Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan speaks with reporters Wednesday in his Madison office. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

House Democrats think their most likely strategy to prevent major cuts to Medicaid or other popular federal programs in the current budget reconciliation process will be to win over a few House Republicans.

“We just need three Republicans, basically nationwide, to say no to something,” said U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) at a Q-and-A session with reporters Wednesday in his Madison office.

The Republican majorities in both houses of Congress are using the complicated budget reconciliation process to pass a spending plan that will allow them to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

As part of that, House Republicans passed a blueprint calling for $880 billion in cuts to programs overseen by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Medicaid represents the largest expense item in the committee’s purview, and analysts have said Congress could only hit that target by making Medicaid cuts.

Pocan said estimates of the cost of preserving the tax cuts have risen in Washington, from $4.5 trillion in the original House proposal to “more like $7 trillion in tax cuts” in the current proposal combined from House and Senate alternatives.

The objective for House Democrats currently is to make cuts to Medicaid harder for GOP members to go along with, Pocan said. In Wisconsin, about 1.3 million residents are enrolled in Medicaid, including one third of the children in the state and 55% of seniors in nursing homes.

“You know, the more they hear that, at some point they may listen,” Pocan said of Republican members who won swing districts by narrow margins — and, he argues, they could push back against those sorts of cuts.

“I don’t expect them to maybe say it publicly and maybe to hold a town hall and say it, but if they say it privately in their caucus, that’s good enough, as long as three people won’t support something,” Pocan said. “That’s enough to kill something, right? So that’s kind of my goal is to keep facilitating that.”

The focus, though, is not on stopping the tax cuts, but stopping the cuts to Medicaid, SNAP and other federal programs.

“If we could stop that, and we could stop, maybe, some of the education cuts that might otherwise come … funds for low-income [districts], funds for special ed, I think they’re still going to move forward with their tax cut bill,” Pocan said.

He speculated that under those circumstances, the GOP majority would pay for the tax cut with a deficit increase. 

“Is that a good answer? No,” Pocan said. “But is it better than seeing people lose their health care right now or their food assistance through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program? Yeah. So you know my job is to wake up in the morning and get excited about bad choices rather than the worst choices.”

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Protesters outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Greenbelt rally on April 4, 2025, in support of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was deported to El Salvador in an “administrative error,” calling for him to be returned to the U.S. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen Chris Van Hollen said Wednesday he was denied a meeting with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvador-born Maryland resident who was mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in his home country notorious for human rights abuses.

The Maryland Democrat met with El Salvador Vice President Félix Ulloa in the Central American country in an effort to help bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States. Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, but a U.S. immigration judge issued a protective order in 2019 finding that sending him back to his home country would put him in grave danger.

After meeting with Ulloa, Van Hollen briefed reporters on the visit and said the Salvadoran vice president rebuffed his requests for contact with Abrego Garcia.

“I asked the vice president if I could meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia and he said, ‘Well, you need to make earlier provisions to go visit CECOT (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo),’” Van Hollen told reporters in El Salvador, referring to the mega-prison.

“I said, ‘I’m not interested, at this moment, in taking a tour of CECOT, I just want to meet with Mr. Abrego Garcia,’” Van Hollen said.

“He said he was not able to make that happen. He said he’d need a little more time. I asked him if I came back next week, whether I’d be able to see Mr. Abrego Garcia. He said he couldn’t promise that either,” the senator added. 

Van Hollen said he was also denied a phone or video call with Abrego Garcia to ask how he was doing and report that information to his family. 

The senator said he would contact the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador and request they ask the government of El Salvador to connect the two of them via phone, following a suggestion from Ulloa.

Van Hollen’s visit came a day after a federal judge in Maryland ordered the Trump administration to offer evidence on how it has sought to help with Abrego Garcia’s release from CECOT.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that the Trump administration must “facilitate” — but did not require — his return to the United States. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele also said Monday that he would not bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States.

The Trump administration has acknowledged in court that Abrego Garcia was deported due to an “administrative error.”

The administration accused him of being a member of the gang MS-13. He has not been charged or convicted of any criminal offenses, including gang-related crimes.

Van Hollen, noting that the Trump administration “illegally abducted” Abrego Garcia, said he “won’t stop trying” to get the wrongly deported man out of the prison and back to Maryland and predicted others would follow.

“I can assure the president, the vice president, that I may be the first United States senator to visit El Salvador on this issue, but there will be more, and there will be more members of Congress coming,” he said.

Administration responds

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media Wednesday a copy of a restraining order Abrego Garcia’s wife sought against him in 2021 “claiming he punched, scratched, and ripped off her shirt, among other harm.”

In response, Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, told Newsweek she had a disagreement with him, but that things did not escalate and she did not continue with the civil court process. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made a statement on the case, displaying the restraining order, repeating the accusation Abrego Garcia is a gang member and objecting to media references to him as a “Maryland father.”

“There is no Maryland father,” she said.

Patty Morin, the mother of a Maryland woman slain by a Salvadoran immigrant in the country without legal status, also appeared at the briefing and spoke in favor of the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation actions.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a press conference at the department's headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, April 16, 2025.  (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Wednesday the department will shift its research into autism toward potential environmental causes, though he declined to say exactly what the Trump administration would do if certain industries or pollutants were found responsible.

Kennedy, an environmental lawyer with no medical or research training, declared that autism is a preventable disease, argued research into genetic causes is a “dead end” and asserted that “we know it’s environmental exposure,” before saying HHS would fund “a series of new studies to identify precisely what the environmental toxins are that are causing it.”

“This has not been done before,” Kennedy said. “We’re going to do it in a thorough and comprehensive way and we’re going to get back with an answer to the American people very, very quickly.”

Kennedy said during his first press conference since receiving Senate confirmation that he wanted researchers to look into numerous potential factors, including mold, food additives, pesticides, air, water, medicines, ultrasound, age of parents, obesity in parents and diabetes in parents.

He pledged to have “some of the answers by September,” though he added the research will “be an evolving process.”

Kennedy appeared confident in his personal assessment that environmental factors lead to autism, without attributing that belief to any one industry or contaminant.

“This is coming from an environmental toxin and somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food,” Kennedy said. “And it’s to their benefit to normalize it, to say, ‘This is all normal. It has always been here.’ But that’s not good for our country.”

Autism experts, however, cast doubt on Kennedy’s assertion that environmental factors lead to autism and questioned his proposed timeline to prove such a link.

When asked by a reporter what exactly the Trump administration would do if research found conclusive evidence that one specific industry or pollutant was causing autism, Kennedy didn’t say whether HHS would push to ban it or close down any businesses. 

“I think we’re going to figure out a way to make pressure on them to remove it,” he said. “I think also there will be market forces that also exert pressure on them to remove it.”

Research difficult

Catherine Lord, professor of psychiatry with the school of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, said during an interview with States Newsroom following Kennedy’s remarks that trying to reach a definitive cause of autism before September was an “utterly ridiculous” timeline.

Lord said “the most likely hypothesis is that there may be interactions between genetics and, for example, environmental exposures, or even experiences like extreme prematurity.”

But she noted that studying the impact of environmental contaminants on people’s health, or a complex diagnosis like autism, is challenging because scientists obviously cannot expose people to toxins.

“It’s so difficult to do that work well, and people do it, but they can’t do it quickly,” Lord said. “And so I think that we do need work in that area, and I think it has been funded in the last few years. It just hasn’t come out with anything that is earth-shattering. It’s more the same thing, which is that if you’re exposed to something bad, your chances of having a child with any kind of neurodevelopmental disorder is going to go up.”

Lord expressed concern about moving funding and research away from genetic factors, saying “we do know that autism is genetic, so I think that is not under question.”

“I think the genetic work was moving forward,” she said. “It’s a slow pace, again, because they’re addressing so many different genetic patterns. But I think that at least there’s clear progress within this science.”

Limits funding for genetic research

Eric Fombonne, professor emeritus of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Sciences University, said during an interview that it was unwise for Kennedy to say there would be some answers about autism within a few months.

“It’s ridiculous to say that he’s going to unravel the etiology of autism in six months,” Fombonne said. “I mean, he could give, like, all the money of the world to any lab or any person. They could never report any results before several years from now, at the minimum.”

The pace of medical research, he said, is slow and Kennedy’s comments show “a complete ignorance and disregard for science and what we do and how complicated it is and the time it takes.”

Directing research dollars toward possible environmental contributors to autism will also limit the amount of funding available for genetic research, which Fombonne said “has been incredibly productive.”

“The pie is limited,” Fombonne said. “So if you move funds from genetic research to environmental research, you’re going to slow down the pace of genetic research.”

Fombonne explained that research into genetics and autism is “quite complicated” and has shown that not all genetic mechanisms are “the same across different families.”

“So it’s a very complex puzzle. And as you know, the brain is a very hard organ to study. So understanding the pathophysiology, which is associated with these gene variants, is a very hard process,” he said. “But we are doing that and we are progressing. And this has been paying off enormously over the last 20 or 30 years.”

Fombonne wouldn’t make the same assessment of potential environmental factors, saying there are no signs of higher rates of autism in certain areas or certain time periods, like scientists have found for some other conditions.

“There is no evidence that there is a cluster of cases of kids who have been living in a polluted area, or exposed to particular environmental circumstances,” Fombonne said. “There is no starting point, which is strong, to start environmental research somewhere we can say is going to pay off.

“So it’s going to be very exploratory initially, which may be a good thing to do. But at least, let’s do it well, and most of the studies so far are short.”

Krish Lal Isserdasani, who is from India, has been studying computer engineering at the UW-Madison since 2021 and plans to graduate on May 10. UW-Madison Engineering Hall. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A federal judge has temporarily blocked the cancellation of a 21-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison undergraduate student’s visa and any actions in relation to that by the Trump administration. 

Krish Lal Isserdasani, who is from India, has been studying computer engineering at the UW-Madison since 2021 with plans to graduate on May 10. On April 4, just a month before graduation, Isserdasani received notification from UW-Madison’s International Student Services office that his visa was cancelled and his authorization to be in the country would end on May 2. He received no communication from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the State Department regarding the visa revocation.  

His cancellation was part of a wave of cancellations at universities across the country as President Donald Trump’s administration targets international students and ramps up deportation efforts in a crackdown on immigration.

U.S. District Judge William Conley wrote in his order Tuesday that Isserdasani has a “reasonable likelihood of success” on his claim that his visa was wrongly terminated and faces “possible devastating irreparable harm” as a result of the cancellation. Conley’s order bans the government from revoking his visa, detaining him or taking any other actions related to the cancellation pending a preliminary hearing April 28.

“The loss of timely academic process alone is sufficient to establish irreparable harm,” Conley wrote. “Given the amount of Isserdasani’s educational expenses and potential losses from having to leave the United States without obtaining his degree, the court concludes that Isserdasani credibly demonstrates that he faces irreparable harm for which he has no adequate remedy at law in the absence of injunctive relief.” 

Since the termination earlier this month, Isserdasani has reported a significant psychological impact on him, according to the order, including “difficulty in sleeping and fear that he will be placed in immediate detention and deportation.” 

“He reports being afraid to leave his apartment for fear of being apprehended at any moment,” the order states.

According to the complaint, Isserdasani and his family have spent about $240,000 on his education in the country. He would lose $17,500 on the current semester’s tuition and would be responsible for four months of rent despite not being able to stay in the country, the complaint states.  

Isserdasani is represented by Madison lawyer Shabnam Lotfi, who said in a statement to the Wisconsin State Journal that the “international students have done absolutely nothing wrong.” 

“They have followed U.S. laws and fully complied with the terms of their student status. They do not deserve this,” Lotfi said. “America must speak out against this injustice and not allow the Administration to distort the facts for their own political purposes.”

