Gov. Tony Evers signed a pair of bills into law Friday that make grooming a crime and require school districts to adopt policies on appropriate communications. 

“Keeping our kids safe, especially while they’re in our schools, must be a top priority for us, whether it’s addressing grooming, gun violence, bullying or other harmful behavior,” Evers said in a statement.

The bills were introduced last year after a report from the CapTimes that found there were over 200 investigations into teacher licenses stemming from allegations of sexual misconduct or grooming from 2018 to 2023, though bill authors, including Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), said they had worked on the legislation for longer.

“After nearly two years of working to strengthen protections for children in Wisconsin, I’m grateful to see these two important bills signed into law,” Nedweski said in a statement. “This is a major step forward in protecting kids, supporting victims and ensuring that those who prey on children are held accountable.”

AB 677, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 88, defines grooming as “a course of conduct, pattern of behavior, or series of acts with the intention to condition, seduce, solicit, lure, or entice a child for the purpose of producing, distributing or possessing depictions of the child engaged in sexually explicit conduct.” 

Some of the behaviors that could fall under the law include verbal comments, suggestions or conversations of a sexual nature directed toward a child, inappropriate physical contact or attempts to initiate such contact and communication via texts, emails, social media, or online platforms, meant to seduce, solicit, lure or entice a child.

Under the law, a person convicted of a grooming charge would be guilty of a Class G felony. The charge would increase to a Class F felony if the person is in a position of trust or authority, to a Class E felony if the child has a disability and to a Class D felony if the violation involves two or more children. A convicted person would need to register as a sex offender.

SB 673, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 89, requires public, private and independent charter schools to adopt appropriate communication policies for employees, volunteers and students. Policies will need to be in place by Sept. 1. 

The policy will need to include a range of consequences for policy violations, apply to communications during and outside of school hours, including standards for appropriate content and methods of communication. 

The Department of Public Instruction will need to develop and provide free training on professional boundary violations and identifying, preventing and reporting grooming. School boards will need to provide annual training to employees starting in the 2026-27 school year.

“We have an important obligation to make sure our kids can feel secure, supported, and cared for by educators and staff in our schools — adults they should be able to trust and depend on — while also providing more clarity about what interactions with students are inappropriate and unacceptable and enhancing punishments for adults who violate that sacred trust,” Evers said. 

Evers also signed SB 466, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 93, that expands the Missing Child Alert program to include alerts about 10- and 11-year-olds.

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A St Croix County school district that has become the target of right-wing politicians and activists for allowing students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity is now being investigated by the Trump administration Department of Education over the practice.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced in a press release Thursday it was investigating the New Richmond School District “based on reports that the District is allowing biological men to use female restrooms.” 

The head of a Wisconsin LGBTQ+ rights group Friday called the administration’s action an attempt to “bully” school children. 

“The law protects trans girls and their ability to use the girls’ bathroom,” said Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin. “A federal department’s press release does not, and cannot, change law. However, a federal administration can bully our kids, and that is exactly what this announcement of an investigation is.”

The New Richmond district superintendent, Troy Miller, was not available for comment early Friday afternoon. 

New Richmond policy attacked, defended

The Trump administration’s action follows its increased targeting of states that allow students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, including threatening to withhold federal funding. It also follows increasing attention on the New Richmond district’s policy from right-wing advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty and Wisconsin Republican political campaigns.

A public discussion of the district’s policy arose at a Jan. 29 meeting of the district’s school board, the Hudson Star Observer reported, with community members speaking for and against allowing students to choose the restroom they use. Opponents of the policy included a school board candidate, the newspaper reported.

Videos posted from a meeting in February to the Facebook page NR Students Against Moms for Liberty show a handful of students speaking in favor of allowing students to use the restrooms they are comfortable with. 

“I’m a woman at New Richmond High School who uses the women’s bathroom, and I ask that you hear my perspective. As a woman, I’m not afraid to use the bathroom with someone who is transgender,” one student said. “While fear around potential violence in bathrooms is totally valid, potential worries about what can happen in the bathroom are misplaced. Trans people are not scary or pedophiles. They are our community members.”

In a presentation prepared for that Feb. 10 meeting, legal counsel for the school board defended the policy respecting gender identity. A 2017 federal appeals court ruling

in the case Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education “defined ‘sex’ under Title IX to include gender identity,” according to the presentation slide — meaning that schools must allow students to use bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity.

At a meeting in late February, Board President Bryan Schafer said district lawyers have told the board that the district is following current law and following case law, the Hudson Star Observer reported. School board members voted at that meeting to look into adding more school restrooms and rejected a call for an internal investigation.  

Republican politicians, candidates weigh in

A week after the issue first arose in January, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany posted on Facebook a demand that the district reverse its policy. Michael Alfonso, who is running in the 7th Congressional District race to succeed Tiffany, has posted on his campaign Facebook page at least five times in the last month about the policy, directing increased national attention to the district. State lawmakers from the area have also weighed in. 

Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, who previously represented the 7th District, and recently was endorsed by President Donald Trump. 

“I would expect this from Madison or Milwaukee or some crazy liberal place but not northern Wisconsin,” Alfonso said in a video he filmed with his wife, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, on the way to a school board meeting. “This is why it’s so important for conservatives to remember that elections have consequences. There’s no reason that we should have liberal lunatics on our school boards. We need to make sure we’re getting out to vote in April and August and November because we have a very good chance to take our state back.”

The Department of Education press release Thursday said the agency’s Civil Rights Office “will determine whether the District violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) by allowing students to access intimate facilities based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” The press release states that an unidentified student in the district has “fear, embarrassment, and anxiety” and no longer uses the restrooms while in school due to the district policy.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that the department will investigate the complaint fully and address any violation promptly.

“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” Richey said. “School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve.” 

Defending students’ choices, gender identity

Swetz of Fair Wisconsin said in a statement to the Examiner Friday that the Whitaker v. Kenosha decision is “very clear when it comes to accessing bathrooms in schools” in its finding that Title IX protects gender identity. 

“Wisconsinites and Americans are tired of this relentless bullying campaign against kids, families, educators, and schools,” Swetz said. These attacks are not only wrong, but also a significant misdirection of resources and focus.”

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), who is the mother of a transgender adult child and a co-chair of the state Legislature’s Transgender Parent and Nonbinary Advocacy Caucus, issued a statement Friday defending respect for students’ gender identity.

“Every student deserves to feel safe, respected, and supported at school. Schools have a responsibility to create safe and welcoming environments where all students can learn without fear of discrimination,” Ratcliff said. “Policies that recognize and respect students’ gender identity are consistent with the spirit of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the values of fairness and inclusion we strive to uphold in Wisconsin schools.”

Ratcliff said the local school board’s decision should be respected. 

“Local school boards are best positioned to make such decisions that reflect the needs of their schools while ensuring every child is treated with dignity and respect,” Ratcliff said. 

Nevertheless, there have been ongoing legal challenges over school bathroom policies in Wisconsin, and some school districts in Wisconsin have adopted policies that restrict transgender students. 

Just before Trump took office in January 2025, a federal judge overturned a Biden administration order extending Title IX to include protections for gender identity. On his first day in office, Trump reversed other Biden administration orders protecting gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Since then, the Trump administration has systematically erased references on federal websites to gender identity, labeling the concept as “gender ideology” and substituting “sex” in its place. 

In addition to Moms For Liberty, the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has also called attention to the New Richmond district. WILL recently put out model policies that would separate bathrooms based on sex.

“This is a welcome decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title IX and protect girls’ privacy,” WILL Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer said in a statement. “For too long, school districts in Wisconsin have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males.”

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WASHINGTON — The United States lost 92,000 jobs in February, edging unemployment up slightly according to the latest employment figures released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The report showed, for the third time in the last five months, losses among nonfarm jobs and highlighted a continued “trend down” in the information sector and federal government employment. The federal workforce is down by 11% from its peak in October 2024, according to the bureau. The report also noted a decrease in health care jobs, “reflecting strike activity.” 

Unemployment ticked up to 4.4% from 4.3% in January, and rates remained higher for women, teenagers and non-white workers.

Administration officials blamed the job losses on winter weather on the East Coast and labor strife among West Coast health care workers.

But Democrats faulted President Donald Trump’s policies, including military action in Iran and reimposing tariffs after the U.S. Supreme Court said many of Trump’s taxes on foreign goods were illegal.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Friday’s report is a “blaring alarm that Donald Trump’s economy is deteriorating rapidly,” and speculated the nearly week-old war in Iran will only make things worse.

“Now we’ve seen job losses in two of the last three months and an economy teetering on the edge of recession,” Schumer said in a Friday morning statement. “Tariffs are increasing costs, gas prices are spiking, and jobs are evaporating: The Trump Republican agenda is failing the American people and without immediately changing course the economy may go over the cliff.”

The unexpected report, combined with uncertainty over the war with Iran, rattled U.S. markets Friday morning, sparking a drop across all indexes, according to a daily update from the New York Stock Exchange’s Eric Criscuolo. 

Economists had estimated a February jobs gain for the U.S. to land around 59,000, according to Criscuolo. Additionally, the report is in stark contrast to January’s figures, which showed the economy gained 130,000 jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trump officials project optimism

But the administration is brushing off negative headlines, and attributing the weak report to ice and snow storms in February and a month-long strike by Kaiser Permanente health care workers. 

“While record-breaking strikes and bad winter weather dragged down February nonfarm employment, the unemployment rate held steady, and there are several positive signs for our economy that continue to show American workers are recovering from the mess left behind by Biden,” Labor Secretary Lorie Chavez DeReemer said in a statement.

She added that the administration’s massive tax and spending cuts law enacted in July is positive for the economy.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNBC Friday, “I think what we need to start doing with these jobs numbers, at least on the payroll side, is take the average over a few months.”

“And if you take the average over a few months, we had a surprisingly positive one last month and a surprisingly negative one this one. But on average, it’s about what we expect to be seeing,” he said, adding that the sharp fall in immigration is leading to “break-even employment” in the U.S.

No growth

Economists cautioned the jobs report builds on a negative economic outlook for the country.

“While it’s never sensible to read too much into one month of data, this morning’s report showing a decline in nonfarm payrolls and an increase in the unemployment rate comes at a difficult moment, with inflation still above target and an oil price shock threatening to raise inflation further,” said Daniel Hornung, a fellow at Stanford Institute of Economic Policy Research.

“The report complicates the Fed’s efforts to keep both unemployment and inflation low, and it makes it difficult for the Administration to argue heading into the midterms that their policies are leading to the kind of growth or improvement in living standards that they’ve long promised,” Hornung, the deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden, said.

David Kelly, JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist, described the report as “weak.”

“We’re not seeing any job growth at all, really, in this economy,” Kelly told CNBC Friday morning. “But because immigration has done such a 180 here, and we’ve got a huge drop in the labor force — and that’s keeping the unemployment rate from spiking here — but it’s a very, very slow economy.”

Flocks of poultry in Dane, Jefferson and Walworth counties have been infected with highly pathogenic avian influenza, according to the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. 

The virus has been circulating across North America since 2021, infecting both wild and domesticated birds. The birds on the affected properties will be killed to prevent the further spread of disease, and DATCP has established a 10 kilometer control area around the infected premises in which the movement of poultry is restricted. 

The infected birds in Dane County were in a backyard poultry flock while in Jefferson and Walworth counties the affected birds were in commercial flocks, according to DATCP. 

Officials and farmers in Wisconsin have been managing avian flu infections since spring 2022 when outbreaks across the state shut down poultry shows, exhibits and swap meets. Last year, a dairy herd was quarantined after an infection was discovered. 

DATCP said it is monitoring farm workers at the affected facilities for signs of infection and recommends biosecurity measures to protect flocks and herds near where the current infections were found.

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Like many churches, Christ Presbyterian Church on Madison’s near east side displays “welcome” banners outside its front doors. Unlike most churches, those doors are always locked to protect the clients and staff of the Community Immigration Law Center, which works out of offices in the church. 

The locked doors are just one of the many ways CILC has been forced to change as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to massively decrease the immigrant population in the United States. 

The names of staff members are no longer publicly available on the organization’s website. Legal clinics to provide advice to asylum seekers are no longer being held because the administration has effectively stopped the asylum process. 

Already bursting at the seams of its office spaces in the church, CILC is working this year to grow its staff from eight lawyers and four paralegals to 10 lawyers and 16 paralegals in an effort to fill the gaping need across Wisconsin for immigration attorneys. 

The organization has also beefed up its rapid response capabilities, so when a community organization such as Voces de la Frontera hears about an immigration arrest, that person and their family can be quickly connected with an attorney through CILC. 

Grant Sovern, one of CILC’s co-founders, says that until the last few months, the organization was doing pretty well keeping up with cases — about 300 detention cases since Trump took office.  But with the Trump administration reversing protective orders that had been issued under President Joe Biden and continuing to upend longstanding policies, reinterpret rules and threaten the arrest of new classes of immigrants, CILC needs to do its best to make sure the government is adhering to the law and the Constitution, he adds. 

“The only chance we have for due process is applying the legal system, because the Constitution is still almost working in most of the cases,” Sovern says. “But you can’t just do that on your own. And in immigration, that’s more true because the federal government has a ton of discretion in how they apply those laws and the day-to-day workings of this immigration court.” 

CILC’s legal director, Aissa Olivarez, grew up in the Rio Grande valley near the U.S.-Mexico border. After five years teaching first grade, she attended law school at UW-Madison with the intention of practicing immigration law. She has stayed in Wisconsin because she saw a greater need here than in her home state of Texas, where there’s already robust infrastructure to assist immigrants. 

Growing up Mexican-American near the “militarized border” prepared her for all the tactics that Trump’s ICE has spread across the country, she says. But over the last year, the fear that ICE has caused in Wisconsin’s immigrant communities — particularly as surges of federal agents in neighboring Minnesota and Illinois drew headlines — has put a heavy burden on the CILC staff to be there for their clients. 

