Tiger Stadium at Louisiana State University pictured on Sept. 13, 2024. (Matthew Perschall for Louisiana Illuminator) 

WASHINGTON — A measure that would set a national framework for college athletes’ compensation got one step closer to becoming law Wednesday after advancing in two separate U.S. House panels.

The bill’s fate remains uncertain as it makes its way through Congress, and Democrats argue that the legislation would give “unchecked authority” to the NCAA on athletes’ pay and fails to provide labor and employment protections for athletes.

Two panels with jurisdiction over the matter — the House Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees — approved the legislation, known as the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act, or ‘‘SCORE Act.”

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s vote fell along party lines, 30-23. 

On the Education and Workforce panel, the 18-17 vote featured all Republicans who were present voting in favor of the measure except Rep. Michael Baumgartner of Washington state. All Democrats on that panel voted against the measure. GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California and Elise Stefanik of New York did not vote.

Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said the bill “brings much needed stability to college athletics.”

“Since the NCAA lifted Name, Image and Likeness and transfer rules in 2021, college athletics have been in a period of chaos as constant litigation and efforts to classify student-athletes as employees jeopardize thousands of academic and athletic opportunities,” the Michigan Republican said during his committee’s consideration of the bill.

Kentucky GOP Rep. Brett Guthrie, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said during his panel’s markup that “without this bill, student-athletes will be left to fend for themselves against bad actors, non-revenue generating sports could face devastating cuts and legal uncertainty will continue to hang over all of college sports.”

The full House will not consider the legislation until at least September, when members return from their summer recess that began one day ahead of schedule Wednesday.

A federal standard

The effort, nominally bipartisan, comes as the college sports world grapples with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines that let student-athletes profit from their name, image and likeness, or NIL. A patchwork of laws exists across states, and there is currently no federal NIL law.

A federal judge in June approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.

The bill would prohibit college athletes from being recognized as employees and would require colleges to “provide comprehensive academic support and career counseling services to student athletes that include life skills development programs,” such as those regarding mental health, nutrition, strength and conditioning and financial literacy.  

The bill’s lead sponsors are GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida and Democratic Reps. Janelle Bynum of Oregon and Shomari Figures of Alabama.

Guthrie, Walberg and GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Lisa McClain of Michigan, Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin and Russell Fry of South Carolina were also original co-sponsors.

‘Extreme employment ban’

Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the House Committee on Education and Workforce, said that “instead of holding the revenue-rich NCAA and its powerful conferences accountable, the SCORE Act provides a series of blank checks and bailouts that will not uplift or protect college athletes,” during the panel’s markup.

The Virginia Democrat said the bill “imposes obligations without oversight, fails to include concrete protections and outright bans college athletes from ever having labor or employment protections.”

“This extreme employment ban will not only open the door for further exploitation of college athletes and protect athletic departments’ bottom lines more than the students they serve, it is a broad stripping of athletes’ rights, and that should not be the solution,” he said.

Rep. Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat and ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, voiced similar concerns during his committee’s markup.

The measure “fails to offer meaningful protections to college athletes and completely ignores the true crisis facing colleges and universities,” he said, adding that President Donald Trump “continues to destroy America’s higher education system with reduced federal research dollars, taxes on endowments and cuts to federal student aid.”

Pallone also said the bill “gives the NCAA and conferences nearly limitless and unchecked authority to govern how athletes get paid, if they can transfer schools, and how much time they can be required to spend training, traveling and competing.” 

Supporters of Kilmar Abrego Garcia protest outside the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville on June 13 before Abrego Garcia's arraignment on federal charges. (Photo: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — Two federal court rulings on Wednesday allowed Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man unlawfully deported to El Salvador by federal immigration authorities in March, to be released from pre-trial detention in Tennessee without the risk of immediate removal from the U.S.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw in Nashville denied the government’s request to keep Abrego Garcia jailed while he awaits trial on criminal charges stemming from a 2019 traffic stop.

Abrego Garcia denies the criminal charges lodged against him when the government quietly brought him back into the United States after months of illegal imprisonment in the central American country’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, where he remained until June 6.

“The pieces of evidence the Government cites to, taken alone or together, warrant a finding that Abrego is, at best, a low risk of nonappearance. As an initial matter, the Court agrees with Abrego that the nature of the crimes he is accused of do not, on their own, fall within the categories of crimes Congress specifically enumerated as warranting a presumption of detention,” Crenshaw, appointed by President Barack Obama, wrote in a 37-page opinion.

In a separate ruling in Maryland Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered that authorities cannot immediately take Abrego Garcia into custody upon his release in Tennessee.

Xinis granted Abrego Garcia’s emergency request to return to his home state of Maryland while he awaits trial. Federal authorities previously told Xinis they intended to swiftly arrest Abrego Garcia, if released, on an immigration detainer. 

“Accordingly, the Court shares Plaintiffs’ ongoing concern that, absent meaningful safeguards, Defendants may once again remove Abrego Garcia from the United States without having restored him to the status quo ante and without due process. Thus, additional relief is necessary,” Xinis, an Obama appointee, wrote in her 18-page order. 

Xinis’ order requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to return Abrego Garcia to the agency’s order of supervision in Baltimore, the jurisdiction of his original immigration proceedings. If ICE initiates his removal to a third country, the authorities must provide 72 hours notice of the destination to Garcia and his legal counsel.

Sent to CECOT

ICE arrested and detained Abrego Garcia in Maryland on March 12, and days later sent him among hundreds of other migrants on legally contested deportation flights to CECOT.

Abrego Garcia has detailed psychological and physical torture he experienced at the notorious prison.

Upon returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S., the Justice Department indicted him on human smuggling charges, stemming from the 2019 traffic stop. His attorneys maintain the Trump administration used the indictment to save face in light of court orders finding Abrego Garcia’s deportation unlawful and the Supreme Court’s order for the federal government to facilitate his return.

Abrego Garcia has had deportation protections in place since 2019, barring authorities from sending him back to his native El Salvador due to concerns he would experience gang violence there.

New Nissan cars are driven onto a rail car to be transported from an automobile processing terminal located at the Port of Los Angeles on April 3, 2024 in Wilmington, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said late Tuesday he struck a “massive” trade deal with Japan, lowering his threatened tariffs on Japanese products.

The deal, according to Japanese negotiators, will include a lower rate on the country’s top export: automobiles.

Trump’s declaration of a new framework comes as a legal fight over a large portion of his tariff policy will be heard in federal appeals court next week.

The president announced via Truth Social Tuesday evening that Japan had agreed “at my direction” to invest $550 billion in the United States and will open its markets to more American products, including cars, trucks, rice and other agricultural goods.

In exchange, Trump agreed to lower what he calls “reciprocal” import taxes on Japanese products to 15%, down from the 25% rate he threatened in early July.

Tariffs are import taxes paid by U.S. companies and individuals who purchase goods from other countries.

While some details remained unclear, Trump said the agreement is “the largest Deal ever made,” and continued in a post on his online platform that “there has never been anything like it.”

Japan’s government confirmed the new deal Wednesday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said the parties agreed to a 15% tariff on Japanese vehicles and auto parts imported into the U.S. without any volume restrictions — down from the blanket 25% U.S. tariff on foreign cars that went into effect in April. Hayashi delivered the remarks through an English translation during a morning press conference.

Jeff Schott, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said securing $550 billion in investment from Japan would set the agreement apart from other trade deals.

