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Autocrats and authoritarians share certain traits.

They don’t recognize checks and balances nor the institutions tasked with imposing them. 

They do not recognize the rule of law. Laws that do not suit simply do not apply. 

So, a country’s governing documents such as a constitution are malleable. Truth is what they say it is, facts be damned.

Critics who challenge this – journalists and the organizations they work for, law firms, universities, disagreeable judges, artists, etc. – are in for punishment and derision. They are cast as unelected elites, liars and betrayers of the country’s ideals, the better to silence or mute their influence.

But perhaps most importantly, autocrats and authoritarians must identify enemies for the rest of us to hate. Anyone who’s not part of their tribe, ideologically, ethnically, racially, by gender or sexual orientation is a target. If they speak another language, all the better.

President Donald Trump has focused for years on targeting  immigrants.

Trump himself is a  descendant of white immigrants and is married to one, but that’s where he makes an exception. 

He has accepted white South Africans as refugees while dismantling protections for people from countries he once described as sh–holes. Which is to say, refugees who aren’t white. 

He claims white South African refugees are the victims of extreme violence. As descendants of apartheid adherents, they are members of a group that has retained its privilege in South Africa. They are certainly  not victims of genocide, as Trump claims. The data shows that they are less likely to be the victims of violence than Black South Africans.

Trump’s executive order to enshrine English as the country’s official language – America for English-speaking Americans only – is another example of whites-only tribalism. 

Long ago, the languages of European immigrants like Trump’s forebears  were thought to  delay assimilation and demonstrate traitorous loyalty to other countries. But these days, the fear is rooted around Spanish of the Latin American variety and the languages of immigrants from Asia and Africa.

Around the globe, people in  other countries think a populace fluent in many languages is an advantage, not a deficiency. 

But Trump’s American is one of proud provincialism.

In any case, immigrants already recognize English as the indispensable language of commerce and success in this country.

Ask any child of immigrants. My parents desired that I master written and spoken English, though the price was less literacy in their native language – Spanish.

My proficiency in English brought my parents the most pride.

Now, for many people, speaking perfect English is a matter of safety. Trump  is deporting immigrants of color under an assumption they are members of criminal gangs. But in many cases there is plenty of evidence that those charges are misplaced, and people are being deported  without due process. 

Trump is carelessly rounding people up and sending them to a hellhole prison in El Salvador and to other countries he would assuredly describe as sh—holes —  even to a dysfunctional non-country such as Libya, in the midst of a civil war, without giving them time to respond to the charges against them. 

He has long labeled immigrants as terrorists, although there is little discernible link between immigrants and terrorism.

Under his broad definition, importing drugs to satisfy Americans’ appetites for illicit substances is a terrorist threat,  not  a public health issue.

Even when the administration is forced to admit error in deporting people who have a legal right to be here, it is not returning them. See, Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvadoran prison.

Like many citizens of color, I’ve become hardened to Trump’s racist  animus. We’ve been cast as job stealers, criminals and a threat to American culture. This is the same animus that made the  civil rights movement necessary. 

Not so long ago, we thought  the pendulum had swung to a more equitable, inclusive country.

But then more than 77 million Americans voted for Trump for the purpose of making America great again.

A country led by an authoritarian leader who thumbs his nose at the rule of law is not the America I know. And it certainly isn’t great. 

Carol Lemke, a member of the nurses union bargaining team at Meriter hospital in Madison, addresses nurses before they return to work Sunday morning after ratifying a new labor contract. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Nurses at Meriter hospital in Madison returned to work Sunday with a new contract at the end of a five-day strike, the first in the hospital’s history.

The agreement, reached Saturday and ratified by union members late Saturday night, for the first time gives nurses direct input on staffing concerns at the hospital, said Pat Raes, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin and also a nurse at the hospital. Raes spoke at a short return-to-work rally Sunday morning outside the hospital.

While it falls short of establishing guaranteed ratios of patients to nurses, Raes said the new two-year contract  establishes a precedent by including  language about staffing concerns.

Wages will go up by 10% over two years, Raes said. She said the wage gain offered “meaningful raises” including 8% across the board and the other 2% for “step increases recognizing our experience and attracting new talent.” 

Raes said the contract also contains  “enforceable language” addressing the safety of health care staff and patients, including a commitment to install a metal detector by the end of the summer.

Staffing concerns and a push for the hospital to guarantee specific ratios of patients to nurses on duty were among the issues that the union stressed in contract negotiations and during the five-day walkout.

In public statements during the contract talks and strike, UnityPoint Health-Meriter officials said they shared the union’s concerns for safe staffing levels but opposed dictating ratios, claiming it would hinder  flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

Raes said the agreement builds on an existing system of committees in which nurses are in charge. “We really felt that was the format for having the staffing discussions and noting where those issues were,” she said Sunday.

The contract also commits the hospital to an annual discussion with the union on staffing concerns and issues, Raes said.

“This was a long and difficult negotiation,” Raes said. “We acknowledge Meriter’s management for ultimately coming to the table and reaching an agreement that prioritizes the needs of our patients and our dedicated professionals. Today, we turn the page.”

The final negotiating sessions were conducted with the aid of a mediator from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).

“We did not want to walk,” said bargaining committee member Carol Lemke, “but we felt it was the only thing we could do” to get staffing-related language in the contract.

In a statement distributed by UnityPoint Health-Meriter Saturday night after the agreement was announced, Sherry Casali, the hospital’s chief nursing officer, said, “We are grateful for the dedication and hard work of everyone involved in the negotiations. This tentative agreement represents meaningful progress toward a contract that recognizes the important contributions of our nurses.”

Raes said the union is now turning its attention to state legislation lawmakers have reported they are drafting that would establish a state mandate for the ratios of health care workers to patients in health care institutions. 

After five days of large throngs of picketing nurses, the crowd outside the hospital Sunday morning was smaller. The scene was cheerful and celebratory, accompanied by a sense of relief.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway turned out for the 6:30 a.m. return-to-work rally.

“I want to thank you for your courage because I know this wasn’t easy,” she told the nurses.

While she said she was grateful “mostly to the nurses,” Rhodes-Conway also said she was “grateful to management for coming to the table and finally understanding that we are stronger when we collaborate.”

The contract was ratified Saturday night by “a supermajority” of nurses, Raes said. Although the union didn’t release the official vote count, Raes said, “We had more people vote for this contract than we have ever had vote in the past.”

The union pushed to ensure the votes were cast and counted before midnight because the pay increases take effect with the start of the next pay period, Sunday morning.

The timing was also important for another reason. Meriter management told the union and employees that nurses on strike would be removed from the list of active employees effective Sunday, which would end their health insurance coverage.

The union wanted to complete the ratification process Saturday night “so there would not be any issues — there would not be any threat,” Raes said.

“We have nurses that are being treated for long-term health issues that cannot afford to lose their insurance who were out striking, and we have had other ones that felt they had to cross the picket line to not risk their health insurance,” Raes said.

She said she doesn’t expect divisions among members because of those choices, however. “Everybody, all the nurses, will continue to work together and have each other’s back on the floors,” Raes said, “because that is how we have to work.”

Voces de la Frontera Executive Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz (center) discusses the arrest of Ramón Morales Reyes with attorneys Kimi Abduli (right) and Cane Oulahan (left). (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A strange turn of events followed the arrest of Ramón Morales Reyes, a 54-year-old Mexican-born man, who was living in Milwaukee as he sought a U-visa — a type of visa available to victims of crimes. 

On Friday, advocates from Voces de la Frontera joined immigration attorneys representing Morales Reyes to dispute accusations made by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that Morales Reyes — who does not speak or write in English — drafted a neatly handwritten note in English threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. Voces de la Frontera and Morales Reyes’ attorneys are calling for DHS to correct the record and clear his name.

The affair began on May 21, when Voces de la Frontera received a hotline call reporting a possible sighting of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Milwaukee. Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, said during the Friday press conference that one of the group’s “trained community verifiers” contacted local residents who confirmed the sighting and also provided video footage of Morales Reyes being detained. 

“His vehicle was left on the side of the road, and using the license plate we were able to identify the owner and communicate with his family,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “Shortly after, Ramón’s daughter came to our office to seek help. We assisted her in completing a power of attorney and ensuring that her father received the essential medication that was critical to his health. We immediately contacted attorney Kime Adbuli, who has been representing Ramón in his ongoing U-visa case.”

Neumann-Ortiz explained that a “U-visa” is a form of immigration relief for crime victims who have suffered emotional or physical abuse and who have helped law enforcement or government officials in the investigation and prosecution of a crime. “It provides a temporary legal status, and a pathway to permanent residency,” said Neumann-Ortiz. “In the past, the Morales Reyes family had sought resources from Voces.” 

Days after the arrest, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem provided statements for a press release describing Morales Reyes as an “illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump.” Noem added, “this threat comes not even a year after President Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania and less than two weeks after former FBI Director Comey called for the president’s assassination.” 

Noem was referring to Comey sharing a picture on Instagram of sea shells arranged into the numbers “8647”, which “86” interpreted as slang for “get rid of” and “47” being a reference to Trump, the 47th U.S. president, NPR reported. Comey is now being investigated by the Trump administration. “All politicians and members of the media should take notice of these repeated attempts on President Trump’s life and tone down their rhetoric,” Noem said. “I will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure the protection of President Trump.”

The DHS press release included an image of the note, neatly handwritten in turquoise-colored pen and in flawless English. “We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans,” it began. “We have done more for this country than you white people — you have been deporting my family and I think it is time Donald J. Trump get what he has coming to him. I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 to shoot your precious president in is (sic) head — I will see him at one of his big ralleys (sic).” The reference to “30 yard 6” may be an incorrectly written reference to 30-6 (pronounced as “30 odd 6”), which is a high caliber bullet for rifles. 

Morales Reyes’ family says that it is impossible that he wrote the note. Described by his attorneys as a soft spoken,  hardworking and committed family man, Morales Reyes works as a dishwasher. He was described as coming from a rural part of Mexico where it’s common for people to have no more than a third-grade education. Morales Reyes had difficulty filling out paperwork, does not speak English and is not proficient in writing in Spanish. Neumann-Ortiz said that his family called Voces organizers, confirming that Morales Reyes had very little formal education, and could not read or write in Spanish. 