“How do we make this sustainable from an emotional point of view?” Olivarez says. She notes that she and her staff are often the first people detained immigrants meet with after their arrest. “And so oftentimes we get a long story or a lot of information that we may not need, but we know how important it is to listen, to lend an ear and to get the facts so that we can complete our mission of making sure that people get strong and good legal advice, but also the mission of just being a human in that space, and providing individuals with the space to talk, with the ability to discuss and ask questions and bring humanity.” 

But, she says, that can mean “we are carrying a very large emotional load, especially watching the way that the dismantling of people’s rights and the dismantling of our immigration courts is happening. There’s a lot of grief involved, and a lot of grief that we have to navigate, knowing oftentimes what people are facing, what they’re going through, and also worry for our own families.” 

Olivarez says it can be daunting to face the caseload, knowing there are about 1,000 days left in Trump’s term, understanding the pace is not likely to let up and trying to avoid burning out. But she feels CILC is playing an essential role for migrant communities across the state. 

“Can we keep up with that in an emotional way? Because the stakes are so high, because it means permanent separation from a family member, permanent exile from the United States, that we are well enough so that we can do the work. But we also haven’t faced this as an organization before,” she says. “And it’s really easy — because of all of the stories we hear and the people we see in these facilities — to lose hope. But I can tell you, the people who are not losing hope are the people who are being impacted. You know, they want to keep fighting. They stay strong through months and years of detention, and it’s a complete privilege and honor to be able to be trusted by the community in that way.” 

Natalia Lucak, the daughter of Czech immigrants, is CILC’s senior program manager. Lucak previously ran the organization’s asylum clinics, assisting asylum applicants with getting the proper paperwork filed to the right agencies. 

Now, she’s working with immigrants in Wisconsin — many of whom have come to the country with legal status only to lose that status because of Trump administration policy changes — to prepare for what happens if ICE arrests them. 

When Lucak started working in immigration law during President Barack Obama’s second term, “the goal and the hope was to help people stay here,” she says. Now she feels like she’s had her “wings clipped” because her job has become all about managing and assessing risk. 

Her job has become “preparing people for the possibility of being detained and advising them that you know what could happen if they’re detained, the likelihood of success in their case,” Lucak says.

“Now it’s just a very different calculus, especially when I talk to families, and as they think about, you know, what would happen to their children if they’re detained?” she says. “How would prolonged detention impact the family? And how much risk are they willing to take to stay here and just hope that things are okay when we are seeing increased detention numbers across the country and certainly in Wisconsin in the last few weeks.” 

For the first time, Lucak says she’s helping families weigh if it’s better to leave the country on their own before they get arrested and deported. There is a lot for her clients to weigh, all while they’re scared for the safety of their loved ones.  

“This administration is random. It’s just by luck that you’ve avoided [arrest] so far And that luck may run out, and who knows when? And so let’s plan,” she says. “People are crying often doing these consultations, and especially if they have kids, maybe they have U.S. citizen kids.”

The questions can be endless. 

“I’ve had various clients who have kids who are special needs, and so they’re U.S. citizens,” Lucak says. “They’re accessing certain programs here. And you’re kind of deciding, do we leave on our own? Do we uproot? Do I risk being deported and being separated from my child? Would my child stay here? My child go with me? How would my child come with me? Like even preparing, does your child have a passport? Like, does your child, if you’re gonna leave, or if you’re detained and deported, and your child needs to follow, that child needs a passport. There are all these documents you need to get in line. And so it’s really just like, do you have a family plan, who’s gonna pick up your kid if you’re detained there at school?” 

Even amid all the uncertainty, all the stress and the burden of being a small staff working out of some church offices to thwart the full weight of the federal government, Lucak says she and her colleagues plan to just keep trying to figure it out. 

“We are gonna find ways to fight and make them follow the law, make them follow due process, make them do these things,” she says. “And you know, they do have our back up to a wall because of all the power that they hold, especially when it comes to immigration.”

She adds that the staff has to be nimble “and not hold being too precious about things that worked under Biden. Like it’s not going to work anymore, and we just have to do it differently.”

Attending the State of the Union Address last month as Congresswoman Gwen Moore’s guest was, in a word, surreal.

As a child care provider and small business leader in Wisconsin, I spend my days thinking about how rising costs affect my staff and the families whose children we care for. I never imagined I would one day sit in the Capitol for an address like this.

Watching at home does not capture the scale of it: the formality, the history, the gravity of the room.

Last year, for the first time in my life, I began speaking publicly about health care affordability. For years, I relied on Affordable Care Act enhanced tax credits to afford my own coverage. When those credits expired, I watched members of my team face impossible decisions: pay dramatically higher premiums or go without health insurance altogether. That is not an abstract policy debate for us; it is a real and immediate stressor.

Congresswoman Moore invited me to share those experiences. She  and I had many conversations about the realities facing working families, including how the expiration of those tax credits is affecting millions of Americans, particularly the educators and families I see every day. We talked about the pressure of rising rent, utilities, groceries, child care and other costs, and how health care is increasingly becoming the expense that pushes families over the edge.

So when I took my seat in the Capitol, surrounded by university presidents, members of the military and leaders from across the country, I listened carefully.

I hoped to hear a serious plan to address health care costs.

Instead, health care received only brief mention in what I later learned was the longest State of the Union address in American history.

The President spoke about a “golden age” and a booming economy. But for whom? And in what parts of the country?

That’s not the reality I see.

Certainly not in the everyday lives of the people who form the foundation of our workforce: the teachers, farmers, caregivers, service workers and small business owners I interact with every day.

A golden era for a select few does not make a golden era for a country.

Not for teachers standing in classrooms.

Not for farmers working their fields.

Not for the caregivers, service workers and small business owners whose work sustains our communities.

They are the threads in the quilt that holds this country together. When policies ignore their struggles or make basic necessities like health care more expensive, those threads begin to fray.

Nearly 44% of U.S. adults say it is difficult to afford health care right now. Premiums have doubled, tripled or even quadrupled for millions of families following the expiration of enhanced ACA tax credits, a policy decision now affecting nearly 22 million Americans.

More than one million Americans have already dropped coverage, including more than 20,000  Wisconsinites.

We all know there are people behind those numbers.

They are assistant teachers deciding whether they can risk going uninsured. They are kitchen staff weighing premiums against rent. They are parents of toddlers delaying doctors’ appointments because another bill is already overdue.

In child care, those decisions ripple far beyond a single household. When educators cannot afford health care, they leave the field, and when they leave, classrooms close and parents lose the care they rely on to go to work. In that way, health care affordability is not just a personal issue; it is a workforce issue and an economic issue for the entire country.

At the same time, proposed cuts of more than $1 trillion from Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act are putting enormous pressure on the health care system itself. Across the country, over 750 hospitals, maternity wards and nursing homes are facing service cuts or closure because of these changes.

Every closure, every service reduction and every essential worker lost means higher costs, longer delays for care and greater risk for families.

None of that made it into the speech.

Meanwhile, billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1 trillion, and pharmaceutical companies reported more than $130 billion in profits last year alone.

But the working families I know are making impossible trade-offs.

I attended the State of the Union hoping to hear that relief was coming —  that health care affordability would be treated as the urgent economic issue it is for my family, the families we serve at the daycare and for all working families.

Instead, I heard a version of the economy that does not match the reality I see every day.

In our corner of America, parents are postponing appointments. Employees are calculating whether they can risk going uninsured. Small business owners are wondering how long they can keep absorbing rising costs.

Being present in the Capitol did not change that reality.

Because for those of us entrusted with caring for children and for the families who rely on us, health care affordability is not a political talking point.

It is basic survival.

And Americans do not need to be told that we are living in a golden era.

We need to feel it.

That means passing legislation, making real investments, and taking meaningful action that improves the daily lives of the people who hold this country together. It means proving, not just promising, that the American people are worth investing in.

Because a truly golden era is not measured in stock market gains or applause in a chamber.

It is measured in whether everyday families can afford to live, work and care for one another with dignity.

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WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the U.S. House Budget Committee sent a letter to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday, asking its experts to determine how much the war in Iran could cost. 

“The Constitution grants Congress both the power of the purse and the responsibility of declaring war,” Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle wrote. “A timely and comprehensive estimate from CBO will support Congress in the conduct of its constitutional responsibilities. 

“Congress should ensure we are spending taxpayer dollars to improve the quality of life for the American people, not paying for another endless war in the Middle East.”

Boyle asked the CBO to detail how much the war would cost “under several scenarios, including scenarios of the war lasting longer than 4 to 5 weeks and deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran.” 

He requested the CBO to look at possible unintended costs of the war as well, such as how would “moving an aircraft carrier from near Taiwan to off the coast of Iran impact the United States responding to potential Chinese aggression?”

And Boyle asked the CBO to detail how the war in Iran could affect prices within the United States. 

The Trump administration has not publicly disclosed how much it’s spent on the war or what it expects the total price tag will be for what is dubbed Operation Epic Fury. A spokesperson for the Department of Defense told States Newsroom, when asked about costs, that they “have nothing to provide on this at this time.” 

President Donald Trump said during an afternoon appearance at the White House that Iranian leaders called to try to negotiate an end to the war, but didn’t say if he would begin talks. 

“They’re calling. They’re saying, ‘How do we make a deal?’ I said you’re being a little bit late,” Trump said. “And we want to fight now more than they do.”

Six US troops killed

Trump launched the war on Saturday, killing Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several other top officials in that country’s government. The U.S. and Israeli militaries have continued bombing in the days since. 

Retaliation from Iran has, so far, led to the deaths of six U.S. troops, with top Defense Department officials expecting more casualties in the days and weeks ahead. 

Trump has said he expects the war could last between four and six weeks, or go longer. He hasn’t ruled out sending U.S. ground troops into Iran, though several Republican lawmakers left classified briefings earlier this week saying boots on the ground would be a step too far.  

Congress has not approved an Authorization for Use of Military Force or declared war against Iran, with both Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., saying they believe Trump’s actions are within his authority as commander-in-chief.  

Democrats, and a couple of Republicans, tried unsuccessfully this week to pull back U.S. troops by forcing floor votes on War Powers Resolutions that would have directed Trump “to remove the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran, unless explicitly authorized by a declaration of war or a specific authorization for use of military force.” 

Republicans in the House and Senate largely voted against the resolutions.

Trump expected to ask Congress for more money for Iran war

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

But several GOP lawmakers said this week they expect the Trump administration will send a supplemental spending request to Capitol Hill in the coming weeks to bolster the military’s coffers. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say Wednesday if Trump will ask lawmakers for more funding for the Iran war, though she didn’t rule it out. 

“I don’t have any updates for you on congressional asks from the president,” Leavitt said. 

Any supplemental spending request would need to pass the House and move through the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster to become law.

That would require support from at least seven Democrats in the upper chamber if all 53 GOP senators vote to advance an emergency spending bill for the war. 

State Medicaid budgets will be reduced by a total of $665 billion over the next decade, after President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts federal investment in the health insurance program, according to a new analysis.

Researchers from RAND Health, a policy and research nonprofit, analyzed state and federal data to estimate how much the loss of federal money will affect state Medicaid budgets, publishing their findings late last month. Medicaid is the public health insurance program for people with low incomes, jointly funded by state and federal money.

Overall, the net impact on state budgets, apart from their Medicaid programs, will be a reduction of $86 billion, according to the report. That number is lower than the total reduction in Medicaid budgets because while some states will have to spend more money from their general funds to cover Medicaid losses, others will have to spend less.

New federal rules such as work requirements for some Medicaid enrollees are designed to reduce the number of people on Medicaid, which means states that cover those people would no longer have to pay their share of those medical bills, saving them money. But many states use financial strategies, such as “provider taxes,” to qualify for extra federal Medicaid money. The new law limits their ability to do that, and that will force them to dip into their general funds to cover the loss of revenue.

“The effects of the law on Medicaid budgets and enrollment are substantial, but will vary widely across states, and in some cases may be at least partially offset by savings to the state general fund,” said Preethi Rao, a senior economist at RAND and lead author of the study, in a statement.

By 2034, Medicaid will have 7.6 million fewer enrollees, the authors estimated. The federal government will save about $714 billion from 2025-2034.

Arizona, Iowa and Nevada will see their Medicaid budgets reduced by more than 15%.

California and New York will see the biggest total drop in their Medicaid budgets, $112 billion and $63 billion, respectively.

At the other end of the spectrum, states that don’t rely as heavily on financing strategies like state-directed payments and provider taxes, won’t see such a significant impact. Florida is likely to see less than half a percent change to its Medicaid budget, the report found. North Dakota and Nebraska are also likely to see minimal impacts because their losses are expected to be offset by increased federal rural health funding.

State general funds in Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Kentucky could see more than a 2% savings due to lowering Medicaid enrollment or reducing the types of care covered, the report found.

A few states with small Medicaid populations are expected to see an increase in their budgets due to that rural health program funding, including Wyoming and South Dakota.

“As states plan for the upcoming changes in funding and eligibility, understanding these state-specific differences will be important,” Rao said.

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

Two dozen states asked a federal court to block the tariffs that President Donald Trump instituted last month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down his previous tariffs. 

The lawsuit, filed in the federal Court of International Trade, aims to strike down the president’s latest attempt at imposing tariffs, calling them illegal and requesting refunds to states. Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump overstepped his authority implementing sweeping tariffs last year. 

Immediately after the ruling, Trump announced a new set of tariffs based on a different law. The new tariffs use Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 and set the global tariff rate at 10%, though the administration has suggested that they intend to increase it to 15%. 

“The President is using his authority granted by Congress to address fundamental international payments problems and to deal with our country’s large and serious balance-of-payments deficits,” White House spokesman Kush Desai told States Newsroom. “The Administration will vigorously defend the President’s action in court.” 

