, 2024, referring to reports received by the department that the town board “may have voted to remove all electronic voting machines in all elections,” including presidential primary.

The DOJ letter stated that some voters with disabilities had reported their requests to use accessible voting machines in the primary election were not granted. It quoted the Help America Vote Act’s requirement for all polling places to include systems that enable voters with disabilities to cast their ballots.

The Lawrence Town Board in Brown County also passed a measure in 2023 to stop using voting machines. Lawrence reversed its decision Sept. 9, 2024, according to DOJ, and signed an agreement with the feds to comply with HAVA.

Thornapple did not reverse its voting machine ban, and DOJ sued the town. That October a federal judge issued an injunction, requiring the town to use accessible voting machines in the November 2024 election.

Separately, the Wisconsin Elections Commission ordered the town and its elections clerk to “take affirmative steps” and comply with Wisconsin’s law that also requires accessible electronic voting equipment at polling places to accommodate people with disabilities.

The town appealed the federal court injunction, losing before the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in July.

Under the Dec. 12 settlement, Thornapple and the town’s election officials “will ensure their voting systems are accessible to people with disabilities as required by HAVA.” The deal requires the town to use an electronic voting system “or other voting system equipped for individuals with disabilities at each polling place in the state, for each election for federal office.”

Town officials are also required to be trained on how to implement accessible voting systems that comply with HAVA, to keep the equipment in working order and provide all software and other updates. The deal also requires them to certify after every federal primary and general election that they have complied with the agreement.

Because the cases was originally pursued by the DOJ in the last year of President Joe Biden’s term, Hasenstab acknowledged that voting rights advocates watched the progress of the case with some concern after President Donald Trump took office and began reversing many Biden administration policies.

“We did have some nervousness that they wouldn’t pursue a final resolution to the case,” Hasenstab said Tuesday. “We’re pleasantly surprised that an agreement ended up being reached and that the Department of Justice stuck with that case.”

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Clockwise from top left, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and California Attorney General Rob Bonta speak to reporters about a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its attempts to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at a virtual press conference on Dec. 22, 2025. (Screenshot from Zoom)

The Democratic attorneys general of 21 states and Washington, D.C., are suing the Trump administration for its attempts to defund the Obama-era federal agency created to protect Americans from consumer fraud and discriminatory lending.

After the U.S. mortgage market crashed in 2008 and millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, retirements and homes, Congress in 2010 established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to become the country’s first financial regulatory agency with a goal to protect consumers. The agency has since returned more than $21 billion improperly taken from more than 205 million Americans, according to the Oregon Department of Justice.

Acting director Russell T. Vought has attempted to terminate the agency’s operations by firing hundreds of staff, denying states access to the agency’s resources and requesting $0 to fund the agency’s operations, according to the complaint. 

The coalition of states, led by Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, is asking the court to prevent the Trump administration from requesting $0 in funds for its operations and to order it to request money from the Federal Reserve to fulfill its duties as required by the law. 

Rayfield filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Eugene. 

“This is the same agency that stopped Wells Fargo when they were taking advantage of consumers without their consent and opening millions of accounts without consent,” Rayfield told reporters at a virtual press conference Monday afternoon. “This is the same agency that stopped Navient from taking advantage of student loan borrowers. This is the same agency that protects people who have credit cards, payday lending and mortgages. This is the agency that’s looking out on behalf of all of us.”

The coalition argues defunding the agency will have devastating impacts on consumers and disrupt states’ consumer protection abilities, which rely on consumer complaints and data from the agency.

In 2024, the federal bureau received 3 million consumer complaints, of which 8,800 were from Oregonians. That year, companies provided more than $700,000 in direct relief to Oregon consumers after those consumers made complaints through the bureau’s portal. 

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the lawsuit is his 48th lawsuit against the Trump administration this term, a surge from the 11 lawsuits he was a part of during the two years he served as attorney general during Trump’s first term. 

“My standard hasn’t changed,” he said. “The behavior of this administration has changed. They’re lawless again and again. They’re bullying. They’re reckless. They’re dangerous.” 

The states involved in the lawsuit with Oregon include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia.

