Three new county sheriff’s offices have signed agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allow deputies to enforce federal immigration law. 

The sheriffs of Dunn, Green Lake and Walworth counties have signed the agreements under ICE’s 287(g) program. ICE records show the Dunn County agreement was signed Feb. 10 while the other two are still pending. All three counties have signed on to the program under the warrant service officer model, which allows county sheriff’s deputies to arrest people targeted by ICE with administrative warrants. 

With the three new agreements, 19 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have joined the 287(g) program. Most of the counties have joined the program under the warrant service model while Kenosha and Marathon counties have joined under the jail enforcement model — which allows departments to notify ICE of undocumented immigrants detained in county jails. Kewaunee, Sauk and Waukesha counties have signed up under both models. 

Dodge County does not have a 287(g) agreement with ICE but for years has had a contract to hold federal detainees in its county jail, which includes people arrested by ICE. 

Immigrants’ rights and civil rights groups have criticized the 287(g) agreements, arguing that law enforcement openly stating its support for ICE and its often aggressive tactics discourages immigrants of all legal statuses from reporting crimes as victims or coming forward as witnesses. 

“287(g) agreements do not make anyone safer — they stoke fear and erode trust, deter residents from reporting crime, and divert local resources away from addressing real public safety concerns and the needs of the community,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a statement in January after the Kenosha and Sauk county sheriffs signed their agreements.

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration must explain to a circuit court before the end of March exactly why it appealed a lower court’s ruling that allows Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly to keep his retirement rank and pay while a First Amendment case about the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” video plays out.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s order gives the Department of Justice until March 30 to provide a series of documents in its appeal of the district court’s preliminary injunction.

That ruling, from Senior Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court, said Defense Department officials, including Secretary Pete Hegseth, erred when trying to apply rules that affect active-duty military members to Kelly, a retired Navy Captain.  

“Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces,” Leon wrote. “Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon was nominated by former President George W. Bush. 

DOD seeks to downgrade Kelly retirement rank

The lawsuit began earlier this year after the Defense Department began proceedings to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank and pay for appearing in the 90-second video.

The six Democrats, all of whom are former members of the military or intelligence agencies, said in the video they understood the people working in those fields “are under enormous stress and pressure right now.” 

“Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk,” they said. “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

They went on to say the “laws are clear” and that illegal orders can and must be refused. The video ended with them saying, “Don’t Give up the Ship,’ a long-held phrase in the U.S. Navy.

The Democrats’ video infuriated President Donald Trump, leading the Defense Department to open an investigation into Kelly.

Justice Department officials also launched an investigation into Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander.

The Justice Department failed to get a grand jury to indict the lawmakers earlier this month. 

Kelly cites effects on millions of retired veterans

Kelly wrote on social media Tuesday, after the Justice Department filed its appeal on behalf of the Defense Department, that the Trump administration didn’t “know when to quit.” 

“A federal judge told Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth that they violated my constitutional rights and chilled the free speech of millions of retired veterans,” Kelly wrote. “There is only one reason to appeal that ruling: to keep trampling on the free speech rights of retired veterans and silence dissent. I went to war to defend Americans’ constitutional rights and I won’t back down from this fight, no matter how far they want to take it.”

With the potential for a Democratic majority next year, Wisconsin’s Legislative Black Caucus closed this year’s Black History Month by laying out its policy goals on issues ranging from housing to education to civic engagement for the next legislative session.

Each year, the caucus starts Black History Month with a celebration and ends it with a day of work by bringing community members together in the state Capitol for Black Advocacy Day to discuss the issues facing Black Wisconsinites, meet with Democratic and Republican legislators and network with other community members. The day was created by former Sen. Lena Taylor, who was a member of the caucus during her time in office and is now a Wisconsin circuit court judge in Milwaukee County. 

Lawmakers developed their plans from listening sessions with Black Wisconsinites in four communities across the state.

Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), who chairs the caucus, told reporters that the caucus’ policy agenda will serve as a guide in the future for drafting legislation. 

“We know that the landscape is changing, and so we want to be proactive and make sure that we have a clear agenda of setting policy for next year,” Drake said.

Drake and Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), who sits on the Joint Finance Committee, said they believe Democrats will be able to win majorities in the state Legislature in this year’s midterm elections. Democrats are two seats away from control of  the state Senate and five seats in the state Assembly. 

“We can’t continue to not address these issues,” Johnson said, specifically noting Medicaid and providing resources to the Wisconsin public school system.

During a briefing, Johnson was joined by her fellow caucus members as well as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who formerly served in the state Assembly and is currently running in the Democratic primary for governor, and Wisconsin Voices executive director and former state Rep. David Bowen. 

The platform covered seven issue areas: improving affordable housing and protecting renters; education, literacy and economic opportunity; expanding access to affordable, comprehensive health and mental health care; ending mass incarceration and creating a rehabilitative criminal legal system; protecting people’s ability to participate in the democratic process; and helping communities by ensuring they have safe roads, clean air and affordable housing. 

Johnson detailed some of the disparities that Black Wisconsinites face. 

Housing

“Poverty hits Milwaukee the hardest, especially for Black Milwaukeeans,” Johnson said, adding, “30% of Black residents in Milwaukee live below the poverty line, which is the highest rate among major U.S. metropolitan areas. [Only] 27% of Black [people are] homeowners in Milwaukee, compared to the 56[%] for white households; $37,000 is the median household income for Black families in Milwaukee. That ranks us dead last among the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Poverty among Milwaukee’s African-American children is a whopping 38.8[%], which is the third worst out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas.”

Housing and protections for renters are at the top of the caucus’ agenda. Priorities include  tenants’ rights and developing housing affordability programs for communities with high displacement risk, including a first time homebuyers program and a home repairs program.

Johanna Jimenez of the Community Development Alliance, a Milwaukee-based organization dedicated to increasing homeownership for Black and Latino residents, told the Examiner that the organization supports the goals of the Black caucus and sees a need to connect  with lawmakers and other advocates.

“People there are struggling to become homeowners, to rent affordably and to live in safe housing,” Jimenez said. “Even though, like, we do housing every day, coming together on a larger scale and with more people, it’s super important. We recognize that not one person, not one organization, can get everything done, but we do have proof that when we come together, we get more done, and we get laws passed, people protected and more resources coming down.” 

Jimenez said prioritizing renters and helping people become homeowners is important to  building and stabilizing communities. She noted that out-of-state investors, who buy up property in Milwaukee communities, especially on the city’s North Side, driving up prices and limiting options for first-time homebuyers, continues to be an issue

“The tenants that are in our neighborhoods, they want to live in the neighborhoods, and so if we can focus on homeownership and putting resources aside for homeowners rather than giving investors an ‘easy way in,’ it would help communities… help families thrive.”

The caucus wants increase the state minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.25 an hour, expand access to job training in high-demand fields, including technology and skilled trades, provide targeted support for Black-owned small businesses and entrepreneurs, including grants and low-interest loans, and expand state investment in economic development in underserved communities.

Education

Johnson noted that the graduation rate for white students in Wisconsin is roughly 92.7% while  the graduation rate for Black children is 71% — the largest gap in the country.

“Absenteeism is also a strong predictor of involvement with youth in the criminal justice system,” Johnson said, noting that data from the 2023-24 school year shows that Black students in Wisconsin have chronic absenteeism rates that hover around 47%, which is more than four times higher than the 11.2% absenteeism rate for white students. 

Under its platform, the caucus says that it wants to work to “fully fund” public schools with targeted resources to bring up low literacy scores; expand evidence-based literacy programs, including early childhood and reading intervention initiatives; strengthen accountability and transparency in voucher schools and support development and recruitment of teachers and culturally responsive curricula.

It also wants to help protect people’s participation in the democratic processes by establishing a “Wisconsin John Lewis Voting Rights Act” that would ensure fair electoral maps and end gerrymandering, strengthen voting rights protections and expand civic education and community-led voter outreach. 

Criminal justice reform

Johnson said the caucus also wants to end the cycle of  mass incarceration. One attendee shook her head in agreement and said “amen” as Johnson spoke. 

Some caucus priorities in that area include reforming sentencing guidelines, increasing community oversight of law enforcement practices, expanding reentry programs and ending crimeless revocations. 

One proposal from the caucus meant to help improve the state’s criminal justice system, which was introduced this week, is a constitutional amendment proposal that would ensure Wisconsin bans slavery and involuntary servitude without exceptions.

Black history

When the Wisconsin Constitution was adopted in 1848, it included a prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude. The state joined the union to ensure it followed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which forbade slavery in the territory, and to establish itself as a free state. However, that provision includes an exception for slavery or involuntary servitude if it is imposed as punishment for a crime.

Last week, the Republican-led Assembly refused to take up a resolution to recognize February as Black History Month, which wouldn’t have an effect on policy in the state but which lawmakers said represents a recognition of their history, achievements and work that has shaped the state. 

During the Assembly floor session last week, Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee) said Republicans’ refusal to recognize Black History Month was “a horrific attempt to silence Black voices and to give us a subtle inference that our history isn’t as important as we think it is.” 

Moore Omokunde noted that in the past Republicans have easily passed resolutions to honor President Ronald Reagan, Charlie Kirk and Rush Limbaugh — who Moore Omokunde noted called once called President Barack Obama a “magic negro.”

“At most, we should aspire to be one of the few Black faces in white spaces, and in order to be successful, we should strip ourselves of all of our identity and our traditions…This is only a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Black legislator in this building,” Moore Omokunde said. “You’re welcome to be here, as long as you have a signed permission slip.”

This year’s resolution sought to recognize Black people with ties to the state including Marcia Coggs, who was the first Black woman to be elected to the state Legislature and the first Black lawmaker to sit on the powerful Joint Finance Committee, Bob Mann, who was the first Black player to play a regular season game for the Green Bay Packers, and Malcolm X, who was a prominent Black Nationalist during the Civil Rights movement and had “unique ties” to Wisconsin. 

Malcolm X’s family lived in Wisconsin while he was young after they fled Nebraska due to harassment from the Ku Klux Klan and moved to Milwaukee. His young brother, Reginald, was born in Wisconsin’s largest city. The family lived on West Galena Street on Milwaukee’s North Side until 1929 when they relocated to Lansing, Michigan. 

Malcolm X returned to Wisconsin many times in the 1960s, visiting Milwaukee and speaking to local communities about racial injustice. His work inspired grassroots organizing in the state. 

This year was not the first time that lawmakers have fought over proposals to recognize Black History Month. The state Assembly passed a resolution in 2025 honoring the month, but the resolution left out names of any individual people. The Senate passed that resolution in March 2025. 

Whether or not Democrats do win control of the Senate and Assembly in November, Johnson and Drake expressed confidence that Republicans would not be able to continue to block their work on the issues in the same way that they have for many years. 

“Even if we just get one house, we’re in a better position to hold them accountable,” Johnson said. “They’ll literally have to answer for why these things aren’t good ideas, or why this isn’t good governance when they see the numbers that we’re dealing with.”

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Vice President JD Vance did not utter the word “tariffs” a single time during his upbeat speech at a Plover, Wisconsin, machining plant Thursday. The visit, aimed at shoring up vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden ahead of the 2026 midterms, was part of a post-State of the Union victory lap Vance is taking to market the so-called Golden Age of prosperity President Donald Trump claims he and the Republicans have delivered to rural and blue-collar voters.

