The Waupun Correctional Institution, the oldest prison in Wisconsin built in the 1850s, sits in the middle of a residential neighborhood (Photo | Wisconsin Examiner)

Under scrutiny over prison deaths and living conditions, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections has received recommendations that aim to improve life in adult prisons, including solitary confinement, suicide watch, mental health care and basic corrections practices. 

The study was conducted by Falcon Correctional and Community Services Inc. experts partnering with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC). The department said it is planning to contract with the consulting firm to create a framework to implement recommendations. 

“While the report affirms that DOC is moving in the right direction, it also shows that there is more work to be done,” Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy said in the department’s press release. 

In a statement, the advocacy group Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) said the report “confirms what directly impacted people and advocates have said for years: Wisconsin’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded, under-resourced and in desperate need of healing-centered reform.”

Many of the suggested changes will affect the entire correctional system, the agency said. Consultants and staff will work to “reimagine existing space, create new processes and training at five pilot sites.” 

In a letter dated July 9, 2024, Hoy told a state Assembly committee that the department planned on bringing on Falcon for an outside review. News of criminal charges against staff at Waupun Correctional Institution over prisoner deaths had broken just weeks before Hoy wrote the letter. The same day, the committee heard testimony about the toll of solitary confinement and other issues in the prison system. 

The department and Falcon signed a contract in November 2024, and the Examiner reported in January on details of the partnership obtained through public records requests. Criminal justice reform advocates expressed hope the report would be beneficial but have called for independent oversight of the Department of Corrections. Last week, the department published the 137-page final report, which lists strengths for the department to build on as well as recommendations for improvement.  

The report states that while all recommendations are made based on Falcon’s overall review of the adult prison system, “we understand that the majority of recommendations will require funding, often requiring budget approval.”

Susan Franzen of the prison reform advocacy group Ladies of SCI expressed concern about whether overcrowding and staffing shortages will affect DOC’s ability to effectively carry out recommendations. 

“Legislators need to help the DOC out by giving them a fighting chance to make these changes,” Franzen wrote in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner. 

The report states that the study involved working with DOC officials, gathering data, reviewing policies, statutes and prior studies and conducting virtual workshops with DOC experts and others, including formerly incarcerated people and advocates. 

It also included visits to 15 facilities, such as the Waupun and Green Bay prisons, and interviews with staff and incarcerated people.

Suicide watch

Preventing suicide is a pressing concern, the report states in a section that summarized information from mental health-related discussions with staff during mental health workshops and site visits.

One concern is that observation cells are typically in restrictive housing units; in addition, “individuals on observation status are not allowed therapeutic items, visits, phone calls, or recreation,” the report states.  

People who pose threats to themselves, or who pose threats to others because of mental illness, may be put on observation.

The report recommends housing people in observation in “more appropriate environments that support therapeutic care and patient safety.” 

Over the last 15 years, 59 people died by suicide in Wisconsin prisons, an average of four deaths per year. Suicide watch placements reportedly rose from 1,200 to 1,500 per year to about 2,500 in 2024. In June, the Examiner reported on Victor Garcia, who died due to an attempt to hang himself while he was on observation in a Wisconsin prison.

Psychological services staff decide what items a person can have access to while they’re on clinical observation. Department policy provides a list to use as a starting point, including items like soap, toilet paper and suicide-resistant clothing. 

The report described the list as “very limiting,” and the security mat or mattress was observed to be inadequate for most people on suicide precautions. Later on in the report, it suggests replacing small sleeping mats with suicide-resistant mattresses.

Solitary confinement

The Falcon report includes priorities and steps to take on “restrictive housing” in state prisons, where incarcerated people experience “very limited” out-of-cell programming and recreation time, such as:

• Giving people in restrictive housing at least two hours of recreation and/or programming each day, not including out-of-cell time for necessary activities, such as showers 
• Reviewing the status, programming and needs of people in restrictive housing every week instead of every 30 days 
• Improving cleanliness and removing all graffiti 
• Establishing units that are alternatives to restricted housing for people with serious mental illnesses

Incarcerated people in Wisconsin prisons can be put in restrictive housing as a punishment for a violation or when having the person live with the general population would create a serious threat. 

An average stay in disciplinary separation — a punishment for committing a violation — decreased from 39.7 days in January 2019 to 27.4 days in April 2025, the report notes. However, this varies by facility, and the latest average published online for Green Bay Correctional Institution is 48.7 days. 

The department has begun to address the number of people in restrictive housing and how long they spend there, the report states. However, the number of people placed in restrictive housing has not changed significantly over the last five years.

“High rates of substance use and mental illness among individuals placed in restrictive housing was noted, often contributing to a ‘revolving door’ for this population,” the report stated in the section about mental health insights from staff. 

Solitary confinement has potential effects of physical harm, health issues and negative effects on mental health, the report notes.

Solitary confinement is also associated with increased risk of violence towards oneself and suicide, and research shows that solitary confinement as a tool does not reduce institutional misconduct or violence or the risk of recidivism, the report states. 

There were 950 people in restrictive housing as of September, 863 of whom were placed there due to a rule violation, according to online Department of Corrections data. 

Under a policy that went into effect last May, a placement of over 120 days has to be approved by the assistant administrator for the division of adult institutions, the report noted. 

An overcrowded system

All medium and maximum-security facilities in Wisconsin except for Waupun Correctional Institution are over capacity, as of January, the report states. Facilities for men were at 130% of capacity, while women’s prisons were at 166% of capacity. People are living at security levels that don’t fit their classification — for example, a person sentenced to medium-security being held in maximum security, or a person sentenced to minimum-security being held in medium security. 

The state building commission took an initial step toward updating the aging and overcrowded prison system last month, when it agreed to create plans for a revamp. 

Inconsistency in the department 

Leaders and staff at the facility level of the agency felt a lack of autonomy in their day-to-day jobs, the report found. They believe there is “significant and often excessive and unnecessary scrutiny from outside entities.” 

But the study also found a problem with “a general lack of uniformity across facilities,” which is creating challenges relating to monitoring, oversight and accountability. It recommends “system-wide alignment” on areas including basic security practices, incident reporting and investigation processes.

The report recommends that the agency take an approach that involves both oversight and collaboration. The goal would be to carry out the strategy of DOC leadership with both efforts from leadership and “input and innovation” from frontline staff, stakeholders and incarcerated people. 

A central part of a section called “Back-to-Basics in Correctional Practices” recommends a three to five-day training for all staff about basic corrections practices, such as searches, use of force and out-of-cell time for people in restrictive housing. 

The department “has experienced a great deal of staffing changes, with a significant number of the current staff hired during or after the COVID19 pandemic,” the report found.

Strained mental health care

Mental health services were described as strained, according to the section of the report about mental health-related discussions with staff.

That section of the report suggests that an “unsustainable” number of people have been assigned to receive mental health care at least once every six months, and that this interferes with treatment for people who need more intensive care. 

Nearly half of all incarcerated people in adult prisons had been classified as needing mental health care as of May 20. It’s a much higher rate than other state correctional departments see, the report states. 

Department data shows the agency isn’t fully staffed in psychological services, with a vacancy rate of 19.7%. 

About nine in ten incarcerated women were on the mental health caseload. The report also noted that the population of maximum security facilities has a higher percentage of incarcerated people with mental health needs than medium or minimum security facilities.

Other recommendations in the report address medical practices, investigations and intelligence practices, data management and human resources and staffing.

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President Donald Trump delivers remarks during a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in the East Room at the White House on Feb. 24, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed into law late Wednesday a bill compelling the release of unclassified investigative files from the case against convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom he shared a well-documented friendship, though Trump denies any involvement in the financier’s crimes. 

Epstein, who surrounded himself with the rich and powerful, died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

Trump signed the bill the day after the House sent it to the Senate, which agreed by unanimous consent to accept the measure.

In a post on his own social media platform Truth Social, the president name-called several prominent figures in business and politics, including former President Bill Clinton.

“Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!” Trump wrote.

In the lengthy post, Trump credits himself and Republican leaders in Congress for the legislation, though the bipartisan bill was forced to the House floor via a discharge petition. 

After months of loud cries to release the files, even from his base, Trump changed his position Sunday night and directed Republicans to support the measure.

In July, Trump’s Department of Justice issued a memo that it would not publicly release any further records about the Epstein case.

The legislation overwhelmingly passed the House Tuesday in a 427-1 vote. GOP Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the lone no vote. 

The legislation compels the Justice Department to publicly disclose “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein or (co-conspirator Ghislaine) Maxwell.” 

They include records related to Epstein’s detention and death; flight logs from Epstein’s planes; names of those connected with Epstein’s alleged crimes; records of civil settlements, and sealed and unsealed immunity deals and plea bargains; records pertaining to entities with ties to Epstein’s trafficking or financial networks; and internal DOJ communications “concerning decisions to investigate or charge Epstein or his associates.” 

The bill carves out exceptions for records containing victims’ identities, images of death or physical abuse, and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation. 

The bill also notes that the “DOJ may not withhold or redact records on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

The bill’s passage and Trump’s signature came less than a week after lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released some 20,000 pages of emails from Epstein’s estate that repeatedly mentioned Trump’s name. 

In one email from Epstein to convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, the financier and sex offender claimed Trump “knew about the girls.”

Many other names turned up in the thousands of pages of correspondence, including that of Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett, who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a residence, and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

A House Republican effort to censure Plaskett narrowly failed in the House Tuesday night. Summers announced Wednesday that he would resign from prominent board and other positions.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., talks with reporters as he arrives at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  Graham is one of eight senators who could sue the government over an FBI subpoena of his cell phone call logs, under a law passed to reopen the government. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House approved legislation Wednesday that would revoke part of a law Congress approved just last week, which for the first time allows senators to sue the federal government, potentially for millions of dollars, if their data is subpoenaed without their knowledge. 

The 426-0 vote sent the bill to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., doesn’t appear inclined to put the measure on the floor for a vote, though he hasn’t entirely ruled it out. 

“You have an independent, co-equal branch of the government whose members were, through illegal means, having their phone records acquired, spied on if you will, through a weaponized Biden Justice Department,” Thune said. “That, to me, demands some accountability.”

Thune said he understands why several Republican senators were frustrated they didn’t know the provision was added to the funding package that ended the government shutdown.

“I take that as a legitimate criticism in terms of the process,” Thune said. “But I think, on the substance, I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization against a co-equal branch of the government.”

Thune declined to say if he thinks it’s appropriate for senators to sue for millions in taxpayer dollars for having their phone call records pulled as part of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

“I don’t think there’s anybody that was targeted for whom the money matters,” Thune said. “I think it’s more about the principle.”

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of eight senators who could benefit, said shortly after the House wrapped up debate he plans to sue Verizon as well as the Department of Justice under the new provision. 

“The subpoena that was issued, I think, was fatally flawed. The judicial order saying if you told me (about the subpoena) I would tamper with witnesses or tamper with evidence is legally offensive,” Graham said. “I’m not going to take this crap anymore. I am going into court, and we’ll see what happens.”

Dispute among Republicans

Senate Republicans’ decision to include the lawsuit provision in the stopgap spending law that ended the 43-day government shutdown represented a rare public break between GOP congressional leaders.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said last week just after the House passed the funding law he was “very angry” the lawsuit language was added to the package without his knowledge or sign off. 

“I think that was way out of line. I don’t think that was the smart thing to do. I don’t think that was the right thing to do,” Johnson said at the time. “And the House is going to reverse it. We’re going to repeal that. And I’m going to expect our colleagues in the Senate to do the same thing.”

The provision, which will remain in effect unless the Senate passes the new bill and Trump signs it, allows senators who had their cell phone or other data subpoenaed without their knowledge to sue the federal government for $500,000 “for each instance of a violation.” 

