International Workers Day on May 1 commemorates the great labor struggles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when workers fought and died for decent wages and working conditions.

The militant energy of the early labor movement, long dormant in the United States, has been making a comeback recently as Americans chafe at economic instability, the destruction of health care and other basic rights and protections, and recoil from a government dedicated to further enriching billionaires at the expense of working people. Add to that the campaign of terror the Trump administration has launched against immigrants who do much of the manual labor in this country and the violent repression of the neighbors who try to protect them, and it’s starting to feel like 1886.

On Friday, May 1, labor unions and immigrants rights groups are coming together to organize mass walkouts in more than 3,000 cities across the U.S. “No work. No school. No shopping” is the tag line for the national campaign, joined in Wisconsin by Madison Teachers Inc., the Southcentral Federation of Labor, and myriad civic groups. 

This week’s protests grow out of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May Day general strikes that began 20 years ago to oppose Wisconsin U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s federal bill that proposed making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime punishable by mandatory prison sentences. For the first time, in those May Day protests, “you saw largely Latino immigrant, working-class families … with grandparents and baby strollers, coming out in this peaceful wave of mass marches,” recalls Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the Milwaukee-based immigrant workers’ rights group. “It really was like an earthquake, and it shelved that terrible bill and put the conversation of immigration reform back on the table.”

This year, national labor unions are showing up for the May Day actions in a big way. That’s inspiring, because it’s clear that massive resistance from a broad, working-class movement is what it’s going to take to stop the brutal repression and outright theft of public resources by the current regime.

“Workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights are the same,” Andy King, managing director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said on a May Day press call this week. His group’s May Day demands include no more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and stopping the construction of megawarehouses for the mass detention of human beings. 

The fear-mongering about immigrants coming from the Trump administration is not an accident, Neumann-Ortiz said during the same call. “It’s a strategy to divide us, to scapegoat and to distract from the real challenges working families face, and in particular, the growing control of our economy by billionaires.” She talked about the heartbreaking case of Elvira Benitez, a mother of three from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, who was arrested by ICE during a routine check-in after she was approved for a green card. Now she’s sitting in detention in Kentucky, and her youngest daughter is under medical supervision for suicidal thoughts related to the traumatic experience of being separated from her mom, Neumann-Ortiz said.

She also highlighted the case of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a legal permanent resident, who was detained by ICE in what appears to be a retaliatory arrest for his political speech defending Palestinian rights. 

A secretive police agency that whisks people away in order to silence dissent should worry all of us. “And these are not isolated cases, as we know,” Neumann Ortiz said. “It’s a system.”

Deaths in ICE custody have hit a new record since the beginning of Trump’s second administration. Yet the federal government plans to expand warehouse detention to house more than 92,000 people. Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition told reporters on FIRM’s May Day press call, “our state has become ground zero for a system that warehouses human beings for top dollar, makes jokes and merch at their expense, where suffering is hidden and accountability is absent.”

“Shut down these disgusting warehouses and choose a path rooted in care,” she demanded.

What is happening to our country? What will it take to wake people up?

During the same week I listened to activists planning the May Day walkout, my phone rang and an automated voice informed me that Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was holding an impromptu “telephone town hall” in the middle of a weekday afternoon. I stayed on and listened to Johnson tell his constituents that he favors eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security without the guardrails Democrats are seeking for ICE and Border Patrol. We’re living in too “dangerous” a time not to act immediately, Johnson said, and Congress is “too broken” to make these decisions in a deliberative fashion. That’s why, he explained, now that President Trump is in office and Republicans hold a majority, he has switched his position on ending the minority party’s power to filibuster legislation. Johnson wants to get Democrats out of the way to pass the SAVE America Act, which will severely curtail voting rights on the thoroughly disproven theory that undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers and swaying U.S. elections. 

Johnson listened approvingly to voters on the call who recycled Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats are stealing elections. He expressed his enthusiasm for RFK Jr. and “progress” on his pet issue — getting rid of supposedly harmful vaccines. Some callers expressed anxiety about the Iran war, with Johnson reassuring them that it was going “perfectly.” One woman swore at him and was disconnected. But the most revealing part of the call came when a caller mentioned that a lot of people are worried about health care — a brewing crisis in Wisconsin where 63,000 people are losing Medicaid coverage because of Trump’s cuts and another 20,000 have dropped their Affordable Care Act coverage because of rising premium costs after Republicans refused to renew ACA enhanced tax credits.

The root cause of the problem with health care, Johnson said, is the government’s involvement. 

“Take a look at Amazon, what that private sector competitor has done to deliver products in hours, sometimes at a really low cost. So private sector consumerism works, but we’ve driven consumerism out of healthcare by having somebody else pay for it,”  he said. His solution? “Move to a rational system of catastrophic care plans, and then most of healthcare paid out of pocket with real consumerism.”

Never mind Johnson’s choice to hold up Amazon as a paragon of business, a company that was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally blocking competition, inflating prices using its monopoly power, and stifling innovation. Never mind the multiple lawsuits brought by its drivers for high-pressure, inhumane working conditions and that unfortunate incident in which a warehouse worker died on the floor while his coworkers were allegedly told by management to ignore him and keep production rolling.

Setting all that aside, how many regular voters in Wisconsin agree that the best way to handle crushing healthcare costs is to make them pay out of pocket for every medication, office visit and procedure?

As Trump’s approval ratings reach a new low and gas prices spike, Johnson’s position that you should cover the full cost of your healthcare out of pocket is unlikely to give Republicans a bump.

The problem in our country is that we seem to have lost the class consciousness that animated the labor movement of the Progressive Era.

Instead, today, we have a rightwing populism that purports to defend the interests of blue collar workers but is, in fact, investing in the immiseration of the vast majority of Americans, the theft of their healthcare, their education, their wages and workplace protections, for the benefit of oligarchs like Johnson, who couldn’t care less if people suffer, sicken and die, so long as he remains rich. 

I don’t think people can put up with this for much longer. The inhumane treatment of regular, hardworking people, the pain and waste of the greed-driven regime we are living with should turn the stomach of every American. 

May Day is a sign of hope. 

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A Dane County Circuit Court judge ordered the Wisconsin Department of Justice to release its list of about 16,000 law enforcement officers certified in the state. 

The lawsuit was brought by media outlets the Badger Project and Invisible Institute. Police officers in Wisconsin are required to be certified by the state’s Law Enforcement Standards Board. The DOJ has previously released partial versions of the list, arguing that the full database could compromise the identity of officers working undercover. 

Both outlets have frequently written about “wandering cops” who leave departments due to misconduct or abuse only to be hired by another agency. The DOJ list includes a record of cops being fired or resigning in lieu of termination. 

Judge Rhonda Lanford ruled on Tuesday that the DOJ’s argument against releasing the list went against the state’s open records law. 

“When responding to records requests, there is a strong presumption of openness and liberal access to public records,” she wrote.  “[T]he DOJ has not met its burden to show that this is an ‘exceptional case’ warranting nondisclosure.”  The judge concluded that DOJ’s denial “was not the product of a genuine, case-by-case balancing analysis, but rather a habitual denial based on [its] past inability to garner compliance from local agencies.”

Lanford noted that law enforcement officers hold a public position and therefore “necessarily relinquish certain privacy and reputational rights by virtue of the amount of trust society places in them and must be subject to public scrutiny.”

Tom Kamenick, the lead attorney in the lawsuit and founder of the Wisconsin Transparency Institute, said the decision was a win for transparency in Wisconsin government and the requirement that officials must prove real risk of harm when denying an open records request. 

“Courts have ruled time and time again that speculative fears of harm do not justify withholding government records from the public,” Kamenick said in a statement. “Government officials must do more than merely claim that, hypothetically, something bad might happen if the records are released.  Rather, they must show that harm is likely to occur and is sufficiently serious to overcome the presumption of access to government records. DOJ could not do that here.”

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The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision gutting the federal Voting Rights Act sent Black Democrats in the U.S. House reeling on Wednesday, as they confronted a new reality where Republicans could gerrymander some of them out of office and limit the ability of Black voters to elect candidates in the future.

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus vowed to fight the court’s decision. They demanded fresh votes on federal voting rights legislation that has languished for several years and urged voters to turn out in the November election.

But facing a Republican-controlled Congress for at least the rest of the year and a Republican White House for at least the next two-and-a-half years, the prospect of major new voting rights legislation becoming law appears slim in the near term.

“It will pave the way for the greatest reduction in representation for Black and minority voters since the years following Reconstruction,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat, said of the court’s decision, referring to the post-Civil War period in the South.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. 

As of Aug. 4, 2025, Congress included 61 Black members of the House, including two delegates, and five senators, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Racial gerrymander

In a 6-3 decision written by Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court ruled that Louisiana’s congressional map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because it unnecessarily created a second district where a majority of residents are Black.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act had previously limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens. Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the decision would now allow states to dilute the voting power of minority voters without legal consequences.

Republicans welcomed the decision, with many saying race should play no role in redistricting. President Donald Trump, informed about the ruling by reporters and told that it would help Republicans, exclaimed, “I love it.”

Florida lawmakers approved a new map within hours of the opinion. The proposal, offered by Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this week, seeks to secure four additional House seats for Republicans. DeSantis had invoked the court’s decision, even before it was released, to push lawmakers to pass the new map.

GOP candidates and officials in other states urged state lawmakers to move quickly to redraw maps, even with primary elections approaching. Even if only a small number of states enact fresh gerrymanders this year, the Supreme Court decision will likely trigger another, bigger wave of redistricting over the next two years ahead of the 2028 election.

“The Court rightly acknowledged that the South has made extraordinary progress, and that laws designed for a different era do not reflect the present reality,” Alabama Republican Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement.

Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said the decision “restores fairness, strengthens confidence in our elections, and ensures every voter is treated equally under the law.”

The Supreme Court in 2019 allowed states to redraw maps for political advantage, ruling that federal courts would no longer adjudicate partisan gerrymandering cases. That previous decision, combined with Wednesday’s opinion, offers states a wide berth to draw maps that limit the voting power of minorities if they’re sold as politically necessary.

Bloody Sunday

Sewell represents a district that includes Selma, where the civil rights activist and future U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., along with other marchers, was beaten by state troopers in 1965 while walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an episode called Bloody Sunday. 

The beatings helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act later that year — the same law the Supreme Court weakened on Wednesday.