It’s a tough sell. 

The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released the day before Vance parachuted into Wisconsin, shows Trump hitting a second-term low with Wisconsin voters, with 44% saying they approve of the job he’s doing and 54% saying they don’t approve. Across partisan affiliations, the rising cost of living is voters’ No. 1 concern, while 55% of respondents told pollsters tariffs are hurting Wisconsin farmers. Manufacturers are not happy, either.

“I can tell you from my experience running our company, from everyone I talk to in my networks — 95% of people in manufacturing — 99% do not support the tariffs,” said Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, a Wisconsin-based company with locations across the Midwest.

Shivaram spoke on a press call with Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin ahead of Vance’s speech Thursday. Many business owners, he said, are afraid to publicly share their criticisms of the Trump administration. When he meets other leaders of manufacturing companies in boardrooms, he said, “It’s like, look, we can’t say anything about how dumb the tariff policy is, because we’re going to be the next one whacked on X.” But, he added, “it’s costing all of them, all of us, a lot of money.”

Tariffs have caused “chaos and uncertainty” for businesses, agreed Kyle LaFond, owner and founder of American Provenance and Natural Contract Manufacturing, a small business that makes personal care products. “Last year, when these tariffs were first instituted, I absorbed those costs as much as possible. I did that for about eight months,” LaFond said. “But that is not a sustainable business practice.” Ultimately, he said, businesses have to pass along the cost to their customers:  “Tariffs are just attacks on the American consumer.” 

There’s a reason slim majorities of Wisconsin voters chose Trump in 2016 and 2024. Vance put his finger on it in his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.”

Wisconsin manufacturing workers and farmers suffered tremendously from global trade deals. Democrats and Republicans alike brushed aside their pain and tried to tell them that the booming stock market and increasing corporate profits were worth the crashing prices and job losses. Never mind the communities ruined and all the families that fell out of the middle class.

Trump and Vance spoke to those voters. In his convention speech, Vance cleverly tied global trade deals supported by both political parties to immigration.“Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us,” he said, “our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor.”

But the immigrants who make up 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms did not drive the collapse of Wisconsin’s small-farm economy. They, too, were displaced by globalization that drove down prices and accelerated a “get big or get out” economy that has taken a heavy toll on working people on both sides of the border. The arrival of immigrants willing to work long hours for low pay on farms that were forced to expand rapidly to stay afloat was a blessing to farmers who simply couldn’t find American workers to fill those jobs.

Today’s increasingly virulent, demagogic attacks on those hardworking immigrants should make everyone queasy. 

Alex Jacquez, a former White House economic official in the Biden administration who also worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, sees Vance’s rise as a big win for the populist right. Vance’s criticism of global trade deals that hollowed out American manufacturing, and his appeal to the “forgotten” American workers who have never recovered from outsourcing, struck a nerve with voters across the industrial Midwest. 

“But I think the question is whether the actual policies put forward are having the outcomes that they intend here,” Jacquez said in a phone interview Thursday.

Trump ‘s failure to deliver the economic miracle he advertised, along with devastating cuts to health care and the safety net, pose a looming problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The solution they’ve hit on is a combination of bluster, bullying and straight up lies. 

In his Plover speech, Vance doubled down on Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants and Democrats in the State of the Union. Following up on Trump’s racist characterization of the entire Somali immigrant community in Minnesota as “pirates” responsible for plundering public aid, Vance  blamed “‘illegal aliens” for fraud in public benefits programs and voting. He brought up Trump’s lurid descriptions of crimes committed by immigrants and, like Trump, excoriated Democrats for not standing up and cheering as the president subjected grieving parents to a gory rehash of violent attacks on their children.

The reason Democrats didn’t stand up during Trump’s speech, Vance suggested, is that “they answer to people who have corrupted this country. They answer to people who opened the border. They answer to people who got rich off of illegal immigrant labor. … We want American workers to get rich for working hard, not illegal aliens.”

Sucker-punching Democrats on immigration was a goal of the State of the Union speech. And Republicans will keep on punching. Their sanctimonious horror at the very idea of their colleagues not standing up and cheering for the victims of violent criminals is a way of changing the subject away from the spectacle of masked federal immigration agents spreading murderous mayhem in Midwestern neighborhoods, and, of course, the fact that none of this is making American workers better off. 

As Jacquez pointed out, “Certainly Trump has cracked down on immigration, but that doesn’t seem to be redounding to the benefit of native-born workers. We’ve seen the unemployment rate creep up even while fewer immigrants are working these days on the manufacturing side.”

“We lost manufacturing jobs in every single month of 2025,” he added. “There has been no resurgence whatsoever in actual people getting jobs in manufacturing and, in fact, in many sectors, some of the trade policies that Trump has advanced have been actively harmful.”

At the end of his speech, Vance took questions from local media that reflected the immediate concerns of voters in western Wisconsin. 

What can his administration do to stop the closure of rural hospitals that are creating a health care desert in the district he was visiting?

Vance blamed the problem on the Biden administration, although rural hospital closures did not begin under Biden and are severely exacerbated by Medicaid cuts under Trump. Vance also claimed the Trump administration is now turning things around with the rural hospital fund included in the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” — $200 million of which was awarded to Wisconsin in December.

Derrick Van Orden also pumped the rural hospital fund in remarks ahead of Vance’s speech, saying it’s “just a lie” that Democrats care about rural health care, because they didn’t vote for the massive tax- and spending-cut bill that contained the rural health care fund. 

KFF projects the fund will only make up for about one-third of the Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid in rural areas. And that offset is temporary. The rural health fund expires in five years. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, 250,000 people are losing their health care coverage because of the Medicaid cuts and changes to the Affordable Care Act passed by Republicans. Those losses are concentrated in rural areas, and have a cascading effect on rural hospitals and entire rural economies.

Van Orden, who has spent his whole political career calling for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, reversed course and voted with Democrats to extend ACA subsidies last month — right after voting to block the same measure when Democrats brought it up the day before. 

In answer to a question on the health care worker shortage and the aging population of rural Wisconsin, Vance took a swipe at college students who major in women’s studies. The Trump administration — which has focused on repealing a pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment, resumed garnishing the wages of student debtors and imposed less affordable repayment plans — wants to make it easier for people to study to become doctors and nurses without getting “layered up with debt,” Vance declared.

Will the Trump administration withhold Medicaid money from Wisconsin as it recently announced it will do to Minnesota, as punishment for the state’s refusal to hand over the sensitive, personal information of food assistance recipients and of voters?

In answer to that question, Vance said it was outrageous that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have refused to hand over the data Trump is demanding, and left the open the option of withholding federal Medicaid money, saying Democrats “like to cheat” in “voter rolls and welfare rolls.” 

Asked about farmers facing wildly fluctuating commodity prices, Vance celebrated the administration’s success in getting China to open up its market to U.S. soybeans. That’s a head-scratcher, since China was purchasing about half of all U.S. soybeans a year ago, before it stopped amid a trade war caused by Trump’s tariffs. That was a big problem for Wisconsin farmers who were suddenly stuck sitting on a bumper soybean crop after losing their biggest buyer. Even with the new deal, those farmers will not be made whole, Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, told Wisconsin Public Radio, and China has now found new markets, setting up a long-term business loss.

Among Vance’s many preposterous claims, perhaps the most incredible was the picture he tried to paint of a caring, empathetic Trump, who wakes up every morning asking what he can do to solve the problems of the American people. Do even Trump’s supporters buy the idea that the man who made $4 billion off the presidency after just one year in office is driven by selfless concern for the needs of others? 

On one occasion, Vance said, during a discussion of the soaring stock market, Trump asked earnestly what could be done for people who don’t own any stocks. The answer, he said, was Trump’s brilliant plan to give low-income workers a $1,000 federal match for retirement. That idea was actually signed into law by Biden four years ago.

Asked for his further ideas for investing in rural communities, Vance said his administration will mostly “just listen” to voters. He held up Van Orden as the administration’s point man for keeping in touch with constituents in rural Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Van Orden is so notorious for avoiding in-person contact with voters, Democrats have made a regular practice of visiting his district to hold town halls from which he is reliably, notably absent. 

The claim that either he or the Trump administration is concerned about solving the problems of Wisconsin voters is the biggest lie of all. 

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Pressured by businesses on the importance of immigrant labor, some Republican states are backing off plans to require all employers to check for legal employment status before hiring workers.

State and federal legislation to require that employers use E-Verify, a federal system to check legal status, has been limited this year as a push grows from business interests that say checking status could hurt state economies. Business groups have cited the cost of complying with the laws and the potential loss of crucial immigrant workers who don’t have legal work authorization.

Millions of worksites around the country use E-Verify to ensure new hires are legal to work in the United States, but it isn’t required in all states or for every industry. Going after employers has not been as popular with Republicans as immigration enforcement aimed at detaining and deporting people living here illegally.

In Idaho, for instance, legislation that would require all employers to use E-Verify, crafted with help from the conservative Heritage Foundation, is awaiting state House consideration — while a more limited mandate for large state and local government contractors passed the state Senate Feb. 19.

“I think we should tread lightly, and private businesses should not be enforcement agencies,” said state Sen. Mark Harris, a Republican and rancher who sponsored the less-stringent bill, on the Senate floor before the vote.

Idaho Republican state Sen. Brian Lenney, who voted for the bill, spoke resentfully of business leaders who came to the state Capitol to lobby against the broader mandate for all employers to use E-Verify.

“There were men in suits holding a press conference downstairs to let the world know and tell Idaho which industries cannot survive without illegal labor,” Lenney said before the vote. “They’re trying to protect a system that keeps human beings cheap, compliant and silent. … Is this bill making a dent, like it should? Not really.”

An industry-funded report said a sharp drop in unauthorized labor from deportations could cost the state economy billions of dollars and reduce state tax revenue by almost $400 million. The report, funded by the Idaho Alliance for a Legal Workforce and prepared by regional economists, emphasized the importance of immigrants to certain industries: As much as 90% of the workforce in dairy production is foreign-born, for example, and half of those individuals might not be authorized to work in the U.S.

There were 21 states with E-Verify requirements for contracts or business licenses as of 2024, federal data showed. Seventeen states had pending legislation to begin or expand E-Verify mandates as of Feb. 5, said Mick Bullock, a spokesperson for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some bills have not progressed after business opposition, such as an E-Verify mandate in Kansas opposed by the Kansas Chamber and the League of Kansas Municipalities. The chamber said the bill “would create an aggressive, invasive, and costly system of employment verification on all Kansas businesses” in 2025 testimony.

“The goal of this bill is to prevent illegal immigration, however with the bill’s broad definitions and severe penalties this legislation would suppress business operations,” the chamber wrote in submitted testimony.

Another example of a limited E-Verify mandate is a recent Ohio law. It applies only to nonresidential construction, despite testimony about illegal labor in residential construction. After Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure in December, it takes effect March 20.

An earlier version of the same Ohio bill passed the state House in 2024 but did not pass the state Senate. In a hearing at the time, Richard Ochocki, an organizer for the state plumbers and pipefitters union, said he spent three hours at an apartment and condo construction site in Columbus without finding even one person with the legal work status required to join the union.