Since his arrest, Morales Reyes’ family has received death threats on social media. “They want his name cleared,” said Neumann-Ortiz. On the day he was arrested, CNN reported, Morales Reyes was questioned by detectives from the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), who suspected that someone may have been setting him up to get deported. Police were reportedly investigating jailhouse calls from a person who’d allegedly assaulted Morales Reyes during a September 2023 armed robbery. 

CNN reported that ICE agents were given a handwritten note by Morales Reyes with family-related information, and agents realized that the handwriting did not match. The questions surrounding the letter are reminiscent of those stemming from the arrest and deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was accused by the U.S. government of being a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13. President Trump held up pictures which had been altered to appear as though “M S 1 3” was tattooed on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles.  

Getting Morales Reyes deported would prevent him from testifying against the person in custody for allegedly attacking him, his attorneys said at the press conference. 

Attorney Kime Abduli said there are due process concerns around Morales Reyes’ arrest, as it could interrupt his testimony as a victim in a criminal proceeding and  also impact his U-visa case. The specific visa process which Morales Reyes is undertaking “is really meant to offer protection to people who may be undocumented who are victims of crime in the United States,” Abduli explained. 

“It’s meant to encourage them to report those crimes, when they are victims of those crimes, to the authorities, and to cooperate in the investigation. Where a person may be undocumented and fearful of reporting these sorts of things, Congress basically established the U-visa to make it ‘safe’ for them to come forward with that information. As long as they’re cooperating with law enforcement, the U-visa is intended to offer some protection for that individual.” Obtaining a U-visa can be a very lengthy process spanning seven to eight years at a minimum, Abduli said. 

Attorney Cane Oulahan, who is representing Morales Reyes in his deportation proceedings, said that ensuring due process is his top priority. Oulahan said that a bond hearing is expected in the coming days, where he expects the government to argue “vigorously” for Morales Reyes to be deported. It’s likely that the accusations from Noem’s DHS will also be raised before the judge. 

Another controversial deportation in Milwaukee

The controversy and questions come as ICE attempts to expel another Milwaukee resident. Yessenia Ruano, a teacher’s aide in Milwaukee Public Schools, was ordered recently by ICE to return to her home country of El Salvador in a matter of days. This is despite Ruano having a pending visa application for trafficking victims, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

On Friday, the same day Voces and attorneys held a press conference about the Morales Reyes case, ICE ordered Ruano to get on a deportation flight on June 3. Ruano will leave behind her 9-year-old twin daughters, who are U.S. citizens. Ruano’s attorneys said that it appears that ICE is abandoning policies of waiting for processing of T and U visas, which protect people from deportation. Ruano has lived in the U.S. for 14 years, has no criminal record, has a valid work visa, and is employed at a bilingual public elementary school. She said she is hoping that a final legal filing could pause her deportation.

Ruano’s case spurred a flurry of condemnation from local Milwaukee officials. “Deporting valued members of our community who are raising and educating our kids, assisting law enforcement in their important work, and giving back to our neighborhoods should alarm us all,” Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley wrote on X. “These individuals are victims of a broken immigration system. The Trump administration told the country they were only going after ‘the worst of the worst’. But time and time again, we see them targeting the very people who contribute the most — our neighbors, our coworkers, or friends.” 

Crowley said that he is “deeply alarmed that our country continues to turn its back on our most vulnerable.” He went on to say that “by not standing up and protecting our neighbors, we’re not just failing them — we’re failing our entire community. Due process is under attack, and that should concern all of us in Wisconsin and across the country.”

Congresswoman Gwen Moore also released a statement, calling Ruano a “beloved member of her community,” and declaring that “deporting Yessenia will not make our country safer.” Moore said the deportation order “will only separate Yessenia from her children and her community while exposing her to danger she was forced to flee in El Salvador. Instead of making America a beacon of hope for people like Yessenia, this Administration’s focus is only pushing cruelty that demonizes immigrants.”

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) said that the Trump administration’s deportation of Ruano is “wrong and harmful.” Clancy said in a statement that Ruano had volunteered at her local Catholic parish, worked in her neighborhood school, and was taking care of her family. 

Recent weeks have seen ICE and the Trump Administration focus more on Milwaukee. Since late March, at least four people have been arrested by immigration agents after attending regularly scheduled hearings at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. Local officials denounced the courthouse arrests, only for Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan to also be arrested by federal agents for allegedly obstructing authorities by escorting a man sought by ICE from her courtroom into a public hallway.

“Yessenia is an asset to our community whenever she touches it,” said Clancy. “Our community and her daughters deserve to continue to have Yessenia with us here, and Yessenia deserves to continue to build a thriving life with her family in Milwaukee.” Clancy condemned ICE, saying the agency “continues to act arbitrarily and with cruelty. We must all do what we can to protect our neighbors from it.” 

Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025. Amid several legal disputes, the Trump administration has continued its controversial deportation policy to El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Maryland slammed the Trump administration Friday for its “blatant lack of effort to comply” with her order earlier this month to report steps taken to facilitate the return of a second wrongly deported man to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

“Defendants’ untimely response is the functional equivalent of, ‘We haven’t done anything and don’t intend to,’” U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, whom President Donald Trump appointed in 2018, wrote in her order blasting a nonresponse from the Department of Homeland Security.

“Telling this Court that ‘[i]t is DHS’s understanding that Cristian is in the custody of El Salvador,’ adds nothing to the underlying record and simply reflects a lack of any effort to obtain or provide information regarding Cristian’s ‘current physical location and custodial status,’” she wrote.

Friday’s order from Gallagher is the latest scathing remark from federal judges who have found the Trump administration either violated their preliminary injunctions or restraining orders, or have broadly invoked executive privileges to stonewall information in immigration cases.

Gallagher, like other federal judges who have found themselves in the spotlight for blocking immigration-related policies, raised concerns about the Trump administration skirting due process rights and slow-walking rectifying deportation mistakes as the government continues its aggressive campaign of mass deportations.

Officials at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and President Donald Trump himself have continued to claim broad authority to conduct immigration removals. They have lashed out against the judges, labeling them as “activists” and accusing them of blocking the Trump administration’s agenda.

“Its very important that we’re able to get these people out fast,” Trump said during a press availability in the Oval Office Friday. “We have judges that don’t want that to happen. It’s a terrible thing.” 

Violating removal protections

Two cases of men whom the administration sent to El Salvador despite court orders blocking their removals stemmed from the first major case of the administration apparently disregarding a judicial order: a temporary restraining order from U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg not to remove migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Despite the mid-March temporary restraining order from Boasberg, three planes landed in El Salvador hours later and roughly 300 men were sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. 

Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, and a 20-year-old referred to in court documents only by the pseudonym Cristian, whose case Gallagher is handling, were among them.

Abrego Garcia had, since 2019, a court order protecting him from deportation to his home country of El Salvador because an immigration judge was concerned he would face gang violence if returned.

Cristian, who arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor, was part of a class action that barred removal from the U.S. while his asylum case was pending in immigration court.

In both cases, the administration has said it is powerless to compel the Salvadoran government to release them, an argument Gallagher expressed frustration with Friday.

“Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher wrote.

The U.S. is paying El Salvador up to $15 million to detain removed immigrants.

“As a Venezuelan native, he is in El Salvador only because the United States sent him there pursuant to an agreement apparently reached with the government of El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.

Judges see pattern of defiance

In Abrego Garcia’s high-profile case, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, also in Maryland, said “nothing has been done” by the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Administration officials have admitted he was mistakenly deported to CECOT.

Xinis recently denied the Department of Justice’s request for an extra 30 days to submit documents on its efforts to return Abrego Garcia.

He remains in a lower-level prison in El Salvador, despite a Supreme Court order from April that directed the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S.

A judge in Massachusetts found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process after eight men were deported to South Sudan and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to a county on the cusp of another civil war.

Boasberg, who sits in a federal court in the District of Columbia, found probable cause to hold Trump officials in contempt for violating his temporary restraining order that ordered deportation planes carrying men removed under the Alien Enemies Act to be returned to the U.S. over concerns they did not receive due process.

The Trump administration has challenged all those decisions on an emergency basis to the U.S. Supreme Court.

‘A judge in Boston running foreign policy’

Top administration figures have argued it is the judges who have overstepped, trespassing on the executive branch’s role in setting foreign policy.

In the Oval Office Friday, Trump singled out U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, who is overseeing the case in Massachusetts.

“You can’t have a judge in Boston running foreign policy in places all over the country because he has a liberal bent or he’s a radical left person,” Trump said.

Murphy was appointed by former President Joe Biden.

That case, which centers on removing migrants to a country they are not citizens of, could play an outsized role in the legal battle over the administration’s approach to immigration after Supreme Court decisions this month have allowed the Trump administration to end two temporary legal programs and exposed more than 800,000 immigrants to potential deportation.

Many of those who lost protections hail from countries that are deemed too dangerous for return.

‘Get them out rapidly’

The Trump administration has publicly stated Abrego Garcia will not return and accused him, without producing evidence, that he is a leader of the MS-13 gang.

The president has also acknowledged that if he wanted to, he could secure the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. But Trump said he would not, alleging that Abrego Garcia has gang ties.

The president posted pictures on social media of Boasberg, who was pressing Department of Justice attorneys for answers on if his order was deliberately violated. It prompted a rare response from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who stressed the importance of an independent judiciary.

While the Supreme Court eventually lifted Boasberg’s nationwide injunction on the use of the Alien Enemies Act, federal judges in Colorado and parts of New York and Texas have blocked use of the wartime law within their districts, citing concerns about due process.

Top Trump officials, such as Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have floated suspending habeas corpus, which allows people who believe they are being unlawfully detained to petition for their release in court.

Habeas corpus claims are currently the only avenue that Venezuelans subject to the Alien Enemies Act have to challenge their deportation under the wartime law.

“We can’t keep them for years here as they go through trial,” Trump said Friday of swift deportations. “We have to get them out rapidly.” 