Isserdasani is one of dozens of students and alumni at University of Wisconsin institutions to have had their visas canceled by the federal government in recent weeks. There have been at least 26 at UW-Madison, 13 at UW-Milwaukee and several more at other campuses.

UW-Madison first announced cancellations on April 8, saying the university wasn’t notified by the government but had learned about them because staff has been reviewing federal databases every day to see whether students have been affected

According to the Associated Press, the Trump administration’s work to cancel visas has affected  at least 901 students at more than 128 colleges and universities nationwide. Some have been participants in protests about the war in Gaza, and others have had minor infractions, including traffic violations, according to published reports. 

Conley’s order indicates that Isserdasani appears to have had his visa canceled in relation to an arrest for disorderly conduct in November 2024 after he and friends got into an argument with other people while walking home from a bar one night. Madison District Attorney Ismael Ozanne declined to pursue charges after the arrest, and Isserdasani never had to appear in court and thought the issue was dealt with. He has had no other encounters with police, the order says. 

The university’s notification email that Isserdasani received stated that the reason given was “otherwise failing to maintain status” and he was “identified in criminal records check and/or has had their VISA revoked.” It said the termination “does not have a grace period to depart the U.S.” and that “employment benefits, including on-campus employment and any practical training you may have had authorized, end immediately when a SEVIS record is terminated. Therefore, you no longer have authorization to work in the United States.”

The order said Isserdasani “was given no warning, no opportunity to explain or defend himself and no chance to correct any potential misunderstanding.”

The judge’s order also covers the visa cancellation for Hamidreza Khademi, a 34-year-old citizen of Iran and graduate student at Iowa State University, who is also being represented by Lotfi.  Khademi graduated in December 2023, but was working in the country through a visa extension approved in 2024.

Khademi was arrested in February of 2024 and accused of evading arrest in a vehicle in Texas. However, the Texas Department of Public Safety eventually determined that there was no violation and decided against filing charges. His visa was terminated on April 10 and an email notifying him included similar reasoning as the one Isserdasani received. 

The judge reserved a ruling on the motion for a temporary restraining order for Khademi, pending further briefing by the parties, because he questioned whether the western Wisconsin court was the appropriate venue for the case. 

“Plaintiffs include no facts showing that venue is proper for the claims brought by Khademi, who appears to have no ties to the Western District of Wisconsin, nor do the events or omissions giving rise to his claims,” the judge wrote.

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Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) speaks about how advocates can convince Republicans to fund the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program at the Great Lakes Audubon Society's 2025 advocacy day. (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) said Wednesday the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program is “on life support,” adding that some of his Republican colleagues give it a 20% chance of being extended in this year’s budget debate before its expiration next year. 

Kurtz, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine), Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Secretary Karen Hyun spoke Wednesday to a gathering of members of local Audubon Society chapters and staff of Audubon Great Lakes ahead of the organization’s advocacy day to lobby legislators to support conservation funding. 

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was established in 1989 to help preserve local natural environments. Throughout its history, the program has enjoyed mostly bipartisan support as it has provided grants through the DNR to help local governments and nonprofits fund the acquisition, restoration and maintenance of public land, parks and wildlife habitats. 

In recent years, the program has become a flashpoint in the fight over the boundary between the executive and legislative branches of state government. Until a decision by the state Supreme Court last year, any member of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Committee on Finance had the authority to hold up a project funded through the stewardship program by placing an anonymous hold on that spending. 

The Court’s decision entirely removed the Legislature’s oversight of the program, a change that further turned Republicans against its continued existence. 

“We could make that process better, where it was not just one individual not liking something and being able to kill a project. I agree with that,” Kurtz said. “When the court case came in and basically took that entire process away, that was not good either, because there was no oversight. And I understand some of you believe whatever the DNR does is fine. That’s great. Some of my colleagues don’t believe that.”

Especially in the northern part of the state, Republicans have objected to stewardship funds being used to conserve land that then gets taken off of local property tax rolls — taking money away from already struggling small local governments. In other cases, Republicans have complained that proposals for projects under the grants rely too heavily on the state funds without the local governments providing enough of their own money. 

In his proposed 2025-26 budget, Gov. Tony Evers has requested the stewardship program be increased from its current funding of $33 million per year to $100 million per year for 10 years. 

Kurtz said he’s working on a bill that would return some oversight authority over the program to the Legislature without the anonymous objection provision. He added, though,  that if the Audubon members went to Republicans Wednesday saying, “‘It’s the governor’s budget or nothing,’ you already lost.” 

“I don’t need you to do that, because, I’m being very sincere, I’m trying to keep this alive, and if you go over there [saying that], there’s a good chance it’ll die,” he said. “So don’t do that. Let them, especially when you’re meeting with my colleagues, ask them what [their] concerns are. ‘Why don’t you like this? What is it about the program that we can do better so we can have another day to make sure we protect all our wonderful birds and animals.’”

Habush Sinykin noted that 93% of Wisconsinites support the program and said that in her purple district covering Milwaukee’s northwest suburbs, the stewardship program is hugely popular. She said the anonymous hold of a project in the district drew the ire of community members of both parties. 

“There’s a lot of understanding at the legislative level that in these uncertain times, with these newer maps, that our state representatives and senators, including those on the Joint Finance Committee, have to be wary and strategic about issues like this that are bipartisan,” she said. “They’re actually non-partisan. They are successful community building issues. So I think that’s a little bit where your leverage is to lean in hard. How popular these are.”

Aside from the stewardship program, the society members lobbying in the Capitol Wednesday were pushing for the state to increase protections for wetlands and grasslands, advance sustainable practices in the state’s agriculture and forestry industries and grow renewable energy production. 

On Wednesday morning, the administration of President Donald Trump announced a proposed rule that would rescind habitat protections for endangered species across the country. 

Marnie Urso, Audubon Great Lakes’ senior director of policy, said that with the federal government retreating from conservation efforts, state level efforts have become more important. 

“With that uncertainty, this kind of work is even more important, for state lawmakers to be on the path to conserving our natural resources,” Urso said. “The Knowles Nelson project program is bipartisan. It always has been a permanent foundation. So we know it has wide, widespread bipartisan support.”

Urso said leaning into that popularity could help advance the group’s priorities. 

“Even Trump voters like the Knowles Nelson Conservation Fund,” she said. “So we’re confident that by coming and talking, telling our story and getting to understand what’s important to our lawmakers, we can inform those decisions. And now it’s more important than ever to have state conservation programs continue.”

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Prisoners look out of their cell as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT, on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

This story was updated at 4:04 p.m. Eastern.

WASHINGTON —  A federal judge in Washington found probable cause Wednesday the Trump administration is in contempt of court for defying his order to stop flights of Venezuelan immigrants headed to a prison in El Salvador.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg gave officials one week to submit a list of steps they have taken, or will take, to comply with his order, or identify the official or officials who chose to send the planes to El Salvador, despite learning of his order, he wrote in a 46-page opinion Wednesday.

Boasberg wrote the government could “purge its contempt,” for example, by voluntarily obeying the order and giving the imprisoned men an opportunity to challenge their cases. Officials could also “propose other methods of coming into compliance.”

If the government does not attempt to remedy the situation, Boasberg will require declarations, or even live witness testimony, to identify who’s responsible for the noncompliance and refer them for criminal prosecution.

The case centers on President Donald Trump’s decision in mid-March to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport more than 200 Venezuelans – and other nationals – with suspected gang ties. The men were detained at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

Despite Boasberg’s order to halt the flights, including returning two planes that were mid-air, immigration officials allowed them to land in El Salvador — and directed a third one to take off.

Boasberg wrote Wednesday that the “Government’s actions on that day demonstrate a willful disregard for its Order, sufficient for the Court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.”

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions. None of their responses has been satisfactory,” continued Boasberg, who was appointed to the bench in 2011 by former President Barack Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate.

Order ‘gleefully’ violated

Boasberg provided a detailed timeline in a memorandum opinion Wednesday accompanying his probable cause order.

The judge delivered a verbal order at 6:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 15, mandating the government halt any new deportation flights and bring any planes that had taken off back to the U.S. He later entered a written order into the record at 7:25 p.m., according to the court filing.

“By mid-Sunday morning, the picture of what had happened the previous night came into clearer focus,” he wrote. “It appeared that the Government had transferred members of the Plaintiff class into El Salvador’s custody hours after this Court’s injunction prohibited their deportation under the Proclamation.

“Worse, boasts by Defendants intimated that they had defied the Court’s Order deliberately and gleefully,” Boasberg wrote in his opinion.

He highlighted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted on social media a post from El Salvador President Nayib Bukele who highlighted a headline about the judge’s order and wrote “Oopsie … Too late” with a laughing face emoji.

What followed was “obstructionism” and “stonewalling” from the government, according to Boasberg, as officials refused to answer basic questions about the timeline of the flights and whether the plaintiffs who were granted class status in the lawsuit were now in El Salvador’s custody. The government argued such information would compromise national security.

Boasberg denied the government’s motion to block his temporary restraining order, and an appeals court upheld it.

Supreme Court ruling

The Trump administration then appealed to the Supreme Court, and the justices ruled 5-4 on April 8 that Trump could use the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants but must provide them a chance to challenge their cases first.

Boasberg addressed that ruling in his opinion Wednesday, writing that even a win on appeal did not negate the government’s responsibility to obey the order while it was active.

“If a party chooses to disobey the order — rather than wait for it to be reversed through the judicial process — such disobedience is punishable as contempt, notwithstanding any later-revealed deficiencies in the order,” he wrote.

Disputed gang membership

Family members and attorneys for many of the deported men have disputed the Trump administration’s claims that those taken to El Salvador were members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

They claim the men were deported because ICE agents misinterpreted their tattoos. Many deportees had no criminal record and were in asylum hearings before an immigration judge, they added.

Among those deported was El Salvadoran native Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whose wife, a U.S. citizen, has been fighting in a separate federal case for his release from CECOT. Abrego Garcia had a protective order from an immigration judge in 2019 shielding him from removal to his native country because of risks of gang violence.

The Trump administration has not complied with a court order to return him to the U.S. 

Sandra Lomeli testifies at a public hearing April 10, 2025, against a bill imposing new restrictions on the process for confirming eligibility for Medicaid. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Legislation that would add new restrictions to the process of qualifying for Medicaid is on hold in the Wisconsin Capitol after meeting with resounding opposition at an Assembly hearing less than a week ago.

At a meeting Tuesday to vote on two other bills, State Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) told the Assembly Committee on Public Benefit Reform that he chairs that the Medicaid measure “has some work to be done yet.”

The bill’s author, Rep. William Penterman (R-Columbus), told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message Tuesday that the legislation “is still in the Assembly Committee on Public Benefit Reform. The conversation on how to improve the bill is ongoing.”

An opponent of the measure, however, suggested that opposition testimony had prevailed in keeping it from moving forward.

“I think you all realized how terrible and harmful that legislation was,” said committee member Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), directing his comment at his four Republican colleagues. “We heard two and a half hours of testimony overwhelmingly against that [bill].”

Clancy spoke before voting against two other bills that the committee passed 4-2 along party lines — one making sweeping revisions to Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance (UI) system, and the other barring local governments from instituting guaranteed basic income programs using tax dollars. 

Recipients marshal opposition to Medicaid measure

Medicaid covers acute and long-term medical care for low-income people as well as people with disabilities. It’s funded jointly with federal and state money and managed by the state under federal rules and guidelines.

With some exceptions, recipients must have incomes at or below the federal poverty guideline. Most Medicaid recipients must be reviewed once a year to confirm they are still eligible for the program.

AB 163 would direct the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to conduct eligibility reviews every six months.

It also would add restrictions on the verification process — forbidding the state from automatically renewing Medicaid beneficiaries, forbidding the state from automatically filling in electronic forms with the recipient’s information except for their name and address, and cutting off a person’s ability to enroll in Medicaid for six months for failing to report a change that might make them ineligible.