“The flow of undocumented workers to Ohio has been steadily increasing over my five and a half years as an organizer. I have personally encountered undocumented workers in Cleveland, Canton, Ashland, Lima, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus,” said Ochocki, speaking in favor of E-Verify, in prepared remarks.

Madeline Zavodny, a professor at the University of North Florida who has researched the effects of E-Verify on the labor market, said exemptions for short-term work such as agriculture or small business is common, but limiting it to part of one industry such as nonresidential construction is unusual.

“The more limited the law is, the less impact it would have,” Zavodny said. “And nonresidential construction may be heavily unionized in Ohio such that there’s not a lot of unauthorized workers anyway. Unauthorized workers are often day laborers who work primarily in residential construction, not nonresidential.”

Meg Rietschlin, majority owner of a construction firm that bids on schools, roads, culverts and other nonresidential construction projects in rural Crawford County, Ohio, said she requires her workers to have a valid driver’s license, which should be enough to show they have legal status. An E-Verify mandate would drive her out of business because of the additional paperwork, she wrote in 2024 testimony.

“If you inundate me with the requirement to collect so much information, I will cease to be,” Rietschlin wrote. “This proposed law is meant to drive the small contractor out of public works opportunities.”

A report Zavodny co-authored in 2015 found E-Verify mandates appeared to help some workers who compete with unauthorized workers, such as Mexican immigrants who became citizens and U.S.-born Hispanic people, but did not measurably help U.S.-born non-Hispanic white people.

A 2020 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no evidence that E-Verify mandates improve the native-born labor market in general, and no evidence that people without work authorization moved away because of the mandates. Unauthorized workers may move from large businesses to small businesses that are less likely to comply with the mandates, the paper concluded.

As the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ramped up last year, restaurants and construction lost the largest number of immigrant laborers compared with 2024, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data. Landscaping, building services and warehousing industries also lost tens of thousands of laborers.

Rick Naerebout, who represents about 350 Idaho dairy farmers as CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said his members depend on unauthorized labor to run their farms that together produce more than 18 billion pounds of milk in 2025, behind only California and Wisconsin.

Idaho farms have not seen large-scale raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Naerebout said, though there was one last year in South Dakota and one in New Mexico in June, among others. Naerebout said he believes President Donald Trump has paused most ICE raids on agriculture and tourism, as has been reported by The New York Times and Stateline.

Idaho should limit E-Verify mandates to government as the state Senate bill would do, and shouldn’t pass more stringent mandates as the other bills would do, Naerebout added.

“The president couldn’t be more clear that he wants there to be space for critical industries like agriculture to try and get to where we find the solution,” Naerebout said. “The irony is Idaho voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and you’ve got Idaho Republicans now saying what the president’s doing isn’t good enough.”

Among other states, Tennessee has a broad E-Verify mandate for all businesses with at least 35 employees, though the exact number of employees has shifted over the years. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law effective in 2023 that lowered the threshold from 50 to 35, and one proposed bill this year could shift it back to 50 employees.

The mandate has faced business opposition but “other than a brief period of adjustment implementation has gone very smoothly,” Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a statement to Stateline. McNally and other state officials have collaborated with the Trump administration on a package of proposed state legislation this year, including making E-Verify mandatory for state and local government hires.

Florida also has an E-Verify mandate for employers with 25 or more employees, with a bill under consideration to expand it to all employers. It passed the state House in January and is now in a state Senate committee.

In Democratic-led California, employers starting this month must notify employees about their rights under state law, including a prohibition on using E-Verify in a discriminatory way to screen only some employees. A bill in Democratic-led New York, with 12 Democratic sponsors, would prohibit use of E-Verify to screen job applicants or check on existing employees, which is  already prohibited by federal law. E-Verify can only be used legally after a job offer and before an employee has started work.

Meanwhile, some conservative-leaning states are moving to tighten rules. An Indiana bill would hold public works subcontractors accountable as part of an E-Verify mandate for public agency contracts and a West Virginia bill would require all employers to use E-Verify.

Federal legislation to mandate E-Verify for all employers has bogged down in recent years. A Senate bill last year did not progress beyond a committee, and a similar House bill bogged down in 2018.

Last year, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie introduced a bill that would require E-Verify for federal contractors only, saying it was “an area where mandatory E-Verify makes clear sense” in prepared testimony.

Mackenzie said he had sponsored an E-Verify law as a state lawmaker in 2019, and that it “has ensured there is a lawful workforce in the construction industry in my home state of Pennsylvania, protecting American workers from unfair competition, providing a level playing field for businesses, and helping to confirm all appropriate taxes are paid.”

Mackenzie’s bill on federal contractors had a committee hearing in January, during which California Democratic U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said the bill would need an exemption for agriculture, since the government buys food and milk produced by undocumented workers for the military and schools on military bases.

“If we don’t exempt ag, we will have a very serious problem throughout the federal government, especially in our military that relies on ag products in feeding our soldiers,” Lofgren said. Her request to amend the bill was voted down.

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

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats threw a spotlight Thursday on President Donald Trump’s attempts to yank funds away from minority-serving institutions, as the administration tries to end diversity, equity and inclusion policies in schools.

Hawaii U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted an unofficial hearing that gathered advocates, leaders, experts and students to sound the alarm on the consequences of cutting funding for the more than 800 MSIs, as they are known, that enroll millions of students of color. Many are from low-income households or are the first in their families to attend college.

Hirono blasted the administration’s broader efforts to end DEI efforts in schools, as well as larger ongoing actions to axe the 46-year-old U.S. Department of Education.  

Trump “has been attacking these programs and is now working to illegally eliminate the programs entirely, not to mention they would like to eliminate the entire federal Department of Education,” she said. 

In September, the department decided to gut and reprogram $350 million in discretionary funds that support minority-serving institutions, over claims that the programs for Black, Asian, Indigenous and Hispanic students and more are “racially discriminatory.”

Soon after, the department moved to redirect $495 million in additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities as well as tribal colleges.

Adding fuel to the fire, the Justice Department issued an opinion in December finding several grant programs for minority-serving institutions to be “unconstitutional.” 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon concurred with that opinion, and the agency said later that month it was “currently evaluating the full impact” of the opinion on affected programs.

‘Plainly cruel’

Mike Hoa Nguyen, associate professor of education and principal investigator for the MSI Data Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said MSIs are “the backbone of American higher education.” 

Nguyen said these institutions “provide critical pathways to academic opportunity and achievement for millions of students of color, particularly those from low-income households and those who are often the first in their families to go to college.” 

He noted that as a result of the funds being reprogrammed, MSIs have been left “struggling to figure out how to explain the continuity of vital services — services that have been empirically demonstrated to improve student learning, boost academic performance in the classroom and ultimately lead them to graduate.” 

Nguyen added that “these funds are about providing the basic resources so students can learn, grow, succeed and contribute to our society and our economy, and eliminating these resources in general — and in such an abrupt manner — isn’t just misaligned and misguided, it’s plainly cruel.” 

Rowena Tomaneng, president of Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education, said “essential programs nationwide have been shuttered or destabilized” as a consequence of the yanked funding.  

“These programs are not supplemental — they are essential to closing equity gaps for first-generation and low-income students,” said Tomaneng, whose organization advocates for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, faculty and staff across higher education. 

“Their loss will reverse hard-won gains, widen disparities and weaken institutions that serve as gateways to opportunity,” Tomaneng said. 

Senators send letter to McMahon

The hearing came a week after Hirono, along with Sens. Alex Padilla of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, led nearly two dozen colleagues in urging McMahon to reverse her department’s decision to unilaterally halt federal funding for MSIs.

“This decision is yet another example of this Administration attempting to circumvent Congress and its obligations to follow the law,” the senators wrote. “Unilaterally deciding that long-standing programs are unconstitutional, absent a ruling from the judiciary, sets a dangerous precedent and disrupts needed support that colleges and students rely on.” 

Meanwhile, Trump signed into law earlier in February a spending package that funds the Education Department at $79 billion this fiscal year.

The measure also “increases funding for all Title III and V programs that support HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Tribal colleges, and other minority-serving institutions,” per a summary from Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats. 

Hirono noted that “only Congress can eliminate these programs, and Congress has decided not to do so,” during the hearing. 

“In fact, we provided additional funding for these programs in the fiscal year (20)26 spending bill reiterating our support for them, but of course, the Trump regime doesn’t care about Congress’ priorities,” she said. 

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. 

Gov. Tony Evers has written to the White House, demanding that President Donald Trump release $29 million Wisconsin was promised to complete an upgrade of the state’s unemployment insurance system.

Evers’ letter to Trump, sent Tuesday, repeatedly leans into the upgrade project as a tool for “preventing fraud, waste, and abuse in our unemployment insurance system.”

The terminated grants “were being used to efficiently and effectively reduce fraud and ensure correct payment of benefits,” Evers wrote. Referring to the justification stated in the U.S. Department of Labor’s letter in May canceling the grants, Evers added: “Notably, Wisconsin was informed that, apparently, those grants no longer effectuate the priorities of the U.S. DOL.”

Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system upgrade was launched after major snags in the unemployment system in 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when business shutdowns spiked unemployment claims in the state. There were widespread complaints about the system, and Evers fired his first Department of Workforce Development cabinet secretary over the delays.

The Evers administration blamed the state’s computer system used for processing claims, which was based on decades-old technology, and in 2021 lawmakers authorized a major overhaul of the system.

With an $80 million grant from the federal government, part of the American Rescue Plan Act pandemic relief measure enacted in the first months of President Joe Biden’s administration, DWD proceeded with the upgrades.

“We upgraded the entire claimant portal,” DWD Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview in August. Among a number of improvements, the upgrade made it possible for people filing an unemployment claim to send photos or digital document files to the agency, she said.

“Since modernizing the claimant portal, DWD has consistently paid 88% of regular UI claims within three days or less of the claim being filed,” states the latest quarterly report on the upgrade project. The report, under the signatures of Pechacek and Department of Administration Secretary-designee Kathy Blumenfeld, was filed with the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee Jan. 30.

Starting in September 2021, the Department of Labor awarded DWD four additional ARPA grants totaling $29 million. That included $11.25 million to modernize the UI system portal for employers; $6.3 million for fraud prevention and deduction and related modifications; $6.8 million for improved communications for UI users and $4.5 million in identity authentication and proofing and other improvements.

“The modern employer portal would improve communication between DWD and its customers for tax and wage reporting, employer information and support, responding to submitted unemployment insurance claims verification, and appeal activities all in a secure setting,” Pechacek and Blumenfeld wrote in the Jan. 30 report.

The Trump administration notified Wisconsin May 22 that the $29 million was being terminated. The letter left open the possibility of future grants

“Vendors working on UI modernization had to end their work before the product was complete,” Pechacek and Blumenfeld wrote in their report. “The Trump Administration’s decision to pull funding from UI modernization projects turned partially completed software contracts into sunk costs, effectively wasting many months and hundreds of millions of dollars nationally.”

DWD asked the Labor Department in June and July to reverse its decision, but the request was denied. In August, Evers wrote U.S. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer and again urged reinstatement of the grants.