The lawsuit contends that the statute the White House is relying on has never been put into use — and the Trump administration is applying it improperly. 

“This statute has never been used ever at all in the history of this country,” Oregon AG Dan Rayfield said on a conference call with reporters about the lawsuit. Rayfield called the law “archaic,” adding that it was originally intended to be used when the country still operated on the gold standard, which the country moved away from for a fiat system. 

In their lawsuit, the 24 states said Trump’s justification for using the law “is fatally flawed” because he redefines key terms to force the statute to authorize tariffs. Specifically, they argue, the term “balance of payments” refers to a currency crisis “that was of great concern” in the early 1970s when U.S. currency was tied directly to gold — but that doesn’t apply since the nation ended the gold standard in 1976.

Since the 1974 law was crafted to deal with issues relating to the country’s economy under a different monetary system and does not address tariffs, the AGs contend that its use is wholly illegal. 

“A trade deficit is not a ‘balance of payments’ deficit. These are not the same thing at all. The president doesn’t know the difference or he doesn’t care,” Arizona AG Kris Mayes said. “Either way, he is breaking the law again.”

The lawsuit also contends that Trump’s tariffs  violate the Constitution’s separation-of-powers principle, which was a core argument in the first tariffs lawsuit — one with which the Supreme Court agreed. 

“If he had the support of Congress, he could have legally passed his tariffs by now,” Rayfield said. “But the truth is he doesn’t have the support of Congress, nor does he have the support of the American people, and he is doing an end run.”

Although the first tariffs lawsuit took nearly a year to resolve, Mayes said the AGs are confident the recent Supreme Court ruling means they will swiftly win injunctions against the implementation of Trump’s second round of tariffs. 

“We are hoping to get a quicker decision based on the very resounding, we think, victory we achieved in the Supreme Court,” she said, adding that they are hoping for a preliminary injunction against the tariffs being implemented in the near term as the case works its way through the process. 

“I think we’re pretty confident or we would not be here,” New York AG Letitia James said, letting out a small chuckle, when asked if they believe they will be successful in this second lawsuit. 

James herself has had her own personal legal battles with Trump whose Department of Justice indicted her on two counts of bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution. 

The indictment was thrown out and two grand juries declined separate efforts by the DOJ to bring the charges back. 

“At the end of the day for us this is not about political gamesmanship — this is about making sure our communities don’t pay the price for President Donald Trump’s inability to take an L,” California AG Rob Bonta said. 

Attorneys general from the states of Arizona, Oregon, California and New York are leading the charge on the new lawsuit. They are  joined by the AGs of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin. The governors of Kentucky and Pennsylvania are also part of the new lawsuit.

WASHINGTON — House Republicans and a handful of Democrats followed the Senate in blocking a measure Thursday to stop President Donald Trump from furthering the war in Iran without authorization from Congress.

The joint war with Israel that began six days ago has already claimed the lives of six U.S. troops and injured and killed dozens of civilians across Israel and the Persian Gulf nations. Iranian officials say more than 1,000 have been killed since Saturday, according to multiple reports. 

The War Powers Resolution sponsored by Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Thomas Massie, R-Ky., failed in a 212-219 vote. Massie was the lone Republican to sign on to the measure.

Massie and Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, broke ranks with Republicans to vote in favor of limiting Trump’s hand in Iran. But Democrats Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, Jared Golden, D-Maine, Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, and Juan Vargas, D-Calif., joined the majority of Republicans in opposing the War Powers Resolution.

Golden issued a statement following the vote saying he is reluctant to support a halt to the current fighting, despite Trump’s lack of clarity.

Servicemembers are “actively engaged in hostilities, our allies are under attack and the Iranian regime is more desperate than ever to reassert its power. While I do not believe that an abrupt about-face is a good course of action given the reality on the ground, that should not be construed as my approval,” Golden said. 

Davidson wrote on social media Monday that he wants to “review the intelligence behind the Iran strikes. I’m open to being persuaded these strikes were necessary. But I do not support a regime-change war, and any boots on the ground or prolonged conflict requires authorization from Congress.”

House lawmakers otherwise split along party lines, with Republicans offering resounding support for the intervention.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., described the War Powers Resolution as a “a terrible, dangerous idea.”

During debate on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., said Trump “is utilizing his constitutional Article II authority to defend the United States of America against that imminent threat that we agree upon.”

Mast sponsored a separate, symbolic resolution reaffirming Iran as the largest state-sponsor of terrorism. The measure passed Thursday in a 372-53 vote. Two members voted present. All who voted “no” or present were Democrats.

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., who argued for the War Powers Resolution on the floor Wednesday, said the U.S. is now involved in a conflict with Iran “at President Trump’s own behest.”

“What is the strategy for preventing regional escalation, and what is the plan for the day after? What will this cost the American people? Because the American people deserve those answers, and Congress deserves a vote,” Meeks said.

House vote echoes Senate

A similar War Powers Resolution failed in the U.S. Senate Wednesday when all but one Republican, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, voted against it. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to join Republicans in opposing the measure.

Republicans, joined by Fetterman, have blocked other attempts to rein in Trump’s military interventions during his second term. A War Powers Resolution to stop Trump from further operations in Venezuela failed in the House and Senate in January. 

The U.S. apprehended Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife on Jan. 3 on drug trafficking and weapons charges. Maduro remains in U.S. custody while awaiting trial. His arrest followed months of a U.S. bombing campaign on alleged small drug boats in the Caribbean Sea that have killed more than 130 people, according to the human rights-focused Washington Office on Latin America, which has joined a chorus of critics who argue the strikes are illegal.

Congress overrode a veto by President Richard Nixon in 1973 during the ongoing Vietnam War to pass the War Powers Resolution as a check on presidential power 

Strikes continue

U.S. and Israel continued strikes on Iran Thursday. 

Trump urged all Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps members and police to lay down their arms and “accept immunity.” Otherwise, they’ll face “absolute guaranteed death,” he said at an unrelated White House event Thursday afternoon.

“We also urge Iranian diplomats around the world to request asylum and to help us shape a new and better Iran with great potential,” Trump said.

The war widened its reach as Azerbaijani officials said two drones from Iran struck an airport and other civilian targets inside the NATO ally’s borders. 

“These acts of aggression will not remain unanswered,” according to a statement Thursday from Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News Wednesday night that if the U.S. launches a ground invasion, “we are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

White House press secretary told reporters Wednesday American ground troops are “not part of the current plan” but did not rule out that it’s an option “on the table.”

All six U.S. troops killed by an Iranian drone in Kuwait Sunday have been identified by the Pentagon.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump Thursday said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will be leaving the post for a job as a special envoy, following an appearance before a U.S. Senate panel this week that provoked bipartisan criticism of her handling of the department that is tasked with fulfilling the administration’s mass deportation campaign. 

Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a Trump loyalist who has championed the president’s war against Iran, will lead the Department of Homeland Security, the president wrote on his social media site, TruthSocial.

“I thank Kristi for her service at ‘Homeland,’” Trump wrote, adding that her role ends March 31.

In a social media post, Noem wrote she looked forward to her new role as a special envoy for a new “Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere.”

In that role, she will work with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, adding that her new position will “build on the partnerships and national security expertise” that she made as DHS secretary, but did not go into detail. 

“I look forward to working with them closely to dismantle cartels that have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren,” she said, adding that the “Western Hemisphere is absolutely critical for U.S. security.” Trump said her title would be special envoy for the Shield of Americas, “our new Security Initiative in the Western Hemisphere” that will be announced at a conference in Doral, Florida, on Saturday.

As members of Congress and other officials reacted to the sudden news of Noem’s ouster Thursday, the outgoing secretary spoke at a previously scheduled event with local law enforcement leaders at a conference in Nashville. 

Noem took questions from the officials in the room, but was not asked about the shakeup and did not address it.

In a social media post, Mullin said he was grateful for the nomination and, if confirmed, would support Trump’s “mission to safeguard the American people and defend the homeland.”

“I look forward to earning the support of my colleagues in the Senate and carrying out President Trump’s mission alongside the department’s many capable agencies and the thousands of patriots who keep us safe every day,” he said. 

Senate hearing

In the heated hourslong oversight Tuesday hearing before senators, Republicans grilled Noem over handing no-bid contracts to close allies and her agency’s slow disaster relief response. 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis berated Noem for a full 10 minutes, criticizing her for a policy she instituted to require disaster relief funds over $100,000 to be approved by her, which he said created a bottleneck in approving funds to his state that is recovering from Hurricane Helene.

He slammed her leadership at DHS as a “disaster” and said it showed the same bad decisionmaking that led her to shoot and kill her 14-month-old dog named Cricket, which she detailed in her 2024 memoir. 

After the president announced Thursday that he would nominate Mullin to lead DHS, Tillis gave his support in a social media post.

“Senator Markwayne Mullin is a great guy and a great choice to lead DHS, restore competence, and refocus efforts on quickly distributing disaster aid, keeping the border secure, and targeting violent illegal immigrants for deportation,” Tillis said. “Another big positive: he likes dogs.”

Also cited were multiple video recordings that contradicted her statements that two U.S. citizens killed by her federal immigration officers in Minneapolis were “domestic terrorists.”

Senate Democrats have refused to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security, now at day 19 of a shutdown, unless certain policy changes are made to immigration enforcement tactics. A vote in the Senate to move forward on approving a funding bill for the agency failed again on Thursday, in a 51-45 vote. Sixty votes are required.

Ad campaign 

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Thursday that Trump was planning to fire Noem after she said during the Senate hearing that a special $220 million ad campaign that prominently featured her was personally signed off on by the president. 

Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy questioned Noem about her decision to award a no-bid contract for the ad campaign, in which she pressured immigrants in the country without legal authority to “self deport.” 

A ProPublica investigation found that Noem awarded the contract to the husband of former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Kennedy asked Noem if the president was aware of the cost of the ad campaign. Noem said Trump knew about it and approved it. 

According to the Wall Street Journal’s Thursday story, the president had not agreed to the campaign, and he was frustrated with its self-promoting style. 

Kennedy had mused to Noem that the ad campaign was “effective in (boosting) your name recognition.”

Minneapolis killings

Democrats have called for Noem to step down following the deaths of U.S. citizens in Minnesota, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both 37.

Noem had approved an aggressive immigration operation, sending more than 2,000 federal immigration agents to the city. The months-long operation in a city with a high Somali refugee population sparked massive protests and community pushback. 

Following Pretti’s death, the second, Trump directed White House border czar Tom Homan to take over the operations.

Cabinet departure

Noem is the first high-profile Cabinet official to leave her role, which she’s held for a little over a year. 

A similar inflection point with the Trump administration’s immigration policy occurred in the president’s first term in 2018, when huge controversy was generated when parents were separated from their children at the southern border. 

Then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was charged with implementing the policy, which was crafted by Stephen Miller, who is still a top architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Nielsen eventually resigned from her role months later.  

Back to South Dakota?

While the president said Noem will move into another role, the former governor of South Dakota could still have a future in her home state with a potential primary race against Republican Sen. Mike Rounds.

To earn a spot on the June 2 primary ballot, Noem would have to gather nominating petition signatures from 2,171 registered South Dakota voters by March 31.

If that race were to materialize, it would pit two former governors against each other. Rounds was governor of South Dakota from 2003 to 2011, and Noem served from 2019 until last year, when she resigned to join Trump’s Cabinet.

However, such a race would be an uphill battle for her as Rounds already earned a reelection endorsement from Trump in July. 

Before she was governor, Noem served in the U.S. House as South Dakota’s lone representative. She could seek a return to that position, because Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson is running for governor. 

The leading candidate for the state’s Republican nomination for U.S. House is Attorney General Marty Jackley, who lost to Noem in the 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary.

Markwayne Mullin 

Mullin, if confirmed by the Senate, would be the first Native American to lead DHS. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. 

Mullin appears to have little experience in homeland security. In the Senate, he does not sit on any committee that oversees or appropriates funds to the agency. 

He’ll be tasked with carrying out the president’s campaign promise of mass deportations, along with leading crucial agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, transportation security and cyber security, among other departments. 

He would also be taking over an agency that received a separate funding stream from Congress that provides more than $170 billion for immigration enforcement and detention, which he voted for last year. 

Mullin will have to leave the Senate in order to run the agency, if confirmed. Another former senator who serves in Trump’s cabinet, Rubio, resigned as Florida’s senator after the Senate confirmed him in a 99-0 vote. Rubio voted for himself before submitting his resignation.

In his time in the House from 2013 to 2023, Mullin sat on the Energy and Commerce, Transportation and Infrastructure and Natural Resources committees.

In the Senate, he sits on the Appropriations, Armed Services, Indian Affairs and Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committees.

During a 2023 HELP Committee hearing, Mullin challenged International Brotherhood of Teamsters President Sean O’Brien to a physical fight.

On Appropriations, he chairs the panel that handles funding for the legislative branch, and on the HELP Committee, he chairs the panel on Employment and Workplace Safety.  

He would undergo a confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, where he called the committee chair, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a “freaking snake,” and said he understood why Paul’s neighbor assaulted him, according to an Oklahoma journalist. 

Paul’s ribs were broken by his neighbor in the assault in 2017.

Seth Tupper contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans and a single Democrat blocked a War Powers Resolution Wednesday aimed at limiting President Donald Trump’s joint war with Israel in Iran that has taken the lives of six American troops and killed top Iranian leaders.

The resolution failed 47-52, with Sen. Rand Paul, R- Ky., the only Republican to cosponsor the measure, joining Democrats in challenging Trump’s war in Iran. 

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the lone Democrat to break with his party and vote against moving ahead with the measure.

The vote came five days after Trump ordered the military to join Israel in surprise strikes on Iran that killed its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pentagon officials say the administration does not plan to let up on the continuing offensive.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said earlier Wednesday that U.S. B-1, B-2 and B-52 aircraft, as well as Predator drones, will fly with Israeli airpower “day and night” to deploy “death and destruction from the sky all day long.”