“There isn’t a lot of information about over what period of time this would cover, and how it would be financed, and things like that, but the headline number of $550 billion is certainly notable, if it’s believable and if it’s achievable,” Schott said Wednesday in an interview with States Newsroom.

While specifics are unknown, possible investments from Japan might include Nippon Steel’s takeover of U.S. Steel, or a joint venture to export liquified natural gas from Alaska.

Schott said the trade deal “is likely going to set a template” for trade talks with other nations, including ongoing negotiations this week in Washington, D.C., with South Korean officials.

Aug. 1 deadline set

The news of a deal with Japan came just after the White House announced new trade arrangements with Indonesia and the Philippines ahead of a self-imposed Aug. 1 deadline, when steeper tariffs are set to trigger on trading partners around the world.

Trump had threatened Japan in a letter earlier this month with a 25% “reciprocal” tariff on all Japanese goods set to begin Aug. 1, in addition to special sectoral and national security tariffs on foreign automobiles, at 25%, and imported steel and aluminum, which now sit at 50%.

The president shocked global markets in early April when he announced a universal 10% tariff on every foreign good coming into the U.S., plus staggering additional “reciprocal” import taxes on major trading partners based on the country’s trading relationship with the U.S.

Trump initially slapped a 24% reciprocal tariff on Japan, which imports less from the U.S. than U.S. entities buy from Japan. The U.S. ran a $69.4 billion trade deficit with Japan in 2024, according to the Census Bureau.

Trump has twice delayed his so-called reciprocal tariffs on other economies as his administration attempts to leverage the threats into agreements. The administration has yet to strike a new deal with the European Union, another major trading partner.

Court hearing

The U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit is set to hear oral arguments July 31 over Trump’s reciprocal tariffs, which he triggered by declaring international trade a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs as unconstitutional in a May 28 decision, following two legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.

Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among the states that brought the suit.

V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, led the business plaintiffs. Others included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.

Upon appeal from the White House, the Federal Circuit allowed Trump’s tariffs to remain in place while the case moved forward.

Federal payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024 and that violated the Impoundment Control Act, according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. (Photo by SDI Productions via Getty Images)

The Health and Human Services Department illegally withheld payments from Head Start for the first months of President Donald Trump’s term, a government watchdog reported Wednesday.

HHS payments for Head Start this year were significantly behind schedule compared with 2024. That violated the Impoundment Control Act, a law governing the president’s duty to spend congressionally appropriated funds, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.

The law, sometimes called the ICA, allows the president to withhold appropriated funds in some circumstances. But the publicly available data did not show those conditions were met and HHS did not mount any defense prior to the report’s publication, according to the GAO.

“Because that evidence indicates that HHS withheld appropriated funds from expenditure, and because the burden to justify such withholdings rests with HHS and the executive branch, we conclude that HHS violated the ICA by withholding funds,” the report said.

Before the report’s publication, HHS did not provide the GAO with information requested by the watchdog or a legal analysis, according to the report, which was signed by GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez.

However, an HHS spokesperson told States Newsroom in a Wednesday email that it would respond to the GAO and disputed the report’s conclusion.

“HHS did not impound Head Start funds and disputes the conclusion of the GAO report,” the spokesperson wrote. “GAO should anticipate a forthcoming response from HHS to incorporate into an updated report.”

How Head Start works

Head Start is a federal grant program to fund pre-kindergarten services for low-income families. The federal government provides up to 80% of a local program’s eligible costs, the report said. As of last year, 1,600 organizations received Head Start funding for education, nutritional, health and social services.

Organizations receiving Head Start funding generally win grant approvals for five years at a time. Programs in good standing are automatically renewed, according to the report.

Mere days after Trump took office in January, dozens of Head Start grant recipients found they were unable to access funds they’d expected from HHS, according to a Jan. 28 statement from the National Head Start Association, a coalition of grantees.

GAO’s analysis showed the department disbursed about one-third less grant funding in the first three months of the Trump administration than it had over the same period in 2024. The difference amounted to $825 million less for Head Start grants over those months.

The law does allow for HHS to stop funding for grantees before the end of the five-year period under certain circumstances, such as for failing to meet performance standards or becoming under-enrolled.

In those cases, though, HHS must warn the programs of potential cuts in grants, provide a detailed plan the organization can implement to avoid grant cancellation and give the grantee a fair hearing as well as the ability to apply for refunding — all before funding can be cut off, according to the GAO report.

There is no indication HHS took any of those steps before abruptly cutting funds in January, according to the report.

‘The president is not a king’

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, blasted President Donald Trump and his HHS in a lengthy statement that asserted Congress’ power over spending decisions and admonished the administration for harming an important program for working families.

“Trump has signaled he would like to eliminate Head Start—but that’s not his choice to make,” Murray said. “Congress delivered this funding for Head Start on a bipartisan basis, and instead of trying to destroy preschool programs and breaking our laws to hurt working families, President Trump needs to ensure every penny of these funds get out in a timely, consistent way moving forward—and he must also finally get out the rest of the investments he has been robbing the American people of.”

Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley, the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, highlighted Congress’ role in directing federal funding, calling on Trump and White House Budget Director Russell Vought to comply with appropriations laws.

“The President is not a king, and laws are not suggestions,” Merkley said in a statement. “Once again, we’re seeing proof that this administration is in clear violation of the law under the Impoundment Control Act. The funds appropriated by Congress are not merely suggestions for Donald Trump and Russ Vought to ignore – these are funds that hardworking families rely on, and Head Start is essential to making sure the doors of opportunity are open to every child in our country.”

ACLU lawsuit

The GAO report did not list any further action the agency would take but did note that litigation over the withheld funding is ongoing.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit in April in federal court in Seattle that included parents and Head Start grant recipients.

The suit described widespread confusion that Head Start organizations experienced when they could not access expected federal funding, compounded by cuts to support staff in regional offices.

No cooperation

The report detailed the lack of participation by HHS in the GAO’s investigation and tied it to a separate legal fight involving a public website.

“HHS has not provided the information we requested regarding factual information and its legal views concerning the potential impoundment of appropriated funds,” the report said.

Without information from the administration, the watchdog based its findings on publicly available data.

The White House Office of Management and Budget added an obstacle to that task, the watchdog said.

The office “removed agency apportionment data from its public websites, which is both contrary to OMB’s duty to make such information publicly available and to GAO’s statutory authority to access such information,” the GAO report said.

On that question, a federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to once again publish details about the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his ruling that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to post a website detailing how it doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.

Flood waters left debris including vehicles and equipment scattered in Louise Hays Park on July 5, 2025 in Kerrville, Texas.  (Photo by Eric Vryn/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration official running the Federal Emergency Management Agency testified Wednesday the response to flash flooding in Texas over the Fourth of July weekend served as an “outstanding” model for the rest of the country.

His conclusions about the catastrophic flooding, which had a death toll of 135 and included extensive search and rescue operations, were questioned by several members of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee holding the hearing.

David Richardson, the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator, told the panel that he “can’t see anything that we did wrong.”

“The response in Texas, which was community-led, state managed and federally supported, brought the maximum amount of capability to bear in Texas at the right time and the right place,” Richardson said. “We made that happen and that is a model of how response should be done.”

Richardson testified that in his view “emergency management is not a pile-on sport. It’s well coordinated, relies on personal relationships, it’s got to be exercised beforehand. And all those things came together on Texas’ worst day.”