“To be clear, if the Trump Administration does not reverse course and provide the $29 million Wisconsin expected to receive, the state will not be able to complete its UI system modernization project, which is designed to use innovative tools to help efficiently and effectively prevent benefit fraud and abuse,” Evers declared in the August letter.

Wisconsin’s appeals to the Labor Department to reconsider “have largely gone ignored,” Evers told Trump in his letter this week, with no “formal decision” from the department, nor any new grants to modernize UI systems.

“If fighting fraud is truly and earnestly a meaningful commitment of you and your administration, funding for states’ unemployment modernization projects must be restored,” Evers wrote.

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WASHINGTON — The nation’s main agency for handling disaster response and recovery is shuttered for the third time in recent months and its workers are on the verge of missing paychecks, as members of Congress and the White House remain divided in a separate dispute over immigration enforcement.

Lawmakers are raising questions about how the ongoing shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security is affecting the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is housed within DHS. FEMA already lacks a permanent administrator and has been under threat of a major overhaul by President Donald Trump. 

The agency is no stranger to shutdowns and keeps much of its workforce going without pay during a funding lapse, though several programs are paused until Congress approves a spending bill. 

The longer the shutdown lasts, the more likely it is to have repercussions on FEMA’s staff, especially when thousands of its employees miss their first paycheck Friday. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt, chairwoman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said she hopes that missed income will increase pressure on Democrats to strike a deal on the last remaining government funding bill for fiscal 2026.

“You think about the winter storm the South went through. Now you think of the winter storm that we just had. We clearly need this to be functioning and working,” Britt said. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he doesn’t believe the Trump administration is “serious” about finding bipartisan agreement on guardrails for immigration enforcement. 

“We’ve sent them multiple compromises. They barely respond,” Murphy said. “I think it feels like they want the shutdown to continue, because they are prioritizing continuing their lawlessness at ICE.”

Minneapolis shootings 

Democrats held up DHS funding after federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in late January during a surge in Minnesota, just weeks after different immigration officers shot and killed Renee Good. Both were U.S. citizens. 

Democratic leaders have detailed several changes they want to make to immigration enforcement operations, including a requirement that agents wear body cameras and do not wear masks. 

Republicans have said they’re willing to negotiate with Democrats on some of those issues, but have requests of their own, including that cities and states that don’t cooperate with federal immigration agencies do so.

The two parties were unable to broker an agreement before stopgap funding for the Department of Homeland Security expired, plunging all of its agencies into another shutdown that’s dragged on since Feb. 14. 

This marks the third funding lapse for DHS this fiscal year. The first, which affected large swaths of the federal government, lasted 43 days and ended in mid-November. The second shutdown was partial since some of the full-year spending bills had become law. It lasted about four days, ending Feb. 3.

DHS’s contingency plan says about 20,975 of FEMA’s roughly 24,925 employees will keep working during the funding lapse. 

In general, any federal employee tasked with the protection of life or property keeps working during a shutdown, while those assigned to other programs are supposed to be sent home. Neither category receives paychecks until Congress and the administration come to some sort of funding deal. 

FEMA’s disaster relief fund is somewhat unique among federal programs since Congress has granted it the authority to deficit spend; it cannot run out of money, even during a shutdown. 

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that FEMA’s non-disaster grant and training programs tend to halt during a shutdown, possibly leading to “delays in awards, possible delays in grant drawdowns, and deferral or cancellation of training and exercises that support state and local preparedness.”

Staffing is also an ongoing issue for FEMA, not just during shutdowns but in general, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office, a congressional watchdog. 

“Recent FEMA workforce reductions may reduce how effective a federal response could be in future high-impact disasters,” it states.

FEMA didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from States Newsroom to share exactly how the shutdown has impacted the agency and provide a list of which programs are running during the funding lapse and which are on hold.  

Noem criticism

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine., said she’s apprehensive about how the shutdown has affected several agencies housed within Homeland Security. 

“My concerns are that FEMA, the Coast Guard and TSA are all bearing the brunt of this shutdown, which is why it is vital that we get an agreement and get one fast,” Collins said, referring to the Transportation Security Administration, which protects the nation’s transportation systems.

Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said there were issues with how DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was managing FEMA before the shutdown began. 

“Well, let’s be clear that Noem hasn’t been good about sending out any FEMA emergency grants anyway,” Murray said. “So I’m always concerned about how she operates her agency.”

Trump has spoken repeatedly about overhauling or even doing away with FEMA and established a review council to provide him with suggestions, though they missed their deadline last year and have yet to release their report. 

Trump also hasn’t nominated anyone to lead FEMA during his second term in the White House, opting instead to use a series of people to temporarily run the agency who didn’t need to go through the Senate confirmation process. 

Cam Hamilton, one of those FEMA leaders, said on a podcast released in mid-February there was “so much political volatility” during his time working at the agency, in part, because of Noem. 

“The talking points were not coherent. I will say that my former boss was not as elaborate and sophisticated in team building,” he said. “So there was not an easy time understanding, what is the message, what is the platform.”

Hamilton worked as the senior official performing the duties of the administrator at FEMA until he was ousted in May after he testified before Congress he personally did “not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

‘We’ve had all this snow’

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a senior appropriator and Republican Policy Committee chair, said she’s not happy with the FEMA shutdown. 

“I’m not comfortable with what’s shut down at FEMA, and it should put pressure on the Democrats to push this through,” Capito said. “We’ve had all this snow, we’re going to have other disasters, and we rely on FEMA a lot in our state.”

Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said there is money available for disaster relief but that he’s concerned “whether or not people are going to be there to be administering” it.

Peters said he believes leaders at DHS, including Noem, are trying to make the shutdown more problematic than necessary.

“I think she’s trying to create pain,” Peters said. “She’s trying to create pain as opposed to trying to put in safeguards for ICE. It’s really pretty outrageous what she’s doing.”

A Milwaukee police officer has been accused of abusing his access to the department’s Flock camera network, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Milwaukee district attorney’s office Tuesday. Josue Ayala is charged with one count of misdemeanor misconduct in public for allegedly using MPD’s Flock network to determine the locations of two people, one of whom was in a romantic relationship with Ayala. 

If convicted, Ayala could face up to nine months in prison and up to $10,000 in fines. The criminal complaint states that a negotiation is underway, “a condition of which requires Josue Ayala to resign his position as a police officer” for MPD. 

Flock cameras continuously photograph and identify vehicles with AI-powered Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology, and then store that data in a network which can be searched by law enforcement agencies across the country. Distributed by the multi-billion dollar company Flock Safety, the cameras have been criticized for facilitating mass surveillance of citizens using a system that can be easily abused or misused by law enforcement. 

According to the criminal complaint, one of the alleged victims used a website to determine that Ayala had conducted numerous searches of that person’s license plate. “VICTIM ONE believed that Officer Ayala ran VICTIM ONE’S license plate over 100 times,” the complaint states. Detectives reviewed audit data from MPD’s Flock network showing that one victim had been searched by Ayala 55 times while the other victim had been searched 124 times over the same time period. 

Detectives learned that both victims used to be in a relationship together but had since broken up. After the relationship ended, one of the victims began to date Ayala. The investigation revealed that Ayala had used Flock while dating the victim.

The complaint states that Ayala was on duty when he conducted the searches. When officers use Flock, they need to put in a reason for the search. Ayala used “investigation” in order to conduct the unlawful searches. Last year, an analysis by the Wisconsin Examiner found that “investigation” was the most common search term Wisconsin law enforcement agencies used to access Flock during the first five months of 2025. Other agencies used even more vague search terms, including  just a dot. Agencies disagreed about whether officers should be held accountable for using vague terms. 

In December 2023, MPD leadership issued a memorandum warning that staff who used Flock for reasons unrelated to law enforcement could face discipline. MPD’s policy on ALPR technology and Flock also states that the system should only be used for “bona fide law enforcement purposes.” 

Ayala had been assigned to the MPD’s District 2 station on Lincoln Avenue, but is now on full suspension. The resignation agreement is pending with the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, a police department press release states. 

Police Chief Jeffrey Norman said in a statement, “I am extremely disappointed to learn about the incident and expect all members, sworn and civilian, to demonstrate the highest ethical standards in the performance of their duties.” 

“If a member violates the code of conduct, they will be held accountable,” Norman added.  “… I want to remind the public that everyone is afforded the right of due process under the law, and as such, are innocent until proven guilty.” Norman also directed his department to create additional auditing mechanisms, although the department’s press release does not explain what exactly those mechanisms are. 

Ayala’s alleged use of surveillance technology for personal reasons is not an anomaly. In Menasha, an officer is facing felony misconduct in public office charges for using Flock to track a person’s vehicle while he was off duty. In Kenosha County, a sheriff’s deputy is also accused of using Flock and a squad car tracking system called Polaris to track one of his co-workers. The Examiner has filed records requests to obtain the internal investigation regarding the Kenosha sheriff’s deputy. 

The chief of the Greenfield Police Department is also facing felony misconduct in public office charges for installing a department-owned pole camera system on his property for personal reasons, and then deleting texts which may have been related to the investigation of the camera’s use. WTMJ reported that the chief captured himself deleting the messages using a body camera he’d worn to document a meeting where he was being offered the chance to retire. 

Residents in Milwaukee have been increasingly critical about the use of Flock cameras and facial recognition technology by both the police department and sheriff’s office. After a Fire and Police Commission meeting earlier this month related to facial recognition, where dozens of residents denounced the use of surveillance technologies, Norman announced that MPD would ban facial recognition for its staff. Locals have called for more oversight and transparency around police surveillance technology in the city.

The Milwaukee Police Association (MPD’s union) denounced Norman’s decision to restrict facial recognition. After the charges were announced against Ayala, the union posted on Facebook that he is innocent until proven guilty, that it respects “the integrity of that process,” and clarified that Ayala is not related to the union’s president Alex Ayala. 

Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, said in a statement that these latest accusations of Flock misuse “exemplify just how easily Flock cameras can be turned against the very people the technology purports to protect.”

McCray Jones criticized the use of vague terms to search Flock’s network, referencing reporting from the Examiner. “These meaningless, one-word descriptions make it impossible to know what the technology is being used for or whether it’s justified,” he said. McCray Jones called for greater public reporting and oversight of surveillance technologies in Milwaukee.

This story has been updated with comment from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin.

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State officials across the country are looking to crack down on fraud and mistakes in the nation’s largest food assistance program, spurred by looming federal rules that will force states with high error rates to pay more.

But the Republican proposals mostly focus on more frequently verifying the eligibility of individual households that participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), rather than on broader administrative shortcomings that allow most of the waste and fraud to occur.

Policies such as verifying recipients’ eligibility each month — which can involve cross-checking multiple databases or collecting extra documentation — might increase state agencies’ workloads without lowering error rates. This is especially likely if states don’t boost funding to handle the extra paperwork, investigate fraud or resolve recipient and agency errors.

Eliza Kinsey, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine who focuses on hunger, said staffing shortages, outdated technology and changes to eligibility rules that require oversight are making it harder for state agencies to avoid overpaying or underpaying recipients — the errors that will cost states money under the new federal rules.

