Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now reject at least some federal vaccine guidance as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to de-emphasize the importance of childhood vaccinations under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., according to research by KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization based in California and Washington, D.C. 

The tally as of March 10 reflects states that have announced they will go their own way on childhood vaccines since last May, when Kennedy began to make changes to the vaccine schedule. Those changes culminated with a reduction in recommended routine childhood vaccinations, from 13 to 7, as of January. 

New state-by-state recommendations reflect a partisan divide, as all states with Democratic governors have rejected federal childhood vaccine guidance while many Republican states have not. 

Virginia announced in February that it would not follow CDC guidelines, a change after the inauguration of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who took over after a Republican predecessor. Spanberger had campaigned on the issue, saying she would not support a rollback of childhood vaccinations.

In Florida, the state Senate passed a bill March 9 making it easier for parents to let their children go unvaccinated, though state House leaders have said they will not consider a similar bill despite support for it from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

In Louisiana, the state has adopted a policy of not promoting vaccines or holding clinics. Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who reluctantly agreed to Kennedy’s confirmation despite objecting to his views on vaccines, is facing a primary fight. 

Fifteen Democrat-led states sued Kennedy in federal court in February, seeking a reversal of the new vaccine guidelines. A preliminary hearing is scheduled May 29.

Some states have created formal alliances to share health information. The Northeast Public Health Collaborative, composed of Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York state, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York City, said in January it will continue following guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics instead of the federal government.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released its immunization schedule for 2026, which kept in place the schedule as it was before HHS’s overhaul. Twelve medical professional organizations endorsed the academy’s schedule. 

And governors of 14 states have formed another alliance to share public health information, including on vaccines. The updated CDC guidance “creates confusion and introduces unnecessary barriers for families who want to protect their children from serious illness,” said the Governors Public Health Alliance in a January news release. The governors are all Democrats, though the group says it is nonpartisan.

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

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Wednesday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the revocation of legal status for more than 350,000 Haitians, opening them up to deportations. 

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to block a lower court’s ruling that found the Trump administration unlawfully ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti. 

TPS is a status given to nationals who hail from a country deemed too dangerous for return. The program grants work permits and deportation protections through renewal cycles ranging from six to 18 months. 

As President Donald Trump aims to carry out mass deportations, the administration has moved to revoking legal status, such as TPS, for millions of immigrants, which means they then may be deported.  

Administration argues status is temporary

In court filings, Sauer argued that the decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia harms the Trump administration’s “national interest and foreign relations.” 

He added that TPS is supposed to be “temporary,” and notes that Haiti has had the designation since 2010. 

The high court asked for a response by Monday from attorneys representing the TPS holders who initially sued. 

Haiti first received TPS designation after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and had it renewed following the president’s assassination in 2021 by gangs. 

The Trump administration moved to end TPS designation by Feb. 3. But Haitian TPS holders sued, arguing that the end of the designation did not take into account the country’s current condition. Haiti is dealing with gang violence and political instability. 

Other TPS moves

The Trump administration has also asked the high court to allow for the stripping of TPS for 6,000 Syrian nationals. The Supreme Court has not ruled on that emergency appeal yet. 

The Trump administration has sought to end legal protections for immigrants with TPS status. 

So far, the administration has revoked TPS status for 13 of the 17 countries that were designated at the start of the president’s second term. 

Those 13 countries are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

The four remaining countries with TPS expiring this year without an extension are El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense must quickly release the results of its investigation into whether the U.S. military bombed a girls’ elementary school in Iran that left at least 168 people dead, according to a letter sent Wednesday that was signed by nearly every Senate Democrat. 

“To be clear, the war against Iran is a war of choice without Congressional authorization,” they wrote. “Nonetheless, as these military actions continue, the United States and Israel must abide by U.S. and international law, including the law of armed conflict.”

The letter from 46 senators to Secretary Pete Hegseth calls on Pentagon officials to conduct “a swift investigation into the strikes on this school and any other potential U.S. military actions causing civilian harm, and the findings must be released to the public as soon as possible, along with any measures to pursue accountability.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Defense said in a statement the “incident is under investigation.”

US responsibility probed

President Donald Trump said while leaving the White House Wednesday that he didn’t know anything about preliminary reports that the U.S. is responsible for the bombing. The New York Times reported earlier in the day that an “ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States is responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school.”

The lawmakers’ letter requests the Pentagon answer a series of questions, including 

• Whether the U.S. military conducted the strike on Feb. 28 on the girls’ elementary school.
• If it was a U.S. strike, what the military meant to bomb and what led to the school being hit instead.
• Whether the department is “complying with rules to prevent the commission of war crimes.”
• If the DOD created a “no-strike list” before bombing began in Iran and what other steps military officials have taken to reduce or prevent harm to civilians. 
• Whether the military is using artificial intelligence tools in its operations in Iran. 
• What steps the department took to comply with the laws of war. 

Senators signing letter

The letter was signed by Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, Delaware Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons, Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Hawaii Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, Illinois Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, Maryland Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen, Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Michigan Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin, Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, New Jersey Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. All are Democrats. 

Maine Sen. Angus King and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both independents who caucus with the Democrats, signed the letter as well. 

Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was the sole Democrat not to sign the letter. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a case that centers on a dispute between state Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature about who controls money the Department of Justice is awarded as part of lawsuit settlements. 

The suit is yet another challenge to the lame duck laws Republican legislators and outgoing Gov. Scott Walker enacted in 2018 in the days before the end of Walker’s term and another instance of the Supreme Court stepping in to enforce the separation of powers between Wisconsin’s executive and legislative branches. 

Under several provisions of the lame duck laws, the Legislature sought to limit the executive branch’s authority to spend money. The Supreme Court previously struck down provisions that required the approval of legislative committees before executive agencies could act. 

The Legislature argues that under the law, the attorney general is required to put money from a financial settlement into the state’s general fund, which legislators control through the normal budget process. Kaul argues he can put the settlement funds in accounts controlled by DOJ but doesn’t have the authority to spend those funds without approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee. 

Initially filed in Polk County Circuit Court in 2021, when a conservative majority controlled the Supreme Court, the case appeared in the 2nd District Court of Appeals in 2024 where a 2-1 decision reversed the circuit court’s ruling that Kaul could direct settlement funds into DOJ accounts. 

That majority opinion was authored by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative judge now running for a seat on the Supreme Court. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

Generally, conservative legal interpretations of the law involve strict adherence to the exact language of a statute while liberal legal interpretations take into account intent. In this case, that typical structure is flipped. The DOJ argues that it is following the exact language of the law by directing the settlement money into accounts for specific DOJ programs that fall under the umbrella of the general fund and not spending those funds without approval from JFC. DOJ also notes that historically, Wisconsin attorneys general have had broad authority to spend settlement money. 

DOJ attorney Hannah Jurss argued to the Court Wednesday that it isn’t DOJ’s fault the Legislature wasn’t precise enough when crafting the law — though the law has effectively cut off Kaul’s ability to direct the expenditure of settlement funds. 

“We now do not have discretion to expend those monies. So if the intention was to prevent the attorney general’s expenditure of settlement funds as properly understood, it did that,” Jurss said. “There are now monies sitting there that are left to the attorney general’s discretion that the attorney general cannot spend. Instead, I think what the court is seeing in the Legislature’s arguments are unsupported assertions about some sort of broader intent that, frankly, have no support whatsoever in the text of the statutes, in statutory history.” 

Jurss added that a similar structure guides the budget statutes across state government, so if the Court sided with the Legislature, much of the existing budget framework would be affected. She noted programs in the Departments of Tourism and Military Affairs that would be hit. 

“This Court should not cut the wire on the budget statute structure across Wisconsin statutes simply for the Legislature to accomplish its preferred outcome here,” she said. 

Misha Tseytlin, the attorney for the Legislature — whose former position as state solicitor general was cut by the Legislature in the lame duck laws — argued the Court should side with the Legislature to stop Kaul from finding ways around the law. 

“Because the attorney general had found his way around the Legislature’s prior attempt,” Tseytlin said. “I know there’s not a lot of sympathy for the Legislature from the courts, but imagine how frustrating it is. You’re trying to rein in the attorney general, you’re trying to get them to stop these practices, you enact this JFC provision, and they find a way around that.”

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Passengers at a handful of airports this week waited in hours-long security lines as the government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security dragged on.

Though Transportation Security Administration officers are required by law to work during a lapse in funding, more than usual have been absent after receiving only a partial paycheck during the most recent pay period. TSA officers will miss an entire paycheck this weekend if the shutdown is still in effect then. 

No end to the shutdown appeared imminent Wednesday, as the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would have funded TSA and other agencies in DHS that are not related to immigration enforcement.

In the meantime, TSA officers are not being paid. 

Most live paycheck-to-paycheck, said Johnny Jones, the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 100, which represents TSA agents.

The lack of pay has contributed to absenteeism, Jones added. The union does not condone coordinated “sick-outs,” which are illegal. 

But individual officers miss work for one of three reasons during a shutdown, he said: pre-planned time off, legitimate illness or personal emergencies, and those calling in sick but seeking other work to pay bills.

“If you’re normally receiving a paycheck, you wouldn’t have that third group,” he said.