The language is retroactive until Jan. 1, 2022, and allows the eight senators who had their cell phone call logs subpoenaed as part of the FBI’s 2023 investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election to sue for millions of dollars. 

The FBI reportedly obtained data for cell phone use between Jan. 4 and Jan. 7, 2021, for Graham and Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty of Tennessee, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, as well as Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly. All are Republicans. 

The law allows judges to delay notification for 60 days if the information was pulled as part of a criminal investigation and if telling the senator would endanger someone’s safety or life, lead the lawmaker to flee prosecution, result in someone tampering with or destroying evidence, lead to witness intimidation, place the investigation in jeopardy, or unduly delay the trial. 

A judge could keep renewing that 60-day notification delay in criminal investigations if one or several of those elements continued to exist. 

Both parties object 

House debate on the two-page bill sponsored by Georgia GOP Rep. Austin Scott was broadly bipartisan, though Democrats and Republicans expressed frustration with the lawsuit language for different reasons. 

Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil, R-Wis., said the “troubling provision” in the spending law must be stricken.

“These provisions are not the right path to address the true concerns over the separation of powers,” Steil said. “Remember, Congress serves the American people, not the other way around.”

Steil said the FBI pulling cell phone call records for senators as part of its investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election, known as Operation Arctic Frost, was an abuse of power that should be addressed. But he said allowing senators to sue for millions of dollars in taxpayer money was the wrong way to do that. 

“I’m committed to holding those involved accountable. No one benefited by the failures of the Biden administration,” Steil said. “However, that does not mean that elected officials should be financially benefiting from those failures now.”

New York Rep. Joe Morelle, ranking Democrat on the committee, said those eight senators’ cell phone logs were pulled because FBI agents believed the lawmakers “had knowledge of or even participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Efforts that culminated in a violent attack on this very institution.”

Morelle said anyone with a basic understanding of criminal investigations knows that phone records “are among the most routine tools used” to gain a better understanding of events. 

“They do not reveal the content of any conversations. They simply show which numbers were called, which numbers called them and when those calls were made,” Morelle said.

“If these Republican senators genuinely believe that their civil liberties were violated or if they are interested in changing the law relating to subpoenas, then they are better positioned than literally anyone on planet Earth to hold hearings, draft legislation and debate proposed changes in the open,” Morelle added. “But that’s not what this is all about. This is about ensuring the law applies to every other American, just not to them.”

Scott said House Republicans voted for the spending law to end the government shutdown, not because they supported the lawsuit provision, which he called “the most self-centered, self-serving piece of language that I have ever seen in any piece of legislation.”

He also rebuked Sen. Graham for saying during interviews that he plans to sue the federal government. 

“We have one senator, one, who maintains that this provision is good and is currently saying that he is going to sue for tens of millions of dollars,” Scott said. “I believe my side did the right thing in voting to open up the government. There are a select few people that did the wrong thing in putting language in the bill that would make themselves individually wealthy.”

Bombs, cows, the Postal Service and lawsuits

Graham, who was an Air Force Judge Advocate General officer before entering politics, compared having his cell phone data pulled as part of the investigation to a case he handled earlier in his career after the Air Force “dropped a bomb on a guy’s barn and killed his cow. And he was able to make a claim.”

Graham also compared it to someone suing the government after being hit by a U.S. Postal Service truck, when asked by a reporter what he plans to do with the millions of dollars he will likely receive if he were to win the case. 

“You do whatever you want to do with the money if you’ve been wronged,” Graham said.  

In addition to filing a lawsuit, Graham hopes to broaden the language so that organizations and private individuals can file suit against the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act if they feel they’ve been wronged similarly. 

“I will insist on a vote in the United States Senate to expand the ability of people to make claims that may have been harmed,” Graham said, adding that would likely include the Republican Attorneys General Association, the Republican National Committee and Turning Point USA.

Graham rejected criticisms of the lawsuit provision from fellow GOP lawmakers, saying it doesn’t represent “self-dealing.”

“I understand politics, but I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about getting the right outcome,” Graham said. “I mean, if you don’t want me to sue the government, that’s up to you. I’m going to sue, whether you like it or not. I’m not going to put up with this anymore, and people in my spot shouldn’t have to deal with this in the future.”

American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney Lee Gelernt holds a press conference outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after a March 21, 2025, hearing on deportation flights that occurred despite a court’s restraining order in place. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)  

WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said Wednesday he will proceed with his inquiry on whether there is sufficient evidence to charge officials in the Trump administration with contempt for violating his order to return deportation flights to the United States.

Following an appeals ruling last week, Boasberg has the ability to resume a contempt investigation against the Trump administration relating to his March 15 order, which required several deportation planes that contained hundreds of Venezuelan men removed under an obscure wartime law to return to the U.S. Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador, and 137 men were detained at the mega-prison known as CECOT.

“I certainly intend to find out what happened that day,” Boasberg said.

He ordered the Department of Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit against the government, to submit by Monday filings on how to proceed with the inquiry, such as potential witnesses and hearings as well as sworn declarations to the court. 

An attorney on behalf of the Department of Justice, Tiberius T. Davis said the Trump administration doesn’t believe Boasberg should move forward with the inquiry.

Boasberg cited several appellate judges who have ruled that he has the ability and jurisdiction to continue his fact-finding inquiry into the events of March 15.

“Justice requires me to move promptly,” he said.

Boasberg told Davis that he wants to get to the bottom of which official, or officials, gave the order to ignore his temporary restraining order to turn the planes back toward U.S. soil while they were in the air. 

Removals challenged

Additionally, Boasberg heard arguments from ACLU lead attorney Lee Gelernt on a request to require the Trump administration to give the 137 Venezuelan men the opportunity to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. 

The men removed under the law remained at CECOT for several months until they were returned to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange. 

Gelernt said that a majority of that group want the opportunity to challenge their removal under the wartime law, in the form of a habeas petition, which immigrants use to challenge their detention. He said the ACLU has been able to reach about one-third of the group members and they wish to pursue their claims either back in the U.S. or through a virtual hearing. 

“They are still very, very traumatized about what happened,” Gelernt said, adding that many fear being returned to CECOT if they come back to the U.S.

Remote hearings?

Davis argued that if the men want to continue with their habeas claim, then they would have to be detained in the U.S., rather than make the challenge virtually. 

“To fulfill a habeas, they have to be in our custody one way or another,” Davis said. 

He said they would likely be taken to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but said that was not definite. 

Gelernt said the federal government should provide a plan in order for the men to make their due process claim.  

“Some may want to know if there is a remote option, if they found a sufficiently safe hiding place within Venezuela,” Gelernt said.

Boasberg agreed, and said the U.S. Supreme Court also agreed when it ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia as part of a due process case. 

Abrego Garcia was also taken to CECOT and detailed the physical and psychological torture he experienced there. 

The return of the sandhill crane to Wisconsin is a conservation success, but now the state needs to manage the population and the crop damage the birds can cause. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature are trying once again to establish a sandhill crane hunting season in the state and once again the issue has caused a heated debate. 

At a public hearing on a bill to establish a crane hunt Wednesday morning, Democrats and conservation groups complained that the proposal was a solution in search of a problem while hunters repeatedly insisted the only way to manage the crane population is through a hunt. 

The bill is the product of a Joint Legislative Council study committee convened last year — which spent months trying to find a compromise solution that would satisfy farmers concerned about the more than $1.5 million in crop damage the birds cause each year, hunting groups dead set on establishing a hunt and bird conservationists worried a hunt could damage a population that the state spent decades working to reestablish. 

Sandhill cranes were once gone from the Wisconsin environment, but years of careful work have reestablished the birds. However, many of the wetland habitats that originally served as the bird’s nesting sites have been replaced with farmland and the birds like to eat the corn seeds out of those fields. 

The compromise proposal barely eked through the study committee — which was divided along similar lines as Wednesday’s hearing. 

In the version of the bill under consideration now, a number of proposals meant to help farmers with the crop damage problem have been stripped out, including a program that would subsidize part of the cost for pre-treating corn seeds with a chemical that makes them unappetizing to the birds. 

Dave Considine, a retired state representative whose former district includes the Baraboo-based International Crane Foundation, said at the hearing it was a “travesty” that aid for farmers has been left out of the bill. 

“I thought we had a really decent compromise [in the study committee]. Now I come here to testify and we have given farmers no help, nothing,” Considine said. “Matter of fact, most of the science in the committee meeting, spoke of the fact that if anything [a hunt] may increase damage.”

Plus, a number of anti-hunt advocates questioned how holding a hunt in the fall is meant to deter crop damage, which largely happens in the spring before the seeds have sprouted. 

A number of pro-hunt speakers at the hearing pointed to Alabama, Kentucky and Tennessee, as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec, which hold or are preparing to start sandhill crane hunting seasons. 

The difference, conservationists argued, is that the sandhill cranes that migrate through the eastern flyway (the region of North America of which Wisconsin is a part), use Wisconsin as their annual nesting ground. 

“Cranes are long-lived, and slow to breed one or two young annually,” said Ann Lacy, director of North American eastern flyway programs at the International Crane Foundation. “They do not have the same biology as ducks or geese; therefore, they cannot be managed similarly. They have unique biological considerations, especially in Wisconsin. What happens to these birds in Wisconsin has an effect on the Eastern Population as a whole.”

Despite all those concerns, hunting advocates refused to budge, even as several experts testified explaining the scientific reasons why a hunt won’t help the crop damage problem. For example, sandhill cranes mate for life and are extremely territorial but most of the damage in the state every year comes from single birds moving in larger flocks. If one or both members of a mated pair are killed in a hunt, that only opens up the pair’s territory to be taken over by an unruly group of unmated birds. 

“[We’ve] heard several times that hunting is not a tool that will help us against agricultural damage,” Todd Schaller, a member of the Wisconsin Waterfowl Association board said in response to the expert testimony. “I’m going to say, in my pragmatic thinking, that’s false.”

In 2021, Republicans in the Legislature proposed a similar bill to start a crane hunt. When announcing that bill, conservative rock musician Ted Nugent appeared at a press conference in which he called the birds “ribeyes in the sky.” On Wednesday, Tim Andryk of Wisconsin Ducks Unlimited argued people would be less squeamish about having a crane hunt in Wisconsin if they tasted the meat. 

“They’re just amazing when it comes to eating them,” Andryk said. “They’re a delicate, dark red meat … they’re such good eating that people that are opposed to hunting them, once they’ve eaten one, I don’t think they would be opposed to hunting.”

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Traders work as the market opens on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Nov. 18, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — At least 25 bills have been introduced this Congress to further limit lawmakers and their family members from trading individual stocks, and representatives across the aisle renewed pressure Wednesday on U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson to take up the issue.

Their contention is members of Congress hold a serious advantage over everyday Americans when buying and selling stocks because of their access to information on Capitol Hill.

The House Committee on Administration convened Wednesday morning to hear how existing guardrails laid out in the 2012 STOCK Act fall short and consider the options to revamp it.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, shortened to the STOCK Act, codified that members of Congress, congressional employees and other federal officials are not exempt from federal insider trading laws. 

The law also required that lawmakers and certain congressional staffers must disclose stock transactions that amount to over $1,000 within 45 days.

The law built upon the late 1970s-era Ethics in Government Act that established financial disclosure requirements for officials in all three branches of government.

“While rules already govern how public officials trade stocks, stronger restrictions may be necessary to restore trust and ensure officials are not profiting from their positions,” said Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis.

Ranking member Joe Morelle, D-N.Y., said that he “unequivocally” supports a ban on members of Congress trading individual stocks and “that ban should extend to the co-equal branches of government as well.”

Law seen as ineffective

Policy experts before the committee poked holes in the protective measures already on the books.