‘Texas got what they needed’

Richardson told the panel that while he was on vacation when the Texas flooding began and for several days afterward, he “remained in my truck the whole time” making phone calls to state and federal officials.

“Texas got what they needed when they needed it,” he testified.

When asked by Texas Republican Rep. Brian Babin “what steps will FEMA take to ensure that something like this will never happen again,” Richardson said the agency works “as closely as we can with emergency managers in Texas and the local communities.”

“Through mitigation grants, resilience and those type of efforts, we work with them to build the best emergency management system we can have,” Richardson said. “And as you saw in Texas, under the secretary’s leadership and the president’s leadership, it worked very, very well.” 

Arizona Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton, ranking member on the subcommittee, rejected Richardson’s characterization that the Texas response and recovery efforts were handled appropriately.

“It haunts me that we could have had more urban search and rescue pre-positioned in place,” Stanton said. “We could have saved more of those people.”

Stanton alleged that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s requirement that any contract costing more than $100,000 get her approval hindered federal search and rescue operations.

“That bottleneck delayed urban search and rescue teams for more than 72 hours,” he said. “By the time many urban search and rescue teams reached Texas, no one had been found alive for days.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, chairman of the subcommittee, appeared to defend FEMA’s approach to the Texas flooding, saying it’s not possible for FEMA to pre-position resources for all flood warnings.

“Flood warnings happen all across the country on a regular basis and FEMA doesn’t pre-position to every flood warning it gets because they would pre-position literally 365 days a year,” Perry said. “That having been said, with fast-moving disasters, like the one that occurred in Texas, it is not like a hurricane, which you can track, you can anticipate landfall or the location of the disaster to pre-position assets.”

Call-in center in Texas floods

Richardson defended staffing and wait times for FEMA’s call-in center during the two-hour hearing, rejecting reports that people were unable to get through to representatives following the Texas floods.

Stanton said that Noem’s sign-off policy on higher cost contracts caused issues here as well.

“On July 5, less than 24 hours after the tragedy, FEMA’s call center contract expired because of this $100,000 sign-off policy,” he said. “The result, the vast majority of calls from survivors went unanswered. Families desperate for shelter and aid were met with silence.

“Can you imagine losing a family member, losing your home and having your call go unanswered when you’re looking for a lifeline?”

Perry said that the subcommittee was told by another FEMA official that the call center prioritizes people in a disaster area when that disaster is ongoing, but emphasized the panel expected the correct information.

“So you might be getting calls into the call center from across the country, but the ones outside the disaster response area are put kind of behind the ones that are priority, which is the disaster that’s occurring now,” Perry said. “We don’t want to say that anybody is distorting the truth, but we got to make decisions on the correct information.”

Richardson testified that FEMA surged staff to the call center following the Texas flooding, but that Monday was an especially busy day for people contacting the agency.

“All calls were answered within three minutes … and no calls beyond 10 minutes. So it’s from three to 10 minutes,” Richardson said. “And the vast majority of phone calls were answered. The questions were addressed.”

Eliminate FEMA?

Richardson declined to say whether the Trump administration will try to completely eliminate FEMA, saying that the president “wants a better emergency management capability.”

President Donald Trump launched a FEMA review council earlier this year to assess how the agency, which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, operates and where changes could be made.

Trump and Noem have repeatedly said they think the federal government could get rid of FEMA. Richardson said he expects the review council to issue its recommendations later this year. 

When the 2023-25 budget bill made it to Gov. Tony Evers, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425 — an additional 400 years. Evers signed the 2023-25 budget bill on July 5, 2023. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)

A handful of Republican lawmakers are seeking, again, to take away schools’ authority to raise their school revenue limits by $325 per pupil annually for the next four centuries, given to them through a partial veto by Gov. Tony Evers. 

Reps. Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin) and Jim Piwowarczyk (R-Hubertus) alongside Sens. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) and Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said in a memo that the bill would put “property tax decisions back into the hands of local voters and taxpayers where they belong.” 

“The pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock 402 years before this veto,” the lawmakers said. “It is hard to justify locking in a funding increase for just as long into the future.” 

In the 2023-25 state budget bill, lawmakers included a $325 increase to schools’ revenue limits for only two years, 2023-24 and 2024-25. When the bill made it to Evers, he exercised his partial veto power, striking two digits and a dash from the years to extend the annual increases through 2425 — an additional 400 years. 

In the last state budget, the Legislature allocated money to school general aid to support the revenue limit increase. The new state budget approved earlier this month did not include any general aid increase meaning that if school districts decide to use the $325 per pupil revenue increase, it will come solely from property taxes. The increase is not automatic and would need to be approved by individual school boards.

The partial veto was controversial at the time with Republican lawmakers complaining that property taxpayers would be burdened by the veto and Evers had broken the deal with lawmakers. Evers defended it, saying he was giving schools a reliable annual funding increase. Republicans sued, attempting to get the veto declared unconstitutional, but the state Supreme Court upheld it in April, saying it was within Evers’ constitutional powers.

Evers celebrated that decision, saying at the time that schools deserve “sustainable, dependable, and spendable state support and investment.” 

“For over a decade, the Legislature has failed to meet that important obligation,” Evers said in April. “Importantly, this decision does not mean our work is done — far from it.” 

The bill faces a difficult path to becoming law as it would need to pass the Assembly and Senate and not be vetoed by Evers.

The bill authors also complained about the governor’s vast veto power, which is one of the broadest in the nation. 

“This use of that power has gone way too far,” the lawmakers said. They referenced the dissent from Justice Brian Hagedorn in the lawsuit, saying that the veto gives the governor “monarchical” powers.

The power has been curtailed in the past through state Supreme Court rulings, including recently when the Court unanimously ruled in another case that one of Evers’ partial vetoes was unconstitutional. Wisconsin governors have also lost some of their considerable partial veto authority through constitutional amendments. 

Evers’ 400-year veto led Republican lawmakers to introduce constitutional amendment proposals that would limit the power further. A constitutional amendment would need to pass the Senate and Assembly twice in consecutive legislative sessions and get approval from voters before it would become law.

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Corrine Hendrickson addresses a gathering of parents and child care providers outside the state Capitol on Friday, May 16, 2025. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

For 18 years Corrine Hendrickson has been taking care of young children in her New Glarus home.

At the end of August she’ll send the last of those children home, shut the doors of “Corrine’s Little Explorers” and clean up for a final time. She hadn’t planned for it to be this way.

“It’s really difficult,” Hendrickson says. “I’m not closing on my terms. I’m not closing because I was ready to close. I’m closing because it’s the decision that I need to make for myself and my family.”

It’s a decision, she says, forced by what the 2025-27 state budget didn’t do for child care.

“It will affect our community as a whole,” says Devon Kammerud, whose children were among the first that Hendrickson had in child care when she began the business. “I knew a few of my friends who were having babies they were hoping to go there. Now they won’t have that.”

Hendrickson says that even with provisions that were hailed as an unprecedented state investment in care, the budget fell short of what would have been required for her to afford to stay in business.

In the months leading up to the budget’s passage, Hendrickson was one of the leading voices for a substantial state investment in child care. As a co-founder of Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), she helped lead rallies and round tables to call on lawmakers to set aside nearly half-a-billion dollars to send  directly to child care providers across Wisconsin.

Ongoing state investment

Providers and advocates have been seeking an ongoing state budget line item for child care for years. Without that continuing outside support, they argue, it  will either be impossible to pay child care teachers adequately or impossible for anyone beside affluent families to afford quality child care.