“The court just gave states permission to use partisan gerrymandering as a wholesale excuse to deny Black and minority voters a voice in our democracy,” Sewell said.

In Missouri, the Republican-controlled legislature earlier this year passed a map intended to oust Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who was Kansas City’s first Black mayor. The state Supreme Court is weighing a legal challenge that could keep the map from taking effect before the November election.

On Wednesday, Cleaver in a statement called the opinion “deeply disrespectful of the generations of African Americans and civil rights advocates who gave their freedom, their blood, and even their lives to make it possible.” 

Obama criticizes ruling

Former President Barack Obama condemned the decision as another example of how a majority of the current Supreme Court seems intent on “abandoning its vital role” in ensuring equal participation in American democracy and protecting the rights of minority groups against majority overreach.

“The good news is that such setbacks can be overcome,” Obama said in a statement. “But that will only happen if citizens across the country who cherish our democratic ideals continue to mobilize and vote in record numbers – not just in the upcoming midterms or in high profile races, but in every election and every level.

Several Democrats said Congress should pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, a Democratic-sponsored measure that seeks to restore preclearance — a requirement that states with a history of discrimination obtain federal approval before making voting changes. The Supreme Court effectively halted preclearance in 2013.

The House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it stalled in the Senate. Democrats could likely pass the bill again if they retake the House in November but would face a likely filibuster again in the Senate. Even if they managed to pass the bill, Trump would be virtually certain to veto it.

Rep. Cleo Fields, a Louisiana Democrat whose district was ruled an unconstitutional racial gerrymander, sought to place the court’s decision in a broader, historical context. 

Looking ahead to midterms

Recalling Louisiana’s Jim Crow past, he said the state used to require individuals to recite the Constitution’s preamble before registering to vote.

“If you tell me I’ve got to jump a certain height, I could probably do that. Tell me I’ve got to run a certain distance, I could probably do that, too. But if you tell me I have to be white to serve in Congress from Louisiana, I can’t do nothing about that — I need some help from my government,” Fields said, adding that’s why Congress needs to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called the Supreme Court’s conservative majority “illegitimate” and said the opinion was unacceptable but not unexpected. 

While acknowledging the decision represents a setback, America has an opportunity to mount a comeback in the upcoming election, he said.

Jeffries, who is set to become speaker if Democrats retake the House in November, said one of the chamber’s first actions would be to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

“So we can end the era of voter suppression in America once and for all,” Jeffries said.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to uphold the Trump administration’s efforts to end temporary legal protections for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians. 

The decision could also affect several other lawsuits related to what is known as Temporary Protected Status that are pending in lower courts. The suits challenge the Trump administration’s procedures to terminate country protections, which have sharply raised deportation risks for more than 1 million immigrants. 

So far, the Trump administration has ended TPS destinations for 13 countries, out of 17 that were active at the start of President Donald Trump’s administration.

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that federal courts, under the law, cannot review the executive branch’s decision to end or extend a TPS designation.

“They challenge the very kind of foreign policy-laden judgments that are traditionally entrusted to the political branches,” Sauer said of TPS recipients who are suing to remain in the United States. 

But two lawyers, Ahilan Arulanantham, representing Syrians, and Geoffrey Pipoly, representing Haitians, argued that their clients could challenge a lack of proper procedure that then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem took in ending those TPS designations. 

That would include not undertaking a review of country conditions before making a determination, the lawyers said.

Most of the questioning came from the three liberal justices, who grilled Sauer and pressed him on Trump’s racist remarks disparaging Haitians.

The conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, asked Sauer only a handful of questions, and seemed skeptical of Arulanantham and Pipoly’s argument, signaling that they may already agree with the Trump administration’s position that the courts cannot review TPS terminations. 

A decision is not expected until June or early July. Both cases would go back to the lower courts to continue on the merits argument. 

But if the Supreme Court agrees with the Trump administration, then TPS holders from Haiti and Syria could be subject to deportation. 

The effort to end TPS designation is part of President Donald Trump’s broader effort to curtail immigration and strip legal status for people, creating thousands of newly unauthorized immigrants in order to subject them to his mass deportation drive.

How TPS works

TPS is a humanitarian program that Congress created in 1990 to allow for temporary protections for nationals who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, disasters or other extreme circumstances. 

TPS holders must go through vetting to be approved for work permits and legal protections. Each renewal lasts from six to 12 to 18 months. 

Those determinations are up to the Department of Homeland Security secretary, who typically consults with the State Department to evaluate country conditions and determine if the status needs to be extended. Decisions would depend upon whether conditions are still unsafe for a migrant’s return.

Sauer argued that the courts cannot review that final decision, including procedural ones that lead up to it. 

Arulanantham contended that position is a “double edged sword.” Another administration could easily come in and a new DHS secretary could theoretically use TPS to give legal status to immigrants in the country unlawfully, and that decision would not be subject to review by the courts, Arulanantham said.

The TPS holders before the Supreme Court argue that Noem did not consult with the appropriate agencies, such as the State Department, before deciding to end TPS designation. They say she did not follow proper procedure — but they are not challenging that a decision to terminate a country can be reviewed. 

Arulanantham said with Syria, if Noem had reviewed the State Department’s report, which advises people not to travel to the country because of armed conflict, and still decided against renewing protections, that decision is not reviewable. 

“What is reviewable is whether she actually asks anything and gets any information about country conditions,” he said. 

Sauer said that legal argument was “meritless,” because the TPS “statute does not micromanage the degree of consultation with other agencies.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressed Arulanantham why a challenge to the review of how a TPS termination is ended would even matter.

“If it’s just kind of a box-checking exercise, I mean, why would Congress permit review of the procedural aspect, when really what everybody cares about much more is the substance?” she asked.

Arulanantham said it’s “because Congress … and the millions of people who live with TPS, have some faith in government, and they believe that if there is consultation, the decisions will be better.”

He said, “Our view is that even if it comes back like a box-checking exercise, people will at least know that somebody talked to somebody else.”

Trump ‘racial animus’ cited

Pipoly argued that the ending of TPS for Haiti was based on racial animosity toward Haitians, pointing to the president’s own words where he referred to the Caribbean island as a “shithole.” 

“The true reason for the termination is the president’s racial animus towards non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular,” he said. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked Sauer about those comments from Trump. 

“We have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a ‘filthy, dirty and disgusting s-hole country,’ I’m quoting him, and where he complained that the United States takes people from such countries, instead of people from Norway, Sweden or Denmark,” she said. “I don’t see how that one statement is not a prime example of … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision.”

Sauer argued that none of those statements “mentions race or relates to race,” and instead the president was referring to “problems like crime, poverty, welfare dependence.”

In the lower court that blocked the Trump administration from ending TPS for Haiti, federal Judge Ana Reyes found that there was racial animosity in the government’s decision to end the humanitarian protections. 

This is not the first time Trump has tried to end TPS for Haiti — he did so in his first administration in 2018, but was blocked by the courts.

Haitian workers in the US

The day before Wednesday’s oral arguments, a handful of Democratic lawmakers gathered with domestic care advocates outside the U.S. Capitol to stress the importance of TPS workers. More than 20,000 Haitians work in healthcare, according to the immigration advocacy group FWD.us.

“At this moment, over 1 million people are at risk of being removed from their homes, separated from their families, having their lives uprooted because of Trump’s cruel and unlawful attempt to terminate their temporary protected status,” Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley said during the Tuesday press conference. 

Pressley said that thousands of TPS holders serve as essential workers, including one recipient from Haiti who took care of the congresswoman’s mother, who died from cancer.

“It was Haitian nurses who prayed over my mother, who sang songs to my mother, who oiled her scalp lovingly and braided her hair,” Pressley said. “Everyone who calls this country home benefits from TPS, and stands to be harmed by this termination.”

Pressley has led the bipartisan push in the House to approve a measure that would extend TPS for Haiti up to three years. 

Ten Republicans, including one independent who caucuses with the GOP, joined Democrats in approving the bill earlier this month. 

While it passed in the House, the legislation would need 60 votes in the Senate, which is controlled by Republicans. Additionally, if Congress managed to pass the bill, it would likely be rejected by Trump. 

“We are demanding the Supreme Court uphold the law, save lives and protect our communities,” Pressley said. “To send vulnerable families to countries like Haiti, Venezuela and Syria that are enduring horrific humanitarian crises is unconscionable, shameful, unlawful and preventable.”

The suspect in the attack at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday night was prepared for a mass casualty event, prosecutors said in a document filed in federal court early Wednesday.

Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and three assistants in her office signed a memorandum asking a judge to keep 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen detained as he awaits trial. They said his “actions were premeditated, violent, and calculated to cause death,” and he sought to “express his political opinions through violence.”

“Had the defendant achieved his intended outcome, he would have brought about one of the darkest days in American history,” they wrote. “The defendant traveled across the country with the explicit aim to kill the President of the United States.”

A detention hearing is set for Thursday. Allen is charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump, as well as interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill the president. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet members all safely evacuated the Washington Hilton ballroom.

The document lists a host of weapons, ammunition and other supplies Allen had in his possession at the time of his arrest.

He had a “12-gauge pumpaction shotgun with one spent cartridge in the barrel and eight unfired cartridges in the magazine tube,” the document reads. He carried additional ammunition in a Velcro strapped to his body and in a separate pouch, the prosecutors said. 

He also carried a fully loaded .38 caliber pistol with two additional magazines. 

The document also shows a mirror selfie Allen appears to have taken in his hotel room just before the planned attack. He is fully armed and outfitted in the photo.

The White House Correspondents’ Dinner, dating back more than 100 years, is an annual black-tie event, often attended by the president, that hosts more than 2,000 journalists, administration officials and other guests at the Washington Hilton. 

President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and members of the Cabinet attended Saturday’s dinner, along with many members of Congress. 

Allen, who traveled by train from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., prior to the attack, sent a note just prior to attempting to rush the Capital Hilton ballroom, brandishing a gun. 

He did not name Trump but said, “Administration officials (not including Mr. Patel): they are targets, prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest.”

Prosecutors argued his intent was to inflict mass harm and disrupt the government.

“Had the defendant successfully made it into the ballroom, he not only could have killed or injured dozens of people, but he could have destabilized the entire federal government, given the number of high-ranking government officials present,” the Department of Justice said. “The defendant sought to express his political opinions through violence. The Court should consider the identities of the defendant’s intended victims and the significant roles they play in governing this country to assess the nature of the charged offenses.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve was one step closer to the job Wednesday after North Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis cast the deciding vote to advance Kevin Warsh’s nomination to the full Senate.

Lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs voted 13-11 along party lines to move Warsh to the next step.

The potential turnover at the top of the Fed, which sets monetary policy, comes as Americans see higher costs hit their pocketbooks, particularly soaring prices at the gas pump, as the U.S.-Iran conflict disrupts worldwide energy supplies.

Tillis had withheld his support until the Trump administration announced Friday it would drop what the senator described as a “bogus” investigation of current Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

“It’s no secret that the reason that Mr. Warsh’s nomination could have been held up is because of my concern with the investigation. I want to thank the Department of Justice for the assurances that they gave me,” Tillis, R-N.C., said following the panel’s brief morning session that lasted just under 15 minutes.

“The fact of the matter is, this was based on two minutes of testimony. It was not criminal,” Tillis said of the DOJ’s probe into Powell’s June 2025 testimony to Congress on a major $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

The committee vote comes after Trump’s sustained verbal attacks on Powell over several months, including numerous public threats to fire the Fed leader if he did not agree to lower interest rates. `

A federal judge last month blocked the administration’s subpoenas to probe the Fed and Powell, citing “a mountain of evidence” that Trump was using the investigation to force Powell’s hand.

The Fed was scheduled to meet Wednesday afternoon to deliver its latest decision on interest rates, possibly the last under Powell, whose term expires May 15.

Inflation, affordability

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said the vote brings Trump “one step closer to completing his illegal attempt to seize control of the Fed and to artificially juice the economy.” 

Inflation and affordability are emerging as major issues ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. 

Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., said his constituents in Georgia and beyond “deserve to know that the Fed is on their side, maximizing their chances to keep a good paying job and keeping their lives affordable, not on the side of the president’s poll numbers or his political concerns as we approach the midterm.”

“Fed independence is not theoretical. It matters to the everyday lives of working families,” Warnock said.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll taken between April 24-27, 61% of Americans think the U.S. economy is on the wrong track. 

When asked about the costs and benefits of the war in Iran, only a quarter of respondents said they agreed the U.S. military operation was worth it, according to the Ipsos poll.

Americans have watched fuel prices climb in March and April after Iran retaliated against the U.S.-Israeli attacks by choking off the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow maritime passageway where, prior to the war, one-fifth of the world’s petroleum passed.

Gas prices climb

The average price across the U.S. for a gallon of regular gas reached $4.23 Wednesday, not only the highest price point since the U.S. launched operations in Iran on Feb. 28, but also the highest since July 2022, according to GasBuddy.  

Prior to the war, a gallon of regular hadn’t topped $3 all year.

A return to normal, free flow in the strait — which was about 140 vessels per day pre-war — appears out of reach at the moment, as Trump announced last weekend his negotiators pulled back again on attending talks in Islamabad.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sidestepped a question Wednesday regarding how much longer the war might last, asked by Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., before the House Armed Services Committee.

During the same hearing however, the Pentagon’s Jules Hurst III, acting undersecretary of war who oversees finances, did reveal the war had so far cost the U.S. $25 billion.

While the Fed’s inflation target is 2%, data released at the beginning of April showed prices for all items rose 3.3% over a year ago. The jump was largely driven by a 21% spike in fuel prices from February to March.

The Fed’s so-called “dual mandate” is to maximize employment and stabilize prices. The Fed primarily loosens or tightens the economy by adjusting interest rates — lowering them if the economy lags and inflation is too low, and raising them when inflation becomes too high.

Lisa Cook firing

Warren and Warnock also noted Trump’s ousting in August of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, appointed to the board by former President Joe Biden. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether Trump exceeded his authority in firing Cook.

Warnock said he was dissatisfied with Warsh’s written responses to additional questions sent after his April 21 nomination hearing before the committee.

“I asked, quote: ‘If President Trump, or any future president, attempts to unlawfully fire you without cause, would you leave the Federal Reserve?’ His response, quote: ‘I will not answer hypothetical questions of this nature,’” Warnock recounted.

“Well, this isn’t a hypothetical question. In fact, the president attempted to fire Governor Cook this in the past year, and the president has repeatedly mused about firing Chair Powell because he won’t bend to his interest rate demands — doing so as recently as two weeks ago,” Warnock said, referring to Trump’s comments during an April 15 Fox Business interview. 

Asked Wednesday afternoon if he thinks Warsh will persuade the Fed’s board of governors to lower interest rates, Trump told reporters, “They should because it’s a good time to lower them. We’re the most prime country anywhere in the world.”

Powell also faced questions Wednesday afternoon.

When asked whether he expects Warsh will remain independent of Trump, Powell said, “He testified very strongly to that effect in his hearing, and I’ll take him at his word.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office on Monday invoked an upcoming landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the role of race in drawing congressional districts to justify the Republican’s proposed gerrymander.

“The use of race in redistricting should never happen,” the governor’s general counsel, David Axelman, wrote in a memo unveiling a map that aims to hand Republicans four additional U.S. House seats in Florida.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court delivered an opinion sharply weakening a major portion of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Even before the decision, Republicans and Democrats across the country were scrambling to get ahead of the court’s anticipated ruling. 

The rush comes even as state legislative sessions wind down and the window to redraw maps rapidly closes ahead of the midterm elections in November — likely pushing most redistricting battles into the 2028 election cycle.

The opinion in the case, Louisiana v. Callais, could reverberate for decades. The court’s conservative majority significantly curtailed the consideration of race when drawing legislative maps. 

Until now, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has limited states from using maps that dilute the voting power of minority citizens.

“If the Supreme Court does decide to gut or significantly weaken Section 2 of the VRA, we’re very concerned that it would give, basically, the green light to states to racially gerrymander,” Michael McNulty, policy director at Issue One, a group focused on protecting American democracy, said in an interview ahead of the decision.

Republicans could ultimately secure up to 19 U.S. House seats nationally directly because of the Supreme Court’s decision, according to a projection by Fair Fight Action, a Georgia-based progressive voting rights group, and the Black Voters Matter Fund, which advocates on behalf of Black voters. At the state level, the groups have projected that Republicans could gain up to 200 state legislative seats across the South. 

“It is hard to overstate what an earthquake this will be for American politics,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA School of Law and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project, wrote in a blog post following the opinion’s release on Wednesday.

Louisiana case

A group of white voters challenged Louisiana’s congressional map as an unconstitutional racial gerrymander after the state in 2024 created a second district where a majority of voters are Black. 

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices agreed, ruling 6-3 that the map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander because the state didn’t need to create a second majority-minority district.

In the majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that “none of the historical evidence presented by plaintiffs came close to showing an objective likelihood that the State’s challenged map was the result of intentional racial discrimination.”

Justice Elena Kagan, one of the court’s three liberal justices, wrote in a dissent that the Supreme Court has “had its sights set” on the Voting Rights Act for more than a decade.

“Under the Court’s new view of Section 2, a State can, without legal consequence, systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power,” Kagan wrote.

Following the opinion, Republican-led legislatures across the South are expected to move to break apart Democratic districts where a majority of residents are Black or from other minority groups. 

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, called on the state legislature to reconvene and redraw the state’s congressional districts to create another Republican-held seat in Memphis. Blackburn, who is running for governor, said an additional seat is essential to cement President Donald Trump’s agenda.

Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves last week announced a special session to redraw the state’s Supreme Court districts, to begin 21 days after the court releases its decision.

“It is a decision that could (and in my view should) forever change the way we draw electoral maps,” Reeves said in a statement announcing the session.

Although the Supreme Court case centered on Louisiana, state officials are likely out of time to adopt a new map for this year’s election. The primary election is set for May 16.

Still, Louisiana will be free to pursue redistricting next year.

U.S. Rep. Troy Carter, Sr., a Democrat who represents one of the state’s two majority-minority districts, said the court’s decision was a “devastating blow” to the promise of equal representation.

“This ruling is about far more than lines on a map — it’s about whether Black Louisianians will have a meaningful opportunity to make their voices heard,” Carter said in a statement.

The redistricting wars of 2026

As of 2024, roughly a third of U.S. House seats represented majority-minority districts — 122 held by Democrats and 26 held by Republicans, according to estimates by Ballotpedia. Texas and California account for nearly half of all the districts.

Seven states have already taken the extraordinary step of redrawing their maps this year after President Donald Trump urged Republicans to draw lines that maximize partisan advantage ahead of the midterms. Maps are typically redrawn every 10 years after the census.

Texas and California struck first, followed by Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio and Utah. Virginia voters last week approved a redraw, and Florida lawmakers approved a new map Wednesday. 

All told, Republicans may emerge from the redistricting war with a small net advantage of a handful of seats if the Florida plan is enacted and the other maps are upheld.

The calendar will prove a major obstacle to additional gerrymanders this year. Primary elections have already been held in some southern states and ballots have been distributed in others. 

Mississippi, North Carolina and Texas have already held primaries, while ballots have been distributed in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. 

But after November the clock resets, giving states more than a year to pursue further changes to their maps before the 2028 election.

“We are much more concerned about the impact on 2028 and beyond that that would have, letting these politicians basically just pick their voters instead of the voters picking them,” McNulty said.

John R. Lewis bill

As Democrats look ahead to Callais’ likely fallout in the coming years, they have begun urgently calling for action in Congress and at the state level. They also say the decision emphasizes the stakes of this year’s elections.

“Today is a devastating day for democracy and a wake-up call for all those who seek to protect it,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Democrats in Congress have repeatedly offered the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Named after the civil rights activist and Georgia congressman who died in 2020, the legislation aims to strengthen Section 2 and other elements of the current Voting Rights Act, though it’s unclear whether the bill would be constitutional under the Callais decision.

The U.S. House, under Democratic control, passed the legislation in 2021 but it was filibustered in the Senate. Some lawmakers are speaking about the measure again, and Democrats may take control of Congress in November’s elections—though they would still face President Donald Trump in the White House. 

“We can and must revive the Voting Rights Act,” Rep. Terri Sewell, an Alabama Democrat and the ranking member of the House Administration Subcommittee on Elections, said at a shadow hearing on voting rights on Monday.

For their part, Republicans hailed the Supreme Court decision as long overdue.