Abrego Garcia and Cristian

In an April order, Gallagher wrote that Cristian’s case is similar to Abrego Garcia’s and that “like Judge Xinis in the Abrego Garcia matter, this court will order Defendants to facilitate Cristian’s return to the United States so that he can receive the process he was entitled to under the parties’ binding Settlement Agreement.”

In that order, Gallagher said the federal government must show “a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits by (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services).”

On May 6, she affirmed her decision that the Trump administration must facilitate Cristian’s return, but put her own order on pause to allow for Department of Justice attorneys to appeal to the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

The appeals court declined the Trump administration’s request to pause her order.

Gallagher said Friday she would give the Trump administration officials until Monday to “remedy their noncompliance.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk listens as President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Billionaire Elon Musk said Friday he will continue to advise President Donald Trump despite stepping away from his official role as a special government employee.

During a wide-ranging Oval Office press conference, Musk — sporting a bruised right eye he blamed on a punch he invited from one of his sons, 5-year-old X — also said he expects U.S. DOGE Service will continue trying to cut at least $1 trillion in federal spending, setting the middle of next year as a target date.

“This is not the end of DOGE, but really the beginning,” Musk said. “My time as a special government employee necessarily had to end — it was a limited time thing, it’s 134 days I believe, which ends in a few days. So it comes with a time limit. But the DOGE team will only grow stronger over time. The DOGE influence will only grow stronger.”

Musk then compared his initiative to Buddhism, a religion practiced by hundreds of millions of people, saying DOGE jobs were “like a way of life” that he hoped would permeate throughout the federal government.

DOGE’s efforts so far have led to about $160 billion in spending cuts, Musk said. That’s a small fraction of the $6.8 trillion the federal government spent during the most recent fiscal year and short of the goal he set before joining the administration.

Musk said DOGE was “relentlessly pursuing” at least $1 trillion in spending cuts to benefit American taxpayers, shortly after pointing out a golden eagle on the ceiling of the Oval Office that Trump said used to be plaster.

“Nobody ever really saw it. They didn’t know the eagle was up there, and we highlighted it,” Trump said. “Essentially it’s a landmark, a great landmark, and that’s 24-karat gold. And everybody loved it. Now, they all see it when they come in. So it’s been good.”

Musk hailed Trump for ensuring the Oval Office “finally has the majesty that it deserves.” Neither man shared how much was spent to redesign the eagle.

Musk plans to refocus his professional efforts on his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX.

New York Times story on Musk drug use

Trump said he “hopes” that Musk continues to advise him on government issues, even though he will no longer be employed by the White House.

Republican lawmakers, Trump said, are “totally committed to making the DOGE cuts permanent and stopping much more of the waste in the months to come.”

“We want to get our great, big, beautiful bill finished and done,” Trump said, referring to a tax and spending cuts package the House passed earlier this month. “We put some of this into the bill, but most of it’s going to come later. We’re going to have it (codified) by Congress, affirmed by Congress. In some cases, we’ll make cuts, in some cases we’ll just use it in a different layer to save the money. But it’s hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Musk declined to answer a question about a bombshell New York Times report published earlier in the day that detailed his ongoing use of drugs, including ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms.

Trump desires bigger tax cuts from Senate

Trump said during the press conference he hopes the U.S. Senate amends the “big, beautiful bill” by cutting more government spending, without specifying which programs.

That package would cut about $1.5 trillion in federal funding for several programs during the next decade, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its full analysis of the package next week, including how changes made just before the bill went to the floor will impact state budgets and people’s access to safety net programs.

Trump also called on senators to further lower taxes in the package,

“It’s an unbelievable bill…It cuts, you know, it’s a huge cutting,” Trump said. “But there’s things I’d like to see, maybe cut a little bit more. I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes. It’s going to be the largest tax decrease or cut in the history of our country. I’d like to see it get down to an even lower number. I was shooting for a slightly lower number. I would have liked to have done that.”

Trump appeared to renew his call for Congress to completely eliminate the debt limit, even though the tax and spending cuts package would raise that ceiling by $4 trillion.

“I agree with Elizabeth Warren on that. I think we should get rid of it,” Trump said, referring to the Democratic senator from Massachusetts. “It’s too catastrophic.”

The Progress Pride Flag flies over the Wisconsin Capitol. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

For the seventh time, Gov. Tony Evers ordered the Progress Pride Flag to fly over the Wisconsin State Capitol for LGBTQ Pride Month. 

This year, Pride Month begins on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which gave same-sex couples the right to get married in 2015. But Evers’ celebration of LGBTQ pride is occuring as the administration of President Donald Trump attacks the rights of transgender people and a recent Gallup poll found that Republican acceptance of same-sex marriage has fallen to its lowest level in nine years. 

“When the Pride Flag flies above the People’s House, it sends a clear and unequivocal message that Wisconsin recognizes and celebrates LGBTQ Wisconsinites and Americans,” Evers said in a statement. “Every day, but especially today and this month, we reaffirm our commitment to striving to be a place where every LGBTQ kid, person, and family can be bold in their truth and be safe, treated with dignity and respect, and welcomed without fear of persecution, judgment, or discrimination. I promised long ago that, as governor, I would always fight to protect LGBTQ Wisconsinites with every tool and every power that I have. I will never stop keeping that promise.”

In the executive order Evers signed Friday, he notes that the LGBTQ has been under attack in recent years, including in Wisconsin where Republicans have tried more than once to pass legislation attacking transgender children.

“Despite historic victories, in the last several years, there has been a significant increase in anti-LGBTQ legislation introduced in state Legislatures across the country, including in Wisconsin, that have targeted LGBTQ kids and people and increased dangerous anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, as well as efforts on a state and national level to erase LGBTQ history and stories.” 

The Progress Pride Flag flying above the Capitol includes the recognizable LGBTQ rainbow colors and a chevron of additional stripes that represent LGBTQ people of color, the transgender community and people with HIV/AIDS.

The U.S. Supreme Court, on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday said it will allow the Trump administration to remove deportation protections for more than 500,000 nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who were given permission to temporarily remain and work in the United States by the Biden administration.

The move by the high court — which permits the deportations while a lawsuit continues to work its way through the courts — came after a district court in Massachusetts in April blocked the Trump administration from ending the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, or CHNV, program for 532,000 people.

It’s the second decision by the Supreme Court this month stripping immigrants of some form of temporary legal protections, affecting more than 800,000 people in the country without permanent legal status who are now subject to swift deportation.

On May 19, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to end Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Venezuelans who were granted the protection from deportation because their home country was deemed too unstable to return to due to the political regime.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin welcomed the ruling.

“Ending the CHNV parole programs, as well as the paroles of those who exploited it, will be a necessary return to common-sense policies, a return to public safety, and a return to America First,” she said in a statement.

Todd Schulte, the president of the immigration advocacy group FWD.us, said in a statement that the high court’s decision “penalizes half a million people for complying with our immigration laws.”

“This decision will have devastating and immediate consequences, and is part of a broader attempt by the executive branch to justify further immigration enforcement crackdowns against families across the country,” Schulte said. “The government failed to show any harm remotely comparable to that which will come from a half million people losing their jobs and becoming subject to deportation.” 

Friday’s case is one of several immigration-related emergency requests the Department of Justice has brought to the high court, as the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, wind down temporary legal pathways for immigrants and redefine the constitutional right of birthright citizenship.

No judicial review for parole, DOJ argues

In the emergency filing to the high court in Friday’s case, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as what is called humanitarian parole, for the CHNV program.

He added that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration.

Liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

“The Court has plainly botched this assessment today,” Jackson wrote in her dissent. “It undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the Government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”

She argued that the Trump administration did not prove it would be harmed by the preliminary injunction. An appeals court previously rejected the government’s request to put the lower court’s order on hold.

“While it is apparent that the Government seeks a stay to enable it to inflict maximum predecision damage, court-ordered stays exist to minimize—not maximize—harm to litigating parties,” Jackson wrote.

President Joe Biden created the CHNV program in 2023. It temporarily granted work permits and allowed thousands of nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they were sponsored by someone in the United States and passed a background check.

Shawano County was included on a Department of Homeland Security list of jurisdictions "defying federal immigration law"

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security listed Shawano County along with Dane County, Madison and Milwaukee as Wisconsin jurisdictions “defying immigration law” on Thursday. 

The department released the list as part of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump requiring that sanctuary jurisdictions across the country be listed. 

“Sanctuary jurisdictions including cities, counties, and states that are deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,” the DHS announcement states. “Sanctuary cities protect dangerous criminal aliens from facing consequences and put law enforcement in peril.” 

Dane County, Madison and Milwaukee have enacted policies that limit local law enforcement agencies’ collaboration with federal immigration authorities. Earlier this year, Dane County Sheriff Kalvin Barrett announced that the county would no longer participate in a program that provides funding in exchange for telling federal agencies when an immigrant without legal status is in custody in the local jail. Milwaukee also refuses to share such information. 

“DHS demands that these jurisdictions immediately review and revise their policies to align with Federal immigration laws and renew their obligation to protect American citizens, not dangerous illegal aliens,” DHS stated.

But Shawano County, which Trump won with 67% of its vote last year, is a Republican Party stronghold that appears out of place on the list. The DHS announcement states that “no one should act on this information without conducting their own evaluation of the information.” 

In 2021, the Shawano County board voted to declare the county a “Second Amendment sanctuary county,” which declared the county sheriff would not enforce any laws which “unconstitutionally impedes our fundamental Second Amendment right to Keep and Bear Arms.” 

The Shawano County administrator and sheriff did not respond to requests for comment.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks during her confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 17, 2025. (Photo by Eric Thayer/Getty Images)

A federal judge in California said Thursday he is considering issuing an order to preserve work permits for a small group of Venezuelans with temporary protected status, which allows migrants to live in the United States for a set period without fear of deportation.

They were granted these extended protections by immigration officials before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that allowed the Trump administration to revoke those protections.

A hearing before U.S. District Judge Edward Chen was the first in the case since the Supreme Court on May 19 allowed the Trump administration to end temporary protections for a group of 350,000 Venezuelans and vacated Chen’s order blocking the administration’s move.

Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to a seat in the Northern District of California, acknowledged that the Supreme Court’s decision has left an “island” of about 5,000 Venezuelans who have gotten work permits approved until October of 2026 — before the high court’s order moved up the date their TPS status expired.

