A sign advertises the availability of flu and COVID-19 vaccines at a pharmacy in Madison, Wisconsin. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Vaccination rates for influenza and COVID-19 are low in Wisconsin, and on Thursday, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services announced that two children have died within the last month: one from the flu in northeast Wisconsin and one from COVID-19 in the western part of the state.

Citing concerns for family privacy, DHS is not releasing the ages of the children. At a media briefing, Tom Haupt, the DHS respiratory epidemiologist, said they were the first deaths of people under 18 from those illnesses since the start of the flu season Oct. 1.

Although year-to-year comparisons in mid-season are difficult, “we are definitely seeing an increase in influenza and COVID-19 at this particular point,” Haupt said.

Haupt said DHS has not yet verified whether either of the two children were vaccinated. Both had “some underlying conditions that would increase their risk” for more serious illness, he said.

Five people under 18 died from flu in January and early February 2025, Haupt said. DHS monitors certain illnesses, including flu and COVID-19, through data from hospital emergency rooms, lab tests and studying municipal wastewater for evidence of the viruses responsible.

Vaccination is the best tool for preventing serious illness from both flu and COVID-19, Haupt said.

“Our vaccination status for children for both COVID-19 and influenza are very low,” he said. “We want them to be increased significantly.”

Across all ages, about 28% of Wisconsinites have been vaccinated against the flu and 10.6% against COVID-19. “These numbers are lower than what we’ve seen over the past few years and that’s very unfortunate,” Haupt said.

DHS recommends both vaccines for everyone 6 months or older. The COVID-19 and the flu shots can both be given at the same time.

Flu can have outcomes much worse than its usual symptoms.

“Influenza could lead to cardiac problems for both children and adults. It can lead to encephalitis,” Haupt said. “So, it’s not only the acute acute part of influenza, it’s what can happen later on.” With vaccination people are “protecting yourself and protecting those people who are around you.

For a third serious respiratory illness, respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, DHS recommends the maternal RSV vaccine for expectant mothers who are 32 to 36 weeks pregnant, to protect their infants after they’re born.

DHS recommends the RSV vaccine for infants younger than 8 months if they were born to mothers who did not get the vaccine during pregnancy. DHS also recommends the vaccine for children 8 to 19 months old with a higher risk of RSV, as well as for adults 75 and older and for adults 50 to 74 years old who have an increased risk for the virus.

Haupt said doctors have told DHS that they’re encountering more vaccine hesitancy in the general public than in the past. One cause appears to be confusion about shifting recommendations from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC advisory council that makes recommendations on vaccines, he said.

Haupt said that for people hesitating about getting vaccines for themselves or their children, the “most accurate sources” for information are the state health department, local public health departments, community clinics, pharmacies and primary care doctors.

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Gov. Tony Evers meets with children at a Fitchburg child care center in September 2023. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers approved an administrative rule change Thursday meant to make it easier to place children, who are in foster care because they are unable to safely remain in their home, with relatives or “like-kin” caregivers.

“We know that kids do better when they have supportive and loving people around them, and they’re in settings where they feel safe and can be their best and full selves. Keeping adults in kids’ lives who know and love them can go a long way toward making sure a kid has the stability they need so they can be focused on being a kid,” Evers said in a statement. “This is about doing what’s best for our kids and helping increase the likelihood of youth being in an environment with their family and loved ones, especially during difficult, chaotic times in their lives.”

According to the Evers administration, the rule change will help by providing a separate, streamlined licensing pathway for relative and “like-kin” caregivers as well as ensure that there is fair financial support available for them.

The rule change is a continuation of work on the issue. In 2024, the state Legislature passed and Gov. Tony Evers signed 2023 Wisconsin Act 119 which expanded the definition of those eligible to be kinship caregivers to include first cousins once removed and adults with a “like-kin” relationship with the child, meaning people with a significant emotional relationship with a child.

According to the Department of Children and Families, in 2024, 39% of children in Wisconsin who entered out-of-home care were initially placed with relatives, increasing the likelihood that they would be placed with their siblings, experience more stability during their placement and help them achieve permanency with family.

“We know kids do better when they’re with family — however they define it. And families do better when they can spend less time running up against unnecessary administrative and financial barriers and more time together, being a family,” DCF Secretary Jeff Pertl said in a statement.

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A wolf makes its way across a road in Yellowstone National Park. (Jacob W. Frank/Courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service)

The U.S. House on Thursday passed, 211-204, a bill to remove Endangered Species Act protections for the gray wolf outside Alaska.

The bill, sponsored by Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert, would direct the Interior secretary to reissue a 2020 rule removing ESA protections that delisted wolves other than the Mexican wolf in the lower 48 states, while stipulating it could not be challenged in court. 

The rule from President Donald Trump’s first administration was struck down by a federal court in 2022.

Five Democrats voted for the bill and four Republicans voted against it. The measure was considered during the chamber’s last vote series before a two-week break, and 18 members did not vote.

Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, has sponsored a companion bill in that chamber. The measure faces an uphill road in the Senate, where passage of partisan bills is rarer due to the 60-vote threshold for most legislation.

The bill would remove gray wolves from the ESA list, even though they have not reached population figures that the Fish and Wildlife Service has said would indicate full recovery.

Rep. Donald S. Beyer, a Democrat from Virginia, said it would be reasonable to adjust population thresholds, but that congressionally mandated delisting was unwise and illegal.

“This bill fails to recognize the status of gray wolves today, taking us back to an outdated rulemaking that didn’t hold up in court,” Beyer said on the House floor Thursday.

House Natural Resources Committee ranking Democrat Jared Huffman of California said the bill set a “troubling” precedent by blocking judicial review.

“It tells the American people they no longer have the right to challenge unlawful government actions,” he said. “The ESA is simple and effective. It ensures decisions are grounded in science — that’s the heart of it — and this bill throws that principle out the window.”

Several Republicans on the Natural Resources Committee spoke in favor of the bill, saying it would delegate wolf management to states.

In a statement, Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican, said the gray wolf has been “fully recovered” for two decades.

“States are more than capable of managing thriving wolf populations. This legislation restores a common-sense, science-based approach to wolf management, returning decision-making to states,” he said.

Republicans also argued the bill would protect livestock and humans.

Rep. Pete Stauber showed a photo from his district in Ely, Minnesota, of a wolf in a school parking lot.

“Because of the gray wolf’s listing status, nothing could be done to protect the lives of the students there,” the Republican said. “The broken ESA is putting my constituents’ lives at risk.”

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan leaves the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse on May 15, 2025. Judge Dugan appeared in federal court to answer charges that she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant, elude federal arrest while he was making an appearance in her courtroom on April 18. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Updated at 9:14 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 18

After six hours of deliberation, a federal jury found Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan guilty of felony obstruction but not guilty of misdemeanor concealing a person from federal immigration law enforcement. The high-profile federal trial stemmed from Dugan’s interaction with federal agents who came to her courtroom to arrest a man who was appearing before her on April 18.

“You don’t have to agree with immigration enforcement policy to see this was wrong. You just have to agree the law applies equally to everyone,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly Brown Watzka told the jury in closing arguments.

Dugan’s case gained national attention, with her defense attorneys saying in closing arguments that the federal government was trying to make an example of the 66-year-old judge in an effort to “crush” those who try to stand up to federal power. Defense attorney Jason Luczak asked the jury to consider whether they were willing to accept the level of government overreach he and other attorneys argued was exemplified in the case. 

Dugan invoked her Fifth Amendment rights and didn’t testify during the trial. 

During their deliberations, the jurors asked multiple questions of the judge. Among them was whether Dugan needed to know exactly who immigration officers had come to the courthouse to arrest. The question went to the obstruction charge Dugan faced, and U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman decided that in fact Dugan would need to have known the federal agent’s target in order for the obstruction charge to apply. Prosecutors argued vehemently against Adelman’s decision.

Jurors also asked to see the policies of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in regards to serving warrants. 

Later, after another jury question, Adelman advised jurors that Dugan needed to have “sufficient knowledge” of a “pending proceeding,” as defined in statute, in order to obstruct that proceeding. 

Closing arguments

Prosecutors made their closing arguments in the federal trial Thursday, asking jurors to consider what happens when judges decide which laws they want to follow based on their own personal beliefs. Dugan was accused of interfering with federal agents as they tried to make an immigration arrest outside her courtroom, and with helping their target to evade arrest. Jurors, the prosecution said, must draw a line, without which “there is only chaos,” and that “chaos is what the rule of law is intended to prevent. 

Calling immigration enforcement a “polarizing issue” nationwide, prosecutors said that Dugan was not on trial for her personal beliefs, but because she “stepped outside of the law.” As they flashed slides and footage to the jury, the prosecution heavily featured statements from Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera, who accompanied Dugan into the hallway at the courthouse to confront the agents. Cervera testified against Dugan saying, “judges shouldn’t be helping defendants evade arrest,” a quote prosecutors highlighted to the jury. 

Dugan knew that the agents had a warrant, prosecutors argued, yet concealed Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, the immigrant they were there to arrest. Dugan’s obstruction of the agents was completed the moment she led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney, Mercedes de la Rosa, to a non-public door to exit her courtroom, the prosecution asserted. Flores-Ruiz exited into the same hallway where agents were waiting for him, and they arrested him shortly afterwards outside the courthouse. But “it simply does not matter what happened next,” prosecutors said. 

Although de la Rosa, whom prosecutors described as “naive and inexperienced,” took the door to the public hallway where agents were waiting, they told the jury Dugan intended for Flores-Ruiz and his attorney to use a staircase to exit on the fifth floor. To buttress their argument, prosecutors played courtroom audio that captured Dugan talking with court reporter Joan Butz and saying “down the stairs” as well as Dugan saying, “I’ll do it…I’ll take the heat,” and Butz responding, “I’d rather get in trouble.” 

Prosecutors argued that had Flores-Ruiz taken the stairs instead of going out into the hallway, that the agents “would have never found” the Mexican-born man, who was in the country without legal authorization. Repeatedly, prosecutors said that no one should ever “second guess” the decisions of ICE agents and law enforcement. 

Dugan was described as “stern” and “angrily pointing” in the hallway, rounding up nearly the entire arrest team and telling them to go to the chief judge’s office. Cervera led the agents to the office, testifying that she felt “abandoned” by Dugan and  “roped into” Dugan’s plan. “No one is above the law,” the prosecution stressed.

Attorney Jason Luczak, delivering the closing  for Dugan’s defense, tried to poke holes in the prosecution’s narrative. “This is a very important case; this is a very unprecedented trial,” Luczak said. “Make no mistake…the government is trying to make an example” out of Dugan, he said. He added that the jury had the power to check what he described as “overreach” by the federal government. 

Luczak stressed that prior to the second Trump administration, ICE arrests had never occurred at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. When the arrests began in late March, individuals had been reportedly arrested in elevators and before attending family court, actions which should have been reported up the agency’s chain of command but weren’t, he said. “They’re not even following their own policies,” Luczak said. “This caused concerns, legitimate concerns, among the judges.” 

