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.
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.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., speaks during a press conference on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. Also pictured, from left, are House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and House Republican Whip Tom Emmer of Minnesota. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
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.
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., stood and spoke alongside women who shared stories of sexual abuse by the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025, ahead of a U.S. House vote to compel release of the government’s Epstein case files. (Screenshot courtesy of C-SPAN)
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.
U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Ariz., who became the 218th signature on the discharge petition to force a vote on disclosing the Epstein files, spoke outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
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.
Robin Galbraith, 61, of Maryland, and Donna Powell, 67, of Washington, D.C., held signs outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025, ahead of a U.S. House vote on releasing the Epstein files. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
For some of these communities who are experiencing economic difficulty … some of these townships are saying, ‘Well, why not?’
– Livia Garofalo, researcher with Data & Society’s Trustworthy Infrastructures team
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.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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.
This story was originally produced by Iowa Capital Dispatch, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
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).
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
“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.
Former FBI Director James Comey testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2017 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey has been granted access to all grand jury materials in his case after a federal judge found “profound investigative missteps” that could result in the dismissal of Comey’s indictment.
Eastern District of Virginia Federal Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick wrote Monday that issues with evidence, testimony and statements to the grand jury outweigh the usual heavily guarded secrecy of proceedings.
The government filed a motion for an emergency stay hours after the order.
In the 24-page order, Fitzpatrick delivered a scathing account of the government’s mishandling, and possibly illegal access to, evidence presented to grand jurors, including a potential Fourth Amendment violation.
Additionally, the single person to testify before the grand jury was an FBI agent who knew that the evidence he reviewed may have been attorney-client privileged or confidential information, according to the order.
Fitzpatrick also found that the entirety of the grand jury proceedings was not provided to the court, and that two statements to jurors by interim U.S. Attorney Lindsey Halligan “could reasonably form the basis for the defense to challenge whether the grand jury proceedings were infected with constitutional error.”
“(A)s the Court has found, these materials are essential if Mr. Comey is to fully and fairly defend himself in the face of the irregularities that have characterized this investigation from its inception,” Fitzpatrick wrote.
Fitzpatrick concluded “the record points to a disturbing pattern of profound investigative missteps, missteps that led an FBI agent and a prosecutor to potentially undermine the integrity of the grand jury proceeding.”
The order stemmed from Comey’s motion to access the grand jury proceedings.
District Judge Michael S. Nachmanoff, a President Joe Biden appointee who is overseeing the Comey case, ordered the materials be turned over, but the process was halted when the government challenged the order.
Nachmanoff then remanded the case to Fitzpatrick, who in 2022 was selected on merit by a panel of U.S. District judges in the Eastern District of Virginia to hold the magistrate position for eight years.
A federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, indicted Comey in September on one charge of making false statements to Congress during testimony in 2020 and another of obstructing a proceeding of Congress.
Prosecutors had sought an additional charge of making false statements, but the grand jury returned only the two charges.
Trump, who publicly urged U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to prosecute Comey, ousted the then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik S. Siebert.
Trump replaced the office’s top prosecutor with former personal lawyer Lindsey Halligan, who swiftly obtained an indictment.
Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel speaks with reporters after an event Feb. 26. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Former state Attorney General and conservative state Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel has been appointed as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Schimel, who was also previously a Waukesha County Circuit Court judge and the Waukesha County district attorney, will now be the highest ranking federal prosecutor in the district that covers the eastern part of the state, including Milwaukee.
Usually, U.S. attorneys are first recommended for the office by the two U.S. senators in a state and then nominated by the president before being confirmed by the Senate. In Wisconsin, Sens. Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson operate a joint commission responsible for finding candidates.
Schimel told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the commission was unable to reach a consensus for the job — which has been empty since February when former U.S. attorney Gregory Haanstad, a Biden appointee, left the role as part of the normal transition when a new party enters the White House.
In a statement, Baldwin accused Trump of “blowing up Wisconsin’s bipartisan judicial nominating process” and “ignoring Wisconsinites of all stripes” by choosing Schimel, whom voters rejected twice, in his races for state attorney general and Supreme Court.
Once the commission failed to find a candidate, Schimel said he reached out to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom he knows from their time as state attorneys general.
Interim U.S. Attorneys are allowed to hold that role for 120 days, though the Trump administration has tried in other states to extend that period.