“It’s a small exception,” he said.

Attorneys for those TPS holders filed an emergency motion to protect that subgroup to keep those work and deportation protections through October 2026. They are also pushing for an expedited hearing schedule to challenge the administration’s revocation of protections because the group of Venezuelans lost protections in April, meaning they are subject to deportation.

“Every day that there’s not a final decision in this case, our plaintiffs are now subject to deportation, are now losing their jobs, and we need to move urgently towards a final resolution in this case,” Jessica Karp Bansal, who is representing the National TPS Alliance, said at a Thursday hearing.

Back and forth

In March, Chen found that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s decision to revoke extended protections for Venezuelans previously granted under the Biden administration until October of 2026 was arbitrary and capricious. His order overturned Noem’s revocation of protections for one group of Venezuelans who were placed on TPS in 2023.

The group of Venezuelans given protections in 2023 were initially scheduled to lose that status on April 7, meaning the Supreme Court’s May decision allowed Noem to immediately revoke the extended protections. The second group’s protections will end in September.

The groups who brought the suit against Noem represent TPS holders from Venezuela. The immigration groups have amended their complaint to include TPS holders from Haiti, whose protections will expire in August after Noem revoked an extension.

A federal district court in New York this week held oral arguments on the termination of TPS for more than 300,000 Haitians.

The California case is also before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments in July.

Noem cited gang activity as her reason for not extending TPS for the 2023 group of Venezuelans.

The attorneys and the American Civil Liberties Union, on behalf of the TPS holders, are also pressing for discovery to obtain records and documents to show the decision process for ending TPS for nationals from Venezuela and Haiti.

Chen set a status conference for June 24 at 1 p.m. Pacific Time. 

Participants hold candles at a vigil for striking nurses outside Meriter hospital in Madison Thursday evening. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Roughly 150 nurses and their allies gathered at dusk Thursday for a vigil to show support for the strike underway at Meriter hospital in Madison.

The crowd was smaller than the throngs that have gathered outside the hospital during daily picketing and rallies, but the feelings they conveyed were no less intense.

“We’re holding this vigil because beneath the charts, beneath the chants, beneath the signs and beneath the daily strength that it takes to strike is something deeply serious,” said emergency room nurse Shelby Davis. “We’re not just here for better contracts. We’re here for safety, for dignity, for the basic right to care for our patients without risking their lives or our own.”

With the vigil, organized with the involvement of two church pastors, the nurses and their union sought to cast the issues that led to the five-day walkout as a matter of moral principle.

“You are doing holy work,” said Pastor Justin Dittrich of Lake Edge Lutheran Church, opening the vigil at Brittingham Park on Madison’s near South Side, a block from the hospital grounds.

“The strike is not the end, but the beginning of a more just health care system for all people, workers and participants,”  Dittrich added. “We stand with the nurses of Meriter because they are healers, truth tellers, and agents of faith and justice.”

UnityPoint Health-Meriter and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin are in the midst of negotiations for a new labor agreement for about 1,000 nurses who work at the hospital. The nurses union began a five-day strike Tuesday after a bargaining session May 19 ended without a new agreement, and after the union’s bargaining team said management negotiators were not responding adequately to their concerns about staffing levels, hospital security and compensation.

Negotiations resumed Thursday, during which union bargaining team members reported some progress, and continued on Friday.

Among the union’s primary issues in negotiations has been a demand for specific ratios of nurses to patients.

“Even though I work in the ER and not on the floor, I see how staffing levels affect every part of the hospital,” said Davis. “I’ll never forget the one moment during my nurse residency, a new grad was recognized for taking care of seven patients on their own. Seven. That wasn’t a badge of honor, that was a red flag.”

The hospital management has said dictating ratios would interfere with its need for flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

Speakers said the demand is not just in the interest of nurses, but a matter of concern for patients as well.

“Ratios are for us — yeah, absolutely,” said nurse Dara Pierce. “But they’re also for everybody else and I think sometimes that goes unnoticed.”

The fear of violence in the workplace has driven nurses to demand a stronger role in formulating security policy, speakers said, along with measures such as metal detectors.

“We’ve had violent or unpredictable situations come through our doors with just one security guard assigned to ER and no metal detectors,” said Davis. “No one should have to feel unsafe when they’re coming to a hospital and no nurse should be expected to risk their life just to do their job.”

The lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which began five years ago, continues to weigh on health care workers, nurse Annette Bernas told vigil participants.

“We were considered essential, but let’s be honest, we were expendable,” she said. “We didn’t complain. We showed up. We held hands when family members couldn’t.”

As the pandemic laid bare the importance of health care and health care workers, “we were hopeful that everything we gave would open the eyes of the world to the importance of nurses and support staff,” Bernas said. “But here we find ourselves in a deeper crisis. The burnout is real. Nurses are leaving in waves. PTSD from those years is something we still carry, and yet we’re being asked to do more with less.”

After the speeches the crowd walked behind a large yellow banner, carrying flickering candles from the park to the hospital entrance on Brooks Street.

There Pastor Raymond Monk of Milwaukee offered a benediction. 

“This new course has caused many of you all to make a decision to make sure that your voices are heard and the voices of those who are hurting, their voices are heard also,” said Monk. “I want to encourage you at this pivotal moment in history to continue to defy the norms and to make known to the world that things must change and that things must change right now.”

Faith upholds their cause, he suggested, adding that God “is always on the side of the oppressed.”

State Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) argues Thursday in the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee for including the full budget request from the state Department of Safety and Professional Services in the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget. (Screenshot/WisEye)

Republicans on the Legislature’s budget committee rejected a proposal Thursday to add permanent staff to the state agency responsible for ensuring that a range of professionals have licenses they need to do their jobs.

Instead, the Joint Finance Committee voted along party lines to extend five contract positions for three more years as well as add a handful of other positions.

The 2025-27 state budget marks the fourth one in which Gov. Tony Evers has been rebuffed after urging lawmakers to increase staffing at the Department of Safety and Professional Services (DSPS) to speed up the agency’s license and permit administration.

There was no debate during the 45-minute meeting Thursday.

All four Democrats on the committee spoke up, either to advocate for their proposal for the agency or to criticize the GOP proposal as inadequate. None of the Republicans, however, made arguments for their plan for DSPS or against the Democrats’ alternative.

In addition to issuing professional licenses in health care, personal services, professions such as accounting or architecture and for skilled tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians, DSPS also oversees a variety of building and other public safety licenses and permits.

Starting more than three years ago, Republican lawmakers raised criticism of the agency amid heavy backlogs in the licensing process for a wide range of professionals.  

Democratic lawmakers — as well as some outside groups representing licensed professionals — have charged the backlog was a result of the Legislature’s failure to authorize more positions at the department.

The department is almost entirely self-funded through the fees it collects from license applications, but the size of its staff requires the approval of the Legislature.  

In the 2023-25 draft state budget, Evers requested 74 new positions at DSPS, but the final spending plan drafted largely by the Republican majority on the finance committee added 17.75 positions.

Evers redirected pandemic relief funds to DSPS to hire more contract workers to help manage the licensing process. In the last couple of years, the backlog has been reduced so that on average a license is issued in two weeks, according to state Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay), a finance committee member.

In his 2025-27 budget draft, Evers requested 30 new positions at the agency. On Thursday, Democrats on the finance committee proposed adding 31 positions, including 14 to staff the department’s call center serving license applicants and nine additional employees to process license applications.

Authorizing fewer people than DSPS has requested “has a tremendous risk of causing significant delays or or even just making it a little bit harder for people to be able to get their license,” said Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha). “We want people to be able to get the licenses that they need so they can go to work. We want people to get the renewals that they need so they can continue working.”

State law requires about 10% of the fee revenue from professional licenses in health and business professions to be transferred to the state budget’s general fund.

“We have been pulling funds out of an agency that’s almost basically self-sufficient and dumping the money into the general fund, all while the demand for licenses is exploding,” said Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee).

Johnson warned the committee that if the licensing process gets bogged down again, shortages in fields such as health care in particular are likely to worsen.

Falling short of funding the department’s full request “impacts every single person in the state, whether you’re a licensee or not,” said Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison). “What we are doing is starving that system and making it harder for every single one of us to access needed professional services.”

The Democratic proposal failed on a 4-12 vote, with all the Republicans on the 16-member committee voting against it. 

The Republican measure passed 12-4, with only Republicans’ support.

It extends five contract call center positions that expire Sept. 30 for another three years.

The GOP motion omits three lawyers and three paralegals the department had requested for professional regulation compliance and for the state’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program.

The motion also transfers $5 million from DSPS revenues to the state budget’s general fund, in addition to the annual 10% from license fees. 

The Republican measure authorizes a consultant for pharmacy inspections that was part of the original budget draft. It also includes funding to continue a youth firefighter training grant that was in the original request and the Democratic proposal.

The committee’s co-chairs, Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), released a joint statement later Thursday declaring that “Joint Finance Republicans voted to invest in important government services while holding the line on spending.”

The statement cited funding for DSPS call center staff “to help credential holders and the public navigate licensure platforms” and said the funding “ensures the department can operate effectively and provide these critical services to professionals.”

Immediately after the final vote, however, Andraca told her colleagues that the outcome was a missed opportunity.

“We could be sitting here claiming a bipartisan success story, because today the median time to get a license is only 15 days,” Andraca said. “We should be continuing the success story and taking a victory lap, and instead we’re chipping away the progress that we’ve made — and that’s very disappointing.”

Sen. Ron Johnson at the Newsroom Pub on Wednesday, May 28, 2025 | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

You have to hand it to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson. As Republicans across the country run in fear from their constituents, refusing to hold town halls lest they be asked to answer for brutal federal budget cuts and threats to health care, nutrition assistance and Social Security, Johnson showed up at a Milwaukee Press Club event Wednesday and appeared cheerfully unperturbed as he took questions from journalists and a skeptical crowd. Not that his answers made sense.

People sitting in front of the podium at the Newsroom Pub luncheon crossed their arms and furrowed their brows as Johnson explained his alternative views on everything from global warming to COVID-19 to the benefits of bringing the federal budget more in line with the spending levels of 1930 — i.e. the beginning of the Great Depression, before FDR instituted New Deal programs Johnson described as “outside [the president’s] constitutionally enumerated powers.”