“The fact that we’re seeing error rates that are higher really makes sense, given the context of what’s going on in SNAP right now,” Kinsey said.

SNAP, formerly known as food stamps, is a federal-state program that provides recipients with a debit card that can be used to purchase food at grocery stores and other retailers. SNAP errors and fraud often get conflated, but they’re largely separate issues: Errors are unintentional mistakes by SNAP agencies or recipients, while fraud is intentional theft.

SNAP errors occur when the state overpays or underpays SNAP recipients. They’re caused either by unintentional recipient mistakes — forgetting to report a change in how many people live in the household, for example — or by an agency processing error, such as incorrectly calculating a household’s expenses.

States have encountered instances of individual recipient fraud, though they can go uninvestigated when resources are scarce. Large sums, in the millions, have been stolen by sophisticated crime rings that electronically “skim” money from the debit cards that SNAP recipients use to purchase food.

State SNAP error rates include recipient fraud, recipient errors, and state agency errors.

Alabama earned local and national media attention last year when initial U.S. Department of Agriculture data from early 2025 showed it leading the nation in stolen SNAP benefit claims, ahead of much more populous California and New York.

“There’s a lot of talk about SNAP fraud, and a lot of it is misrepresented,” Nancy Buckner, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Human Resources, which administers Alabama’s SNAP program, told state lawmakers at a January budget hearing. “The biggest SNAP fraud in this country are those people that are doing it electronically.”

In recent years, her department noticed SNAP purchases being made in states nowhere near Alabama, she said, including New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Maine.

“It was obvious to us we don’t have that many Alabama clients shopping in those other states,” she said. This month, Alabama became the second state, behind California, to issue SNAP debit cards to recipients with the kind of microchips that are standard on commercial debit cards. Chipped cards are harder to steal from than those with magnetic strips only.

In the middle of it all, states are staring down massive cuts in federal funding. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act puts states on the hook for more administrative costs and forces states to pay a higher share of benefits, in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars, if they have higher error rates.

“The federal government is telling states, you have to pay more in administrative costs, and you have to bring your error rates down simultaneously,” said Kinsey. “It feels like those two changes are in opposition with each other.”

Error prone

Last month, Alabama state lawmakers grilled Buckner, demanding to know her plan for lowering the state’s error rate.

Under Trump’s new law, Alabama’s SNAP administrative costs will rise by $39 million. Meanwhile, the state’s error rate, which Buckner expects to be about 9%, is below the national average, but high enough to allow the feds to force the state to cover 10% of its SNAP benefits starting in fiscal 2028.

All told, Alabama could be on the hook for an additional $200 million or more per year by 2028.

“Is there anything that can be done to prevent running into that $200 million wall?” Alabama state Sen. Greg Albritton, a Republican, asked Buckner during a budget hearing in January. “Right now I think that the train’s got the light on, heading straight for us.”

Buckner said she hoped for some extra wiggle room from the feds, but provided few details on how the department could lower Alabama’s error rate enough to avoid financial penalties.

Currently, the federal government pays for SNAP benefits and splits administration costs 50/50 with states. But starting in October, under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, all states will be on the hook for 75% of their own administrative costs. And the new law allows the feds to penalize states for their SNAP errors, requiring them to pay from 5%-15% of their SNAP benefit costs if their error rates are over 6%.

The only states under the 6% threshold, per the most recent data available from USDA, which oversees the program, were Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

Republicans say these new rules will reduce the federal government’s investment in SNAP while giving states some “skin in the game” when it comes to being responsible with federal money.

“One of the problems is the federal programs don’t mandate the prevention, detection and prosecution of fraud,” said Dawn Royal, with the United Council on Welfare Fraud, a national membership group focused on fraud in public assistance programs. “And so states are unwilling to spend state money in order to protect federal money.”

In Alabama, the USDA replaced nearly $16 million in stolen benefits from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2025, according to federal data.

The Alabama Senate is currently considering a bill that would require state agencies to conduct monthly checks of other state databases to make sure SNAP enrollees remain eligible.

Buckner told state lawmakers that increasing eligibility checks for SNAP benefits would “shoot that error rate up, way up.” The state’s Legislative Fiscal Office estimated the additional work for both Medicaid and SNAP under the pending bill could cost $16.7 million per year.

“Monthly reporting is not the answer to that, at all,” she said.

But other states are looking at similar measures.

Lawmakers in states including Idaho, Kansas and Wyoming have introduced bills to require their state SNAP administrators to check eligibility of SNAP recipients more frequently. Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah bills would require verification of citizenship or legal immigration status before approving applicants for SNAP benefits. A Wisconsin bill would require the state’s Democratic governor to bow to a White House demand to turn over state data on SNAP recipients.

And in Arizona, GOP lawmakers wanted to go even further than the new federal requirements. Last week Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a package of Republican bills that would have required the state agency administering SNAP to get its error rate below 3% by 2030 or face financial penalties, and cut an additional 10% from its budget if the state failed to take corrective action.

States target fraud

SNAP fraud has made state and national headlines in recent years, but there’s not a broad consensus on the scale of the problem nor how to address it.

Some SNAP fraud is perpetrated by recipients who lie in order to get SNAP benefits for which they’re not eligible. But there’s also organized electronic SNAP theft, which involves thieves taking control of EBT accounts through electronic methods such as card skimming or cloning, bot attacks and phishing scams. Skimming is a form of theft where devices are illegally installed inside sales terminals at a store and capture card data. That data is then used to make unauthorized purchases or steal from the victim’s account.

In December, a longtime USDA employee was sentenced to two years in prison for her role in what the U.S. Department of Justice called a “sprawling fraud and bribery scheme” that generated more than $66 million in unauthorized SNAP transactions. The same month, two Romanian nationals were indicted for their role in allegedly stealing more than $160,000 in benefits in Oregon and elsewhere. In 2025, California reported more than $100 million in stolen funds from California SNAP recipients’ EBT cards.

States reported replacing more than $360 million in stolen benefits from fiscal 2023-2025, according to federal data. Experts and state officials differ on whether recipients or organized crime rings are the biggest threats to SNAP. But since the federal government stopped reimbursing stolen SNAP benefits at the end of 2024, more states are looking at ways to address fraud.

States including Arkansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Virginia are joining Alabama and California in rolling out chip cards to make it harder for skimmers to steal SNAP benefits.

“SNAP fraud is rampant,” said Royal, of the United Council on Welfare Fraud. “If anybody tells you that there’s not SNAP fraud out there, they’re trying to pull the wool over your eyes. It exists in all 50 states. It is definitely a plague on the taxpayers.”

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

A parents’ advocacy group is giving mixed reviews to the latest developments in addressing the ongoing issue of lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools.

On the plus side, Lead Safe Schools MKE supports a new lead testing initiative at MPS that officials announced this week.

“We applaud the efforts at testing children and increasing testing penetration,” Kristen Payne of Lead Safe Schools MKE told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message. “This will help to ascertain the extent to which children in Milwaukee suffer from elevated blood lead levels.”

Payne said the organization wants to see testing and evaluation expanded from elementary schools to the rest of the school system.

Caroline Reinwald, the public information officer for the Milwaukee Health Department, said that the MPS work started with elementary schools because younger children are at higher risk for lead exposure, which can lead to developmental problems. MPS is planning to evaluate other schools, she said in an email message, with the health department overseeing and guiding the process.

An MPS Lead Reports and Plan webpage outlines the district’s project for addressing potential lead exposure in the school system.

Payne said Lead Safe Schools MKE wants MPS to adopt a stronger standard for evaluating drinking water for the presence of lead than it currently uses — 15 parts per billion — noting that public health experts say that no level of lead in drinking water is safe for humans.

MPS media relations manager Stephen Davis said that the district tested drinking water from all fountains, faucets, dispensers and other fixtures in 2016, and that 94% of fountains “met EPA standards.” Fountains that did not were turned off and eventually replaced.

Davis said there are no lead service lines providing water to MPS school buildings. The district also has filtration systems on all water fountains.

Payne said that her group wants to see the district use a standard from the American Academy of Pediatrics of less than 1 ppb.

The organization also wants MPS to continue dust-wipe sampling in the buildings that the district has declared stabilized to ensure that they remain safe.

Reinwold said the health department “supports continued vigilance and will continue working with MPS to ensure stabilization work remains protective over time and that any new deterioration is addressed promptly.”

In addition, Lead Safe Schools MKE has sought more testing of soil on MPS school grounds, which Payne called “an overlooked pathway of potential exposure.”

Davis said the school district has evaluated areas where children may “come into contact with bare soil” including playgrounds, courtyards and unpaved outdoor spaces.

Payne said Lead Safe Schools MKE also has concerns about communication and transparency in the ongoing project to address lead exposure concerns in the school system.

“There are serious gaps in the data available to the public and no clear accountability processes in place to be sure information gets published,” she said.

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Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said that the nearly eight hours of hearings held by the newly established Committee on the Oversight of the Department of Justice this week amounted to “political theater.” 

In a series of hearings Tuesday and Wednesday, the committee, chaired by Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), dug into allegations that the DOJ violated state rules when it hired out of state lawyers on contract to enforce the state’s environmental regulations. 

The attorneys were given fellowships to work as special assistant attorneys general through a New York University program tied to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The testimony obtained by the committee included input from Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, the state’s largest business lobby and one of the state Republican Party’s most powerful allies, and a dairy farmer who was subject to an enforcement action by the state after he operated his factory farm without a permit for six years. 

The Republican members of the committee said the fellowships presented “troubling” opportunities for a third-party organization to exert partisan influence over the work of the DOJ. Throughout the testimony, Republicans also complained about the specifics of state employment classifications, the timeliness of paperwork filing and previous contributions Bloomberg has made to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. 

At a press conference Wednesday afternoon, Kaul compared the committee’s work to former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman’s widely maligned review of the 2020 election. 

“Increasingly, what we’re seeing are actions from the committee that I would describe as Gableman-esque,” Kaul said. “This is clearly an exercise in political theater, not a substantive exercise, and that’s really unfortunate, because the reality is that we do have serious issues to address on behalf of the people of Wisconsin, and we have progress to make.”

Kaul also questioned how an investigation into outside influence on state government could give the state’s most powerful lobbying organization a multi-hour platform to testify.

“The purported basis for this is to investigate outside influence, and the only outside influence that is going on here is the outside influence on our Legislature,” he said. “Just yesterday, the state’s most powerful lobbying organization got a platform to testify from this Legislature. We did not hear from a single person who was impacted by the harmful pollution, who was there to talk about those harms. So we have a one-sided presentation from the Legislature, and any concerns about outside influence are ones that relate to the actions of the Legislature, not the Department of Justice.”

Republicans on the committee complained that the fellows were paid through the university program while officially being classified by the state as volunteers and that Kaul seeking this outside funding for staff attorneys amounted to an end-run around the Legislature’s authority to decide the department’s budget. 

“If you’re truly a leader of a department, you shouldn’t give up. You seem to believe in certain things, but you’ve given up on trying to help with your own state resources,” Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) said, asking why Kaul didn’t ask the Legislature for additional money to fund environmental enforcement attorneys. 

Kaul said he’s “confident the current majority will not fund additional environmental positions.” 