Schimel will now take over the office as it manages increased federal immigration enforcement happening in the state and heads into the highly political trial of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan, who federal prosecutors have alleged obstructed the work of federal agents attempting to apprehend a migrant in the county courthouse. Dugan’s trial is set for Dec. 15, Schimel told the Journal-Sentinel the prosecution team on the case will remain the same.
Schimel ran for the state Supreme Court earlier this year in what became the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history — largely due to the involvement of Elon Musk, who was at the time a part of the Trump administration through his DOGE office.
Schimel lost by more than 10 percentage points to Justice Susan Crawford. In his campaign, he touted his prosecutorial experience but was unable to separate himself from criticism that he was too closely tied to Trump and Musk.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — David Richardson, the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has resigned and moved to the “private sector,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Monday.
Karen Evans, the agency’s chief of staff, is expected to take on the role of acting administrator starting Dec. 1.
“Mr. Richardson led FEMA through the 2025 hurricane season, delivering historic funding to North Carolina, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Alaska, and overseeing a comprehensive review that identified and eliminated serious governmental waste and inefficiency, while refocusing the agency to deliver swift resources to Americans in crisis,” the spokesperson said.
Previous FEMA acting head ousted in May
President Donald Trump has yet to send the Senate a nominee for FEMA administrator, opting instead to have a string of officials serve as acting leaders of the agency that he hopes to overhaul in the months ahead.
Cam Hamilton worked as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator until May, when he was let go one day after he testified before a House committee that he did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Richardson, who was working as the assistant secretary of the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office at the Department of Homeland Security, was then named as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA.
Richardson testified before a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee in July that FEMA’s response to the catastrophic Fourth of July floods in Texas was well managed.
“Texas got what they needed when they needed it,” he said at the time.
The Washington Post reported in September that “key staff members could not reach” Richardson for “about 24 hours in the early aftermath” of those floods, which killed more than 130 people.
Trump review council misses deadline
The White House deferred questions about Richardson’s resignation to the Department of Homeland Security, opting not to say whether Trump would eventually send a FEMA administrator nominee to the Senate for confirmation.
Trump has long criticized FEMA and created a review council earlier this year to assess how the agency performed during the last few years and suggest ways to rework its structure.
The review council was supposed to send Trump its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline.
The Homeland Security spokesperson who confirmed Richardson’s resignation to States Newsroom said the administration expects the report to be released in the near future.
“We anticipate the forthcoming release of the FEMA Review Council’s final report, which will inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force,” said the spokesperson.
A sign is seen outside the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center at Weaverville Town Hall on March 29, 2025 in Weaverville, North Carolina. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The review council that President Donald Trump tasked with overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency was supposed to release its recommendations before Monday but missed the deadline.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security declined to say when the report would be published, but wrote in a statement that it would “inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force.”
A congressional staffer, not authorized to speak publicly, said the report could be published as soon as mid-December. A spokesperson for Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a council member, said the review council will vote to finalize the report at an upcoming public meeting.
Trump established the 12-person council through an executive order he signed back in January and tasked the group with releasing the report within 180 days of its first meeting, which it held on May 20.
That should have meant a release this past weekend, though it’s possible staff writing the report were furloughed or tasked with other work during the 43-day government shutdown.
Hegseth, Noem are co-chairs
The council, co-chaired by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, held three public meetings earlier this year, where members spoke about possible ways to restructure FEMA but didn’t preview what recommendations they would actually put in the report.
Trump said in June “the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment” and that he would like states to shoulder more of the responsibility for natural disaster response and recovery.
“When you have a tornado or a hurricane, or you have a problem of any kind in a state, that’s what you have governors for,” Trump said. “They’re supposed to fix those problems. And it’s much more local. And they’ll develop a system. And I think it will be a great system.”
The FEMA Review Council’s report is supposed to include an
“assessment of the adequacy of FEMA’s response to disasters during the previous 4 years,”
“comparison of the FEMA responses with State, local, and private sector responses” and
“analysis of the principal arguments in the public debate for and against FEMA reform, including an appraisal of the merits and legality of particular reform proposals,” among several other elements.
FEMA action underway in Congress
Any major changes to FEMA would likely need to move through Congress before they could take effect. But a bipartisan group of lawmakers hasn’t waited for the review council’s suggestions to get started.