A handful of protesters chanted in the rain outside the Newsroom Pub, but overall, the event was cordial and reactions muted. In part, this was attributable to Johnson’s Teflon cockiness and the barrage of misinformation he happily unleashed, which had a numbing effect on his audience. 

Johnson fancies himself a “numbers guy.” In that way he’s a little like former House Speaker Paul Ryan, his fellow Wisconsin Republican who was once considered the boy genius of the GOP. Ryan made it safe to talk about privatizing Medicare by touring the country with a PowerPoint presentation full of charts and graphs, selling optimistic projections of the benefits of trickle-down economics, corporate tax cuts and the magic of the private market. But Ryan couldn’t stomach Trump and he’s been exiled from the party. Johnson is the MAGA version. While he doesn’t dazzle anyone with his brilliance, he does a good job of baffling his opponents with a barrage of B.S. that leaves even seasoned journalists scrambling to figure out what question to ask. Where do you begin?

Back in 2021, YouTube removed a video of Johnson’s Milwaukee Press Club appearance because he violated the platform’s community standards by spreading dangerous lies about COVID, the alleged harm caused by vaccines and the supposed benefits of dubious remedies. 

But this week he was back, proudly endorsing DHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s decision to eliminate federal COVID vaccine recommendations for pregnant women and healthy children. While he hopes Kennedy goes further in rolling back vaccinations, he said, “at least we’re not going to subject our children to them anymore.”

A woman in the audience who identified herself as a local business owner seeking “common ground” thanked Johnson for saying “we don’t want to mortgage our children’s future,” but expressed her concern that besides the deficit spending Johnson rails against, there’s also the risk that we’re mortgaging the future by destroying the planet.

Johnson heartily agreed that everyone wants a “pristine environment.” “I mean, I love the outdoors,” he declared. But then he added, “We shouldn’t spend a dime on climate change. We’ll adapt. We’re very adaptable.” 

He claimed that “something like 1,800 different scientists and business leaders” have signed a statement saying there is no climate crisis. (The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that climate change is real and caused by people and the statement he referred to has been debunked.) “So if it’s climate change you’re talking about, we’re just at cross-purposes,” he added. “I completely disagree.”

Most of Johnson’s talk consisted of a fusillade of hard-to-follow budget numbers and nostrums like “the more the government spends the less free we are.” Charles Benson of TMJ4 News tried to get the senator to focus on what it would take to get him to go along with Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill. “So, a lot of numbers out there,” Benson said. “Can you give me a bottom line? Do you want 2 trillion? 3 trillion?”

“Your reaction is the exact same reaction I get from the White House and from my colleagues,” Johnson chided, “too many numbers. It’s a budget process. We’re talking about numbers. We’re talking about mortgaging our kids’ future.” 

Like his alternative beliefs about vaccination and climate science, Johnson’s budget math is extremely fuzzy. He asserted, repeatedly, that Medicaid is rife with “waste, fraud and abuse.” But the Georgetown University School of Public Policy has published a policy analysis dismantling claims that there is rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid that concluded, “This premise is false, and the thinking is dangerously wrong.”

More broadly, Johnson claims that balancing the budget and reducing the federal deficit is his No. 1 concern. But he’s committed to maintaining historic tax cuts for the super rich. The only way to reduce deficits, in his view, is to enact even deeper cuts than House Republicans passed, increasing hunger, undermining education and rolling back health care — because he’s totally unwilling to increase revenue with even modest tax increases on corporations and the very wealthy. Those cuts, not a deficit that could be resolved by making the rich pay their share of taxes, are the real threat to our children’s future.

“I’m just a guy from Oshkosh who’s trying to save America,” Johnson said at the Press Club event. He recapped, in heroic terms, his lone stand against the 2017 tax cut for America’s top earners, which he blocked until he was able to work in a special loophole that benefitted him personally.

He told the panel of Wisconsin journalists he will also block Trump’s “big, beautiful” budget bill unless he sees deeper cuts, which he insisted would be easy to make. The 40 states that have taken the federal Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (which Johnson still calls “Obamacare”) are “stealing money from federal taxpayers,” he declared. Slashing Medicaid will be easy, he suggested, since “nobody would be harmed other than the grifters who are sucking down the waste, fraud and abuse.”

Grifters?

Wisconsin has 1.3 million Medicaid recipients. One in three children are on BadgerCare, as Medicaid is called here, along with 45% of adults with disabilities and 55% of seniors living in nursing homes. Our state program faces a $16.8 billion cut over 10 years under the House plan. During the Q&A session, I asked Johnson about this — not just the numbers, but the human cost. I brought up Shaniya Cooper, a college student from Milwaukee and a BadgerCare recipient living with lupus, who spoke at a press conference in the Capitol this week about how scary it was to realize she could lose her Medicaid coverage under congressional Republicans’ budget plan. 

“To me, this is life or death,” she said. She simply cannot afford to pay for her medicine out of pocket. When she first learned about proposed Medicaid cuts, “I cried,” she said. “I felt fear and dread.”

What does Johnson have to say to Cooper and other BadgerCare recipients who are terrified of losing their coverage?

“I’ll go back to my basic point,” Johnson replied. He quoted Elon Musk, whom he said he greatly admires for his DOGE work slashing federal agencies. “If we don’t fix this, we won’t have money for any of this [government in general],” he said Musk told him.

“Nobody wants the truly vulnerable to lose those benefits of Medicaid,” Johnson added. “But again, Obamacare expanded the waste, fraud and abuse of Medicaid, you know, expanding the people on it when, you know, when a lot of these people ought to be really getting a job.”

Some of Johnson’s Republican colleagues are worried about withdrawing health care coverage from millions of their constituents. Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri called it immoral and “political suicide.” He said he won’t vote for the Medicaid cuts that passed the House because they will put rural hospitals out of business, and because too many hard-working, low-income people rely on the program for health coverage and simply cannot afford to buy insurance on the private market. 

But Johnson remains untroubled. He’s pushing for bigger and more damaging cuts. And when asked what he can tell his constituents who are afraid they’re about to lose life-saving health care, his answer is simple and unapologetic: Get a job.

Pierre Kory testifies in front of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. | Screenshot via CSPAN

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy.

Last month, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary and longtime anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the funeral for the second unvaccinated child in Texas to have died in the ongoing measles outbreak. While in Texas, he met with the two grieving families — along with two local doctors promoting unproven measles treatments, whom he called “extraordinary healers.” 

Following the first death, Children’s Health Defense (CHD), the anti-vax organization Kennedy led until recently, pushed its own narrative claiming that the 6-year-old Mennonite girl did not actually die from the measles. In this effort, CHD has relied heavily on Pierre Kory, a Wisconsin doctor who has both amplified that assertion and claimed that the measles virus has been weaponized by unknown conspirators.

Kory is a Kennedy ally who has been widely criticized for spreading Covid misinformation during the pandemic, including pushing the use of ivermectin as a “miracle drug” for treating that virus. 

For years, CHD and Kennedy have promoted the debunked claim that the standard measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine given to almost all children in the U.S. is tied to autism. With an upsurge in the pandemic-era, right-wing embrace of the anti-vax movement — and of Kennedy himself — there has been a notable decrease in routine pediatric vaccinations in the U.S. 

Now that measles immunization rates have fallen below thresholds to maintain herd immunity in certain parts of the country, outbreaks such as the one in West Texas are expected to become more common. In February, Texas reported the country’s first measles death in a child in the more than two decades since the disease was classified as eradicated in the U.S. 

In response to this death, CHD posted a video on March 19 featuring Kory and Ben Edwards, another Texas doctor Kennedy applauded, discussing the girl’s medical records, which her parents released to the organization. 

Despite having no training in pediatric medicine and having had his board certifications in internal medicine and critical care revoked last year, Kory claimed the child’s death was due to incorrect antibiotic management of a bacterial pneumonia infection that had “little to do with measles.” Edwards — a family doctor who has been treating measles-stricken children in Texas with medications not indicated for measles and was accused of seeing pediatric patients while actively infected with measles himself — concurred with Kory. 

Without being able to examine the medical records themselves, pediatricians consulted for this article were limited in their critique of Kory’s assessment. But they did question his understanding of empiric antibiotic recommendations for pediatric pneumonia. Secondary bacterial pneumonia infections following viral diseases are common, and pneumonia is a well-documented complication of a measles infection. 

These doctors also questioned the strong personal bias underpinning Kory’s assessment and pointed to his history of extreme claims about Covid made online and to right-wing media outlets  as evidence against his reliability as an “expert.” 

Furthermore, Kory has been inconsistent in his messaging around this measles death when addressing various audiences. When Alex Morozov, founder of the counter-misinformation group Eviva Partners, confronted Kory about his statements regarding the young girl’s cause of death at the so-called “Summit for Truth & Wellness” on March 29, the answer he got was very different. At that event, Kory suggested this was a case of the measles being “weaponized.”

In an audio recording of their conversation published by Morozov, Kory said: 

Do you want to know the real story on this case? Quite a few of us believe that they weaponized the measles virus. And this measles is more. They’re doing this on purpose. She got sicker from the measles probably because they monkeyed with the measles virus…. Do you know how many bioweapons labs there are and what they can do?

Like the unfounded claim of an error in medical treatment, this “weaponized measles” narrative has spread rapidly throughout the online crankosphere. However, this conspiratorial rhetoric has not been accompanied by urgent recommendations for increased vaccinations to prevent infection from a supposedly more virulent strain.

Kennedy, who promoted pandemic conspiracy theories along with ivermectin as an alternative to Covid vaccines, has called Kory “honest, brave, and sincere” and “a brave dissident doctor.” The doctor appeared with him at various campaign-related events in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, both before and after RFK Jr. suspended his own campaign and joined forces with Trump to launch the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement. 

As ivermectin proved to be ineffective against Covid, Kory turned on the life-saving mRNA vaccines while cozying up to Kennedy and CHD. Kory and the ivermectin group he co-founded — the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), now called the Independent Medical Alliance following a pro-MAHA rebrand — have rallied with Kennedy and CHD on multiple occasions, including against Covid vaccine mandates during the deadly Omicron wave in late 2021 and early 2022.