Penterman, the only witness who testified at the bill’s April 10 public hearing, highlighted the statistic that 20% of Wisconsin residents are on Medicaid. 

He described the legislation as an effort to “reassess and restore integrity to the system by ensuring that only those who are truly needy and truly qualified for this coverage receive benefits.”

But the recurring message from a stream of hearing witnesses — the vast majority of them people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid for long-term health care in their homes or in the community or their family caregivers — was that the current eligibility requirements are already burdensome, and strict enough to keep out people who aren’t eligible.

“We heard from so many people who do a tremendous amount of work to prove to the state that they have low enough income, low enough assets, that they are who they say they are, that they meet the functional screen and all of the other requirements that the department has [for them] to be able to get in or stay in the program,” said Tamara Jackson, legislative policy representative for the Wisconsin Board of People with Developmental Disabilities, in an interview Tuesday.

The hearing came just two days after the bill was introduced April 8. Its fast track prompted an overnight opposition campaign by Medicaid recipients.

“We heard from people across the state who had said that they had contacted their state lawmakers about this particular bill and had really used it as an opportunity to tell them what they do to be allowed in the Medicaid program,” Jackson said.

Federal Medicaid debate draws attention

Recent Congressional action on federal legislation to extend tax cuts enacted in 2017 has included spending targets that would appear to make Medicaid reductions inevitable. Medicaid recipients have been following those debates and making public appeals to oppose cuts in the program — priming them to oppose the state proposal as well.

“I think that people are paying attention, and the reason there were so many contacts is because Medicaid is so important to folks and they’re willing to show up and talk about it,” Jackson said.

At the very start of the April 10 hearing, Penterman alluded to communications he had already received from advocates and said he planned an amendment to exempt people with developmental disabilities from some of the bill’s restrictions. He introduced the amendment later that day.

Several witnesses, however, criticized limiting the amendment to people with developmental disabilities, arguing that the bill’s requirements would be needlessly onerous for many other people.

Sandra Lomeli of Pewaukee was one of the hearing witnesses against the Medicaid bill. She is the mother of two adult children with severe disabilities who are able to get long-term care through Medicaid. One requires 24-hour care as a sexual assault survivor, she said.

Lomeli is also covered by BadgerCare Plus, the Wisconsin Medicaid plan for primary and specialty health care and hospitalization, because being her children’s family caregiver limits her working hours to a part-time nonprofit position.

She told the committee that she fills both sides of a ream’s worth of forms each year to confirm her children’s Medicaid eligibility. She said she spends 54 hours completing those forms and 10 hours confirming her own eligibility each year.

In her testimony Lomeli challenged lawmakers to enlist Medicaid participants and advocates if they wanted to write legislation to improve the program.

It appeared to Lomeli that her suggestion “took people by surprise that we would even be at the table,” she said in an interview Tuesday. “I don’t think they valued that we could add value — because if they did, somebody would have reached out.”

She said she doesn’t consider the legislation dead, however, which concerns her.

“The issue is not off the table yet,” Lomeli said. “They’re just going to reword it. We have won the battle now. We haven’t won the war.

UI change, basic-income ban, both pass on party lines

While setting the Medicaid bill aside Tuesday, the Committee on Public Benefit Reform advanced two others with only Republican votes.

AB 164 would rename Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system as a “re-employment assistance” program with new requirements for workers and for the state agency that administers it.

Those include requiring recipients, who must currently make four work searches a week, to make two of those in the form of direct contacts with prospective employers. It also adds a variety of additional counseling procedures and requirements for people who receive unemployment benefits.

Department of Workforce Development Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek submitted written testimony expressing “concerns about this proposal due to the anticipated reporting burden for employers, potential costs, bureaucratic requirements, and lack of sustainable funding.”

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed similar legislation in 2023, citing similar complaints as well as the fact that it did not go through the state’s joint labor-management unemployment advisory council.

AB 165 would bar local governments from using tax dollars to create guaranteed income programs without a work or training requirement. Evers vetoed a similar bill to that one in 2023 as well, on the grounds it usurped local control. 

Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) made the same argument against the current legislation.

Knodl defended the both bills as helping to “protect the integrity of these systems, and that’s important if we want them to be sustainable in the future.”

Clancy argued that both should have been put on pause along with the Medicaid bill.

“But all three of those . . . bills are fundamentally the same,” Clancy said. “They are kicking people when they are down. They are hitting people at their most vulnerable, and frankly, in 2025, when national and state Republican policies have meant that people have more needs. We should not be attacking those social safety nets.”

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Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Wisconsin lawmakers considered new tax incentives meant to encourage the development of more employee-owned businesses and cooperatives and to promote safe gun storage. Both measures drew bipartisan support during a hearing Tuesday in the Assembly Way and Means Committee. 

One bill — AB 17 — would provide a tax credit to businesses that make the transition to a model that gives employees a stake. The credit would cover 70% of the costs for converting a business to a worker-owned cooperative or 50% of the costs for converting the business to an employee stock ownership plan. Businesses could receive a maximum of $100,000 from the tax credit. 

In a worker-owned cooperative, employees jointly own the business and have control over its operations. Employee stock ownership plans give employees partial or full ownership of a company’s stock as an investment for their retirement. 

According to the UW Center for Cooperatives, there are 728 cooperatives across the state, including 33 worker-owned cooperatives. 

The bill would create an individual income tax subtraction and a corporate income and franchise tax deduction for  the capital gain realized from the conversion. It would also instruct the Department of Revenue to create a program to promote employee-owned and cooperative business structures, providing education, outreach, technical assistance and training.

“More than ever, Wisconsin benefits from companies keeping jobs here, investing in their communities and staying locally owned,” bill coauthor Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) told lawmakers on the committee. This type of business structure, he said, is a “strong tool” to encourage that goal. 

James said the tax incentive would help businesses considering switching because the conversion process can be complicated and expensive.

According to the National Center for Employee Ownership, a transition to a worker-owned model can initially cost between $10,000 and $30,000. Converting to an employee stock ownership plan can generally cost between $100,000 and $300,000, with ongoing costs of $20,000 to $30,000 a year.

Several Wisconsinites who have benefited from making the switch testified in favor of the bill. 

John Dally, a veterinarian, said it would provide “critical support” for cooperatives in Wisconsin. Dally started a practice about 20 years ago with a colleague in Spring Green, and in 2020, they  acquired another location in Mazomanie. 

As they were getting older, he said, they began considering retirement and the future for their business, Cooperative Veterinary Care.

“We wanted to ensure the practice would stay in these small communities, continue to serve the families and the pets that we just come to know and love — we’ve worked with them for our entire careers — and we also wanted to have some fair and equitable options for our employees and have a return on our investment to sell,” Dally said. 

Dally said historically veterinary practices would be sold to younger associates, but with increasing costs of education, many young veterinarians cannot take on the additional debt that comes with taking it over. Private equity firms and large corporations have also been acquiring small practices in recent years, he said.

According to Brakke Consulting, a veterinary management consulting firm, nearly 25% of general veterinary practices and 75% of specialty practices, such as emergency and surgery care, are owned by large corporations. The issue of consolidation in the pet care field by large corporations has gotten the attention of U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. 

“We were looking around and thinking, what could we do, and I came upon this idea of employee ownership and it just made total sense,” Dally said. He said the transition in 2022 to a worker-owned cooperative cost about $30,000. He said a grant helped with the expense, and they also received support from the UW Center for Cooperatives. 

‘Tangible, positive impact’

Dally said that their team of veterinarians, technicians and assistants have been able to take ownership of the business. The employees, he said, range in age from 20 to 58 and come from a variety of backgrounds. 

“We all came together to create bylaws, manage the business, make decisions about how to allocate resources in smart and equitable ways,” Dally said. He said the cooperative has kept these veterinary services in these communities when they might have closed as they retired or sold to a large corporation who may or may not have kept them there. 

In the three years since transitioning, Dally said the worker cooperative has developed a beneficial health insurance program and a mental health program, invested in new equipment, raised wages and distributed additional profits back to the employees.

“It’s just created a tangible, positive impact on our local communities. It provides a clear pathway for employees to not only work for the business, but to own a piece of it and benefit from its success and all their efforts and enthusiasm,” Dally said. “Our experience in transitioning to this model is proof that it works, particularly in small communities.” 

Dally said it would not have been possible without the help they received, and  the bill could provide the necessary support to other businesses looking to make the transition. 

“It will allow businesses like ours to thrive and continue serving their communities while providing meaningful economic benefits for workers. It has the potential to change the landscape of business ownerships in Wisconsin, especially in these rural communities that are often overlooked by larger corporate interests,” Dally said. “We need your support to make this a reality.” 

Kristin Forde with the UW Center for Cooperatives told lawmakers that the center’s staff has  seen greater interest in employee ownership as a succession strategy for retiring owners, but the models remain largely unknown among business owners. 

Forde said the state is likely to face a crisis in business as Baby Boomers prepare to retire. 

“We really see employee ownership as… a solution to that problem,” Forde said. The legislation, she said, would tie together education and financial incentives to ensure that employee-owned cooperatives are a “feasible solution to retaining jobs and services in our communities.” 

Promoting safe gun storage 

Republicans and Democrats also appeared supportive of AB 10, which would eliminate sales taxes on devices meant to ensure safe storage of guns.

According to the CDC, unintentional injury is a top cause of death among children with guns being a leading method for injury. “It was kind of jarring to hear that,” bill coauthor Rep. Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee) said. 

Neylon said unsecured firearms are a major cause for those deaths and injuries, and that  he wanted to propose a way to make safe storage more affordable. 

“This isn’t about politics,” Neylon said. “This is about saving kids’ lives.”

Neylon said after hearing from constituents and consulting with the state Department of Revenue, he has amended the bill to cover a variety of devices in addition to gun safes. 

The amendment defines  a “firearm storage device” as a locked and fully enclosed container and excludes glass-faced display cabinets. It adds “firearm safety” devices, “installed on a firearm designed to prevent unauthorized access to the firearm or to prevent it from being operated without first deactivating the device.” 

Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) said she supports the action, but called for more to be done. 

“Protecting our kids and our communities should be top of mind for many of us… and there are a lot of people that are not responsible gun owners, so I do think we need to do more in this area,” Fitzgerald said. 

Gov. Tony Evers has also included the proposal in his 2025-27 budget, but Republican leaders on the Joint Finance Committee have removed it from his previous budget proposals and have said they plan to write their own budget. Fitzgerald asked Neylon why he proposed the measure if it was included in Evers’ budget. 

“I think, personally, this is at risk of being pulled out of the budget as a public policy item,” Neylon said. While his bill does have a fiscal impact, “I think there’s precedent of doing this through legislation in the past,” he added. “But if it ultimately is in a budget that I support, I would be happy about that.” 

Deductions for teachers’ classroom costs

Lawmakers also considered AB 64, which would allow teachers to claim a tax deduction of up to $300 for expenses, including professional development courses, books and other classroom supplies. It, too, has bipartisan support.

Bill coauthors Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac) and Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake said) the bill mirrors the deduction that is already available for teachers when they file their federal taxes.

“This would double the potential benefit and bring teachers significantly closer to be made whole,” Armstrong said. 

Armstrong noted that teachers “sometimes find it necessary to purchase books or supplies for their classrooms.”  He added that he has  two daughters who are teachers and remind him about the costs “consistently at the beginning of school.”

CESA 6 CEO Ted Neitzke told lawmakers his wife, a Sheboygan middle school language arts teacher, has a classroom with likely “tens of thousands of dollars worth of Mrs. Neitzke’s investments in books and materials.” 

“This is something that… would be a great tool for local school systems, especially when we’re competing nationally for talent, to be able to support our staff in reimbursing some costs that they spend,” Neitzke said. “Any little bit helps.”