Child care wages have been historically low. A 2023 report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found that in Milwaukee, lead teachers’ pay averaged between $12 and less than $15 per hour — less than retail employees at big box stores or warehouse workers.

Parents, the policy forum report found, were paying in Milwaukee County more than $16,000 a year for infant care and more than $12,000 a year for a 4-year-old. Providers, teachers and families are all “struggling at the same time,” according to the report.

Elliot Haspel, a fellow at Capita, a family policy think tank, contends that child care should be considered a public good. He compares it to public schools, libraries, fire departments and park systems, because “the benefits are so widespread they go beyond the users of the service.”

In addition to providing children with early education opportunities, the availability of child care has benefits “for the overall health of families and the ability of families to stay in communities,” Haspel told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview in May.

Pandemic relief and financial stability

The COVID-19 pandemic gave Wisconsin an opportunity for proof of concept for a state investment. Federal pandemic relief funds “gave us the most financial security we’ve ever had,” Hendrickson says.

She and Brooke Legler, who owns a group child care center in New Glarus, started WECAN about the same time. They had been traveling Wisconsin, hosting showings of the documentary “No Small Matter” about the importance of early childhood education. They started WECAN to bring activist muscle to advocating on behalf of providers and parents and increase respect and funding for child care.

Congress enacted the first COVID-19 pandemic relief funding programs in 2020. They culminated with the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), enacted in March 2021, shortly after President Joe Biden took office. ARPA made it possible for Wisconsin to send $20 million a month to child care providers across the state for two years under the Child Care Counts program instituted by the Department of Children and Families under Gov. Tony Evers.

“We really pushed hard to get that funding to come to our state,” Hendrickson says. “And then we also pushed hard to make sure that our state did allocate it directly to all of us [providers] that were regulated.”

The monthly payments made it possible for providers to raise wages for child care teachers without having to further increase the fees parents were already paying.

After failing to persuade the Republican majority in the Wisconsin Legislature to extend Child Care Counts with state funds in 2023, the Evers administration extended the program with repurposed federal money for another two years, reducing the monthly payout to $10 million. The money ran out early this month.

When Evers introduced the 2025-27 budget in February, he once again proposed extending Child Care Counts, asking for $480 million over two years. A survey of providers found that as many as 25% said they could close without continued support.

The only way to stabilize the child care sector, providers and their allies argued, was to provide a sustained, substantial state investment. Hendrickson and countless other advocates — the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Democratic lawmakers, innumerable providers and some business leaders as well — spent most of the first half of this year advancing that message.

Weighing the odds

The odds looked steep from the start. The Republican majority on the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee pulled Gov. Tony Evers’ $480 million line item for child care along with more than 600 provisions from the draft budget at the committee’s first budget meeting in the spring.

As the budget debates dragged on, advocates kept up their demands. During that time, Hendrickson was weighing her own future. She asked herself, she says, “what were the odds of us getting what we needed in this budget, and what I would need to get put in the budget in order for me to be able to operate and not outprice my parents?”

Hendrickson almost closed her child care service in the fall of 2024, when three of the eight openings for kids were unfilled until the end of September. “And I didn’t want to have to go through that again this next year — and the prices were only going to be higher,” she says.

By June, it wasn’t looking good. Initially Hendrickson expected her program to have no openings in the fall. Then three families told her they would be dropping out.

One was a mom who qualified for the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program for low-income families. The subsidy is supposed to cover 75% of the cost of care, but as child care fees have increased Wisconsin Shares has not been able to keep up. The mother said she could no longer afford her part of the bill.

The woman moved with her child to another county, and Hendrickson said she’s heard from her that she’s “trying to work from home with her 2-year-old also there at all times, because she just can’t afford her child care anymore.”

Another family was moving out of state at the end of the summer — but then changed their plans and left in June.

Weeks before the budget negotiations concluded, Hendrickson had gotten word that a direct funding program was still possible, but that insiders thought it would get only about $100 million, less than one-fourth of what providers and Evers had been seeking.

With that in mind, Hendrickson calculated a rate increase and gave that estimate to a third family. They had been driving every day from Madison to New Glarus because her center was a good fit for their child and because her rates were lower.

The new rates were closer to what they would expect to pay in Madison, the family told her, and they decided to look closer to home.

The tipping point

Subsequent inquiries for care came from families who were expecting a child or who had a child under 2 years old. But Hendrickson was already at her limit for that age group under the terms of her family child care license and couldn’t add more.

On July 1, Evers announced a budget deal with funding for child care, including $110 million that would be distributed to providers along the same lines as Child Care Counts — not as a long-term program, but as a bridge to an undefined future. “A bridge to nowhere,” says Sarah Kazell, a child care teacher and advocate who has worked with Hendrickson.

Kazell says the failure of lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle to follow through on the message throughout the last six months for child care funding has left her “deeply disappointed and angry.”

It’s not just the absence of funding, she says, but also the last minute addition of a pilot program to increase the ratio of children to providers, but only in the low-income subsidized part of the child care system. “It just seems specifically harmful to the kids that are most vulnerable,” Kazell says.

Hendrickson had already privately calculated that she could get by if the lawmakers approved about $240 million — half what Evers had sought originally. But with a single year at a still smaller amount, increasing her rates by $60 a week  “just wasn’t going to work,” she says.

Taking into account the cost for property taxes, liability insurance, homeowner’s insurance and utility rate increases, “I just couldn’t continue to justify keeping my business open while struggling and hurting my own family,” Hendrickson says.

And she knew she would need to decide sooner rather than later, so families would have time to find a new provider.

“I didn’t want the families in my care to have to worry about where their kids would go if I continued to try and struggle — and then what would happen to those kids, and where would they go?” Hendrickson says. “And I didn’t want to feel guilty and have to stay open while also bankrupting myself.”

Corrine’s Little Explorers will remain open through the end of August. Working with Legler, Hendrickson arranged for the children to be able to transfer to Legler’s center, The Growing Tree, starting in September if their parents want that.

From provider to advocate

Hendrickson graduated from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2001 with a degree in early childhood education, but in the recession after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks there were no jobs, especially in early education, she says.

She went to work at a Bath & Body Works store, working her way up to store manager. After her oldest son was born in 2006, “I had three very pregnant friends who were talking about how they couldn’t find care and how they were trying to figure out who would have to quit their job,” Hendrickson says.

Chatting during a weekly get-together, she brought up her college degree. “I said, ‘What if I quit my job and I opened up a child care?’” she recalls.

“That was a way I could meet the needs of my community, use my teaching degree, and start a small business,” Hendrickson says. “How hard could it be? This can’t be that bad, right? Yeah, I was naive.”

She had been paying for child care herself and “saw how much I was paying,” she says — not understanding the costs that providers have to bear.

She started with the infants of two friends and her own son, 10 months old at the time. Three months later another infant joined the group. Wisconsin allows child care providers who are caring for three children unrelated to them to operate without a license.

In the midst of the Great Recession of 2008, her husband, Kevin got laid off from his job at a landscape contracting company. “We were trying to figure out how do I stay open,” Hendrickson recalls. “We went on food stamps. We went on BadgerCare … We did everything we could to keep my business floating and him trying to find a part-time job.”

A volunteer firefighter for New Glarus, her husband was able to take a part-time firefighting job in Verona and has since risen first to a full-time position and more recently to fire chief.

Within a couple of years, Hendrickson got licensed from the state as a family child care provider. “We weren’t really making a lot, but it was what I loved,” she says.