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee voted 57-3 in September to send a bill to the floor that would make significant changes to FEMA, including making it a Cabinet-level agency.
House GOP leaders have yet to schedule the legislation for a vote. If passed, it would need Senate approval and Trump’s signature to become law.
Women who say they were abused by disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein raise their hands as attorney Bradley Edwards speaks at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 3, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Sunday night abruptly changed his tune, telling House Republicans to vote on a bill to compel the Department of Justice to release all files related to its investigation into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 awaiting federal trial.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown.’”
Trump continued in his signature style of arbitrary capital letters: “The Department of Justice has already turned over tens of thousands of pages to the Public on “Epstein,” are looking at various Democrat operatives (Bill Clinton, Reid Hoffman, Larry Summers, etc.) and their relationship to Epstein, and the House Oversight Committee can have whatever they are legally entitled to, I DON’T CARE!”
The House is expected to vote Tuesday after a bipartisan discharge petition garnered 218 signatures last week, forcing House Speaker Mike Johnson, of Louisiana, to bring a bill to the floor that would compel the DOJ to release Epstein investigation materials.
It’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., would bring the legislation to a floor vote in the GOP-controlled chamber.
Kentucky’s Thomas Massie co-sponsored the petition with Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. Three other House Republicans, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, South Carolina’s Nancy Mace and Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, joined all Democrats in signing.
The House’s newest Democrat, Arizona’s Adelita Grijalva, became the 218th signature after she was sworn in Wednesday by Johnson, following weeks in which the chamber was out of session. Johnson refused to swear in Grijalva until after the government shutdown, breaking a precedent of swearing in new members when the chamber is out.
Johnson has not been in favor of a vote, and rather has pointed to the ongoing House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s investigation into the Epstein documents.
Committee Republicans released more than 20,000 pages of Epstein’s emails on Wednesday, many of which contained Trump’s name.
The committee, led by Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., revealed the massive trove of emails from Epstein’s estate after the panel’s Democrats released a selection of the correspondence that included the allegation that Trump “knew about the girls because he asked ghislaine to stop.”
Epstein was referring to Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator, who would later be convicted on federal sex trafficking charges.
Emails and subpoenas
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 Epstein had poached young female staffers from the club. Epstein was convicted in Florida of soliciting minors for sex in 2008.
Trump had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, who surrounded himself with the rich and powerful.
Committee Republicans did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment Wednesday on how long the committee has had possession of the emails and their timing of the data dump.
The committee has subpoenaed several people in relation to the probe, including Maxwell, several former U.S. attorneys general and former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Trump dispatched Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who is also the president’s former personal defense attorney, to interview Maxwell in a Florida prison in July.
According to transcripts, Maxwell told Blanche that she “never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects.”
Soon after, Maxwell was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas, and House Democrats claimed this month that a whistleblower revealed the convicted sex offender was being “pampered” by the warden. House Democrats also claimed the whistleblower revealed Maxwell was preparing a commutation application to Trump for release from her 20-year sentence.
FBI memo
The FBI issued a July memo stating the Department of Justice would not be releasing any further information on the government’s sex trafficking investigation into Epstein.
The announcement sparked a firestorm of demands over the summer to release all investigative material, even among Trump’s supporters in Congress and far-right media influencers, including Megyn Kelly and the late Charlie Kirk.
Trump promised on the campaign trail to release the files.
Since the FBI memo, a magnifying glass has been fixed on Trump’s past relationship with Epstein.
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.
Trump has denied all reports.
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.
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Tim Brown/Getty Images)
The Federal Aviation Administration early Monday lifted an order that airlines cut domestic flights to 40 major U.S. airports, as air traffic control staffing levels improve following the six-week government shutdown.
The move came just before the busiest travel week of the year, though it was unclear how long it would take for airlines to resume normal operations.
The FAA’s safety team recommended ending the restrictions after seeing only one staffing trigger affect travel Sunday, according to an agency press release. There were 81 staffing triggers on Nov. 8, a few days before the end of the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
“I want to thank the FAA’s dedicated safety team for keeping our skies secure during the longest government shutdown in our nation’s history and the country’s patience for putting safety first,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in the release. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, controllers have returned to their posts and normal operations can resume.”