“Despite allegations of improper conduct, no member of Congress has ever been prosecuted under the (STOCK) Act, nor do any public records exist indicating that officials have ever paid statutory fines for STOCK Act disclosure errors,” said James Copland, senior fellow and director of legal policy at the conservative Manhattan Institute. 

Trust in lawmakers and government officials to self-police is eroding, argued the experts and several committee members. 

Roughly 86% of the public across party lines wants to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks, according to a 2023 survey from the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Dan Savickas, vice president of policy and government affairs for the advocacy group Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said data collected by stock activity trackers and journalists reveals Congress’ sticky entanglement with the market. 

According to a January 2024 report from Unusual Whales, a platform that monitors lawmakers’ stock transactions, dozens of members who traded in 2023 outperformed the S&P 500 Index. 

A New York Times investigation published in 2022 found 3,700 stock transactions by members of Congress from both parties from 2019 to 2021 “posed potential conflicts between their public responsibilities and private finances.” 

Savickas said a number of issues exist in the law’s current form, not least of which is that the STOCK Act “does not prevent conflicted trading by members of Congress, but merely requires them to report when and if they do so.”

Plus, many report them late without consequence, he added. Additionally, a violation is only subject to a $200 penalty and enforcement is left up to the executive branch, leaving it vulnerable to subjectivity and politics, Savickas said.

Some members of the committee questioned how lawmakers would be taxed should they be forced to divest, and how to navigate specific family investments. That included Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., whose family owns 20% of a community swimming pool he and his family have long used.

“How do we make sure that we’re not eliminating me or making me sell something that I feel strongly about? This has been part of my childhood, part of all my kids’ childhoods,” Griffith said, adding that his son coached the local swim team to the championships last year.

“How do we protect that while curing the ills of people who are trying to do bad things?”

‘As crooked as a dog’s leg’

During a press conference ahead of the hearing, Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said “this place is as crooked as a dog’s leg, and it needs to stop.”

Burchett joined Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., and Seth Magaziner, D-R.I., in urging Johnson to bring to the floor the Restore Trust in Congress Act, a bill joining together several members’ proposals from this year.

The bill would prohibit Congress members, their spouses, and any dependent children and trustees from owning, buying or selling securities, commodities, futures and certain other assets. If enacted, a lawmaker and their family members would have 180 days to divest. Those newly elected would have a 90-day timeline to do so. The ban would not apply to diversified funds.

“Everybody standing here along with a number of others have been working on this issue for some time,” Magaziner told reporters. 

“We all worked together over the course of the summer to come up with a single, unified bill. So we have one bill, one strategy, and now it is on leadership to get this done and give us a vote,” he continued.

Other leaders on the issue who’ve signed onto the joint effort include Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Chip Roy, R-Texas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Joe Neguse, D-Colo. Nearly 80 others signed as cosponsors in addition to the 16 original names.

Fitzpatrick said lawmakers “have to get this done, we will get this done this Congress.”

“Mark my words, this bill, or a bill, will come to the floor, hopefully through an open amendment process where we can make this better,” Fitzpatrick told reporters.

“If we are all willing to accept the premise, and I hope everyone is, that members of Congress unequivocally have access to inside information — we do — if you accept that premise then we have to do something on the stock trading front,” he continued.

Johnson timeline for action

When asked by States Newsroom if Johnson has a timeline for bringing any of the proposals to the floor, a spokesperson responded in an email, “We’ll defer to House Admin (committee) for the time being whether they plan to markup a bill etc.”

Johnson told Punchbowl News in September that a stock trading ban bill is “a tough issue.”

In May, Johnson said he worried whether a ban would affect who could serve in Congress because salaries haven’t risen in several years.

“But on balance, my view is we probably should do that because I think it’s been abused in the past and I think, sadly, a few bad actors discolor it for everyone,” he said.

Masked federal immigration officers talk while they patrol at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York City on Oct. 16, 2025. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) 

WASHINGTON — Federal immigration officers are making unlawful arrests in the District of Columbia because they are relying on ethnicity to identify targets, immigration advocates argued in federal court Wednesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are allowed to make warrantless arrests if an officer has probable cause or reason to believe a person is in the United States without legal authorization and can escape before a warrant is obtained. But the immigration advocates challenging ICE’s methods say the officers are using ethnicity-based criteria that have led to wrongful arrests.

“People are living in fear that they will be arrested unlawfully or subject to detention,” Ama Frimpong, the legal director of immigration advocacy group CASA and lead counsel in the case, said.

CASA is seeking class certification for people affected by the policy.

U.S. Justice Department attorney John Bardo said the Trump administration was against class certification because it would cause “micromanaging” by the courts for federal immigration officials and he argued that the plaintiffs in the class have different immigration statuses.

“You don’t even have commonality among the four plaintiffs,” Bardo said.

U.S. District Senior Judge Beryl A. Howell said she would make a decision on class certification and whether to narrow a preliminary injunction soon. 

Quota challenged

The suit stems from President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration in the district that flooded the 68-square-mile capital with federal law enforcement and National Guard troops. As a result, there has been an uptick in aggressive immigration enforcement.

Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said officers should arrest 3,000 people per day on suspicion of being in the country without legal authorization. 

Bardo confirmed that policy in court Wednesday, but said the figure was a goal. 

Questioned by Howell, he said the quota was not leading to unlawful arrests and that officers were properly trained. 

Profiling policy

A policy that allows officers to target people based on factors like ethnicity and accent has also swept up U.S. citizens and legal residents. 

Groups challenged the policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court eventually heard it. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a 6-3 decision temporarily allowing profiling based on ethnicity that citizens face few problems in having their immigration status verified if federal agents apprehend them.

The four individual plaintiffs in the case in Howell’s court are immigrants who have some form of legal status such as a pending asylum case or temporary protections but were arrested by federal officers. They argue they were targeted because of their ethnicity and fear they will continue to be targeted because they are Latino. They have moved for class certification.

One plaintiff, B.S.R., said in his declaration he was arrested twice by officers in the district, despite having a pending asylum claim.

Another plaintiff, N.S., said in his declaration that was leaving a Home Depot after buying supplies and was arrested by officers, even after he showed his documentation showing he had Temporary Protected Status for Venezuela. He was transferred to several ICE facilities across the country and detained for 28 days before he was released and able to return to his family in the district.

A third, R.S.M., has a pending application for a visa category for victims of a crime who are helpful to law enforcement in cases. 

In her declaration, R.S.M. said that during her arrest, officers scanned her husband’s face, and found he was not the person they were looking for. 

“For a moment, I was relieved and thought they would not arrest us, but one officer said it did not matter that my husband didn’t match the person they were looking for, and the officer decided to arrest us anyway,” she said, adding that only one officer out of the seven who arrested them was in clothing that identified them as law enforcement.

R.S.M. said she was released and given an ankle monitor, but her husband is still detained.

‘Like being kidnapped’

In a declaration submitted to the court, the lead plaintiff, José Eliseo Escobar Molina, detailed how he was detained by federal immigration officials. 

Escobar Molina came to the U.S. in 1998 and obtained Temporary Protected Status in 2001. The status is granted when the Department of Homeland Security deems a national’s home country too dangerous to return to due to violence, natural disaster or other unstable environments.

He lives in the district neighborhood of Mount Pleasant, which has a large Salvadoran immigrant population, with his significant other and their two sons, both U.S. citizens. Escobar Molina, who works in construction as a scaffolder, said he was getting in his truck to head to work.

“Officers dressed in plainclothes got out of the vehicles,” he said in his declaration. “First, two of them grabbed me by the arms and immediately handcuffed me, and then the two officers from the other Suburban came over and grabbed me by the legs.”

Escobar Molina said the officers didn’t identify themselves and he tried to inform them of his legal documentation, which he said was in his wallet.

“I felt like I was being kidnapped,” he said. “Once in the car, I told them again that I had papers. The driver of the car, who was one of the officers that handcuffed me, told me, ‘Shut up b–-h! You’re illegal.’ After he yelled at me, I stayed silent. I did not try to resist arrest or to flee.”

Escobar Molina said he was asked no questions from any law enforcement officer before being transferred to a facility in Chantilly, Virginia. He said that during his 23-hour detention, all he was given was “one small bean burrito, something sweet, and a glass of water.” 

Officer mistake

Escobar Molina said while at Chantilly, Virginia, one of the officers at Homeland Security said his TPS “doesn’t count as being legal here,” and he was then transferred to Richmond, Virginia. 

TPS for El Salvador is still valid, and DHS extended the status earlier this year. 

Escobar Molina said once he was at Richmond, an ICE supervisor realized the mistake and said he was free to leave.  

“He said to me, ‘Sorry you had to live through this. These are new officers. They do not know what they are doing,’” Escobar Molina said, recounting his interaction with the ICE supervisor. “He gave me a copy of my TPS approval notice and told me to carry it with me so I could show it if officers stopped me again.” 

Escobar Molina said when he was arrested in the summer, it was the first time he had been arrested since being in the U.S. for more than 20 years. 

“I fear the same for my sons because even though they are U.S. citizens, they are Hispanic just like me,” he said. “I told them to carry their U.S. passports with them at all times just to be safe.”

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators began debating how to reduce health care costs for Americans during a hearing Wednesday, where experts’ varied recommendations and comments from lawmakers previewed the rocky and potentially long path ahead. 

Republicans on the Finance Committee argued the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has led to a spike in health insurance costs for individuals  that shouldn’t be offset by tax credits any longer. 

Democrats urged their colleagues to extend the enhanced subsidies for at least another year to give Congress more time to address larger, more complex issues within the country’s health insurance and health care systems. 

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said the hearing marked “the first step in building the foundation for” health care reform.

“We need both short-term and long-term solutions,” Crapo said. “In the short term, we cannot simply throw good money after bad policy. If we keep advancing a system that drives up premiums, we will make this problem even harder to solve.”

“Instead, we should set the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices,” Crapo added. “Rather than accepting the current system of giving billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers, we should consider providing financial assistance directly to consumers through health savings accounts, which are now available on the Obamacare exchanges through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Such tax-advantaged accounts are used to save money to pay for medical expenses and generally are used in conjunction with a high-deductible insurance plan, but an HSA “is a trust/custodial account and is not health insurance,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The ACA, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, overhauled the U.S. health care system with the intent of reducing high rates of uninsured people and ending insurance industry practices such as exclusions based on pre-existing conditions and the sale of policies with high costs and skimpy coverage. The law also expanded Medicaid and, for individual coverage, introduced the health insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that now are at issue.

According to the health organization KFF, the number of uninsured Americans fell from about 14% to 16% in the years preceding passage of the law to a record low of 7.7% in 2023.

Pessimism about health care action

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the panel, rebuked Republicans for focusing on other policy areas throughout the year instead of making improvements to health care.

“Sitting on your hands has consequences,” he said. 

Wyden doesn’t see a way for Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits set to expire at the end of the year for people who get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace, despite Democrats pressing for that during the 43-day government shutdown that ended in mid-November. 

Wyden expressed support for working with Republican senators to address health insurance companies’ structure, though he said he is “skeptical” his GOP colleagues will actually approve legislation on that particular issue in the months ahead. 

“Now if they are serious about taking on the crooks that dominate big insurance, like UnitedHealthcare, I’m all in,” Wyden said. “In my view that starts with a laser focus on lower costs for consumers, going after fraud where it truly exists, and cracking down on middlemen.”

‘Very little that this Congress can do’

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president at the center-right American Action Forum and former chief economist at the Council for Economic Advisers during the President George W. Bush administration, told the committee the structure of the Affordable Care Act poses problems. 

“As a piece of health policy, economic policy and budget policy, the ACA has always been a troubling construct,” Holtz-Eakin said, later adding there is “very little that this Congress can do to change the outlook” for 2026. 