Kory has not just turned on Covid vaccines, but routine childhood immunizations in line with Kennedy’s and CHD’s established anti-vax rhetoric as well. 

In 2023, Kory appeared in an FLCCC webinar about pediatric vaccines titled “Your Child, Your Choice.” The same year, despite his lack of pediatric credentials, he served as an “expert” on the issue of childhood vaccinations for Republicans in Wisconsin.

That same year, Kory testified at the Wisconsin Capitol as part of a GOP-led effort to block adding the meningitis vaccine as a state requirement for school-aged children, which is  required in many other states and has been recommended by the Center for Disease Control’s Advisory Council on Immunization Practices since 2005. (While Kory and company were initially successful, the meningitis vaccine was eventually added to Wisconsin’s requirements as of the 2023/24 school year.) 

During this measles outbreak, both Kennedy and Kory have once again promoted “alternative” treatments. 

Kennedy has drawn heavy criticism for pushing vitamin A as a treatment for measles while simultaneously failing to provide a sorely needed, full-throated endorsement of the MMR vaccines. Following the second death, while the HHS secretary correctly called the vaccines the “most effective way” to prevent measles, he quickly undermined his own statement. In his tweet about the funeral, Kennedy included a shoutout to doctors Edwards and Richard Bartlett, his other “extraordinary healer” from Texas, for their use of unproven treatments on infected children in the local community. 

On March 31, Kory appeared in another CHD video about the first Texas child’s death, claiming she should have received intravenous vitamin C, which is not indicated for measles-related pneumonia. Of note, prior to his co-authorship of questionable papers on the use of ivermectin to fight Covid, Kory co-authored a since-retracted paper on a Covid hospital protocol that featured vitamin C.

Given his past statements on Covid and routine pediatric vaccines as well as his ties to Kennedy and CHD, Kory would have a vested interest in distancing himself from children’s deaths from vaccine-preventable illness. But this is dangerous, experts warn, during a measles outbreak where vaccines play a vital role in stopping the spread of disease.

A representative for the hospital that treated the first child spoke out against “misleading and inaccurate claims” about this case being circulated online. “Our physicians and care teams follow evidence-based protocols and make clinical decisions based on a patient’s evolving condition, diagnostic findings, and the best available medical knowledge,” the spokesperson said.

CHD did not back down in the wake of the second pediatric measles death early last month. The organization requested hospital records for this case while offering a free e-book — featuring a foreword by Kennedy — on “secrets the government and media aren’t telling you about measles and the measles vaccine.” The book accuses the mainstream media of weaponizing outbreaks “for political gain.” 

In an email to their followers on April 7 — the day after the second child’s funeral — CHD announced an April 17 webinar event called “Inside the Measles Deception” featuring Kory, Booker, and Edwards. The restricted event was available only to their donors. 

On April 8, CHD tweeted, “Our mission hasn’t changed. The MMR vaccine is dangerous and has caused more deaths than measles,” a claim that is totally unsubstantiated. The next day, Kory returned for another CHD video claiming to have reviewed the medical records for the second case and, unsurprisingly, again maintained that the 8-year-old girl did not die from the measles. He said:

“This is just getting exhausting, this constant fear-mongering by the media. I’ve already lost so much trust in the institutions of society. But to see them rampage like this on inaccuracies and peddling falsehoods and just distortions, it’s terrible. It’s terrible for our health. They are scaring people into getting what I think is a very dangerous vaccine.” 

The Milwaukee Police Administration Building downtown. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Across the nation, law enforcement agencies are accessing Flock Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) camera databases, regardless of whether they have their own contract for the AI-powered system. Researchers from 404 Media published a data trove derived from Flock audits earlier this week. Although the audit data came from the Danville Police Department in Illinois, Wisconsin Examiner found that intelligence units within the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) also appear in the database.  

The audit data shows that last year on July 15 and Oct. 21, personnel from the Southeastern Threat Analysis Center (STAC) — a homeland security-focused arm of the MPD’s fusion center — conducted a total of three searches within Danville PD’s Flock network. STAC gathers and disseminates intelligence across eight counties in southeastern Wisconsin. 

MPD’s own Fusion Division is co-located with the STAC. Together the units operate a “real time event center,” a vast network of both city-owned and privately owned cameras and operate Milwaukee’s gunshot detection system known as Shotspotter. They also monitor social media and conduct various types of mobile phone-related investigations. STAC has also explored the use of drones, facial recognition technology and predictive intelligence.

MPD’s Flock searches were logged under the user name “D. Whi” from “Milwaukee WI PD – STAC”. In the dataset’s “reason” column, the searches were recorded as “HSI investigation” and “HSI vehicle loader.” Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) specialize in matters of immigration, illegal exporting, cyber crime and national security.

By tapping into Danville’s Flock data, according to the audit, STAC was able to access 4,893 Flock networks and an equal number of individual devices, such as cameras, for the July 15 search alone. The other two searches from October reached 5,425 Flock networks and devices and captured data from a one-month period. 

404 Media’s investigation focused on how Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has accessed Flock databases nationwide, despite not having a contract with the company themselves, and how various agencies appeared to conduct immigration-related searches. Whereas many searches were logged as “immigration violation,” “ICE” or even “ICE ASSIST,” others only noted the involvement of HSI. 

In a statement sent Wednesday morning, an MPD spokesperson denied that STAC’s use of Danville PD’s Flock network was immigration-related. “Information regarding this investigation is classified and not available as it is ongoing,” the spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. “I can confirm it is related to a criminal investigation with HSI and not immigration related.” The spokesperson later added that this was a “HIDTA investigation,” referring to a federal task force linked to the federal High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program. 

MPD’s HIDTA units are attached to the department’s Special Investigations Division, a separate branch from the Fusion division and STAC. “The majority of HIDTA and STAC investigations are classified,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement. “Oftentimes, these investigations involved confidential informants and sometimes it could take years to resolve.”

Several police departments in Milwaukee County utilize Flock cameras. MPD entered into its contract in 2022. Over 1,300 registered cameras operate across the city as part of Community Connect, a program supported by the Milwaukee Police Foundation, according to the program’s web page, with nearly 900 “integrated” cameras which grant MPD real-time access. 

Both the use of automatic license plate readers and MPD’s ability to participate in immigration enforcement are governed by specific policies. The department’s immigration policy, SOP-130, cautions that “proactive immigration enforcement by local police can be detrimental to our mission and policing philosophy when doing so deters some individuals from participating in their civic obligation to assist the police.” The policy limits MPD’s ability to assist ICE with detaining or gathering information about a person to “only when a judicial warrant is presented” and when the target is suspected of involvement in terrorism, espionage, a transnational criminal street gang, violent felony, sexual offense against a minor or was a previously deported felon. 

A curiously timed public hearing 

Privacy advocates have raised concerns and filed lawsuits over Flock’s ability to collect and store data without a warrant. The license plate reader policy – SOP 735 – allows personnel to access data stored “for the purposes of conducting crime trend analyses” but only when those activities are approved by a supervisor and are intended to “assist the agency in the performance of its duties.” 

MPD personnel may use Flock to “look for potentially suspicious activity or other anomalies that might be consistent with criminal or terrorist activity” and are not prohibited from “accessing and comparing personal identifying information of one or more individuals who are associated with a scanned vehicle as part of the process of analyzing stored non-alert data.” Automatic license plate reading technology captures information from any passing car. In some cases, investigators may also place specific vehicles on a Be On the Lookout (BOLO) list, also known as a “hot list”, which notifies law enforcement whenever a specific vehicle is seen by a license plate reader-equipped camera. 

A Thursday morning public hearing held by the city’s Finance and Personnel Committee considered whether more Flock cameras should be added to Milwaukee’s already existing network. Ald. Scott Spiker spoke in support of the cameras, and said he worked to install license plate readers in his own district. Spiker described having discussions with local business district leaders and MPD’s fusion center, which resulted in cameras being deployed on 27th Street. “Don’t ask me where, because I won’t tell you,” said Spiker, adding that the cameras “serve a variety of purposes” from combating car theft to aiding Amber and Silver Alerts. 

“There’s going to a broader question, which I imagine will be a subject of the public testimony, however, and I’m fine hearing it, but ultimately there’s going to be a discussion to be had in the city of anything that smacks of surveillance software, and what sort of oversight is provided, and should be provided,” said Spiker. He added that such a discussion “will be had in full in Public Safety” and that although he welcomed public testimony, the committee was there to discuss approving a contract, and not concerns over surveillance. 

“The camera’s already in use by MPD, and in use by our parking checkers,” said Spiker. “When they do night parking enforcement, they use ALPR’s. When they do zoning enforcement during the day, they use ALPR’s. So these are already in use. They have no facial recognition or any of the stuff that’s been in the news. But it is a legitimate question to ask what degree of surveillance of any sort, given the national context, do we want to have oversight over?” 

Spiker said that there’s a “big debate” about surveillance but that “we can’t sort that out today.” 

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, complained that the public had not been alerted ahead of time about the discussion of the Flock contract. “I’ve been checking daily and the documents in this file and the text of the resolution weren’t posted until yesterday [Wednesday] afternoon,” said Merkwae. “So I think for an item that has significant implications for the civil liberties of Milwaukeeans, particularly the most vulnerable resident, that’s concerning.” 

The agenda had been out for over a week, and was amended a couple of days before the hearing, Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic later explained. 

Merkwae said, “We know that ICE has gained access to troves of data from sanctuary cities to aid in its raids and immigration enforcement actions, including data from the vast network of license plate readers across the country.” She cited a 404 Media investigation earlier this month, which found that Flock is building a massive people look-up tool which pulls in different forms of data, including license plate reader data, “in order to track specific individuals without a warrant.” 

Merkwae also referenced 404 Media’s findings this week revealing immigration-related look-ups, as well as the classified investigation that involved MPD’s intelligence units. The advocacy director also questioned what MPD’s policies mean in practice when federal or out-of-state law enforcement want to access its Flock databases. 