Some of those who are working are going without lunch or making other sacrifices, Jones added. And he said two colleagues were evicted during the most recent shutdown last fall, which lasted for 43 days.

The U.S. war against Iran, which has an estimated price in the billions of dollars in just its first two weeks, has also driven resentment among TSA workers, Jones said.

“One of the things that I’ve heard from the colleagues is that, man, we got plenty of money to go fight wars and bomb Iran, but we can’t pay our own employees,” he said.

Long lines

No exceptionally long wait times were reported Wednesday, but the previous few days saw several examples of snarled security lines.

Security lines topped three hours at Houston’s William P. Hobby International Airport on Monday and Tuesday. 

Lines at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were up to two hours Monday and the airport’s social media drew a direct line to the shutdown.

“Due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown, there continues to be a shortage of TSA workers at the security checkpoint … which is causing longer-than-average lines,” the airport’s X account posted.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport also urged passengers to leave extra time to account for factors including “TSA staffing constraints.”

CBS News reported Wednesday that more than 300 TSA agents have left their jobs since the shutdown began. TSA officials did not respond to messages seeking confirmation of that figure.

Senate gridlock

The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, Washington’s Patty Murray, sought unanimous consent Wednesday for the Senate to approve a bill that would fund all of DHS other than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the secretary’s office.

Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who chairs the subcommittee on Homeland Security funding, objected.

Murray’s bill “would effectively defund our law enforcement officers that are charged with keeping Americans safe,” Britt said.

Each party blamed the other for the impasse, which has been unbreachable since the department’s funding lapsed Feb. 14.

Following the January fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis, Democrats are demanding changes to immigration agencies’ conduct as a condition of funding the department.

Republicans have said they are willing to negotiate the issue, but the parties disagree on what to do for the department, which also includes the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the meantime.

Republican leaders sought to pass a short-term continuing resolution to fund the entire department, but Democrats rejected it, saying it would allow the operation of immigration agencies without adding accountability measures.

“Right now, TSA agents are going without pay because Republicans and the White House have decided they would rather shut down all of DHS than pass some very basic reforms to rein in ICE and Border Patrol,” Murray said. “We also want TSA and FEMA funded, but we are not going to be blackmailed into cutting a blank check for ICE to get it done.”

Politics cited

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, said Democrats have stopped negotiating on DHS funding in a bid to keep the issue alive for the November midterm elections. 

“The American people are tired,” he said. “Lines get longer at the airports because TSA isn’t funded. The American people want us to do our jobs. Republicans are at the table. We’re ready to work toward a solution. Democrats have walked away.”

Jones, the AFGE member and TSA officer, declined to say which approach to short-term funding was preferable, but said it was Congress’ job to fund the federal government.

“We all swear the same oath to the same Constitution,” he said. “Now my job function is a little different than theirs, so they need to do theirs so I can do mine.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats and education advocates Wednesday marked one year since the U.S. Department of Education initiated sweeping mass layoffs.

Those layoffs set the stage for more unprecedented efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year to wind down the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

Meanwhile, a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the staffing reductions affected the government’s ability to determine how well student loan servicers are doing their jobs.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted the press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, along with advocates, to underscore the impact of the mass layoffs and other major cuts on students and families across the country. 

The U.S. Supreme Court in July 2025 temporarily greenlit the mass layoffs, along with Trump’s plan to dramatically downsize the agency, which he had outlined in an executive order signed later in March 2025. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said the administration “has shown it will stop at nothing, even ignoring court orders and violating federal law to dismantle the department and sow chaos for students, families, communities and my coworkers.” 

“They will continue to undermine the careers of thousands of dedicated public servants who work every day to support our students and families,” Gittleman added.

The March 2025 Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort, hit wide swaths of the agency, taking heavy hits to units such as the Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. 

Student loans

Two Government Accountability Office reports — including the one released Wednesday — underscored the impact of the staffing reductions at these two units on the department’s abilities to carry out its key responsibilities. 

In February 2025, FSA “stopped assessing student loan servicers on accuracy and call quality due to lack of staff capacity,” the government watchdog reported.

Between January and December 2025, the department saw a drop in 656 staffers at FSA, according to the report.  

“By not assessing servicer accuracy and call quality, FSA lacks assurance that borrower records are correct and that servicers are giving borrowers quality information,” according to the GAO report.

Civil rights

Another GAO report, released in February, found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees not working between March and December 2025, who were put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

The government watchdog found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.

The agency later moved to rescind the RIFs against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded. 

“So they wasted taxpayer money while they also tried to undermine the laws of the United States that guarantee civil rights to every student,” Van Hollen said during Wednesday’s press conference.  

Interagency agreements 

Members of Congress and advocates also pushed back against the Education Department’s several interagency agreements with other departments, which transfer many of its responsibilities to Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State.

The department has clarified in fact sheets regarding the agreements that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities” and oversight of the programs involved. 

The effort has drawn strong backlash from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocates.

“Trump is setting these programs up to fail,” Hirono said, adding that by “shoving these programs to departments that do not have the experience or wherewithal to run these programs, he is setting these programs that our kids rely on (up) for failure.” 

Funding increase

Meanwhile, Congress earlier this year rebuked a request from the president to dramatically slash funding for the department as he and his administration seek to dismantle it. 

Trump signed a measure in February that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal 2025 funding level and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump sought.

The spending package does not provide ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the department’s responsibilities, but it does direct the department and the agencies part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.

The department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have not formally authorized a war in Iran, though they may soon be expected to approve emergency funding for the endeavor without any projection from the Trump administration as to how long it may last or the full cost, not just in dollars but in American troop and civilian lives. 

Experts on defense spending interviewed by States Newsroom say the cost of weeks of air bombing will mount into the billions of dollars, a sum that will balloon if ground troops are sent into Iran to undertake regime change and if the war extends for months to come.

Defense Department officials briefed Congress on Monday that the Pentagon spent $5.6 billion on munitions alone during the first two days of the war, according to a congressional aide not authorized to speak publicly. The aide expects DOD has spent into the double digits in the days since. 

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about the timeline and end goals for the war, called Operation Epic Fury. He at first said the bombing campaign he began alongside the Israeli government could last between four and six weeks and on Monday said it is possible it will end “quickly.” Trump, however, hasn’t ruled out a longer assault or the deployment of ground troops.  

Republican lawmakers who control Congress say the ongoing attack is an essential national security undertaking and that they won’t constrain Trump in his role as commander-in-chief. 

Democrats, who tried unsuccessfully to remove U.S. troops from hostilities until approved by Congress, will be needed to provide enough votes to move any supplemental spending request through the Senate — one possible obstacle to a prolonged conflict. 

Even a relatively brief war will have long-lasting, far-reaching consequences for the millions of people pulled into the conflict. 

“One lesson of history is that a war that is supposedly short or brief has these huge repercussions that ripple across time,” said Stephanie Savell, director of the Cost of War project at the Watson School of International & Public Affairs at Brown University.

Neither the White House nor the Office of Management and Budget have disclosed publicly how much the bombing has cost taxpayers so far or how much spending it might eventually require. A Defense Department spokesperson said they “have nothing to provide on this at this time.” The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, has asked the Congressional Budget Office to come up with a number.

Comparison with Iraq, Afghanistan

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the foreign policy program at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said a ballpark estimate for the military costs of war during an “extended air campaign” would normally run a couple of billion dollars a month. 

“But at this point, I think we’re more likely in the couple billion a week range,” he said. 

Achieving long-lasting regime change, which Trump has spoken about often since the war began, could be much more costly, both in terms of American spending and troops’ lives, as well as civilian casualties. 

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq averaged about $1 million per deployed U.S. troop per year once all of the infrastructure, equipment, health care and other factors were rolled into the cost of war.  

During the peak of those wars, O’Hanlon said, there were about 100,000 to 175,000 troops in those two countries and the United States was spending about $200 billion annually. 

“If you needed at least 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, you could conceivably need a quarter million or more in Iran if you’re really going to try to occupy and stabilize the whole country,” he said. “So that means now you’re getting into the range of $250 to $300 billion a year for a presence that would stay in Iran for a full 12 months. And then each and every year it would be additional.”

That, however, is just the potential cost for the military. It doesn’t include damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region or other costs associated with war. 

“You’ve got your infrastructure damage as well as higher energy costs around the world. And already talk of less fertilizer being produced, which is going to reduce crop yields,” O’Hanlon said. “So there are all sorts of second-order effects.”

‘Wars are never quick or cheap or easy’

The death toll for U.S. troops, seven of whom have already died, could also increase depending on the scope of the conflict. 

There were about 150 combat fatalities during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, as well as about 150 deaths from training and accidents in the lead-up and aftermath, O’Hanlon said. 

The war in Afghanistan led to the deaths of about 2,500 U.S. troops across roughly two decades. About 4,500 Americans died in the 15 years of the war in Iraq, he said. 

Savell, of the Cost of War program at Brown University, said research has shown that “wars are never quick or cheap or easy.”

The Iraq War that began in 2003, she said, is one of many examples of political leaders messaging ahead of time that a conflict would be “short and decisive and relatively inexpensive.” 