The jury was asked to consider whether they really believe that Dugan would put her career at risk for Flores-Ruiz. “This case is riddled with doubts,” said Luczak, stressing that the jury could only convict if they find Dugan guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. “There are consequences on rubber-stamping what the government wants you to rubber-stamp,” he said.

Jurors were reminded of the many emails sent by various judges asking for a policy, sharing stories of having people detained during court, and the slew of questions they had about how the county courthouse could respond. Chief Judge Carl Ashley had released a statement saying that ICE presence at the courthouse discouraged participation in the justice process and eroded trust in the courts’ integrity. 

Luczak also cast doubt on Cervera’s testimony. Jurors were played mute security camera video and asked to decide whether they believe Cervera that Dugan told the agents three times that they needed a judicial warrant, something that didn’t appear to happen in the video. “Judge Cervera is wrong,” said Luczak. “I don’t know if she’s lying, but I could think of some reasons why.” Cervera, the attorney argued, was trying to save herself by throwing Dugan under the bus. “You’re either a friend or an enemy of the government,” he said, asking the jury to consider why prosecutors relied on her statements so heavily. 

When Dugan spoke with the agents, Luczak said, “she’s not being confrontational, she’s being a judge.” He also highlighted that agents contradicted themselves in testimony and in the interviews they gave to FBI agents after the incident. Luczak pointed out that the agents never ran down the hallway to the elevators, as they’d implied. The audio evidence provided by prosecutors had also been taken from multiple microphones and put into one file, and was not audible in many areas, Luczak told the jury, adding, “I don’t think you can see this as very good evidence at all.” 

“If you don’t trust the evidence that the government is putting forward, it’s just another reasonable doubt,” Luczak said. Dugan never concealed Flores-Ruiz from the agents, who never entered her court to keep eyes on him, he said, adding that she never told de la Rosa to take the stairs. Luczak highlighted that prosecutors showed the jury video of the hall, with the filmer going down the stairs and not into the hallway, the opposite of what actually occurred. He called the government’s downplaying of concerns around ICE “tone deaf,” and questioned why Cervera herself texted her sister to warn her about sweeping arrests coming to the courthouse if she, too, didn’t have concerns.

“Justice is not what the government is seeking today,” Luczak. “They’re just wrong.” He told the jury to rely on Dugan’s emails to determine her state of mind, including one where she wrote: “We are in some uncharted waters with some very serious and even potential tragic community interests at risk in the balance.” 

The jury was given instructions by Adelman, and began deliberations shortly after 2 p.m. At around 3:45 p.m., the jury sent out a question to the judge. Interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin Brad Schimel, who lost a bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court earlier this year, made an appearance in the gallery as Adelman read the question from jurors about whether they were allowed to see ICE policies, which were included among the exhibits. 

Defense calls former Mayor Barrett as character witness

As witness testimony in the trial against Dugan concluded Thursday morning, Milwaukee County judges and public defenders spoke about the confusion and questions they faced when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began arresting people at the county courthouse. Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was also called to the stand as a character witness, testifying that he’s  known Dugan for over 50 years since they were in high school together. 

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judges Katie Kegel and Laura Gramling-Perez testified for the defense about emails local judges sent each other, asking for guidance and sharing stories about having people “snatched” out of their courtrooms and seeing ICE agents sitting in cars outside the court. 

One judge chimed in on the chain, “does this mean that Milwaukee County is cooperating with ICE?” Milwaukee County does not cooperate with ICE detainer requests in the jail. The Milwaukee Police Department also has its own policies limiting cooperation with ICE.

Judges air concerns about courthouse arrests

In one of her emails, Gramling-Perez strongly urged the creation of a policy on courthouse arrests by ICE. Under such a policy, she testified, ICE agents would be required to check in with the chief judge before conducting any enforcement. When the arrest team arrived the morning of April 18, they checked in with security who notified their supervisors at the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office. Security initially believed the agents would need to be escorted by the sheriff’s office, but a sergeant told them that wouldn’t be necessary. 

Gramling-Perez reviewed emails on the stand that said “the historic protocols are now shifting quickly,” and explaining  that although state and local law enforcement have conducted arrests around the court in the past, those activities were always guided by clear policies or practices which were respected by law enforcement. “The ICE detentions are a different animal,” one email stated.

Prosecutors repeatedly attempted to get Gramling-Perez to say that ICE arrests were allowed in public hallways, per the “key takeaways” that she outlined in her email to Dugan and other judges. Gramling-Perez, however, didn’t budge. When prosecutors showed her images of documents they claimed were part of her presentation, she said she’d never seen them before. When they pressed her to say that ICE arrests could happen in public hallways, she countered that her emailed explanations were not all inclusive, that she is not an expert on the matter, but that even public hallway arrests have their limits. 

Gramling-Perez testified that although discussion of a policy had begun, no policy had yet been established by the chief judge. 

Attorney Maura Gingerich, a public defender, was also called to the stand as a defense witness. Gingerich testified wearing a black suit with a black mask she said she wore for health reasons — attire similar to what she wore on April 18, when security cameras captured her photographing the plain-clothes ICE, FBI, DEA, and Border Patrol task force members in the courthouse hallway. Gingerich testified that she took photographs of the agents to send to her supervisor, so that the chief judge would be notified that the agents had returned and could offer guidance. 

“I think that it was very stressful to see what I thought were a number of law enforcement on the sixth floor without uniform,” Gingerich testified, noting she had already gone to another courtroom when Dugan approached the agents. One of the prosecutors  suggested  Gingerich followed the agents to another courtroom and was cooperating with Dugan,  saying, “I know what you guys were trying to do,” but Gingrich denied that characterization. Gingrich said she never saw Dugan that morning. 

Barrett calls Dugan ‘extremely honest’; Dugan invokes the Fifth Amendment

Former Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett testified as a character witness for Dugan, saying he has known her and the Dugan family for half a century. They first met when they attended the same high school.

Barrett described Dugan as very active in the community, an enthusiastic participant in community organizations and in  her church. “I think that she is extremely honest and I know that she will tell you exactly how she feels,” Barrett testified, adding that he feels that Dugan is a good person. 

The defense rested its case ahead of a lunch break. Dugan invoked her Fifth Amendment rights not to testify. Defense attorney Steven Biskupic noted on the record that he objected  to draft instructions the judge gave the jury, after Adleman chose jury instructions crafted by the prosecution instead of the defense.

Dugan faces up to five years in prison and a $350,000 fine for the felony conviction, but as a nonviolent offender with a record of service to her community is unlikely to be sentenced to time behind bars. Her sentencing hearing has not yet been scheduled.

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Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks at the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 18, 2025. Oz and other Trump administration officials announced proposed rules that would limit gender-affirming care for minors. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took major steps Thursday in a campaign to block minors’ access to gender-affirming care nationwide. 

Under two proposed new rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospitals would be barred from providing gender transition treatment for children as a condition of participating in Medicare and Medicaid programs, and Medicaid funding would be prohibited from being used to fund such care for minors. 

As most hospitals receive Medicare and Medicaid funding, the rules would essentially have the effect of a nationwide ban if they are finalized. 

The announcement came a day after the U.S. House passed a bill that would impose federal criminal penalties for gender-affirming care for minors and hours before it advanced a separate measure that would prohibit Medicaid funding for gender transition treatment for minors. 

The proposed regulations, which will next undergo a period of public comments, are certain to draw legal challenges.

The efforts build on Trump’s executive order in January that restricted access to gender-affirming care for kids. 

More than half of states already have laws or policies aimed at limiting youth access to gender-affirming care, according to the nonpartisan health research organization KFF. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced the proposals alongside several other health officials at a press conference at HHS headquarters in Washington, D.C. 

The room featured a handful of GOP members of Congress. At least two Republican state attorneys general — Ken Paxton of Texas and Todd Rokita of Indiana — were also in attendance.

At the press conference, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the FDA is also sending “warning letters” to 12 breast binder manufacturers and sellers for “illegal marketing of breast binders for children for the purposes of treating gender dysphoria.” 

Breast binders are used to flatten tissue in the chest.  

Kennedy said his agency’s Office for Civil Rights is moving to “reverse the Biden administration’s attempt to include gender dysphoria within the definition of disability.” 

House passes anti-transgender bills 

The proposed rules are part of the Trump administration’s broader anti-trans agenda. 

Trump has signed executive orders that make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” aimed to bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military, and sought to prohibit trans athletes from competing on women’s sports teams consistent with their gender identity.

Meanwhile, efforts at the congressional level to restrict youth access to gender-affirming care face a dismal path in the Senate, where any legislation would likely need the backing of at least 60 senators to advance past the filibuster.

The House passed a measure Wednesday night, 216-211, that would subject medical professionals to up to 10 years in prison for providing gender-affirming care for minors. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who sponsored the legislation, called its passage a “win for children all over America,” in a social media post Wednesday. 

It’s likely the last legislative achievement for the Georgia Republican, who is resigning from Congress in early January. 

Four Republicans voted against the measure: Reps. Gabe Evans of Colorado, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Mike Kennedy of Utah and Mike Lawler of New York.

Three Democrats voted with the GOP to back the bill: Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Don Davis of North Carolina.

The House also passed a measure Thursday, 215-201, from Texas GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Greene that aims to prohibit “Medicaid funding for gender transition procedures for minors.” 

Cuellar, Gonzalez and Davis also backed the GOP-led bill, along with fellow Democratic Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state. 

‘Cruel and unconstitutional attacks’ 

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, blasted the administration’s proposals, saying they “would put Donald Trump and RFK Jr. in those doctor’s offices, ripping health care decisions from the hands of families and putting it in the grips of the anti-LGBTQ+ fringe.”  

Robinson also emphasized that the rules are “proposals, not binding law,” and called on community members, health care providers, administrators and allies to “be vocal in pushing back by sharing the ways these proposals would be devastating to their families and the healthcare community at large.” 

The American Civil Liberties Union also condemned the administration’s proposals and vowed to challenge the efforts in court. 

Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Rights Project, dubbed the proposals “cruel and unconstitutional attacks on the rights of transgender youth and their families.” 

Strangio said the proposals would “force doctors to choose between their ethical obligations to their patients and the threat of losing federal funding” and “uproot families who have already fled state-level bans, leaving them with nowhere to turn for the care they need to survive and thrive.”

A Tennessee voter casts his ballot in Nashville during a special election this month. The U.S. Department of Justice has sent confidential draft agreements on voter data sharing to more than a dozen states, including Tennessee — part of the Trump administration’s effort to obtain unredacted voter rolls from states. (Photo by Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

The U.S. Department of Justice has sent a confidential draft agreement to more than a dozen states that would require election officials to remove any alleged ineligible voters identified during a federal review of their voter rolls.

The agreement — called a memorandum of understanding, or MOU — would hand the federal government a major role in election administration, a responsibility that belongs to the states under the U.S. Constitution.