Complaint - as filed

Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said she hopes her "fellow assemblymen continue to put pressure on their leadership" to pass postpartum Medicaid expansion. Felzkowski spoke at a Republican press conference about postpartum Medicaid expansion in April. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said in a year-end interview with the Wisconsin Examiner that the year has been one of “very steady growth” and top priorities for her in the remaining legislative session include passing legislation to help bring down the cost of health care, advancing medical cannabis legislation and passing additional tax cuts. 

Felzkowski pointed to the state budget in which lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers increased funding for roads and transportation costs, cut taxes including for retirees, increased special education funding and dedicated funding to mental health initiatives. She was one of four Senate Republicans to vote against the state budget, a vote she said she took because of her opposition to increasing the state’s hospital assessment without health care reforms. 

A slimmed down, 18-member Republican majority in the Senate this session and several GOP senators who took a stand against a compromise budget deal gave Senate Democrats an opening to come to the budget negotiating table, and to win compromises on school funding as well as stop cuts to the University of Wisconsin system.

Felzkowski said the slimmer margins this year have been normal. 

“If you look back for the last 30 years, when the Republicans are in control, we are normally at 18-15 margin in the Senate,” Felzkowski said. “When we were up to like 22, that was kind of a gift, so we are a very strong Republican majority right now.”

Felzskowski said working on health care affordability will be her top priority when lawmakers return in January. This includes working on health care price transparency and working to advance her legislation that would make changes to the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers — third-party companies that manage prescription drug benefits between health plans, employers and government programs.

Health care and prescription drugs

Felzkowski’s bill would allow patients to use any licensed pharmacy in the state without facing penalties and require benefit managers to pay pharmacy claims within 30 days. 

“Our neighbors to the south in Illinois just passed their version of PBM reform,” Felzkowski said, adding that her bill has passed out of committee and lawmakers are now discussing whether it will receive a full Senate vote. 

Felzkowski’s health care price transparency legislation would require hospitals to make publicly available to consumers the standard costs of “shoppable services,” which would be defined as those that can be scheduled in advance such as x-rays, MRIs and knee replacements. 

“What is one thing that you buy that you have no idea what it’s going to cost? It’s health care. That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Felzkowski said. “Other states have passed it. They’re starting to see the fruition of it and it does work. There’s a reason we have the fifth highest health care costs. It’s because our Legislature has not done anything to help bring those costs down and it’s time that we actually start doing that.” 

Felzkowski, who has been a longtime advocate for legalizing medical cannabis, said the Senate is “closer than ever” to having a vote on the floor on a proposal to do so, but she believes the chances of the Assembly advancing legislation remain “slim.”

Felzskowski said she hopes legislation to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum women from 60 days after giving birth to one year isn’t dead this session. Wisconsin is one of two states in the U.S. that haven’t accepted the federal extension.

“I hope that my fellow assemblymen continue to put pressure on their leadership… Deep red states, blue states as well as purple states across the nation have postpartum care for 12 months and they’ve done it because it’s the return on investments for taxpayers as well as being the right thing to do,” Felzskowski said. “We see baby thrive, we see mom thrive, and it actually lowers the cost down the road.”

Fate of WisconsinEye

Felzkowski said Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are having discussions about solutions to the shutdown of WisconsinEye, the nonprofit service that provides video coverage of legislative hearings, floor sessions and Wisconsin state government business. WisconsinEye halted its livestream and pulled down its video archive last week due to a lack of funding.

“Even if we do something temporary to get us through a session… just get through until April and then do a really deep dive on what should be the next step,” Felzkowski said, adding that that includes looking at how other states cover their state government.

“The transparency is important,” she said, adding they want to ensure people still have access to government proceedings and a record is still being kept of it all.

Felzkowski said she hopes Republicans can get one more tax cut done before the end of the legislative session next year. 

New tax cuts in the works

A few of the ideas legislators are considering include eliminating taxes on tips and overtime. 

“Anytime we can return money to our citizens is a good thing,” Felzkowski said, adding that state Republicans would like to align Wisconsin tax cuts with federal policy. The federal megabill approved in July included a tax deduction on tips and overtime that will be available from 2025 through 2028.