“We see many of those kinds of narratives being, you know, a refrain these days in relation to Iran as well,” Savell said. “So I think that the comparison in that sense is apt.”

The Iraq war also had major unanticipated consequences for those living in the region, including “that the U.S. invasion was partially responsible for the rise of the Islamic State,” Savell said.

“And that militant group has now spread its terror attacks around the world,” she said.

In addition to the direct deaths of both troops and civilians that come from bullets, bombs and other weapons of war, there will be indirect deaths that stem from a lack of clean water, food and medical care.

“Those kinds of things have really, really long-lasting and deep impacts for people, especially women and children,” Savell said. “In contemporary wars, children ages zero to five are often the ones who end up suffering in the long term because of the diseases and the malnutrition that can be a reverberating effect of war.”

Regime change ambitions

Seth G. Jones, president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said during a roundtable discussion that he believes it will be “very difficult” for the U.S. and Israeli militaries to cause “major damage to the Iranian regime largely from air and naval assets.” 

“I think even with ground troops, trying to social engineer a foreign government is incredibly difficult,” he said. 

The U.S. military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as operations in Libya, he said, all used a combination of tactics, including ground forces. 

“Those wars persisted for years, if not decades, after that. And we saw civil wars in all three cases and insurgencies,” Jones said. “So, trying to do that without a meaningful ground presence, I think, is going to be virtually impossible. And then you run the risk of what the U.S. did in 1991 in Iraq and Hungary in 1956, which is it urged individuals to rise up, and they were slaughtered in both cases, the Kurds and the Hungarians.” 

Shaping an entirely new Iranian regime, he said, would take “months if not longer.” 

A prolonged conflict could lead to several challenges for the U.S. military, one of which will be restocking munitions like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, about a quarter of which were drawn down in 2025, according to Jones. 

“The more the U.S. fires, the less munitions it has, offensive and defensive, including available for its war plans … against China in the Taiwan Strait, against North Korea on the Korean Peninsula and against Russia,” Jones said. 

There is also a chance the conflict could widen even further if Iranian supporters outside of that country decide to begin targeting the U.S. military or civilians. 

“Do the Houthis start firing from Yemen? Do we see Iraqi Shia militia start conducting attacks, including against U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, or other locations?” Jones said. “Or do we see the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and its partners conduct attacks elsewhere? We know they’ve conducted assassination plots, at least, in the U.S., including in the city of Washington. So how does that expand?”

The defense budget

Mara Karlin, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of practice at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said during a panel discussion that while the U.S. military has a large budget, its resources aren’t infinite. 

Congress approved $838.7 billion for the Department of Defense in January as part of its annual government funding process. Republicans approved another $150 billion for the Pentagon to spend on specific programs, like air and missile defense, as well as shipbuilding, in their “big, beautiful” law enacted in 2025.

“Fundamentally, the U.S. military can often find ways to walk and chew gum; it just gets really hard to do so and the costs can only increase,” she said. 

And while the possibility of Trump sending in U.S. ground forces isn’t completely out of the picture, Karlin said that “is almost inconceivable.”

“Ground troops mean you’re getting ready for a lot of casualties, especially given that you have the potential for regime collapse,” she said. 

Making that type of choice, to put U.S. troops into Iran, would likely ensure the war “will be long and it will be ugly,” despite the possibility of significant change.

“Iraq 2026 actually looks pretty different. The costs to get to that from 2003 onward were so extraordinarily high,” Karlin said. “And I think that it is safe to assume that if one were to use that analogy, you would see something as rough, if not much, much worse.” 

Abby Wurzburger, a 14-year-old from Wauwatosa, is leading the charge on a bill to ban animal testing by cosmetics manufacturers in Wisconsin.

“Although the total number of animals and testing facilities are not disclosed to the public, this doesn’t stop the fact that any amount of unnecessary testing is too much,” Wurzburger said at a press conference in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Tuesday. 

The middle school student was joined by Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa), who represents the young advocate and helped her work on the bill. The bill’s lead authors are Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis), and Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit). Vining described her constituent as the “driving force” behind the legislation before passing the microphone to allow Wurzburger to speak about the issue. 

Wurzburger said her concerns about animal testing started after she became a vegetarian a couple of years ago. A meal on a cruise spurred her decision. 

“It had an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I was actually eating a hamburger, and I was looking at, like all the waste I saw, the animal products and stuff,” she said, “I was like, this is a lot of waste, and this needs to be stopped.” 

Wurzburger explained at the press conference that animal testing involves putting cosmetic products, including perfume, nail polish, makeup and hair products, on the skin, eyes and other body parts of an animal.

“It’s basically just seeing how it reacts with them, and it’s cruel and inhumane,” she said. 

Wurzburger first contacted Vining two years ago and has worked with her since — contacting members of Congress from across the country, reviewing legislation in other states and meeting with Wisconsin Legislative Council to work on the bill draft. She said that in the beginning she wasn’t getting much response from lawmakers. 

“That was kind of frustrating, but it worked out,” Wurzburger told the Examiner. 

Vining complimented her constituent’s work, emphasizing that Wurzburger worked on the issue outside of school and saying she brought printed documents to their meetings with highlighted areas, notes and questions.

“You did difficult research,” Vining said to Wurzburger while they spoke with the Examiner. “You were sorting through bills from the federal level and Virginia, and you kept going through and figuring out what you thought was the right way to do something… if you were writing it for Wisconsin.” 

Members of Congress have introduced proposals to implement a federal ban on cosmetic animal testing as recently as last year, but none have been successful. There are at least 45 countries that ban cosmetic animal testing.

There are 12 states in the U.S. that have bans, including Virginia, Illinois, and Louisiana. California became the first state to adopt a cosmetic animal testing ban in 2018 and Washington state became the latest in 2025.

“We need Wisconsin to be the 13th,” Wurzburger said at the press conference. “This is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart as I’ve been an animal lover my whole life.” 

Wurzburger said “the Wisconsin Humane Cosmetics” bill is modeled closely after Virginia’s bill. 

“After these bills have been passed, cosmetic companies started to drift away from these practices and are becoming more cruelty free, so those other bills have definitely promoted cosmetic cruelty free,” she said. 

According to the bill draft, cosmetic manufacturers would be prohibited from conducting animal testing, manufacturing or importing ingredients that were developed using cosmetic animal testing or selling cosmetics that were produced using animal testing. The ban would take effect on Dec. 31, 2026.

One change that Wurzburger said she thought about involved the penalties included in the bill. Under the bill draft, a person would be subject to $5,000 forfeiture for a violation and an additional $1,000 for each day the violation continues.

“We didn’t want to make it too high for small businesses who would suffer from that,” Wurzburger told the Examiner about deciding to mirror the penalty established in Virginia’s law. “I was thinking it would be really easy for the big businesses just to pay it off and keep testing, but then we thought about the small businesses.”

In the afternoon, Vining gave Wurzburger the opportunity to speak to a couple of fourth grade classes who had come to tour the Capitol. Wurzburger told the students about how she first emailed Vining in the sixth grade and said they could email their lawmakers about anything they want to see change. 

“I want to make sure that you guys know that nobody is too small to make a change that you believe in,” Wurzburger said.

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Public concern about rising costs is fueling hopes for a blue wave in the November midterm elections, as well as Democratic wins in Wisconsin that could deliver trifecta control of the Legislature, governor’s mansion and state Supreme Court.

But even if the would-be autocrat in the White House does not find a way to disrupt the midterms, the rise of affordability as the dominant public issue is a both blessing and a trap. The intense focus on micro (household) economics neglects a bigger battle Democrats must fight. 

It’s dangerous to make too narrow a response to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian threat. Democracy is menaced on two fronts: first the immediate attack on its institutional bedrocks — fair elections, equal justice, constitutional checks and balances — and second by the underlying cause of the civic emergency: a profound crisis in legitimacy arising from a chronic failure of government to deliver on the most pressing problems affecting peoples’ lives and futures. 

The long-term failures of the U.S. government to promote and protect a decent life for most people have  produced combustible political kindling, exploited by an authoritarian movement and its charismatic leader, to seize power  and ignite the most profound crisis in democracy since the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Thousands of our neighbors in Minnesota and Illinois, thrust into the first front of the struggle, are responding with courage and discipline. They are demonstrating the power of organized people and civil society groups with active members, aided by the elected officials they inspire to action, to hold the line for democracy. Grassroots defenders of democracy must continue to peacefully resist every authoritarian offensive, but if we fail to also address the underlying drivers of the crisis, victory will be fleeting.

Wisconsin’s crucial role

As a state that will determine the outcome of the 2028 presidential election, Wisconsin may be fated to play its most important role on the second front: the challenge of demonstrating that democracy is up to the task of meeting the challenges of 21st century life. To meet this charge we must come to terms with the depth of public discontent that has opened millions to the scapegoating rhetoric of authoritarian demagogues while demoralizing and disengaging still more who have come to believe, through embittering experience, they have no stake in democracy.

The affordability crisis is not transitory, it is a symptom of a long-term decoupling of the general economy, and democratic government itself, from the bread-and-butter worries of working people. The widespread realization that the economy is stacked against most people casts a pall over American politics. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, two-thirds of respondents believe the middle class is beyond the reach of most Americans. 