Republicans have largely fallen in line to support Trump’s actions and have panned the War Powers Resolution that would compel the president to answer to Capitol Hill on moving forward in Iran. 

Democrats assert Trump’s war in Iran is illegal, violating the Constitution’s Article I power given to Congress to declare war. Republicans maintain Trump acted well within war powers granted to the president in Article II of the Constitution.

‘Members of the Senate, this is war’

The 1973 War Powers Resolution mandates the president report to Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops. If after 60 days from first notice Congress has not authorized a war or passed legislation related to the military action, the president’s use of armed forces is automatically terminated. 

Congress passed the act to rein in presidential war powers, despite a veto from President Richard Nixon amid the ongoing Vietnam War. Congress overrode the veto.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said on the floor ahead of the vote that Republicans want “to give the president an easy pass around the Constitution.”

“You can’t stand up and say, this is one and done, and no troops are engaged in hostilities against Iran. Members of the Senate, this is war. The president of the United States has called it a war against Iran,” said Kaine, who sits on the Senate Committee on Armed Services.

Kaine sponsored the War Powers Resolution alongside Paul.

Kaine said on the floor that during a classified briefing from the administration Tuesday, he asked officials if the recent pattern of military interventions in Venezuela and now Iran meant “that you believe you never need to come to Congress to wage war against anyone, anywhere.”

“No one” refuted his point, he said.

Briefings for Congress

Administration officials briefed all members of Congress Tuesday, for the first time since the war began. Officials had briefed congressional leaders and intelligence committee heads.

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who also sits on the Armed Services Committee, said ahead of the vote the Constitution “leaves no room for doubt that Congress, not the president, has the sole power to declare war.”

“And that check is in place for a very important reason. Our founders did not want to place the immense power over whether or not to go to war in the hands of just one individual,” Peters said. 

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said on the floor ahead of the vote the vast majority of presidents in American history “have ordered kinetic acts, just like President Trump has done, without going to Congress.”

“This isn’t new,” said Risch, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Lindsey Graham again lauds Trump

In lengthy comments on the Senate floor prior to the vote, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., praised Trump’s decisions on Iran and argued the War Powers Resolution violates the Constitution.

“To my Democratic colleagues, what you’re proposing will cause chaos for every commander-in-chief that follows,” said Graham, a Trump ally who has been outspoken in support of the war all week. 

Graham said if Congress wants to stop Trump’s war in Iran, it can do so by cutting funding during the annual appropriations process.

“The president, as commander-in-chief, has the ability to use our armed forces to protect our nation. And Congress, if we disagree with that choice, has the ability to terminate the action, taking the money away, and that’s the check and balance that was created a long time ago,” Graham said.

Speaker Johnson says US not at war

The U.S. House is expected to take up the War Powers Resolution Thursday. Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters multiple times this week he expects it to fail.

During a morning press conference, Johnson said he doesn’t believe the military is “at war right now” and argued that Congress limiting the president’s ability to continue attacking Iran “would put the country in serious harm.”

Johnson brushed aside the possibility that Americans may vote Republicans out of power during November’s midterm elections if the war drags on, especially without a formal authorization from Congress. 

“I think they’ll reward it politically, but if people get a bad taste in their mouth for what happened back here in the first part of the year in Iran, they just do,” he said. “But we know, and history will record that we did the right thing.”

Johnson added that he believes lawmakers voting against continued military action in Iran “would be a terrible, dangerous idea.”

A War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s military actions in Venezuela narrowly failed in January in both the House and Senate.

Ground troops?

The White House maintains Iran rejected any negotiations with the U.S. on reining in its nuclear program, and that the objective of the war launched over the weekend is to destroy Iran’s current weapons capacity and missile production, and “end their pathway to nuclear weapons,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.

The press secretary said American ground troops are “not part of the current plan” but did not rule out that it’s an option “on the table.”

Leavitt denied any claims that the goal of the offensive is regime change, despite the killing of some of Iran’s leaders.

Leavitt said during the press briefing that the U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, dubbed Operation Midnight Hammer, “obliterated Iran’s three major nuclear sites.”

“Yet the terrorist Iranian regime has remained fully committed to rebuilding its nuclear program,” she said.

Iranian authorities said in November the nation was no longer enriching uranium, according to The Associated Press. The AP further reported the reclusive government has blocked international inspectors from assessing its four nuclear enrichment facilities, citing a confidential report journalists viewed from the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Control of the skies, sinking a ship

Hegseth underlined Wednesday morning the U.S. will not slow down its offensive in Iran, already having struck 2,000 targets, and that more troops and airpower will arrive Wednesday.

The secretary said the U.S. and Israel will have “complete control of the Iranian skies” within a few days. 

Hegseth also showed a video of an apparent U.S. submarine strike in the Indian Ocean on Iran’s “prize ship,” sinking it. 

General Dan Caine, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the submarine used a single torpedo to sink the ship — the first time a U.S. submarine has done so since World War II, he said.

U.S. Central Command wrote on social media that it had “struck or sunk to the bottom of the ocean” more than 20 Iranian regime ships.

The Pentagon cited a significant decrease in Iran’s retaliatory strikes. The regime launched rockets and drones on civilian sites throughout the Persian Gulf states beginning Sunday, and on regional U.S. military bases. 

Caine said to date, Iran’s missile and drone strikes respectively dropped 86% and 73% from the first day of fighting.

A drone attack killed six U.S. troops Sunday at a commercial port in Kuwait, a U.S. ally.

Caine said the remains of the six U.S. soldiers will return to the U.S. “as soon as possible.” The Pentagon publicly identified four late Wednesday, and Caine said the military will release the names of the other two troops killed “as soon as we can ensure that all of those families have been properly notified.”

Leavitt said Trump will attend the transfer of the troops’ remains upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Hegseth bashes media

Hegseth said the Pentagon moved 90% of U.S. troops out of the range of Iran’s missile reach prior to the war.

“We’ve taken control of Iran’s airspace and waterways without boots on the ground. We control their fate, but when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news. I get it. The press only wants to make the president look bad,” he said.

Both Hegseth and Leavitt declined to provide details about a strike Saturday on an elementary school in southern Iran that local authorities said killed 168 people, many of them children.

“All I can say is that we’re investigating that. We, of course, never target civilian targets,” Hegseth said. 

When pressed on whether it was a U.S. or Israeli munition that struck the school, Hegseth replied: “We’re investigating it.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Dozens of western Wisconsin residents packed into rooms at the Eau Claire State Office Building this week for the start of a contested case hearing against the state Department of Natural Resource’s decision to grant a permit allowing Ridge Breeze Dairy to expand its operations to include 6,500 cows. 

The Pierce County dairy currently houses 1,700 cows. The expansion would make it the largest factory farm in the seven county region of Barron, Buffalo, Dunn, Pepin, Pierce, Polk and St. Croix counties. 

Local opponents to the Ridge Breeze expansion have been working against the plan since 2024, packing  public hearings and combing through public documents. The activists have uncovered inconsistencies in the dairy’s application — which first had to be sent back by the DNR because the farm’s plan for managing its manure said it would spread liquid manure on nearby fields without the permission of the property owners.

If expanded, the farm would produce 80 million gallons of liquid manure every year. 

Despite the initial application’s problems and the widespread opposition, the DNR approved the expansion in February 2025. 

Tuesday’s hearing was the beginning of the process to challenge that DNR permit decision. The contested case will be decided by Wisconsin Administrative Law Judge Angela Chaput Foy. Foy’s decision will be appealable to the state circuit court system. 

On Tuesday, activists involved in the fight against Ridge Breeze tied their work for the past two years to the recent efforts in other parts of the state by residents working to stop the construction of massive AI data centers in their communities. 

Both conflicts have brought together people of diverse political persuasions to fight outside corporate interests that try to assert the authority to build whatever they want, no matter what the ramifications are for local water, energy use, economies or quality of life. 

“Whether it’s a data center coming into your community, or a massive factory farm like Ridge Breeze, everyday people need to continue to stand together, organize and create greater change that will protect and put the power back into the hands of regular people,” Danny Akenson, an organizer with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin, said at a news conference before the hearing. 

Akenson told the Wisconsin Examiner that it’s no surprise that people of “all political stripes” are seeking basic protections for their communities against corporate extraction. 

“The reality is that rural America — and really communities of all different sizes, rural, urban, suburban — are standing up against massive corporate overreach and the extraction of wealth from their communities into the pockets of shareholders and investors,” he said. 

GRO-WW has been heavily involved in the fight against Ridge Breeze and against the growing popularity of factory farms across western Wisconsin. The organization helped connect the plaintiffs in the contested case with attorneys from Midwest Environmental Advocates to dispute the permit decision. 

Their petition against the permit asks that at the very least it be modified to make sure the DNR is monitoring the local water so the farm is held accountable if the state’s groundwater pollution rules are violated. 

“There is substantial concern as to whether Ridge Breeze can appropriately manage the manure and process wastewater it intends to generate following expansion,” the petition for review states. 

The day began with several hours of public testimony. Members of the public packed into the small conference room where the hearing was held and two overflow rooms, while dozens more watched on the Zoom stream. 

Only opponents of the farm expansion testified, largely rehashing the arguments they’ve made against the expansion for years — that it doesn’t have an adequate manure spreading plan, that the farm traffic will be too loud, that the farm’s location will harm local trout streams and that the already high level of nitrates in the local groundwater will only be made worse.  

Juliet Tomkins, a retired agricultural lawyer who operates a small Pierce County farm, questioned how the judge would feel if the case were about her drinking water.

“I would like you to think about how you would feel if the regulator of your water supply that keeps you and your family and your loved ones safe failed to keep 80 million gallons of contaminants annually out of your water supply because the regulators inadequately reviewed the contamination procedures, and the result of this inadequate oversight was the permanent contamination of your water, the groundwater, for generations to come,” Tomkins said.

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WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans spent a Wednesday oversight hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasting local governments for policies that limit immigration cooperation, while Democrats slammed her leadership of the department, saying it led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. 

House Republicans were more friendly to Noem than GOP senators who on Tuesday pressed, and at times yelled at, her for her quick judgment in labeling those killed in Minneapolis — Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, and Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse — as domestic terrorists. Senators were also critical of slow responses from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

At the House Judiciary Committee hearing, Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio blamed the Biden administration for immigration policies Jordan said created a crisis and slammed local jurisdictions that decline to assist the federal government in immigration enforcement, often referred to as sanctuary cities. 

He referred to that as “the dumbest policy I have ever heard,” and vowed that Congress would ban it.

During the nearly six-hour hearing, Noem said she agreed, and supported Republicans’ efforts to move forward with legislation to prevent states and local governments from resisting immigration enforcement.

“Illegal aliens that come into this country know where they can go where elected officials will protect them,” she said.

Republicans also criticized Democrats for refusing to approve funding for the Department of Homeland Security for fiscal year 2026 unless there are changes to immigration enforcement tactics. Democrats took a hard line on the issue following Pretti’s death in late January. 

The House Wednesday voted 211-209 to advance a DHS funding bill. A final vote is expected Thursday. 

‘Blankie’ left on jet

The top Democrat on the panel, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, took up a litany of issues with Noem, starting with a report from the Wall Street Journal that detailed how special government employee and top Noem adviser Corey Lewandowski fired a U.S. Coast Guard pilot after Noem’s blanket was left behind on a prior flight. 

The pilot had to be rehired because no one else could fly the plane, according to the WSJ story. 

“Apparently when your special blanket, your blankie, was left on one of the government jets and not transported over to the new one, your special government employee, Corey Lewandowski, chivalrously stepped forward to fire the pilot — mid-air,” Raskin said. “But then he had to be rehired immediately because there was no one else who could fly the two of you on the rest of the journey home.”

Noem denied the story.

Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, pressed Noem about multiple media reports that she currently has a romantic relationship with Lewandowski and raised concerns about how much authority Lewandowski has at the agency.

“You go off and you attack conservative women, and you say that we’re either stupid or we’re sluts,” Noem said, but did not answer if she was having an affair. 

Moskowitz also said he got Noem a “new Coast Guard blankie” and held up a packaged blanket with the emblem of the Coast Guard.

FEMA problems

As in Tuesday’s Senate hearing, Noem was again grilled by a North Carolina lawmaker over delays in FEMA assistance, with Democratic Rep. Deborah K. Ross filling the role Wednesday.

Ross said that thousands of residents in western North Carolina are still waiting for Noem to approve additional FEMA funding that Congress provided in a separate disaster relief funding law after Hurricane Helene in 2024.  

“These delays in paying out this desperately needed recovery funds are simply unacceptable, and you heard that from my Republican senator, (Thom) Tillis, yesterday,” Ross said. 

Ross slammed Noem for instituting a policy to require any FEMA contract costing more than $100,000 to be approved by her first. 

Ross said that policy “has contributed to many of these delays, creating a bottleneck, blocking reimbursement for hundreds of millions of dollars of disaster funding that stand directly between North Carolinians and that relief.” 

Noem blamed former President Joe Biden for not sending disaster relief money to the state, saying he “failed North Carolina,” and that the state had received billions more under the Trump administration.

“Because we appropriated the money!” Ross shouted. 

In late December 2024, Congress passed a separate disaster relief package that Biden signed into law in the final month of his term.

Minneapolis questions

Noem was pressed by Raskin about referring to Good and Pretti, both 37 years old and shot and killed by federal immigration agents, as domestic terrorists. 

“I want to give you a chance before the entire country to correct your false and defamatory claim based on what you know today, Madam Secretary, were Renee Good and Alex Pretti domestic terrorists?” Raskin asked. 

Noem did not answer repeated questions from Raskin if she believed Good and Pretti were domestic terrorists, but said “what happened in Minnesota in those two incidents was an absolute tragedy.”

Editor’s note: This is the first report in an ongoing series.