The government reopened after a 43-day shutdown on Nov. 12.
Air traffic controllers were required to work without pay during the shutdown, leaving many to pursue second jobs and the workforce overstressed. The order to reduce flights, peaking at 6% at major airports, was meant to reduce that stress.
The banners at the tops of major U.S. airline websites warning of canceled flights disappeared by Monday morning.
One carrier, Southwest, replaced it with a message that its normal schedule would resume Monday.
“Good news, the US government shutdown has ended,” the message read. “Our full schedule resumes on Nov 17. Book your next trip with confidence today.”
A Kwik Trip station in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, was among the locations chosen for new charging stations in the first round of Wisconsin's build-out for its charging station network under the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program (NEVI), part of the bipartisan infrastructure law enacted during President Joe Biden's term in office. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
A program to expand electric vehicle charging stations in Wisconsin is getting a $14 million jolt with plans to build 26 more stations across the state.
Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Department of Transportation announced the expansion plan Monday.
The announcement recharges the state’selectrical vehicle charging network project, supported by the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program. NEVI, part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law signed by then-President Joe Biden, provides grants to states to build more charging stations.
“Transportation is evolving, and departments of transportation and states have to adapt with that evolution,” said John DesRivieres, WisDOT’s communications director. “As the market and the number of folks who are driving electric vehicles grows, EV infrastructure is needed.”
NEVI funding paused after President Donald Trump took office, and Wisconsin was one of 15 states along with the District of Columbia tosue the Trump administration in May for cutting off money for the program. A federal judgeblocked the administration in June from defunding NEVI, and the Wisconsin DOT subsequentlyrestarted its program.
The $14 million in federal funds for Wisconsin’snew round of charging stations will go to projects in communities throughout the state, from Superior in the northwest to East Troy in the southeast. They include 11 locations at Kwik Trip service stations, six locations at hotels or resorts, six locations at other service station brands and a handful of other businesses.
“My administration and I have prioritized ensuring our state’s infrastructure meets the needs of the 21st Century since Day One because expanding our clean energy and electric vehicle infrastructure helps create jobs and bolster our economy, and it’s good for our planet, too,” Evers said. “Thanks to our actions to get the Trump Administration to release this critical funding that they were illegally withholding, we are thrilled to see the NEVI program continue to support these goals and further move us toward the clean energy future Wisconsinites deserve.”
The transportation department chose projects based on their location, their potential for future development, and the business site’s hours. Extended hours were given preference to accommodate longer refueling times, according to WisDOT.
Wisconsin’s plan calls for charging stations along 15 major interstate, U.S. and state highway corridors that cross the state. A WisDOTEV charging station dashboard shows the locations for all planned chargers in the state.
With the round of grants announced Monday, Wisconsin has invested a total of $36.4 million in federal funds for 78 projects.
A customer charges his electric car at a Kwik Trip service station in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. The station was included in the first round of charger stations to be built with federal funds in Wisconsin. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
The first round,announced in May 2024, invested $22.4 million to build 52 stations. Of those, 11 are operational, 16 have been authorized for construction and the rest are in pre-construction phases.
A federal tax credit for electric vehicles that was included in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act abruptly ended, effective Sept. 30, under the Republican tax-cut and spending mega-bill enacted in July.
“There are already 37,000 EVs on the road today, and we saw that number spike as people raced to purchase EVs before the federal tax credit expired,” said Alex Beld, communications director for Renew Wisconsin, a nonprofit that promotes policies and programs to expand solar, wind and hydropower along with building electrification, energy storage and electric vehicles.
“By expanding our network of charging stations, we hope to see that number continue to climb,” Beld said. “Through this transition away from gas-powered vehicles, we can reduce emissions and support our state’s economy.”
Ananalysis by SRI International published in 2023 for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. concluded that “there is a tremendous opportunity for Wisconsin to develop a globally competitive cluster centered on the manufacturing of EVs and EV-related equipment, which in turn can help revitalize Wisconsin’s automotive manufacturing industry and drive statewide economic development.”
Beld said that jobs related to clean energy grew four times faster than the rest of Wisconsin’s economy in 2024.
“If this funding had been clawed back permanently, I think we would have still seen progress,” Beld said. “It would have certainly been slower and would have likely cost the state jobs.”