U.S. Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement said “activists” for too long had manipulated the redistricting process to achieve political outcomes, dividing Americans in the process.

“The Supreme Court made clear that our elections should be decided by voters, not engineered through unconstitutional mandates,” Hudson said.

Voting Rights Act over the years

Over more than a decade, the Supreme Court has narrowed the potency of the Voting Rights Act, a 1965 law banning racial discrimination in voting that came as Congress battled Jim Crow laws in southern states. 

The measure was intended to help enforce the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, which guarantee equal protection under the law and prohibit denying the right to vote on the basis of race.

In 2013, the court effectively halted preclearance — the requirement that some states and local governments with a history of discrimination obtain federal permission before changing their voting practices. At the time of the decision, most southern states and a handful of others were subject to preclearance.

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that federal courts cannot review allegations of partisan gerrymandering. The decision cleared the way for state lawmakers to gerrymander their maps for political advantage without fear they would be second-guessed by federal judges. 

The opinion helped empower a wave of gerrymanders after the 2020 census and set the stage for this year’s mid-decade redistricting.

Turning to the legislatures

Facing a bleak federal landscape, some voting rights advocates are increasingly turning to state legislatures. The Supreme Court decision undercutting Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act will likely intensify efforts to advance state-level legislation.

“Because political participation is inherently local, it is imperative to press for protections at the ground level,” Todd Cox, associate director counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, a racial justice legal organization, said at the shadow hearing.

Some Democratic state lawmakers already introduced measures in anticipation of an unfavorable Supreme Court decision.

The Illinois House last week approved a state constitutional amendment that would require districts to be drawn “to ensure that no citizen is denied an equal opportunity to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of his or her choice on account of race.”

The Illinois amendment would also require, where practical, the creation of racial coalition or influence districts — terms that refer to districts where racial minorities together constitute a majority of residents. The measure, which must also pass the state Senate before going to voters, was a pre-response to the Callais opinion.

“This will ensure that Illinois will always recognize the fundamental principle that a democracy of the people, by the people and for the people must include all the people,” Illinois Democratic House Speaker Emanuel Welch told reporters after the amendment advanced.

Illinois Republicans have cast the amendment as a Democratic power grab. The state has some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, Illinois House Minority Leader Tony McCombie, a Republican, said in a statement. The Princeton Gerrymandering Project has given Illinois’ maps an overall “F” grade.

“Let’s be clear: this has nothing to do with strengthening democracy,” McCombie said. “It’s about locking in one-party control at any cost.”

Amid a climate of uncertainty surrounding the future of federal funding for after-school programs, Wisconsin advocates, representatives from nonprofit organizations and local youth asked Democratic candidates for governor what they will do to support after-school programs.

Four of the seven major candidates for the Democratic nomination for governor participated in a forum Tuesday evening at the Goodman Center on Madison’s East Side, hosted by the Wisconsin Partnership for Kids. They included former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez and state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison).

The hosts were from a coalition of organizations that work to improve early childhood education, literacy and economic mobility for children across the state. Some of the coalition’s goals include stabilizing access to child care and supporting out-of-school time programs.

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes and U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, did not respond to the invitation to participate, according to the hosts. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and former Wisconsin Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan had previous commitments. 

Jackie Scott with the Wisconsin Partnership for Kids told the Examiner that the organization wanted to ensure there was a forum where youth issues were at the center of the conversation. 

“There’s a huge gap and we wanted to make sure that kids are front and center in the conversations for the next leader because, it’s corny, but kids are our future,” Scott said. “Unfortunately, I feel like kids’ issues often take the back burner. There’s not a whole lot of conversation that actually involves kids and gives youth a voice.”

Catie Tollofson, the vice president of mission and programs at the Goodman Community Center, echoed that sentiment.

“Anytime we’re going to  elect an official, we want to make sure that those folks, if they’re representing us at a state level or any level, have youth issues as a part of what they are speaking about and thinking about and running on,” Tollofson said. 

During the forum, candidates took questions from kids as well as adult advocates. One of the first questions, from a 10-year-old girl, was about candidates’ favorite activity from when they were her age. Barnes said biking; Roys said attending camps through the Madison School & Community Recreation; Hong said sledding and Rodriguez said camping. 

Candidates were asked how they would help to strengthen or expand Wisconsin’s after-school programs. 

The conversation came as President Donald Trump has proposed a budget eliminating dedicated federal funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC), which supports local school and community-based after school and summer learning programs. 

According to a 2023 report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, federal funding for the program has decreased by about  $10 million in inflation-adjusted terms since 2014. This is despite rising demand.

About 27 states in the U.S. have a dedicated funding stream for after-school and outside-of-schooltime  programs. Wisconsin is not one of those and its programs rely mostly on federal, local and philanthropic dollars. Last year many programs in the state were left in limbo when the Trump administration abruptly withheld funding. It eventually released the funds.

Candidates expressed support for the programs and said they would  provide state funding to keep them going.

Rodriguez said her child care plan, which would cap costs for families at 7% of their income and ensure a minimum wage for employees, would also cover after-school programs.

“You should treat it like the infrastructure that it is… My plan also indicates that child care providers should be paying at a minimum of $18 an hour, and this would include many different types of child care,” she said, including after-school programming.

Hong said she would support investing state dollars into afterschool programs. She said that access to grants or funding would need to be equitable, meaning it should be easy to find and apply for and available to those working in the programs. 

“After-school time is mental health care. After-school time is healthcare. It is a way for kids and our communities to be able to take care of each other, and it should have its own dedicated funding stream from the state,” Hong said. 

Roys said she breathed a sigh of relief when she got a notification this week that her 8-year-old and 4-year-old got into their after-school programs. 

“I think about how much scrambling it would mean if they hadn’t gotten in,” Roys said. “Families with means can pay for all types of enrichment, things that should be basic rights for children… to do sports, to be able to socialize with friends, to have help with homework and tutoring, to do theater and art — that should be available to every single child. Instead we ration it based on where you live and based on whether or not your parents pay for it.” 

Roys said that publicly funded after-school programs would help close the gap. “This has become so critical, given what the federal government has put on the chopping block,” she said. “We cannot leave Wisconsin children vulnerable to those kinds of cuts.”

An America After 3PM survey of Wisconsin families conducted by the AfterSchool Alliance found that for every child in an after-school program, there are four who cannot access a program. 

According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, about 20,000 Wisconsin students are served annually at 168 sites that receive 21st Century CLC funding. 

Barnes said the state is in a care crisis due to the cuts to education implemented under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature. He noted that he participates in Milwaukee recreational programs. 

“We already know what works. We have well functioning systems in place in the state. What we don’t have are well funded systems in this state that contribute to the growth and development of our children,” Barnes said. “That’s what we have to prioritize immediately.” 

Scott noted that Wisconsin is surrounded by states that are investing in child care, including in Michigan where $75 million in state grants are going towards before-school, after-school and summer programming in the 2025-26 fiscal year. 

“I was really excited that pretty much every single candidate acknowledged the fact that this is a broken system in Wisconsin, and that we don’t choose to invest in our kids,” Scott said. “We put that burden on philanthropy or we put that burden on local governments and it’s just not something that could be carried alone by philanthropy and local governments.”

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Republican lawmakers and candidates across the country have escalated their anti-Islam rhetoric in recent months, a strategy aimed at energizing voters by claiming without evidence that Muslim culture and religious tenets threaten American political values.

Political observers say Republicans are seizing on anti-Islamic sentiment to gin up enthusiasm among their voters as they head into the 2026 midterm elections. It’s been a successful campaign strategy in the past.

Aggressive enforcement tactics have soured many Americans on hard-line immigration policies, once a winning issue for conservatives, and GOP victories on abortion and transgender rights have blunted the electoral power of those issues.

Instead, GOP candidates in some of the highest-profile political races in the country are putting Islam and the nebulous threat of Shariah at the center of their campaigns.

Shariah is a religious code derived from the Quran and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad that addresses moral, spiritual and daily life for Muslims. But the term has become shorthand, in some conservative circles, for anything having to do with Islam or with Islamic extremism.

Critics say conservative politicians have made Muslims a political bogeyman in their fight to hang onto power. Muslims say the rhetoric misrepresents their values and endangers their communities.

“I worry this will harm freedom, which is the very value some of these politicians are claiming to protect,” said Mustafa Akyol, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. Akyol is Muslim, and his research focuses on public policy and Islam.

“To think that American Muslims, which make 1% of the whole population, can enforce Shariah or force it on other people, that’s a very exaggerated claim.”

Up and down the ballot, Republicans have spent about $12 million since last year on ads that negatively mention Islam, Muslims or Shariah, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm.

Former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Jay Mitchell, now running for Alabama attorney general, recently released a campaign ad inviting supporters of “radical Islam” to “Allah Akbar your butt all the way back to the Middle East.”

In Georgia, Republican state Sen. Greg Dolezal, a candidate for lieutenant governor, released an AI-generated campaign ad last month depicting Muslim people invading a suburban neighborhood. In a post on X sharing the video, he described Muslims as “invaders who would rather pillage our generosity than assimilate.”

Officials in Alabama and Oklahoma have quashed efforts by Muslim groups to expand into larger facilities after those proposed developments attracted the attention and ire of conservative politicians. And Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature this year enacted laws allowing a handful of state officials to designate certain groups as domestic terrorist organizations.

At the federal level, incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn released a $1.6 million political ad earlier this year that claims “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology” and says “Shariah law has no place in American courts or communities.”

There’s even a Sharia-Free America Caucus in Congress, launched last December by Republican Texas Reps. Keith Self and Chip Roy. It currently has more than 60 members spanning 25 states, according to Self. He called it “a noble cause to save Western Civilization and fight back against the threat of Sharia” in a January press release.

Akyol, of the Cato Institute, likens the furor to the American panic over communism in the 1950s that culminated in Wisconsin Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to root out communist infiltration in the U.S. government and other spheres of power.

Those efforts “led to the crackdown on public freedoms in America like civil liberties, freedom of speech,” Akyol said. “Luckily that ended, but this seems like a McCarthyism 2.0 era where the issue now is not communism, but Islam.”

Years of legislation

Republicans say they’re responding to voter concerns and trying to preempt the possibility that religious or foreign political codes might creep into the U.S. legal system, jeopardizing free speech or due process.