This December, Wisconsin residents are experiencing the highest property tax hikes since 2018, according to a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report. The report explained that state budget decisions including Evers’ veto that allows school districts an annual $325 per pupil increase for the next 400 years as well as lawmakers’ decision to not provide any increase to state general aid this year have led to the hikes. 

Asked whether lawmakers will look to solutions for lowering property taxes, Felzkowski said it would take a new governor. 

“We have given [Evers] numerous chances to reverse that 400-year veto and he keeps vetoing the bill, so it’s on the governor’s plate right now,” Felzkowski said. “Until we get a different governor in the East Wing and we can start seriously addressing education and all the things that are wrong with it, I don’t know what to say.” 

Felzkowski said that even with the state budget surplus there wasn’t enough state money for the general aid increase.

“There were a lot of mouths to feed on that budget,” Felzkowski said. “With increasing revenues all over, there was not enough money out there to backfill that $325… We would have had to have raised taxes dramatically to do that. The dollars didn’t exist.”

Felzkowski said on education that she hopes Wisconsin will opt into the new federal education tax credit program. The program would provide a dollar-to-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to a qualifying “scholarship granting program” to support taxpayer-financed private-school vouchers. Evers would need to opt the state into the program by Jan. 1, 2027, but so far has said he won’t. 

Confident GOP will hold Senate in 2026 

Wisconsin Republicans have held control of the state Assembly and Senate since 2010, and next year will test the strength of that majority when the state’s 17 odd-numbered Senate seats will be up for election for the first time under new legislative maps adopted in 2024. 

Last year when the maps were in place for the 16 even-numbered seats, Democrats were able to flip four seats. In 2026, Republicans will need to make sure Democrats cannot flip two additional Senate seats to hold control of the body.

Felzkowski expressed confidence that they will do so. 

“We will come back with a strong Republican majority. We have better policies, we have better ideas and we run great candidates,” Felzkowski said.

There will be several key, competitive districts in 2026 including Senate District 5, which is currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), Senate District 17, which is currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Senate District 31, currently represented by incumbent Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) who will face a challenge from Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp). 

“We’re going to run on the same policies we’ve always run on: lower taxes, strong freedoms, strong economies, strong education and government getting out of your way so that you can live the American dream,” Felzkowski said. “The Democrats are going to run on an anti-Donald Trump policy, more government, more influence in your life. It’s all they’ve ever run for.”

Some Democrats have taken election results in 2025 as a sign that people are unhappy with the Trump administration and are ready to elect Democrats. 

Felzkowski said she didn’t think that 2025 election results in other states were going to be applicable in Wisconsin, though she said the new maps could be challenging for Republican candidates. 

“Wisconsin is kind of a unique state. We’re a very purple state,” Felzkowski said. “We knew those candidates in Virginia were going to win, I mean, it’s a blue state so I mean you can’t really base us on what happened in Virginia and New Jersey… We’re going to be running in Democratic-gerrymandered seats, so we’re going to have to work very hard, but we will win.”

Wisconsin also has an open race for governor on the ballot next year. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is considered the frontrunner in the GOP primary, and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, are the current Republican hopefuls.

Felzkowski said she probably won’t endorse in the Republican primary for governor, but she is looking for a candidate who is a “conservative reformer who’s willing to take on the tough issues from health care, education, and corrections, lowering taxes” as well as someone who will do “a deep dive into our agencies,” adding that she hopes they’ll work to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.” 

The Democratic field of candidates is much larger including Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Milwaukee County Exec. David Crowley, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.

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Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, speaks following a hearing in federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, Md. — U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis will retain an order keeping the wrongly deported El Salvador national Kilmar Abrego Garcia out of federal custody for the rest of the year, the judge said at a Monday hearing.

In the first hearing that Abrego Garcia was present for after his release last week, Xinis pressed U.S. Department of Justice attorneys to say by Friday how they planned to proceed, including whether they would seek a new warrant to arrest Abrego Garcia. Attorneys for Abrego Garcia would then be able to respond to the government next week, with a decision coming in the new year. 