Until the late 1970s, majorities of voters could believe that a thriving economy would benefit them personally, and that most had a pathway to the middle class. There were glaring inequalities along racial, gender and geographic lines, yet for millions of working class people, including immigrants from around the globe and Black refugees from the Jim Crow South, macro and micro economics were conjoined.

After 50 years of economic rigging orchestrated by the ultra wealthy, the most rapacious corporations, and pliant politicians from both parties, this faith has been dashed. While lacking the suddenness of the 1929 crash, the cumulative effect is like a slow motion slide towards depression for the working and middle classes. In the richest country on Earth a stunning 60% of Americans worry about affording the basics of life, while in Wisconsin 35% of all households, and 60% of Black households, make less than a survival income.

This is no accident. As Harold Meyerson details in The American Prospect, through a half century of deliberate policy choices most of the benefits of growth have been funneled to the privileged few, resulting in a $79 trillion shift in assets to the top. If national income were distributed now as equally as in 1975, each wage earner would make an astounding $28,000 more per year on average. Combined with the deliberate encouragement of massive corporate monopolies with the power to jack up prices, this immiseration is pushing people to  a breaking point, making affording health care, housing, energy, food and education more and more challenging for the less than rich.

Despite its effectiveness in abetting the largest wealth transfer in history, government at all levels has been rendered stunningly inept when it comes to public works, social policy, and almost everything else that benefits the working and middle classes. 

A parallel crisis in the 1930s

In the New Deal economic order, there seemed to be nothing the government could not accomplish, from the work programs of the 1930s, to the economic mobilization against fascism, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the moon mission. Now everything from high speed rail to rural broadband, affordable housing, health care, child care, public education and cheap, renewable energy is tied up in knots.

While much of the blame can be placed on  the deliberate sabotage of government by an unholy alliance of grasping billionaires, big corporations, and right wing ideologues, a growing chorus of social critics also point the finger at a major shift in liberalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent books by Paul Sabin, Marc Dunkelman, Richard Kahenberg, Yoni Appelbaum, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and to significant degrees Bill McKibben and Gary Gerstle, make parts of a compelling case that the reaction against abuses of administrative power provoked liberals to overcorrect by creating so many regulatory and legal hurdles that government struggles to get anything big done that benefits the working and middle classes.

Further tarnishing public trust, this impotence does not apply to oligarchic power. The only force with the political and economic resources to cut through all the landmines and bottlenecks to bold action are the giant corporate monopolies, as we are seeing with the reckless buildout of highly unpopular AI data centers without guardrails to protect the public interest in affordable energy, clean air, and the stability of the climate on which we all depend.

The most useful historical analogy to our perilous situation is what Franklin Roosevelt confronted after Herbert Hoover’s futility in responding to the calamity brought on by that era’s economic royalists. Jonathan Alter and Eric Rauchway show that top opinion leaders of the era such as Walter Lippmann and William Randolph Hearst believed democracy too paralyzed to succeed, and openly advocated for Roosevelt to suspend Congress and assume dictatorial powers. 

Roosevelt was reportedly quite taken with the movie Gabriel Over the White House, a Hearst-funded production about a president seizing dictatorial power and curing the Great Depression. Ultimately, Roosevelt refused to take this path, although he fretted that failure would make him the last president. Democracy’s last near death experience in the 1930s has passed from collective memory only because Roosevelt did not fail. 

Drawing on reforms developed over three decades of progressive and labor organizing, Roosevelt amassed sufficient power to take radical action within the constitutional order to restructure and democratize the economy. Despite atrocious racial discrimination baked in by segregationist Democrats, the reforms tangibly improved material circumstances enough to restore the public’s belief that democracy could deliver. Despite receiving only half a loaf, even Black voters defected from the GOP in droves.

A difference between 1933 and 2026 is that authoritarians had not yet seized power, and despite sharp policy disagreements, Hoover and Roosevelt were committed to democratic norms. Today’s political crisis, like the crisis of the 1930s, is driven by economic elites capturing public policy and destroying democracy’s capacity to deliver what people need to thrive.

Divided Democrats

Within the big tent of the current pro-democracy coalition there is a comparable division to that of Roosevelt’s time on the necessity of structural reform. The division is even more dangerous now, in the face of an actual authoritarian takeover. This fissure is exemplified by the vast gulf between two of the most successful “blue wave” candidates of 2025: New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who gave the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union. 

Spanberger’s affordability agenda focuses on the cost of health care, housing, and utilities. Although strongly messaged, substantively she offers a series of opaque technocratic fixes and small bore policies that will not shift pricing power away from monopolies, nor raise the incomes of workers. For example, she nibbles around the edges of health care, yet keeps the foxes in the henhouse, leaving hospital monopolies, big insurance and Big Pharma in control of setting grossly inflated prices.

This contrasts sharply with Mamdani, who offers remarkably clear and understandable solutions — a rent freeze, fast free buses, a $30 minimum wage, free universal child care, paid for with a wealth tax — which would make one of the world’s most expensive cities more affordable for working and middle class New Yorkers. While Mamdani’s agenda is challenging to achieve in a system stacked against bold action, in contrast to Spanberger’s suite of solution-ettes, its clarity means voters can fulfil their democratic role by holding either the mayor or those who block his agenda accountable.

This divide among Democrats does not necessarily map on a left to center axis but on whether the affordability crisis requires small adjustments to an otherwise healthy system or structural reform that democratizes power and tangibly improves material circumstances. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), the co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, declares: “You do not save democracy by running around, yelling about saving democracy. You do it by demonstrating that democracy and Democratic values deliver better quality of life for normal people.”

Springing the affordability trap

Donald Trump is feeling the brunt of public outrage for his false sales pitches on affordability. If he actually had a program to lower prices and raise wages he would have built greater support for his authoritarian project. We may not be so fortunate if a more effective autocrat is elected in 2028.

This is why affordability is a trap for Democrats: winning elections on empty promises will only deepen the crisis in democracy, setting the table for future authoritarians. Josh Bivens writes for In These Times that creating a more equal and affordable economy requires a “sharp change” in the “policy path” of the last half century.

The only solution to the ails of democracy is deeper and more robust democracy. As I wrote in the Wisconsin Examiner after Gov. Evers ignored public pressure to fight for a better state budget, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on elected officials alone. It depends on more people organizing effectively to push them towards compelling and forceful action. Movements make leaders, not the other way around. 

We have already seen this happen on the first front of the fight to save democracy. Democratic leadership in Congress is fighting harder and using the power they have to more assertively check Trump’s lawless usurpations only because of immense pressure from organized people and everyday Americans. We must now apply this same pressure to demand that candidates and electeds fight to transform the rigged economy and ossified governing structures stacked against effective action. 

Because of Wisconsin’s enormous influence in presidential elections, we have a special obligation to light a fire under Democratic candidates for the Legislature and governor in a crowded primary field. We need more people to push the candidates, and more to join with organizing groups that are working to impel them to fight for bold and impactful reforms that a beleaguered and disillusioned people will feel in their daily lives. How Wisconsin Democrats run in 2026, and especially how they govern in 2027, will have a tremendous influence on how presidential contenders run in 2028, a year that could be democracy’s last best hope.

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Thousands of low-income people living with HIV could be losing drug coverage as states impose limitations on HIV assistance programs amid constrained budgets — raising alarms over consistent access to lifesaving medications.

Many factors are putting budget constraints on state programs, including federal funding — which has remained flat for years and hasn’t been adjusted for inflation — increased drug costs and rising insurance premiums.

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is the national safety-net program supporting more than 600,000 low-income people living with HIV across the nation. States receive federal grants and drug rebate money — the latter making up the bulk of state program budgets — to, among other things, help pay for medications and support community groups and specific populations, such as women and children.

Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance.

As of January, at least 18 states have pulled back their Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, known as ADAPs, in some way, according to a March 2 analysis by health research group KFF and a report by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, which offers consultation for states.

There are roughly 1.2 million people in the United States living with HIV, and about 1 in 4 people get support from a state drug assistance program.

A disproportionate number of HIV/AIDS patients are gay, bisexual and other men who have male-to-male sexual contact, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. LGBTQ+ communities have been targeted in recent years by some federal and state policies, including the rollback of civil rights, shutting down a youth mental health hotline, restricting health care access, and imposing discussion and book bans in public schools.

Florida has introduced the most dramatic restrictions on income eligibility for its HIV drug program — cutting individual eligibility for the program from 400% of the federal poverty level to 130%. That means uninsured and underinsured people up to that 400% poverty line no longer have coverage under the program.

That’s roughly slashing maximum annual income of $63,840 for an individual down to $20,748. The state says the change will prevent a $120 million shortfall.

“(That) creates an immense coverage cliff,” for example, for childless adults not eligible for Medicaid, said Amber Tynan, CEO of Big Bend Cares, a North Florida Ryan White provider. Florida is among the 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.

Florida’s department of health didn’t respond to Stateline’s request for comment.

Delaware, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island have also reduced income eligibility for their programs, but to a lesser extent, according to KFF. For example, Kansans with HIV/AIDS whose incomes are above 250% of the federal poverty level won’t be eligible for help with Obamacare insurance premiums. That change will affect about 230 people, the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates.