Holtz-Eakin testified that Congress is long “overdue for a real rethinking of health care policy at the federal level” that he believes should focus on two primary areas. 

The first is to “rationalize the insurance subsidies” and the second is to address what he referred to as “high-value care,” which he said should include Medicare, the health program that covers 69 million Americans over 65 and some people with disabilities. 

“Medicare is a great budgetary threat, and so I encourage the committee and the Congress as a whole to take a hard look at that and make some progress toward better health care outcomes and better budgetary outcomes,” Holtz-Eakin said.  

Jason Levitis, senior fellow of the Health Policy Division at the left-leaning Urban Institute and a Treasury employee who led the ACA implementation at the department during the Obama administration, urged lawmakers to address the “too complicated and segmented” health insurance marketplace. 

Levitis said the best short-term option for Congress would be to extend the enhanced tax credits for ACA enrollees during 2026, despite the time crunch. 

“At this point the only feasible option is a clean extension of the existing enhancements,” Levitis said. “The marketplaces have already built that option and have been preparing for months for the possibility of an extension.” 

Former Trump adviser says ACA ‘failed’

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former special assistant to President Donald Trump at the White House National Economic Council, said bluntly that the Affordable Care Act has “failed.”

“The law entrenched an inefficient insurance-dominated health sector with massive subsidies flowing straight from the Treasury to health companies,” Blase said. 

The subsidies for ACA marketplace plans, he said, were “ill-designed and inflationary,” urging lawmakers not to extend them for another year.  

“The enrollee share of the premium is capped regardless of the total premium. When enrollees pay only a small slice of the premium or no premium at all, insurers face almost no price discipline,” Blase said. “Insurers can raise premiums knowing the taxpayers will absorb almost all of the increase.”

Blase said he believes the ACA’s regulations on health insurance companies are one of the reasons costs have spiked. 

“For example, under the medical loss ratio, insurers must spend a minimum share of premium revenue on medical claims. In other words, to increase profits, insurers must increase premiums,” Blase said. “The ACA’s essential health benefits require plans to cover the same set of services regardless of what people want or need. These rules increase premiums and wasteful spending.”

The medical loss ratio was included in the ACA in response to insurers who spent “a substantial portion” of premiums on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead and marketing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

‘We all believe we need to reform’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters separately from the hearing the debate over how to restructure health insurance to bring down costs has highlighted the “differences of opinion” among GOP lawmakers. 

“We’ve got a lot of people who have strong views, but the one thing that unites us is we all believe we need to reform, and we’ve got to do something to drive health care costs down,” Thune said. 

GOP leaders, he added, are “looking for solutions that will lower health care premiums, not increase them. And what we see today is just constant inflationary impacts from some of these policies of the past.”

Trump, who would need to support any health care overhaul bill for it to move through Congress, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that he wants lawmakers to send money straight to Americans, without detail on how that would work. 

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump wrote. “THE PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO NEGOTIATE AND BUY THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, INSURANCE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great Healthcare in America!!! GET IT DONE, NOW. President DJT”

Senate Chambers in the Wisconsin State Capitol. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

During its last floor session of the year, the Wisconsin Senate passed bills Tuesday that would eliminate the annual $325 per pupil revenue increase for school districts, define abortion to not include treatment for ectopic pregnancies and other emergency medical conditions and block state and local dollars from being used on health care for people not legally in the country.

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said she is “dismayed” and “disgusted” that lawmakers were not taking up bills that focused on affordability. She said she is open to working across the aisle on the issue.

“Republicans do not care about affordability, and they have no plan about affordability either,” Hesselbein said. “There are no bills on this calendar that will lower prescription drug costs, increase access to health care, lower housing costs or make child care more affordable.”

Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) noted a few of the more than 60 bills lawmakers were scheduled to take up and questioned whether they addressed pressing matters. 

“Republicans, who determine the issues and bills we focus on, today are addressing things like exempting tobacco bars from the public smoking ban, delaying the implementation of commercial building code rules,” Keyeski said. “While these may be worthy issues to discuss, I would suggest that it does not meet the threshold of emergent need when families are facing dire economic circumstances. GOP legislators are essentially forcing us to sit idly by and watch Wisconsinites suffer.”

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) said at a press conference that Democratic lawmakers were just “filibustering” and rejected the claim that Republicans weren’t working to help with affordability in the state.

“We passed a budget which had the second largest tax cut in state history to get money back into people’s pockets for utility bills, for retirees on fixed incomes, for middle class tax cuts. We’re doing everything we can to try to keep things affordable, ending the 400-year veto so taxes don’t go up in the next budget process,” LeMahieu said. “We are very concerned. It seems like Democrats can make these statements, but yet they’re introducing bills that let local governments increase their levies to tax, raise property taxes, and everything else, so it seems a little disingenuous.”

Republicans advance bill to eliminate 400-year veto

The Senate voted to pass a bill that would reverse Gov. Tony Evers’ partial veto that extended school revenue limit increases for 400 years. 

Lawmakers during the 2023-25 state budget gave school districts a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years. When the bill reached Evers’ desk, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425, to lawmakers’ dismay. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in April that the partial veto was within Evers’ powers.

In response, lawmakers introduced SB 389 to eliminate the $325 per pupil school revenue limit increase beginning in the 2027-28 school year. It passed along party lines. 

“We’re very concerned with the ruling of the state Supreme Court, but what we want to do is to clarify that the original intent of the Legislature in the budget was to increase school funding for the next budget period,” Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), a coauthor of the bill, said. “He changed the bill in a way that no governor in the history of the state of Wisconsin has changed [a bill], and that’s very concerning for us because the Legislature is where the voice of a people is supposed to take place, and the governor is supposed to look at that and use his veto authority to determine where he stands on that, but he went far beyond what’s ever been done before.”

Democratic lawmakers defended the revenue limit increases, saying it is helping school districts that have struggled without inflationary increases in state funding.

“As fists clench over the 400-year veto, know this, it doesn’t even make up for inflation. What it does is, it provides a minimum increase for what people can expect,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said. “Unfortunately, with this vote, it is trying to go back and trying to actually make a horrible budget even worse by saying not only are we giving you zero dollars in general aid increase…, but more than that, we’re also going to bar the local school district from making up for that gap by being able to allow them to vote for an increased property tax.”

Larson said that the law could have been changed during the 2025-27 state budget process and that it is the state’s fault that property taxes are bearing the brunt of the increases.

“Everybody who voted for the budget, in essence, voted for the continuation of the $325 dollars per pupil increase to be passed on to local taxpayers to make up the difference,” Larson said. “If you had wanted to change it, there were two things that you could have done. One, you could have voted to have that ended and substituted with a different per-pupil increase. Second thing is, you could have had the state actually fund those increases using funds from the increasing general aid or using the vast surplus that we have, taking money from the agriculture manufacturing tax credit [or] anywhere else, and you could have actually funded our kids.”

Redefining abortion

The Senate also passed SB 553, which seeks to redefine abortion to exempt treatments for certain medical conditions including the removal of a dead embryo or fetus, an ectopic, anembryonic or molar pregnancy.

Bill coauthor Sen. Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) said during a press conference that he wanted to remove confusion from state statute, saying he is “pro-life” and hasn’t wanted to stop women from being able to receive the medical care that they need. 

“Women who need medical attention due to situations of stillbirths, miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies or other related issues, can and should receive the care that they need. That has always been the pro-life position,” Quinn said. “This bill before us today does not ban abortions. It does not restrict abortions, it simply clarifies our laws so that both women and medical providers can do what is necessary in those situations.”

Wisconsin has a web of abortion restrictions in place, including a 20-week ban, but confusion soared in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. An 1849 law interpreted as a near-total abortion ban led health care providers afraid of felony charges to deny care to women who faced miscarriage and life-threatening pregnancy complications.

Recently, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, the state’s largest abortion provider, stopped providing abortion care in part due to federal changes.

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the lawmakers were trying to distance themselves from “the horrors that we are seeing in states that have banned and restricted abortion.” The Assembly coauthor, Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) said in September that she introduced it in part because Republicans are getting “killed” on the abortion issue during elections, although she said she favors a total abortion ban.

“Women being turned away from hospital emergency rooms repeatedly, being left to bleed out in Walmart parking lots. In fact, women are dying because they are denied timely abortion care that could easily have saved their lives, and their children left orphaned,” Roys said. “That’s the reality of what it looks like when you ban and restrict access to abortion in this country.”

Recent polling done by Marquette Law School found that abortion policy has declined as a “most important” issue among voters across all partisan groups in 2025 as compared to 2022, although 50% of respondents still said they were “very concerned” and 23% said they were “somewhat concerned” about the issue. 

Another recent poll found that 78% of voters support protecting health care professionals from criminal charges related to providing abortion care and 72% of voters favor allowing advanced health care providers like nurse practitioners and midwives to provide abortion care.

Roys said she was also concerned that the bill could push physicians to do emergency C-sections rather than terminate pregnancies as a way of addressing health issues. 

“Abortion is a necessary medical procedure that sometimes pregnant people need to save their lives, to preserve their health, to preserve their future fertility, and nothing in this bill is going to change that,” Roys said. “This bill will instead push physicians to force women to have unnecessary C-sections or to induce delivery rather than providing them with abortion. A C-section is much more dangerous. It is much more invasive. It’s major abdominal surgery that takes weeks or months to recover from, and it also impairs a woman’s future ability to be pregnant to have the labor and delivery that she wishes.”

The bill will now go to the Assembly for consideration. 

Restricting health care for immigrants

The Senate concurred 21-12 in AB 308, which would prohibit state, county, village, long-term care district and federal funds from being used to subsidize, reimburse or provide compensation for any health care services for a person not lawfully in the United States. Sens. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) joined Republicans in favor. 

Bill coauthor Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) said the bill would ensure that Wisconsin doesn’t begin spending large amounts of money on people who aren’t legally in the country. He noted that other states, including Minnesota and California, have rescinded or paused providing coverage for people not legally in the U.S. 

“[Illinois] did an audit and found that they had spent nearly $900 million on health care benefits for illegal aliens, about a 200% increase, and then in Minnesota, the Legislature, by bipartisan vote, they voted to end the eligibility for illegal immigrants due to questions about their state’s financial well-being, and then, lastly, wonderful, California. Gov. [Gavin] Newsom recently froze enrollment of illegal immigrants into the state’s medical programs, citing California’s $12 billion budget deficit,” Wanggaard said at a press conference. “We’re looking at something that is really a no-brainer.”

Wisconsin already doesn’t allow immigrants without legal authorization to apply for the state’s Medicaid program, BadgerCare.

There are two programs available to those without legal status outlined on the Department of Health Services website: Medicaid Emergency Services, which provides short-term medical coverage for people who have a medical emergency and aren’t eligible for BadgerCare Plus or Wisconsin Medicaid, and BadgerCare Plus Prenatal Plan, which provides health care coverage for pregnant mothers who are not eligible for BadgerCare Plus due to immigration status or being in prison or jail.

Democratic lawmakers accused Republicans of seeking to make a political point and neglecting to address health care costs and accessibility.

“We are not in an affordability crisis because of less than 1% of BadgerCare funds that are used to save lives,” Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) said. “This is cruel, it is a mean-spirited bill that is attempting to score cheap political points off of a group that’s already marginalized enough.” 

Advocates have warned that the bill could have a “chilling effect,” discouraging people from seeking care when they need it.

“Why is this sort of thing even coming up for discussion? Are we that heartless? Have we really lost our vision for this country?” Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) asked. “These are all messaging to somebody’s base. Terrible people who are coming here to work in our factories, in our fields without the proper papers need to be punished… How heartless are we to make political points? Go ahead and make your god dang political points.”