“If law enforcement told us that they wanted to put a tracking device on every single car in the country so that we know where every car is every single moment of the day, and we’re going to build a database of all those locations run by an unaccountable private company, and accessible to every law enforcement agency across the country without needing any type of a warrant, I think we would be alarmed and we would have some follow-up questions,” said Merkwae. “So at the end of the day, we think the public deserves to know how it is being surveilled and the common council deserves to know the answers to some pretty basic questions before approving contracts for surveillance technology that’s deployed without a warrant.”

In 2023, Fox 6 published a map of Flock cameras operated by MPD. The map, broken up by aldermadic district, shows a large cluster of cameras located on the North Side around District 7, as well as a cluster on the South Side around District 8. Smaller clusters of cameras were located on the East, far Southwest Side and Northwest Side of the city. 

After Merkwae testified, Spiker raised a question about whether public testimony should continue, given open meetings laws. A lengthy discussion followed about which issues and topics may be discussed in the hearing by committee members, which halted public testimony for over 20 minutes as alders heard from city attorneys and MPD. Ald. Miele Coggs said hearing the public’s concerns before a contract is approved for surveillance technology was important. Ald. Dimitrijevic also stressed that public comment was an important step, saying that the committee would not go into closed session to discuss the Flock contract before the public finished speaking, or otherwise limit public testimony. 

When public testimony continued, Milwaukee residents shared further concerns about the technology. Ron Jansen said that the city has seen a surge of surveillance gear used by MPD. “Between the growth of a fascist regime in Washington …  and our own militarized and violent police force here in Milwaukee, it’s clear that the last thing we need is more ways for police to track us,” Jansen said. He added that Flock networks are capable of tracking and cataloging “people’s every movement throughout a given day” even if they’re not the target of an investigation.

Other residents, including locals from Spiker’s district and representatives from the court diversion non-profit program JusticePoint, also spoke against Flock’s expansion. Tara Cavazos, executive director of the South 27th Street Business District, said Flock cameras had made her area safer. “We are the initiators of these three additions to the Flock network,” said Cavazos. “And we donated the funds for two years of use of these Flock cameras. So they’re not coming from MPD’s budget, it’s coming out of our budgets. These Flocks are not going to be placed in a neighborhood, it’s not specific to any vulnerable communities, they are in business districts on state and county highways.” 

Cavazos said that since Flocks have been deployed, car thefts declined “significantly on the south end of our corridor, where the border between Milwaukee and Greenfield is,” and that “we’ve caught a homicide suspect.” Leif Otteson, an executive director of two business districts, said that he hears from people who want more surveillance. Otteson recalled working to expand the city’s ring camera network, which STAC and other parts of MPD’s fusion center have access to. Otteson has talked with people who want cameras in their community gardens and other areas. “I just want to make that clear, that people like myself are getting those requests,” said Otteson. 

Once public testimony concluded, the committee went into closed session for over an hour. The discussion pertained to an unspecified “non-standard” provision in the Flock contract, which had been raised by the city attorney’s office. When the committee returned to open session, they voted 4-1 to hold the file due to legal concerns with the contract until the next committee meeting on June 18. 

Flanked by state Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) and state Rep. Lee Snodgrass (D-Appleton), Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) outlines a joint resolution for Pride Month, (Screenshot/WisEye)

Wisconsin Democratic lawmakers are circulating four draft bills and two joint resolutions to address issues of discrimination against members of the lesbian, gay, trans and queer community.

The package was announced just before  Pride Month begins on June 1.

“We celebrate the history of the LGBTQ+ movement and the future of our population, and I can’t think of a more important time to do that,” said Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire), at a Capitol press conference Thursday. “Meanwhile in Washington the Trump administration and Republicans here in Wisconsin are engaging in rhetoric and political activity that seeks to erase LGBTQ+ people and target us …  the goal in that rhetoric and in that movement is to make us feel alone.”

Embracing diversity and joining with  allies give the community strength, Phelps said.

“Everybody who is not themselves a member of the LGBTQ+ community knows and loves at least one person in the community. And I think when they shut out all the noise and look inside, they know that they want the best for that person or those people,” Phelps said.

In addition to a joint resolution embracing Pride Month, the Equality Agenda legislation includes measures to:

• Update various Wisconsin laws pertaining to married couples, including laws on adoption and on in vitro fertilization, to ensure they apply to same-sex couples.
• Prohibit “conversion therapy” aimed at changing a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity and subjecting licensed professionals who practice it to professional discipline.
• Bar the use of a “gay or trans panic” as a defense by persons accused of crimes.
• Provide grants for training school counselors and social workers on LGBTQ+ rights.

Also part of the package is a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution that would repeal the 2006 amendment declaring marriage to be only between one man and one woman.

The amendment preventing the state from legally recognizing same-sex marriages remains on the books although it was overridden by the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage across the country.

“With the 20th anniversary of Wisconsin’s constitutional amendment that banned marriage equality coming up next year,” said Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), chair of the Legislature’s LGBTQ+ Caucus. “It is long past time to give voters the chance to remove that discriminatory language from our constitution.”

Protestor Pat Braun carries a sign April 23, 2025, in Rapid City, South Dakota, to protest the cancellation of student visas. (Photo by Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight) 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says his agency and the Department of Homeland Security will work to “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students.

Rubio’s announcement offered few details but said “under President Trump’s leadership, the U.S. State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

Chinese students comprise the second-largest group of international students in the United States, behind Indian students. 

The move is part of the Trump administration’s continuing immigration crackdown and battle with higher education.

In an ongoing scuffle with Harvard University, a reflection of the administration’s efforts to crack down on “woke” institutions and go after campuses they say are harboring antisemitism, the government moved to halt the school’s ability to enroll international students last week.

But Harvard sued over the effort, and the revocation has been temporarily blocked in court.

Under the Trump administration, the State Department has revoked visas of international students who were involved in campus protests and other activities related to Israel’s war in Gaza. Some students were detained by immigration authorities as part of that effort.

Focus on China

In his Wednesday announcement, Rubio said the State Department would also “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.” 

At the department’s Thursday press briefing, spokesperson Tammy Bruce declined to get into specifics regarding the number of students who would be impacted or what falls within “critical fields,” as Rubio’s statement noted.

Bruce said the United States “will not tolerate the CCP’s exploitation of U.S. universities, or theft of U.S. research, intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition.”

More than 277,000 Chinese students studied in the United States during the 2023-24 academic year — making up nearly one-quarter of the more than 1,126,000 total international students in that school year, according to a report from the Institute of International Education and the State Department.

However, the total number of students from China declined slightly from the 2022-23 school year, when that figure stood at more than 289,000.

In the 2023-24 academic year, Chinese students made up one-quarter or more of the total international student population within California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington state and Wisconsin.

New York University, Northeastern University in Massachusetts and Columbia University in New York hosted the highest number of international students during that academic year.

Students from South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, Vietnam and Nigeria also comprised large groups of international students in the United States during the 2023-24 school year.  

The announcement raises myriad logistical questions over how the United States would carry out the effort, as well as how officials would determine who has “connections to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Meanwhile, the State Department temporarily paused new student visa interviews earlier this week as the administration prepares to expand the screening of applicants’ activity on social media, according to multiple reports.

UW-Madison Engineering Hall. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that international students with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in “critical fields” could have their visas revoked. Rubio didn’t define what those critical fields would be and also provided little detail when he said that the State Department would “enhance scrutiny” on new student visa applications.

The administration has also said it plans to increase the vetting of visa applicants’ social media accounts. The announcement that the administration would be revoking the visas of Chinese students came the same day the State Department announced it had paused scheduling appointments for visa applicants. 

UW-Madison had 3,414 international students from China this spring semester. In recent years, the university has worked to expand its international student body, aiming to increase the international population from 4% to 8% by 2028. The acceptance of international students helps the university increase revenue as state aid has remained flat and inflation has increased costs because international students pay an average of four times the amount of tuition as in-state students. 

The university said Thursday it is monitoring the situation. 

“We are deeply concerned about the impact of such a policy on our Chinese student community,” the university said. 

In a message to its international students, the university advised them to attend visa appointments that are already scheduled and inform university staff if an appointment is canceled. The message also told the students to schedule appointments as quickly as possible once the pause on scheduling is lifted and to enroll in classes for the fall. 

These moves are the latest in the Trump administration’s efforts to attack international student visas. Earlier this spring, the administration deleted visa records for some students over minor traffic infractions and encounters with law enforcement. That effort temporarily canceled the visas of more than two dozen students and alumni at UW schools across the state. 

The Trump administration rolled back that decision and reinstated the visas after a federal judge ruled in favor of a number of students who sued to stop the revocation.

Migrants from Mexico and Guatemala are apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers after crossing a section of border wall into the U.S. on Jan. 04, 2025 in Ruby, Arizona.  (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Center for Migration Studies Thursday released a report finding the population of people in the United States without permanent legal status increased to 12.2 million in 2023, using the most recent Census Bureau American Community Survey data.

It’s a number that grew by 2 million from 2020 to 2023, according to the study by the nonpartisan New York think tank that studies domestic and international migration. 

Six states that have the largest population of people without permanent legal status also saw some of the biggest increases. They are California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York and Texas. Of those states, the fastest-growing were Florida, New York and New Jersey.

That population estimate includes not only people in the U.S. without legal authorization, but immigrants in programs that provide temporary legal status. That would include programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, and Temporary Protected Status, as well as people with pending asylum cases or who received humanitarian parole status since 2021.

The study noted that estimating the size of the population without permanent legal status could “become even more challenging in the next few years” because the census data collection could be affected by mass firings of federal workers as the Trump administration aims to cull the federal workforce.

Authors of the study also took into consideration the Trump administration’s efforts to enact mass deportations and how the population could decline, not due to removals but rather a decrease in the number of immigrants responding to survey data.

“The salient questions would be: Did the decline occur because deportations increased, including of populations stripped of temporary legal status, because fear led to an increase in emigration, because fear reduced the response rates in the surveys, or because of a combination of these or other factors?,” according to the study.

The annual report from the think tank runs counter to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s congressional testimony in May to Senate appropriators that there are more than 20 million people in the country without legal authorization.

Other think tanks that study migration, such as the Migration Policy Institute, have estimated as of 2021, there were 11.2 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal authorization.