A Justice Department official identified 11 states that have expressed an interest in the agreement during a federal court hearing in December, according to a transcript reviewed by Stateline. Two additional states, Colorado and Wisconsin, have publicly rejected the memorandum of understanding and released copies of the proposal.

The 11 states “all fall into the list of, they have expressed with us a willingness to comply based on the represented MOU that we have sent them,” Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, said at the hearing. He spoke at a Dec. 4 hearing in a federal lawsuit brought by the Justice Department against California, which has refused a demand for the state’s voter data.

Neff’s courtroom disclosure, which Stateline is the first to report, comes as the Justice Department has sued 21 states and the District of Columbia for unredacted copies of their voter rolls after demanding the data from most states in recent months. The unredacted lists include sensitive personal information, such as driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers.

The states Neff identified are led by Republicans — Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.

The draft memorandum of understanding represents a new effort by the Trump administration to gain access to some states’ voter data without litigation.

The administration’s lawsuits mostly target Democratic states, where election officials refused initial requests for voter data and allege the demand is unlawful and risks the privacy of millions of voters. They have also voiced fears that the Trump administration could use the information to target its political enemies.

Neff said four states with Republican secretaries of state — Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas and Wyoming — have “complied voluntarily” with the Justice Department’s demand without memoranda of understanding.

The Justice Department says it needs voters’ detailed information to ensure ineligible people are kept off state voter rolls and that only citizens are voting.

Federal officials say they will follow federal privacy laws, but critics fear voter data is being shared with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which operates a powerful citizenship verification tool known as SAVE. The Trump administration has previously confirmed the Justice Department plans to share voter data with Homeland Security.

“What the DOJ is trying to do is something that should frighten everybody across the political spectrum,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. “They’re trying to use the power of the executive branch to bully states into turning over highly sensitive data: date of birth, Social Security number, driver’s license — the holy trinity of identity theft.”

Becker, who worked as a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, told reporters on Dec. 8 that several states received the memorandum. But Neff’s identification of 11 states wasn’t widely available until the judge in the California lawsuit on Tuesday ordered the transcript of the Dec. 4 hearing immediately posted to the lawsuit’s public docket, where Stateline accessed it.

The draft memorandum of understanding, which is labeled “confidential,” outlines the terms of the proposed agreement between each state and the Justice Department. After a state provides its voter roll, the federal department would agree to test, analyze and assess the information. The department would then notify states of “any voter list maintenance issues, insufficiencies, inadequacies, deficiencies, anomalies, or concerns” found.

Each state would agree to “clean” its voter roll within 45 days by removing any ineligible voters, according to the memorandum. States would then resubmit their voter data to the Justice Department for verification.

While the Justice Department has demanded states’ voter rolls since this summer, the memorandum of understanding offers the most detailed picture to date of how the Trump administration plans to use the data.

“It lays out in a way that we haven’t seen in any other context their plan for one of the things, I will say, that they plan to do, which is disturbing,” said Eileen O’Connor, a senior counsel and manager in the voting rights and election program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, a progressive think tank.

O’Connor was a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations. “I think with each passing lawsuit, they are clearly trying to create a national database of every voter in the country,” she said.

The Justice Department didn’t answer questions from Stateline about how many states had been sent the memorandum and whether any had signed it.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, wrote in a statement to Stateline that the department has a statutory mandate to enforce federal voting rights laws. Ensuring the voting public’s confidence in election integrity is a top priority of the Trump administration, she wrote.

“Clean voter rolls and basic election safeguards are requisites for free, fair, and transparent elections,” Dhillon wrote.

Federal involvement in elections

The Justice Department memorandum, if implemented, would mark a significant departure from how election officials typically maintain voter rolls.

States, often in coordination with local election officials, check lists for changes in address, deaths and other reasons for ineligibility, such as a felony conviction. States typically perform this task with little to no federal involvement.

Some states participate in voluntary programs that allow election officials to share voter information with other states for the purposes of looking for voters who may have moved or who are registered in multiple locations. But those don’t include the federal government, which plays a limited role in election administration under the United States’ decentralized approach to elections.

Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said clerks continually look at death records and other sources of data to update voter lists. He said the United States’ localized election system is a strength that guards against election interference.

“The federal government has no role in list maintenance,” Crane said.

But that has begun to change under the Trump administration, as President Donald Trump has made removing noncitizen voters a priority.

Earlier this year, Homeland Security overhauled the SAVE program into a tool that can scan millions of voter records against government databases for evidence of citizenship. The program was previously used for one-off searches to check whether noncitizens were eligible for government benefits.

Some Republican secretaries of state have agreed to upload their voter rolls into SAVE. Democratic secretaries of state object to using the program and say they are wary of what will happen to the voter information once it’s provided to the Trump administration, including its potential use by the Department of Homeland Security.

While SAVE can flag voters with potential eligibility issues, the onus now is still on state officials to investigate whether those voters are actually ineligible and decide whether to initiate a process to remove them from the rolls.

By contrast, the Justice Department memorandum would empower federal officials to take a more active role, allowing them to check the work of state election officials as they remove — or don’t remove — voters.

“We have a system that allows Americans to voice their opinions and to hold government accountable, and that is so fundamentally central to the way our system works,” Oregon Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read, who has been sued by the Justice Department, said in an interview. “We should be focused on how to make that better, not on erecting artificial barriers and putting people’s privacy and confidence at risk for no reason.”

Republican interest

Some GOP election officials have welcomed the Trump administration’s interest and have accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to help states vet their voter rolls. In particular, they praise the overhaul of SAVE, which some GOP secretaries of state had requested before Trump took office.

Some secretaries have touted the removal of noncitizen voters after using SAVE. Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican, in November announced three voters identified as noncitizens had been removed from his state’s voter rolls. Gray has also provided the Justice Department with full access to Wyoming’s voter roll.

“The voter list maintenance that we have been conducting is extremely important for election integrity,” Gray said in a news release.

But as of early December, nearly all states hadn’t provided the Justice Department access to their unredacted voter rolls, with Neff identifying only four that had shared their lists. It also remains unclear whether any state has signed the memorandum of understanding. No state has told Stateline it signed the document.

Nebraska Secretary of State Robert Evnen, a Republican, has received a memorandum of understanding and plans to comply with the Justice Department request, pending the outcome of an ongoing lawsuit, Evnen spokesperson Rani Taborek-Potter wrote in an email to Stateline. A voting advocacy group has sued to block the release of the data.

In an interview with Kentucky Lantern, Kentucky Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams said that his office was “going back and forth a little bit” with the Justice Department over what federal law requires.

“We’ve not really figured out exactly where that line is of what-all they’re entitled to,” Adams said. “What’s not in dispute is they’re entitled to the vast majority of information — people’s names, addresses, birthdays — and we’ve given them all of that.”

Adams added that many state officials “are in the same boat of trying to figure out what exactly they need to do their job and what our obligations are legally.”

Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson, a Republican, confirmed in a statement to Stateline that her office received a proposed memorandum of understanding from the Justice Department. “We are in the process of reviewing the document with our attorneys and carefully considering our options,” Henderson wrote.

Rachael Dunn, a spokesperson for Missouri Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, wrote in an email that the state hadn’t entered into an agreement with the Justice Department “at this time.”

DOJ ‘contractor’ could get voter data

The draft agreement would give the Justice Department wide authority to share the voter data of states that sign on.

The department would be authorized to share the data with “a contractor” who needs access “to perform duties related” to voter list maintenance verification, according to the draft agreement. The agreement doesn’t name any contractors or specify whether they would be inside or outside of government.

Two states have publicly rejected the draft agreement. Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced Dec. 11 she would refuse to sign the memorandum. The Justice Department sued Colorado the following day.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission also rejected the draft agreement that week. In a Dec. 11 letter to Neff, the Justice Department official, the commissioners wrote that state law prohibits them from releasing certain personally identifiable information, such as date of birth, Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers.

“I don’t look at the action that we’re taking today to be commentary on the motive of the appropriateness of the Department of Justice’s request,” Commissioner Don Millis, a Republican appointee, said at a virtual commission meeting the same day. “The U.S. DOJ is simply asking the commission to do something that the commission is explicitly forbidden by Wisconsin law to do.”

The Justice Department on Thursday sued Wisconsin for its voter data.

Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University, told Stateline in an email that he expects no states to sign the agreement.

“It’s no surprise that both Colorado and Wisconsin said no — and I don’t think that’s a question of political leadership,” Levitt wrote. “It’s hard for me to imagine any Republican state with faith in its own list maintenance capacity agreeing to outsource that decision to the DOJ.”

VRLData Sharing Agreement DOJ-WI (2)

Colorado Newsline’s Lindsey Toomer contributed reporting. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

A PFAS advisory sign along Starkweather Creek. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing Thursday on a bipartisan bill that would require the state Department of Natural Resources to notify county and tribal governments when local groundwater contamination is found to exceed state standards. 

Throughout the hearing, the bill’s authors and residents of communities with water quality problems complained of incidents in which significant amounts of time passed before people learned their water was contaminated with harmful chemicals such as nitrates or PFAS. 

“Time really counts, hours, days, weeks, and in our case, even years,” said Lee Donahue, a resident of the town of Campbell on French Island near La Crosse, which has been dealing with PFAS contamination for years. “It’s been heart wrenching to know that my family and my friends and my neighbors have all been impacted by these toxic chemicals. I don’t wish anyone to have contamination in their water. And the sad part is we had no clue that PFAS was pouring from our faucets and that we were drinking that water for years and years and years before any notification was made.”

Initially authored by Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse) and Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp), more than 60 legislators of both parties have signed onto the bill as co-sponsors, signaling the legislation has enough support to be signed into law during a legislative session in which efforts to find compromise on environmental issues — including efforts to extend the Knowles-Nelson stewardship grant program and to create a method to spend $125 million that has been set aside for more than two years to remediate PFAS contamination — have been stuck in the partisan muck. 

Under the bill, if the DNR finds an exceedance of the state’s groundwater standards the department will have seven days to notify the local county or tribal health department as well as the county land and conservation department. 

For several years, Wisconsin policymakers have been unable to establish a state standard for the acceptable amount of PFAS in the state’s groundwater, hitting roadblocks at the state Natural Resources Board and in the Republican-controlled Legislature. The state does have established standards for the amount of PFAS in the state’s surface water and the drinking water provided by municipal water utilities. 

As the Legislature has tried and failed to pass a bill that would spend the $125 million in the PFAS trust fund, residents of communities affected by PFAS contamination have frequently said the policy change they’d most like to see is the establishment of a groundwater standard. 

The contaminant notification bill does not establish a groundwater standard for PFAS, however it requires the DNR to notify the county government if the groundwater is found to have PFAS levels higher than the existing state standards for PFAS in surface or drinking water. 

About one-third of Wisconsin residents get their water from private drinking wells. While the bill does not establish a groundwater standard and does not provide any assistance if the groundwater they use to shower, brush their teeth, make coffee or mix baby formula is contaminated, proponents said it does make sure residents have the information they need to make decisions about the source of their water. 