The Assembly passed the bill in September, so it will now go to Evers for consideration. 

Other bills passed by the Senate Tuesday include:  

• AB 165, which would ban local governments from using tax money to create guaranteed income programs without a work or training requirement. The Assembly passed the bill along party lines in April and the Senate concurred in it 18-15 so it will now go to Evers for consideration. 
• AB 265, which would require judges to sentence people convicted of human trafficking to at least 10 years in prison, or at least 15 years for trafficking a child, was concurred in in an 18-15 party line vote. Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns about young victims of sex trafficking potentially facing mandatory minimums if they are forced to participate in trafficking, while Republicans brushed away those concerns. 
• SB 498 passed 17-16 with Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) joining Democrats against it. The bill would place specific freedom of speech requirements into state statute, including barring campuses from restricting speakers on campus, and implement new penalties, including a tuition freeze, if a campus violates any parts of the bill.
• SB 394 would make it a Class I felony to damage or graffiti structures, plaques, statues, paintings or other monuments on public property or that is maintained by the state or any county or municipality. It passed 18-15 along party lines.
• SB 11, which would require school districts to provide an opportunity for certain federally chartered youth membership organizations, including the Girl Scouts, to give students information about their organizations. It passed by a voice vote. The Assembly is scheduled to vote on the bill on Wednesday.
• SB 16, which would make the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association subject to open records and open meeting laws, passed 22-11.

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In an ever-changing world, it’s nice to know that some things stay the same – my annual health insurance premium increase just came through for the 20th year in a row! For 2026, my company’s small-group policy will rise roughly 10%. And believe it or not, in the world of American health care, that’s considered a modest increase.

For my own family — myself, my wife, and our four kids — our health insurance plan costs about $1,800 per month with a $12,000 annual deductible. That is about $34,000 per year. 

If your household earns around $110,000 a year, you’re actually doing extremely well: that puts you in the top 15% of earners in states like Wisconsin.

But even at that income, a $34,000 annual healthcare bill eats up 40% of your post-tax income.

Let’s put that in perspective:

• That $34,000 is almost six times what that same family pays in Medicare taxes — taxes that help cover the oldest, sickest people in the country.
• That $34,000 is more than my family spends on food, mortgage, property taxes, and utilities combined.
• And the gap between what we pay and what we use has become downright comical: I’m at Hy-Vee four times a week, but I haven’t been to a doctor in over three years.

But here’s the bigger problem: When premiums go up 7% per year — again, considered “moderate” — the magic of compound interest turns that into a doubling of price in just a decade.

At only 7% increases, by 2037, a family earning $110,000 will be paying a $45,000 annual premium for a small-group plan. Add a $15,000 deductible, and private insurance would consume 80% of their after-tax take-home pay.

No household, no matter how responsible or hard-working, can withstand that. 

We’ve been promised reform for nearly a decade. Donald Trump began talking about fixing healthcare back in 2016. By 2024, the country still had nothing more than “concepts of a plan.” And temporary patches — tweaked subsidies, tinkering with tax credits, or tossing out $2,000 checks — are not even in the neighborhood of a real solution. 

At the very least, Congress should make sure those price spikes don’t devastate families on Jan. 1, but the fact that those tax credits are needed speaks to out of control costs within the health care system. 

We are out of time for small fixes. The system doesn’t need polishing — it needs structural change. 

What we need is bold leadership and big ideas. And in my view, the fastest, most practical path forward is a public option — Medicare-for-all-who-want-it. Let individuals and small businesses buy into Medicare. If my family could get coverage for anything less than $34,000 a year, that’s an immediate savings! And we’re far from alone. That’s why I’m advocating with other small business owners, including those at the Main Street Alliance, to get it done. 

You can’t solve an economic problem with partisan politics. That’s why Rep. Derrick Van Orden must come to the table to negotiate on health care. He said he would protect rural health care earlier this year, then turned his back on folks on Western Wisconsin and voted for the ‘Big Ugly Law’. The system is broken and we need serious people to address health care in a serious way. The math has already made the case. Now we need you to have the courage to follow it. 

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Health insurance claim form. (krisanapong detraphiphat/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Two leading Democrats on a U.S. House panel called on the head of an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor responsible for protecting workers’ benefits to take action to address improper health insurance claim denials, in a Tuesday letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom.  

Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Mark DeSaulnier of California — the respective ranking members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce and its Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions — offered three recommendations to Daniel Aronowitz. He is the assistant secretary of the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, or EBSA. 

“Improper claim denials impose substantial health and financial hardships on individuals, leading to delays in necessary treatments, worsened health outcomes, and high out-of-pocket costs,” Scott and DeSaulnier wrote.

“In far too many tragic cases, denials lead to the unnecessary deaths of people who have earned benefits through their plan, but are nonetheless denied the care that could have saved their lives,” they added. 

Improvements called for in collecting data on denials

As head of EBSA, Aronowitz is responsible for administering, regulating and enforcing Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, which is intended to protect participants’ and their beneficiaries’ interests when it comes to benefit plans under their employers. 

DOL estimated roughly 136 million participants and beneficiaries were covered by approximately 2.6 million ERISA-covered group health plans in 2022.  

As part of their recommendations, Scott and DeSaulnier called on Aronowitz to “implement long-delayed transparency requirements to collect data on health claim denials by insurance companies and group health plans.”

The two suggested building upon Form 5500, ERISA’s annual reporting requirement, to “improve data collection from group health plans.” 

Staffing at agency, Trump budget cuts cited

Scott and DeSaulnier also urged Aronowitz to “commit to fully enforcing the law and to ensuring that EBSA is adequately staffed to fulfill its mission,” pointing to a decline in more than a fifth of the agency’s staff under President Donald Trump’s administration. 

Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget request for DOL also called for $181 million in funding for EBSA, a $10 million proposed cut from the prior fiscal year. 

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed its annual bill to fund DOL, including EBSA, back in July and maintained funding for the program in fiscal 2026 at $191 million. 

The corresponding panel in the House also approved its bill to fund DOL in September, aligning with the administration’s request of cutting funding for EBSA by $10 million in fiscal 2026. 

The Democrats also recommended Aronowitz take steps to “improve consumers’ ability to appeal wrongfully denied health benefits.” 

They encouraged the assistant secretary to consult the Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans and to “reverse” DOL’s current posture regarding the council. 

Scott and DeSaulnier noted that DOL took several steps to “undermine” the council, including “delaying public release of its report, purging documents such as testimonies from consumer advocates from the Department’s website, and, to date, failing to convene the Council for any of the four statutorily-mandated meetings.” 

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. 

Sky Roberts, left, brother of Virginia Giuffre, who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein, and his wife Amanda Roberts hold up a photo of Giuffre during a news conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 18, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This story contains mention of sexual abuse and suicide. If you or a loved one are in crisis, help is available 24 hours a day by dialing 988 or visiting 988hotline.org.

WASHINGTON — A bill is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk compelling the release of unclassified investigative files from the case against convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a friend to the rich and powerful who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday night did not object to a unanimous consent request from Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to accept and pass the legislation, as is, after the U.S. House overwhelmingly approved the measure earlier in the day.

The Senate did not receive the bill from the House before adjourning Tuesday night.

A senior administration official told States Newsroom the president will sign the bill “whenever it gets to the White House.”

The lawmakers in the lower chamber voted 427-1 to compel the Department of Justice to release materials related to the government’s investigation of the financier who harmed over 1,000 victims, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was the lone “no” vote.

Survivors and their supporters watched the vote from the chamber’s gallery seats. Among them was Sky Roberts, the brother of the late Virginia Giuffre, who sued Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and the British royal family’s Andrew Windsor, who recently was stripped of his title of prince. Giuffre died by suicide in April.

“I’m very happy with the outcome, but this is just the beginning, and we have a lot of work ahead of us, a lot more to do,” Haley Robson told States Newsroom in an interview after the vote. Robson is prominent among those who have shared their stories of abuse by Epstein.

The bill now goes to Trump, who said Monday he will sign it.

‘Courage and advocacy’ of survivors cited

Schumer, a New York Democrat, wrote on social media earlier the vote would “not have been possible without the courage and advocacy of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors. They made this vote possible. They risked their safety coming out of the darkness to share their stories and to tell the truth.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said earlier Tuesday he expected the bill to move through the Senate “fairly quickly” and likely without changes, according to reporting by CNN.

The legislation compels the Justice Department to publicly disclose “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in its possession that relate to Epstein or Maxwell.” They include records related to Epstein’s detention and death; flight logs from Epstein’s planes; names of those connected with Epstein’s alleged crimes; records of civil settlements, and sealed and unsealed immunity deals and plea bargains; records pertaining to entities with ties to Epstein’s trafficking or financial networks; and internal DOJ communications “concerning decisions to investigate or charge Epstein or his associates.” 

The bill carves out exceptions for records containing victims’ identities, images of death or physical abuse, and information that could jeopardize a federal investigation. 

The bill also notes that the “DOJ may not withhold or redact records on the basis of embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity.”

Trump, Johnson opposition

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson opposed the House effort to release the files until this week.

Johnson said Tuesday morning that he will vote for the measure that has been forced to the floor after Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., gathered enough signatures on a discharge petition to override leadership.

The Louisiana Republican told reporters at his regular House leadership press conference that the “forcing mechanism here prevents the very deliberate, professional, careful manner in which Congress is supposed to do this.”

“But having now forced the vote, none of us want to go on record and in any way be accused of not being for maximum transparency,” Johnson said.

The vote comes less than a week after lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released some 20,000 pages of emails from Epstein’s estate that repeatedly mentioned Trump’s name. 

In one email from Epstein to Maxwell, the financier and sex offender claimed Trump “knew about the girls.”

Trump denies any involvement with Epstein’s alleged crimes, and has said that he kicked Epstein out of his private Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, because he alleged the financier had poached young female staffers from the club. Epstein was convicted in Florida of soliciting minors for sex in 2008. 

During a press conference in the Oval Office Tuesday alongside the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Trump told reporters, “As far as the Epstein files, I have nothing to do with Jeffery Epstein. I threw him out of my club many years ago because I thought he was a sick pervert.”

Trump added, as he has repeatedly said before, that the files are a “Democratic hoax.”

Plaskett text messages

The thousands of documents released by Epstein’s estate revealed the sex offender’s correspondence with academics, journalists, lawmakers and at least one spiritual leader. 

Among the revelations were text messages between Epstein and U.S. Democratic Delegate Stacey Plaskett, who represents the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned a residence.

An effort by Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., is underway to formally reprimand Plaskett for texting with Epstein during a 2019 congressional hearing that featured testimony from Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. News of the text exchange was originally published by the Washington Post.

The official censure would remove Plaskett from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A vote was expected Tuesday night.

Plaskett defended herself on the House floor Tuesday afternoon, saying, “We all know that Jeffrey Epstein’s actions were absolutely reprehensible as a constituent, as an individual who gave donations to me. When I learned of the extent of his actions after his investigation, I gave that money to women’s organizations in my community.”

Stories of abuse 

Women who told stories of being abused by Epstein as teens rallied outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday morning, alongside Massie, Khanna and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., whom Trump attacked online this weekend, nicknaming her a “traitor.”

Robson told the crowd that as a Republican herself, the advocacy from Massie and Greene is “unbelievable to watch, and we are so grateful.”

“And to the president of the United States of America, who is not here today, I want to send a clear message to you: While I do understand that your position has changed on the Epstein files, and I’m grateful that you have pledged to sign this bill, I can’t help to be skeptical of what the agenda is,” Robson said.

In a Sunday night post on his own social media platform, Trump told Republicans to vote in favor of the bipartisan legislation Tuesday, which lawmakers have named the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

Greene, who also spoke at the press conference, said the administration’s refusal to release what are collectively referred to as the Epstein files “has ripped MAGA apart.”