In Pennsylvania, about 1,600 people will lose HIV drug assistance coverage as the state imposes income eligibility caps at 350% of the federal poverty level.

“We cannot continue to provide services at a certain level when the funding to do so does not exist,” Neil Ruhland, Pennsylvania Department of Health press secretary, told Stateline in a statement. He pointed to drug costs and enrollment numbers that are “steadily rising while funding remains stagnant.”

Florida also is removing the brand-name drug Biktarvy, which is the only single-tablet HIV medication regimen recommended by national guidelines for those starting treatment and is the most widely prescribed antiretroviral medication nationally. There is no generic form.

The medication is highly effective at reducing a person’s viral load, meaning the virus is undetectable in blood tests and untransmittable to others.

Eighty percent of Floridians with HIV who are in the state’s program use Biktarvy, Tynan said.

“Not having the opportunity to stay on lifesaving treatment is creating quite the panic and crisis for our population,” Tynan said. “For decades we’ve worked to turn HIV from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable chronic condition, and that progress depends on one thing: consistent access to treatment. When that stability is disrupted like it has (been) in Florida, it creates real risk for patients and for public health.”

Other states (Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington, plus the District of Columbia) also are considering limiting which drugs they cover, according to the alliance’s report.

And several other states may impose other limits to their drug assistance program. Health agencies in Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington are considering cutting funding for core medication and support services. Others are considering implementing a six-month recertification period, restricting eligibility, putting caps on expenditures, changing covered medications and lowering assistance for insurance premiums.

While no state has implemented a waiting list for drug assistance, three states — Arkansas, Louisiana and New Jersey — are considering one as a future cost-containment measure, according to the national alliance’s report.

Dr. Sabrina Assoumou, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, said many of her HIV patients are under-resourced and rely on her state’s Ryan White program. She added that she’s relieved Massachusetts’ program hasn’t announced any changes as of February, when the alliance’s report was released, but that she’s worried for patients in the other states.

“We’ve taken HIV from a very serious virus, a deadly virus when it was first discovered in the ’80s, to a very manageable chronic condition because of the medicines,” she said. “It is concerning to see … that we’re sort of moving backwards by not providing that kind of care that’s so much needed, and that’s lifesaving.”

Florida bypassed a rulemaking process when it announced its changes days before open enrollment ended. In late January, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a global nonprofit agency, sued the state department of health over the changes. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened a new enrollment period for Floridians losing coverage to enroll in a different marketplace plan.

In late February, Florida issued an emergency rule putting the new eligibility requirements into effect. About 32,000 Floridians get help from the state program in some way — whether it’s through local health departments or the state helping to pay for insurance premiums.

Half of those, around 16,000, will lose coverage entirely — but many others will be affected in other ways, such as losing access to Biktarvy.

“So if you remain in the program, there’s a very high likelihood that you’re still going to be impacted by some of the other changes, like the dropping of the premium assistance, the elimination of Biktarvy from the formulary,” said Tim Horn, director of medication access for the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. “When you take a look at all of these changes in the net, the vast majority of Florida ADAP clients are going to be impacted by this, one way or another.”

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is calling for a nominating commission to try again to agree on a nominee to be the U.S. attorney for Wisconsin’s Eastern District after interim appointee Brad Schimel’s term in the position expires March 17. 

The judges in the district declined to retain Schimel for the job. Schimel previously served as the Republican attorney general under Gov. Scott Walker and in 2024 he ran unsuccessfully as a conservative for the state Supreme Court. 

Schimel was appointed U.S. attorney by Attorney General Pam Bondi in November after the nominating commission failed to reach consensus on who should fill the job in both the Madison and Milwaukee district offices. 

Last week, Baldwin said Schimel was a “clearly partisan actor” in the federal prosecutor role. 

Historically, Wisconsin’s two senators — including Baldwin and Sen. Ron Johnson — have worked together to name members of the nominating commission which agrees on candidates who are then recommended to the president and attorney general. Restarting the commission would require Baldwin and Johnson to agree on a charter. 

Across the country, the president has generally deferred to the home state senators when choosing U.S. attorneys. 

“I’m glad that the judges of the Eastern District of Wisconsin are respecting the process that Senator Johnson and I have to get high-quality, impartial prosecutors to serve Wisconsin,” Baldwin said in a statement. “It has not always been easy, but the hard work is worthwhile for the people we serve.”

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WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to force the Trump administration to admit if it plans to send armed federal law enforcement or U.S. troops to polling locations in the upcoming midterm elections. 

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charges that 11 Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests submitted to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense by the DNC in October have gone unanswered, a violation of public records law. 

“To ensure that the American people obtain timely knowledge of potential threats to free and fair elections and to enable the DNC to take appropriate action to ensure voting rights are protected, the DNC now seeks this Court’s aid to enforce FOIA requirements,” according to the suit. 

The suit was assigned to federal Judge Beryl A. Howell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

Voting machines

The suit details how the FOIA requests were filed after comments from President Donald Trump to the New York Times that he regretted not using the U.S. military to seize voting machines after he lost the 2020 presidential election. 

“These and many other actions have raised serious concerns among voters across the country that the President will order armed federal agents or troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices, … and will send FBI agents or Justice Department officials to interfere with the orderly administration and certification of elections,” according to the complaint.

The suit also cites comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that she “couldn’t guarantee” that federal law enforcement officers would not be at polling locations this November. 

“Donald Trump wants to bully and cheat his way through a midterm election that he knows Republicans will lose, but we won’t let him,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “The DNC will stand on the side of voters and use every tool in our arsenal to stop voter suppression and intimidation before it can even begin.”

Are there records?

It’s also possible that no records exist.

Congressional Democrats have pressed Trump officials during hearings on plans to send agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to polling locations. 

Both heads of those agencies, ICE acting director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, said there were no plans to send any of their agents or officers to polling locations. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is leaving her post at the end of month and being replaced by Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin, was also pressed by Democrats. 

She said there were no plans for ICE agents, but also asked Democrats if they plan for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, something that is already illegal and rarely occurs. 

But during the hearing, Noem would not commit to issuing a directive barring immigration agents from polling locations. 

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday added to the fierce debate over compensation for student-athletes, with senators and experts agreeing the current system wasn’t working but with different ideas for a path forward.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, hosted a roundtable of experts, leaders and former college and professional athletes to discuss “fixing college sports.”

Cassidy said the “current system is actually hurting the student-athlete.”

“Our effort will be, what do we do to protect the student-athlete?” he continued, adding that approach would also protect universities.

Two of the five panelists Cassidy brought in hailed from Louisiana State University, including Collis Temple Jr., a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors and former basketball star at the university, along with Julie Cromer, executive deputy athletic director and chief operating officer for LSU Athletics. 

The event came on the heels of a White House roundtable last week, where President Donald Trump pledged to imminently deliver an executive order aimed at reshaping college sports. 

Debate over athletes as employees

The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. 

A federal judge in June 2025 approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.

The rules for name, image and likeness deals vary from state to state.

The college sports landscape is also wrestling with gender inequity in NIL deals and the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, among other issues.

A bipartisan bill on pause in the U.S. House aims to create a national framework for college athletes’ compensation. It would also prohibit college athletes from being classified as employees while providing broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, expressed optimism over the bill’s fate during the White House roundtable, saying “we’re right on the verge of passage in the House and we now think we have the votes to do that.” 

But the bill would face a dismal path in the Senate, where Senate Democrats have pushed back against it.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal from GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state would provide “a new antitrust exemption allowing college football institutions to jointly sell media rights” and make it “optional for conferences and schools to pool their media rights together.”

Conversation between schools and athletes needed

Jim Carr, president and CEO of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, said “the implications of student-athletes becoming employees, or a lot of these court decisions that are making it difficult to enforce our rules around what we call education-based athletics, is really — I don’t think it’s an overstatement or being too dramatic to say — critical to not only the NAIA but each of our institutions being able to stay in business on a long-term basis.” 

Carr, whose association includes roughly 250 institutions, said at an average NAIA school, 36% of the students are also athletes.

Sen. Chris Murphy called for collective bargaining, where athletes can “speak for themselves,” noting that Congress should not “micromanage” the relationship between colleges and college athletes. 

“We should just empower the colleges or the conferences and the athletes to have a conversation between themselves,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

Bernard Dennis III, principal at Jackson Lewis P.C. and an employment and sports law expert, said that if students are classified as employees, “they then become subject to several statutory schemes, not the least of which would be the (Fair Labor Standards Act), which would allow them to be compensated for their work time, for overtime and then it becomes a challenge in what constitutes that.”

He added that “under the law, it would be anything that is required for their work, and so when you have eligibility rules about maintaining a certain GPA, things like that, it becomes not only your time on the field, but does going to class become compensable work time? How do you track that?”

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats tasked with overseeing defense left a classified briefing Tuesday incensed about President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, as the United States and Israel continue their joint bombardment and families prepare to bury seven American service members killed in the conflict.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he left the briefing “more doubtful than ever that there is clarity on objectives or exit strategy.”