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Voces de la Frontera gather alongside allies in Milwaukee for a protest on May Day, 2021. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution Tuesday opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents “operating outside the limits of the law in and around the Milwaukee County Courthouse Complex,” while also calling on the sheriff to work with the county executive and chief judge of the First Judicial District to “ensure access to services and safeguard every individual’s constitutional right to due process.” 

During the board committee meeting Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson called the resolution, which she authored with Supervisors Caroline Gomez-Tom and Juan Miguel Martinez, both “reactive” and “proactive.” The resolution also calls for Milwaukee County residents to be educated on their rights during immigration encounters, such as distributing educational material around the courthouse complex. 

“Let me be clear,” Nicholson said, “everyone regardless of immigration status deserves due process. And that’s not a radical idea, that’s the Constitution. And yet when federal immigration enforcement takes place in our courthouse complex, it sends families into hiding, deters survivors of violence from seeking protection and discourages tenants from asserting their rights.” Nicholson said that “it erodes trust in the very systems we are responsible for upholding.”

In early April, the community learned of two ICE arrests in the county courthouse. The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office said in a press statement that ICE had not given prior notice of one of the arrests and that the sheriff’s office was not involved in making the arrests. Days later, the men were identified as Edwin Bustamante-Sierre, 27, and Marco Cruz-Garcia, 24. ICE said that the men had been convicted of violent crimes or were linked to gangs. Online court records show that one of the men, Cruz-Garcia, was arrested the same day he went to family court for a domestic violence-related restraining order, which was dropped that day. 

Nicholson said the arrests took place in the “public hallways of our courthouse and Safety Building.” She added, “That action didn’t just detain individuals, it delivered a message: ‘This space may not be safe for people who look a certain way, or speaks a certain language.’” 

The arrests were widely condemned by local officials and activists. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement that the courthouse “stands as a cornerstone of justice where residents come to seek information, resources and fair participation in the legal process” and that “an attack on this safe, community-serving space undermines public trust, breeds fear among citizens and staff and disrupts the due process essential to our courts.” 

Milwaukee County Chief Judge Carl Ashley, as well as members of the Board of Supervisors also decried the arrests. Local groups from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin to Voces de la Frontera, and the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression also blasted ICE for making arrests in the courthouse.

The ACLU highlighted that ICE enforcement often causes immigrant communities to avoid contacting law enforcement, even when they are in danger of becoming crime victims. On April 10, Congresswoman Gwen Moore said in a statement that “ICE has seemingly front-run Milwaukee’s justice system, potentially denying the city justice and potential victims a remedy.” Moore added, “This Administration’s decision to remove sensitive location protections will stir even more fear in our communities, prevent victims of crime from coming forward, and disrupt houses of worship, schools, and hospitals.”

In a joint statement Nicholson, Gomez-Tom, and Miguel Martinez said that the resolution “puts us on the right side of history and the right side of humanity.” The resolution is “about helping people … protection process…[and] protecting the promise of what our Courthouse is meant to be – a place of fairness, access, and truth.” 

During public testimony on Tuesday, Sup. Willie Johnson Jr. said that he agreed that the arrests “were an erosion of trust”. Echoing Nicholson’s words Johnson said that “we are stewards of Milwaukee County government, we represent the citizens of this county and we should be respectful of the rights of people to go about their business, be where they need to be, and do what they need to do.” 

Sup. Miguel Martinez said “this is just the first step towards creating more action.” The board is expecting a report back from the sheriff and county executive regarding rules around the courthouse, he  said.

“This administration really is descending into 1939 Nazi Germany,” Miguel Martinez continued. “And I’m not saying that with hyperbole because there’s people that are getting deported and people that are citizens, and are not returning. We have people with residency getting their residency stripped away from them. And every single day, it descends into more and more madness.”

He said that it was the responsibility of board members “as local representatives of our communities, that we make sure that we fight every single day against this unlawful administration, and make sure that we let everybody know that we are here to protect them, and we won’t let our country descend into absolute tyrannical madness.”

Sup. Gomez-Tom added that it is the county government’s responsibility “to serve our community, and all inhabitants of our county.” Milwaukee County residents go to the courthouse for many different services besides the justice system, including victim services, child support or obtaining legal documents, “and everyone should have a right to do so, and to do so in peace,” said Gomez-Tom. 

Supervisors Anne O’Connor said that to her knowledge, the Trump administration is the first to pursue immigration arrests in what were once considered “safe places” such as courthouses or churches. 

At a press conference she attended in the days after the arrests, O’Connor said, ICE agents were parked illegally outside and wouldn’t identify themselves further. She described the feeling as “a cloak of anonymity” and said her constituents are concerned about vulnerable communities such as resettled Afghan-U.S. allies, Rohingya, and Congolese communities who get services from nonprofits.

Sup. Patti Logsdon abstained from voting on the resolution’s passage, saying her decision “is not a reflection of indifference or opposition to the values of justice or fairness,” but concern about the legal uncertainty surrounding the passing and implications of this resolution.” 

Logsdon asked for legal guidance as to what policies the county has in place already to guide ICE interactions, as well as the legal jeopardy elected officials who support policies that could conflict with federal immigration law may find themselves. Logsdon also questioned whether Milwaukee County could be sued for going against immigration enforcement, who would pay for it and how much it would cost “in defending and educating undocumented immigrants about their rights.”

Several members of the public also attended the board meeting, expressing support for the resolution, concern for immigrant communities and opposition to  Trump administration immigration policies.

Gomez-Tom noted that she is the daughter of Mexican immigrants.  “I know what that chilling effect looks like when someone in your family is at risk…maybe isn’t even at risk, but is scared that they could be at risk of being detained, of being questioned,” she said. “What happens is people get paralyzed.”

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Former President Biden speaks about Social Security at a disability conference in Chicago on April 15, 2025. The remarks were his first in public since leaving office in January. (Image via C-SPAN livestream)

Former President Joe Biden on Tuesday used his first public address since leaving office to criticize the current administration for cutting thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration and to rebut those who have questioned the program’s relevance.

“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden said. “They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing 7,000 employees — 7,000 — out the door in that time, including the most seasoned career officials.”

The Social Security Administration announced earlier this year it would cut staffing from 57,000 to 50,000 employees and reduce the number of regional offices from 10 to four.

Biden urged Republicans to preserve Social Security for future generations, arguing during his 30-minute speech to the national conference of Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago that people have been able to rely on it throughout wars, recessions and the pandemic.

“Social Security is about more than retirement accounts. It’s about honoring a fundamental trust between government and people,” Biden said. “It’s about peace of mind for those who work their whole lives, so they can rest assured they’ll have a chance to get back some of what they earned and what they deserve.”

Biden, who accepted the organization’s Beacon of Hope award, said protecting Social Security and the federal workers who administer the program is about defending core principles.

“Who are we? What makes us distinct from the rest of the world?” Biden asked. “It comes down to basic, in my view, fundamental American values — nobody’s king, nobody’s the boss. Everybody has a shot.” 

Biden criticized members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet for making harsh comments about the program. He noted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if she missed a Social Security payment and that “the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen because whoever screams is the one stealing.”

Biden also called out billionaire and head of U.S. DOGE Service Elon Musk for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

“​​What the hell are they talking about?” Biden said. “People earn these benefits. They paid into that benefit. They rely on that benefit.”

White House pledges to maintain program

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing several hours before Biden’s speech the Trump administration doesn’t plan to cut off Americans’ Social Security benefits.

“Let me make it very clear ahead of former President Biden’s remarks: The president, this president, President Trump is absolutely certain about protecting Social Security benefits for law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens and seniors who have paid into this program,” she said. “He will always protect that program. He campaigned on it. He protected it in his first term.”

Leavitt also took a swipe at Biden’s age, saying she didn’t expect him to give a speech during the evening.

“My first reaction when seeing former President Biden was speaking tonight was, I’m shocked that he was speaking at nighttime. I had thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight,” she said. 

Biden, 82, last year dropped his reelection bid in a rematch against Trump, 78, amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

Administrator nominee to target errors

Democrats have raised concerns for months that staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration will impact Americans’ ability to get their questions about the program answered or their issues resolved quickly.

Social Security Commissioner nominee Frank Bisignano testified during his hearing in March that, if confirmed, he would try to “ensure that every beneficiary receives their payments on time, that disability claims are processed in the manner they should be.”

Bisignano said he hoped to ensure Social Security recipients could visit an office, use the website, or speak to a real person after calling the 1-800 number.

“On the phone, I’m committed to reducing wait times and providing beneficiaries with a better experience; waiting 20 minutes-plus to get an answer will be of yesteryear,” Bisignano said. “I also believe we can significantly improve the length of the disability claim process.”

Bisignano promised lawmakers he would reduce the 1% error rate in payments, which he said was “five decimal places too high.” And he said repeatedly that personally identifiable information will be “protected.”

The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines in early April to send Bisignano’s nomination to the floor, but he hasn’t yet been confirmed. 

A crowd gathered outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Tuesday, April 10, 2025, to protest the government's erroneous deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, to a mega-prison in the Central American country. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ordered a defiant Trump administration to provide evidence about how it has tried to secure the release of an immigrant mistakenly deported to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, saying that to date, the record shows “nothing has been done.”

District Judge Paula Xinis laid out a two-week timeline for the government to produce sworn statements on whether and how immigration officials are complying with her previous court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“Discovery will bear out whether you have,” Xinis said, referring to the process through which information is disclosed in court. “And if you haven’t, whether it’s a choice or on justified ground.”

“Cancel vacation, cancel other appointments. I’m usually very good about things like that in my courtroom, but not this time,” she said during a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, had ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by April 7.

A federal appeals court swiftly upheld Xinis’ order. The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices ruled 9-0 Thursday that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return — though they stopped short of requiring it — and provide the El Salvadoran due process through the U.S. immigration courts.

The Supreme Court “could not have been clearer,” Xinis said to Drew Ensign, the deputy assistant attorney general who represented the government Tuesday.

Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, who lived with his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and their 5-year-old child, was apprehended by immigration officials in mid-March.

He was among roughly 260 Venezuelan men the U.S. flew on commercial jets, without due process, to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

Garcia has no criminal history in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country, according to court filings in the lawsuit Vasquez Sura brought against the government last month.

An immigration judge issued a protective order in 2019 shielding his return to El Salvador because of near certainty he would face violence and persecution.

White House echoes Bukele

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted in court documents that Abrego Garcia’s removal on March 15 was an “administrative error.”

The White House maintains it has no power to ask El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia from CECOT, and that Xinis overstepped her authority in ordering the administration to conduct foreign affairs.

The White House also asserts Abrego Garcia is a “foreign terrorist” and a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, which the administration designated a foreign terrorist organization in February.

“Deporting him was always going to be the end result,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday at the daily press briefing.

“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” she said.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told journalists Monday during a visit to the Oval Office, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” labeling Abrego Garcia as a “terrorist.”

The government echoed Bukele’s comments in its daily status report.

“DHS does not have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation,” Joseph Mazarra, acting general counsel for DHS, wrote in Monday’s report.

Following a tense hearing Friday, where the government refused to provide the whereabouts of Abrego Garcia, Xinis ordered the administration to provide the daily updates.

On Tuesday, Xinis told Ensign that the government has provided “very little information of any value” in the reports.

“As a factual matter, I do need evidence in this record because to date what the record shows is nothing has been done,” Xinis said.

Ruling requested on contempt

Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Vasquez Sura asked the court to order immigration officials to arrange for her husband’s return by the end of April 14.

She also asked the court to mandate government officials provide documents and depositions related to Abrego Garcia’s release, and to show cause as to why Xinis should not hold the government in contempt of court for not complying with orders to bring Abrego Garcia back.

Xinis said she will not make a decision on contempt until she reviews a record of evidence.