Oklahoma state Sen. David Bullard is working with fellow Republican state legislators on a constitutional amendment that would bar courts and municipalities in Oklahoma from using any foreign law or religious code that would undermine the U.S. or Oklahoma constitutions. Similar efforts have been made this year in Arkansas, Missouri and other states.

Bullard said he’s heard from constituents who are concerned about a growing threat of other cultures “trying to forcefully usurp” American culture.

“Those are definitely Eastern ideas that don’t mix with Western culture, and the Constitution is created wholeheartedly on that Western culture concept,” he told Stateline.

He notes that his amendment doesn’t mention Shariah and does not single out Muslims.

Conservatives have been pushing similar state legislation for more than a decade. Since 2010, at least nine states have enacted laws aimed at preventing courts from enforcing foreign legal codes, including a 2014 constitutional amendment in Alabama.

When asked about examples of the kinds of instances he’s trying to prevent, Bullard cited a 2009 case in New Jersey in which a judge refused to give a woman a protective order after her husband repeatedly assaulted her, saying the husband was acting on his religious interpretation of Shariah. The ruling was overturned the following year.

“I think more and more people in Oklahoma are calling on us to protect them from that,” he said.

But even the most vocal proponents of anti-Shariah measures have struggled to explain how it could replace the American legal system or why more laws are needed to curb it. The establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution already prohibits the government from favoring one religion over another, or forcing adherence to a religious code.

Standing at a podium with a sign emblazoned with a line through the words “Sharia Law,” Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis conceded during a news conference earlier this month that there isn’t an immediate threat of Shariah becoming the basis for Florida law.

“Of course that won’t happen any time soon,” DeSantis said. “But the more that we’re able to do to protect against that, I think, is going to benefit Floridians for many, many years.”

Real-world worry

The Islamic Academy of Alabama has operated as a K-12 private school near Birmingham for nearly three decades. But in December, local leaders of a nearby suburb denied the school’s request to relocate to a larger facility there. Alabama U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican who’s running for governor and who has railed against Islam on the Senate floor and social media, called for the school to move out of Alabama.

School officials declined Stateline’s interview request but said they remain focused on supporting the education, well-being and safety of their students and community. They’ve dropped their current relocation plans.

In Oklahoma, Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond — who is running for governor — elevated a proposed expansion by the Islamic Society of Tulsa into a political issue when he announced an investigation into its funding. City leaders later denied the society’s application; Muslim leaders responded by hosting a community open house at their Tulsa mosque to connect with the community and promote a better understanding of their faith.

And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is challenging Cornyn for the GOP nomination in the state’s Senate race, sued over the proposed development of a large Muslim-centric community north of Dallas. He called it a “radical plot to destroy hundreds of acres of beautiful Texas land and line their own pockets” and claimed it was unlawfully reserved only for Muslims.

Although the group initially advertised that sales would be limited to certain people, representatives for the development have since said it is open to anyone.

Shariah shorthand

While some lawmakers have made a distinction in their rhetoric between extremism and the Islamic faith, others have made sweeping, derogatory claims that denigrate and stereotype all Muslims.

Tuberville of Alabama has said: “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult.” U.S. Republican Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee has said, “Muslims don’t belong in American society.” U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, a Florida Republican who’s cosponsoring an anti-Shariah bill in Congress, posted on X in February: “If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one.”

While politicians have invoked fears of extremism in their public comments, Akyol said American Muslims are the ones who are most worried.

“If the people who govern your state define you like that, what may come next?” he said. “Maybe a legal step against you, or some fanatic who really believes in that can take his machine gun and attack you.”

Much of the Islamophobic messaging has gone unchecked by other conservatives, a marked departure from previous leadership. In 2001, a few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, then-President George W. Bush visited a mosque in Washington, D.C., and met with Muslim community leaders, declaring “Islam is peace” and condemning retaliation against Muslim Americans.

Earlier this month, DeSantis signed a Republican-sponsored bill into law that allows a few state officials to label certain groups “domestic terrorist organizations.” The new law also bans Florida courts from enforcing religious laws and bars state funds from going to schools affiliated with groups designated as terrorist organizations. It does not specifically mention a religion, but cites Shariah as an example of the kind of religious laws it covers.

“You can have these groups that may not be waging physical war-type jihad,” DeSantis said earlier this month. He warned groups could wage “stealth” or “financial” attacks.

“To me, that’s still jihad and we’ve got to stop it, and this bill provides the structure to be able to do it.”

Critics say such laws also have the potential to harm any organization that finds itself at odds with a current administration.

“That is the danger of these laws, because they are specifically designed to silence political dissent,” said Wilfredo Ruiz, communications director at the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights group. CAIR was one of two groups labeled as terrorist organizations by an executive order DeSantis issued in December.

The Biden administration criticized CAIR for statements made by its leadership after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, but the group denies that it supports terrorism.

CAIR Florida sued over DeSantis’ order, arguing it violated the group’s First Amendment right to free speech. In March, a federal judge blocked the order.

Ruiz said his organization has the resources to continue challenging such laws in court. But he said he worries about smaller groups, including those that aren’t Muslim but might be at risk of being declared a “terrorist group” by whoever is currently in power in Florida.

“Having that executive power with the capacity to name you a terrorist organization before you have been even accused criminally, much less convicted, this is an openly unconstitutional proposal.”

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

Over six years after 17-year-old Alvin Cole was fatally shot by then-Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah, the two sides in a contentious civil case have confirmed that they are close to reaching a confidential settlement deal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. 

A third jury trial in federal court has been set for early May. Each of the first two trials — both held in 2025 — ended in hung juries, with jurors unable to unanimously decide whether Mensah used excessive force when he shot Cole in February 2020. 

The shooting occurred at Mayfair Mall, after a group of teenagers got into an  argument. One of the teens flashed a handgun and Wauwatosa police officers responded to a call  and encountered the group outside the mall. The teens fled when they saw the police, Cole among them. As Mensah and other officers chased Cole, Cole accidentally shot himself in the arm when the handgun he was carrying went off. Cole fell to the ground as police surrounded him, shouting various commands. 

Mensah told investigators that he shot Cole, believing that Cole was raising or pointing the handgun at him. Other officers’ accounts contradicted Mensah’s.  An officer who was closer to Cole, David Shamsi, said that neither Cole nor the gun moved after Cole was on the ground. Another officer, Evan Olson said that the gun was pointed at him, even though he was in a different position from Mensah. After the shooting, Olson and Mensah — who said that they were friends on and off the job — went off alone together in a squad car, violating policies which state that officers need to be separated after shootings to avoid contaminating statements. 

During the trials, Mensah said that he fired to protect himself and others around him, and that he didn’t want to die. Mensah also testified that he did not remember much of what happened that night. Cole was the third person Mensah had killed on the job during his five years as a Wauwatosa officer. Mensah resigned from the department in 2020 following months of protests over the shooting, and was hired by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department before he  retired from law enforcement. Jurors  in the case were not allowed to know about Mensah’s two other shootings in 2015 and 2016, less than a year apart.

The terms of the settlement, including the amount awarded to the family, will remain confidential, lawyers said. During the first trial, attorneys representing Cole’s family asked for $9 million, and then $22 million in the second trial.

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WASHINGTON — King Charles III did not name President Donald Trump Tuesday when he acknowledged before a joint session of Congress the transatlantic tension between the United States and the United Kingdom, but stressed “America’s words carry weight and meaning” as he reflected on decades of diplomatic ties.

The monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland told lawmakers that from “bitter division” 250 years ago, the two nations “forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential alliances in human history.”

“I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world,” he said.

Charles is the first British king to address a joint session of Congress, and only the second monarch to do so after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, spoke before lawmakers in 1991.

Charles was received with loud unanimous applause from both sides of the aisle — a notable difference from the usual one-party enthusiasm during the president’s annual State of the Union address.

He punctuated his roughly 27-minute speech with laugh lines, including a quip that 250 years for America is “just the other day” for the British.

To whoops and cheers, Charles nodded to the “bold and imaginative rebels with a cause” who declared independence but also “carried forward” the ideals of the Magna Carta, a 13th-century document outlining the protection of rights and property from the monarch.

Both sides of the aisle stood applauding in unison as the king cited U.S. Supreme Court cases that laid the “foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances.”

But the king also delivered his speech against the ominous backdrop of a breakdown of American support for Ukraine and an ongoing war in Iran, initiated by the United States and Israel, that has disrupted energy supply in the United Kingdom and around the world.

The conflicts “pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own country,” he said. 

As the king was still speaking on Capitol Hill, the White House shared on social media a photo of Charles and Trump together under the heading “TWO KINGS” and a crown emoji.

Trump attacks on British prime minister

U.S.-U.K. relations have frayed as a result of Trump’s recurrent attacks on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s decision to not join offensive operations targeting Iran.

Trump paused his scathing online screeds against the British government during the king’s first full day of his state visit, which included a 21-gun salute and ceremonial flyover after Charles and Queen Camilla arrived on the White House South Lawn. 

Shortly before Charles addressed Congress, Trump took aim on his Truth Social platform at another European leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, accusing him of thinking “it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”  

Just over one month into the U.S. campaign in Iran, Trump, on Truth Social, told the U.K. and other allied partners to “Go get your own oil!”  from the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. 

“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,” he wrote.

Two weeks earlier, Trump attacked NATO allies, telling reporters in the Oval Office, “I’ve long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So … this was a great test, because we don’t need them, but they should have been there.”

Charles recounted in his speech to Congress how the only time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, invoked Article 5 was to defend the United States following the Sept. 11, 2001 attack.

The king and Camilla are scheduled to visit the 9/11 Memorial in New York City on Wednesday.

“We stood with you then, and we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten,” Charles said.

Just under 460 British troops died fighting alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

Epstein files

The king’s trip to the U.S. also comes after the high-profile release of millions of records related to the disgraced hedge fund manager and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who had ties to Charles’ brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. 

Mountbatten-Windsor settled outside of court in 2022 with the late Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre, who accused Epstein and the former British prince of trafficking her for sex.

Mountbatten-Windsor has been stripped of his royal title of prince and is under investigation in Britain for allegedly sharing confidential government information with Epstein, which came to light in the publicly released files.

The king acknowledged victims of sexual abuse in his speech, according to a palace aide, when he remarked to lawmakers, “In both of our countries, it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives us our collective strength, including to support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today.”