“I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate. I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war,” Blumenthal said.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that since the beginning of the war in Iran, “approximately 140 U.S. service members have been wounded over 10 days of sustained attacks.” 

“The vast majority of these injuries have been minor, and 108 service members have already returned to duty,” he said. “Eight service members remain listed as severely injured and are receiving the highest level of medical care.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked at a press briefing about a Reuters news report that as many as 150 U.S. troops have been injured in the war, replied, “I know it’s within that ballpark,” but deferred to the Pentagon for the exact numbers.

Seven U.S. troops have died, the Pentagon has said.

‘The most fighters, the most bombers’

Military and defense intelligence officials conducted the closed-door update for senators shortly after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine, said from the Pentagon that Iran should expect “yet again the most intense day of strikes” Tuesday.

“The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes — intelligence more refined and better than ever,” Hegseth said.

The secret briefing occurred a day after oil prices took a rollercoaster ride, peaking at $119 a barrel before falling below $90, due to Iranian officials’ effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s petroleum passes.

Giving mixed signals Monday night, Trump said the war in Iran is “going to be a short-term excursion,” but added later the U.S. military “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.” 

Dems unsure of end game

Many Senate Democrats have criticized the administration for not coming before Congress to debate the war publicly.

“We’ve been calling over and over again for them to come out of the classified rooms to allow us to have these conversations as much as we can in an open setting,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said after leaving the briefing, held in a secured compartmented information facility, or SCIF, underneath the U.S. Capitol.

“I have to think about what I can and can’t say — it is concerning, it is disturbing, and I’m not sure what the end game is or what their plans are. They certainly have not made their case,” Rosen said.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said “a range of four individuals” briefed lawmakers, including a major general and personnel from the Joint Staff Intelligence and Defense Intelligence Agency, two organizations.

Telling reporters that “wild horses” could not get him to discuss the classified briefing, Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said he hasn’t received a request from Democrats, including ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., for an open hearing.

Schumer demands hearings 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a joint press release with Reed and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., just after the classified briefing demanding public hearings “on Trump’s war of choice.”

“Public hearings featuring cabinet-level witnesses have been a standard part of congressional oversight throughout our history, including recent military conflicts, as well as during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, our founders were clear about the role of Congress in matters of war as the representatives of the American people,” the senators wrote.

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said he feels lawmakers are getting enough information from the administration, but he indicated that what happens after the bombing stops will largely be left up to civilians in Iran.

“That’s not our focus,” he said. “Our focus was on eliminating the threat to our people in the Middle East, to our allies, and to be able to address the threats before they became a lot worse in a very short period of time.”

Rounds said he believes that once the war ends, it will “be up to the Iranian people to determine whether they want to join the free world.”

“The Iranians are very smart people. They’re well educated. They can run their country if given the opportunity,” he said. “But if they just come to bring in another group of religious zealots, then they’re going to continue to have problems. And I think they realize that.”

Progress seen by Montana’s Sheehy

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized the administration for not having clearer goals or an exit strategy. 

“Here we are, well into the second week of attacks, and there are still contradictory descriptions of the goals and contradictory descriptions of how we intend to accomplish this work.” she said. 

Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy said he believes the U.S. military has “made great progress” during the first week-and-a-half of bombing. 

He said he expects the war will end once the United States and Israel have eliminated “the regime’s ability to continue to spread terror around the world and continue to control regional waterways and continue to try to kill Americans and our allies, not just in the region, but around the world.”

Shaheen, ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said she hopes the administration will publicly release its investigation into whether a U.S. missile struck near a girls school in Iran. 

“Hopefully they will release the investigation,” she said. “Certainly I don’t believe there is any deliberate intent to target civilians in Iran in that way, but the fact that there are so many different explanations for what’s happening raises concerns.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans during a Tuesday hearing laid the groundwork for legislation that would prevent state and local governments from making decisions on whether to limit cooperation with the federal government on immigration enforcement. 

Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham of South Carolina argued that sanctuary cities — a term used by critics — undercut federal law, and local policies shielding immigrants without legal status should be banned. President Donald Trump has called on Republicans who control Congress to act.

“What’s the upside of ignoring federal law and keeping people like this out of federal custody?” Graham said. “It’s a political choice.”

As the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, federal immigration officials have increased enforcement in the interior of the country, targeting cities with high immigrant populations that are led by Democrats such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and the District of Columbia. 

All those cities have policies that bar assistance to the federal government in immigration enforcement. 

“Our Democratic friends are accepting of a sanctuary policy. They don’t think it’s a problem. I do,” Graham said. “Let’s have a debate. Let’s have a vote. This will be good for the country going into 2026 as to who should be in charge of controlling our borders and enforcing law.” 

He did not cite specific legislation he favors, but last month he introduced a bill, S.3805, that would make it unlawful for states and local governments to pass laws that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. 

One of the witnesses tapped by Republicans, former DHS Secretary Chad Wolf, who served in the first Trump administration, agreed.

“To restore the rule of law, the era of sanctuary cities needs to come to an end,” Wolf said. 

Immigration enforcement funds

The top Democrat on the committee, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, said the committee should instead be conducting oversight of the $170 billion Congress provided to the Department of Homeland Security through the 2025 tax cuts and spending package known as the “Big, Beautiful Bill.”

He argued that under that funding, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted aggressive immigration enforcement, wearing masks and conducting warrantless arrests. 

“We now have a secret police called ICE,” Merkley said.

He noted that three U.S. citizens have been killed by federal immigration agents: Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota, and Ruben Martinez in Texas. 

Merkley also pushed back on the assumption that immigration enforcement does not occur in states and cities that are referred to by Republicans as sanctuary cities. 

“Sanctuary is a bit of a misnomer,” Merkley said. “It refers to the decision that local police will serve as local police and not be commandeered to be assisting ICE agents.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, said in his state, there is a legal precedent to not hold an immigrant for ICE to pick up because it would be regarded as an unlawful detainment.

“It is binding law that state and local officials who hold somebody under an ICE detainer, where ICE hasn’t bothered to get a warrant, can be held civilly liable,” Whitehouse said.

Graham took issue with the requirement for a judicial warrant and said the need for it to deport someone is “stupid.” 

“All of a sudden we’re Nazis,” Graham said.

Democrats are calling for ICE to use judicial warrants when making an arrest of a person in the country without legal authority, not for deportations. 

Budget Committee role

Democrats argued that the Budget Committee instead of immigration policy should be addressing fiscal issues, such as the spike in oil prices due to President Donald Trump’s decision to join Israel in its war with Iran. 

California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla said Tuesday’s hearing was “off-base.”

“Gas prices are spiking because of an unauthorized war with Iran,” he said. 

Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico agreed, and said the hearing should focus on affordability and the rising cost of living. 

Graham said he would hold a future hearing on affordability. 

Fewer Wisconsin children and adolescents got vaccinated last year for many childhood illnesses, raising the risk of outbreaks and clusters that could lead to more widespread illness, the state health department reported Monday.

Vaccination rates for a group of seven childhood diseases that public health experts recommend in the first two years after birth fell to 66.9% in 2025. In 2024, the rate was 68.8%, according to the Department of Health Services.

“While nearly seven out of every 10 children had the recommended vaccines in this series by 24 months of age, we know that three out of 10 kids did not,” said Stephanie Schauer, who manages the Wisconsin immunization program for DHS. That’s a decline of almost 2 percentage points — about 1,200 children, she said at an online press briefing Monday.

“We use data like this as an alert system,” said Paula Tran, state health officer and administrator at the DHS Division of Public Health, said in a DHS statement. “Today that alert system is sending a clear signal that the health and well-being of Wisconsin kids and communities are at risk.”

Details of vaccination rates for children and adolescents are published on the Department of Health Services website. 

In 2025, 79.8% of children 2 or younger were fully vaccinated against measles — dropping below 80% for the first time. In 2013, 88.2% of Wisconsin 2-year-olds were fully vaccinated with the MMR vaccine, which protects against mumps and rubella as well as measles.

“Measles is a very infectious disease and really requires a very high level of immunity in a community such that it won’t spread,” Schauer. “So it is something that we are concerned with as we continue to see that drop.”

Measles outbreaks have been popping up across the country in the last year especially. The MMR vaccination rate in Wisconsin has been slowly but steadily declining over the last dozen years, and last year it fell by 1.6 percentage points from 2024.

“That’s headed in the wrong direction. We need more children protected, not fewer,” Schauer said. “We really need to be closer up around 95% of a community protected so that we don’t have an outbreak if measles is introduced into a community.”

With spring break coming soon and with it travel plans, the health department is also encouraging families to review their children’s measles immunization records, Schauer said, because most recent measles outbreaks and clusters across the country “are due to individuals who have been traveling where measles is occurring and then bringing them back.”

There have been some positive trends, Schauer said. In contrast to most other vaccine types, the rates of vaccine against meningitis — which is given in adolescence — have been increasing over the last decade and the last couple of years in particular.

She attributed the increase both to increased awareness and to the health department’s addition of the vaccine in 2024 to the list of required shots for students going into grades 7 and 12. Previous attempts to add the meningitis vaccine to the required list were blocked by the Republican majority on the state Legislature’s Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules.