“If people have a right to clean water, then they have a right to know when their water is not clean,” said Michael Tiboris, the agriculture and water policy director at the River Alliance of Wisconsin. “And this bill is exactly the kind of action that we appreciate having legislators take a strong position on, giving families knowledge of the threats to their drinking water makes it possible for them to protect themselves.” 

None of the people or groups that testified at the hearing Thursday were in opposition to the bill, but a few industry groups expressed a handful of complaints and said they’d like to see amendments to the bill’s final version. 

The concerns of business groups centered around making sure that any notifications were made after test results have been verified and making sure that the notifications don’t instigate regulatory action from the government that it doesn’t have the authority to undertake. 

“It’s just not appropriate for the government to take any kind of action,” said Adam Jordahl, director of environmental and energy policy at Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. “I know it’s not a direct regulatory action where we’re expecting an individual or business to do something or comply with something, but nevertheless, the issue of sort of holding people accountable to a regulatory PFAS standard that has not yet actually been promulgated into the administrative code. We find that to be very problematic and kind of a slippery slope going down in terms of holding people accountable or responsible to something that hasn’t gone through the full rulemaking process.”

Scott Suder, the president of the Wisconsin Paper Council, said he’s concerned that prematurely telling people their water is contaminated could create “reputational risks” for nearby businesses. 

“It creates unnecessary legal and reputational risk for industry, potentially because the notice is subject to public inspection and copying under [Wisconsin open records law],” Suder said. “All exceedance notifications would become public records, creating significant disclosure and some reputational risks, so even minor errors or omissions could trigger liabilities, and the visibility of exceedances may lead to public misunderstanding about actual risks. So it is a bit concerning for industry as well.”

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A cannabis pre-roll is held at a legalization anniversary party in Cranston, Rhode Island, Dec. 1, 2023. (Photo by Christopher Shea/Rhode Island Current)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday to loosen federal restrictions on marijuana, which Trump said reflected the drug’s potential medical benefits while discouraging recreational use.

The order moves cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III on the Federal Drug Administration’s list of controlled substances. Schedule I, the most restrictive category under federal law, indicates a high likelihood of abuse and no accepted medical value. 

Trump said the move reflected that cannabis could have medicinal value, even if abuse was still possible.

The order “doesn’t legalize marijuana in any way, shape or form and in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug,” Trump said. “Just as the prescription painkillers may have legitimate uses, but can also do irreversible damage … it’s never safe to use powerful controlled substances in recreational matters.”

Still, the order marks a major step in the decades-long liberalization of cannabis policy. 

Since 2012, when Washington and Colorado voters legalized personal marijuana use, 22 other states have legalized at least some form of recreational use. Only 10 states still restrict both medicinal and recreational use.

In a statement, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, praised Trump while calling for further reforms to bring federal law into harmony with states where the drug is legal.

“I thank the President and am pleased that they are finally taking this step to begin the process to reschedule,” Polis wrote. “Colorado’s cannabis industry is the gold standard ensuring that products are safe and regulated. It’s good to see the federal government finally following suit, but it’s frustrating it’s taken this long and there is much more to do for a full descheduling,”

President Joe Biden started the process for rescheduling the drug last year.

Medical angle

A group of administration officials and medical doctors flanked Trump during the Oval Office signing, with some speaking to the potential medical benefits of marijuana, including as an alternative to highly addictive opioid painkillers.

“The facts compel the federal government to recognize that marijuana can be legitimate in terms of medical applications when carefully administered,” Trump said.

Researching the potential benefits of marijuana is nearly impossible because of the tight restrictions on Schedule I substances, advocates have argued.

Removing cannabis from Schedule I would help ease those restrictions, Trump said. 

“This reclassification order will make it far easier to conduct marijuana-related medical research, allowing us to study benefits, potential dangers and future treatments,” he said. “It’s going to have a tremendously positive impact.”

In addition to researchers, the split between federal law and the legal landscape in many states has created challenges for the industry, users and law enforcement, among others.

For example, the unusual position of state-legal businesses in a federally banned industry means they cannot use certain tax provisions, access some banking instruments or transport their product across state lines.

In a lengthy statement, Paul Armentano, the deputy director of leading marijuana legalization organization National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, offered qualified praise for the move, saying it “validates the experience” of patients who have used marijuana to treat chronic pain and other conditions. 

“This directive certainly marks a long overdue change in direction,” Armentano said. “But while such a move potentially provides some benefits to patients, and veterans especially, it still falls well short of the changes necessary to bring federal marijuana policy into the 21st century. Specifically, rescheduling fails to harmonize federal marijuana policy with the cannabis laws of most states.”

The reclassification could provide tax relief to many marijuana businesses, he added.

GOP senators opposed move

Many Republicans in Congress remain opposed to legalizing marijuana.

In a letter dated Wednesday, 24 Senate Republicans urged Trump not to reclassify marijuana, which they said had a high likelihood of abuse and no medical value.

Allowing marijuana businesses to take advantage of federal tax deductions would give them a tax break of as much as $2.3 billion, allowing them to increase marketing efforts and expand into additional states, the lawmakers wrote. The benefits of economic growth would be outweighed by the costs of accidents, “not to mention the moral costs of marijuana advertising that could reach kids,” they wrote.

“In light of the documented dangers of marijuana, facilitating the growth of the marijuana industry is at odds with growing our economy and encouraging healthy lifestyles for Americans,” the GOP senators wrote. “We urge you to continue your strong leadership of our country and our economy, and to turn away from marijuana rescheduling.”

North Carolina’s Ted Budd led the letter, which was also signed by John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, John Cornyn of Texas, Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Jim Banks of Indiana, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho, Rick Scott of Florida, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Dave McCormick of Pennsylvania and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which the White House said will be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center.  (Photo courtesy of Kennedy Center)

WASHINGTON — The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a prestigious cultural hub in the nation’s capital, will be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Thursday.

The renaming comes after President Donald Trump named himself chair of the board in February in a major shake-up. He later fired the Kennedy Center president as well as board members appointed by President Joe Biden before appointing his own members.

Leavitt said the board unanimously approved the name change. However, a federal statute appears to prohibit the renaming of portions of the center, which is considered a living memorial to Kennedy.

“After December 2, 1983, no additional memorials or plaques in the nature of memorials shall be designated or installed in the public areas of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,” according to the U.S. code. 

Congress likely would need to change the law for the center to be renamed officially. 

The Kennedy Center was renamed in 1964 to honor President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated.

Leavitt said the renaming was “because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building. Not only from the standpoint of its reconstruction, but also financially, and its reputation.”

“Congratulations to President Donald J. Trump, and likewise, congratulations to President Kennedy, because this will be a truly great team long into the future!,” she wrote.

Since the president’s takeover of the center, major artists and performers have canceled performances or boycotted performing. The artist Issa Rae, and the musical “Hamilton” will no longer perform at the center and dozens of cast members of “Les Misérables” refused to perform for Trump officials earlier this year.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A panel of appellate judges seemed skeptical during Thursday oral arguments that the Trump administration erred in relying on a decades-old statute to require millions of noncitizens to register with the federal government and carry documentation.

But they did take issue with the paperwork required of immigrants without legal status as well as the consequences for those who fail to register, and questioned if the practice violated due process and self-incrimination rights.

In February, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the agency would enforce a rule under the Immigration and Nationality Act that requires all immigrants in the country without legal status to register with the agency or risk fines or potential jail time.  

A federal court in April sided with the Trump administration, allowing the registration requirement to go through.

The suit, brought by immigration rights advocates, does not challenge the statute from 1940 requiring those without legal status to register, but instead the process used by DHS in rolling out the policy without a proper notice and comment period. The suit also challenges a penalty for not filling out paperwork, as the form is only in English and can only be accessed with an internet connection.

Administration position

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Kartik N. Venguswamy from the U.S. Attorney’s Office said a notice and comment period is not needed because the form is just procedural and a new rule is not created. 

He added that the rule does not cause irreparable harm, because any harm is from outside forces, such as immigration enforcement or deportation that could follow registration with the federal government.  

Judges Patricia A. Millett, Gregory G. Katsas and J. Michelle Childs heard the case in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Former President Barack Obama nominated Millett; President Donald Trump nominated Katsas in his first term; and former President Joe Biden nominated Childs.

The judges raised concerns with the form itself, including one question that requires the noncitizen to report any crimes they have committed, regardless of whether they were charged or convicted. 

That wades into violation of the 5th Amendment’s protections against self incrimination, one judge said.

“That’s asking you to confess to things that no government authority is aware of,” Millett said of the final rule. “And it’s a big step toward the 5th Amendment.”

The Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan immigration think tank, estimated that between 2.2 million and 3.2 million immigrants will have to register. The registration requirement could be a powerful tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out mass deportations.

Rule has gone unenforced

Michelle Lapointe, arguing on behalf of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said the federal government has not enforced the rule for nearly 80 years. 

The registration requirement is authorized under a wartime act known as the Alien Registration Act of 1940 that was first used in World War II. It was rarely used after that, but briefly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

During that time, any noncitizen males older than 16 who hailed from 25 countries with a Muslim majority had to register with the federal government. But the program led to no terrorism convictions and was eventually dissolved in 2016.

Lapointe said because the rule would apply to as many as 3 million immigrants without legal status, a notice and comment period must occur. Under the rule, immigrants 14 and older who are required to register will need to carry registration documents at all times or risk potential prison terms or fines of up to $5,000.

“It is solely for the process of deportation,” Lapointe said.

As the Trump administration continues with its immigration crackdown, federal immigration officials could carry out their plans for mass deportations by having easy access to records of immigrants unlawfully in the country.

But Childs seemed skeptical that the federal government couldn’t use the statute, because it’s on the books.

Katsas also said the rule is not new — the government has just decided not to enforce it since 1940.

“It seems like a more fair account” that the government is ending a long policy of not enforcing a rule that, on its face, “covers all aliens,” he said.

But Katsas said the “rule does expand the category of information and that’s new.”

That category of information includes the requirement to detail to the federal government any crime the individual has committed, which Lapointe argued would violate 5th Amendment rights. 

Registration form debated

Childs and Millett questioned the roll-out of the form, the fact that it’s only accessible online and in English, and the penalty for not registering with the federal government.

“These are forms regulating a community … where English is not their native language,” Millett said. 

Venguswamy said the forms were in English because “English is the language of the United States government at this point.” 

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to adopt English as the official language, including paperwork.  

Millett asked Venguswamy if it’s the government’s position that an immigrant who doesn’t understand English will not be charged or issued a penalty for failing to register. 

“I’m not in a position to speak to whether or not that is the position the government will take,” Venguswamy said. 

Millett then asked why a proper notice and comment period is not needed for a new process, even if it’s not creating a new statute. 

She gave Venguswamy an example of the IRS not changing the tax code, but issuing a new tax form for taxpayers to fill out.

“We’re gonna issue new tax forms, for everyone to fill out their taxes, we’re not creating tax obligations, just new forms in Ancient Biblical Greek,” Millett said. 