Tomczyk also spent a significant chunk of his testimony asking about the timing of DOJ filing paperwork to officially hire the fellows, including when they took their oaths of office and got licensed to practice law in Wisconsin. He compared delays in the oaths being completed with the Tuesday testimony of dairy farmer Phil Mlsna — who missed a filing deadline with the DNR, causing the loss of his dairy farm’s permit.

Felzkowski, a former member of the Joint Finance Committee, has been among the Republicans most hostile to the state’s environmental rules and conservation programs. As a member of JFC, she anonymously held up the Pelican River Forest conservation project and has been heavily opposed to the extension of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program. 

Throughout her questioning of Kaul, she argued that funding environmental enforcement is inherently partisan. 

“You want the citizens of the state of Wisconsin to believe this is a non-partisan organization without a personal agenda or their own private agenda,” Felzkowski said. 

Kaul said enforcing the state’s environmental laws is a partisan issue only in that many Republicans don’t believe the government should address climate change. 

“Well, what I would say is that the center is focused on environmental protection issues, and so a lot of it is a question of if you view protecting the environment, addressing climate change, working to protect safe and clean water, as partisan issues or not,” Kaul said. 

Following the hearing’s conclusion, the Republican members of the committee held a press conference to say they’d assess the testimony and release a report. During the press conference, Tomczyk questioned if the DOJ should be “punished” over the fellowship issue. 

“If we’re going to punish a farmer for not having his paperwork done, should the DOJ be punished for not having theirs?” he asked, adding that he has “some ideas” for what the punishment would look like. 

The Democrats on the committee said that after two days of testimony, Republicans couldn’t point to any specific cases in which the fellows’ work on a case was unduly influenced. 

“What was clear from the testimony over the last two days is there was not one, not one example of any legal matter or enforcement action that was worked on by these legal fellows that pointed to any special interest,” Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), a former environmental attorney, said. “They were working on bread-and-butter environmental enforcement actions pertaining to water quality, CAFO regulation, wetland remediation and the like, everything was what we need as a state to protect our communities.”

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture will transfer a large office building to the General Services Administration in a step toward shrinking the department’s footprint in and around Washington, D.C., Secretary Brooke Rollins said Wednesday.

More than 70% of offices at the USDA’s South Building, in Washington, sit empty on any given day, while deferred maintenance costs have piled up past $1 billion, Rollins said at a press conference in front of the building.

“Behind me, along this entire city block in bricks and mortar, is what government that has grown too big, too bloated and too disconnected from its citizens looks like,” Rollins said. “That all changes starting today, because today we are officially starting the process of turning the South Building back over to the General Services Administration.”

The department will also vacate leased space at an office in Alexandria, Virginia, USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden said.

The moves are part of a plan the department outlined in July 2025 to shift its workers out of the capital region, reducing the workforce in D.C., Maryland and Virginia from 4,600 to around 2,000 while expanding regional hubs throughout the country.

Rollins said Wednesday the move was the “next step to right-size our federal real estate footprint to root out waste, fraud and abuse.”

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican who has long advocated for shrinking the federal government, applauded the move and urged department officials to consider her state as a target for relocation.

“Let’s just keep on draining the swamp, and, Secretary Rollins, moving our federal workers closer to the people that they represent,” Ernst said. “And I would say that the great state of Iowa is a good place to start.”

Workforce to relocate

Workers in the department’s Food and Nutrition Service who currently report to the Virginia office will relocate to Washington, D.C., Vaden said. 

The broader reorganization would ramp up over the summer, allowing employees with school-aged children to finish the academic year in the capital area and complete their relocation in time for the next school year, he said.

That will require a series of steps required by laws, regulations and union contracts, Vaden said. 

The July plan said the effort to spread the USDA workforce out from D.C. would take years. It included expanded regional offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

The department would also maintain administrative support locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Minneapolis and agency service centers in St. Louis; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Missoula, Montana, according to a July 24 memo.

South Building future unclear

GSA Administrator Edward Forst said the move represented “a very preliminary stage” and declined to provide a timeline for the transfer to be complete.

“I don’t want to commit to a time frame other than I have two years and 10 months left in this job,” he said. “And we’re going to get a lot done in that time frame.”

Vaden said the USDA reorganization would be complete by the end of 2026.

Forst said USDA’s transfer of the South Building triggered a long and comprehensive process to find a new use. The agency would consult with stakeholders, including the private sector, and that the district’s prosperity was among its priorities. 

“We’re committed to economic prosperity for D.C.,” he said. “That’s one of our initiatives. We also talk to the private sector and others about the best case use and how we also deliver the best results for the American taxpayer. So it is a long, it’s a comprehensive process. We want to be good listeners, and then we’ll execute on this.”

A group of Wisconsin parents, students, teachers, school districts and education advocates are suing the Legislature over the current school funding formula, arguing that the system does not meet the state’s obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students as required by the state Constitution. 

The suit was filed Monday evening in Eau Claire County Circuit Court by Madison-based nonprofit Law Forward and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union.

The plaintiffs in the suit are led by the Wisconsin Parent Teacher Association and include five school districts, including Adams-Friendship Area School District, School District of Beloit, Eau Claire Area School District, Green Bay Area Public School District, Necedah Area School District, the teachers union of each respective district, eight Wisconsinites including teachers, parents, students and community members, as well as the Wisconsin Public Education Network. 

The lawsuit names the state Legislature, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), and the Joint Finance Committee and its Republican and Democratic members. 

Jeff Mandell, co-founder of Law Forward, told reporters during a press call Tuesday that schools have been doing their best to fully prepare students to be productive and active members of society but that the current funding system is making it almost impossible. 

“These folks are not magicians. They are not Rumpelstiltskin. They cannot turn straw into gold, and we do not have what we need for our schools to thrive,” Mandell said. 

Mandell noted that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has previously considered the way schools are funded in the 2000 case Vincent v. Voight. 

The Supreme Court found in the Vincent v. Voight case, which was initiated by a group of Wisconsin students, parents, teachers, school districts, school board members, citizens and the WEAC president, that the state’s funding formula was constitutional. 

The majority opinion indicated that the Legislature had articulated that an equal opportunity for a sound basic education is “the opportunity for students to be proficient in mathematics, science, reading and writing, geography and history, and for them to receive instruction in the arts and music, vocational training, social sciences, health, physical education and foreign language, in accordance with their age and aptitude.” The opinion also concluded that as long as “the Legislature is providing sufficient resources so that school districts offer students the equal opportunity for a sound basic education as required by the constitution, the state school finance system will pass constitutional muster.”

Mandell said that in the 25 years since the ruling “things have gotten considerably worse, and we are at a point where, for many districts … they are on the verge of crisis.” 

The lawsuit lays out the difference between how Wisconsin schools were funded in the  1999-2000 school year versus the 2023-2024 school year. School funding 25 years ago was comprised of 53.7% state funds, 41.6% local funds and 4.7% federal funding; in 2023-24, the mix had changed to about 45% state, 43% local and 12% federal funding.

“The fault for this crisis lies not at the feet of students, parents, families, teachers, staff, administrators, school districts, or elected board members,” the lawsuit states. “The shortcomings of our public schools are directly traceable to the Legislature’s consistent failures to ensure adequate state funding of public schools and to legislate a rational school finance system that meets constitutional mandates.”

The lawsuit states that school districts across the state are “facing financial crisis” because of expiring federal funding and stagnating state dollars. 

The suit also details the state’s history of funding schools and the increasing reliance on property taxes through school referendums to try to keep up with costs. It also details the ways that the state’s school choice program, which was launched in the 1990s and has grown exponentially over the years, has reduced funding for public schools. 

Law Forward was at the helm of the 2024 lawsuit that ended with the Wisconsin Supreme Court declaring the state’s legislative maps an unconstitutional gerrymander and is in the process of challenging the state’s Congressional maps. 

Mandell said the plaintiffs in the suit include a geographically diverse group to highlight how this is a statewide problem. He said it is possible that other districts will reach out about joining the case and they will “figure that out as we go.”

Joshua Miller, an Eau Claire Area School District parent, told reporters that “the dire need for adequate funding has been made clear to the lawmakers, but they have refused to hear our pleas” 

“The situation is sad, absurd, and it’s infuriating,” he said. “Wisconsin’s current school finance system is broken and this lawsuit, which I am proud to join, would be a way for the courts to force legislators to make a new system that works and actually meets the needs of the students of Wisconsin.” 

Tanya Kotlowski, a plaintiff in the case and superintendent for the Necedah Area School District, said her district is going to referendum for a third time this spring to help fund its operations. In April, the school district plans to ask voters to approve a four-year operational referendum that would provide a total of $5.8 million in order to maintain the district’s current level of educational programming as well as operate and maintain the district. 

Kotolowski noted that she and other school leaders have spent a lot of time advocating on behalf of their schools to lawmakers for additional funding. During the recent state budget cycle, school funding was one of the top issues brought up by members of the public at listening sessions held by the budget committee.

“Despite all of those efforts, the funding system has not kept up with the needs of our children and the needs of our current realities,” she said. “Our local referendum, some would argue or could argue, has been 100% funding that mandated legal, constitutional obligation.”

According to the lawsuit, the Necedah Area School District has directed over $6.6 million — all of its operational referendum revenue — to its special education fund over the past eight years.

Kotlowski said her district has been underfunded by $13 million for special education costs over the last decade, and that if funding had kept pace with inflation, the district wouldn’t need to go to referendum this year.

Mandell said that referendum requests used to be fairly rare and used when a school district had large projects.

“What we’re seeing now is a system where school districts have no choice but to go to referendum regularly to try to fund basic operations to keep the lights on and to keep payroll flowing, and it’s really a tremendous problem,” Mandell said. 

Referendum requests that allow schools to exceed state-imposed revenue caps through approval from voters became a part of Wisconsin’s school funding equation in the 1990s. Lawmakers implemented school revenue limit caps as part of an effort to control local property taxes. 

The revenue limits used to be tied to inflation, but that was ended in the 2009-11 state budget, leaving increases up to the decisions of state lawmakers and the governor, who have not provided predictable increases budget to budget.

The recent state budget did not invest any additional state dollars into school general aid, in part because lawmakers were upset with Evers’ 400-year partial veto in the prior state budget. The partial veto extended a $325 per pupil school revenue limit increase from two years to four centuries, giving, schools the authority to bring in additional dollars from state funds or property tax hikes. Without the state providing additional funding, many schools have turned to raising property taxes using the school revenue authority to help support their operational costs. 

“I understand there’s a big political debate about that veto, and about that mechanism, we don’t have a position on this. What we’re saying is that the school funding mechanism is not sufficient and is unconstitutional, even with that,” Mandell said.

The state budget did provide additional funding for special education reimbursement, but recent estimates show that the amount of funding will not be enough to provide reimbursement at the promised rates of 42% and 45%. Increasing special ed funding is part of ongoing negotiations between legislative leaders and Evers. 

The lawsuit comes as the legislative session is coming to a close. 

The state Assembly adjourned for the session last week and the Senate will wrap up next month, but the only bills with a chance of becoming law are those that have already passed the Assembly. 