Answering questions about the king’s address, the palace aide told reporters traveling with Charles, “It was certainly in (his majesty’s) mind to acknowledge victims of abuse, so they are naturally incorporated in this line.”

Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother who has become an activist following his sister’s death last year, was on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a roundtable about Epstein victims ahead of Charles’ visit.

Roberts and the king did not meet.

King will visit Virginia

Charles, a vocal advocate for the environment, is also scheduled to visit Shenandoah National Park in Virginia Thursday to view America’s “extraordinary natural splendor.” The king emphasized to lawmakers the need for a collaborative effort to fight climate change.

“Even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature,” he said. 

“We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security,” he said.

Charles also celebrated the shared financial economy between the United States and U.K., highlighting $430 billion in annual trade. Just over a year ago, Trump began a new tariff regime on British goods, and imports from many other trading partners.

Review of the troops

Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcomed the king and queen on the White House South Lawn Monday morning for a ceremony full of pomp and circumstance, including a review of the troops, a distinguished honor for a visiting head of state.

During brief and mostly scripted remarks, Trump highlighted a tree planted on the White House grounds by Elizabeth II in 1991. Trump described the tree as a “living symbol” of the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

“In the centuries since we won our independence, Americans have had no closer friends than the British. We share that same root. We speak the same language, we hold the same values, and together our warriors have defended the same extraordinary civilization under twin banners of red, white and blue,” Trump said.

Trump and Charles met in a closed-door Oval Office bilateral meeting following the ceremony. 

The first lady and the queen met with American schoolchildren at the White House tennis pavilion, where the students donned Meta Quest headsets to view several U.K. landmarks, including Stonehenge and Buckingham Palace. The event was part of the first lady’s effort to promote technology in education, according to the White House.

Charles and Camilla are scheduled to attend a state dinner at the White House East Room Tuesday night before heading to New York City Wednesday.

The king and queen are scheduled to visit the small town of Front Royal, Virginia, Thursday, as well as meet Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in Shenandoah National Park, according to the British embassy.

A lawsuit seeking to throw out Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they’re unconstitutionally anti-competitive was dismissed Tuesday by a panel of three circuit court judges. 

The lawsuit was brought last summer by bipartisan business group Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy Coalition, represented by the progressive nonprofit Law Forward. 

For more than a decade, Wisconsin has been a national symbol of the effects of extreme partisan gerrymandering and Tuesday’s dismissal comes amid a effort by both major parties to redraw maps ahead of this fall’s midterm elections. 

A national mid-decade redistricting tit-for-tat started last year when Texas Republicans drew new maps, at President Donald Trump’s request, in an attempt to limit the number of Democrats in the House of Representatives. A number of other Republican states, including Missouri and North Carolina, followed suit. In response, voters in California and Virginia voted to change state laws to allow Democrats to re-draw their maps to minimize Republican seats. 

This week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would redraw his state’s maps to give Republicans four more seats. 

While both parties have drawn political maps to favor their own candidates, only congressional Democrats have proposed a bill that would ban partisan gerrymandering. In Wisconsin, state Democrats have long pushed for the adoption of a non-partisan redistricting commission. 

Wisconsin’s current congressional maps were adopted in 2021 by the state Supreme Court after Gov. Tony Evers and Republicans in the Legislature were unable to reach a deal on their own. When forced to weigh in, the Supreme Court instituted a “least change” rule that required any maps proposed to the Court to hew as closely as possible to the maps instituted by Republicans in 2011. The map the Court chose was proposed by Evers, a Democrat, but resulted in a heavily Republican congressional delegation, since they were drawn to adhere to the “least change” standard.

The 2011 political maps and the least change decision allowed Republicans to hold six of the state’s eight congressional seats. The state Supreme Court tossed out the state’s legislative maps in 2023 — which remained heavily gerrymandered under the “least change” standard — on the grounds that the shapes of the districts, some of which were broken into noncontiguous parts, were illegal. 

Over the years, the court system has heard a number of challenges to Wisconsin’s congressional maps on the basis that they are an illegal partisan gerrymander. A separate three-judge panel dismissed another lawsuit on partisan gerrymandering grounds late last month. 

Despite that dismissal, the Law Forward lawsuit argued that its claims were new and therefore deserved to be considered by the courts. The lawsuit argued that the maps were drawn to unfairly give incumbents of both parties an advantage, pointing to the fact that only one of the state’s congressional districts, western Wisconsin’s 3rd CD, is regularly decided by a single-digit margin. 

“After the Wisconsin Legislature adopted the 2011 congressional map, congressional races over the ensuing decade were, as intended, highly uncompetitive,” the lawsuit stated. “The Court’s adoption … of the ‘least change’ congressional map necessarily perpetuated the essential features — and the primary flaws — of the 2011 congressional map, including the 2011 congressional map’s intentional and effective effort to suppress competition.”

Republicans and their allies intervened in the case, arguing that it should be dismissed because the anti-competitive argument treads the same ground as the partisan gerrymandering claims the Court has already declined to hear. 

The three-judge panel, made up of Dane County Judge David Conway, Marathon County Judge Michael Moran and Portage County Judge Patricia Baker, agreed and dismissed the case, noting that the makeup of the state’s political maps is a question best left to the political branches of government, not the judicial system.

“Plaintiffs’ anti-competitive gerrymandering claims are functionally equivalent to partisan gerrymandering claims, at least for purposes of the political question analysis,” the judges wrote. “In a two-party system, partisan fairness and competitiveness are correlated: a more competitive map is typically a fairer map, whereas less competition usually means less partisan fairness. The objective of both theories is to change ‘the partisan makeup of districts,’ whether by achieving proportional representation, electoral competitiveness, or both.” 

Doug Poland, Law Forward’s director of litigation, said in a statement Tuesday that it’s disappointing the panel dismissed the case before it had the opportunity to hear evidence. He also said the panel’s ruling will be appealed directly to the Supreme Court. 

“This is the first anti-competitive gerrymandering case ever filed in Wisconsin courts, and it deserves to be heard,” Poland said. “We believe that the circuit court was wrong in concluding that anti-competitive gerrymandering is ‘functionally equivalent’ to partisan gerrymandering. They are different claims, based on different evidence, that target different ways of manipulating representation to the detriment of voters.”

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WASHINGTON — U.S. senators across the aisle pushed back Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate funding for programs serving disadvantaged students.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon defended those and other proposed cuts to her agency outlined in Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which calls for $75.7 billion in new discretionary budget authority for the department that would mark a $3.2 billion, or 4.1%, reduction from fiscal 2026 levels. 

The administration has taken major steps to dismantle the 46-year-old Department of Education as part of the president’s quest to send education “back to the states.” That effort continues despite much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurring at the state and local levels.

“We’ve been clear: Shifting authority back to the states will not come at the expense of the central federal programs (and) support, much of which predate the department itself,” McMahon told lawmakers at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies.

The panel shares jurisdiction over Education Department spending with the corresponding subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. The president’s budget request is generally considered a starting point for negotiations, but Congress is responsible for deciding federal spending.

Bipartisan support for TRIO 

Republican and Democratic senators took particular aim at the administration’s proposal to eliminate Federal TRIO Programs in fiscal 2027.

The Federal TRIO Programs — funded at $1.19 billion this fiscal year — help support groups including low-income students, first-generation college students, individuals with disabilities and veterans. 

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the full Senate Appropriations Committee, said she opposes the president’s proposal to eliminate TRIO, noting that these programs have “changed the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students in Maine and across the country.” 

The Maine Republican added that TRIO “enjoys robust support and has made such a difference in the lives of children.” 

Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman also emphasized his support for TRIO, noting that in his state, these programs “have been a game-changer in helping low-income and first-generation students not only access higher education, but also succeed once they are there.” 

Sen. Jeff Merkley was the first in his family to go to college and said he comes from a “very blue-collar, frontier, homesteading, timber background.”

The Oregon Democrat said it’s from that perspective he believes that “having conscious programs to help people overcome the cultural chasm that exists between blue-collar kids like myself and that college world that you have very little contact on is enormously valuable in America, and the stats from these programs are pretty damn impressive.” 

The secretary told the panel that while “there are many instances where the TRIO program has been very beneficial … as we look across the country in how to spend these dollars and how to have similar results by maybe not necessarily focusing students towards college degrees, maybe there’s another way for them to have their path to success.” 

McMahon said her agency was in the process of spending “about $2.1 million” for investigating and evaluating the TRIO programs.

In its summary of Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request, the department said that TRIO “has failed to meet the vast majority of its performance measures, and studies of program effectiveness have shown that it has not increased college enrollment.” 

Dems decry plan to eliminate agency

Meanwhile, McMahon took heat from the leading Democrats on the subcommittee and the broader Senate Appropriations panel over the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the agency. 

Part of those efforts include several interagency agreements between Education and the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior, State and Treasury that transfer many of Education’s responsibilities to those agencies.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the subcommittee, said Education “is transferring the vast majority of its programs to other federal departments, agencies with little experience or expertise or capacity to administer them.” 

The Wisconsin Democrat said that instead of “reducing bureaucracy” — a major goal of the administration across the federal government and the department in particular — the transfers are creating “another layer of it.”

She added that “where states previously primarily dealt with the Department of Education, they will now have to deal with multiple federal agencies.” 

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the full Appropriations Committee, pressed McMahon on the status of the administration mulling the transfer of special education services out of the Education Department amid its dismantling efforts. 

The possible move to transfer programs out of the department’s Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services has stoked widespread concern from disability advocates.

McMahon said her department was “still evaluating where those programs would best be located, and we have not made that determination yet.” 

“I can assure you that the intent of this administration is not to put these students at risk in any way whatsoever,” McMahon said. 

But Murray was not satisfied with the secretary’s response, saying she is “deeply concerned that your answer sounds like you’re still moving ahead — let’s make it clear that will break the law, and it will make it a lot harder for these students with disabilities to get the education and understanding that their country will stand behind them with that.” 

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday obtained a second grand jury indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, long a target of President Donald Trump’s anger for overseeing an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

A federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted Comey related to a photo he posted on social media of seashells arranged to read “86 47.” Comey took the photo while vacationing in North Carolina last year. The indictment alleges that Comey threatened to harm the president and that he used interstate commerce to transmit the threat when he posted the photo.

An arrest warrant was also issued for Comey. The indictment alleges that a “reasonable recipient who is familiar with the circumstances” would interpret the seashell photo as a serious expression of intent to harm Trump.