A Nov. 14 conference at UW-Madison debated the merits of bringing fusion voting back to Wisconsin (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Dozens of political scientists, election experts and members of the public gathered in a UW-Madison conference room Friday to debate whether returning to a 19th century election process could empower voters and help turn back the United States’ slide toward authoritarianism.
The event centered around fusion voting, which is the practice of allowing more than one political party to nominate the same candidate on a ballot. Currently used in Connecticut and New York, the fusion voting system means the candidates on the left can appear on the ballot under both the Democratic Party and the smaller Working Families Party while candidates on the right appear for the Republican Party and the Conservative Party.
In theory this can give the minor parties enough influence to push for policy changes. A minor party that can swing 4% of a vote total can move the needle.
Throughout the 1800s, fusion voting was the norm across the country — the Republican Party itself was formed in Wisconsin as a fusion party by voters who felt that the major parties at the time, the Democrats and Whigs, weren’t doing enough to end slavery. Eventually, the two major parties worked together to get the practice banned in most of the country.
Often, minor fusion parties are further from the ideological center than the major parties, but a lawsuit is currently pending in Wisconsin from a group called United Wisconsin aiming to create a fusion party that connects moderate voters who don’t feel like they’re represented by the modern Democrats or Republicans. The effort is being helmed by former state Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz and former Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney. The group is represented in the lawsuit by the voting rights focused firm Law Forward.
Lawsuits to reinstate fusion voting are also pending in New Jersey and Kansas.
Lilliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, said during the conference that the two party system and primary election process have polarized the country’s politics and made our’ “sense of winning or losing” more “existential.”
Looming over the discussions, but without being explicitly mentioned very often, was the Trump administration’s anti-democratic actions — including denying the outcome of the 2020 election, supporting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and pardoning Wisconsin’s fake electors — and the threat of authoritarianism. The debate Friday was often an exchange over how fusion voting fits into broader systemic reforms and if it can be used in tandem with proposals including proportional representation, multi-member congressional districts, ranked choice voting, gerrymandering prohibitions, filibuster reform and others.
“It makes it possible for people who want to organize and who want to create and claim their own political power, to do so in an effective way,” Beau Tremitiere, an attorney from the non-profit Protect Democracy, said. They’re exactly right. “People are deeply dissatisfied with the system. There’s a lot of energy to do something better and fusion makes that easier.”
Fusion advocates said the system allows politics to be more dynamic. People’s political beliefs don’t always fit neatly in a party system that encourages big tents and the necessity of coalition management in those big tents means that parties aren’t encouraged to distance themselves from their most extreme members.
“Politics is a complex, dynamic system that is always changing,” said Lee Drutman, who studies political reform at the think tank New America. “And the key is, how do you keep it from spiraling out of control? How do you keep it from a self-reinforcing tumult? And if you have a party system problem, which we do, you need a party system solution.”
But several speakers at the conference also laid out the limits and downsides of fusion voting. It’s not a major structural reform. Fusion parties are usually further from the ideological center, so if the goal is a more moderate politics, it’s not clear fusion will deliver that. Members of the Green Party expressed concern that fusion enables a patronage system of political favor trading.
Overall though, the conference often returned to the idea that the country is in a democracy crisis and experimentation is a good thing in the effort to turn it around.
“I’m supportive of experimentation,” Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said. “It seems to me, we should see more real world experiments.”
Schultz, who was in the Legislature from 1983 to 2015, said he’s trying to establish a fusion party in Wisconsin to get more “humanity” in the state’s politics.
“Why fusion voting? Why does it matter? Because of agency, the fact that suddenly people get a chance to sit at the table, to be a part of the discussions that matter to them,” he said. “Yes, fusion voting is not the be- and end-all political reform, but it is, in my opinion, an essential part of our future if we’re going to get back to having a healthy democracy.”
Protesters march outside of a new ICE facility being constructed in Milwaukee. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Activist groups and community members gathered Saturday morning to denounce the construction of a new federal immigration enforcement detention facility on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side. Renovations at the property, located at 11900 W Lake Park Drive, were clearly underway, with construction equipment sitting behind new fencing, piles of dirt and stacks of building materials visible through the building’s dark windows. Outside, protesters marched in the street and delivered speeches.
The 36,000-square-foot detention and processing center is planned to serve as a central hub for southeastern Wisconsin, holding people before deportation or transfer to other detention centers.