Even if a deal arises out of the current negotiations on property taxes and school funding, Mandell said the problem identified in the lawsuit will still exist. He noted that a proposal from Evers included $450 million towards school general aids — an amount that is $2 billion less than what schools would get if inflationary increases had continued in 2009. Mandell said Evers is not named in the suit because it is the Legislature that is chiefly responsible for appropriating funds. 

“This is not a problem that arose overnight. It has developed over decades, and it’s not a problem that will be solved overnight,” Mandell said. “Any deal that the Legislature and the governor might reach… is not going to solve the problem.”

Mandell said that the plaintiffs in the lawsuit  are not looking for the court to decide on a specific amount of money that the state should provide to schools, but instead want the court to “fully explain and delve into how the finance system works, what the needs are, and to make some of those decisions.”

The lawsuit asks the court for a judgement that declares the Legislature hasn’t fulfilled and cannot “shirk” its constitutional obligation to fund schools at a sufficiently high level to “ensure that every Wisconsin student has an equal opportunity to obtain a sound basic education that equips them for their roles as citizens and enables them to succeed economically and personally in a tuition free public school where the character of instruction is as uniform as practicable.” It calls for the current funding system to be ruled invalid. 

The lawsuit calls for relief that will “establish a schedule that will enable the Court — in the absence of a superseding state law, adopted by the Legislature and signed by the governor in a timely fashion — to adopt and implement a new school finance system that meets all relevant state constitutional guarantees.” 

Mandell said, however, that it likely won’t be up to the court to decide exactly how the state should fund schools. 

“There are almost an infinite number of options for how the Legislature could do this, but what we’re asking the court to do is to look at it and say to the Legislature, not good enough…. then we do expect that the Legislature and the governor will do their jobs,” Mandell said. 

Mandell said that ideally a ruling would give lawmakers the opportunity to make changes in the next budget cycle. The budget process will kick off again in January 2027, after the state’s fall elections which will determine the make-up of the Senate and Assembly as well as choosing a new governor. 

If the Legislature and the governor don’t fix the problem, Mandell said, the court should step in again.

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Democratic lawmakers have drafted legislation to more than double Wisconsin’s minimum wage, which has remained at $7.25  for nearly two decades.

The proposed legislation, announced Tuesday by Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine), would raise the wage to $15, then ramp up the minimum to $20 in four years and automatically increase the wage thereafter to keep pace with cost of living, the lawmakers said at a press conference in the Wisconsin state Capitol Tuesday.

“I ran for office to make sure working people have a voice in this Capitol,” said Cruz, a first-term member of the Assembly. “This bill is about dignity. It’s about fairness and it’s about building an economy where if you work hard in Wisconsin, you can afford to live in Wisconsin.”

With the Legislature’s current two-year session just about finished, Tuesday’s announcement was also aimed at sending a signal to voters in November about the Democrats’ policy priorities.

“We’re going to continue working for this bill, but even if it doesn’t pass this session, we know that elected officials will be held accountable this fall,” said Roys — who, in addition to being a lawmaker, is one of more than a half-dozen Democrats seeking the party’s nomination to run for governor.

17 years since last increase

The state minimum wage was raised to $7.25 17 years ago, when Roys was a first-term member of the Assembly. The bill aims to make the minimum wage a “living wage” — “the amount of money that a single person needs to earn to cover the basics of their life, housing, utilities, food, transportation and health care,” Roys said.

Based on the numbers produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology living wage calculator, “a million Wisconsin workers earn less than a living wage,” she said, adding that even the legislation’s initial boost to $15 an hour is less than a living wage in all 72 Wisconsin counties.

“So, this bill is not only long overdue, it’s actually pretty modest compared to what people actually need to thrive,” Roys said.

The legislation would push the state minimum to $15 per hour on enactment; increase the minimum in stages to $20 per hour by 2030; and index the new minimum to the consumer price index starting in 2030, “so as the cost of living increases, people’s wages will increase with it,” Roys said.

For small businesses with 50 or fewer employees, the $20 wage would be phased in by 2035.  

“We believe in supporting workers and respecting the realities facing small businesses,” Cruz said. “Economic justice and small business stability can and must go hand-in-hand.”

The bill would also move the subminimum wage for tipped workers — now $2.33 — to $7.50 immediately and then phase it up to $10 by 2030, after which it would be tied to half the standard minimum wage, Cruz said.

In addition, the bill would repeal a Wisconsin law that currently bars local municipalities from enacting local minimum wage ordinances.

“Communities know their costs, so they should have the freedom to respond,” Cruz said.

‘Backbone of our communities’

About 800,000 Wisconsin workers are paid less than $20 an hour, Cruz said — as “home health care providers, early childhood educators, grocery workers, nursing assistants — the backbone of our communities.”

Wisconsin’s low-wage workers “are essential workers that make our society run,” Roys said. “And nowhere is a living wage more urgently needed than in rural Wisconsin, where many communities have limited employment opportunities. A handful of employers, often massive multinational corporations, can suppress wages because workers have so few alternatives.”

She argued that increasing the minimum wage will strengthen local economies by boosting the average person’s buying power

“Because when a worker in Ladysmith gets a raise, that money’s going to stay in the community in Wisconsin,” Roys said. “But when a national corporation suppresses wages in Ladysmith, those profits go to shareholders in Arkansas or the Cayman Islands. This legislation is an economic development bill for Wisconsin.”

 The band of Democratic lawmakers who joined the news conference were outnumbered by a crowd of service workers in red shirts, most of them members of the Milwaukee Area Service and Hospitality Workers union — MASH.

“This bill is about making sure that there’s some more power in the market for workers so we all can make a living wage,” said Troy Brewer, a lead cook at the Fiserv Forum sports arena in Milwaukee and a MASH union steward.

Service workers across the state “are withheld access to economic security, while our jobs continue to act as the backbone to our economy,” said Sabrina Prochaska, a shift leader at Anodyne Coffee in Milwaukee, where the union is negotiating its first contract. “The problem is not our jobs, but rather these jobs do not pay a livable wage. It’s not right and we’re done accepting it.”

The legislation also has the backing of a wide range of unions and allied groups. Many of the same organizations joined with MASH at an event in September to launch their demand for a $20 minimum wage.

Rebuilding the New Deal

Peter Rickman, the president and business agent for MASH, said the legislation is part of a larger mission — to reverse the erosion of the New Deal reforms that were enacted in the 1930s.

Rickman said in that era, a coalition that was led by Democrats but included some Republicans helped build the American middle class by fostering collective bargaining and union rights, and by setting a minimum wage.

The minimum wage was intended as a wage floor that would allow people to make a living, he said.

“It was never intended to be a poverty pay for those folks. It was intended to move the whole labor market. That is how we gave birth to the world’s first middle class,” Rickman said. “We built it with public policy. Politicians took the side of working people and said, ‘We are going to make this labor market work for the working class.’”

He said those policies have been dismantled by “another bipartisan coalition — too many Democrats but mostly Republicans,” which pushed wealth up instead of spreading it among workers.

“The greatest redistribution in the history of the world happened: $79 trillion dollars from worker paychecks went to corporate profits,” Rickman said, citing a Rand Corp. study.

The bill was unveiled days after the Wisconsin Assembly concluded its active lawmaking for the Legislature’s current two-year period. The state Senate is expected to follow suit in a few weeks.

Roys, however, appeared unperturbed by the suggestion that the timing would make its enactment this year unlikely. She noted that the impending wrap-up was the work of the Legislature’s Republican leaders, not a requirement

“Republicans choosing to go home and take a 10-month vacation so that they campaign for re-election is a choice that they are making,” Roys said. “They don’t have to. We could come to work every single day for the rest of the year, just like the workers that are standing up here do.”

She said the session’s end won’t stop proponents from talking up the bill. “Maybe this is the last bill of 2025,” Roys said. “And maybe it’s the first law of 2027.”

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeated his hardline stance on immigration during his record-long State of the Union on Tuesday, previewing a potential midterm campaign message as his party faces an uphill battle to keep a majority in the House.

“The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump said.

His nearly two-hour speech before Congress came on the 11th day of a partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. He called on Democrats to immediately fund the agency. 

Democrats have refused to approve new funding for DHS unless changes are made to enforcement tactics following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal immigration officers. 

Another vote to move forward on approving funding for DHS failed, 50-45, Tuesday mere hours before the president’s address to Congress.

Immigration enforcement has continued during the shutdown because the department has a separate funding stream Congress provided last year through the massive tax cuts and spending package. 

Rhetoric remains

Despite the controversy the months-long immigration operation in Minneapolis has created, Trump defended the operation and his views on immigration more generally, possibly signalling he does not plan to tone down his rhetoric in an election year.

He made racist remarks about the Somali refugee population in Minneapolis, referring to them as “Somali pirates” and accusing them of widespread fraud. 

He blamed the Biden administration for “importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders.” 

“We will take care of this problem,” he said.  

Trump also made another racist remark that immigrants “don’t speak English,” and called on Congress to pass legislation to bar immigrants in the country without legal authorization from obtaining commercial drivers licenses.

He also called for Congress to end so-called sanctuary cities, local jurisdictions that have policies to bar cooperation with the federal government’s immigration enforcement. 

Trump also called for Congress to pass a national voter ID requirement law to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. 

The president did give a passing endorsement of legal immigration, saying early in the speech he would “always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

Many of the groups he has targeted as president, though, including Minnesota’s Somali population, have legal authorization to be in the country.

Padilla blasts Trump approach

Democrats have seized on the unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, where residential areas have experienced masked immigration agents and roving patrols. 

In a rebuke to Trump’s Speech, California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Democratic response that aired across Spanish networks. 

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Last summer, federal law enforcement officials forcibly removed and handcuffed Padilla at a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.

The incident represented a stark escalation of tensions between Democrats and the Trump administration after the president ordered 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to quell the protests in Los Angeles. 

After Padilla, California’s first Latino senator, was released, he gave an emotional speech on the Senate floor that accused the president of using his home state as a testing ground for deploying the U.S. military domestically. 

In his response Tuesday, he addressed the incident at the Noem press conference.   

“They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,” Padilla said. “As our parents taught us, if you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting. And I know you are still standing and still fighting too.”

WASHINGTON — Some congressional Democrats boycotted President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, opting to attend counter-programming to protest the administration’s actions.

Lawmakers took to alternative stages in Washington, D.C., in rebukes of what they see as Trump’s lack of regard for constitutional norms, immigration enforcement tactics and response to the affordability crisis hitting American families.  

“Our democracy is wilting under ceaseless attack from a president who wants to be a despot,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut at the “People’s State of the Union” rally on the National Mall.

“Millions of Americans are losing their health care because the president has chosen corruption to pad the pockets of his billionaire friends instead of helping average Americans,” said Murphy, who serves as the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. 

The rally, hosted by progressive media company MeidasTouch and progressive advocacy group MoveOn, countered the president’s address to Congress. Lawmakers brought their own guests to the event, who rebuffed ongoing actions by the administration. 

Tuesday night also featured the “State of the Swamp” at the National Press Club, hosted by DEFIANCE.org, a resistance effort against Trump; the Portland Frog Brigade, a coalition of “artist-activists” and COURIER, an advocacy media network. 

The “State of the Swamp” event brought in several Democratic lawmakers, former Trump administration officials, current and former Democratic state leaders, as well as leading voices against the administration. 