She asked Venguswamy if a proper notice and comment period would be needed for those new tax forms.

He said it would not, because it’s a change in procedure, not a change to the rule.

“Wow,” Millett said. “We can all be criminally prosecuted for not filling out our taxes unless we can find the five people in the United States who know how to speak Ancient Biblical Greek.”

Enbridge pumping station, Mackinaw City, Feb. 7, 2023 | Laina G. Stebbins

A federal judge has deemed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s move to revoke the Line 5 oil pipeline’s easement to operate within the Great Lakes unenforceable, determining that the move is barred by federal law.

Judge Robert Jonker of the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan’s Southern Division issued an order Wednesday siding with Canadian pipeline company Enbridge in their case against Whitmer and the director of the Department of Natural Resources.

In his opinion, Jonker pointed to the Pipeline Safety Act of 1992, concurring with Enbridge’s assertion that the law preempts states from placing safety regulations on interstate pipelines. He also pointed to arguments from the government of the United States and Canada arguing that the state’s effort to shut down the pipeline violates a 1977 treaty between the two nations concerning the flow of oil and natural gas through pipelines across borders. 

Consequently, Jonker granted Enbridge’s request for summary judgment, barring the state from enforcing the order terminating the pipeline’s easement to operate in the Straits of Mackinac, where Lake Huron and Lake Michigan meet. 

“Pipeline safety generally, and protection of the Straits of Mackinac, are critical interests to be sure,” Jonker wrote in his opinion. “But when it comes to Line 5, they are the responsibility of the United States and Michigan lacks the power to interfere.”

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Line 5 has long been a point of concern for tribal nations and environmental advocates within the Great Lakes, as Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel each pledged to shut down the pipeline as part of their 2018 campaign. 

The 645-mile-long pipeline, which runs from northwestern Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario includes a four-mile-long segment, where a set of dual pipelines operates on the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac.

Opponents of the pipeline point to a 2010 incident, where Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured, spilling hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo river. Enbridge has also reported gaps in the protective coating in the segment running through the straits. These segments have also been damaged by anchor strikes, prompting the state to declare the region a “No Anchor” zone.

In a statement to the Michigan Advance on Wednesday, Enbridge Spokesperson Ryan Duffy said the company welcomes the ruling, arguing that state officials pursued a shutdown of the pipeline due to “unsupported” claims about its safety.

“Any dispute over its continued operation must be resolved through the 1977 Transit Treaty’s dispute resolution process, which Canada has already invoked,” Duffy said. “Today’s ruling makes clear that efforts by Michigan officials to permanently shut down Line 5 would interfere with U.S. foreign affairs – authority vested exclusively in the federal government.”

A spokesperson for Whitmer referred Michigan Advance to the Department of Attorney General, which is representing the governor and DNR Director Scott Bowen in the case.

Danny Wimmer, the attorney general’s press secretary, said they are consulting with the governor’s office and the DNR to review the opinion and determine their next steps, which could include an appeal of the ruling. 

“From our own preliminary review, it appears this opinion is wrongly decided on the law and an affront to Michigan’s sovereign interests in managing the use and occupation of its submerged lands,” Wimmer said. 

A separate case led by Nessel which aims to invalidate the pipeline’s easement remains pending in state court.

Attorneys for Whitmer and Bowen have also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh whether the state is immune from legal action in the case, after two previous courts determined the matter fell within exceptions to sovereign immunity.

A screenshot from a video released by the Wisconsin State Public Defender that shows a youth in detention being restrained and beaten by staff at the Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center in Caledonia on May 27, 2025.

The Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office released a video Tuesday of an incident involving a staff member repeatedly punching a then-15-year-old at a juvenile detention center.

The incident took place on May 27 and involved a youth at the Jonathan Delagrave Youth Development and Care Center in Caledonia.

 The video appears to show four staff members directing him to move from a spot by a wall in a hallway, possibly to a nearby room, and Elliott not moving. After a staff member swung at him, the situation devolved into a struggle. Elliott was struck repeatedly by staff before and after he was on the ground.

The incident occurred less than a month after the 48-bed facility opened on May 1, the State Public Defenders Office (SPD) said. According to the SPD, the teen had bruises, swelling on his right eye, blurred vision and headaches, scrapes and cuts and dried blood in his ear, based on records from evaluations arranged by the facility. 

“To the parents who have kids in a detention center, check on your babies,” said Kianna Reed, his mother.

The SPD wants its client immediately transferred from the facility and placed in a group home “where he can receive specialized therapy and support.”

“The people in this video should have never been entrusted with caring for children. This is a sickening act of violence,” State Public Defender Jennifer Bias said in a statement. 

The family is looking for an attorney for a civil lawsuit against Racine County, the SPD said. 

In the SPD release, Reed said that “seeing that video and knowing my son is still in that facility is terrifying,” and that “the staff need proper training and accountability.”

In a statement emailed to the Examiner, a Racine County spokesperson described the publicly released video as a partial record of a longer incident  and said that staff’s interaction with the youth took place over several minutes. It said the youth clenched his fists and made multiple threats of physical violence to other juveniles and staff.

“Maintaining the safety of youth and staff in our facilities is our highest priority,” Amberlyn Yohn, administrator of youth rehabilitation services, said in the county’s statement. “Situations like this are complex and unfold quickly. While one employee’s actions became the focus of this incident, our broader team followed established protocols and cooperated fully with the review process.”

The county commits to making sure staff have the training, oversight and support needed for managing difficult situations, Yohn said.

The “primarily involved staff member” was immediately placed on administrative leave after the incident and resigned within three days, Racine County said in a statement emailed to the Examiner. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, his name is Robert Knight, and he told the Journal Sentinel his actions were justified based on Elliott’s history at the center. He disputed that he resigned because of the investigation.

A different worker seen repeatedly striking the teen was ordered to complete eight hours of remedial training and appears to still be employed at the facility, according to the public defender’s office. Three of the four staff members involved are still employed at the center, according to the public defender’s office, which obtained records showing the staff’s employment status.

Knight said her son was displaying signs of aggression at the time of the incident, according to the Journal Sentinel. He said he intended to force the boy back rather than strike him.

The teen had been found guilty of charges of retail theft and obstructing an officer.

A new alternative

Efforts to close the Lincoln Hills facility have not yet proven successful, and its location makes it difficult for youth there to maintain contact with their community and families.

Years after a 2017 lawsuit filed over abuses, Gov. Tony Evers announced in October that the state had reached full compliance with all of the court-ordered reforms. The Department of Corrections’ website describes plans to build smaller facilities and keep youth closer to home.

In addition, the state has awarded money to counties to establish Secure Residential Care Centers for Children and Youth (SRCCCY). Milwaukee’s is expected to open in 2026; Racine’s is the only one that is currently open. The county website says it provides a “structured and rehabilitative environment for male youth.”

The facility was built as an alternative to the Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake youth prisons, the SPD said in its release. Some juvenile offenders can now go to the facility instead of Lincoln Hills, Eileen Fredericks, the SPD’s youth defense practice coordinator, told the Examiner.

Fredericks said that “we only have one, and then shortly after it opens, we have this really serious incident.”

The county’s website says that youth are placed in the SRCCCY under a statute that requires that the youth committed an act that would carry a sentence of six months or more if the youth were an adult. The youth also must have been found to be a danger to the public and in need of restrictive custodial treatment.

In the weeks before the facility opened in May, the Racine County Eye reported that officials said the center is a more cost-effective and compassionate alternative to state-run youth correctional facilities such as Lincoln Hills.

According to the public defender’s office, at the time of the incident, the teen was a few weeks into a five and a half-month period of participation in the SRCCCY’s RISE-UP program. He has been in detention consistently since December 2024, the SPD office said.

In the SPD’s release, Bias argued that building “shiny new prisons” won’t prevent situations like what happened to the teen. 

“We need meaningful reforms to the way our children are treated in the juvenile justice system,” Bias said. “We need judges who will prioritize alternatives to incarceration and detention workers who value care over punishment.”

Fredericks said she wants “these kids to be seen as kids” and that “there’s kind of this mindset that they’re less than kids, because they’ve done something wrong.”

Transparency concern

Bias accused the county of seeking to “sweep this incident under the rug.” The public defender’s office called for a “full-scale” investigation into conditions at the facility and the qualifications of staff members who interact with children. 

Reed told the Examiner she did not see any of the video released Tuesday by the SPD until October. 

In its statement, the county said that immediately after the May 27 incident, the mother of the youth and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections were notified. The Examiner reached out to the DOC and was told that the Jonathan Delagrave facility is county-run, and questions regarding personnel or those housed there are best directed to Racine County. 

The county said important privacy protections for juveniles must be respected, but that the county has been and remains transparent in its response to the incident. 

Law enforcement and independent human services agencies fully investigated and reviewed the incident, the county said. The details of the investigation and relevant video were provided to the Racine County District Attorney’s Office, which declined to pursue prosecution, the county said.

Warning: the video released by the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office contains graphic footage of violence against a child.

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Miguel Aranda speaks with Democratic Party members after a party meeting in Kenosha on Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo courtesy of Aranda congressional campaign)

In Miguel Aranda’s bid to be the Democratic nominee for Congress in Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, the college administrator says he brings a variety of assets.

One is local political experience. In his second term on the Whitewater School District school board, he serves as vice president. Board elections are nonpartisan.

“I’m not in politics because I want to make a career out of it,” Aranda said in a recent interview. “I can work across the aisle.”

Aranda, 35, is one of a growing number of hopefuls aiming for the Democratic nomination to run against Republican U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, now in his fourth term. Other declared Democratic candidates are ironworker Randy Bryce, emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman, Racine community activist Gage Stills and Janesville union leader Enrique Casiano.

“I’m the only one who has won a political campaign,” Aranda said. “I know how important it is to bring people together and stay united.”

The Cook Political Report’s most recent update, Dec. 9, maintained the 1st District’s projected 2026 outcome as “likely Republican.” Despite such forecasts, in the current cycle the district has drawn a broader array of potential Democratic opponents than it has seen in years.

The party’s last contested primary came in 2020. In 2024, what was expected to be at least a three-way primary race was avoided after Peter Barca’s late entry into the contest led the rest of the field to drop out by summer.

Aranda is the associate director of a college readiness program at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.

A Spanish speaker and an active Democratic party volunteer for the last 15 years, Aranda has organized bilingual workshops at party events. When the Whitewater school district held a referendum to raise property taxes in support of school district operations in 2022, Aranda said, he did presentations directed to the local Spanish-speaking community.

Public education is one of his top campaign priorities, he said. While funding is primarily a state and local function, the federal role in supporting public schools is important, he said, and he opposes the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the federal Department of Education.

“There’s a lack of public education funding,” Aranda said. “Local constituents are going to feel it in their pocket. Republicans aren’t doing much to assist in our investment for the future.”

Aranda’s parents, both Mexican immigrants, settled in Whitewater in the early 1990s, he said, and he grew up in the community, which straddles the line between Walworth and Jefferson counties.