“The only thing that will speak to the powerful, courageous women behind me is when action is actually taken to release these files, and the American people won’t tolerate any other b- – – -t,” Greene said.

GOP Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina and Lauren Boebert of Colorado were the other Republicans to join Massie, Greene and all Democrats to sign the petition.

Grijalva signature

In a second press conference outside the Capitol later Tuesday morning, the House’s newest Democratic member, Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva, spoke alongside sexual abuse prevention advocates. 

“The momentum behind this did not come from politicians. It came from survivors and the public who demanded answers. This is why the discharge petition crossed 218 signatures, despite Speaker Johnson doing everything in his power to prevent this from happening, including calling an early summer release, and delaying myself my swearing in for seven weeks,” Grijalva said.

Grijalva became the petition’s 218th signature on Wednesday, immediately after her swearing-in ceremony. 

Johnson refused to swear in Grijalva, who won her seat on Sept. 23, during the government shutdown despite precedent of other representatives swearing an oath while the House is out of session.

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., also spoke at the press conference, warning that Senate leadership should not “delay this any further.”

“They need to schedule a vote on this so this can get passed into law,” Kelly said.

Trump told NBC News Monday he would sign the legislation.

Roughly a dozen public protesters stood outside the police barricade surrounding the press conference, holding signs demanding the release of the Epstein files.

Robin Galbraith, 61, of Maryland, held a sign protesting Johnson’s refusal to allow an earlier floor vote to disclose the files.

“These survivors deserve justice. And you know, all women and girls deserve justice,” Galbraith told States Newsroom in an interview. “Like when you have the richest people in the world trafficking girls, I mean, as somebody who has daughters and sons, we all want to see that children are not victims like this anymore.”

FBI memo 

In July, the FBI issued a memo stating the department would not publicly release any further information on the Epstein case.

The sudden reversal, after Trump and his supporters campaigned on releasing the files, sparked upheaval among the president’s base and trained a magnifying glass on Trump’s well-documented friendship with Epstein.

Trump denies any wrongdoing.

The president sued The Wall Street Journal for reporting on a 50th birthday card Trump allegedly gave to Epstein. The card featured a cryptic message and a doodle of a naked woman with Trump’s apparent signature mimicking pubic hair. Trump denies that he created and signed the birthday doodle.

The Journal also reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi briefed the president in May that his name appeared in the Epstein case files. The context in which his name appeared is unclear. 

A series in the Miami Herald in 2018 by journalist Julie K. Brown drew wide attention to Epstein’s crimes and Trump’s appointment in 2017 of former Miami federal prosecutor Alex Acosta, who cut a deal in 2008 to end a federal investigation into Epstein, as the secretary of Labor.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration took major steps Tuesday in trying to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education, announcing six interagency agreements signed with other departments that will transfer several of its responsibilities to those agencies. 

The announcement was immediately met with intense backlash from Democratic members of Congress, who questioned its legality, and labor unions. 

The agreements — with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State — come as Trump has sought to take an axe to the 46-year-old department in his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

The move further fulfills a pledge Trump heavily campaigned on and later tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to carry out. 

“The announcement really follows the plan that President Trump has had since Day One, and that is returning education to the states — he fully believes, as do I, the best education is that that’s closest to the child and not run from a bureaucracy in Washington, D.C.,” McMahon told Fox News on Tuesday following the announcement. 

The secretary likened the initiative to a “test run” and said her department wants to see “if what we think to be true is that they will function much more in a streamlined fashion and much more efficiently if we relocate those programs into other agencies.” 

McMahon added that the agency would “move it,” “see how it works” and deliver the “outcomes” to Congress. 

She said her department hopes Congress would then vote to codify the permanent move of those programs to those agencies. 

But any effort would face a difficult path in the Senate, which requires at least 60 senators to advance most legislation. Republicans hold just 53 Senate seats.

The announcement also came as the U.S. Supreme Court in July allowed the Trump administration to temporarily proceed with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Education Department ordered earlier this year.

That plan — outlined in a March executive order Trump signed — called on McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of her own department. 

How Education agreements will work 

The Education Department clarified in fact sheets it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities and will continue its oversight of these programs” regarding all six interagency agreements.

A senior department official could not yet say how many Education Department employees would be transitioning to these other agencies, and noted that there will be “a bit of a lag” between the signing and when the agreements are fully executed. 

The official said the department is “still exploring the best plan” for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid.

The Department of Labor will take on a “growing role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, per a fact sheet. 

The Education Department said that “with proper oversight by ED, DOL will manage competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate ED’s programs with the suite of employment and training programs DOL already administers.”

In another agreement, the Labor Department will also take on a greater role in managing the Education Department’s higher education grant programs, such as TRIO and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP.

This also includes the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need program and the Strengthening Historically Black Graduate Institutions program, among others. 

The Interior Department will also take on a “growing role” in administering the Education Department’s Indian Education programs, per a fact sheet. 

Under an agreement with HHS, that agency will oversee the National Committee on Foreign Medical Education and Accreditation’s work. 

HHS will also “manage existing competitions, provide technical assistance, and integrate” the Education Department’s Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, the department said. 

That program, according to the Education Department, “supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education through the provision of campus-based child care services.” 

The Education Department’s agreement with the State Department will let that agency “oversee all foreign education programs,” per a fact sheet. 

‘Outright illegal effort’

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted the move as an “outright illegal effort to continue dismantling the Department of Education.” 

Murray said “it is students and families who will suffer the consequences as key programs that help students learn to read or that strengthen ties between schools and families are spun off to agencies with little to no relevant expertise and are gravely weakened — or even completely broken — in the process.” 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House Appropriations panel, said  “any attempt to unilaterally remove programs from the Department of Education will fundamentally alter their purpose,” in a Tuesday statement.

“This is not about efficiency — it is about creating so many needless bureaucratic hurdles that the Department of Education is rendered useless — a death by a thousand cuts. Imposing massive, chaotic, and abrupt changes on a whim will waste millions of dollars in duplicative administrative costs and impose wasteful burdens on the American education system,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, decried the move in a Tuesday statement and called on congressional Republicans to “work with Democrats to stop this assault.”

The Virginia Democrat said “the mass transfer of these programs is not only extremely inefficient and wasteful, but it will result in inconsistent enforcement of federal education policy.” 

He added that “instead of protecting the civil rights of students of color, students with disabilities, English as a Second Language (ESL) students, and low-income students, and closing achievement gaps, the Secretary of Education has spent her tenure dismantling ED.” 

Unions slam move

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “this latest ploy by the Trump Administration to dismantle the Congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is not only unlawful — it’s an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on the agency to protect their access to a quality education.” 

She added that “students, educators and families depend on the Department’s comprehensive support for schools, from early learning through graduate programs” and “that national mission is weakened when its core functions are scattered across other federal or state agencies that are not equipped or positioned to provide the same support and services as ED staff.” 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, said “spreading services across multiple departments will create more confusion, more mistakes and more barriers for people who are just trying to access the support they need.” 

Weingarten added that “it’s a deliberate diversion of funding streams that have helped generations of kids achieve their American dream” and “will undermine public schools as places where diverse voices come together and where pluralism, the bedrock of our democracy, is strengthened.”

“We are now watching the federal government shirk its responsibility to all kids. That is unacceptable,” she said, adding that “Congress must reclaim its authority over education during upcoming federal funding battles.” 

State Rep. Matt Morgan, R-Richmond, surveys a map of proposed new congressional districts in Texas, as Democratic lawmakers, who left the state to deny Republicans the opportunity to redraw the state's 38 congressional districts, began returning to the Texas Capitol in Austin on Aug. 20, 2025. REUTERS/Sergio Flores

Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday.

“The public perception of this case is that it’s about politics,” U.S. Judge Jeffrey Brown, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling. “To be sure, politics played a role in drawing the 2025 Map. But it was much more than just politics. Substantial evidence shows that Texas racially gerrymandered the 2025 Map.”

Brown ordered that the 2026 congressional election “shall proceed under the map that the Texas Legislature enacted in 2021.” The case will likely be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election.

The decision is a major blow for Republicans, in Texas and nationally, who pushed through this unusual mid-decade redistricting at the behest of President Donald Trump. They were hoping the new map would yield control of 30 of the state’s 38 congressional districts — up from the 25 they currently hold — and help protect the narrow GOP majority in the U.S. House.

The map cleared the GOP-controlled Legislature in August and was quickly signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott. Several advocacy groups sued over the new district lines, saying lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black and Hispanic Texans and drew racially gerrymandered maps. Over the course of a nine-day hearing in El Paso earlier this month, they aimed to convince the judges that it was in voters’ best interest to shelve the new map until a full trial could be held.

It was not immediately clear if the state still has a legal path to restoring the new map in time for 2026. Unlike most federal lawsuits, which are heard by a single district judge and then appealed to a circuit court, voting rights lawsuits are initially heard by two district judges and one circuit judge, and their ruling can only be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The decision comes 10 days into the monthlong period when candidates can sign up for the March primary. The filing deadline is Dec. 8.

This is just the opening gambit in what promises to be a yearslong legal battle over Texas’ congressional map. A lawsuit over the state’s 2021 redistricting — including its state legislative and education board seats — went to trial earlier this summer and remains pending before the same three-judge panel. The judges have indicated they may want to see how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a major voting rights case before issuing their full ruling on Texas’ maps.

But for Trump, and many of his Republican supporters in Texas, the short-term goal of having this map for the 2026 election was as important as the long game.

“I’m convinced that if Texas does not take this action, there is an extreme risk that [the] Republican majority will be lost,” Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said on the floor of the state Senate before the new map passed. “If it does, the next two years after the midterm, there will be nothing but inquisitions and impeachments and humiliation for our country.”

This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune, a States Newsroom partner

A woman is detained by federal agents after exiting a hearing in immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building on Sept. 3, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — More than 60 members of the congressional Democratic Women’s Caucus Tuesday sent a letter to the head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raising “extreme concerns” about the treatment of pregnant immigrants in detention. 

“The health and safety of pregnant women should not be threatened as a result of the administration choosing not to adhere to Federal regulations,” the 61 Democratic lawmakers wrote to ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons. “That is why we urge the administration to fully comply with the existing regulations and immediately correct the violations.”

They specifically cited concerns at ICE facilities in Lumpkin, Georgia; Basile, Louisiana; and Broadview, Illinois. 

“At the detention centers, it was reported that pregnant women were being shackled, locked in restraints, or placed in solitary confinement,” they wrote, citing American Civil Liberties Union reports. The women have also been deprived of proper prenatal, postpartum, lactation and miscarriage care, they said.

The letter argues that ICE’s own regulations do not require pregnant, postpartum or nursing immigrants to be detained and detainment should only occur if the release is “prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances exist.”

“By detaining vulnerable women in appalling conditions while pregnant, you are subjecting both the pregnant individual and the unborn child to significant risks and possible death,” according to the letter. “We urge the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE to follow its own rules and regulations on detention of pregnant women and demand their humane treatment.”

Lawmakers are asking for ICE to immediately release any detained immigrants who are pregnant. 

They are also pushing for ICE to answer several questions, including the number of pregnant immigrants in detention; the number of births or still births that took place in detention; the number of medical incidents experienced by pregnant detainees; and how many pregnant immigrants have been shackled by ICE. 

Lawmakers asked ICE for a response within 45 days. 