The government maintains the Supreme Court’s decision does not mean they must work with El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia because the president, not federal courts, has jurisdiction over foreign affairs.

The administration also contends that the Supreme Court’s use of the term “facilitate” only means that they need to remove “domestic” barriers to bringing Abrego back to the U.S. — not that they would have to work with El Salvador to secure his release.

“Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable — or constitutional — here,” they wrote in a response to Vasquez Sura’s request.

In the Oval Office Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the U.S. would provide a plane, but cannot force Bukele to release Abrego Garcia.

Ensign provided a transcript of the Oval Office meeting to the court 15 minutes prior to Tuesday’s hearing, according to Xinis.

“I don’t consider what happened yesterday as evidence before this court yet,” Xinis said.

Ensign pushed back on Xinis’ order for expedited discovery, saying that the issue is a “narrow interpretative dispute” of what the word facilitate means that “does not require discovery.”

After pushing back again, Xinis responded, “I just don’t think it’s that difficult. I think you want to make it that difficult because getting to the facts may not be that favorable.”

Seized while looking for work

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization in 2011, fleeing violence in his home country of El Salvador, according to court records.

Six years later while he was looking for work at a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, he was taken into custody by Prince George’s County Police Department.

While there, he was questioned about gang affiliation and law enforcement did not believe he was not a member of the MS-13 gang, according to court records.

The evidence officers submitted included Abrego Garcia wearing a Chicago Bulls hat, a hoodie and a statement from a confidential informant that stated he was a member of MS-13, according to court documents.

While he was never charged with, or convicted of being, in a gang, he was kept in ICE detention while his case proceeded before an immigration judge.

Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

Immigrant rights groups are cautioning migrants without legal status about the dangers of obeying the Department of Homeland Security’s directive to register with authorities, group leaders told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Representatives from immigrant groups across the country said the requirement, which a federal judge upheld last week, is an enforcement tool for President Donald Trump’s administration and that following the directive to register could lead to unlawful detention and deportation.

Participants on the call did not explicitly say they were counseling migrants without legal status against complying with the directive, but said people affected should seek legal counsel first.

“This tool is to identify individuals for detention, deportation and to threaten with imprisonment if they do not comply,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said.

“These actions are abhorrent to the values of this country, and we will not stand silent to see cruelty as the official immigration policy of this administration. To our community, our message is that you’re not alone, you have rights, seek legal guidance, and you’re not obligated to provide information that can hurt you or your family.”

Under Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration has sent “innocent people” to detention facilities at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, Salas said.

The administration has detained immigrants of all legal statuses without due process, and ignored court orders to reverse those actions. Advocates on the press call Tuesday said that defies the law.

Immigrants, even without legal status in the country, are “entitled to their day in immigration court,” Nicole Melaku, the executive director of National Partnership for New Americans, said.

The directive, which requires immigrants who have registered with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to always carry with them proof of their registration, would also lead to racial profiling of U.S. citizens, advocates have said.

No reported registrants

Salas said her organization, which is based in Southern California, does not know of anyone who has completed the registration.

The people who are required to register are unclear about whether it is in their interest to comply, and distrust of Trump – who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and has routinely flouted due process for immigrants – is a major obstacle.

“We don’t have anybody who has – that we know – yet registered,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion in our community as to whether to do this or not. What does it mean? What are the risks? And I also want to say that … everything that has come from this administration has actually been harmful, so people are taking that into account.”

Legal fight continuing

U.S. Judge Trevor Neil McFadden, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2017, rejected advocacy groups’ attempt to block the directive, saying in an order last week that the groups hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by it.

But the legal fight against the directive will continue, George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at the immigrant services organization CASA, said.

In addition to a possible appeal of McFadden’s ruling, Escobar said his organizations would watch “very, very closely” how the administration conducts the operation, with special attention to racial profiling, and would not hesitate to bring court challenges.

“We will do everything possible to fight this,” he said. “This may be a show-me-your-papers type of situation where people may be racially profiled, stopped on the street just because they’re speaking in other languages, because they look like an immigrant, and has to be asked to show this registration compliance.”

Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Children outside with a child care teacher at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)

A news report that the Trump administration is considering ending the federal government’s Head Start program has alarmed providers and parents who rely on the child care and early education program.

“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 14 Head Start centers in Dane and Green counties. “The children and families we work with are some of the most vulnerable folks in our communities. The parents in those communities rely on the care we provide to stay employed.”

USA Today reported Friday that the Trump administration “is considering a budget proposal that would zero out funding for Head Start.” The news report quoted an anonymous administration official who said the White House funding blueprint for the 2026 fiscal year doesn’t allocate money for Head Start.

The president’s budget is a wish list, and Congress decides how to appropriate federal funds. An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told USA Today that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Project 2025, the agenda drafted by Russell Vought prior to his confirmation as OMB director, calls for eliminating Head Start.

Responding to the report Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tied the proposal to President Donald Trump’s goal of extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted in his first term.

“Shutting down Head Start — taking care away from kids, firing teachers, and making child care even more expensive for parents — all so President Trump can hand out new tax breaks for the wealthy and well-connected is flat out wrong and you can be sure I will fight this proposal at every turn,” Baldwin said.

Head Start was founded in 1966, part of the War on Poverty undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson. It provides child care and preschool for families with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline. Children living in foster homes are also eligible for Head Start.

In Wisconsin more than 15,000 children are enrolled in more than 300 Head Start child care centers across the state, according to the Wisconsin Head Start Association. With more than 4,300 employees, Head Start ranks in the top 100 employers in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, the association’s executive director.

“At least 70% of our families have a parent who is either working or in school full time,” Mauer said Monday. The remaining families include grandparents who are retired but full-time caregivers for their grandchildren as well as families unable to work due to disabilities or who “are working through some very, very significant challenges.”

She predicted that the impact from ending the program wouldn’t stop with the families who rely on Head Start.

“If Head Start isn’t there, if this program were to shut down, surely there’ll be tremendous cascading economic impacts in our communities,”  Mauer said. “I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you’re at work, it’ll create a disaster.

Child care already a crisis

Fears for the survival of Head Start are escalating as the state’s overall child care sector is increasingly under strain. As many as 25% of child care centers in a survey released April 10 said they could close without continuing support in the next state budget.

April Mullins-Datko is Head Start director for ADVOCAP, a social service agency serving Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Green Lake counties. She said that the agency’s four Head Start centers would likely not survive the loss of federal support.

“We would lose services for the 202 children we serve,” Mullins-Datko said. “It would exacerbate the child care crisis we have in our communities, which then has negative impacts on our available workforce.”

ADVOCAP’s centers include three in Fond du Lac County and one in Green Lake County, with 193 families relying on the program for the care and early education of their children.

“Ninety-three percent of my families are working or going to school full time,” Mullins-Datko said.

The agency’s Head Start federal contract is supposed to be good through Dec. 31, 2028, Mullins-Datko said, but with reports of defunding she fears that won’t be honored: “There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of adherence to law and contracts.”

Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council provides social services in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau Claire counties in West Central Wisconsin. The agency’s programs include nine Head Start centers enrolling 442 children. Of those, 382 children are in preschool and 60 are in Early Head Start, for children from birth to age 3, said Thanh Bui-Duquette, Western Dairyland’s Head Start director.

Three centers are in cities — two in Eau Claire and one in Altoona — but the rest are in rural communities.

“We meet the needs of each individual community,” Bui-Duquette said. “The needs of the urban Eau Claire area look very different from rural Trempealeau County.”

Even with jobs, 96% of the families with children in Western Dairyland’s program have incomes below the federal poverty guideline. For children from those families, she said, Head Start has been demonstrated to improve long-term outcomes — increasing the chances of graduating from high school and going on to higher education, and reducing the chances of ending up in the criminal justice system.

“It’s important to have that solid foundation early on, especially for children from disadvantaged families,” Bui-Duquette said.

Payments delayed, offices closed

The news that Head Start is in the crosshairs of budget-writers in the Trump administration follows other jolts to the program in the last two months.

In late January and early February, Head Start operators reported widespread problems in their efforts to collect standard payments from the federal government. Under Head Start contracts, programs incur an expense then submit documentation through a federal online portal to get reimbursed. Head Start programs reported that payments stalled, for nearly two weeks in some cases, without explanation.

Payments have since resumed, but Mauer said directors are reporting demands for more information holding up payments.

“They’re getting substantial delays for things that are accepted expenses, which is concerning,” she said.

On April 1, Head Start operators learned that the program’s five regional offices across the country were closed without any advance notice, including the Chicago office that serves Wisconsin and five other states in the Upper Midwest.

Those events and the report that the program could be defunded have rattled Head Start employees and the parents who have counted on the program, operators say.

“Families and staff are both really scared and concerned,” said Bailey, the Reach Dane director. “Families are reaching out, worried the program is going to close, asking, ‘Is my child still going to be able to go to school?’”

Reach Dane’s human resources staff has been interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in the coming school year, and applicants are nervous about whether the job will exist, she added.

Bailey said the program is trying to be transparent with employees and families about the uncertainty and fight for the program’s survival, all without sparking panic.

“Trying to figure out how to navigate and inform folks when there’s no communication is a hard place to be,” she said.

This report has been updated.

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Robert "RJay" Fisher shows off a recording studio that is part of the Green Bay Office of Violence Prevention's new location. Fisher is a violence interrupter with the office. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

Robert “RJay” Fisher has personal experience with the damage gun violence can cause. His work with Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention aims to keep others from experiencing the same harm.

Fisher said that “having a brother who is now incarcerated for a situation that happened in Green Bay, that was pretty tough for me. And I know what type of trauma I experienced from that. I had a brother who was shot here on the west side of Green Bay, about 11 years ago. And so, I remember getting those calls, and having to deal with those emotions, and what that felt like.”

He said other family members have been shot. ”I also have lost a lot of friends due to gun violence,” said Fisher. “And just recently, two years ago, I lost my uncle, one of my only uncles, due to gun violence.” 

Fisher is a violence interrupter at the Office of Violence Prevention, where he builds relationships with community members and tries to prevent violence before it happens. 

The office listens to “rumblings in the community,” Fisher said. When they hear something from social media or word of mouth, it’s their job to put out the fire. 

Fisher said he’s been in the community for a long time and worked for the Green Bay Area Public School District. He said his relationships and people’s respect for him enable him “to intervene in those situations and start conversations.”

“And then if they’re open [to it], I try to either meet with them or bring them into the space,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical to have a home base.”

Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention was formed in 2023 after the city was awarded a grant from the Medical College of Wisconsin. On Monday, the office held the grand opening of its new location on the east side of Green Bay. 

Director Andrea Kressin described it as a safe space where relationship building and coaching can happen. This is important for the office’s prevention work to support people who are at the highest risk of engaging in violence or deter them from engaging in further violence, she said.

Police officers operated at the office’s old location, and high-risk individuals might not have a good relationship with police, Fisher said. 

“We kind of take them out of their environment, and bring them in a calm, safe space where we can then use our CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] strategies to kind of help them rewire the way they think,” Fisher said. 

In its 2023 crime report, the Green Bay Police Department reported six homicides and a 17% decrease in assault offenses, which included gun violence.

In its 2024 crime report, the department reported four fewer homicides, but also reported a rise in crimes against persons of around 18%. Some of the offenses that led to the increase included aggravated assault, simple assault and kidnapping/abduction. 

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform partnered with Green Bay Police and other local community corrections agencies to study shootings and homicides in Green Bay between 2019 and 2021. The analysis found that in Green Bay “most gun violence is tightly concentrated on a small number of very high risk young Black male adults that share a common set of risk factors.” 

These risk factors included involvement in street crews/groups and significant criminal justice history, according to the analysis. The analysis found that shootings were often caused by a “petty conflict over a young woman, a simple argument, or a feud on social media.” People involved in groups or gangs were also involved in a range of other criminal activities, such as selling drugs or robbery, which made them more likely to be involved in violence. 