The couple renovated their home, adding a lower level that opens to the outdoors and serves as the child care space. Hendrickson qualified for the state’s highest quality rating, five stars, in 2012 and has maintained that since. 

When she encountered a child with special needs, Hendrickson asked about help from state officials in the administration of then-Gov. Scott Walker. She recalls one who told her that she could turn away the child. “I didn’t think that was right,” Hendrickson says.

‘We need people … that actually care’

All three of Bekah Stauffacher’s children have spent time in care at Corrine’s Little Explorers. “She’s had such a positive impact on all three of them,” Stauffacher says. “We feel so lucky that we got to know her and have our children with her.”

Stauffacher’s middle child, who’s now 12, has severe developmental delays due to a genetic disorder. Hendrickson threw herself into finding some additional support for the girl during her years in child care.

“It was impressive,” Stauffacher says of Hendrickson’s advocacy on behalf of her daughter. “It was more than we could have handled ourselves — we were grateful that she took it on.”

For a special needs child covered under the Wisconsin Shares subsidy program, a care provider can get additional funding for an aide, special materials or training. She got to know Democratic state Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who later introduced legislation that would have expanded that additional funding for all special needs children in child care, whether they were part of Wisconsin Shares or not.

Although the bill died in committee, “going through that process really empowered me, and helped me understand what your representatives are supposed to do,” Hendrickson says.

Kazell has spent the last few years subbing for Hendrickson in the child care program when Hendrickson has gone on the road to press the case for child care support or lead workshops on advocacy. She’s also been active in WECAN’s advocacy and organizing work.

“She’s a mentor to me, and I think the most meaningful and most important mentor in my life,” Kazell says — both in early childhood teaching and in the work of organizing for change.

“She definitely was that person that helped me gain such a deep appreciation for the need for actual activism and organizing,” Kazell says — critical, she adds, to bring about the cultural change to elevate society’s value for child care and the political change to translate that value into concrete policy.

“She can talk a mile a minute and she knows a lot of stuff, but she’s also the type of person who’s keyed into where the other person is coming from,” Kazell says.

As she considers what she’ll do next, Hendrickson expects to stay involved in advocacy work, providing training in grass-roots organizing. It’s something she’s been doing already for several years.

She’s also contemplating whether to run for the state Legislature.

“We need people in there that actually care and understand the consequences of their inaction or their action,” Hendrickson said. “Taxes aren’t necessarily bad. It’s just we need to use them in ways that the people paying them feel that they’re getting something back for it.”

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People listen to a sermon before being admitted to lunch at the Hope Center, which assists homeless and addicted residents in Hagerstown, Md. Experts say Medicaid cuts will exacerbate rural communities’ access to mental health care. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Across the nation, Medicaid is the single largest payer for mental health care, and in rural America, residents disproportionately rely on the public insurance program.

But Medicaid cuts in the massive tax and spending bill signed into law earlier this month will worsen mental health disparities in those communities, experts say, as patients lose coverage and rural health centers are unable to remain open amid a loss of funds.

“The context to begin with is, even with no Medicaid cuts, the access to mental health services in rural communities is spotty at best, just very spotty at best — and in many communities, there’s literally no care,” said Ron Manderscheid, former executive director of the National Association of County Behavioral Health and Developmental Disability Directors.

Cuts over the next 10 years could force low-income rural families to pay for mental health care out of pocket on top of driving farther for care, experts say. Many will simply forgo care for depression, bipolar disorder and other illnesses that need consistent treatment.

“Not only do you have very few services available, but you don’t have the resources to pay for the services,” Manderscheid said. “That makes the problem even worse.”

Rural communities are already at higher risk of suicide, with rates almost doubling over the past two decades. Already, rural communities are grappling with a shortage in mental health professionals, making them more vulnerable to losses compared with more urban areas, experts say.

Paul Mackie, assistant director of the Center for Rural Behavioral Health at Minnesota State University, Mankato, studies rural mental health workforce shortages.

“If it [coverage] goes away, what would then be the person’s next option if they already don’t have the resources?” said Mackie, who grew up on a rural Michigan dairy farm. “You can have a rural psychologist or a rural clinical social worker working under a shingle, literally alone.”

Small rural hospitals often provide critical behavioral health care access, he said. One analysis found the cuts next year would leave 380 rural hospitals at risk of shutting down.

States such as Mackie’s Minnesota, which expanded Medicaid eligibility under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, would suffer significant slashes in federal matches as a result of President Donald Trump’s signature legislation. The law, which includes tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, cuts the federal government’s 90% matching rate for enrollees covered under expansion to anywhere from 50% to 74%.

States will have to redetermine eligibility twice a year on millions enrolled under Medicaid expansion. Some Medicaid recipients also will have to prove work history. The new law creates work requirement exceptions for those with severe medical conditions — including mental disorders and substance use — but experts say proving those conditions may be convoluted. The exact qualifications and diagnoses for the exceptions haven’t been spelled out, according to a report by KFF, a health policy research organization.

“You can’t work when your mental illness is not treated,” said Dr. Heidi Alvey, an emergency and critical care medicine physician in Indiana. “It’s so counter to the reality of the situation.”

Alvey worked seven years at Baylor Scott & White Health’s hospital in Temple, Texas. As nearby rural critical access hospitals and other mental health centers shut down, the hospital became the only access point for people hours away, she said.

“People who just had absolutely no access to care were coming hours in to see us,” she said. Many had serious untreated mental health conditions, she said, and had to wait days or weeks in the emergency department until a care facility had an open bed.

She’s concerned that Medicaid cuts will only make those problems worse.

Jamie Freeny, director of the Center for School Behavioral Health at advocacy group Mental Health America of Greater Houston, worries for the rural families her center serves. The organization works with school districts across the state, including those in rural communities. Nearly 40% of the state’s more than 1,200 school districts are classified as rural.

She remembers one child whose family had to drive to another county for behavioral health. The family lost coverage during the Medicaid unwinding, as pandemic provisions for automatic re-reenrollment expired. The child stopped taking mental health medication and ended up dropping out of school.

“The child wasn’t getting the medicine that they needed, because their family couldn’t afford it,” Freeny said. “The catalyst for that was a lack of Medicaid. That’s just one family.

“Now, you’re multiplying that.”

Family medicine physician Dr. Ian Bennett sees Medicaid patients at the Vallejo Family Health Services Center of Solano County in California’s Bay Area. The community health clinic serves patients from across the area’s rural farm communities and combines primary care with mental health care services, Bennett said.

“When our patients lose Medicaid, which we expect that they will, then we’ll have to continue to take them, and that will be quite a strain on the finances of that system,” Bennett said. The center could even close, he said.

“The folks who are having the most difficulty managing their lives — and that’s made worse by having depression or substance use disorder — are going to be the folks most likely to drop off,” said Bennett, a University of Washington mental health services researcher. “The impacts down the road are clearly going to be much worse for society as we have less people able to function.”

The psychiatric care landscape across Michigan’s rural western lower peninsula is already scarce, said Joseph “Chip” Johnston. He’s the executive director of the Centra Wellness Network, a publicly funded community mental health care provider for Manistee and Benzie counties. The network serves Medicaid and uninsured patients from high-poverty communities.

“I used to have psychiatric units close by as an adjunct to my service,” he said. “And they’ve all closed. So, now the closest [psychiatric bed] for a child, for example, is at least two hours away.”