“When we came to Whitewater, the only people that helped us were public school teachers,” Aranda said of his family’s experience.

He said immigration reform is another of his campaign’s concerns. On that, “there’s a lot of things at the local level we cannot do,” Aranda said. “I truly believe immigration reform that is comprehensive and fair will help not just public education but a lot of the scarcity and pain that people are feeling.”

Aranda has a master’s in business administration. He’s also held a variety of other jobs, he said, giving him the sort of direct experience he believes many voters can identify with.

“I’ve worked in call centers, custodial services and fast food,” Aranda said. “People want a good, stable job — this message is very simple. That’s what I want to guarantee for others.”

He supports a proposal advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, for a federal law setting the minimum pay for public school teachers at $60,000.

“Republicans say you can’t do that, but now you see ICE [agents] offered more money and debt forgiveness,” Aranda said.

While Aranda is not the only Hispanic entrant in the Democratic contest, he considers an ability to appeal to Hispanic voters to be one of his selling points. The 1st District has “a lot of Latino potential voters,” Aranda said. “They’ve been frustrated with both political parties.”

Aranda said he’s been traveling throughout the district to meet with Democratic Party groups and solicit their support. He also has been trying to educate and engage casual voters and non-voters, he said.

He described a recent visit to a college organization of Latino students. After introducing himself and his campaign for the 1st District, “Nobody knew who their representative was,” he said.

“Some don’t know what a Republican or a Democrat is and what they stand for,” he added. “Republicans take advantage of that, too.”

Aranda believes motivating more people who have been largely detached from politics to take an interest and go to the polls can help Democrats flip the seat.

“I think there’s a huge opportunity there,” he said. “I think there’s an opportunity for younger voters, too — for their voice to be heard.”

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Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said that “looking at the way [WisconsinEye is] currently run, it seems like they’re really burning through money. It’s not the most effective use of taxpayer money, so we’re not going to give WisconsinEye a blank check to keep running it irresponsibly.” LeMahieu speaks on the Senate floor in September 2023. (Screenshot via WisEye).

Legislative leaders have been in discussions with WisconsinEye, the broadcast network that recently stopped offering coverage of state government business, about a potential long-term solution for the financial crisis facing the organization, the president of the organization told the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday.

Due to a lack of funding, WisconsinEye halted its livestream coverage of state government on Monday and pulled down its video archive of over 30,000 hours of state government proceedings, candidate interviews and other programming. WisconsinEye launched in 2007 as an independent, nonprofit organization funded mostly by charitable donations.

Jon Henkes, president of WisconsinEye, has said that the organization had trouble raising sufficient funds to meet its operational costs due to a competitive fundraising environment. The organization sent a letter to lawmakers in November asking them to modify the terms of $10 million in state matching funds set aside for an endowment for the organization, giving it access to the money without raising the dollar-for-dollar match.

Henkes told the Wisconsin Examiner on Wednesday that conversations are taking place in the state Capitol as legislators look for a solution so that WisconsinEye can continue in its current form. 

“We’re not there yet. This is a process, and it’s going to take a little bit of time as it relates to when will we go back up,” Henkes said. “The conversations going on right now would be a long-term solution.” 

The organization has until June 30, 2026, to raise matching funds to access the $10 million endowment funding first set aside in the 2023-25 state budget.

WisconsinEye asked the state to provide about $1 million in funding without the matching requirement to cover its 2026 operational budget. 

Henkes said another potential solution would be for the state to remove the matching requirement and manage the money as an endowment on behalf of WisconsinEye. He said there would be a “significant amount of money that would generate earned income” to take care of the majority of the organization’s budget and complement the income WisconsinEye brings in from on-air sponsorships and small online giving.

“It’s early in the process, but the signals that we’re getting from the people who are the decision makers are very encouraging to us,” Henkes said. 

The Wisconsin Examiner reached out to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) for comment but did not hear back by Wednesday evening. 

LeMahieu has expressed skepticism about giving the organization state funding, telling the Associated Press that it’s “important to make sure the public can view what’s going on in state government” but that “looking at the way [WisconsinEye is] currently run, it seems like they’re really burning through money. It’s not the most effective use of taxpayer money, so we’re not going to give WisconsinEye a blank check to keep running it irresponsibly.” He also told the Wisconsin State Journal that it “may not be the most responsible way to provide this service to the public.”

Democratic Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview last month that she thinks WisconsinEye is “essential” and that lawmakers “should have structured their funding a little differently in the state budget, but we have an opportunity to do so now to make sure that they can provide that service.”

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) told the Examiner in an interview on Monday that WisconsinEye has been a “helpful tool” that has been “nice for people to be able to stay at home and be able to watch what we’re doing” and she is open to having conversations with her Democratic and Republican colleagues on a path forward. 

Henkes said the organization is still looking for funding from donors to help get its coverage up and running in the short term. 

“There are a couple of six-figure gift requests that are under consideration right now with prominent people in Wisconsin,” Henkes said, adding that those donations would put WisconsinEye in the position “to bridge the gap toward what the state intends to do and get us back on back on the air. We’re hopeful.”

“Our board has said, well, if we’ve got an agreement for the long-term, and we found some short-term funding, we’re back in business,” Henkes said.

Four Democratic lawmakers propose replacing WisconsinEye

A group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Rep. Brienne Brown (D-Whitewater), introduced their own proposal on Tuesday to replace WisconsinEye with a public affairs network run and operated by the state government. 

“Thanks to this shutdown, the public will not have online access to committee hearings and public meetings happening this week, which they have come to rely upon,” the lawmakers said in a co-sponsorship memo. “This failure underscores a fundamental need: Open government requires reliable and permanent public infrastructure, not a private entity that can be shut down due to difficulties raising funds or in an attempt to pressure legislators to provide funds. Public access should not be dependent on the generosity of donors.”

Under the proposal, the $10 million would be repurposed to start an Office of the Public Affairs Network that would be attached to the Department of Administration. The office would have a $2 million annual appropriation under the bill.

The network would need to provide live coverage of state government including all legislative floor sessions, all meetings of legislative committees, meetings of executive branch agencies, the state Supreme Court and other judicial proceedings, news conferences as well as related civic events.

According to the lawmakers’ memo, the office would need to operate in a “strictly nonpartisan manner” and “guarantee unrestricted public access without requirements such as online account registration, paywalls, or other burdens.”

A Public Affairs Network Board would also be created that would be responsible for appointing the director of the office and overseeing its activities. The board would include the governor, two public members appointed by the governor and four state lawmakers.

The bill also includes a provision to allow current employees of WisconsinEye who have demonstrated their talent and technical expertise to be rehired.

The DOA would also need to attempt to obtain the complete digital archives of WisconsinEye in order to permanently maintain them as part of the new network’s archive.

Henkes had a number of concerns about the proposal. 

“WisconsinEye, as an independent network, is in fact in the tradition of Wisconsin’s commitment to open, transparent government of the people, for the people, by the people,” Henkes said. “We just strongly believe that a state-run, government-controlled state Capitol network is not in the best interest of Wisconsin.”

Henkes said the proposal brings up questions about whether having a board that includes lawmakers and the governor could politicize things and “inject partisanship into decision making on programming and what committee gets covered and what committee doesn’t get covered.”

Henkes said he is also concerned about the expanded capacity that lawmakers proposed. He said that under its contract, WisconsinEye is required to cover floor sessions as well as a certain percentage of committee hearings, but not everything. 

“Truth be told, the Legislature in its wisdom in the current contract with WisconsinEye does not require us to cover every committee hearing because they know that some of those are of minimal interest to the public and would probably draw the attention of 10 viewers,” Henkes said, adding that he also thought the cost to expand that coverage would be “at least double” the $2 million lawmakers included annually.

Henkes added that for 18 years WisconsinEye has exceeded its contractual obligations and that includes covering over 14,000 hours of live video, which is also archived, as well as over 16,000 additional hours of interviews with hundreds of candidates for office, news conferences, rallies, debates and other coverage. 

“We bleed for this mission and we care greatly about civil dialogue in this state and inspiring informed voter participation, and it’s a model in terms of programming and coverage that’s exceptional,” Henkes said. “Its just that the funding model in the current philanthropic environment is not sustainable.”

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President Donald Trump addresses the nation in an address from the Diplomatic Room of the White House on Dec. 17, 2025. (Photo by Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — As Americans continue to face rising prices ahead of year-end holidays, President Donald Trump blamed inflation and health care costs on his predecessor during a prime-time speech Wednesday in which he also claimed to have fixed the issues.

Trump “inherited a mess” and has turned the United States into the “envy of the entire globe” by imposing an immigration crackdown, tariffs and tax breaks, he said. 

“Over the past 11 months, we have brought more positive change to Washington than any administration in American history. There’s never been anything like it, and I think most would agree I was elected in a landslide,” Trump said.

Standing before a backdrop of Christmas decorations, Trump also promised $1,776 checks would arrive for members of the United States military by Christmas.

And he continued to blame Democrats for health care costs that are projected to skyrocket next month when tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans expire.

Nearly a year into his second term, Trump remains fixated on blaming former President Joe Biden even as his own approval ratings sink, according to numerous recent polls.

A plaque below Biden’s photo in Trump’s newly installed “Presidential Walk of Fame” display reads “Sleepy Joe Biden,” according to reports from journalists present at the White House Wednesday.

“When I took office, inflation was the worst in 48 years, and some would say in the history of our country, which caused prices to be higher than ever before, making life unaffordable for millions and millions of Americans. This happened during a Democrat administration, and it’s when we first began hearing the word ‘affordability,’” Trump said.

Consumer price index data released Thursday for September through November show the overall cost of goods rose 2.7% over the past 12 months, after rising 3% for the 12 months recorded at the end of September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. When Trump took office in January 2025, it was 3% over the previous 12 months. The bureau did not analyze data for October 2025 because of the government shutdown.

In recent weeks, Trump has said “affordability” is a “hoax.”

Yet the bulk of Trump’s somewhat hastily scheduled address — the White House announced it Tuesday — focused on lowering costs for housing, electricity and health care.

Trump announced he will send a $1,776 “warrior dividend” to every U.S. servicemember. The amount is in honor of the year of the country’s  founding, Trump said. Checks are “already on the way,” he said.

That could add up to as much as $2.6 billion, according to a White House estimate Wednesday night that 1.45 million service members would receive the payment.

Health care costs

He also touted trumprx.gov, where he said Americans can find “unprecedented price reductions” on prescription drugs starting in January.

“These big price cuts will greatly reduce the cost of health care,” Trump said.

He boosted a Republican plan on Capitol Hill to fund individual health savings accounts, or HSAs, in annual amounts of $1,000 to $1,500 depending on age and poverty level. An HSA is not health insurance.

“I want the money to go directly to the people so you can buy your own health care. You’ll get much better health care at a much lower price,” Trump said.

Four House Republicans defected Wednesday to sign a Democrat-led petition to bypass Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and force a floor vote in January on extending health insurance premium subsidies for people who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

‘My favorite word’

Trump spent several minutes addressing the economy, stating that prices on groceries and fuel are coming down. Both claims are false, according to government data.