The patient came in with a belly full of blood, Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung recalled. Her pregnancy was ectopic, no longer viable, and could have killed her if left untreated. But when she went to a mobile pregnancy help center offering free care in an RV in St. Louis, she was told the pregnancy could be saved.

By the time she saw Zahedi-Spung days later, her fallopian tube had ruptured.

In North Lauderdale, Florida, Ieshia Scott was pregnant and in the throes of postpartum depression. She thought she’d arrived at an abortion clinic. She told the staff she might hurt herself if she had another baby. They told her God would give her strength.

A woman and her partner in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, went to a pregnancy help center by mistake. When they made it to a Planned Parenthood clinic across the street, the pregnant patient handed Dr. Kristin Lyerly a copy of the sonogram. But the scan was not of her uterus. It was her bladder.

All three patients had gone to crisis pregnancy centers, organizations that advertise free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds but dissuade women from pursuing abortions and contraceptive options. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ended national abortion access in June 2022, the centers have seen an infusion of taxpayer dollars in many Republican-led states. But medical experts have urged lawmakers to reconsider the state support, as the centers can endanger public health by “causing delays in accessing legitimate health care,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. 

States Newsroom conducted a 50-state investigation examining state and federal budgets, as well as the tax records of these organizations, finding that while the magnitude of public funding for them is growing, oversight is not. 

Twenty-one states funneled nearly a half-billion dollars, or $491 million, of taxpayer money to crisis pregnancy center organizations between fiscal years 2022 and 2025. That figure does not include millions some states diverted from federal programs like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and it does not include multimillion-dollar tax credit programs launched after federal protections for abortion rights were overturned. 

Nearly $1.3 billion in local, state or federal government grants were awarded to 1,259 crisis pregnancy centers in total between 2019 and 2024, according to States Newsroom’s analysis of tax records. The actual figure may be higher, as digital records are not comprehensive or entirely up to date.

Yet that largesse hasn’t been matched by corresponding regulation. Oversight of taxpayer funding remains weak, either blocked by legislators or ignored by state agencies. 

The centers are most often faith-based nonprofits that say they provide much-needed support for pregnant clients at no cost. An estimated 2,633 crisis pregnancy centers were operating in the United States as of March 31, 2024, according to research from the University of Georgia. 

John Mize, CEO of Americans United for Life, argues that pregnancy centers are important for people who really don’t want an abortion, and for anyone who regrets their abortion to find support. 

“I am strongly of the opinion that most women that have abortions do it because they don’t feel like they have any other option,” Mize said.

But critics and researchers say the pregnancy centers mislead potential clients about their services or pose as medical clinics despite lacking proper licensure. They sometimes promote treatments like abortion pill reversal, which is unproven and potentially dangerous. 

“Often, patients are lured in by this idea of getting free care,” said Dr. Rachel Jensen, Darney-Landy complex family planning fellow at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “It’s free, because it’s often subsidized by taxpayer dollars. Free health care sounds amazing. It should be available to all people. But the problem is, then, that the CPCs are unregulated — and they operate outside of ethical principles and best care practices.”

Firsthand accounts: ‘What’s your plan for this pregnancy?’ Comfort, shame and a missed diagnosis

Indiana state Sen. Shelli Yoder, a Democrat, said access to maternal health care in her state continues to decrease while support for crisis pregnancy centers increases. Indiana boosted its budget for the centers from $250,000 in 2021 to $2 million, then doubled it to $4 million by 2024. The state’s maternal mortality rate is among the worst in the country. 

“It’s not that these centers don’t serve a purpose. But they certainly are not a replacement for maternal health care, and they are not health care centers, and yet our state is using taxpayer money to fund them as if they are,” Yoder said. “And we are sending a message to moms, or to women, that they are health care centers, and they are not.”  

Zahedi-Spung was working an emergency room shift in 2019 at a St. Louis hospital, not too far from the pregnancy center housed in an RV and frequently parked in front of a Planned Parenthood clinic. She said she was horrified to learn the patient with the ruptured ectopic pregnancy had been told at the mobile crisis pregnancy center a few days before that it could be saved. A tubal ectopic pregnancy is never viable.

Today, Zahedi-Spung works in Colorado as a high-risk OB-GYN. But that experience in the ER still haunts her.

“They’re a private organization providing medical care without a medical license, so they are not liable for anything they tell anyone,” she said.

Andrea Trudden, spokesperson for Heartbeat International, one of the largest pregnancy center networks in the U.S., said that as of 2025, more than 75% of Heartbeat affiliates offer medical services and are different from pregnancy resource centers, which offer parenting classes and material aid but not medical services.

“Medical affiliates that provide limited obstetrical ultrasound or other services follow applicable state laws, professional standards, and clinical protocols,” Trudden said in a written statement.

According to a report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, 37% of 2,775 crisis pregnancy centers provided testing for sexually transmitted infections, and 29% provided STI treatment in 2024. The institute, which is the research arm of one of the largest anti-abortion policy groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, found that 81% of surveyed centers provided ultrasound services in 2024. The report notes that 28% of paid center staff have medical licenses, along with 12% of volunteers.

The only option for miles

In North Florida’s largely rural Wakulla County, there are no full-time practicing OB-GYNs. Wakulla Pregnancy Center is in Crawfordville, the county seat of about 4,800 people. Many women in the area lack transportation, said the center’s director, Pam Pilkinton. They have to travel about 20 miles north to Tallahassee for prenatal care.

Run by a local ministry, the center has a blue-and-white sign that advertises “Free Pregnancy Tests.” Inside, a cozy living room furnished with sofas leads to a counseling room and donation space, where moms peruse a range of free baby clothes and supplies. Most of the center’s clients have low incomes, and are on Medicaid or uninsured.

When Florida passed a six-week abortion ban in 2023, legislators simultaneously increased state funding for crisis pregnancy centers by 455% — from $4.5 million to $25 million. The following legislative session, they added another $4.5 million. 

The funds go to the Florida Pregnancy Care Network, which manages contracts with more than 100 crisis pregnancy centers across the state. The organization is required to report the amount and types of services provided and the expenditures to the governor and state legislature once a year. But it is not required to make any noncompliance findings public. 

The public money for centers in Florida doesn’t end there. Wakulla Pregnancy Center received a separate allocation in the 2025 budget of $136,000. According to the funding request, $60,000 is allocated for a building asbestos issue, and $58,000 pays for the salary and benefits of the executive director and client coordinator. The rest is for pregnancy tests, educational materials, ultrasound referrals and other supplies. 

But Pilkinton is clear about one point: The center does not provide medical care in this maternal health care desert. 

“We’re not a medical facility, and that is something that we let everyone know up front,” Pilkinton said. “We provide material support, education, information and peer counseling.”

That doesn’t include practices like referring a patient to an OB-GYN for prenatal care after a positive test, for example, “because we’re not a medical facility,” she said.

Wakulla County’s severe maternal hospitalization rates ranked among the worst in the state in 2023 and 2024.

Like in other states, maternal health care has continued to flounder in Florida — and shortages are likely to worsen. Nearly half of 1,500 OB-GYNs who responded to a state survey say they plan to stop delivering babies within the next two years. 

The money Florida allocated for pregnancy centers might have covered more maternity care across the state, said Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani.

“We do need to strengthen our safety nets when it comes to supporting new moms,” Eskamani said. “Instead of addressing those gaps and investing in those areas, we continue to dole out millions of dollars to these unregulated and often religiously affiliated anti-abortion centers that are not addressing any of these disparities.”

In previous legislative sessions, Eskamani filed bills to repeal state funding and introduce regulation of existing centers. The bills have yet to receive a hearing, but she and her colleagues have filed them again.

“These not-for-profit organizations run with very little federal or state oversight, and sometimes they don’t even have licensed medical staff on site,” she said. “At this point, it’s a blank check.”

Big checks, little oversight

Much of the state funding for pregnancy centers did not exist before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ended federal protections for abortion rights in June 2022. 

Conservative-led states — such as Texas — that already allocated tens of millions to pregnancy centers have doubled or tripled their budgets for pregnancy resource groups since 2022. In Missouri, lawmakers have budgeted nearly $50 million since fiscal year 2022 from the general fund and federal block grant dollars. Texas’ allocation ballooned from $140 million in fiscal years 2024 and 2025 to $180 million in 2026 and 2027. 

In southwest Missouri, Republican state Rep. Christopher Warwick’s support of the centers is a focus of his reelection campaign.

“I think it’s important that we fund organizations that are willing to save life,” he said.

Read more: Federal funding for people in poverty heading to anti-abortion centers instead

Louisiana lawmakers directed $4 million from the state’s general fund to pregnancy centers for 2025, as part of its Pregnancy and Baby Care Initiative. But an audit found the state doled out the maximum amount per center allowed by state law — $100,800 — to most of the groups without requiring them to fully document how they spent it.

Auditors were concerned Louisiana paid the centers more than the cost of the actual services provided.

In Oklahoma, state auditors discovered in 2022 that an anti-abortion nonprofit called Oklahoma Pregnancy Care Network disbursed less than 7% of the $1.6 million it promised to nonprofits under the state’s Choosing Childbirth program. A month and a half before its contract was scheduled to end, the group had served 524 women, less than 6% of the 9,300 Oklahoma women it initially projected it would serve. An administrator with the nonprofit told The Oklahoman she was unaware there were problems.

Despite those findings, state lawmakers later directed nearly $18 million — a quarter of the state health department’s entire budget — toward Choosing Childbirth through November 2027. More than $4 million of it went to the Oklahoma Pregnancy Care Network. The network did not respond to States Newsroom’s requests for comment.

Inner workings

Lyerly, the OB-GYN in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, said the couple with the mislabeled sonogram came into her Planned Parenthood clinic in the early months of 2022. It wasn’t uncommon for patients with appointments at Planned Parenthood to accidentally go to the crisis pregnancy center across the street. This couple sought an abortion, she said, but came in with the ultrasound image of the woman’s bladder rather than her uterus. On top of the mislabeled ultrasound, they felt misled, because they were told the pregnancy was just a few weeks along when it was much more advanced.

“This was a challenging situation for them, was emotional and frustrating and upsetting to them, and it was so unnecessary,” said Lyerly. She stopped providing abortions in Wisconsin later that year when a state law banning the procedure went back into effect after the Dobbs decision.

Many centers are affiliated with umbrella organizations, including Care Net, Heartbeat International (formerly Alternatives to Abortion International) and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, but often do not disclose that connection on their website. The parent companies provide guidance for operations, including yearly conferences, along with training for limited ultrasounds and other services. Training and funding for many of these centers’ ultrasound programs also come from national religious groups like Focus on the Family and the Knights of Columbus.

Heartbeat International is the largest of the three, with more than 4,000 affiliated service providers across the U.S. and in more than 100 countries, according to Trudden.

Trudden said Heartbeat International offers professional training and practical resources for affiliates, who determine their own governance, leadership and location and must agree to a set of standards also shared by Care Net and the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates. Those standards include practicing honesty and confidentiality with clients and complying with all legal and regulatory requirements. 

Some pregnancy centers are staffed with licensed professionals trained in sonography. The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates says it has trained more than 6,000 health care professionals “in the medical and legal ‘how to’s’ of limited obstetrical ultrasound.” But at its national conference last year, leaders discouraged centers from performing ultrasounds on women who they suspect have ectopic pregnancies to avoid liability. The guidance came in the wake of a lawsuit against a Massachusetts center, in which the plaintiffs alleged that center staff failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured, prompting emergency surgery. The clinic reached a settlement with the patient. 

Some centers offer more medical services, like prenatal support and testing and treatment for STIs, such as Idaho’s Stanton Healthcare, which is accredited by the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care and does not receive any public funding. 

“We have caught ectopic pregnancies. … I can think of three in the last eight months off the top of my head,” said Angela Dwyer, Stanton’s director of client services. 

But advocacy groups such as Campaign for Accountability have raised alarms about how many clinics do not have to follow federal health privacy laws, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA.

Clinics that offer free services and do not bill insurance face no penalty for disclosing a client’s information. 

In contrast, Jessica Scharfenberg, CEO of Healthfirst Network in central Wisconsin, said if any of her 10 reproductive health clinics violated HIPAA, they would face steep federal fines and possible jail time for staffers. 

“If my entity broke HIPAA, we would have federal consequences, even though we also have an internal policy for it,” Scharfenberg said. “They have their internal policies. They break HIPAA, there’s no consequences for it.”

The websites of some centers give the appearance of being HIPAA compliant even though they aren’t, States Newsroom has reported. 

The other two main umbrella organizations did not respond to multiple requests for comment by email and phone. 

‘So much help’

In North Lauderdale, Ieshia Scott would stare at her 6-month-old, unable to hold the baby when she cried. Scott, who also had a 10-year-old, felt overwhelmed by a constant cloud of stress and sadness, all while trying to keep up with college classes.

When she found out she was pregnant again, Scott searched for an abortion clinic in the city, and a pregnancy resource center came up in the search results. That 2018 visit would last nearly three hours, during which she fielded dozens of questions about why she wanted an abortion. Scott had suicidal thoughts and was depressed but felt totally unheard. 

“I really was disregarded,” said Scott, now 36. “I was actually saying to her, like — ‘I don’t know, I might hurt myself, I might hurt the baby.’”

The center didn’t refer her to a psychiatrist, therapist or OB-GYN. The staff member instead reminded her of the Ten Commandments.

“I’m literally telling her, I can’t — I can’t do it. And she was like, ‘You can, you can. And there’s so much help.’”

Mental health is a contributing factor in about 23% of the nation’s maternal deaths, reports from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

Scott eventually went to a clinic to get the care she needed. But she worries for women who can’t. 