Xinis expressed frustration with the Trump administration Monday, as she has throughout the monthslong case that has highlighted the nationwide crackdown on immigration.

She said she would “happily” consider a lawful request from the administration to detain Abrego Garcia under a different section of law than the one she has already rejected. But the government has not given her the assurance that they would pursue a different authority to detain him again.

“But the problem is, you want me to lift the (temporary restraining order) so that we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “Why should I give the respondents the benefit of the doubt in this case? Why should I do that here? Show your work. That’s all.”

DOJ lawyer Ernesto Molina objected to a restriction on the government’s ability to detain Abrego Garcia.

“There’s no period during which an alien cannot be detained under the appropriate circumstances,” he said.

Move to Costa Rica?

Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, told reporters following the hearing that Abrego Garcia, who is married to and the father of U.S. citizens, would be with his family for the holidays.

“As of right now, Mr. Abrego Garcia is going to return to his home with his wife and his children and his family members in Maryland,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. “And he will be at home through Christmas and New Year.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg also blamed the federal government for keeping Abrego Garcia in the country, rather than allowing him to self-deport to Costa Rica.

Costa Rica has agreed to accept Abrego Garcia, who entered the United States without legal authorization in 2011. The Trump administration has rejected deportation to the Central American country, instead proposing he be removed to several African nations to which he has no relationship.

Abrego Garcia “remains willing” to move to Costa Rica, Sandoval-Moshenberg told Xinis. If not for the government’s actions to pursue criminal charges in Tennessee and to reserve the right for future immigration enforcement in Maryland, Abrego Garcia would now be out of the country, Sandoval-Moshenberg said.

“It’s the government that’s preventing him from doing so,” he said. “He’s literally in a double bind. …. He’s got two ankle bracelets.”

Abrego Garcia after his deportation was imprisoned in a brutal prison in El Salvador and returned to the United States to face criminal charges in Tennessee stemming from a 2022 traffic stop. After he was ordered released from U.S. marshals’ custody by a federal judge, Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him again at an appointment at the Baltimore, Maryland, ICE field office.

In mid-December, he was released from the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. He had remained there since September. 

An accounting error at the Wisconsin Department of Transportation that erroneously increased the paper value of state infrastructure assets has been corrected, according to the Legislative Audit Bureau. (Getty Images)

An accounting error led the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to erroneously increase the value on paper of the state’s infrastructure assets by nearly $900 million, legislative auditors said in a new analysis.

WisDOT corrected the error after the Legislative Audit Bureau drew it to the attention of the department, and the erroneous information was not included in the state’s 2024-25 fiscal year financial statements.

WisDOT had initially added $896 million to the value of the state’s capital infrastructure assets. It took that step after a previous audit report recommended a change in some of the department’s accounting procedures. In the process, however, WisDOT overlooked other accounting principles and procedures, which if followed would not have led to the error, according to the audit bureau’s report on the Wisconsin’s 2024-25 financial statements

WisDOT officials agreed with the new audit finding and said they would follow through on the audit bureau’s recommendations to update their procedures.

WisDOT was one of two state agencies that the Legislative Audit Bureau spotlighted in the financial statement audit report. The report was released Friday, Dec. 19, and highlighted Monday by the co-chairs of the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee.

The audit report also said the state Department of Administration hasn’t adequately addressed security concerns relating to the state’s information technology systems that have been raised in previous audits.

“These audit findings have been found for numerous years, with no corrections taken by DOA,” stated a press release from the audit committee’s Republican co-chairs, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia).

Corrections are underway, however, according to Kathy Blumenfeld, DOA secretary-designee.

In a letter responding to the audit, Blumenfeld wrote that while the audit bureau’s findings were “repeated from previous years,” the department “has in the last year implemented certain corrective actions consistent with the auditors’ recommendations.”

Those changes will require “sustained multiyear execution,” she wrote, given the nature of the audit findings. She also wrote that lawmakers have declined to increase DOA funding for cybersecurity, adding that more state funding “will be imperative to ensure the long-term security needs of the state.”