Those facilities are also expensive. A one-night stay in an inpatient psychiatric facility can be anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 a night, he said.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

With a new law cutting Medicaid funding to certain clinics, Planned Parenthood estimated 200 of its clinics in 24 states are at risk of closure with the cuts, and nearly all of those clinics — 90% — are in states where abortion is legal. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

Planned Parenthood had already begun the arduous task of closing some clinics and curtailing services immediately after Congress passed the massive budget reconciliation bill that included a new law cutting Medicaid funding to certain clinics on July 3.

Now that a federal judge only partially blocked the enforcement of the bill, that situation may only get worse in the coming weeks and months.

The provision – which the organization said directly targeted their services for defunding and fulfills a longstanding goal of anti-abortion advocates and many Republican elected officials – prohibits Medicaid funding for clinics that provide abortion care and billed Medicaid more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023. Federal Medicaid dollars cannot be used for abortion care, except in cases of rape, incest or certain medical conditions, and are instead most often used to provide standard reproductive health care at little to no cost. That includes treatment for sexually transmitted infections, cancer screenings and contraception. Planned Parenthood provides services for about 2 million patients every year, and 64% of clinics are in rural areas or places with health care provider shortages.

Within days of President Donald Trump’s signature on the bill, Planned Parenthood and affiliates in Utah and Massachusetts sued federal authorities, quickly winning a temporary restraining order. But on Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani’s order only blocked enforcement against one of the affiliates that filed the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, and affiliates “who will not provide abortion services” as of Oct. 1. Clinics that didn’t bill Medicaid more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023 are also protected from cuts.

On Tuesday afternoon, attorneys for the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to reverse the preliminary injunction decision.

Clinic and affiliate leaders say the fallout from the funding measure has already resulted in chaos, and they are still trying to determine what it means for their operations.

Clinics were already hampered by frozen Title X funding

Erica Wilson-Domer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, told States Newsroom on Thursday that they temporarily paused Medicaid services after the bill became law, but were back to regular operations under the restraining order. She acknowledged it will vary by state and county, and it’s unclear how the clinics will respond to Monday’s preliminary injunction.

“We have a saying that if you’ve seen one Planned Parenthood, you’ve seen one Planned Parenthood,” Wilson-Domer said. “We sort of all have to independently make a decision based on our financial situation and what’s going on in our states.”

Each affiliate operates as an independent nonprofit organization that can make its own financial and administrative decisions. Similar to the landscape for abortion access after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, the availability of services for Medicaid patients at Planned Parenthood and other high-volume reproductive health clinics now largely depends on where someone lives.

The national group estimated 200 of its clinics in 24 states are at risk of closure with the cuts, and nearly all of those clinics — 90% — are in states where abortion is legal. In 12 states, approximately 75% of abortion-providing Planned Parenthood health centers are threatened. The entire organization has about 600 clinics in 48 states.

Wilson-Domer said even before the budget bill became law, the clinics limited what contraceptives they could offer after the U.S. Health and Human Services Department froze Title X funds for specific clinics that the agency said provided care to undocumented immigrants and promoted messages of diversity, equity and inclusion. The loss of that funding increased the costs of obtaining contraception such as Nexplanon from $425 to more than $1,200, and no longer made it feasible for the clinics to offer.

Two clinics in rural Ohio that did not provide abortion services will close on Aug. 1, the Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region announced on Thursday. Those clinics provided contraception, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and other wellness services.

“Our challenge isn’t just the federal lawsuit, but we’re in a state … where the state legislature pays no attention to the needs of its community,” said Nan Whaley, president and CEO of the Ohio affiliate, during a press conference on Thursday. She added that Ohio also passed a budget bill that allows the rollback of Medicaid expansion if federal support for the program drops by even 1%.

Although the affiliate’s four other clinics will remain open, they are no longer accepting or billing Medicaid for services. In an emailed statement, spokesperson Maya McKenzie said the restraining order wasn’t enough.

“For many smaller affiliates, the risk of the federal government requesting back pay if the order or an injunction expires is too great,” McKenzie said.

In a court brief filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on July 14 opposing Planned Parenthood’s request for an injunction, DOJ attorneys said, “an injunction won’t provide the certainty that Planned Parenthood wants, because the government will be able to deny (or claw back) payments if and when it ultimately succeeds.”

Some Pennsylvania clinics limited contraception options

In Pennsylvania, Planned Parenthood Keystone said it temporarily paused Medicaid billing for contraceptive devices such as IUDs, Nexplanon, and Depo Provera, among other services, while it assessed the legal risks of the new law. Instead, sliding scale fees and referrals to other providers were made. After the restraining order, CEO Melissa Reed said they resumed billing.

“That court order is set to expire soon, and the legal landscape remains uncertain,” Reed wrote in an emailed statement. “We’re hopeful for a lasting resolution, but regardless of the outcome, our focus will always be on making sure patients can continue getting the care they need.”

Elsewhere, Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania said they could not share internal protocols but remained committed to protecting access to care for every patient.

Affiliates in the West, including Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette in Oregon and Washington, said their nine health centers are providing the full scope of usual services. That includes the Ontario Health Center, which is a critical border clinic for patients in western Idaho, which has a near-total abortion ban. Christopher Coburn, the affiliate’s chief of external affairs, said they are not limiting appointments for patients covered by Medicaid either. Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, which has health centers in Idaho, Alaska, Hawaii, Indiana and Kentucky, also said it is not limiting services.

Like many others who provide family planning services, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio CEO Wilson-Domer said the cuts to Medicaid won’t affect abortion rates, and will likely increase them further by cutting off contraception access.

“What I hope people are really thinking about is that statistic that 1 in 4 women will visit Planned Parenthood in their lifetime, and … preventative care is what’s actually being defunded here,” she said. “If the intention is to reduce abortion, this is the exact opposite of that.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters about the Republican budget reconciliation package at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — House Republicans are headed home early for their August break after an uproar over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files all but halted any possibility of floor action.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he’s sending his members back to their districts until September to avoid “political games” relating to a bipartisan effort pressuring the release of government investigative documents on Epstein. The financier was a Florida sex offender who died by suicide in 2019 in his New York City jail cell, according to authorities, where he was awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Epstein enjoyed a wide circle of wealthy, powerful friends, including President Donald Trump. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that it reviewed a 2003 birthday greeting from Trump to Epstein featuring a cryptic message and hand-drawn naked woman, leading Trump to promptly sue the publication.

“We’re for maximum transparency. We’re engaging in that right now. We don’t need political games,” Johnson said at a weekly press conference where the Louisiana Republican was asked about an effort by his own members to compel the release of case material.

GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has joined California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna in spearheading an effort to force a vote on releasing what are commonly referred to as the Epstein files. The procedural move, called a discharge petition, could be ready for the floor in September if Massie and Khanna can gather signatures from a majority of members.

“I don’t understand Thomas Massie’s motivation. I really don’t. I don’t know how his mind works,” Johnson continued.

He said the White House needs “space” to produce documents and is “in the process” of releasing materials related to the Epstein case.

“There’s no purpose for Congress to push the administration to do something it’s already doing,” he said.

On a separate track, the GOP-led House Rules Committee, the last stop for legislation before it reaches the floor, recessed Monday evening before Democrats on the panel could force their Republican counterparts to vote on amendments related to release of the Epstein information.

The bills stuck in that committee, largely to do with immigration, permitting and public lands, will no longer go to the floor this week.

Last floor votes are scheduled for Wednesday afternoon. House members will not return until Sept. 2.