ICE officials did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

House lawmakers who signed the letter include:

• Robin Kelly of Illinois
• Delia Ramirez of Illinois
• Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California
• Sylvia Garcia of Texas
• Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico
• Joyce Beatty of Ohio
• Jasmine Crockett of Texas
• LaMonica McIver of New Jersey
• Emily Randall of Washington state
• Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida
• Deborah Ross of North Carolina
• Nikema Williams of Georgia
• Julie Johnson of Texas
• Pramila Jayapal of Washington state
• Norma Torres of California
• Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico
• Andrea Salinas of Oregon
• Lois Frankel of Florida
• Lucy McBath of Georgia
• Judy Chu of California
• Kelly Morrison of Minnesota
• Lateefah Simon of California
• Valerie P. Foushee of North Carolina
• Yvette D. Clarke of New York
• Gwen Moore of Wisconsin
• Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey
• Yassamin Ansari of Arizona
• Ro Khanna of California
• Becca Balint of Vermont
• Jahana Hayes of Connecticut
• Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia
• André Carson of Indiana
• Danny K. Davis of Illinois
• Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon
• Veronica Escobar of Texas
• Troy A. Carter of Louisiana
• Laura Friedman of California
• Summer L. Lee of Pennsylvania
• Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida
• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
• Mike Quigley of Illinois
• Val T. Hoyle of Oregon
• Janice D. Schakowsky of Illinois
• Glenn Ivey of Maryland
• Jennifer L. McClellan of Virginia
• Terri A. Sewell of Alabama
• Juan Vargas of California
• Jesús G. “Chuy” García of Illinois
• Julia Brownley of California
• Shri Thanedar of Michigan
• Angie Craig of Minnesota
• Nydia M. Velázquez of New York
• Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. of Georgia
• Frederica S. Wilson of Florida
• Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri
• Diana DeGette of Colorado
• Nanette Diaz Barragán of California
• Dina Titus of Nevada
• James P. McGovern of Massachusetts
• Zoe Lofgren of California
• Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania 

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez speaks during a Wisconsin Technology Council forum featuring Democratic and Republican hopefuls in the 2026 governor's race Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The longest ever federal government shutdown that ended last week revolved around a top issue for Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez as she campaigns to be Wisconsin’s next governor: health and health care.

A registered nurse by training and former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rodriguez has been deeply involved in health care policy, first in her single term as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly and then, since 2023, as the No. 2 official in the state’s executive branch.

And, she says, it motivated her to declare her intention to succeed Gov. Tony Evers after Evers decided to stand down from the 2026 election.

“One of the reasons why I wanted to run is to make sure that we have somebody in a leadership position that, No. 1, understands health care, and No. 2, really gets how unaffordable and broken it is,” Rodriguez told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview Monday.

She also sees a shift in the federal government away from established public health principles, forcing states to take the lead on setting public health standards. In the governor’s office, she said, her professional background would equip her to tackle  those issues.

As  a state representative, Rodriguez proposed a bill in the 2021-22 legislative term to accept the expansion of Medicaid — BadgerCare in Wisconsin — through the Affordable Care Act. Expansion would allow the state to enroll people with incomes between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty guidelines in Medicaid, with the federal government paying 90% of the additional cost.

When the ACA took effect, Gov. Scott Walker was in office and refused throughout his two terms as governor to accept the federal support and expand the program.

Evers defeated Walker in 2018 and promised to accept the federal expansion, but in the lame-duck session before he was sworn in, the Republican majority in the Legislature passed a bill that Walker signed, requiring the Legislature’s approval for expansion.

Since then, repeated attempts by Democrats to expand Medicaid, including the bill Rodriguez authored four years ago, have failed with Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Another form of Medicaid expansion — covering mothers for a year after they give birth — has the support of bipartisan majorities in the Senate and the Assembly, but Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has opposed bringing it to the floor. 

“We are one of two states that have not done that — us and Arkansas,” Rodriguez said. “And I think Arkansas may be working on it. So we may be the only one left at the end of the day.”

Rodriguez’s political career started with her Assembly race in 2020, flipping a Republican seat in the Milwaukee suburbs. She followed that with her race for lieutenant governor in 2022 and now her  campaign for the Democratic nomination to run for governor in 2026.

Throughout her political life, she said, she has been supported by 314 Action, a political organizing group seeking to elect more scientists and people in science-related professions, including health care.

During the recent federal government shutdown, Democrats in the U.S. Senate insisted that any resolution to fund the government also extend federal subsidies for health insurance under the ACA. The expiration of those subsidies at the end of this year will cause health insurance premiums to double, on average, participants in the ACA marketplace. 

Ultimately, a handful of Democratic senators voted with the Republicans to advance a GOP-authored spending bill that ended the shutdown without addressing the looming health insurance cost spike.

But the issue won’t go away, Rodriguez said.

“We’re looking at a doubling of premiums,” she said. “A 60-year-old couple are looking $1,500 to $2,000 more a month to be able to pay for their health insurance. That is absolutely unaffordable for most Wisconsinites.”

The problem extends beyond just people who buy their insurance through the federal marketplace, she warned.

“The larger amount of people who are uninsured in the state, the higher our health care costs are going to get, because they’re going to wait, they’re going to delay care, they’re going to be sicker when they get into care, and it’s going to cost hospital systems more in terms of uncompensated care,” Rodriguez said.

“If people will go uninsured, it’s going to raise costs,” she added. “And continuing to talk about it, continuing to let people know how that works, is something that I’m uniquely equipped to do as a nurse, as somebody who’s worked within the health care system. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m running for governor.”

Rodriguez said she has seen the benefits that the ACA has brought in the last decade and a half.

Before it was in place, “people delayed care,” she said. “They came in sicker to my emergency department and it cost a whole lot more dollars to be able to treat them and they were out of work because they had to be treated within a hospital system as opposed to going to their regular doctor and being able to get the care that they needed and be able to take care of their diabetes, to take care of their hypertension. Those are the kind of things that the Affordable Care Act has allowed us to do.”

She said she’s heard from small business owners who were able to start a business because they could get health insurance thanks to the ACA.

“Do we need to fix it? Absolutely. Do we need to get it better? Absolutely,” Rodriguez said. “But to get rid of it is going to have devastating effects on health care in Wisconsin.”

Rodriguez said she also brings the perspective of health and health care to other policy topics.

“The medicine we give you, the procedures that we do — it’s such a tiny fraction of how healthy we are,” she said.

Food, housing and “a good-paying job to put a roof over our heads and to pay for the food we eat and to pay for the medications we’re prescribed” are health issues, too, Rodriguez said. That’s why housing affordability, for example, is part of her platform, she said. 

“Tom Tiffany in the governor’s seat [is] not going to put a priority on lowering costs for Wisconsinites,” she said.

She also predicted that, if elected, Tiffany would sign laws restricting abortion in Wisconsin — “and that is going to be extraordinarily dangerous for people.”

Rodriguez views her science background as a strong selling point. “I think we want somebody who’s going to use data and science to make decisions,” she said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Donald Trump’s secretary of the federal Department of Health and Human Services, has been “using conspiracy theories as his underlying belief system, and that hurts real people,” Rodriguez said.

She cited surging measles cases in Wisconsin and nationally and the deaths of children in some states after the federal government weakened its support for vaccination.

“That hasn’t happened in a decade, and they’re continuing to feed this anti-science rhetoric that is going to harm our kids here in Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve been clear, I think RFK Jr. should resign. I don’t think he’s qualified for the job that he has and he’s actually a danger to public health across the country.”

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An aerial view shows a data center situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Va., last year. Local communities around the country are seeking more input on where and how data centers are built. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

When local activist Frank Arcoleo found out over the summer that a data center was coming to his neighborhood in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he said he was furious. There’d been no votes or public hearings.

The first phase of the data center project under development there only required administrative approval from a few city officials, based on the building permit application and state laws.

“So these data centers are going in, and guess what? The public gets nothing to say about it because the city’s already approved it,” Arcoleo said.

Now, Arcoleo is backing a zoning ordinance under consideration by the Lancaster City Council that aims to ensure residents have a say in the future. The ordinance would require data center projects to undergo a special exception hearing from the city’s zoning hearing board. It would also require data centers to adhere to the city’s noise ordinance and for developers to submit a report detailing the project’s planned electricity and water use for the city to review.

Similar efforts are underway across the country, as municipalities move quickly to enact ordinances about where and how data centers are built. A few communities have turned to ballot measures or lawsuits.

But at the same time, some state lawmakers are rushing to pass legislation that would accelerate the development of data center infrastructure.

More data centers are being built nationwide to meet the demand for digital services, including power-hungry artificial intelligence systems. Data centers, which house thousands of servers, are able to store and transmit the data required for internet services to work.

The facilities support a digital society and can provide increased tax revenue. Data center advocates argue they also can bring new jobs and other benefits for states and local communities. But residents and local leaders in several localities across the country — including cities in Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia and other states — are concerned about how the facilities could drive up utility bills and harm the environment.

Lancaster’s residents, including Arcoleo, are worried about the amount of energy required to power data centers — which could drive up electricity rates for the entire city, he said.

“Data centers alone will cause dirty electricity sources — coal-fired plants, diesel-fired plants, natural gas-fired plants — that were due to come offline to stay online because we need every kilowatt of power that exists,” said Arcoleo, a member of the progressive advocacy group Lancaster Stands Up. “That affects me too because it ruins my environment.”

But Pennsylvania’s governor has been working to bring more data centers to the state. In June, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro announced that Amazon was planning to invest at least $20 billion to build data center campuses across Pennsylvania — the largest private sector investment in state history. He’s also pushing proposals to encourage more energy production in the state, which would supply data centers. But critics say parts of his plan would sideline local officials.

‘This is moving so quickly’

Data centers require a great deal of electricity to run, which some state officials worry will drive up electricity demand — and utility bills.

Many data centers also require significant amounts of water to cool their servers. Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day — equivalent to the water use of a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people, according to a report from the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, a nonprofit that provides educational resources to policymakers and the public.

Local leaders and advocates across the country are weighing the potential outcomes in their community. In August, Starwood Digital Ventures submitted plans to New Castle County, Delaware, for a data center project that could consume as much power as 875,000 to almost 1 million homes — nearly twice the 449,000 housing units that exist in the state, according to Spotlight Delaware.

Amazon pulls Louisa County data center proposal after strong resistance

The proposed data center sparked strong opposition from residents at a July town hall, including state House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown, a Democrat, who organized the event. New Castle County Councilman David Carter was already working on an ordinance that would put up guardrails for data center development in the area.

Under the proposed ordinance, data centers could not be built within 1,000 feet of any residential zoning district. Developers would also be required to coordinate with state regulators to ensure enough water is available to cool the facility’s servers. The ordinance also outlines a decommissioning process for data centers that are no longer in use.

“Most of these concerns are things you can manage and plan for, but this is moving so quickly that I think across the country, most jurisdictions are playing catch-up for their codes to best manage these data centers,” Carter told Stateline.

Currently, Virginia leads the country in data center development. In the absence of state laws, Virginia’s localities began to make their own data center rules.

Earlier this year, local leaders in Loudoun County, Virginia, which has one of the highest concentrations of data centers in the world, amended the county’s zoning ordinance to require data center proposals to go through a public hearing process and get approval from the Board of Supervisors.

Loudoun County officials are looking forward to new data center bills coming out of next year’s legislative session, said Michael Turner, vice chair of the Board of Supervisors. But he added that decisions regarding data center development should ultimately be left to localities.

“The decision for how local communities can use their land has to be left to the local communities,” Turner said. “But there’s no question: There’s rising tension between local community government, and state and federal government, as this high demand for both data and energy is continually rising.”

Meanwhile, Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed a bill in May that would have required data center developers and energy utilities to disclose information to local governments on noise and environmental impacts of a proposed project.

In DeKalb County, Georgia, in October, county leaders voted to extend a local ​moratorium on new data center applications until Dec. 16 while local leaders assess the impact of the incoming facilities, according to Decaturish. At the same time, county leadership is considering a zoning amendment that would regulate where data centers can be built, how they are designed and other standards.