One of the report’s recommendations was that the city of Green Bay should invest in development and expansion of community-based violence intervention services.

Kressin said the Office of Violence Prevention has played a part in contributing to a short-term reduction in the number of homicides as well as shots-fired incidents in the community. 

When a violent incident happens and has the potential to lead to retaliation in the community, a primary role of the office is to intervene, Kressin said. She also said the office has built partnerships with community organizations, participated in community events, hosted community conversations in Spanish and English and knocked on doors. 

Fisher said the Green Bay Police Department shares information with the Office of Violence Prevention. The department can give information to Kressin, and the office can make a plan to get involved. The goal is to minimize and defuse a situation so they don’t have to contact the police, but the office will contact the police to avoid someone getting hurt, Fisher said. 

The new location includes a recording studio, lending library, video production tools and interactive workshops aimed at building life skills in collaboration with community organizations, the office said in a statement. 

Kressin said participants can learn about music production and build relationships with violence interrupters. One of the interrupters is working with podcasting and videography, and the Office of Violence Prevention is getting started with the rollout, she said. 

Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis was one of the speakers at the grand opening’s press conference. 

“Our police officers in our organization have been able to make some really great relationships, and a lot of us, myself included, have been able to see tangible results in real people’s lives as a result of that work together,” Davis said. “And so we’re looking forward to what the future holds for this program and for this community.” 

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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House April 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C.. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele won’t return a Maryland man the United States erroneously deported to a mega-prison in his Central American country, he said Monday during a visit to the Oval Office.

Sitting beside President Donald Trump, Bukele told reporters, “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Administration officials present for the meeting defended the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador who had a protective order from a U.S. immigration court shielding him from being sent back to his country because of risks to his life.

The administration admitted in court filings that it deported Abrego Garcia, of Beltsville, Maryland, by mistake.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him, that’s not up to us,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning, provide a plane,” she added.

The Supreme Court issued a 9-0 decision Thursday stating the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Abrego Garcia on March 15 among roughly 260 Venezuelan men the U.S. flew on commercial jets without due process to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

ICE agents apprehended Abrego Garcia near Baltimore on March 12 when he was driving his 5-year-old son home. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, “was called and instructed to appear at their location within ten minutes to get her five-year old son, A.A.V.; otherwise, the ICE officers threatened that the child would be handed over to Child Protective Services,” according to a court filing.

Garcia has no criminal history in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country, according to the filing.

The Trump administration is paying the El Salvador government $6 million to detain the men, sparking questions over whether the payment violates U.S. human rights law.

Lawyers for many of the Venezuelan men maintain their clients weren’t gang members.

Trump triggered the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, specifically targeting Venezuelans 14 and older who the administration suspected of having ties to the gang Tren de Aragua. 

Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office Monday that he wants to export “homegrown” criminals, as in U.S. citizens, to El Salvador and would be willing to assist Bukele in building more mega prisons.

“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you’ll have to be looking at the laws on that,” said Trump.

Rubio, Miller defend deportation

The administration maintains that immigration courts connected Abrego Garcia in 2019 to the violent El Salvadoran gang MS-13 but makes no mention of the protective order granted to Abrego Garcia by an immigration judge that same year.

In addition to Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Abrego Garcia’s deportation and the administration’s refusal to cooperate with a court order to return him to the U.S.

Miller said Friday’s unanimous Supreme Court decision squarely landed on the side of the administration.

“This was a 9-0 (decision) in our favor against the district court ruling saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States,” Miller told reporters in the Oval Office Monday.

“The ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador’s sole discretion, was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador,” Miller continued.

Bukele said the idea that El Salvador would return Abrego Garcia is “preposterous.” 

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said.

The Department of State designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization in February.

Rubio said he doesn’t understand “what the confusion is.”

“This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country,” Rubio said, adding that “foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court.”

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement Monday calling Bukele’s comments “pure nonsense.”

“The law is clear, due process was grossly violated, and the Supreme Court has clearly spoken that the Trump administration must facilitate and effectuate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He should be returned to the U.S. immediately. 

“Due process and the rule of law are cornerstones of American society for citizens and noncitizens alike and not to follow that is dangerous and outrageous. A threat to one is a threat to all,” Schumer said.

Daily updates

Abrego Garcia’s case is winding through the federal courts.

The administration was ordered Friday, after a standoff in court, to provide daily updates on Abrego Garcia’s physical location and status, and what steps the administration has taken or plans to take to facilitate his return.

Abrego Garcia’s wife sued Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and immigration officials in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland last month, alleging her husband received no due process and his removal was unlawful.

District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by April 7.

A federal appeals court unanimously upheld the lower court’s order on April 7. The Trump administration missed the deadline and immediately appealed to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.

The high court unanimously ruled Thursday that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return but stopped short of requiring his return and did not give a deadline. The court also ordered Xinis to clarify language in the lower court’s ruling to test whether the court overreached into foreign affairs.

OMB Director Russ Vought testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 15, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — A nonprofit organization filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday, alleging its decision to stop posting budget documents in late March violates federal law.

Protect Democracy Project’s case is the second lawsuit challenging the Office of Management and Budget’s choice to pull down a webpage with apportionment information that detailed when and how the administration was spending money appropriated by Congress.

The case, as well as the one brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington last week, asks a federal judge to require OMB to restore the website that publicly shared the data for years.

OMB Director Russ Vought told Congress late last month that the budget office would no longer publicly post apportionment information, writing in a letter that to do so would disclose “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.”

“Such disclosures have a chilling effect on the deliberations within the Executive Branch,” Vought wrote. “Indeed, these disclosure provisions have already adversely impacted the candor contained in OMB’s communications with agencies and have undermined OMB’s effectiveness in supervising agency spending.

“Moreover, apportionments may contain sensitive information, the automatic public disclosure of which may pose a danger to national security and foreign policy.”

A ‘brazen move’

Democrats in Congress sharply criticized the decision, with a few calling on the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, to investigate. 

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., issued a joint statement in late March urging Vought to reverse course.

“Congress enacted these requirements over a Democratic President’s objections on a bipartisan basis because our constituents, and all American taxpayers, deserve transparency and accountability for how their money is being spent,” DeLauro and Murray wrote. “Taking down this website is not just illegal it is a brazen move to hide this administration’s spending from the American people and from Congress.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrats on the Budget committees, urged the Government Accountability Office to look into the matter.

GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez did and wrote in a letter released earlier this month that OMB’s decision to withhold publicly sharing the apportionment information was “very concerning.”

“We understand that OMB took down the website taking the position that it requires the disclosure of predecisional, and deliberative information,” he wrote. “We disagree.”

Perez rejected OMB’s argument that all of the information had to be removed since “apportionments may contain sensitive information which, if disclosed publicly automatically, may pose a danger to national security and foreign policy.”

“While there may be some information that is sensitive if disclosed publicly, it is certainly not the case that all apportionment data meets that standard,” he wrote. “Where there is such sensitive data that should be protected from public disclosure, those would be the exception and should not serve to take down the entire database.”

Lawsuits want public info restored

The two lawsuits — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Office of Management and Budget and Protect Democracy Project v. U.S. Office of Management and Budget — ask federal judges to require OMB to post the information online once again.

CREW wrote in its filing that OMB posted a public version of the database in July 2022, after Congress required it to do so in a government funding bill.

The Trump administration removed that webpage on March 24, though OMB “provided no notice or explanation prior to its removal,” according to the lawsuit.

The CREW lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and assigned to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.

Protect Democracy Project wrote in its lawsuit that the “laws requiring transparency for apportionments make it more difficult for the executive branch to impound funds unlawfully outside the view of Congress and the public.”

The Trump administration faces numerous lawsuits stemming from its efforts to block several departments and agencies from spending money appropriated by Congress, also known as impoundment.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 bars the executive branch from holding onto money instead of spending it as directed by Congress. But Vought has said several times he believes the law is unconstitutional.

Protect Democracy Project’s lawsuit was also filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, though it hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Monday afternoon.  

Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Federal layoffs have hampered the city of Milwaukee’s ability to respond to growing concerns about lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denied the city’s requests for assistance after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut the agency’s response team, which would have helped Milwaukee tackle lead contamination in its K-12 schools. 

“This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have somebody to turn to at the CDC,” said Mike Totoraitis, commissioner of the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD), during a Monday press conference. Totoraitis learned of the development, which he said left him “quite shocked,” in an email as the Health Department was planning further responses to lead contamination in MPS. “To see that all of our partners at the CDC had been let go was pretty…pretty difficult,” he said.

Although a local network of partners will continue supporting MHD’s efforts, Totoraitis said that the department now has no CDC contacts to consult with on  childhood lead poisoning. The commissioner called it “a pretty stark moment for us at the department to not have someone to reach out to federally.” 

In February the Health Department began reaching out to the CDC as staff members realized the scale of the lead problem e in MPS buildings. Totoraitis said the department might have to assess the school district’s 68,000 students and over 100 school buildings. 

The CDC initially connected the city to specialists at the National Center for Environmental Health’s childhood lead prevention program. City health officials had hoped national teams would help investigate potential lead exposure cases and help with evaluating which schools were likely to have the worst problems.

Totoraitis explained that while there are acute exposures to lead — such as ingesting paint chips — chronic exposure from dust was paint degrades over time is also a hazard. 

With closer analysis, the health department would be able to learn more about how children in Milwaukee are getting exposed to lead, including whether they’re exposed at school or at home. 

CDC was expected to send three to four people to Milwaukee for up to five weeks, he said, as well as provide technical assistance from individuals advising the department remotely from Atlanta. 

“That’s why we engaged them right away,” said Totoraitis. He described the team as “the top experts in the field for lead exposure,” with experience dealing with lead hazards at a much wider scale than local experts in Milwaukee.

There was “no indication” that the CDC teams would be let go, said Totoraitis. “So that was pretty startling,” he added. Preparation to deploy the teams was underway when the CDC abruptly canceled “overnight” on April 1. 

So far, nearly 250 MPS students have been tested for lead poisoning and several schools have been shut down as work crews undertake remediation efforts. 

In early April, MPS announced that it was separating with its facilities director Sean Kane, who’d been with the district for 25 years. Officials said Kane had not allowed health department staff into Golda Meir School to do a full risk assessment and did not disclose that remediation work had been attempted after a student tested positive for lead contamination. 

Childhood lead contamination has been linked to cognitive disorders including degraded impulse control, learning disabilities and violent behavior. About 85 MPS schools were built before 1970 and are therefore at high risks of lead contamination. 

Totoraitis said that so far, there isn’t a timeline on when MPS schools that have been closed due to lead will reopen. Fernwood Montessori School, Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School were closed, while four others that had been closed were re-opened. 

Totoraitis said that remediation work is farthest along at Fernwood, which is beginning its fifth week of closure. Fernwood was “significantly worse off” than investigators anticipated and required extensive repair work, he said. 

As the city works to respond to the lead issue, federal staff and the unpredictability of federal assistance will remain a challenge. Just a couple of weeks ago, the city lost $11 million in COVID-19 grants that were geared towards “recovery” rather than “response,” officials said.

“The part that’s really concerning for us is there hasn’t been any communication warning us of these changes and shifts in personnel,” said Totoraitis. “April 1 is a really stark moment for public health here across the country, and specifically here in Milwaukee, where now we don’t know who to call. We don’t know how to respond to some of the challenges that we’re dealing with right now because we don’t know if I’m reaching out to someone today, if they’re going to be there tomorrow.”

Totoraitis said the Health Department and its local partners stand ready to respond, but he questioned what could happen if the department encounters a complex challenge, such as a particularly complicated blood screening data.  