“I am bringing those high prices down and bringing them down fast,” Trump said.

The latest consumer price index for September showed gasoline prices rose 4.1% over the past 12 months, and “was the largest factor in the all items monthly increase,” increasing 1.5% over the previous month.

Food prices rose faster than overall inflation in recent months, according to the government’s latest data. Food prices in August were 3.2% higher than a year ago, according to the data.

Still, Trump claimed an economic turnaround that he credited to his international trade policy.

“Much of this success has been accomplished by tariffs — my favorite word ‘tariffs’ — which for many decades have been used successfully by other countries against us, but not anymore,” he said.

The U.S. ended fiscal year 2025 with a deficit reaching nearly $1.8 trillion, or roughly 6% of the domestic economy’s gross domestic product.

Trump unilaterally imposed a global 10% tariff on all foreign goods in April, plus higher tariffs on many major trading partners, including the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Vietnam. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on whether Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal.

The U.S. collected nearly $195 billion in customs duties in fiscal year 2025, up from $77 billion in fiscal 2024, according to the U.S. Treasury’s monthly statement.”

Americans have lost faith in Trump’s ability to handle the economy, according to an NPR/PBS News/Marist poll published Wednesday.

Trump received a 36% approval rating on his economic strategy, the lowest rating over the past six years that the survey has asked voters the question.

A Fox News poll released Nov. 19 found 76% of respondents saw the economy negatively. Of all voters polled, 41% approved and 58% disapproved of Trump’s performance. That’s down from the conservative news network’s poll of Biden’s approval ratings during the same point in his presidency, which the network says was 44%.

Mum on Venezuela

The president did not spend much time addressing his military campaign off the coast of Venezuela, despite declaring just 24 hours beforehand that the U.S. had formed a “blockade” in the Caribbean Sea.

Trump posted on his own social media platform Truth Social Tuesday night that Venezuela is “completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America.”

The campaign, which has become top of mind for many lawmakers on Capitol Hill, is about preventing drug smuggling to the U.S., Trump and Republican lawmakers have repeatedly said.

Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Trump administration to release unedited footage of a Sept. 2 strike that killed two shipwrecked individuals who were clinging to what was left of a boat after an initial strike.

Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, the largest immigrant detention center on the East Coast, was the site of a May demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration policies. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Wednesday blocked a policy from the Department of Homeland Security, finding that it violated an appropriations law that allows members of Congress to make unannounced oversight visits to federal facilities that detain immigrants.

Judge Jia Cobb rejected the Trump administration’s argument that the new policy doesn’t prevent members of Congress from entering a DHS facility that detains immigrants. 

“The notice requirement as implemented by ICE officials does just that: it stops visiting Members of Congress from entering a facility unless they have provided seven days of advance notice,” she wrote in her opinion.

The stay on the DHS policy from Cobb is temporary, while the case proceeds.

This year, DHS created the new policy to require lawmakers to give the agency seven days’ notice, plus approval from an agency official, before visiting a facility where immigrants are detained. 

In July, 12 members of Congress sued, arguing that DHS overreached its authority in creating the policy and that it violated a 2019 appropriations law, referred to as Section 527.

“The Court thus finds that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim that Section 527 funds are being used to implement a seven-day notice requirement for Members of Congress seeking to enter ICE detention facilities, and that the notice requirement is contrary to law and in excess of DHS’s statutory authority,” Cobb wrote.

As the Trump administration continues with its aggressive immigration crackdown, the number of immigrants held in detention has ballooned. One of the few tools Democrats have, as the minority party, is oversight of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities.  

The suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia charged that the Trump administration overreached its authority in creating the policy.

Those Democrats who sued include: Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, J. Luis Correa of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Jimmy Gomez of California, Raul Ruiz of California, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Norma Torres of California.

In a statement, lawmakers praised the decision. 

“It reinforces the rule of law and reminds the administration that oversight is not optional,” they said. “Real-time, on-the-ground visits to immigration detention facilities help prevent abuses and ensure transparency. Oversight is a core responsibility of Members of Congress—and a constitutional duty we do not take lightly.”

Democrats created the policy that allows members of Congress to show up unannounced at DHS facilities that detain immigrants, including ICE field offices, after the first Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the southern border in 2018.

At that time, Democrats were unable to conduct interviews with separated immigrant families and often denied entry into DHS facilities, so lawmakers included the provision in the fiscal year 2019 appropriations law.

The provision was later expanded to include all immigrants detained at DHS facilities, not just children, and allowed for unannounced visits by members and the inclusion of congressional staff to enter with their members during oversight visits.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on May 8, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans on a Judiciary Committee panel during a Wednesday hearing defended the Trump administration’s move to end temporary protections for immigrants who hail from countries deemed too dangerous to return. 

Republican Rep. Tom McClintock of California, the chair of the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee, slammed former President Joe Biden for “abusing” Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, and other humanitarian programs. 

The federal government grants TPS when a national’s home country is too dangerous to return to, such as after a major natural disaster, ongoing violence or political instability. The status allows immigrants to have legal status and work authorization for up to 18 months before needing to renew the status, which requires a background check. It is not a pathway to citizenship.  

Under the Biden administration, the program expanded to include 1.2 million immigrants. Republicans largely opposed that expansion, and have noted that groups that gain TPS status are rarely removed from the program.

“Along the way TPS became permanent protected status,” McClintock said.

Since being confirmed by the Senate earlier this year, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has moved to end legal status for 1 million TPS recipients hailing from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Syria and Venezuela. 

The top Democrat on the panel, Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, said the move to end TPS for those 9 countries “will lead to people’s death.”  

“When TPS is terminated, we are forcing people to return to real and imminent harm,” Jayapal said. “I’m sad to see us go down this path, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”

There are multiple lawsuits from immigration advocacy groups challenging the Trump administration’s termination of TPS.

Union leader says crackdown harms workers

Democrats on the panel said reducing TPS was part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.

Rep. Deborah Ross, Democrat of North Carolina, said construction sites in her area have been targets of immigration raids, even though workers on the sites have TPS.

She asked the witness tapped by Democrats, Jimmy Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, about the effects of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown at construction sites.

Williams said those TPS workers are leaving the industry and that immigration enforcement at construction sites can put workers in danger.

“You can’t work safely when you’re worried about being targeted for removal,” he said. “The truth is people just won’t show up to work.”

Williams defended TPS as one of the few legal forms that immigrants have in order to have work authorization. He said that TPS falls short because it doesn’t give a pathway to citizenship and creates a limbo for recipients. 

“I believe that this body’s inability to act over the course of the last 40 years on immigration reform is what has led us to this point,” Williams said of the current state of TPS.

Call to narrow program

One of the witnesses invited by Republicans, James Rogers, senior counsel of the America First Legal Foundation, argued that TPS is too broad, and that entire countries should not be designated. Instead, the designation should be limited to a specific location that is affected, he said. 

America First Legal Foundation is a litigation organization founded by Stephen Miller, a top White House adviser who is the main architect of the president’s immigration crackdown. 

Missouri GOP Rep. Bob Onder asked Rogers how much vetting is conducted for immigrants in the TPS program. 

Rogers said it was “impossible” to vet TPS recipients. 

However, in order to be approved for the status, a background check must be completed and with each renewal, the individual with TPS has to be revetted. 

Another witness tapped by Republicans, Larry Celaschi, a councilman for the Borough of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, said in 2022 his town experienced an increased population of TPS recipients from Haiti and that the sudden population change strained local resources. 

“Our borough absorbed an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 migrants in a very short period of time,” he said, adding that the population was previously 4,000. 

Vetting questioned

Over its four years, the Biden administration expanded TPS from roughly 400,000 recipients to over 1.2 million TPS people. Separately, the Biden administration used several humanitarian parole programs to grant temporary legal status for nearly 750,000 immigrants hailing from Afghanistan, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, Venezuela and Ukraine. 

Republicans have long criticized the Biden administration’s expanded use of not only TPS, but other humanitarian programs to handle one of the largest influxes of migrants at the southern border in decades. 

Last month’s shooting near the White House that left one National Guard member dead and another wounded inflamed the debate because the suspect is an Afghan national who had been granted asylum. Since the shooting, GOP officials have increasingly made the accusation that immigrants who came to the U.S. under the Biden administration had little to no screening. 

Republicans on the panel, including Arizona’s Andy Biggs, argued immigrants admitted to the country under Biden were not vetted and allowed into the U.S. illegally, despite being given legal status.

“It’s just B.S. to say ‘everybody’s fully vetted,’” Biggs said. “We don’t know.”

Members of the National Guard patrol near Union Station on Aug. 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court ruled Wednesday that National Guard troops can remain in the District of Columbia while the judges take up the case that began when the district sued the Trump administration for deploying roughly 2,000 troops to the nation’s capital.

Pointing to the district’s special status as a federal territory, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found President Donald Trump would likely succeed in his administration’s argument to keep federalized National Guard troops in Washington, D.C.

Wednesday’s ruling means the guard troops from the District of Columbia and nine states will continue patrolling Washington, D.C., through February, unless the appeals judges find a lower court order against the mobilization to be correct.

Guard members have been deployed to the district from South Carolina, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Ohio, Georgia, Alabama, and South Dakota. 

Judge Patricia Millett, appointed by former President Barack Obama, wrote the decision, in which Judges Gregory Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appointed during Trump’s first term, concurred.

“Because the District of Columbia is a federal district created by Congress, rather than a constitutionally sovereign entity like the fifty States, the Defendants appear on this early record likely to prevail on the merits of their argument that the President possesses a unique power within the District — the seat of the federal government — to mobilize the Guard,” Millet wrote.

Trump mobilized the District of Columbia National Guard and several state guards to the capital under Title 32 status, meaning their members can assist local law enforcement.

District court order 

Judge Jia Cobb, for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, found the administration’s deployment of more than 2,000 guard troops in the city illegal but stayed her Nov. 20 decision until Dec. 11 to give the administration time to appeal and remove the guard members from the district’s streets.

The Trump administration asked the federal appeals court to grant an emergency stay by Dec. 4, which the judges did.

U.S. senators who oversee armed services policy heard testimony from high-level Department of Defense officials on Dec. 11 regarding the Trump administration’s National Guard deployments to five U.S. cities, including Washington, D.C.

Guard member shooting

Wednesday’s decision comes three weeks after two West Virginia National Guard members were shot on Nov. 26 just blocks from the White House. U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries the following day, Thanksgiving. U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, underwent surgery for critical injuries and remains hospitalized.

Prosecutors charged the suspected shooter, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national who was living in Washington state, with first-degree murder, among other charges. 

On the day of the shooting, the Trump administration filed an emergency motion to stay Cobb’s order that found Trump’s guard deployment to the district was illegal.

Trump initially mobilized 800 National Guard troops to the nation’s capital in August after declaring a “crime emergency.” 