Interview sought with Ghislaine Maxwell

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on social media Tuesday that federal prosecutors are seeking an interview with Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for conspiring with the financier to sexually abuse girls.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday that the department’s attempt to interview Maxwell “sounds appropriate,” adding that he was uninformed about the matter and downplaying the relevance of the Epstein case.

“I don’t know about it, but I think it’s something that … sounds appropriate,” he said.

Blanche was Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney. Asked if Blanche’s involvement in the interview raised any concerns, Trump said no. Democrats have used Trump’s social relationship with Epstein to imply he may have been aware of Epstein’s illegal activities.

Trump urged reporters to drop the Epstein case and instead focus on a recent declaration from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard that former President Barack Obama improperly ordered an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election that Trump eventually won. Democrats denounced the report.

Trump tries to dismiss Epstein uproar

Trump has spent the last couple weeks dismissing loud concerns from Republicans and his voter base since a July 7 Justice Department memo denied the existence of an Epstein “client list” and concluded the department would not publish any of the files.

After receiving intense criticism, Trump ordered the department on July 17 to release grand jury testimony in the case.

The president called his supporters “weaklings” for expressing concern about the Epstein “hoax,” in a July 16 post on his online platform Truth Social. Trump also told reporters last week that the so-called Epstein files were “made up” by former presidents Obama and Joe Biden.

The president’s supporters, including members of his current administration, have fixated for years on unreleased details surrounding the financier’s involvement in sex trafficking, including possible names of clients and the circumstances around Epstein’s death.

According to federal charging documents, Epstein sexually abused dozens of teenage girls at his residences in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. The Justice Department has concluded that Epstein likely had more than 1,000 victims.

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

Federal agents block people protesting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a nearby licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County, California, on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A group of U.S. House Democrats on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump’s administration for what they called “cruelty” and “lawlessness” in carrying out mass deportations of migrants without legal status.

At a forum at the U.S. Capitol, Democrats who sit on the House Homeland Security Committee and others rebuked the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown and its impact on communities, bringing in prominent voices from immigration and legal advocacy groups and a U.S. Marine veteran who said his father was beaten by federal immigration officers.

Rep. Delia Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat, slammed the Department of Homeland Security, calling the agency “unaccountable.”

“They continue to break the law and bypass congressional authority to conceal the ways in which they are abusing (the) power of DHS to violate our rights, undermine due process and tear our communities apart,” she said.

“Under the Trump administration, DHS is an out-of-control, abusive terror force that disregards law, rejects accountability and tramples on the very foundations of our Constitution,” Ramirez added.

Rep. Troy Carter, a Louisiana Democrat and committee member, said “like many Americans, I’m deeply troubled by the cruel and profoundly un-American mass deportation agenda being undertaken by Donald Trump and his allies.”

“These harsh policies are not about public safety or border security — we have seen children torn from their parents, a flagrant disregard for basic due process protections and individuals targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.

“Congress must uphold the rights of all people in the United States. We need immigration policy rooted in dignity, fairness and due process, not cruelty and authoritarianism.”

$170B for immigration enforcement

The forum came less than three weeks after Trump signed a massive tax and spending cut bill into law that provides roughly $170 billion for immigration and border enforcement.

NPR reported Monday that DHS is preparing to use military bases in New Jersey and Indiana to detain immigrants who unlawfully entered the United States.

“What is happening right now is just plain wrong,” Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said. “We’re all for immigration enforcement and smart border security, but the targeting of innocent people who are just trying to work hard and make a living, the targeting of the elderly, of the sick, of U.S. citizens, of students by an anonymous army of masked men is not who we are as a country.”

‘Violently attacked and detained’

Alejandro Barranco, a Marine veteran, said his father, an immigrant who does not have legal status, was “violently attacked and detained by federal immigration agents” in Orange County, California.

Barranco said his father, a landscaper, was working in June when masked men approached and quickly surrounded him and did not identify themselves or present any warrant.

He said his father was terrified and ran.

“They chased him through the parking lot and into a crowded street,” Barranco said. “They pointed guns at him, pepper-sprayed him. They tackled him to the ground and kicked him. They restrained and handcuffed him. They dragged him into an unmarked vehicle and pushed him into the back seat. As many have already seen, while several agents were holding him down, another beat him repeatedly in the neck and head area, over and over and over again.”

Barranco depicted the brutal conditions his father endured while in federal custody and said it’s been a nightmare for his family since his father was detained.

Barranco said that while his father was eventually released on bond, “the trauma that day and the brokenness of this system remains in our hearts, and we are still under a cloud.”

Masked agents

The Trump administration also faced scrutiny from the panel over U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents wearing masks during immigration raids. 

Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said ICE agents wearing masks with no identifying information is not proper, but “quite dangerous” and “puts everyone further at risk.”

“I mean, we’ve seen people impersonating ICE, wearing masks and saying that they’re ICE and then carrying out abuses against other people,” Franzblau said, adding that “it puts communities at more risk when you have masked agents, federal agents that should be identifying themselves, going into communities and carrying out sweeping operations like this.”

DHS response

In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Wednesday, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the department, said: “How many Americans have to die because of illegal immigration for Democrats to give a damn about actual American citizens?”

“Democrat politicians should stop defending criminal illegal aliens and exploiting law enforcement for their 15 minutes of fame and start working with President Trump and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Kristi) Noem to keep Americans safe.”

In a Tuesday press release, the department defended ICE, saying the agency has targeted the “worst of the worst” during immigration arrests.

To mark six months since Trump took office on Sunday, the department touted a long list of its actions, including on immigration enforcement and border security.

The agency described the list as “victories” in Trump’s and Noem’s “mission to secure the homeland and Make America Safe Again,” including record low numbers of illegal border crossings.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (Photo courtesy of the Kennedy Center)

Republicans on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted Tuesday to rename the Opera House at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., for first lady Melania Trump.

The panel adopted, 33-25, a package of amendments to the bill funding the Interior Department, Environmental Protection Agency and related agencies for fiscal 2026 that included a provision to designate the First Lady Melania Trump Opera House at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The vote was mostly party line, with Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington joining all Republicans present in voting in favor.

The ranking Democrat on the Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee, Chellie Pingree of Maine, said she was “surprised” by the provision.

“Republicans snuck in something that I think is slightly divisive, which is renaming one section of the Kennedy Center after a family member of this administration,” Pingree said during the full committee markup, a meeting when a bill is debated, amended and voted on.

Subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson, an Idaho Republican, responded that the name change was “an excellent way to recognize (the first lady’s) support and commitment to promoting the arts.”

“Yes, we renamed the Opera House at the Kennedy Center for the first lady, who is the honorary chairman of the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center,” Simpson said.

The Kennedy Center is considered one of the nation’s premier performing arts venues.

President Donald Trump removed several members of the Kennedy Center board in February, replacing them with loyalists who elected him board chair. He also fired the cultural center’s president, Deborah Rutter, and replaced her on an interim basis with Richard Grenell, who has held several roles over Trump’s two presidencies.

Interior-Environment bill

The House Interior-Environment spending bill proposes nearly $38 billion for departments and agencies covered by the measure, an overall spending cut of 6% compared to current levels that mainly comes from chopping 23% of the EPA’s budget.

The Interior Department would see a cut of less than one-half of 1% of its current funding, according to a summary provided by committee Republicans.

Arts and culture funding would also see major cuts in the bill.