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Wind turbines generate electricity at the Block Island Wind Farm on July 7, 2022, near Block Island, Rhode Island. The first commercial offshore wind farm in the United States is located in the Atlantic Ocean 3.8 miles from Block Island, Rhode Island. The five-turbine, 30 MW project was developed by Deepwater Wind and began operations in December, 2016. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration said Monday it’s halting leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects under construction along the East Coast due to national security risks.

The Interior Department paused the projects — off the coasts of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Virginia and New York — due to analysis from reports that have “long found that the movement of massive turbine blades and the highly reflective towers create radar interference,” which poses a national security risk, according to a department release.

“Today’s action addresses emerging national security risks, including the rapid evolution of the relevant adversary technologies, and the vulnerabilities created by large-scale offshore wind projects with proximity near our east coast population centers,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement alongside the announcement. 

The Interior Department said “the clutter caused by offshore wind projects obscures legitimate moving targets and generates false targets in the vicinity of the wind projects.” 

The department said leases for Vineyard Wind 1, off Massachusetts; Revolution Wind, off Rhode Island and Connecticut; Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind; along with Sunrise Wind and Empire Wind 1, off New York, have been paused “effective immediately.” 

The department noted that the pause would give it, the Defense Department and other agencies “time to work with leaseholders and state partners to assess the possibility of mitigating the national security risks posed by these projects.” 

The moves are part of the administration’s continued attacks against the renewable energy source, which have spilled into courts. A federal judge found this month that Trump’s January order halting permits for offshore wind projects was unlawful. 

‘Desperate rerun’ 

The action drew swift backlash from major environmental advocacy groups and Democratic officials. 

Ted Kelly, director and lead counsel for U.S. clean energy at Environmental Defense Fund, said in a Monday statement the administration is “again unlawfully blocking clean, affordable energy.”

The administration has “baselessly and unlawfully attacked wind energy with delays, freezes and cancellations, while propping up aging, expensive coal plants that barely work and pollute our air,” Kelly added.

Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation, described the move as a “desperate rerun of the Trump administration’s failed attempt to kill offshore wind — an effort the courts have already rejected.” 

She added that many of the projects had already won approvals through “rigorous review” and court challenges.

“Trying again to halt these projects tramples on the rule of law, threatens jobs, and deliberately sabotages a critical industry that strengthens, not weakens, America’s energy security,” she said. 

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also weighed in, saying in a Monday social media post Trump was “trying AGAIN to kill thousands of good-paying union jobs and raise your electricity bill.”  

The New York Democrat said he’s “been fighting Trump’s war against offshore wind — a war that threatens American jobs and American energy” and vowed to continue fighting “to make sure these projects, the thousands of jobs they create, and the energy they provide can continue.” 

Rhode Island lawmakers slam pause 

Lawmakers in Rhode Island were also quick to blast the administration’s effort, which affects the Revolution Wind project off its own coast. 

Rep. Seth Magaziner said that “at a time when working people in Rhode Island are struggling with high costs on everything, Trump should not be canceling energy projects that are nearly ready to deliver reliable power to the grid at below-market rates and help lower costs.” 

The Rhode Island Democrat rebuked the administration’s claims that Revolution Wind and the other offshore wind projects present national security concerns as “unfounded,” noting that “the Department of Defense thoroughly reviewed and signed off on this project during the permitting and approval process.” 

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse said in a statement Monday that Revolution Wind “was long ago thoroughly vetted and fully permitted by the federal government, and that review included any potential national security questions.” 

Whitehouse, the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the move “looks more like the kind of vindictive harassment we have come to expect from the Trump administration than anything legitimate.” 

“This is President Donald ‘Stop Work’ Trump trying to keep affordable, clean energy off the grid, without a care about how many working people have to lose their jobs to keep his fossil fuel billionaires happy,” he said. 

In a statement Monday, Sen. Jack Reed noted that amid an increase in energy prices, policymakers should be promoting new energy sources.

“Trump’s repeated attacks on offshore wind are holding our nation back, increasing energy bills, and hurting our economy,” the Rhode Island Democrat said.