“You may be here, but you are not welcome here,” said Ald. Larresa Taylor — who represents the district where the facility will be located. Although the city cannot prevent ICE from taking over the facility, Taylor said that this “doesn’t mean that we are going to accept it laying down.”
Protesters march outside a new ICE facility being constructed in Milwaukee. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Activists from Voces de la Frontera, Comité Sin Fronteras, the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Never Again Action–Wisconsin, the Party for Socialism & Liberation, and the Wisconsin Coalition for Justice in Palestine picketed outside the building for close to two hours. Towards the end of the event, a drone was seen flying overhead, which was not operated by any of the activist groups who held the rally. In a empty parking lot nearby, several deputies appeared to be packing away equipment in the trunk a Milwaukee County Sheriff’s vehicle. The Sheriff’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment on whether its drone team was flying over the Saturday protest.
Opponents of the facility say that its opening moved forward without community input or consent, and that it will perpetuate troubling uses of force and arrests in cities nationwide including Chicago. The facility will be used to process ICE detainees, as well as immigrants who must come in for regular check-ins.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, applauded Taylor, calling her “the first person to sound the alarm months ago about the expansion of this detention center, and to call attention and condemn what was happening in our city.” The building is privately owned by Milwaukee Governmental LLC, which originally requested modifications to the property (something Taylor learned about in December). The LLC is linked to the Illinois-based WD Schorsch LLC, which owns properties leased to federal government agencies.
Protesters outside the new ICE facility. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
“It’s not an accident what is happening, where this facility is being chosen to be built,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “It’s part of a long-term pattern of discrimination and marginalization, and criminalization of working class people of color.” Neumann-Oritz said that instead of spending “millions” on the facility, “that money should be used to pay for FoodShare, BadgerCare, and our public schools.”
Angela Lang, executive director of Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC), said, “We are not free, until we are all free.” Lang added that Black communities “know what it’s like to be ripped away from our families and locked away,” and that people are concerned about federal agents’ behavior in cities like Chicago. “And we have been worried for months, if not years, ‘is this going to happen to Milwaukee?’”
A look inside the ICE facility being built on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Although Milwaukee hasn’t seen protest-related clashes, ICE stirred anxiety and condemnation earlier this year after arresting members of families with mixed-immigration status at the Milwaukee County Courthouse as they attended court hearings. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was also arrested and criminally charged after the federal government accused her of attempting to hide a person sought by ICE who’d attended a hearing in her courtroom. Dugan is expected to go to trial in federal court in December. Other high profile arrests and deportations of community members have also occurred in Milwaukee during the first six months of the second Trump administration.
Conor Mika, a student activist at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) condemned what he said is a lack of transparency and accountability for his school’s relationship with ICE, which has been using a university building for operations in Milwaukee. “It’s time MSOE takes a stand. It’s on MSOE to slow down ICE’s operations, and protect its students by removing ICE from this building, and refusing any future collaborations with these agencies conducting mass deportations in our city.”
Leah Janke and Tanya Brown both attended the rally Saturday, and told the Wisconsin Examiner that it was important to make their voices heard. “I think it’s important that people here know that we don’t want this,” said Brown. “It’s not just a small community that doesn’t want it, it’s everybody. We don’t want it.” Janke said. “It’s 2025, and this is completely unacceptable to be running an ICE facility like this, and be deporting people illegally, without due process. This is insanity. It doesn’t feel right in any way.” Janke added, “I’ve seen a lot happening in Chicago, and that’s my fear…that’s my biggest fear.”
Raúl Ríos, an activist with both Comité Sin Fronteras and Party for Socialism and Liberation. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Besides attending rallies, Janke has been making “whistle kits” filled with whistles and information about reporting ICE, or alerting the community if an arrest is happening. “Be safe out there,” said Janke. “Because honestly, it’s scary and people are getting hurt.”
Raúl Ríos, an activist with both Comité Sin Fronteras and Party for Socialism and Liberation, said it was important to rally people on Saturday both on the North and South Sides of Milwaukee, especially since the city is one of the most segregated in America. “Most people that I’ve heard, not only today but previously, had said that they had no idea that this was even being constructed, and that it’s going to be used as the main facility for southeast Wisconsin,” Rios told the Examiner.
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