With more families asking about the meningitis vaccine and more doctors talking about it with their patients, “that shows that school immunization requirements can and do help ensure that our kids are protected,” Schauer said

Schauer said there are two broad reasons for the decrease in vaccinations: public mistrust and lack of access.

“We understand that there’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there, that maybe people are questioning vaccines, or they may be delaying or spreading vaccines out,” she said.

To overcome mistrust, the state health department looks to health care providers to serve as the best messengers to the families in their care. Research has shown that 86% of the public “had a fair degree of confidence in their primary health care providers to provide them information on public health matters, and that would include vaccines,” Schauer said.

“We continue to recognize that parents have questions, and that’s appropriate and OK, but we want to make sure that they’re getting those questions answered,” Schauer said.

The message to families is to encourage them to turn to their health providers with questions, she added, “so that they can feel reassured that providing vaccines is really the most safe and effective way of preventing some of these really nasty diseases.”

Others, however, may lack any information at all about vaccines, have difficulty getting access to them because they lack regular access to health care.

Vaccines for Children, a program in place for more than 30 years, is intended to make it possible for families whose health care is covered by Medicaid or who have no insurance or inadequate insurance to get the vaccines they need, Schauer said. The program is also available to Alaska Native and American Indian children.

DHS lists providers across the state who participate in the Vaccines for Children program. More than 720 pharmacies and other providers take part, and the department continues to recruit more.

“We don’t want any children to go without vaccines because they weren’t aware of this program,” Schauer said.

DHS also funds 25 community organizations and tribal health departments in a program to make connections in their communities. Those agencies are “the trusted messenger and talking about vaccines and vaccine safety and why they are important in their communities,” she said.

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Over the past year, GOP leaders and the Trump administration have used a law known as the Congressional Review Act to push for coal mining in Montana, oil drilling in Alaska and copper mining in Minnesota, while also attempting to reverse protections for a national monument in Utah.

The rarely used act gives Congress a few months to revoke new federal regulations. Only in the past year has it ever been used to overrule land management plans.

Conservation advocates say Congress is recklessly throwing out detailed plans, which are created after years of research, public meetings and local collaboration. They fear lawmakers’ intervention could upend the long-standing management system that governs hundreds of millions of acres of public lands — with consequences that could threaten endangered species and coal miners alike.

But the fallout could be much more far-reaching than the rollback of protections for specific areas, some legal experts say. By using their review authority in a way that was never thought to apply to land management plans, lawmakers are calling into question the validity of well over 100 other such plans that were never submitted to Congress for review.

If those plans are challenged, it could create legal uncertainty for tens of thousands of leases and permits for oil and gas, mining, cattle grazing, logging, wind and solar farms and outdoor recreation.

“Using the Congressional Review Act (to revoke management plans) is really unprecedented and will have unforeseen consequences,” said Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration. “There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place. This could bring things to a screeching halt.”

Republicans have argued that congressional action is necessary to unleash President Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum frequently refers to public lands as “America’s balance sheet,” and has pledged to increase returns by extracting more resources like oil, minerals and timber.

Montana U.S. Rep. Troy Downing, a Republican who sponsored a resolution to revoke a management plan in his home state, argued during debate on the measure that Montana’s economy and energy demands rely on coal production.

“When the federal government acts recklessly, it is the responsibility of Congress to step in and course correct. … The war on coal must end,” he said.

What’s the Congressional Review Act?

The Congressional Review Act, which was signed into law in 1996, requires federal agencies to submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Congress then has 60 working days to review those regulations, and may vote to revoke them.

If lawmakers reject a rule, federal agencies are barred from crafting a new one in “substantially the same form,” unless Congress passes a new law.

For 20 years, the Congressional Review Act was rarely invoked. But during Trump’s first term, Republicans used it to overturn 16 regulations, such as a rule to protect streams from coal mining pollution. Democrats used the act to revoke three rules from Trump’s first presidency.

But in 2025, Congress and Trump revoked 22 Biden-era rules.

“It seems increasingly popular from Congress as a way to get a quick win to reverse something that happened under the previous administration,” said Devin O’Dea, Western policy and conservation manager with Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, which has opposed efforts to open public lands for resource extraction. “The long-term implications are what we’re concerned about.”

Until recently, management plans for public lands were not considered subject to congressional review. Federal agencies have issued well over 100 such plans without ever submitting one to Congress. Those documents guide the work of agency officials who oversee specific areas of land, often covering millions of acres.

Created after years of public meetings and local feedback, they determine which landscapes will be leased for oil and gas drilling, protected for endangered species or open for off-road vehicles, along with a multitude of other uses.

But last year, Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan advisory agency for Congress, to affirm a sweeping new view of the Congressional Review Act. The office found that certain management plans were subject to review because their land-use decisions “prescribed policy,” and determined that lawmakers’ queries had opened the 60-day review “clock” for the plans in question.

“A very long deliberative process goes into these plans,” said Justin Meuse, government relations director for climate and energy with The Wilderness Society, a conservation nonprofit. “These plans are so broad and multifaceted and deal with so many different things. This is taking a hatchet to something that should be done with a scalpel.”

Using this new tool, Republicans have revoked plans that restricted mining and oil production on federal lands in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. Meanwhile, House Republicans voted in January to overturn a regulation that blocked development of a mine near the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota, a move that now awaits a vote in the Senate.

And GOP lawmakers from Utah are seeking to overturn the management plan for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in that state.

Conservation leaders say the rollbacks are unprecedented.

“It’s very surprising,” said Autumn Gillard, coordinator with the Grand Staircase-Escalante Inter-Tribal Coalition, a group of tribal nations working to protect the monument. “The (resource management plan) is created as a set of advisement points to land managers to reflect on when making decisions. It’s not a direct set of rules.”

In Minnesota, advocates for the Boundary Waters wilderness area say it is treasured for its pristine lakes, where paddlers can fill their water bottles straight from the surface. They fear efforts to allow a copper mine near the headwaters of the area will irreversibly pollute the most popular wilderness in the country.

“We weren’t expecting the Congressional Review Act to be on the table in this way,” said Libby London, communications director with Save the Boundary Waters, a coalition seeking to protect the wilderness area. “It sets a really scary precedent that undermines decades of land management decisions.”

Officials at the Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Land Management did not grant interview requests. Staff at the House Committee on Natural Resources did not grant an interview with U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican who chairs the committee and who has championed using the Congressional Review Act to allow more mining and drilling.

Legal questions

Environmental groups have condemned Republicans’ use of the act to push for more resource extraction. If Trump wants more mining and drilling, they say, then federal agencies should take the time to draft new management plans using the same rigorous process.

But perhaps more concerning to some public land stakeholders are the potential implications for a whole host of other lands. None of the plans issued by federal land managers over the past 30 years were ever submitted for review, because no one at the time considered them to be rules.

In other words, hundreds of plans covering millions of acres of land could be deemed invalid under the new congressional interpretation that they qualify as rules.

“That right there is chaos,” said Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC. “Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation. There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”

In a letter to the Bureau of Land Management late last year, The Wilderness Society and other organizations identified more than 5,000 oil and gas leases that could be legally invalid, as they were issued under management plans that were never reviewed by Congress.

Public lands advocates say the same logic could be applied to mining leases, grazing permits, logging, outdoor recreation and many other activities covered by agency planning documents. Many industries that rely on public lands, such as hunting and fishing guides, could be thrown into chaos.

“Let’s say you’re operating as an outfitter,” said Ryan Callaghan, president and CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers. “Having something like an entire resource management plan rolled back would be a huge curveball, and something you’d have an absolute inability to plan for as a business owner. It’s very reasonable to have a lot of questions as to what the ramifications are.”

Industry concerns

Some industry leaders are also worried about the precedent Congress is setting by wiping out plans that were created after years of local input and consultation.

“I’m fairly concerned about that,” said Kathleen Sgamma, a longtime oil and gas advocate who now serves as principal for Multiple-Use Advocacy, a consulting group focused on federal land policy. “It’s not unreasonable to think about a future day where there is a Democratic trifecta and they would be able to (revoke) old plans likewise.”

Sgamma was nominated by Trump to lead the Bureau of Land Management, but withdrew her nomination last spring amid fierce opposition from conservation groups, and following the publication of a memo in which she had criticized Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

She said she was less concerned with the idea that previous plans could be declared invalid. She argued that, if challenged, agency officials could submit those old plans to Congress and start the 60-day review “clock” before litigation advanced.

The greater uncertainty, Sgamma said, is the provision that agencies cannot adopt rules in “substantially the same form” as those that have been revoked by Congress. While Republicans intend to target restrictions on drilling and mining, they are using the Congressional Review Act to revoke entire plans. That could prevent agencies from issuing new plans covering less controversial topics, such as campgrounds and trails.

Van Tuyn, the environmental lawyer, shared that concern.

“If they have a plan that looks 80% like the previous plan, and a court says 80% is ‘substantially similar,’ what does the agency do? Go back to the drawing board and say 50%? You used to have all this public access and now you can’t?” he said.

The Public Lands Council, which advocates for ranchers who operate on public lands, did not respond to an interview request. Western Energy Alliance, which advocates for oil and natural gas production, did not grant an interview request. The American Petroleum Institute did not respond to an interview request. Public Lands For The People, which advocates for mining on public lands, did not respond to an interview request.