Trump supporters have interpreted the photo as a threat against the president, since “86” is a slang term for removing something and “47” could be seen as a reference to Trump as the 47th president. Comey has said the photo wasn’t intended as a call to violence and deleted the post.

“While this case is unique and this indictment stands out because of the name of the defendant, his alleged conduct is the same kind of conduct that we will never tolerate and that we will always investigate and regularly prosecute,” acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a Justice Department news conference.

In a video posted online after the indictment, Comey said he was “still innocent” and wasn’t afraid. 

“Well, they’re back,” he says at the start of the video.

“It’s really important that all of us remember this is not who we are as a country, this is not how the Department of Justice is supposed to be,” Comey said. “The good news is we get closer every day to restoring those values. Keep the faith.”

Trump’s feud with Comey

A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted Comey in September, accusing him of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional proceeding. The allegations relate to his testimony in 2020 about the FBI’s investigation into links between Russia and the Trump campaign. The indictment came days before the statute of limitations ran out.

Comey pleaded not guilty before a federal judge dismissed the case in November, finding the prosecutor in the case had been illegally appointed. The judge also dismissed a separate case against Democratic New York Attorney General Letita James.

The new indictment marked another escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to prosecute Comey and other political enemies. Last week, the Justice Department obtained an indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has long angered conservatives. 

Hours before the Justice Department announced the indictment, a federal judge in New York ruled that a wrongful termination lawsuit brought by Comey’s daughter, former federal prosecutor Maurene Comey, could proceed. Maurene Comey claims she was improperly fired from the Justice Department because of her father or for political reasons.

Blanche takes questions

The new prosecution also comes as Blanche, a personal defense attorney for Trump, leads the Justice Department following the departure of Pam Bondi. Trump has not yet nominated a permanent attorney general.

The Tuesday indictment was signed by Matthew Petracca, an assistant U.S. attorney in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.

“This is a ridiculous indictment against James Comey. The Department of Justice will lose in court, again,” U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, wrote on social media.

At the news conference, Blanche fielded skeptical questions from reporters about how the case came together and why the criminal case wasn’t brought until nearly a year after the post. He refused to discuss evidence in the case, saying that would be unfair to Comey and prosecutors.

“You are not allowed to threaten the president of the United States of America,” Blanche said. “That’s not my decision, that’s Congress’ decision.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wants to make changes to a Senate-passed bill that would end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, a move that will further delay funding and prolong the stalemate that began in mid-February. 

The holdup could again interrupt paychecks for workers at the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Emergency Management Agency, both of which are part of DHS. Huge backups in airline security lines resulted in March when TSA officers went without pay for weeks until the administration scrambled to reprogram funds.

Johnson, R-La., has chosen not to negotiate potential tweaks in the funding bill with Senate Democrats, who will be needed to advance it if the House makes alterations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a Tuesday afternoon press conference the bill that’s stalled in the House doesn’t “need tweaks.” 

“They’re just stuck. So they come up with, ‘We need some technical changes,’” he said. “Hold up national security for technical changes? It’s absurd. They can pass the bill right now.” 

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the Appropriations Committee, said during a brief interview she was “flabbergasted” by Johnson’s comments.

She added during the press conference she has “no idea what technical changes they’re looking at.”

House hasn’t voted on DHS funding

The Senate unanimously passed a bill to fund the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security in late March and again in early April. Johnson hasn’t put it to the House floor for a vote, blocking it from becoming law. 

The legislation doesn’t include funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the Border Patrol, a compromise negotiated after Republicans and Democrats were unable to broker agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement operations. 

Republicans plan to provide upwards of $70 billion in additional spending for ICE and Border Patrol in a party-line budget reconciliation bill they hope to pass in the coming weeks. 

Johnson said last week he believes the “sequencing is important” on when each of the two bills becomes law. But time is running out for the tens of thousands of federal workers, who are about to miss out on their paychecks once again. 

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement the executive order President Donald Trump signed earlier this month to pay all DHS employees despite the funding lapse can only stretch so far. 

“That money is dried up if I continue down this path the first week of May,” Mullin said. “My pay roll through DHS is just over 1.6 billion dollars every 2 weeks so the money is going extremely fast and once that happens there is no emergency funds after that.”

‘We’ve got to get these agencies funded’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he’s working with House GOP leaders to “massage” the DHS funding bill in hopes it will become law sometime soon. 

“I’m very sympathetic,” he said. “We talked last night and he’s got to manage his challenges there. We have to manage our challenges here. But one way or the other, we’ve got to get these agencies funded.”

The disconnect between House Republicans and their Senate GOP counterparts on when to fund DHS is just one of several challenges party leaders are attempting to address this week. 

“We’re trying as best we can to coordinate strategy with the House. But, you know, it’s a unique situation. We’ve got very narrow margins and people with real strong opinions,” Thune said. “So it’s going to take, obviously, I think, the heavy involvement of the White House to bust some of these things loose. But we’re trying as best we can to ensure that we can get all of these issues across the finish line and ultimately on the president’s desk.”

Republican leaders will need the support of their own members as well as at least some Democrats in order to get major legislation, including the DHS funding bill, to Trump. 

But as of midday Tuesday, it didn’t appear they’d looped in key negotiators on possible changes to the Senate-passed spending bill. 

Recess next week

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the subcommittee in charge of funding DHS, said she didn’t know what changes House GOP leaders wanted to make. 

“I am not aware. I just know that we need to find a pathway forward,” she said. “And nobody should be leaving here, or certainly flying off to (congressional delegation trips), until we do.” 

Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to leave on Thursday for a week-long break. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the DHS funding panel, said House Republicans hadn’t reached out to him or his staff. 

“I don’t know why he’s making this more complicated than it needs to be,” he said. “Our bill, which passed the Senate 100 to zero, would pass the House easily.”

A Dane County judge dismissed a lawsuit from 15 Wisconsin children who had challenged laws they argued made climate change worse and violated their constitutional rights. 

The lawsuit was filed in August by the groups Our Children’s Trust and Midwest Environmental Advocates against the state Public Service Commission and Legislature. 

The suit argued that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening. 

The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination. 

Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require.

In a decision issued last week, Judge Julie Genovese said she’s sympathetic to the children’s argument but that the lawsuit was asking her to weigh in on a fundamentally political, not legal, question. 

“While the court is sympathetic to the youths and admires their willingness to access the courts in their quest to protect the planet, I conclude that the case must be dismissed because environmental policy is a nonjusticiable political question,” she wrote. 

Attorneys for the Legislature had also argued that the children didn’t have standing to bring the case, pointing to a federal court decision in a similar case in California. 

But in other states similar cases have had more success. A group of Montana children successfully sued to protect their right to a clean environment in 2024. 

Tony Wilkin Gibart, MEA’s executive director, told Wisconsin Public Radio he believes there’s a strong case for the ruling to be appealed. 

“Youth plaintiffs are frustrated,” he said. “They’re also incredibly determined and have expressed a lot of resolve to continue this fight.”

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Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Pedro Colón announced Tuesday he’s running to replace retiring Justice Annette Ziegler on the Wisconsin Supreme Court next year. 

Colón, a former Democratic member of the state Assembly and Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge, moved to Milwaukee from Puerto Rico when he was 10 years old. He was the first Latino elected to the Wisconsin Assembly and to sit on the state’s appeals court. 

He was appointed to the Milwaukee County Court by Gov. Jim Doyle in 2010 and then reelected three times. He was appointed to the District I Court of Appeals by Gov. Tony Evers in 2023. 

Colón said in a news release that his experience moving to Wisconsin and decades in the law make him qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. 

“I came to Milwaukee at ten years old, not speaking a word of English. I know what it feels like to stand before a system that was not built for you,” Colón said. “For 15 years on the bench, I have made sure every person who walks into my courtroom gets the same thing: a listening ear and a fair shot. That is exactly what I will do on the Supreme Court.”

Colón got his undergraduate degree from Marquette University and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife and has two daughters. 

He is the second liberal-leaning judge to enter the race to replace the conservative former Chief Justice Ziegler, who announced her plan to retire earlier this year. Clark County Judge Lyndsey Brunette announced her candidacy earlier this month. 

A liberal victory in 2027 would establish a 6-1 majority on the Court, leaving Justice Brian Hagedorn, who has occasionally been a swing vote and sided with the Court’s liberals, as the lone conservative on the bench.

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A Milwaukee alder is throwing his hat in the ring to seek the Democratic nomination for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, saying that he’s been told he’ll get aggressive financial support in challenging the Republican incumbent.

The announcement is getting pushback from a Democratic Party-aligned union group that has endorsed another Democrat in the district.

The newest entrant, Peter Burgelis, said that he was first approached a few months ago by Democratic “party members, not party leadership, but people that care about our state” who didn’t think any of the other 1st District Democrats could beat four-term U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville). He formally entered the race Sunday.

“What it will take to get him out of office is someone who can raise attention nationally, raise money on a national level and attract national attention to the race, that makes this the top 10 race for Democrats to support,” Burgelis told the Examiner Monday.

Burgelis is a mortgage loan officer who was elected to the Milwaukee County Board in 2022, then ran for and won a Milwaukee Common Council seat in 2024. He doesn’t live in the 1st CD and acknowledged in an interview Monday that could make him a target in attack ads.

He said he decided to enter the race after looking at the fundraising data for the other Democrats who will be competing  in the August primary to challenge Steil.

“What I was hoping to see in the first quarter financial report is one of the candidates break out strong with a war chest that would be able to go to bat against Bryan Steil, attract national attention, attract national money, and there just wasn’t anyone that did that,” Burgelis said.

A crowded primary field

This year’s 1st CD Democratic contest has drawn more hopefuls for the nomination than any year in recent memory. Until Burgelis’ entry, the contest had appeared to coalesce around four people.

Among those four is emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman, who announced his candidacy in August.

John Drew, a retired United Auto Workers union leader who chairs the UAW’s statewide political action council, told the Examiner Monday that the council endorsed Berman after distributing questionnaires, conducting interviews and assessing the campaigns of the Democratic hopefuls.

Berman’s background as an ER nurse and as a union member helped drive the endorsement. “He’s somebody who cares deeply about the issues that affect working people,” Drew said. “And we saw that he was running a strong campaign. He was raising more money than any of his opponents, and we felt he was the best candidate to take on Bryan Steil.”