“The CDC brings that expertise, that bigger picture, that we just don’t have eyes to because we’re here focused on an issue in Milwaukee,” said Totoraitis.

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Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT  on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department is paying El Salvador $6 million to house hundreds of immigrants deported from the United States in an immense and brutal prison there, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

But a U.S. law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations. That has led those who wrote what’s known as the Leahy Law and enforced it for years to question the legality of the $6 million payment made as President Donald Trump carries out his campaign of mass deportation.

The Trump administration on March 15 sent 261 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

On March 30, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said another 17 nationals from El Salvador were sent to CECOT, again alleging gang ties. On Sunday, Rubio said 10 more men were sent to the prison in El Salvador, and noted how “the alliance between” the U.S. and El Salvador “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

Tim Rieser, the main author of the Leahy Law while a longtime foreign policy aide to former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the $6 million payment for those migrants’ incarceration for up to a year is likely a violation of the law.

“Sending migrants who have not been charged or convicted of any crime to the maximum-security terrorism prison in El Salvador, where they have no access to lawyers or their families, where they have no rights of due process, and with no idea if they will ever be released, held in cruel and shockingly degrading conditions, would certainly appear to violate the Leahy Law,” Rieser told States Newsroom.

“I don’t think the Trump administration is upholding the Leahy Law or other laws that protect human rights,” he said.

Also deeply concerned is Charles Blaha, a former State Department official for 32 years who led the office responsible for vetting the Leahy Law worldwide, the Office of Security and Human Rights, from 2016 to 2023.

“CECOT is a facility that exposes prisoners to torture, and cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment and punishment,” Blaha said in an interview. “Under the Leahy Law, this should disqualify CECOT from receiving U.S. assistance.”

Trump has also expressed that he is open to sending U.S. citizens to CECOT.

“I love that,” he said. “I don’t know what the law says on that.”

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is scheduled to visit with Trump at the White House on Monday.

Trump administration says law followed

The Trump administration plans to keep using the mega-prison as deportations continue under the Alien Enemies Act, top officials such as U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have pledged. Noem visited the prison in March.

“This facility is one of the tools in our toolkits that we will use,” Noem said during her tour of CECOT.

The State Department has denied any potential violations.

“The Department is following all applicable laws related to foreign assistance, including the State Leahy Law,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in a statement to States Newsroom.

The spokesperson said the U.S. is engaged with El Salvador through foreign assistance to address unauthorized migration and human trafficking.

“As these countries continue to work with us in securing our borders and addressing illegal immigration, we will provide assistance as necessary in support of these collaborative efforts,” the spokesperson said. “Our goal is to ensure that our partners are well-equipped to handle the challenges they face, ultimately contributing to a more stable and secure region.”

The 1997 Leahy Law refers to two statutes – one applying to the State Department and one covering the Department of Defense – that prevent U.S. funds from being used for assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of gross violations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance or rape. 

Payment origin

The exact agency within the State Department that is paying out the $6 million in funding to CECOT is unclear and is a source of interest among Democrats in Congress.

It is likely coming out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America.

INL, among other things, gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to the Leahy Law, Isacson said.

The State Department did not answer detailed questions from States Newsroom as to whether the funds were coming from INL. 

“And even if Leahy doesn’t apply, the State Department has a duty to make sure that we’re not turning over people, even if they’re not our citizens, to places where they’ll be mistreated or tortured,” Blaha said.

The State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor oversees an office that vets recipients of proposed foreign aid for potential gross human rights violations.

Fewer than 1% of requests are blocked after going through vetting through the Leahy Law compliance database. Those units that are blocked from funding are publicly posted on a case-by-case basis.

The most recent listing of publicly rejected units is from 2022, so there is no publicly available record of CECOT or the security units in charge of El Salvador’s prisons being vetted because the prison was built in 2023. However, experts say the country’s record of prison management and publicly available details about the mega-prison mean it should be on the latest version of the list.  

Beatings, use of electric shocks

The State Department’s 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador noted there were credible reports from human rights organizations “of abuse and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards.”

Groups cited in the report interviewed people who were released from prisons in El Salvador and “reported systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks.”

“The coalition alleged the treatment of prisoners constituted torture,” according to the report.

The State Department in its report raised concerns about abusive physical conditions in El Salvador’s prisons, such as overcrowding.

While CECOT is not mentioned in the report by name, the report noted that El Salvador’s government opened a new facility in January 2023 to hold up to 40,000 detainees, which apparently is now CECOT.

No access to CECOT

No human rights group has had access to investigate the conditions of the CECOT prison, said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

Goebertus Estrada has studied El Salvador’s prison system since the country’s Congress allowed President Bukele to issue a state of emergency in 2022 that suspended due process. It’s led to 1.4% of the population, about 84,000 people, being incarcerated.

“We have no reason to believe that the (CECOT) conditions are not similar to those in the rest of the El Salvadorian prison system,” she said. “It’s administered by the same institution and the training of the guards is the same.”

She added that Human Rights Watch and other organizations have not documented anyone who is imprisoned at CECOT ever leaving. Additionally, attorneys and families are not allowed to visit.

“The government has explicitly said that this is a prison for the most reprehensible members of gangs, and that they’re going to rot there,” Goebertus Estrada said.

More than 300 people have died in prisons across El Salvador in the last three years, Goebertus Estrada said. 

That kind of record, WOLA’s Isacson said, is something that should trigger the Leahy Law.

“The Salvadoran units in charge of the prison system… you think would come up because of extraordinarily credible allegations of about 300 people dying in the prison system in the last three years,” Isacson said.

Enforcement up to Congress

Isacson said if the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is not enforcing the Leahy Law, then “it would be up to members of Congress to raise this” concern and potentially pull funding for the bureau in a future appropriations bill.

The most recent warnings about violations of the Leahy Law have been tied to the start of the 2023 war in Gaza and the role of U.S. security assistance to Israel units. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war.

“You had Israeli units, who would not have qualified, getting aid, and Democrats not really making any noise about it,” Isacson said. “The (Leahy) Law is mortally wounded.”

Democratic senators pressed DHS on April 8 to provide a copy of the contract between the U.S. and El Salvador. And House Democratic members, such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, are pushing for a congressional delegation to visit CECOT.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, visited the prison in July 2024, calling CECOT “the solution” and adding “the good ideas in El Salvador actually have legs and can go to other places and help other people be safe and secure and hopeful and prosperous.”  

U.S. citizens at CECOT?

El Salvador’s Bukele has become a key ally in Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

One of Rubio’s first visits to Latin America as secretary of State was to El Salvador. During that February trip, Rubio and Bukele talked about the possibility of detaining immigrants removed from the U.S. in El Salvador. Bukele also offered to imprison U.S. citizens.

“And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents,” according to the State Department’s readout of the trip.

Noem said during an April 9 border security conference that the Trump administration will continue to carry out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and maintain a strong partnership with El Salvador.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled April 7 that, for now, the Trump administration can continue use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those subject to the proclamation must have due process, including court hearings.

The high court did not rule on the merits of using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, when the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela. Until now, the Alien Enemies Act has only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

The Venezuelan men who were sent to CECOT on March 15 under the wartime act, were not notified and or given due process, federal trial and appellate judges have noted. Lawyers for many of the Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador said their clients were not involved in gangs and instead either had no criminal record or were in the middle of asylum hearings before an immigration judge.

‘Cruelty is the point’

During the April 9 conference, Noem touted her meeting with Bukele and said the kind of partnership exemplified by the use of the prison would continue.

However, the Trump administration has taken the position that those at the CECOT prison are no longer in U.S. custody. In a high-profile case, the Supreme Court April 10 ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of a wrongly deported Maryland man to the prison back to the U.S., but stopped short of requiring it.

“The idea of paying someone else to be your (Guantanamo Bay), is brand new,” Isacson said, referring to the U.S. Navy base in Cuba that houses foreign nationals accused of terrorism.

Noem visited CECOT after the Trump administration invoked the wartime law to send deportation flights to El Salvador. On camera Noem pointed behind her and warned the same would happen to immigrants who “commit crimes against the American people.”

Behind her were dozens of men who were stripped from the waist up, their tattoos visible behind bars.

Blaha was highly critical of Noem’s visit, where she took videos and pictures of the incarcerated men.

“Noem’s stunt epitomizes cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment, which is why the administration loves it so much,” he said. “Sadly, the cruelty is the point with these guys.” 

Jennifer Kang-Mieler, right, and PhD student Chaimae Gouya review images they’re using to train an AI model to detect an eye disorder in premature infants. (Photo by Ashley Muliawan/Stevens Institute of Technology)

With the Trump administration making sweeping cuts to staff and research grants at science-related agencies, artificial intelligence could offer a tempting way to keep labs going, but scientists say there are limits to the technology’s uses.

The Trump-appointed leaders of The National Institutes of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services have moved to cut thousands of jobs and billions in federal grants that fund university research and laboratory needs in the last few months.

The federal government may be eyeing artificial intelligence to bridge a gap created by these cuts. In February, the U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs partnered with AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic for an “AI Jam Session,” a day for 1,000 scientists across various disciplines to test the companies’ AI models and share feedback. Some figures in Trump’s cabinet have suggested that artificial intelligence models may be a good substitute for human physicians.

But scientists and builders of AI say it’s not that simple.

AI is playing a major role in scientific discovery — last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for discoveries that used AI to predict the shape of proteins and to invent new ones.

But we aren’t looking at a future where we can substitute researchers and doctors with algorithms, said Jennifer Kang-Mieler, department chair and professor of biomedical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

“It’s a tool they may use to enhance clinical decision-making,” she said. “But I think that clinical expertise is not going to be something that we can completely match with AI.”

Kang-Mieler and other researchers say AI has its limitations, but is playing an increasingly important role in analyzing data, speeding up lab work, assisting in diagnostics, making personalized treatment plans and in cutting some costs related to research.

AI uses in scientific labs and healthcare

Artificial intelligence technologies have been a part of some healthcare and laboratory settings, like image recognition in radiology, for at least a decade, said Bradley Bostic, chairman and CEO of healthcare software company hc1, based in Indiana. But Bostic said the industry is still early in exploring its uses.

“It feels to me similar to 1999, with the World Wide Web,” Bostic said. “We didn’t realize how early days it was. I think that’s where we are right now with AI and specifically in healthcare.”

While AI’s potential is nearly endless, AI’s best uses in scientific and healthcare settings are for tasks that are repetitive and operational, Bostic said. Ideally, AI makes processes more efficient, and frees up humans’ time to focus on more important tasks.

Stephen Wong, the John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Houston Methodist uses machine learning, deep learning, and large language models every day in his lab, which researches cost-effective strategies for disease management.

He said he uses AI models for image analysis, medical imaging, processing massive datasets in genomics, the study of proteins, known as proteomics, and drug screening, as well as sifting through existing research and lab data. His goal is to cut down on tedious tasks, and make sense of large-scale data.

“Even tasks like locating crucial information buried in lab notebooks, scientific publications and patents become far more efficient,” he said.

Efficiency is also the goal of Kang-Mieler’s research, which was funded last fall by an NIH grant. Kang-Mieler and colleague Yu Gan are developing an AI-powered diagnostic tool for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) — an eye disorder and loss of vision — in premature infants.

There was a lack of quality images for AI models to train on, Kang-Mieler said, so they are  using images of animal eyes that feature ROP, to create “synthetic” images of what the condition would look like in humans. The neural networks in the AI model will learn how to categorize those synthetic images, and eventually assist eye doctors in spotting ROP. Before AI tools, this process would have been done by the human eye, and take much longer, Kang-Mieler said.

“The way I saw it was also that if we can be really successful in developing and doing this, we can actually take this into other types of diseases, rare diseases, that are hard to diagnose,” she said.