More than a dozen states passed abortion bans after Dobbs, and efforts continue nationwide to dismantle what access remains. Several states with abortion bans — including Missouri, South Carolina and Texas — have moved to cut Planned Parenthood out of state Medicaid programs as well, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that excluding the organization did not violate Medicaid’s provision requiring freedom of choice in providers. Florida legislators are also discussing cutting Planned Parenthood out of the state Medicaid program.

In 2025, at least 51 Planned Parenthood locations closed or limited medical services after losing state and federal support. Those communities lost access not only to abortion services but also to other reproductive and primary medical care. Independent clinics such as Maine Family Planning stopped offering primary care services for about 600 patients because of a funding loss of about $1.9 million, even though none of the Medicaid dollars were used for abortion.

‘Government handouts’

Lawmakers are not only opening public coffers to provide direct financial support to pregnancy centers, but they’re also creating tax breaks, drawing on federal sources and shifting funds meant to help low-income families to aid the anti-abortion organizations — with few regulations.

Some legislators have resisted stronger oversight. 

In Missouri, state Rep. Warwick opposed a colleague’s suggestion to require the centers to report how they spend their donations in a tax credit program, saying he wanted to limit bureaucracy. He said in a February 2025 legislative hearing that the tax credit keeps the state from having to “verify what programs work.” 

“I don’t think they’re funded enough to be able to mishandle their money,” he told States Newsroom in December. “At least not the ones I’m familiar with.”

Warwick proposed raising the tax credit for pregnancy center donations from 70% to 100% in 2025, meaning someone donating to a pregnancy center could reduce their state tax bill by the exact amount donated. 

The credits that Missourians redeemed shot up from about $2 million to an average of more than $7 million per year after lawmakers removed a cap on credits in 2021, according to a fiscal note attached to Warwick’s bill. State officials estimated a 100% tax credit just for pregnancy center donations would cost the state more than $10.7 million in the first year.

Missouri also funnels more than $2 million per year in state and federal dollars to pregnancy resource centers and similar organizations through its Alternatives to Abortion program. That’s in addition to what the centers receive from Missouri’s federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families fund — $10.3 million in this fiscal year.

Although Warwick’s 100% pregnancy center tax credit failed, he plans to try again in this year’s session. “I don’t think it (a 100% tax credit) would significantly hurt the state, especially when we’re talking about protecting life, protecting the birth of children,” he said.

Nebraska Sen. Joni Albrecht, a Republican who also sponsored a six-week abortion ban, said the centers were a valuable investment when she sought to create a $10 million tax credit program that was revised down to $1 million in 2024. 

Of the 13 pregnancy centers approved for tax credits in Nebraska, four provided less than $150,000 in services, according to tax returns, and one had three consecutive state audit reports with findings of deficiencies in controlling and complying with federal grant funding requirements.

In Montana, a state without an abortion ban, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte found another way to give taxpayer money to pregnancy centers by donating a portion of his annual salary. In 2020, he pledged to give his salary to nonprofit organizations and charities, and has for the past three years included pregnancy centers in that list for a total of more than $60,000.

Idaho state Sen. Ben Adams, a Republican who sponsored a bill to establish a grant fund of $1 million for crisis pregnancy centers in 2025, told States Newsroom he felt it was important to put resources into helping people choose to have a baby. 

“We have, for a very long time, primarily through the federal government, essentially funded abortion through funding for Planned Parenthood and all these different organizations,” Adams said. “We say we’re going to restrict a woman’s access to abortion and that we’re pro-life. Well then, we actually have to be investing in those folks who are choosing life and show them that we mean it when we say we want them to choose life.”

For decades, the Hyde Amendment, a provision Congress has renewed annually, has prohibited the use of federal funding for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest and to save the mother’s life.

Idaho is one of a few states with an abortion ban that isn’t providing government support for crisis pregnancy centers. Adams’ bill failed by one vote in committee and faced opposition from many constituents, including a former board chairman of a crisis pregnancy center in Idaho who said subsidizing nonprofit entities with taxpayer dollars is not the proper role of government.

“Providing taxpayer funds on either side of this moral question is inappropriate,” said John Crowder in his testimony to the legislative committee, prefacing his comments by saying he is a Christian who believes life begins at conception. “Such decisions to lend financial support should be left to churches and individuals, not the government.”

Based on his knowledge of the finances of that center, Crowder said, it was clear they could meet the goals of their mission with the donations they received and “without government handouts.” 

Stateline reporter Amanda Watford contributed to this report. 

This story is part of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by the Commonwealth Fund.

States Newsroom’s investigation is ongoing. If you have had an experience with a crisis pregnancy center, please get in touch at cpcproject@statesnewsroom.com.

METHODOLOGY: To identify government grant funding received by nonprofit crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), a team of States Newsroom reporters used multiple data sources. Reporters reviewed state and federal budgets and legislation to identify public funding allocated to CPCs between 2019 and 2025, with a particular focus on the period following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in June 2022, as well as in prior years, as applicable. The team did not include federal funding from sources such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in the nationwide analysis, and state tax credit programs were also excluded.

Data reporter Amanda Watford cleaned and analyzed a publicly available dataset of CPCs originally collected by the nonprofit advocacy group Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch. Organizations that appeared to be permanently closed or did not report enough revenue to file a full IRS Form 990 were removed from the States Newsroom analysis. Watford extracted filings from ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer for about 2,000 organizations, covering 2019 to 2025. Government grant totals were only available for 217 organizations for 2023 and 2024 due to data infrastructure limitations. A separate analysis using the GivingTuesday 990 database captured basic financial and government grant data for 1,243 organizations between 2019 and 2023. Watford combined the 2019-2023 GivingTuesday data and 2023-2024 ProPublica data. The total amount of government funding provided to CPCs was calculated for each year, yielding a grand total of nearly $1.3 billion across 1,259 CPCs between 2019 and 2024.

This analysis is not comprehensive. Some IRS Form 990 filings were unavailable digitally, and some organizations did not report any government grant funding, so grant funding reported outside the available electronic filings was not fully captured. Financial information available through IRS Form 990 filings is self-reported by organizations to the IRS and is not independently audited. Additionally, there is a lag between when organizations are expected to file returns and when filings are publicly available. Due to these factors, the States Newsroom  findings likely undercount the total amount of public, government funding directed to CPCs. An estimated 2,633 CPCs were operating in the United States in 2024, according to research from the University of Georgia.

The bulk of the money Missouri gives to its crisis pregnancy centers comes from federal funds meant to assist families experiencing poverty with basic necessities and child care, Republican Rep. Jason Smith said on the U.S. House floor in January.

As many as $3 of every $4 for pregnancy centers in Missouri was from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program in 2024, and in the 2026 fiscal year, it will be $2 out of $3. The amount of TANF funding has steadily increased since 2022, from $4.3 million then to $10.3 million in fiscal year 2026. 

At least eight states have given TANF funds to crisis pregnancy centers in recent years, even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortion rights in 2022. According to data from the consulting firm Health Management Associates, more than $102 million from TANF went to the centers in those eight states between 2017 and 2023, including $22.5 million in Ohio, $11.75 million in Indiana and $12 million in Texas. 

The federal government gives TANF funds to each state as a lump sum, and states get to decide how to spend it. There are broad rules for how the funds can be used, but federal law specifies they should assist with facilitating housing or employment; prevent and reduce “out-of-wedlock pregnancies”; and help form and maintain two-parent families. The U.S. House passed a bill in January that would explicitly lay out that crisis pregnancy centers can be a recipient of the funds. It hasn’t been taken up by the Senate yet.

Diana Rodin, associate principal at Health Management Associates, said block grants like the ones associated with TANF can be used broadly, and there isn’t much oversight after the funds are distributed. 

“You have some states that might say in their state plan, ‘We are spending this much on our Alternatives to Abortion program,’ but there’s some states where it’s going to them (crisis pregnancy centers), but there’s nothing you can find,” Rodin said. 

Conservative advocacy groups and lawmakers say anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers provide many free goods and services and are deserving of TANF funds. 

Former Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration proposed regulatory changes that would have required states to show how allocations to pregnancy centers accomplished the purpose of TANF but withdrew them in early January 2025, shortly before Republican President Donald Trump was sworn in. 

On the House floor, Smith said that if the Biden administration had been successful, it would have been detrimental. Yet most crisis pregnancy centers do not provide any medical services beyond nondiagnostic ultrasounds and do not provide prenatal care from physicians. 

“Think of what would’ve happened to maternal care in this country,” Smith said. “One of the few places women can get care and support would have been closed.”

More money on the way

Crisis pregnancy centers are nonprofit organizations, often affiliated with religious groups, that have a mission of preventing people from terminating a pregnancy. A nationwide States Newsroom analysis found that 21 states funneled nearly a half-billion dollars in public money to crisis pregnancy center organizations between 2022 and 2025, and more in the form of tax credit programs. That figure did not include the millions in TANF distributions allocated by those eight states. 

More pregnancy centers are also tapping into federal sources, such as grants for abstinence-only education programs, teen pregnancy prevention, and U.S. Housing and Urban Development funds. 

Read our investigation: Taxpayer dollars flood pregnancy centers. Oversight hasn’t followed.

Medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, object to the misleading and deceptive practices of many pregnancy centers. Federal audits have also shown that some are not properly managing the public funds they receive.

Two centers in California and Washington identified in States Newsroom’s analysis doubled the amount of grants received for abstinence-focused sex education programs in the past two years, according to federal records. In Louisiana, the Department of Children and Family Services shifted $2.26 million in TANF funds to its pregnancy center grant program for fiscal year 2026 after lawmakers cut the program’s state funding by the same amount because more than two-thirds of it went unused, according to a recent state audit.

Millions more in federal dollars are likely to be accessible if the Trump administration changes rules for Title X family planning funding, as it did during the first term in 2019, allowing organizations to receive funds without offering birth control. Under current rules, Title X requires clinics to prescribe birth control and provide other family planning services to low-income populations for free or at low cost. Most pregnancy centers do not prescribe or refer for birth control, which is considered an essential aspect of reproductive health care by the medical community. 

Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, said she and her staff are prepared for the administration to propose a rule change that would allow providers to not offer or refer for birth control, abortion or other family planning services as a condition of receiving the funding. 

“We’re expecting it any day now,” she said. 

Crisis pregnancy centers and other anti-birth control organizations will be better prepared to apply for the funding if the change is adopted, Coleman said. “And that’s not something our folks really had to deal with before, so we’re quite concerned.”

Audit finds mismanagement

Federal records show millions of federal dollars flow to crisis pregnancy centers under the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program, which focuses on abstinence and relationship development for teens. Some states apply for the grant dollars, but individual organizations can also apply for a portion of the funding in a competitive award process. 

A major recipient is The Obria Group and its affiliates, including RealOptions in California. Obria, a chain of pregnancy centers that offers some medical services like testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, operates largely in states with strong protections for reproductive rights. Those states typically do not provide state funding for pregnancy centers, but the centers have tapped into federal funding. Under the first Trump administration, Obria received a $1.7 million grant from the Title X program, with the possibility of two more years of funding for a total of $5.1 million, despite Obria’s unwillingness to provide birth control. 

Obria did not respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom.

RealOptions has received nearly $4 million in Title V funding for an abstinence-only education program since 2020, federal records show, including $900,000 in 2024 and 2025 — double the amount received in prior years. 

 

 

A routine federal audit published in October found RealOptions had placed more than $127,000 of the funding in the wrong budget year. The company did not have adequate policies and procedures for ensuring federal awards were tracked, according to the audit, and RealOptions also failed to complete a form detailing how grant funds were spent as required by law.

In their findings, auditors said the lack of sufficient oversight on the funds created a “high risk” that the company would be out of compliance with federal regulations, and the errors would not be caught or corrected in a timely manner.

RealOptions did not respond to questions from States Newsroom about the audit.

Sex ed funding  

In Washington state, a crisis pregnancy center called Life Choices of Yakima runs a program with abstinence-focused funding called Think Twice Yakima. It has received at least $335,000 per year in Title V federal funding for the program since 2019, and partners with several local schools to administer the curriculum. In early December, the website included the logo of the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families in a list of its partners. 

When States Newsroom reached out to the state agency to ask about the partnership, spokesperson Nancy Gutierrez said it was not a partner, and the organization was asked to remove the logo, which it did. 

Life Choices of Yakima did not respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom. 

Like many of the abstinence programs, Life Choices uses a curriculum from the Dibble Institute, a nonprofit organization in Berkeley, California, that provides a spectrum of sex education materials for licensing. Kay Reed, president and executive director of the institute, said clients include Planned Parenthood and centers like Life Choices, as well as various universities and colleges. The Dibble Institute recently released an abstinence-only curriculum to align with executive orders from the Trump administration. 

The funding, Reed said, dates back to former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. 

“It’s been around a long time, and it’s part of the push and pull between Republicans and Democrats,” she said. 

But the curriculum has grown more restrictive now than with prior administrations, Reed said, pushing for abstinence only “until marriage.” 

Federal housing dollars

Other crisis pregnancy center groups are moving into less common areas of federal funding. Georgia Wellness Group received $450,000 from U.S. Housing and Urban Development block grant funds in July to help build a maternity home in the Atlanta area. County commissioners approved the grant despite vocal opposition from community members, who called it a fake clinic and alleged it deceives people about its true anti-abortion intentions. 

At a public hearing in August, Georgia Wellness CEO Robin Mauck said the grant will be used to purchase a residential home to accommodate up to six women and their children for up to eight months after birth. In January, the group applied for nearly $636,000 in new HUD grant funding for the 2026 cycle, which is under consideration by the county. 

Firsthand accounts: ‘What’s your plan for this pregnancy?’ Comfort, shame and a missed diagnosis

The organization used to be affiliated with The Obria Group, a national chain of crisis pregnancy centers that has been criticized for its practices, including by a former leader of the organization. Mauck said at the August hearing that it was a relationship they used to help them “transition to prenatal care.” 