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan leaves the Milwaukee Federal Courthouse. Judge Dugan is on trial on charges that she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant, elude federal arrest while he was making an appearance in her courtroom on April 18. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley took the stand on the third day of the high profile trial of  Judge Hannah Dugan, who is accused of obstructing federal immigration agents and hiding the man they came to the Milwaukee County Courthouse to arrest. 

Ashley was asked about an email he wrote on April 4 to his fellow judges, following a string of courthouse arrests by immigration officers. The chief judge, like many of his colleagues, was disturbed by the arrests, and feared that they would disrupt the courthouse’s business and erode the public’s trust that the courthouse was a safe place. 

Ashley wrote that ICE arrests could likely be prohibited inside courtrooms but that “I’m not sure we have the authority to intervene with what happens in the public hallway.”

As the judges were discussing a plan for responding to the ICE presence at the courthouse, Ashley offered a training presentation — which Dugan was unable to attend  — that highlighted in part that immigration enforcement could happen in the public hallways, but not against certain groups of people such as victims of crimes. 

While questioning Ashley, prosecutors showed the jury an email Dugan sent in response to the training which said that “optimally” a policy guiding how court staff should respond to the presence of immigration officers would be desirable. Less than an hour later, Ashley attached a draft policy to an email, and sent it off to Dugan and other judges. Ashley testified that he wanted as much feedback on the policy as possible, including from the sheriff’s office, the district attorney and other “system partners.” He also reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to get their input, agreeing with prosecutors who said Ashley “wanted to get it right.” 

Although the policy had been drafted, it had not been officially instituted. The policy was non-binding on April 18 when agents arrived outside Dugan’s courtroom, and did not explicitly state that ICE could not make arrests in the public hallway, Ashley acknowledged on the stand. 

Part of the draft  policy advised court staff to contact their immediate supervisors about the presence of ICE, and said Ashley should be among those notified. Dugan’s defense attorneys argued in prior days of testimony that Dugan was following the draft policy when she went into the hallway outside her courtroom to confirm that the plain-clothes agents there had a non-judicial, administrative warrant and to tell them to go check in with the chief judge. The draft policy stated that all court staff were expected to comply with its guidance, and advised staff that administrative  warrants do not compel staff to comply with requests from ICE agents. 

Ashley testified that he was at home when the agents were sent to his office by Dugan. He recalled getting a call from Brian Barkow, chief deputy of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, advising him that ICE was in the building to arrest someone. After calling the deputy administrator, Ashley confirmed that agents were there. However, Ashley did not direct them to be brought to his office, the chief judge testified. Texts Ashley sent to Dugan telling her to call him went unanswered. She later replied that she had left the court to attend Good Friday church services. 

“I was concerned about what might’ve happened,” said Ashley, who then sent out another email notifying the judges about the ICE activity at the courthouse. He mentioned in the email that “all the agent’s actions were consistent with the draft policy.” 

Judges, courthouse staff upset by ICE presence

Prosecutors have accused Dugan of having “strongly held views” about ICE arrests at the courthouse. Wednesday’s testimony demonstrated that judges and courthouse staff were struggling with the arrival of ICE at the courthouse and trying to formulate a response.

On April 6, in the wake of the first arrests, Ashley issued a press release stating that ICE operating around the courthouse “can deter individuals, particularly immigrants and marginalized communities, from attending court hearings, seeking legal assistance, or reporting crimes,” and that “this undermines the fundamental right to access the courts and seek legal remedies.” This could lead to a lack of trust in the judicial system which could foster “a reluctance to engage with law enforcement, legal representation, and the courts, ultimately hindering the administration of justice.” 

Ashley read the press release on the stand, his voice booming through the federal courtroom. It stated  that “allowing ICE agents to operate within courthouse complexes has the potential to significantly damage the integrity of the court system,” and that “it undermines the principles of justice, fairness, and equality before the law, and ultimately jeopardizes the rights of individuals seeking to navigate the legal process. Courts remain safe havens for all individuals, free from the threats of immigration enforcement.”

The chief judge confirmed on the stand that he continued to hold these beliefs. During cross examination, defense attorneys showed a version of the draft policy, highlighting that it was based on a policy created by San Francisco, California. Ashley testified to editing the draft policy by removing a sentence stating that ICE agents are allowed to arrest people in the public areas of a courthouse, which appeared in the original policy from California. 

Melissa Buss, a Milwaukee County assistant district attorney who was assigned to Dugan’s court, testified Wednesday that she saw Dugan motion to attorney Mercedes de la Rosa — who was representing Flores-Ruiz — to “come here” as she stood by the jury door leading to the non-public hallway. Buss said it was unusual that Dugan appeared to be “directing” de la Rosa, and that the judge seemed “frustrated” whereas de la Rosa seemed “frazzled or confused.” Buss said that she wasn’t aware that Dugan had called Flores-Ruiz’s case early, despite audio recordings showing that Dugan spoke into a microphone and called the man’s case loudly, and set a date for him to re-appear via Zoom. 

Clerk calls ICE agent ‘fascist’

Prosecutors also called Alan Freed Jr., a deputy clerk in Dugan’s court. Freed recalled hearing from public defenders that ICE was in the hallways, saying that he was “upset and a little outraged.” Freed walked back into the courtroom to tell Dugan that there were “ICE guys in the hallway,” which was captured on courtroom audio. Freed also said that Dugan told him not to call the chief judge. Later, when Freed checked back in the hall, he saw agents walking towards the chief judge’s office after being directed there by Dugan. As one of the agents walked past Freed testified that he called the agent a “fascist.” 

Freed was grilled by prosecutors about who said what in the audio recordings, but he testified that he couldn’t recall some of the events of April 18. He’d sat through thousands of cases, including many in Dugan’s court, and had never seen a similar chain of events play out. Freed said it is not unusual for cases to be called off the record as Flores-Ruiz’s was, echoing Buss who said judges can call cases at random and that this was not unusual as prosecutors argued. 

Hasty exit out a side door

De la Rosa also testified that she was concerned about the news that ICE was in the building when she arrived at the courthouse. She’d only been a public defender in Milwaukee since March 2025, not long before ICE began arresting people inside the building. When Flores-Ruiz arrived, she was nervous to get him in and out of the building as quickly as possible to avoid contact with ICE. She asked for the pretrial hearing to be called off the record, and described herself as visibly anxious and even “obnoxious.” 

After Dugan was finished calling her case, de la Rosa recalled Dugan motioning for her and Flores-Ruiz to come by the jury door. She’d had judges lead her and clients out of side doors before, but only in particular circumstances, such as to avoid emotional victims, she said. “I kind of remember being scared or freaked out,” she testified, adding that she was stressed about the agents, and was bouncing back and forth between two languages to translate what was happening to Flores-Ruiz. “My brain was spinning,” she said. When the jury door opened into the hallway, de la Rosa testified, Dugan took a couple of steps in and directed her and her client straight down the hall towards the door that led to the public hallway. 

De la Rosa testified that she was never directed to go to the staircase in that hall, which led to a different floor, and didn’t even know that it existed. Her case had been called before attorney Walter Piel, who arrived early to court with his client. “I was a little frustrated that I wasn’t called first,” Piel testified, but added that he didn’t think that was unusual. When de la Rosa got outside, after unknowingly riding the elevator down with a plain-clothes ICE agent, she heard someone call Flores-Ruiz’s name. Flores-Ruiz ran, and agents arrested him down the street after a brief foot pursuit. 

The young defense attorney recalled being grilled about the incident by the FBI multiple times in interviews which stretched four to six hours in total. De la Rosa testified Wednesday that when Dugan allowed her to use the non-public hallway, she interpreted it as a “mentoring moment” because she was a new attorney unsure how to handle this unique situation. 

Joan Butz, a court reporter in Dugan’s courtroom, testified that she  was irritated when she heard that ICE had returned. “That pisses me off,” she remembered telling one of the other staff. Butz was captured on audio talking with Dugan about “down the stairs,” in a  conversation that wasn’t cleanly recorded. Butz testified that she offered to show de la Rosa the exit near the jury box, saying she just wanted to be helpful. Butz admitted, however, that she believed the correct exit would have been the staircase, and that the wrong exit would have been into the hallway where the agents were waiting. 

Prosecutors rested their case Wednesday, allowing the court day to conclude almost two hours earlier than usual. On Thursday, defense attorneys are expected to call several more witnesses. 

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Medical Assistant Janet Casamichana gives a flu shot to a child in Coral Gables, Fla., in September. Measles cases nationwide rose to 1,958 this year as of Dec. 16. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The number of measles cases is continuing to grow, reaching 1,958 confirmed cases in 43 states through Dec. 16 and threatening to undo next year the United States’ status as a nation that has eradicated the disease, according to a report released Dec. 17 by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The increase of 46 cases in one week, including dozens more in South Carolina alone, raises concerns for holiday travelers.

Cases have now reached 803 in Texas, 182 in Arizona, 142 in South Carolina, 122 in Utah, and 100 in New Mexico this year.

West Texas has been the epicenter this year, but recently South Carolina has seen measles “spread quickly in unvaccinated households” in the Spartanburg County area, and 168 people were quarantined as of Dec. 16, according to the state health department.

The state urged employers to accommodate people with quarantine orders to help avoid more spread, warning that the disease is highly contagious for days before a person is aware of being sick.

Towns with low vaccination rates along the Arizona/Utah border also have seen recent outbreaks.

By July, national case numbers had already surpassed a 2019 outbreak, bringing this year’s caseload to the largest in 33 years. The last time there were more cases was 1992, when there were 2,126, according to the CDC report.

The continued outbreak, reflecting a worldwide increase in the disease but also a rise in vaccine hesitancy that has been encouraged at times by U.S. Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. threatens the hard-won measles eradication declared in 2000 for the United States.

The status has already been taken away from Canada, where the Pan American Health Organization found an outbreak lasting 12 months invalidated the “eradicated” status, and the United States faces an assessment next year. The CDC maintained in November that it was still possible to eliminate measles in the U.S. by ensuring every child has two doses of vaccine, but vaccination rates have been falling further away from the 95% minimum rate that limits spread.

Even as cases have risen this year, the CDC has communicated less about the highly contagious disease on social media, according to Johns Hopkins University research published this month.

The agency posted 10 times on social media this year between January and August, compared with an average of 46 times in the previous four years, according to the report, despite a rising number of cases.

Ruth Lynfield, Minnesota state epidemiologist, said vaccine hesitancy may not be the whole story of low vaccination rates, in a video interview published Dec. 16 by Contagion, an infectious disease news service. Minnesota has 26 measles cases this year, down from 70 last year.

“Overall, there is vaccine confidence. Ninety-two percent of our kids [nationally] are vaccinated against measles. However, in particular communities, that number can be quite low,” Lynfield said. “One of the reasons is not that people may be vaccine hesitant, but they have other priorities.”

Physicians can counteract some of the low rates by gaining trust and listening to concerns, she said, and also just by making things simpler with reminders and easy choices.

“One thing we can do is ensure that we can make it as simple and convenient as possible for parents and families to bring kids in to get vaccinated,” she said.

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