‘A lawless president’

Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, described the State of the Union as a “state of denial” during the event on the National Mall. 

“What’s going to happen under that Capitol is a bunch of lies — lies that Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to tell us about how great this country is doing right now,” he said. “But what is true, what is happening right now, is that Donald Trump and the Republicans have made this country sicker, poorer and less secure.”

Democratic lawmakers continued to blast the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Those criticisms grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens last month in Minneapolis. 

The Department of Homeland Security is shut down as Congress and the administration try to iron out a solution to Democrats’ demands for additional restraints on immigration enforcement following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Now we know the state of our union,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “We know it is under attack from a lawless president who is shredding our Constitution and who is attacking our democracy — a president whose private (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) army executes Americans and then calls the victims domestic terrorists.” 

Epstein files

Democrats also lambasted the administration’s handling of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which faced criticism for its piecemeal rollout of the files and heavy redactions. 

Several Democratic lawmakers invited survivors of Epstein as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. 

“We should be crystal clear about right now what is happening in our country,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, during the rally on the National Mall. 

“We have a president who is leading the single largest government cover-up in modern history — we have the single largest sex trafficking ring in modern history right now being covered up by Donald Trump and (Attorney General) Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice,” Garcia said. 

Trump, who has appeared in several of the files, had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, but has maintained he had a falling-out with the disgraced financier and was never involved in any alleged crimes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday to lambaste Democrats and the Biden administration, while pitching the Republican Party to voters ahead of this year’s crucial midterm elections. 

“Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before,” Trump said. “A turnaround for the ages. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages.”

The nearly two-hour speech included considerable back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans in the chamber, especially when Trump brought up his immigration enforcement activities or GOP efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Trump’s disdain for Democrats was on full display throughout the speech, when he alleged they wanted to “cheat” in elections and said Democrats pressing for lower costs and affordability was a “dirty, rotten lie.” 

“Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them,” he said. “We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting down.”

But there were several moments of bipartisanship, including when Trump recognized U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and his parents as well as the parents of the late U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, both of the West Virginia National Guard.

Beckstrom and Wolfe were shot just blocks from the White House the day before Thanksgiving while on duty in the District of Columbia. Beckstrom died as a result of her injuries the next day and Wolfe was badly injured. Both Beckstrom and Wolfe were awarded the Purple Heart by Major General James D. Seward, Adjutant General of the state of West Virginia, to the applause of lawmakers.

The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team was also able to briefly unite Republicans and Democrats when players appeared in the gallery overlooking the chamber, wearing their gold medals. 

Members of both political parties gave the group a standing ovation and chanted “USA, USA, USA!” before the players left after a few minutes. They had met with Trump at the White House earlier in the day.

Sign held by Rep. Al Green

But there were reminders of deep divisions throughout the speech of historic length — the previous record for a State of the Union speech that was recorded was held by former President Bill Clinton.

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green held up a sign at the beginning of Trump’s remarks that read “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES!” in reference to a racist meme in a video Trump shared on social media that depicted former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as primates.

A Sergeant at Arms employee escorted Green from the chamber a few minutes later as Republicans again chanted “USA!” Green last year was removed from the chamber during Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Trump didn’t just criticize Democrats during his speech, but also the Supreme Court justices who have ruled against his actions, most recently deciding that he overstepped by using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to implement tariffs. Four of the nine justices were seated in the chamber: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump said the tariffs decision was “unfortunate” and that the six justices who ruled against him “got it really wrong.”

Trump reiterated he would use other powers he believes he holds to keep the tariffs in place, arguing he thinks they are “saving the country.”

“They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before,” he said. “Congressional action will not be necessary.”

Trump claimed that if tariffs remain they could replace income taxes, though Congress would need to approve legislation to eliminate that part of the tax code. 

Homeland Security shutdown

Trump spoke at length about immigration and border security during his speech before calling on Congress to end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, which began on Feb. 14 when stopgap funding expired. Democrats have insisted on immigration enforcement reforms.

“Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, homeland security of the United States,” he said.

Trump told lawmakers in the chamber to stand if they believed “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Republicans stood and cheered loudly while Democrats stayed seated, with several of their members calling out their opposition to that part of the speech as well as Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement and deportation. 

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said repeatedly “you have killed Americans” as Trump spoke about the DHS shutdown.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib yelled “Alex wasn’t a criminal,” referring to Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, just weeks after federal immigration officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.

Tlaib later called out that Trump should release all of the Epstein files, referring to documents within the Department of Justice about the criminal investigation into child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

SAVE Act

Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

He said that Americans should only be able to vote by mail if they are ill, disabled, in the military or traveling, though that provision isn’t included in the SAVE Act. 

“Congress should unite and enact this common sense, country-saving legislation right now,” he said. “And it should be before anything else happens.”

The House voted mostly along party lines earlier this month to send the bill to the Senate, where it is unlikely to get the Democratic support needed to move past that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Trump alleged the only reason Democrats won’t help Republicans approve the legislation is because “they want to cheat.”

Boycotts of the speech

Some Democrats opted to attend other events or skip Trump’s speech entirely, citing the president’s immigration enforcement tactics, disregard for constitutional norms and record of false and misleading claims. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he decided not to go because Trump has “made a mockery of the State of the Union.”

“I have no obligation to be a backdrop to a partisan speech full of lies and vitriol,” Murphy said. “I’m heartbroken that I’m not going to be there. But he’s turned his speech into a joke.”

Many of those boycotting will attend counter-programming.

“The American people already know what the state of our union is,” said Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson. “It is marked by frustration, rising costs, and deep exhaustion. Families are stretched thin by higher prices. Communities are disturbed by fatal immigration enforcement tactics. And working people are watching the wealthiest Americans benefit while the middle class is left behind.” 

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger gave the Democratic response following Trump’s remarks, asking three questions in her 12-minute speech.

“Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no,” she said.

California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Spanish-language response.

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Shauneen Miranda and Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

U.S. Sen Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, will register a protest of President Donald Trump’s attempt to exert more control over election infrastructure by bringing her state’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, as her guest to the State of the Union Tuesday evening.

Trump has pressured senators to approve a House-passed bill that would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, involve the federal Department of Homeland Security in elections and disallow universal vote-by-mail that is popular in Washington, Oregon and other states.

Members of Congress often bring guests to the State of the Union to spotlight particular issues and Democrats this year are raising a host of objections to the president’s tariffs program and his immigration crackdown — including a weekslong operation in Minneapolis that resulted in two U.S. citizens’ deaths at the hands of immigration agents — and other issues.

Cantwell told States Newsroom in a phone interview hours before Trump’s address was set to begin that changing election infrastructure could have more long term effects on U.S. democracy than other Trump policies.

“I’m not saying that the tariff issue didn’t have an impact,” Cantwell said. “I’m not saying it’s not horrific that you killed two American citizens who were just trying to express their rights to free speech. But you could upend a lot by changing our election system overnight. I don’t know how you recover from that immediately.”

The Republican bill would amount to nationalizing elections, a contradiction of the Constitution’s provision that states administer elections, Cantwell and Hobbs said.

The framers of the Constitution gave that power to states to protect against the executive branch overreaching, Hobbs said.

The bill would violate that idea, Cantwell said.

“We would be basically saying, ‘It’s okay for a federal leader … and their agency, Homeland Security, to mess around and determine who’s eligible to vote,” Cantwell said. “The reason the separation of powers exist is … so that you didn’t have that federal control, so that people did have faith that they weren’t being manipulated by the federal power.”

The GOP’s championing of the bill follows President Donald Trump’s comments advocating to nationalize elections, a mid-decade campaign to redraw state congressional districts in Republicans’ favor and more than two dozen Department of Justice lawsuits demanding Democratic-led states turn over unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.

Senate rules at risk?

Cantwell’s worries about the bill, known as the SAVE Act, have grown after seeing Trump’s pressure campaign on Republicans, as well as a recent sign of support for the bill from moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine and comments from the bill’s Senate sponsor, Mike Lee of Utah, about adjusting the chamber’s rules to ensure the bill’s passage.

And Cantwell said she expects Trump to mention the issue during Tuesday’s address.

Under Senate rules and tradition, 60 of the 100 senators must approve a procedural vote to move to final passage of nearly all legislation. With Republicans holding 53 seats, that means bills must have bipartisan support to pass the chamber. 

Lee has said he wanted to tweak Senate rules so that opponents of a bill would have to continuously speak on the floor to block consideration of a bill that would otherwise have the support to pass.

Cantwell said she and Hobbs would seek out opportunities Tuesday evening to bring Republicans to their side of the issue.

“He and I got a busy night tonight,” she said. “We gotta go buttonhole a bunch of Republican senators.”

Noncitizens and voting

Republican supporters of the bill say it will enhance election security and ensure that noncitizens do not vote in U.S. elections.

But noncitizens are already barred from federal elections and instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare, even in studies by conservative groups.

And the bill presents several provisions that could reduce voter participation, Cantwell and Hobbs said. 

Many Americans do not have a passport or easy access to their birth certificate. Nearly 70 million married women have changed their names, creating an additional barrier to voter registration.

“I don’t think they’re thinking about these things,” Hobbs said.

The bill would also imperil Washington’s universal vote-by-mail system in which every voter is sent a ballot that can be returned through the mail. 

Vote by mail “has nothing to do with partisanship,” Hobbs said. “It’s about convenience of the voter to be able to take the time to choose the people they want to choose. It’s about security, it’s about transparency, it’s not partisanship.”

The system, which for years was popular among Republicans and Democrats for its convenience, became a partisan issue when Trump partially blamed his 2020 election loss on the mail-in voting increase put in place during that COVID-era election.

“We’re here to evangelize that this system has enfranchised people to vote more and have a higher turnout, which is what our goal should be,” Cantwell said Tuesday. “That’s why the League of Women Voters are on our side in this debate and against the SAVE Act, because the whole goal is to have a more participatory government and vote by mail is delivering that.”

A coalition of Wisconsin environmental advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Monday challenging an administrative law judge’s decision to uphold the Department of Natural Resource’s permit approval to reroute the Enbridge Line 5 oil pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

The petition, filed in Iron County Circuit Court by Clean Wisconsin and Midwest Environmental Advocates on behalf of the Sierra Club, 350 Wisconsin and the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, argues that the administrative law judge ignored extensive evidence that the pipeline reroute will damage local waterways. 

A similar lawsuit has also been filed by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The tribe for years has fought against the pipeline, which currently runs across its land. The reroute is happening because a federal judge previously ruled the pipeline must be moved off tribal land, but the tribe argues the new proposed route will continue to harm its water resources. 

The administrative judge upheld the DNR’s permit decision after six weeks of hearings last year. The petitions from the environmental groups and the tribe move the case from the administrative legal process to the state’s court system. Separately, a challenge has been made against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Line 5 permit decisions. 

“We are more committed than ever to protecting Wisconsin’s waters from the irreversible harm this project threatens to cause. We believe the administrative ruling incorrectly decided critical legal and factual issues, and we are confident that our efforts to hold DNR and Enbridge accountable to Wisconsin’s environmental laws will ultimately be vindicated,” MEA Senior Staff Attorney Rob Lee said in a statement.

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