Venezuelan migrants

One major finding in the study by the Center for Migration Studies was that the population of Venezuelan immigrants increased from 55,000 in 2013 to 220,000 in 2020.

According to the study, that population then doubled in 2023 to 445,000, which is around the time the Biden administration granted TPS protections for a second group of Venezuelans after granting TPS for a first group of Venezuelans in 2021. Roughly half a million Venezuelans are under the TPS program and are at risk of losing protections from deportation.

That program allows nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, political instability or other unstable conditions to remain in the U.S. for up to 18 months unless their protections are renewed by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary.

The Trump administration is moving to end TPS for Venezuelans and invoked an 18th-century wartime law to rapidly deport any Venezuelan national 14 and older who is suspected of gang ties.

The Supreme Court has blocked the use of the wartime law over concerns of due process, and has not ruled on the constitutionality of using the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But the high court is allowing the Trump administration to continue its efforts to end TPS for Venezuelans who were granted protections in 2023.

Central American migrants

The study also found the population of Central American immigrants grew by 1.2 million from 2013 to 2023. With the highest levels of migration at the southern border in 20 years, the Biden administration in January 2023 created a program to allow nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – nearly all from Central America – to be sponsored with work visas and have deportation protections.

Roughly 532,000 people are in that program. The Trump administration has made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court to end it, potentially opening those immigrants up to rapid deportation. 

Proposed changes to higher education policy in congressional Republicans’ tax and spending bill could weaken protections for student borrowers, advocacy groups say.  (Photo illustration via Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The massive tax and spending package U.S. House Republicans narrowly advanced last week could hinder accountability for for-profit colleges and weaken student-borrower protections, student advocates say.

The bill, now headed to the Senate, calls for sweeping changes to education policy under what GOP lawmakers deem “regulatory relief.” 

That includes eliminating a rule governing for-profit schools, removing “gainful employment” as a goal for colleges receiving federal funds and hindering consumer protections for borrowers defrauded or facing school closures.

GOP lawmakers are aiming to slash billions of dollars in federal spending to offset the cost of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, border security and defense spending through the complex budget reconciliation process, which allows Congress to skirt the Senate’s 60-vote threshold that generally requires bipartisanship. The package, which the House passed 215-214 last week, will likely undergo significant changes in the Senate.

The House Committee on Education and Workforce’s portion of the reconciliation package also includes significant changes to how student loans are repaid, cuts to federal student aid and new eligibility requirements for the Pell Grant, a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.

Student advocates and congressional Democrats have opposed the bill, emphasizing the impact of the proposed changes on higher education affordability and access as well as the weakening of protections for defrauded borrowers and fewer guardrails to hold for-profit schools accountable. 

Kyle Southern, associate vice president for higher education quality at the Institute for College Access & Success, said the bill would “put higher education further out of reach for low-income students, students of color (and) many first-generation students.”

“It would also make it a riskier investment, because it … weakens or rolls back many critical student protections that have been put in place as guardrails to help ensure the quality of post-secondary programs across sectors,” he said.

The nonprofit advocacy group aims to advance affordability, accountability and equity in higher education.

Here’s a closer look at the bill’s key education provisions related to institutional accountability and borrower protections:

Repealing the 90/10 rule

The bill repeals the Education Department’s “90/10 rule,” which requires that at least 10% of the money for-profit institutions receive derives from non-federal sources.

The regulation initially did not apply to student veteran benefits, creating a loophole that pushed for-profit schools to target veterans in their programs.

Though Congress did eventually close the loophole in a provision of the massive COVID-19 relief package Congress passed in 2021, the current bill would slash the rule altogether.

Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, said the 90/10 rule “stops federal funds from being used to prop up otherwise failing college companies.”

Wofford said “it’s very shocking and upsetting to all the veterans and military leaders who worked for a decade to get this done and had a bipartisan agreement and had Republican leadership completely signing off,” referencing the efforts to close the earlier loophole.

Veterans Education Success, a group which advocates for the rights of student veterans, service members and their families, wrote to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last week urging the panel to not include the repeal of the 90/10 rule in the chamber’s version of the bill.

Gainful employment

The bill would also strike the phrase “gainful employment” from several definitions within the Higher Education Act, a law providing financial assistance for students and higher education institutions.

As the Institute for College Access & Success notes in a fact sheet, the Gainful Employment rule, an Education Department regulation, helps “ensure that career education programs receiving federal student aid prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation” and aims to “protect students from low-value programs that leave graduates with unaffordable debt and poor job prospects.”

Striking the term from the definitions likely sets the stage for the Education Department to rescind the rule, according to Sarah Austin, a policy analyst at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

“Presumably, what we kind of took (striking the phrase) to mean is that that would lead to them rescinding gainful employment rules because the definitions in statute were what they’ve always kind of used as showing their legal authority to regulate on gainful employment,” Austin said.

“Without those definitions in there, not only does that seem to say that they would not have these gainful employment regulations, but also would kind of stop future administrations from having any sort of gainful employment framework because the definitions are not even in the Higher Education Act anymore.”

Borrower protections

As for borrower protections, the bill would also repeal 2022 versions of the Closed School Discharge and Borrower Defense to Repayment rules, reverting to what they looked like before the Biden administration.

While the Closed School Discharge rule provides debt relief to a borrower whose school shuts down, the Borrower Defense to Repayment provision helps forgive debt for students whose institution defrauded them.

Austin said that “with the 2022 rules, there was automatic closed school discharge, so if a school closed, a borrower may be entitled to have their loans automatically discharged, not require any action on their behalf, where the prior set of rules, they would actually have to apply for the closed school discharge, so this would be reverting back to that if it was to move forward as law.”

Under the bill, the Borrower Defense to Repayment provision would fall back to a 2019 rule that then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos put into place.

Southern, of the Institute for College Access & Success, said that 2019 rule “made the process essentially so onerous and arbitrary that qualifying people would not be able to receive the relief that federal law entitles them to.”

USGS staff install a microsampler in a Milwaukee creek. (Photo by Peter C. Van Metre/USGS)

A field office of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Rice Lake that serves as part of an expansive national network monitoring water data is set to close next year as part of a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) effort to terminate the leases of the agency’s offices. 

The Rice Lake office and an office in Mounds View, Minn., are both operated by the USGS Upper Midwest Water Science Center. They are among the more than two dozen offices across the country DOGE has targeted for closure, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. 

USGS staff and environmental policy workers across Wisconsin say closing  the office in Rice Lake could harm the quality and quantity of the data available in the state — making it harder for local, county and state governments, as well as private citizens and businesses, to make plans and policies in a region that will be at more risk of both drought and extreme weather events as climate change intensifies. 

The USGS water science centers operate thousands of streamgages across the country, gathering data on stream flows and water quality. That data can be used to help design plans for infrastructure such as bridges and dams; inform research on pollutants such as nitrates and pesticides; help farmers set irrigation plans during droughts; give homeowners information on flood plains and support recreational industries such as whitewater rafting. 

“The Rice Lake office is just a very important but small piece of what they do, and what they do is so fundamental to what so many other people are trying to do across so many sectors in the state of Wisconsin,” says Erin O’Brien, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Wetlands Association. “They support state agencies and local communities and others doing not just land and water conservation work, but development and transportation planning and all these other sectors.” 

The agency has been operating streamgages in the United States since the 1880s. One of the first 120 gages the agency installed was in Wisconsin in 1899, according to USGS data. That longevity gives scientists an essential resource for tracking Wisconsin’s bodies of water. It’s easier to understand the effect of a 100-year flood when you’re working with more than a century of data. 

Each individual streamgage increases the value of the entire network, and every additional year of data further improves the data. Many practical uses of the data to understand how rivers and watersheds are functioning require 20 years of measurements, according to a 2021 report on the USGS streamgage network by the Congressional Research Service. 

At a field office such as the one in Rice Lake, the staff is responsible for maintaining and repairing the gages. The risk of closing an office is that the staff won’t be close enough to do that work, resulting in lower quality data, according to Paul LaLiberte, who serves as the chair of Wisconsin Green Fire’s Environmental Rules and Water Resources Work Group. LaLiberte worked on water quality issues for 36 years at the state Department of Natural Resources. 

“This flow data is continually recording, and [the field offices are] the ones that install the equipment, maintain the equipment, and, importantly, go out and calibrate it on a schedule and even in response to events,” says LaLiberte, who worked with staff in the Rice Lake office when he was based in Eau Claire with the DNR. 

“By closing the field offices, that’s going to make it a whole lot harder to do this calibration and maintenance and even run as many stations as they do,” he said. “The consequences will probably be some combination of dropping some stations or having the data be less accurate, because due to travel times, they just can’t send the crews out there to recalibrate the stations. So if the data is less accurate, then the predictions are going to be less accurate, and the infrastructure designs associated with that are going to be less accurate.”

One USGS staff member who works outside of Wisconsin, granted anonymity because agency employees have not been authorized to speak to the media, says staff members across the country weren’t aware their offices were being shut down until the General Services Administration told their landlords the leases would not be renewed. 

The staffer says the terminations are “shocking” because these offices are filled with lab equipment that is difficult to move and there are still not yet plans for alternatives. The result is that the data won’t be collected. 

“I guess maybe this is apparent, but leaving these leases was not a strategy for efficiency,” the staffer says. “There’s no plan in place to leave these facilities and find other alternatives. And it’s a huge effort to now create a plan to find alternatives for these facilities when you know these facilities are in full use, and we don’t see any other options. We will not be able to collect the data that we need to fulfill our mission, because we will be reassigning resources to deal with moving that we don’t have.” 

A USGS spokesperson said in a statement the terminated leases will not harm the agency’s mission. 

“USGS remains committed to its congressional mandate as the science arm of the Department of the Interior,” the spokesperson said. “We are actively working with GSA to ensure that every facility and asset is utilized effectively, and where necessary, identifying alternative solutions that strengthen our mission. These efforts reflect our broader commitment to streamlining government operations while ensuring that scientific endeavors remain strong, effective, and impactful. This process is ongoing, and we will provide updates as more information becomes available.”

The Rice Lake office’s lease is set to end July 31, 2026.