Federal Election Commission reports filed through March 31 show that Berman has collected a total of $426,671 and spent $286,071, with $146,600 on hand. The nearest competitor, Randy Bryce, has collected $45,618 and spent $36,854.

Burgelis, however, told the Examiner Monday that he considers Berman’s fundraising and cash on hand too far behind Steil, who has more than $5.5 million on hand, to make him competitive in the November election.

Burgelis’ opening campaign salvo largely echoes the issues that the rest of the Democratic field in the 1st District — as well as in Wisconsin and nationwide — have been centering in the approaching midterm elections

“Gas is up, groceries are up, healthcare, utilities — everything’s more expensive because of Bryan Steil’s votes to promote the Trump agenda,” Burgelis said. “They’re cutting Medicaid and food assistance in exchange for trillion-dollar tax cuts. That’s not something Wisconsin voters support. Bryan Steil is in it to benefit his billionaire buddies.”

Recruited by former Democratic chair, other insiders  

Burgelis said he was first approached a few months ago, by “a number of people,” including former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate.

He said initially he was asked if his aldermanic district overlapped with the 1st CD. Burgelis said the congressional district is about a mile away.

“Months later the conversation came back to — ‘We need someone who can win and beat Bryan Steil. No one’s coming out of the pack,’” Burgelis said. He added that he was told that the upcoming quarterly fundraising reports “aren’t going to be strong enough,” was asked, “would you consider running?” and decided to enter the race.

“I had conversations with many Democrats and other political leaders before making my decision to run,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “I got broad agreement that someone with a successful political record and who could attract national attention and national money would be needed to beat [Steil].”

He said, “The opportunity to flip the seat and attract national attention and national money is now. Nobody running now can do that.”

Asked about his role in recruiting Burgelis, Tate said in an email message, “Peter asked me about running a while back and I encouraged him to do so. He’s a hard worker, a good progressive, and we need a strong candidate to take on Steil. I don’t have any other color or the like to add.”

Burgelis said his review of past election results gave him confidence that the seat could be flipped to the Democrats.

“The residency thing, I think, is certainly something that a GOP campaign ad is going to harp on in November and October,” Burgelis told the Examiner. “But right now, the goal for Democrats is to get the best candidates through the primary.”

An Urban Milwaukee report April 21 that Burgelis was considering the race noted that Wisconsin law requires members of Congress to live in the state, but does not require them to live in their district.

“The congressional district is a mile from my aldermanic district, and people and neighbors in my district care about the same things that everyone else in Southeastern Wisconsin cares about — life is unaffordable anymore,” Burgelis said.

He said the absence of local elected officials or state lawmakers from the district in the race tells him that “no one sees that they can bring in the national attention or national money needed to have a successful race against an incumbent Republican.”

Drew, the UAW leader, said he spoke with Burgelis after first learning he might run and asked the alder to walk through his reasoning. Burgelis didn’t convince him, however.

“I thought it was a terrible idea,” Drew said. “It seemed like for party insiders a chance to install a manufactured candidate instead of looking at people in the 1st CD — like Mitch Berman — who live there, who are organic candidates, who have a great profile.”

Berman has “dedicated time to campaigning for that office,” Drew added. Ignoring that is “an indication that there are people in the Democratic Party that have not learned anything from our defeats — that a working class candidate who is fighting for bread and butter economic issues is the type of candidate we need to win, not only the 1st CD but in general.”

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Advocates for people incarcerated in Wisconsin prisons gave input for a planned update of the state prison code in a virtual hearing Monday afternoon. 

The hearing gave members of the public a chance to comment on the statement of scope for the upcoming review, which broadly outlines the Wisconsin Department of Corrections plans to update rules regarding resources available in state prisons. 

The advocacy group Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) said in a Facebook post on Sunday that the policies in Chapter 309 of Wisconsin’s administrative code “directly shape daily life for incarcerated people,” including food, visits, hygiene and religious practices. 

“Whether you’ve been incarcerated, have a loved one inside, or simply believe in dignity and fairness your voice belongs here,” the group said. 

Questions at the hearing included whether the department would be speaking with incarcerated people about the upcoming rule update; a DOC employee said there are no specific plans at this point. 

The last time the section of the state’s prison code relating to resources for people in prison was significantly revised was more than a decade ago, with the revision completed in 2013, according to the scope statement. The agency would update the entire section to reflect changes in the law and changes in DOC operations and practices. The scope statement cites a 2018 law as an example of a change that needs to be addressed. 

The alternative to the update is to keep “outdated policies which do not adequately reflect the current state of the law and a rule which needs clarification and reform,” the scope statement said. The updates, it added, will likely not have an economic impact on the agency.

Susan Franzen of the advocacy group Ladies of SCI brought up a section of the code regarding leisure time for incarcerated people. It states that the DOC “shall provide as much leisure time activity as possible for inmates, consistent with available resources and scheduled programs and work.” Incarcerated people are to be allowed to participate in leisure time activities for at least four hours per week, and institutions that have the facilities to allow more “should do so.” 

The code states that leisure time activity is “free time outside the cell or room during which the inmate may be involved in activities such as recreational reading, sports, film and television viewing, and handicrafts.” 

Franzen asked whether there is monitoring to make sure incarcerated people are getting as much time as they can outside or in a dayroom. She said she’s heard some facilities structure meals and standard counts in a way that leads to people spending up to an hour in their cells after a meal, and asked if there is a way to improve efficiency and allow people to spend more time outside of their cells. 

Another section of the code mentioned by Franzen says that a warden will allow an incarcerated person to have 12 adult visitors on the visiting list. A warden can approve more than 12 visitors on the list if the first 12 are close family members. 

A DOC visitation policy for adult prisons that was updated earlier this year generally allows for this to occur. It also says that any additions or deletions for an individual visitor on the list are allowed once every six months. Franzen questioned why incarcerated people can’t be allowed more visitors on the list. 

Since the last revision, the state has seen court decisions addressing correctional issues including religious practices, mail and personal property, which the proposed rule will take into consideration, the scope statement says. The agency would also make clarifications to the rules and cut outdated parts when necessary. 

The chapter addresses resources for incarcerated people in state prisons, including mail, news media, publications, visitation, special events, access to the courts, personal property, food, personal hygiene, leisure time activities, telephone calls, clothing, canteen, inmate account funds, inmate compensation and religious practice, the scope statement says. 

According to the Department of Corrections, members of the public who weighed in must also submit their comments in writing, and written comments submitted by May 1 will receive the same consideration as comments made during the hearing. 

Comments can be mailed, emailed or submitted on the Wisconsin State Legislature website. 

Caitlin Washburn, administrative rules coordinator for the DOC, said there will be opportunity for additional feedback once the proposed rule and changes have been drafted. She said there will be at least one additional public hearing and a public comment period during which people can submit written comments.

The Wisconsin State Legislature’s website allows interested people to receive personalized e-mail notifications, including administrative rules notices. 

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Rep. Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah) criticized heavy spending in state legislative races, which is likely to continue this year, as he announced his retirement Monday. His departure creates an open race for a swing Assembly district that could help determine control of the Assembly. 

Kaufert said in a statement that family and health concerns have led him to retirement. 

“After a great deal of thought and reflection, there comes a time when you simply know it is time,” Kaufert said.  “Family and health concerns have led me to this decision, but it is not one I make lightly.  Representing the Fox Valley has been an honor and privilege.”

Kaufert represents Assembly District 53, which encompasses Neenah, Menasha and part of Appleton. Kaufert was the mayor of Neenah from 2014 to 2022 and also previously served in the state Assembly from 1991 to 2015. 

With new, more competitive legislative maps adopted in 2024, Kaufert came out of retirement to run for the state Assembly in 2024 and won in a close race to the Democratic candidate by about 360 votes — a result that helped Republicans maintain their majority during the 2025-26 legislative session. 

“Making a difference and standing up for those who need a voice — the little guy — has been at the heart of everything I have done,” he said. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) thanked Kaufert for his service in a statement. 

“Dean’s decision to return to the Legislature for one more term speaks to his commitment to public service and to this institution. He didn’t have to come back but he chose to step forward and serve again, and we are better for it,” August said. 

Kaufert’s retirement means Republicans will not have the advantage of incumbency in the race for his seat and opens up the race for the district, which will help determine control of the state Assembly in 2027. 

Republican lawmakers currently hold 54 seats in the Assembly to Democrats’ 45 seats, meaning Democrats  would need to hold all their seats and win five additional seats in November to win the majority. 

Kaufert is now the eighth Assembly Republican to decide against running for reelection this session — the first from a swing district. 

Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a social media post that the seat is crucial for an Assembly majority, noting that when the district elected Kaufert, it also voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race by 4.4 percentage points. The district recently voted for Justice-elect Chris Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate in the April state Supreme Court race by 27.5 percentage points. 

“Republicans see the writing on the wall and the big victory in April has made it clearer than ever that change is coming to Wisconsin this November,” Remiker said. 

Other Republican lawmakers are planning their reelection bids including two incumbents from swing districts: Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R-River Falls) and Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R- De Pere). 

In his announcement, Kaufert said the political environment in the state Assembly has improved and has led to more bipartisan work, but criticized the increasing negativity and spending in campaigns for office. 

“Campaigns have become increasingly more negative, with vicious personal attacks and an overwhelming influx of out-of-state special interest money,” Kaufert said. “The ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality — where opponents are too often demonized and unfairly personally attacked — has taken a real toll on me and my family.”

Kaufert said that both parties are to blame, but called the amount of spending by Democrats on his seat, which pays a salary of about $60,000, “ridiculous.” In 2024, Kaufert’s Democratic opponent spent $1.76 million in his campaign for the seat. Kaufert spent $1.24 million, according to campaign finance reports.

Spending on campaigns will likely continue to increase this year, especially with control of the chambers on the line, and Democrats are already investing in the seats that could help determine control.

The Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, the fundraising arm for the Assembly Democratic caucus, contributed $1 million to Rep. Steve Doyle’s reelection campaign, according to his latest campaign finance reports. It was the most of any Assembly incumbents, according to WisPolitics. The Onalaska Democrat is one of the most “vulnerable” Democratic incumbents, having won his last election in 2024 by just 223 votes. 

Wisconsin election campaign finance laws, adopted in 2015 under the leadership of former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature, allow political parties to accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations and transfer unlimited funds to state-level candidates, including those for Assembly. 

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