In addition to the HUD dollars, Georgia Wellness Group received more than $1.27 million from the Title V Sexual Risk Avoidance Education program between 2021 and 2023, and another $445,000 in 2024. U.S. Rep. Lucy McBath, a Georgia Democrat, helped the organization apply for the federal funding that year with a letter of support, when it was still affiliated with Obria Medical Clinics. The program received another grant of the same amount in 2025.

Attorneys for Georgia Wellness Group sent cease-and-desist letters to people for tying them to Obria during public hearings and for saying the group misleads patients about the services they provide. One of those letters was sent to Allison Glass, state campaign director for the Amplify Georgia Collaborative, a group of reproductive rights advocacy organizations. She shared a copy with States Newsroom.

“There’s a huge housing need in Georgia, and especially around Atlanta, for affordable housing, but that should not come with the shame and deception,” Glass said. “They are so good at being so deceptive about who they are and truly what kind of services they provide and what credentials they have, that they really have unfortunately been able to really dupe a lot of stakeholders and decision-makers in Georgia.” 

Glass said this is the first time she and other advocates know of in which a crisis pregnancy center has received HUD funding. 

Mauck did not respond to a request for comment from States Newsroom. 

The group is one of few crisis pregnancy centers that says it has medical professionals who are fully licensed and overseen by a board-certified OB-GYN, offering many more health services, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and prenatal care. But Georgia Wellness does not list birth control as an offered service, only IUD removal. 

A former medical director for the organization, Dr. Marc Jean-Gilles, has said the clinic is misleading people about its ability to provide obstetrical care, because it does not have admitting privileges and patients are told to seek emergency services elsewhere when they are in labor. He also said surrounding hospitals refuse to coordinate care with the organization because of alleged unethical practices. Those statements were read aloud at the August public hearing to approve the first installment of HUD funding.  

Jean-Gilles told States Newsroom in February that he has no problem with the organization receiving HUD funding if they are using it to shelter people, but from a patient safety standpoint, he said all clinics providing prenatal care should be able to coordinate with local hospitals. 

“My whole take is, it doesn’t matter if you’re a crisis pregnancy center or not. I think when you delve into the realm of prenatal care and delivery, if you can’t provide a provider who’s going to deliver … then you’re doing a disservice to the patients,” Jean-Gilles said. 

Grant Adams, a staff member at Georgia Wellness, said any allegations that the organization misleads anyone about its clinical capabilities are false, as are claims that the youth outreach program is “abstinence only.” During the August public hearing, Adams, who teaches the program to Atlanta-area middle and high school students, said the curriculum includes “medically accurate information about contraception” and tells young people about the risks of early sexual activity so they can make healthy decisions. 

“It doesn’t matter how loud a claim is made, that doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t matter how often a claim is made, that doesn’t make it true,” he said. 

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers contributed to this report.

This story is part of a reporting fellowship sponsored by the Association of Health Care Journalists and supported by the Commonwealth Fund.

States Newsroom’s investigation is ongoing. If you have had an experience with a crisis pregnancy center, please get in touch at cpcproject@statesnewsroom.com.

For nearly 60 years, crisis pregnancy centers have been a pillar of the anti-abortion movement.

Largely staffed by volunteers or part-time workers, these centers — sometimes referred to as pregnancy resource centers — offer limited services related to pregnancy and are guided by a religious mission to stop people from considering abortion.

States Newsroom conducted a 50-state investigation examining state and federal funding for these centers. Between 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal protections for abortion rights, and the end of fiscal year 2025, 21 states have funneled nearly a half-billion dollars to crisis pregnancy centers. Physicians and researchers told reporters they’re concerned about the magnitude of public money crisis pregnancy centers are receiving while Planned Parenthood clinics and other community clinics offering reproductive health care are defunded.

Read our investigation: Taxpayer dollars flood pregnancy centers. Oversight hasn’t followed.

As part of an ongoing series to shed light on the issue, States Newsroom spoke with dozens of doctors, patients and people who found themselves in crisis pregnancy centers. These are some of their stories.

Alabama

When Valkyrie Brodt, 30, became pregnant for the first time last year, she did an online search to find a clinic that would take someone without insurance. She and her husband were waiting to be approved for health insurance, and she was hoping to find a provider who would confirm her pregnancy and check that it looked healthy so far. In her search results, she found what she thought was a pregnancy-focused medical clinic a couple of blocks from the hospital in her hometown of Huntsville, Alabama. She booked an appointment. 

The couple arrived and began to fill out the clinic’s paperwork, but Brodt said something felt off.

“A lot of the questions were less about medical history and more so faith-based questions, and other questions like, ‘What’s your relationship with the baby’s father?’ ‘What’s your plan for this pregnancy?’ I think it did specifically ask what your religion was.

“At that point I realized, OK, this is clearly a Christian-run kind of place. I grew up Church of Christ, and I have a lot of religious trauma from the way that I grew up. I would not consider myself religious at this point. I’m very open-minded towards people who are religious, no bias other than just not wanting it shoved on me.

“I was also under the impression they were going to do the blood test analysis to confirm pregnancy, but it was just another urine sample. And I was like, well, I’ve already done four of these, and they were all positive.

“Then when they called us back, she (the clinic staffer) literally used the words ‘divide and conquer.’’’

Brodt was taken to one room, while a male counselor took her husband to another room. She said she understands why staff might want to separate them, in case of concerns about possible domestic violence or coercion. But Brodt said she was never asked about the couple’s relationship or whether she felt safe. The counselor confirmed that Brodt wanted to keep the baby, asked more faith-related questions, and told her that if she attended counseling sessions she could earn “baby bucks” to redeem on baby items from their store.

“At one point, towards the end, she (the counselor) said, ‘Well, if you know anybody who’s thinking about getting an abortion, send them our way.’ So it was very clear at that point that that was their goal. They gave us probably three or four different pamphlets, and only one of them was a piece of paper with the pregnancy confirmation on it. The rest was ministry stuff, like faith-based parenting classes.”

The clinic scheduled an ultrasound for her, but she and her husband decided not to go back.

“It felt very predatory to me as a 30-year-old woman that’s married. So I can’t imagine how it would feel to a teen mom or a single mom having to walk in there by herself.” 

Read more: Federal funding for people in poverty heading to anti-abortion centers instead

Idaho

Dr. Cate Heil knew people in her hometown who worked at crisis pregnancy centers, and she didn’t have much of an opinion about the centers, other than they seemed like good places for pregnancy counseling. 

That perspective changed.

During her training to become a family medicine physician in Idaho in 2020, she saw a 17-year-old patient who had gone to a pregnancy center, where she received a transabdominal ultrasound. The center told the patient there was “a lot of fluid.” 

“Based on her period, she would’ve been about eight weeks and three days. It didn’t seem like they told her much else. 

“We did a transvaginal ultrasound and saw some concerning things. This patient had a molar pregnancy, which shows up pretty characteristically on ultrasound and is considered a pre-malignancy. Her uterus at supposedly eight weeks was 1 centimeter above her pubic bone, which is much larger than would be expected. She underwent surgery the next week.

“It was concerning to me that this wasn’t recognized as something that’s abnormal. This is not quite an emergency, but it’s something that needs to be managed within a week or so, or needs immediate referral for a surgeon — and that made me nervous.

“Is there other stuff that we’re missing? This is a fairly rare thing, but it’s not unheard of, and it should be able to be recognized by people who are operating an ultrasound, in my opinion. … It made me want to double-check things when someone has gone to a crisis pregnancy center.”

Oregon

Emily Gartman wanted to keep her baby. Unexpectedly pregnant at 21, a friend recommended a pregnancy center, saying nice people would quickly confirm the pregnancy without an appointment. She took a test there, but before the results came back, Gartman said the staff asked her what she would do if she were pregnant. 

They showed her pictures of how an embryo develops into a fetus and told her that it would respond to painful stimuli at 13 weeks, an idea that is not supported by science. Multiple studies have shown that a fetus does not have the capacity to experience pain until at least 24 weeks’ gestation.

“They just kept driving home that if I got an abortion, my baby would be in pain. That it would feel itself being chopped up.

“I was 11 weeks pregnant, and they were clearly trying to make me feel like a piece of s— if I did get an abortion because I was hurting the baby. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but they basically told me if I waited any longer, I wouldn’t have a choice.

“There’s a very high chance that I would’ve kept it. The person I was pregnant by had Marfan syndrome, and the thing I wanted to wait for was an amniocentesis.”

Severe forms of Marfan syndrome, a connective tissue disorder, can cause fatal heart problems. Gartman had wanted more information about her options. An amniocentesis is typically performed between 15 and 20 weeks of pregnancy.

“I ended up having that abortion three days later. I felt like if I didn’t do it right away, I was going to have no choice, and that they’d be right, that I would be a monster.”

Despite many years passing, Gartman, 45, of Portland, said the trauma she endured is one of the main reasons she never had any children. The shame stuck with her, she said, and she thought she had no right to try to have another baby after having an abortion.

“Seeing public money going to these places pisses me off a lot. That’s my money. I don’t want my money being used to do this to someone else.

“My experience with them has been to just tell everybody I know who’s going to go to them to just not do it. I would never set foot in one of those places again.”

North Carolina

After Carley Causey discovered she was pregnant last year, she wanted to know how far along she was. 

So she searched online for a place to “get an ultrasound to try and date how pregnant” she was. 

Causey, 36, said she had originally called an OB-GYN’s office, but she was told that she couldn’t get an appointment for at least seven weeks. 

“Well, most doctors’ offices won’t see you until you’re, like, 12 weeks pregnant. I did call, and they were like, like, not very helpful, because they were like, ‘You’re not far enough along,’” Causey said. 

So she ended up calling a crisis pregnancy center. 

“And this place is totally free. If you wanted to go to the ER and get an ultrasound, that’s like hundreds of dollars. And this is a community resource that charges you nothing, right?” 

Causey said center volunteers told her that it may be too early to do an ultrasound and that she could potentially have an ectopic pregnancy for which she would have to go to the emergency room. But she wanted a transvaginal ultrasound, and she found out that she was almost two months pregnant. 

Causey said her mom used to volunteer at “pregnancy support centers,” and she felt more comfortable going there. And as a Christian woman and family ministries director at a church in Durham, North Carolina, she said she felt awkward going to a place like Planned Parenthood, which she associated with abortion, although it offers a range of medical services. 

“I know that they (pregnancy centers) totally have this reputation of trying to scare women into not having abortions, but that’s just not been my experience with the people who work there,” Causey said. “And I want to give space for that, because I don’t know all these Christian pregnancy centers, but the truth is like, yeah, they do value life, but they also want to provide resources that make it seem possible.” 

Florida

Taylor Biro was sleeping under bridges all over Tallahassee when she found out she was pregnant in 2006. She called a local pregnancy center, telling them she was homeless and seeking an abortion. 

“I was 19 … I was pregnant, and I had no business having a child — I had a lot of difficult things going on around me at the time.

“I remember being very clear. I talked to them on the phone. I told them what I wanted to do. They said, ‘Great, come on in.’

“I went in, and they counseled me — and it ended up not being an actual place that helps, or had any means to help, with abortions. They were more like a faith-based group and wasted a lot of my time. I ended up passing the window when I was able to get an abortion.’’

It was “degrading” when she’d have to attend their classes to earn “mommy bucks” before she could have a few diapers — not even a full pack, she said. 

“Less than a week after I gave birth, I was working at a sandwich shop. I remember standing there taking someone’s lunch order, hoping the pad in my underwear was thick enough to last till my break. For the first five years of my son’s life, I worked four jobs and made less than $11,000 a year. I was exhausted and trying to hold on to some version of myself before all this.”

Being pregnant and giving birth as a homeless teen, Biro experienced violence.

“It forces you to play into relationships that you probably never would have had to endure. You don’t have all the safety nets. It opened me up to domestic violence; it opened me up to sexual violence.”

Biro went on to start her own drop-in center for runaway and homeless youth. She and her team raised money for teens who needed abortions and provided Plan B for those over age 18. 

After her experience with the crisis pregnancy center, she made diapers much more accessible for the new parents who came to the drop-in center, telling them: “You want to take five packs of diapers? Take six.”

She also worked with officers investigating sexual violence and human trafficking of youth, and helped write legislation requiring special training for law enforcement interviewing victims of sexual assault. Biro works with the National LGBTQ Task Force, and also founded Bread and Roses Collective, a team of grant writers for social justice organizations. Her child is now 18.

“It took me years to understand that the shame was never mine to carry. A Christian organization manipulated a homeless teenager into having a child when it was not safe, but (I) should be embarrassed? I know now that my struggle and trauma was not some penance for being young and irresponsible. But that experience, being tricked out of health care, was my origin story.

“It’s strange that even now, I feel compelled to preface it all by saying how much I love my son. As if naming my trauma or the loss of my autonomy could mean I love him less. That guilt buries stories like mine. We hear more about how a child ‘saved’ someone, when the truth is my life had meaning on its own.”

States Newsroom’s investigation is ongoing. If you have had an experience with a crisis pregnancy center, please get in touch at cpcproject@statesnewsroom.com.

In a critical 2026 battle for control of the U.S. Senate, The Associated Press early Wednesday declared James Talarico the winner of the Democratic primary in Texas, while incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will spend weeks to come competing in a runoff election.

The AP called Talarico as the victor over U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett at 2:37 a.m. in a closely watched race that offered candidates with contrasting styles and was seen as an indicator of Democrats’ approach to the midterms. 

As of later Wednesday morning, Talarico led Crockett, 53% to 45.7%, with 91% of the votes counted. But Crockett raised questions Tuesday night about vote tabulation in her home base of Dallas County, blaming Republicans for targeting the county with a rules change about where voters could cast ballots.

On the Republican side, Cornyn had eked out a single percentage-point lead over Paxton in the GOP primary as of Wednesday morning, with the AP reporting he had 41.9% of the vote and Paxton had 40.8%, with 93% of the votes counted.