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.

The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office is denying reports that a U.S. citizen from Illinois was transferred to its jail and then released over the weekend, after being detained by immigration authorities. Multiple local media outlets reported that Sundas “Sunny” Naqvi, 28, was detained upon returning to the U.S. after traveling abroad. 

Naqvi’s family, protesters and local county officials gathered outside the Broadview detention facility in Illinois on Sunday saying that Naqvi had been detained alongside her coworkers. Her family tracked Naqvi’s phone to the Broadview facility and then later to Dodge County Wisconsin, where the jail has long doubled as an immigration detention facility.

During a press conference, CBS News reported, Cook County Commissioner Kevin Morrison — who’s also a family friend of Naqvi — said that “it is our belief” that six people were transported from Broadview to Wisconsin. Naqvi was reportedly released on Saturday along with her coworkers in Dodge County. Naqvi and her coworkers are all of Pakistani descent and headed to India for a work trip with a layover in Turkey, WGN9 reported. Naqvi’s sister, Sara Afzal, said that the group’s flight was canceled due to visa issues. This caused the group to separate and travel to different countries, with Naqvi going to Bulgaria and Austria. They reunited in Turkey and flew back to O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. 

Describing what happened to Naqvi, Morrison said in his speech at Broadview, “All she was told was there was curious travel history, but they had no cause to detain her for those 30 hours.” During the press conference Morrison said of Naqvi that “her first shower was actually today, and she was able to eat some food.” Naqvi’s family members say that she has still not received her passport back. “The fact that this could happen to any U.S. citizen should terrify us all,” said Morrison. 

Naqvi’s family said that federal authorities denied that she was at Broadview. Family members were able to track her cellphone, which was turned off and back on again and showed a location in Dodge County. Federal authorities, however, denied that Naqvi was being detained there.

In a press release issued Monday, Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt refuted the reports. Schmidt’s office “has no record of the individual referenced ever being booked, detained, or released from the Dodge County Jail,” the sheriff said in the statement. “Jail logs confirm that no female inmates or detainees from the federal government were admitted or released during the timeframe in which these events were alleged to have occurred.”

Schmidt said that he takes all allegations about the jail seriously, and that a review and investigation is underway. “We encourage anyone who believes they have evidence related to this matter to provide that information — along with any available electronic metadata — to the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office so it can be properly evaluated,” said Schmidt, who also encouraged Naqvi herself to contact the office. “We are also asking that the unknown individual who reportedly picked her up in the Juneau area and drove her to the Holiday Inn contact the Sheriff’s Office to provide a statement.”

The sheriff said he will not comment further pending investigation into the matter, and that he does not speak on behalf of federal authorities. Late last year, Dodge County sheriff’s deputies were spotted transporting immigration detainees to and from the Broadview facility. 

Wisconsin officials expressed outrage over initial reports of the detention.  Sen. Chris Larson posted on BlueSky  that federal agents “repeatedly lied, saying she was not in custody. After nearly two full days she was released, needing to hitchhike to a nearby hotel to call for a ride home. This should not happen in any nation that purports to call itself the ‘Land of the Free.’”

Naqvi’s family said that she is still recovering from her detention. On Tuesday morning a spokesperson from Customs and Border Protection, a component of the Department of Homeland Security, also refuted Naqvi’s allegations. “The passenger’s claims are blatantly false,” the spokesperson said, adding that Naqvi arrived at O’Hare the morning of March 5. “CBPD officers referred her to Secondary, for additional inspection based on law enforcement checks and conducted a baggage exam. Ms. Naqvi departed CBP within 90 minutes of her arrival to the United States. Ms. Naqvi was not taken into custody or transferred to ICE for detention.”

This article has been updated with comment from the Department of Homeland Security.

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President Donald Trump on Monday told House Republicans, who were gathered in Florida for a policy retreat, that he expects the war in Iran will wrap up “quickly,” though he didn’t give a specific date or detail exactly what he wants to do before ending the hostilities. 

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil,” he said. “And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”

Trump added later in his speech that the U.S. military “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”

During a press conference afterward, Trump said the U.S. military had struck 5,000 locations inside Iran but that he was holding off on bombing some of the country’s larger targets to see if its leaders would allow ships to safely travel through the Strait of Hormuz.

The danger of navigating the key shipping route during the war has been a factor in rising oil prices and other market volatility globally.

“We’ve left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it,” he said. “If we hit them, it’s going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So, we’re not looking to do that if we don’t have to.”

Trump said “when the time comes,” the U.S. Navy and undisclosed partners will escort ships through that narrow channel.

“I hope it’s not going to be needed,” he said. “But if it’s needed, we’ll escort them right through.”

Trump said he was “disappointed” that Iranian leaders over the weekend selected Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader. He is the son of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by military strikes shortly after the war began. 

Trump declined to answer if the country’s new leader could soon become the target of similar military action, saying that would be “inappropriate.”

No new laws without elections bill

Trump also focused on legislative requests for Congress during his speech and at the press conference, calling on House Republicans to restructure a bill they already passed that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and identification to cast a ballot, among other changes. 

Trump said he wants three additional elements written into a new bill. 

The first would be nationwide restrictions on mail-in ballots unless the person is a member of the military based overseas, someone with a disability, someone who is ill or someone who is traveling. 

Trump told GOP lawmakers to add in a provision that would lead to “no men in women’s sports” and language blocking transgender youth from surgery. 

“Now, that should be the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had,” he said.

Trump said if the House GOP passed the reworked bill that Republicans would “win the midterms at levels that you can’t even believe.”

He expressed confidence that Senate Republicans would be able to move such a bill through that chamber, but didn’t detail how that would happen with the 60-vote legislative filibuster still in place. 

“We’re not going to sign a watered-down version like has been sent up there. Let’s go for the gold, and let’s just not accept anything else,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you what, I’m willing to just sort of say, I’m not going to sign anything until this is approved. I really am.”

Democrats unmoved

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a floor speech earlier in the day that Trump’s position would not change Democrats’ minds that the legislation is “Jim Crow 2.0.”

“Donald Trump is saying, in effect, unless Congress helps him undermine democracy, he’s prepared to hold the rest of the country hostage,” Schumer said. “This is what he does. He’s a thug, He’s a bully. He can’t ever argue on the merits, so he threatens.”

Schumer said that would mean any bills Congress approves to try to lower the cost of living wouldn’t take effect. 

“No bill to bring down gas prices. No bills to make groceries more affordable. No bills to increase housing. Not until the Save Act passes. That’s what Donald Trump is saying,” Schumer said. “Democrats will make sure that never happens.”

Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler announced Monday that she will not run for a third term in 2027, setting up another open race for the seat. 

Ziegler, 62, plans to serve out the rest of her term but won’t run in the April 2027 race.

“After three decades on the bench, now is the right time for me to step away to spend more time with my husband, kids and grandkids,” Ziegler said in a statement. “I will, therefore, not be seeking reelection to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2027.” 

Ziegler was first elected to the Court in 2007. Ziegler won a second term in 2017 in an unusual race where there was no opposition, becoming the only justice to not draw an opponent over the past two decades.

“It has been the honor of my lifetime to serve as judge and justice for the past 30 years,” Ziegler said. “I will be forever grateful to the voters who elected me twice in Washington County and then twice to serve on our state’s highest court.”

Ziegler’s announcement comes about a month ahead of this year’s state Supreme Court race, which is open following the decision of her fellow conservative colleague, Justice Rebecca Bradley, to not seek reelection this year. 

Appeals court judge and former Democratic state Assembly member Chris Taylor and Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative, will face each other next month for that seat. 

The retirements of the two conservative justices comes after liberals won the majority on the Court in 2023 and held it in last year’s race.

Recent Supreme Court elections in Wisconsin have brought national attention and record spending for the nominally nonpartisan seats with the ideological balance of the Court at stake. The 2026  Supreme Court race has not received as much attention or spending with the liberal majority assured regardless of the outcome.  A victory for Taylor next month would increase the number of liberal justices on the Court, locking in a  5-2 liberal majority until 2030.

When Ziegler’s seat is up in 2027, liberals will likely look to extend their majority while conservatives will be looking to claw back some ground. 

“While I will not be a candidate next year, my appreciation for the people of Wisconsin and the judicial system I have been privileged to serve in remains as strong as ever,” Ziegler said. “I look forward to finishing out the rest of my term on the Court and handing the baton to a new justice in 2027.”

Ziegler served as the chief justice from 2021 to 2025. She was the second justice to be elected to the position after a 2015 constitutional amendment made it an elected position rather than one selected based on seniority. 

When the Court flipped to a liberal majority in 2023 for the first time in 15 years, the liberal members voted to weaken the powers of the chief justice, putting some of the powers under the control of a three-member administrative committee and making a series of changes to the Court’s internal operating procedures. Ziegler at the time called the move an overreach by “rogue justices.”

Ziegler worked as a private lawyer, an assistant U.S attorney and as Washington County Circuit Court judge, a position to which she was appointed by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, before she was elected to the Supreme Court. Ziegler earned her law degree from Marquette University. 

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