Automation and human capital

Many scientific labs require a lot of physical tasks, like handling liquids, following steps at specific times and sometimes handling hazardous materials. With AI algorithms and hardware, much of that work can be done without humans physically present, researchers at the University of North Carolina are finding.

Ron Alterovitz, the Lawrence Grossberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has worked with Jim Cahoon, chair of the Department of Chemistry, on an approach to make lab work more autonomous. The pair have studied how an AI model could instruct an autonomous robot to execute lab processes, and then how AI models could analyze experiment results into findings. Alterovitz called it a “make and test” model.

“So once people can set it in motion, the AI comes up with a design, the robotic automation will make and test it, and the AI will analyze the results and come up with a new design,” he said. “And this whole loop can essentially run autonomously.”

The pair published their findings last fall, saying there are several levels of automation a lab could deploy, from assistive automation, where tasks like liquid handling are automated and humans do everything else, all the way up to the fully automated loop Alterovitz described.

Alterovitz sees many benefits to automated labs. Robots offer a safer method of handling hazardous materials, and allow researchers to conduct experiments 24 hours a day, instead of just when lab techs are clocked in. The robots also provide high accuracy and precision, and can replicate experiments easily, he said.

“If you ask two different people to do the same synthesis process, there’ll be subtle differences in how they do some of the details that can lead to some variance in the results sometimes,” Alterovitz  said. “With robots, it’s just done the same way every time, very repeatedly.”

While there are fears that AI and automation will cut jobs in science, Alterovitz said it allows humans to do higher-level tasks. Many labs are already facing a shortage of trained technicians who do a majority of the physical tasks involved. 

AI-assisted labs will likely heighten the need for other types of jobs, like data scientists, AI specialists and interdisciplinary experts who can bridge technology with real-world scientific applications, Wong said.

In order to continue innovating and learning new things, labs will still need the “chemical intuition” and problem-solving skills that trained scientists have, Alterovitz said.

AI’s limitations

Kang-Mieler says that AI’s current limitations are a factor that keeps the industry from rushing to apply the technology to everything. AI models are only as good as the data sets they’re trained on, and can contain data bias, or incomplete information that won’t paint a full picture.

And AI models can’t do an essential function of researchers, Kang-Mieler said — discover new information.

“I suppose that AI models can help formulate new hypotheses, but I don’t think that capability is the same as discovery,” Kang-Mieler said. “Current AI models are not developed to make independent discoveries or have original thoughts.”

Bostic has built other technology companies in his career, but said the stakes in scientific research and healthcare are much higher. Inaccurate data in an AI model could lead to a missed diagnosis or another huge problem for a patient. He said the best approach is what he calls “reinforcement learning through human feedback.”

“This is where you don’t have models that are just running independent of people,” Bostic said. “You have the models that are complementing the people and actually being informed by the people.”

Bostic said as the tech industry evolves, AI will play a role in shortening drug trials, providing patients more specialized care and helping research teams make due with fewer skilled workers, he said. But it’s not a fix-all, set-it-and-forget-it solution.

“I don’t see a scenario where clinical decisions are being independently made by machines and there aren’t the experts — who are trained and seeing the total picture of what’s going on with the patient — involved with those decisions anytime soon,” he said. 

Richard Schaefer took part in a clinical trial of psilocybin as a treatment for addiction. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schaefer)

It was a day like any other when Richard Schaefer entered a Madison health care clinic to receive harm reduction supplies. Over 10 years, Schaefer had tried recovering from what began with dependence on a prescription for the pain killer Percocet and later spiraled into an all-consuming heroin addiction. As Schaefer waited for his supplies, he noticed an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study into whether therapy assisted by psilocybin – the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms – could unshackle people from addiction. 

“I’ve tried all types of rehabs,” said Schaefer when he spoke recently with the Wisconsin Examiner. Schaefer is 42, off heroin and training to be a peer support specialist. But from rehab clinics in Oshkosh and Wauwatosa to a 30-day program in the Racine County Jail, old-school complete abstinence and medication-assisted treatment using suboxone, Schaefer had tried it all. “I don’t know if it was more of the timing of being ready to quit or just finding something that actually works for me,” he said. “Something different, an alternative route…This study really changed my life, to tell you the truth.” 

Although overdose deaths are down in every state and the District of Columbia for the first time since the fentanyl crisis began, millions of people continue to struggle with opioid use disorder nationwide. With demand for treatment still high, the University of Wisconsin Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances (TCRPS) is working on finding solutions. Using psilocybin, the team at UW-Madison is developing groundbreaking new therapies tailor-made for people like Schaefer. Advertisements for the study, which focuses on opioid and methamphetamine addiction, can be found in Madison health care clinics like the one Schaefer visited and even on signs on city buses.  

“We already have seen evidence that psilocybin can do some remarkable things to improve the patients’ ability to gain and process important insights about their lives and experiences,” Paul Hutson, a professor and founding director of TCRPS, told UW News in 2023. “We’re excited to see what it can do along those same lines for patients struggling with substance abuse, many of whom have overlapping mental health conditions.” 

A bipartisan bill that began circulating last session in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed to make psychedelic drug treatment available to veterans suffering from PTSD. Commenting on a psilocybin study at UW-Madison that aims to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in combat veterans, UW researcher and professor Dr. Cody Wenthur told Wisconsin Examiner that conducting trials with an inclusive cross-section of subjects is important. 

Although funding cuts by the Trump Administration have undermined research efforts across the country, UW’s psilocybin study is not at risk, university officials say. A university spokesperson said that the study’s funding does not come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and thus is “insulated” from cuts to NIH funding. 

Research has shown that psilocybin has the potential to rewire the human brain, for people with depression. The creation of new neuro-pathways aided by psilocybin, combined with therapy, could help treat substance use disorder, which also changes the brain over time to reinforce addictive behavior.

Nationwide millions of people struggle with an opioid use disorder of some kind. Wisconsin alone annually loses thousands of lives to drug overdoses, with a large portion of those deaths linked with variants of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. By 2038, Wisconsin is expected to receive over $780 million in settlement funding from lawsuits against the companies that seeded the overdose crisis by funneling large volumes of addictive medications into communities. That funding could be used to repair the lives of people and the health of their communities. 

Before he started taking Percoset, Schaefer was a college-educated operations manager at a furniture company, who’d grown up in Racine County. A husband, father and homeowner, he was climbing the ladder in his company when he was prescribed the pain killers. “Everything just kind of quickly fell apart,” said Schaefer, “within about six months to a year I lost all that.” 

During those six months his use of the medication became a recreational habit, then developed into a heroin addiction. Once needles came into the picture, “then it’s just no going back,” Schaefer said. “I ended up going down the drain. I lost my marriage, I lost custody of my kids on an overdose, and then I lost my job — my career I was at for 10 years. And then I lost my house to a foreclosure.” The degradation of his life was swift. He recalled  being kicked out of two sober houses. Eventually, he said, “I ended up on the streets.”

The doors of perception 

Schaefer was immediately intrigued when he saw an advertisement for the psilocybin study. He was already on a suboxone regimen in December 2023, which he said helped him get “on the other side of the wall” from his addiction. He entered the study the following month after contacting the research team. Numerous physical health assessments, phone calls, interviews and meetings followed. 

Schaefer was connected with “two really great therapists,” Travis Fox, a doctor in psychology and Nikki Zellner, a licensed clinical social worker. Their compassion and patience formed the bedrock for his recovery. He had to meet them once a week for a month, in addition to meeting other requirements. 

“They really got to know me and really bring out, or work on, issues that I had suppressed in my life, going back to childhood.” Schaefer said. Fox and Zellner “helped me to learn to love myself again,” he added. It was an alternative approach to therapy that Schaefer hadn’t seen in other recovery programs. “They accepted me for who I am, and helped me to learn that it’s OK to be myself,” he said. “To find the freedom of making a choice, it wasn’t all about abstinence, which a lot of programs are.” Schaefer said that “somehow, with making it my choice, I’ve become a new person and really found a new freedom with that, and really blossomed and come a long ways.” 

By April, Schaefer was ready to step into the experience of psilocybin-based therapy. Early in the morning he caught a cab to the UW nursing school. After one final physical check-up and conversation with doctors, Schaefer was led to a space which he called “the sacred room there.” In that comfortable room surrounded by artwork and with a couch and spaces for Schaefer and the therapists to sit, Schaefer took “the medicine” and his journey began. 

“They didn’t tell me what to call it,” said Schaefer, speaking of the psilocybin he took. “When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.”

Taking his shoes off as he entered the room, Schaefer lay back on the couch, took a tablet, donned a blindfold and waited as about 20 minutes passed. 

“I remember the first session for me was kind of like a movie,” he said. “Like different scenes kept coming to me, you know? Different waves kept coming to me. And some of it was different scenes from life, some of it made sense, or some of it I’m still trying to make sense of what they were. But I realized a lot of things in that first session alone.”

“I think I was learning to find myself,” he said of the experience. A persistent sense of comfort, peace and acceptance stayed with Schaefer after that first session. His ego had been muted, “and I just had this new sense that things were OK,” he said. “I began to have a new outlook on life then.”

Sometimes participants in the psilocybin trials need a bathroom break or to pull out and communicate about what is happening. Zellner and Fox were never far away, and were open to talking to him while he was undergoing the journey. “It’s hard to put words on things while you’re having the medicine in you,” said Schaefer. “I go into it and would like to tell them all these things going on, and to be recorded, and jot down and stuff, but it’s like you can’t find the words to say it.”

“You’re kind of in another world,” he added, saying there may not actually be human language to describe some of the experience. The second dose was even more profound. The “scenes” returned with astonishing vividness. Schaefer recalled going through stages of what felt like collective “human sadness” as well as happiness and joy. 

“There was like a buildup from down and dark to the absolute most bright light and loving energy that I’d ever experienced,” he said. It was in that peak moment “when I felt that I was in the presence of a higher power,” which manifested as a sort of “god” or “energy that was in front of me.” He said he felt a distinctly separate, intelligent presence throughout his sessions, “like things were being taught to me and shown to me.” 

Whatever it was, the presence gave him “the most awesome comforting feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Schaefer recalled. The feeling melted away as Schaefer descended from that blissful state. 

Integration 

In many ways, the hard work begins after the psychedelic experience ends. With the help of their therapists, study participants must attempt to integrate and process what they learned during the sessions. “The integration was powerful because of the therapists being there, to immediately process things coming to your mind,” said Schaefer. 

After each session, Schaefer was walked back to the hospital where he was given some alone time for the night. He never interacted with any other study participants. The next morning, Schaefer met with Fox and Zellner again for a clearer, deeper dive into the prior day’s session. Another follow up came about a week later. “And again, man, that has been such a life-changing experience having a psychedelic medicine with therapists,” Schaefer said, emphasizing that without proper integration and therapy after psychedelic experiences, “you’re lost.” 

Today, Schaefer is clean from heroin and opioids and living a healthier life. Undergoing the psilocybin study at UW-Madison has inspired him to pursue a career as a certified peer support specialist, for which he’s currently finishing training. He aims to become an advocate for harm reduction medications and alternative psychedelic therapies for addiction recovery.

“I would say it’s not for everybody, but for some people who’ve tried different approaches and it hasn’t worked, and they’re serious about changing their life and having an open mind, then this could really be a profound experience to help them go in a new direction,” said Schaefer. 

He hopes that both treatment providers and people struggling with addiction remember that recovery takes patience, compassion, and that it doesn’t have to rely on an abstinence-only philosophy. “It might take 20 times … trying different approaches,” he said. 

Yet in Wisconsin, alternative options are not widely available. States like Colorado are already working to expand psychedelic-based treatment centers, as well as to legalize and decriminalize psilocybin. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Legislature remains reluctant to explore bills to even legalize medicinal cannabis. Schaefer hopes that more people struggling with opioid addiction get the chance that he did. “I’d say it’s already changed my life in so many ways.” 

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