With U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt pulling in about 13.5% of the vote in the Republican primary, neither Cornyn nor Paxton earned the more-than 50% needed to avoid a runoff, set for May 26. President Donald Trump has so far not made an endorsement, which both candidates would treasure.

No Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen

Whoever emerges as the Republican nominee will be considered the favorite in a state that has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since the late Lloyd Bentsen in 1988. Democrats would likely need to win the race to have any chance of taking control of the Senate, which is now dominated by Republicans with 53 seats and would require Democrats to net four new seats nationwide.

But a Paxton-Talarico matchup would likely provide Democrats with their best chance to win over independents. 

Paxton has drawn comparisons to Trump for his unapologetic conservative streak on cultural issues — and a propensity for controversy. A favorite of hard-right Texas Republicans, Paxton was attacked relentlessly in the primary for scandals related to bribery and infidelity.

Those controversies could turn off the moderate voters Talarico courted in the Democratic primary more than the base-driven Crockett.

Democrats in Washington praised the outcome. “James Talarico spent his time in the State House fighting for working families and standing against the corrupt special interests making life unaffordable for Texans. That record is exactly what this moment calls for — and what neither Ken Paxton nor John Cornyn can offer,” said Lauren French, a spokesperson for the Senate Majority PAC, the campaign arm for Senate Democrats, in a statement.

‘Judgment Day is coming’

The GOP primary pitted an establishment figure in Cornyn against a MAGA favorite in Paxton and has been bitterly fought.

The runoff appeared likely to be just as heated, with Cornyn making a direct appeal to electability, saying Paxton would likely drag down House races, and blasting the attorney general as an unworthy standard-bearer.

“I refuse to allow a flawed, self-centered and shameless candidate like Ken Paxton risk everything we’ve worked so hard to build over these many years,” he said. “If he’s nominated, there’s a high risk that Paxton would lose this Senate seat, taking five congressional seats down with him … Ken Paxton as the nominee would be a dead weight at the top of the ticket.”

Cornyn previewed a no-holds-barred approach to the last 12 weeks of the race.

“Texas Republican primary voters will hear more about my record of delivering conservative victories in the United States Senate and learn more about Ken’s indefensible personal behavior and failures in office,” he said. “Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.”

‘Change won’

Paxton counterattacked in his own speech Tuesday night, criticizing Cornyn as insufficiently loyal to Trump and assailing him for sponsoring a gun safety law after a 2022 school shooting that killed 19 in Uvalde, Texas.

Paxton noted that most GOP primary voters cast ballots against the incumbent, despite the record spending Cornyn and allied groups poured into the race.

“Nearly 60% of Texas voters who have known Cornyn for over 40 years, after hearing $100 million worth of ads, chose to vote against the incumbent,” he said. “That’s historic.”

“Tonight, change was on the ballot and change won,” he said. “Texans want new leadership. They want someone with a proven record of fighting and winning for them, and that’s exactly what I’m going to deliver.” 

House races in Texas deliver some surprises

State legislators in Texas redrew their U.S. House maps last year, a rare mid-decade redistricting that scrambled some incumbents’ districts.

One casualty appears to be Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a four-term incumbent Republican from the Houston area.

Crenshaw is a reliable conservative who nonetheless has at times gotten on the wrong side of Trump. Crenshaw was the only Texas U.S. House Republican incumbent whom Trump did not endorse.

Beleaguered Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales is headed to a runoff against challenger Brandon Herrera, The Associated Press said early Wednesday. Sordid details of Gonzales’ affair with a married staffer, who later died by suicide, surfaced and dogged his campaign in the race’s closing weeks.

The House Ethics Committee announced Wednesday morning its members had voted to create an investigative subcommittee to look into allegations that Gonzales “engaged in sexual misconduct towards an individual employed in his congressional office” and “discriminated unfairly by dispensing special favors or privileges.”

The members of that subcommittee will be announced once they are chosen. 

The Ethics Committee, a 10-member panel made up of an equal number of Republicans and Democrats, wrote in the press release announcing its investigation into Gonzales that the creation of a subcommittee “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.”

A Democratic incumbent-against-incumbent race in the Houston area also appeared runoff-bound, with Rep. Christian Menefee leading Rep. Al Green 45.9% to 44.4% with 87% of the votes counted by early Wednesday. The state’s redistricting threw the two House members into the same district.

North Carolina, Arkansas 

The Tuesday primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas marked the first elections of the midterm year. 

In the North Carolina race to replace Sen. Thom Tillis, who is retiring, Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper and former state GOP Chair Michael Whatley easily earned their party’s nominations.

The race, seen as one of very few considered a true tossup, like Texas will be crucial to which party controls the Senate next year.

In a closely watched U.S. House race, incumbent Democrat Valerie Foushee narrowly led challenger Nida Allam by a single percentage point, 49.22% to 48.21%.

In Arkansas, Sen. Tom Cotton easily won his primary and will be heavily favored to beat Hallie Shoffner, a sixth-generation farmer who won the Democratic nomination Tuesday.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report. 

A bill to implement a “bell-to-bell” cell phone ban in Wisconsin schools is making its way through the state Legislature, though Gov. Tony Evers hasn’t decided whether he would sign it if it makes it to his desk.

Wisconsin became the 36th state last year to implement a limit on cell phones in schools. Wisconsin Act 42, signed in 2025, requires school districts to implement policies that ban cellphones during instructional times starting in July 2026. The policies have to include exceptions for emergencies, for educational purposes and cases involving student health care, individualized education plans (IEPs) or learning environment accommodations, also known as 504 plans.

When Evers signed the law in October, he said he had a hard time deciding whether to do so because  he believes in local control and wished lawmakers had taken a different approach. Nevertheless, he said he signed the bill because he was “deeply concerned” about the effect cell phones and social media are having on students. 

Last week, however, Evers said  he hasn’t made up his mind about the bill that would go a step further.

“That’s tough. We already, you know, did something,” Evers told reporters last week when asked if he would sign the new measure. He said it could put the state in the position of telling districts to do something that not all of them may want to do. “I have to think through that,” he added. “I’m concerned about that.”

Wisconsin school districts can already choose to implement a bell-to-bell ban under current law, but AB 948 would require policies banning cell phone use in school — prohibiting them throughout the school day, including during class time, recess, the time between classes and the lunch period. The bill requires the policies to be implemented by July 1, 2027.

Prior to Act 42, most Wisconsin school districts had already restricted student cellphone use, though policies and enforcement varied widely across the state.

Currently 38 states limit student phone use in schools, including 18 with bans for the entire day. 

The state Assembly passed the “bell-to-bell” ban bill in February on a voice vote. It needs to pass the state Senate before it would go to Evers.

At a Senate Education committee meeting Tuesday, Reps. Lindee Brill (R-Sheboygan Falls) and Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) said the bill would do more to ensure support for students and educators.

“This isn’t something that we’re doing to schools because we don’t think they’re doing a good job,” Kitchens said. “This is something we’re helping them with. I think everyone that has looked at this at all recognizes that this is the way to go and we are backing them up.”

Brill said she has heard support from school superintendents and teachers. 

Evers is not the only person with concerns about further limiting school districts from making  these decisions. According to the Wisconsin Ethics Commission lobbying website, several school organizations are registered against the bill, including the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials, the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators.

In written testimony provided when the Assembly heard the bill, Peshtigo School District Superintendent Patrick Rau said that he opposes the bill because it removes local flexibility. 

Rau noted that in a recent incident at his district, a student was able to quickly report a threat on campus during a blood drive using her phone. Police arrested a man who was carrying a loaded handgun, a magazine concealed inside his shirt and two knives, and who later assaulted officers.

“This was a situation that could have become every parent’s and educator’s worst nightmare,” Rau said. The bill would enforce “a one-size-fits-all requirement that does not reflect the real-world conditions schools face each day.”

Brill said that there is an issue with phone addiction in schools, and access to social media is affecting students’ mental health.

“They’re being lost in depression. They’re being lost in keeping up with unrealistic expectations,” Brill said. “We have to do what we can to support the future generation.”

Kitchens,  who authored the first cell phone ban bill, said that views on cell phone bans in schools have been changing since the earlier one was discussed. 

“I got a lot of pushback just for that one,” Kitchens  said, “but I think in that year since that came out, the public has become so much more aware.”

A 2025 Marquette Law School poll found that 72% of Wisconsinites strongly or somewhat support a ban on using cell phones during the entire school day. 

Kitchens noted that there is reporting from across the country where students get used to and appreciate the ban once it is implemented. The ban in New York has encouraged students to turn to using portable CD players and MP3 players while in school.

“The schools that have gone ‘bell-to-bell — and you see it across the country — the reports have overwhelmingly been positive from the kids. After they get past that first week of withdrawal, they appreciate having it,” Kitchens said. “It doesn’t solve the whole problem, but they have a safe space during the day where they can concentrate on what they should be concentrating on.”

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With rising costs for health insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act, Democrats in the Legislature are proposing another tactic to help more people afford health coverage.

Rep. Tara Johnson (D-Town of Shelby) announced legislation Tuesday that would enable members of the public buy into the state’s BadgerCare Plus health insurance plan.

BadgerCare Plus is Wisconsin’s name for Medicaid and is available to families and individuals with household incomes up to the federal poverty guideline — $15,960 for a single person and $33,000 for a family of three.

Johnson’s bill would expand BadgerCare’s coverage by creating a “public option” — allowing families with higher incomes to pay for the health plan out of pocket. Democrats in Wisconsin have offered similar proposals in the past that have not advanced. At the same time, the idea has been catching on in some other states, Stateline reports, although not all of them are connected to Medicaid. 

“When this law is passed, Wisconsinites will have an affordable option instead of the sky-high premiums and massive deductibles currently available from private insurance carriers,” Johnson said at a news conference in the Capitol Tuesday morning. “Public health care keeps prices down because it is not beholden to insurance company stockholders or bonuses for executives, and those savings will get passed on to Wisconsinites.”

“This will dramatically increase, for a large number of people, the number of affordable insurance options at a time when there is a crisis in affordability generally, and health care is one of the top reasons why,” said Robert Kraig, executive director of the advocacy group Wisconsin Citizens Action.

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said the bill would provide an affordable health care alternative for people who had relied on plans purchased through the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov, that was created by the Affordable Care Act. Enhanced subsidies that had lowered the cost of policies bought through the marketplace expired at the end of 2025.

On HealthCare.gov policies, “average premiums more than doubled when Republicans in Congress allowed those enhanced subsidies to expire at the end of last year,” Larson said. The subsidies were eliminated for families with incomes of more than 400% of the federal poverty guideline — around $86,000 for a couple.

For a 55-year-old couple at that income level, the premiums on the second-tier of plans sold at HealthCare.gov would increase “from $601 a month to $2,311 per month this year,” Larson said — or about $20,000 a year.

The legislation would “move us closer to the point where we need to get, where health care is a right for all and anyone can get the care that they deserve without a speck of fear that they are going to go broke just so that they can survive,” Larson said. “The fact that that is an open question right now is shameful for our state. It’s shameful for our country.”

The bill also would allow small businesses with fewer than 50 employees to enroll in BadgerCare plans. Madison chef and restaurateur Evan Danells said some of his employees had relied on ACA plans but were also confronted with increased premiums that many would have trouble being able to afford. Danells is a member of Main Street Alliance, a small business group that has organized support for the ACA among other policies.

“One of the coolest things about having a public option is it allows people to go in and get affordable preventative care,” Danells said. As a result, “they don’t become wards of the state health care system when they’re all of a sudden broke and the problem has snowballed.”

Indiana Hauser of La Crosse said she works two part-time jobs, neither of which provides health insurance. Last year she was able to purchase health coverage for $12 a month with the enhanced subsidies. “This year it went up to $400 a month for worse coverage,” said Hauser, who is active with the advocacy group Citizens Action of Wisconsin.

Hauser said she has life-long health complications due to a traumatic brain injury when she was a teenager. Nevertheless, she said, she has had to go without insurance this year because she cannot afford it.

An affordable community clinic helps her, she added, but many communities don’t have such resources.  While rationing her medications and visits to the doctor, Hauser worries that she’s “one small accident away from a financial crisis,” she said.

“Across the state, there are people and families making life or death decisions, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” Hauser said. “The BadgerCare public option could change my life and the lives of people all across our state.”

Larson and Kraig said that due to changes made by the federal tax- and spending-cut bill that President Donald Trump signed in July 2025, the likely premiums people would pay for BadgerCare under the Public Option haven’t yet been calculated. A 2025 analysis by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau projected premiums could cost about $971 a month, but also noted that a variety of factors could increase or reduce that cost.

According to the Feb. 17, 2025, fiscal bureau memo, “It is possible that the purchase option population could be, on average, less costly, which could make the premium lower” compared with the medical needs of BadgerCare patients who qualify for Medicaid. “If, on the other hand, the purchase option attracts older individuals or individuals with more significant health conditions, the premiums may be similar to, or even higher than, the average cost of BadgerCare Plus coverage.”

With the legislation being introduced after the Assembly has already wrapped up its floor period for 2026, the proposal seems unlikely to advance this year.

“I would say it’s always a good idea to introduce good bills,” Johnson said when asked about the timing of the announcement. Gov. Tony Evers, she noted, earlier Tuesday called for a special session to pass a resolution against gerrymandering the state’s legislative maps.

“We have five days on the calendar in March. We have five days in the calendar in April, I think it’s three days in May,” Johnson said. “There’s no reason that we cannot take up this legislation.”

Then she corrected herself. “Well, there is one reason, and it’s because the speaker chooses not to call us into session,” Johnson said.

“A lot of these bills are sitting in Google Drives,” added Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee). “All this session, we have bills ready to go. It’s a matter of will they be heard? It’s a matter of what is the appetite to have the debate about them? We know that this is something that Wisconsinites care about. They want us to stay here. They want us to get this done.”

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