Local advocates in other areas of the country are pursuing change through the ballot box or lawsuits. Residents in Augusta Charter Township, Michigan, collected enough signatures for a referendum that would let voters decide on rezoning for a proposed data center. Township leaders believe the new facility will generate tax revenue for the community, but residents are concerned about noise and light pollution and higher electric rates, according to Inside Climate News.

In Doña Ana County, New Mexico, residents and an environmental law group filed two lawsuits that allege county commissioners violated state law by approving a data center project that had an incomplete application. Local advocates and state lawmakers representing the county say the developers’ plan to build a natural gas generating station for the data center would exploit a loophole in a state law that requires utilities to use fully renewable energy resources by 2045, according to Source New Mexico.

Data centers’ demand for electricity brings unprecedented opportunity and challenges

Still, some local leaders welcome data centers in their area. In September, AVAIO Digital, a Connecticut-based data center developer, announced that it had broken ground on a $6 billion data center campus in Brandon, Mississippi, about 15 minutes outside of Jackson.

Shortly after the data center was announced, several concerned residents in Rankin County began a petition demanding that county representatives address concerns about utility bills and pollution.

But Brandon Republican Mayor Butch Lee said he sees the project as an opportunity. As more data centers are built, it will prompt more areas to expand and modernize their electrical grid, he said. Local leaders are also working to ensure that the data center uses recycled water for cooling its systems in an effort to promote conservation practices, he said.

“I don’t see any environmental problems,” Lee said. “I don’t see any water problems. I just see a changing national and global landscape of what the next 100 years is going to be like.”

And John Malone, a principal at AVAIO Digital, said the company wants to commit itself to being good neighbors.

“All of these things work better when you’re good neighbors. And so we get it — this is a big project coming into your community,” Malone said. “Of course, people are going to have questions.”

Pennsylvania pushes

Lancaster’s residents are not alone. Local leaders in two Pennsylvania townships, East Vincent and North Middleton, are considering similar rules that would restrict where data centers can be built and operated.

They would establish a special zoning designation for data centers and require developers to study how the structures could affect the local environment, water supply, traffic patterns and more.

And a new zoning ordinance adopted by West Pennsboro Township in August requires those studies and confirmation from developers that an electricity supplier in the area will be able to supply enough power for a data center to serve new data centers in the area.

In Pennsylvania, developers are advertising data centers as an economic opportunity for the state’s local communities, said Livia Garofalo, a researcher with Data & Society’s Trustworthy Infrastructures team. The nonprofit research institute studies the social implications of data-centric technologies.

She said that while some local leaders welcome the potential revenue, others are wary of the major changes data centers have brought to other communities like theirs. A lot of Pennsylvania towns have witnessed the rise and fall of other industries — such as steel and coal — that were said to be good opportunities. Now, they must decide if the data center industry is worth it.

“For some of these communities who are experiencing economic difficulty — especially with a federal shutdown — some of these townships are saying, ‘Well, why not?’” Garofalo said.

Lancaster residents are still trying to understand what the new data center means for the city.

But for Josh Nice, who lives in the city’s Stadium District neighborhood, there’s an “anticipatory grief” — the feeling of worry that comes with an impending loss or change.

“Things like this [data centers] are never designed to benefit communities and working people,” said Nice. “They’re only designed to exploit communities and enrich stakeholders and rich people.”

In Virginia, Turner said he hopes that local communities can work alongside state officials and the federal government in the future to make decisions together.

“All the counties are very concerned about the federal government or the state making broad brush decisions about local land use that can really negatively — and, I mean, negatively — affect local communities,” Turner said.

Stateline reporter Madyson Fitzgerald can be reached at mfitzgerald@stateline.org.

A farmhouse sits along a gravel road near Elgin, Iowa. For at least the next dozen years, rural areas will continue to have only about two-thirds of the primary care physicians they need, according to a new report. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

For at least the next dozen years, rural areas will continue to have only about two-thirds of the primary care physicians they need, according to a report released Monday.

The nonprofit Commonwealth Fund based its analysis on federal health workforce data. Its report comes just days after states applied for portions of a $50 billion rural health fund included in the broad tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July. Some states want to use the federal money to expand their rural residency programs, as physicians who complete their residencies in rural areas are more likely to practice in one.

About 43 million people live in rural areas without enough primary care physicians, according to the report. Across the country, nearly all — 92% — of rural counties are considered primary care professional shortage areas, compared to 83% of nonrural counties. Forty-five percent of rural counties had five or fewer primary care doctors in 2023. Roughly 200 rural counties lacked one altogether.

Nationally, the report found there was an average of one physician per 2,881 rural residents. States in the South had 3,411 patients per physician, whereas states in the Northeast had 1,979 residents per physician.

Rural residents are less likely to use telehealth for primary care, largely because of limited broadband internet access. About 19% of rural respondents said they received health care from a primary care physician via telehealth over the past year, compared with the national average of 29%.

The report also took the pulse of states’ participation in national programs for rural areas, such as a federal loan repayment and scholarship program for physicians working in areas with a shortage of health care providers. In 2023, 40% of rural counties had at least one primary care clinician participating in the program — compared to 60% of nonrural counties.

While the demand for primary care physicians will surpass the supply, the study estimates that the supply of rural nurse practitioners will exceed demand over time, as nurse practitioners are the fastest-growing type of clinician in the U.S., regardless of geography, the authors wrote.

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

 

New EPA draft rules seek to narrow the scope of the Clean Water Act by further defining the Waters of the United States. Pictured here is Little Walnut Creek in Waukee, Iowa on May 5, 2025. (Photo by Cami Koons/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed Monday new rules to define the waters of the United States, or WOTUS, protected under the Clean Water Act. 

The move was celebrated by farm groups that oppose a broad interpretation of the law, while environmental groups said the rule change would end protections for millions of acres of wetlands and small streams. 

Waters of the United States defines the scope of the Clean Water Act and which waters can be regulated with federal water quality standards. The WOTUS definition, which is not laid out in the Clean Water Act, has been the source of several U.S. Supreme Court cases in recent decades, most recently in Sackett v. EPA. 

The high court ruled in May 2023 that wetlands without a “continuous surface connection” to navigable waters did not qualify for Clean Water Act protections. This was upheld by EPA final rules issued in August 2023, that not only applied to wetlands, but also removed the requirement that waters have a “significant nexus” to a navigable water. 

Some conservative groups and lawmakers argued the 2023 EPA interpretation did not go far enough to adhere to the court’s decision in the Sackett case. 

EPA’s new rules, made in conjunction with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, would “fully implement”  the Sackett decision, “accelerate economic prosperity” and support the role of states and tribes in regulating their land, according to the agency’s news release. 

“When finalized, the rule will cut red tape and provide predictability, consistency, and clarity for American industry, energy producers, the technology sector, farmers, ranchers, developers, businesses, and landowners for permitting under the Clean Water Act,” the EPA release said.

The proposed rules would further define terms like: relatively permanent, continuous surface connection and tributary. The rules also establish that tributaries must connect to navigable waters via features that have “consistent” and “predictable flow.” 

The rules say wetlands must be “indistinguishable” from jurisdictional waters, with a “continuous surface connection.” The rules will also limit permafrost wetlands from the scope of the definition, include guidance on “wet season” water bodies, and offer exclusions on ditches, prior converted cropland, and waste treatment systems.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the proposed rules will protect navigable waters, advance cooperative federalism and result in economic growth. 

“Democrat Administrations have weaponized the definition of navigable waters to seize more power from American farmers, landowners, entrepreneurs, and families,” Zeldin said in a statement. “We heard from Americans across the country who want clean water and a clear rule. No longer should America’s landowners be forced to spend precious money hiring an attorney or consultant just to tell them whether a Water of the United States is on their property.” 

According to the release, the proposed rules were formed around feedback from states, tribal nations, local governments and listening sessions. 

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall said, in the release with EPA, the farm organization was “pleased” with the new rules. 

“The Supreme Court clearly ruled several years ago that the government overreached in its interpretation of what fell under federal guidelines,” Duvall said. “We are still reviewing the entire rule, but we are pleased that it finally addresses those concerns and takes steps to provide much-needed clarity.” 

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association similarly celebrated the draft rules Monday. The association’s president and Nebraska cattleman Buck Wehrbein said the previous interpretations of the rule have meant things like “prairie potholes or dry ditches” fall under federal regulation. 

“Waters of the U.S. has been a longstanding and frustrating issue for family farmers and ranchers,” he said in a statement. “Every few years, the definition of a ‘water of the U.S.’ has changed … We appreciate the EPA finally fixing previous WOTUS rules and supporting America’s family farmers and ranchers.”

Environmental groups said the newly proposed rules put habitat, drinking water and structures at greater risk. 

Environmental Defense Fund’s Vice President Will McDow said EPA’s proposed rules were “not based in science, difficult to implement in practice and will create a dangerous lack of clarity.”

“This rule brings tremendous uncertainty and risk to our nation’s drinking water, flood protections and critical habitats,” McDow said in a statement. 

The environmental group Food & Water Watch said the draft rules eliminate “bedrock” protections for rivers, streams, and wetlands. The group said in a news release the rules would “compound the damage” of the Sackett decision that “eliminated protections for tens of millions of acres of sensitive wetlands and small streams.” 

Food & Water Watch Legal Director Tarah Heinzen said the rule “flies in the face of science and commonsense” and will lead to more pollution downstream. Wetlands, Heinzen said, offer “critical functions” in providing habitat, protecting clean water and reducing flooding. 

“Clean water is under attack in America, as polluting profiteers plunder our waters — Trump’s EPA is openly aiding and abetting this destruction,” Heinzen said. “This proposed rule weakens the bedrock Clean Water Act, making it easier to fill, drain, and pollute sensitive waterways from coast to coast.” 

The proposed rules will be published in the Federal Register and open for public comment for 45 days. EPA and the Army will hold two public meetings before developing final rules.

The Palmyra public safety building. (Photo via Palmyra Fire Rescue Facebook page)

The Village of Palmyra in southeastern Wisconsin announced Friday that the village board and police department have decided not to move forward with a controversial agreement with U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE). 

“We deeply value the feedback we have received from our community — on all sides of the discussion,” Village Board President Tim Gorsegner and Interim Police Chief Paul Blount said in a statement on the village’s website. 

“After careful consideration of those voices, along with additional research and review, we believe that at this time, the best course forward for Palmyra is to take no further action on the proposed agreement,” the village officials said. 

Blount previously said that the department’s application to ICE’s task force model was pending review by the village board. 

ICE’s task force model allows officers to “enforce limited immigration authority while performing routine police duties, such as identifying an alien at a DUI checkpoint and sharing information directly with ICE,” and it lays out when officers can make immigration arrests. Officers may also exercise limited authority on ICE-led task forces.  

In September, Blount said Palmyra police would work with ICE when someone was involved in criminal activity, wanted on a warrant or facing criminal charges. He said they would not go door to door to check peoples’ documentation or profile people who they think may lack documentation.

The immigrant rights organization Voces de la Frontera celebrated Palmyra’s decision not to work with ICE. Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz said in a statement, “when we push back together, we stop policies that harm immigrant families and undermine public safety.” 

The village’s statement said the original intent in exploring the agreement was to collaborate with federal law enforcement partners in ways that could strengthen their ability to reduce crime and keep Palmyra safe. The village said it also sought to prevent human trafficking and narcotics trafficking. 

Blount said in September that the program would allow for access to databases and resources that enhance investigations and help combat serious crimes such as narcotics trafficking and human trafficking. He also said the program would come with significant financial incentives from the federal government. 

On Monday afternoon, ICE removed Palmyra from a list of departments with which it cooperates on its website.

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