The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities would each see 35% cuts, bringing each agency’s funding to $135 million. The Smithsonian Institution would receive $961.3 million, representing a 12% cut. And the Kennedy Center itself would see a 17.2% cut, to $37.2 million.

The full House Appropriations Committee approved the bill, with the amendment, 33-28.

Appropriations bills must win 60 votes in the Senate to become law, which generally makes it difficult for overly partisan provisions to be included in the final text.

The corresponding Senate subcommittee has not released its version of the bill, but is scheduled to consider it Thursday.

KUSD's referendum failed in February, and as the state budget process progressed, the district had a $19 million budget gap to fill. A participant at a February rally rolls out a scroll with the names of every school district that has gone to referendum since the last state budget. Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Between the Wisconsin state budget providing no new general aid to schools and the Trump administration withholding federal funds, Kenosha Unified School District (KUSD) Superintendent Jeff Weiss and Chief Financial Officer Tarik Hamdan say school funding has never been so uncertain.

“We really, right now, are at a very unsure, very uncertain time, and it just makes planning extremely difficult,” Weiss told the Wisconsin Examiner in an interview.

The district leaders were among many public school advocates who for months lobbied for large investments in Wisconsin’s K-12 schools during the state budget process that wrapped up earlier this month. 

Weiss said state funding for schools that has not kept pace with inflation over the past 16 years has created the difficult financial situation that Kenosha and other districts across the state are facing and are the reason so many have gone to local taxpayers through referendum to ask for more money.

A recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report found the state’s per pupil education spending has fallen below the national average. In the 2023 fiscal year, Wisconsin spent $14,882 per pupil on public education — 9.9% less than the national average of $16,526 per pupil.

KUSD sought a referendum early this year to bring in $23 million annually for five years to help the school district meet its safety improvements, staffing, curriculum, technology and major maintenance costs. The process was controversial in the community, dividing residents and even eliciting boos at a chorus concert. 

The referendum failed in February, and as the state budget process progressed, the district had a $19 million budget gap to fill. In April, Weiss asked lawmakers at a public hearing to address the long-term problem so he and the district could spend less time struggling to get local taxpayers to pay more and more time on student learning and improving educational offerings.

“This is not how I want to spend our time in the school district,” Weiss said at the time. 

District leaders were hoping for two main changes in the budget: an increase in the state’s share of special education costs to cover 60% and an increase to the state’s general aid to schools of $415 per pupil in year one and $430 per pupil in year two. 

“Special education reimbursement at 60%… would have generated about $11 million,” Weiss said. “The additional per pupil increases would have added around $2 million, a little bit less than that, so together, these two items would have generated about $13 million of additional funding for KUSD.”

Ultimately, the bipartisan budget deal approved by lawmakers and Evers provided an increase for special education funding but no general aid increases. Evers has defended the education portions of the budget, saying it helps with school funding in a “significant way.” 

“That’s a good thing, because we did exactly what the school districts were asking us to do,” Evers said. 

Education advocates haven’t had the same reaction. The Wisconsin Public Education Network called on lawmakers to vote against the budget, and for Evers to veto it. Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teacher’s union, said the budget was “a complete betrayal of public schools” and schools could not handle the “double-blow” from federal cuts to public education and the state’s inadequate investments. 

“Given the ugly truth about this budget, educators are exploring every option to force politicians to bring forward a long-term solution to Wisconsin’s school funding crisis,” Wirtz-Olsen said. “This state can’t keep shattering the foundation of our public schools and expect the professionals who teach them to pick up the pieces.”

For his part, Weiss said he was glad to see some movement from lawmakers, who agreed to raise the special education reimbursement rate to 42% in the first year and 45% in the second year of the budget — a significant jump from the current 30% and the biggest increase in over 30 years. However, the total cost picked up by the state — $207 million in year one and $297 million in year two —  still falls short of what districts need. 

“The fact that there was movement — I was glad to see that,” Weiss said. “Is it game changing? No, not by any means.”

The district is now trying to plan with the new budget.

District budget planning 

Kenosha leaders said they are anticipating the special ed reimbursement rate will fall below the estimated levels. That’s because the pool of money for special education is finite as a “sum certain” allocation, meaning if costs for districts are higher than estimated the state won’t pay more and the percentage of those costs the state covers will go down.

“We’re expecting to get 39[%] just based on some of the historical patterns of sum certain funding,” Weiss said.

Weiss said district officials are expecting about $3 million per year in additional funding from the boost — $10 million per year less than what they initially hoped for from the state budget.

The district has already made significant cuts of about $5 million to help balance its 2025-26 budget. Staffing is the largest expense and most of the cuts came from the elimination of nearly 43 positions. Prior to seeking a referendum, the school district had already closed schools, including five elementary schools and a middle school, and made other cuts to staff and programs.

Salaries and benefits are increasing, driving up costs. 

“Health insurance trends have been increasing at about 10 to 13% each year alone. The salary component, when you’re talking about inflationary increases… and movement on salary schedule just in recent times, is somewhere around 4.5%,” Hamdan said. “There’s all these factors that make budget planning… very, very difficult.”

Weiss said the district also put some items on hold, including security upgrades, staff raises and curriculum.

“As we’re able to find funding, we’ll start putting some of those [on] short term holds — trying to fund those,” Weiss said. “We know that we can’t stop buying curriculum materials or fixing our buildings or buying technology.”

Weiss said there is also some pressure on compensation from neighboring school districts, one of which recently succeeded in passing a referendum. 

“How do we stay competitive with compensation for our employees?” Weiss said, adding that the state budget money will likely be used for labor costs and other items on short-term hold. 

Long-term items, including controlled entrances for seven schools, will continue to be on hold.

“We’re going to have to find another funding stream for that,” Weiss said. “At this point, we haven’t identified what that funding stream is, so those are some of the things that we have taken into account as we look at the budget.”

Potential property tax increase 

Even with the failed referendum, Kenosha’s district leaders are concerned about how property tax changes could appear to residents. School districts will be allowed a $325 per pupil revenue limit increase each year due to a partial veto by Evers in the last budget, but there is no state funding behind it in the 2025-27 budget.

“The state is not going to pay their portion of that. It’s going to be a straight tax increase,” Hamdan said. The last state budget that established the $325 increase paid for it in part through a general aid increase.

The total state general aid to Wisconsin schools is $5.58 billion, the same as 2024. The distribution of the funds is determined by a formula that considers property valuation, student enrollment and shared costs.

The Department of Public Instruction’s July 1 estimate shows that 135 districts — or 32.1% — will get an increase, while 277 districts — or 65.8% — will lose general aid.

In comparison, in 2024 when a general aid increase was budgeted, 68.6% districts were estimated to receive more general aids, while 29.5% of districts were estimated to receive less. 

Hamdan compared it to having one pizza at dinner for a family. 

“The state budget determines the size of the pizza that all 421 districts are going to eat from that year. Is it a 16-inch pizza? Is it an 18-inch pizza?” Hamdan said. “Depending on how hungry each of our school districts are, some of us are going to eat a bigger portion than the others, but there’s only so much pizza available. When some of the other school districts are passing referendums to increase their spending, they’re changing their position in that formula so their hunger is getting higher. They’re allowed to eat more, and that leaves less for some of the other school districts.”

With its increasing property values, decreasing student enrollment and the failed referendum, KUSD is estimated to lose 4.55% — or about $7 million — in general aid funding for 2025-26.

The decrease doesn’t mean the district loses its ability to bring in revenue, but means the district will have to make it up via property taxes — a worry for school leaders. The school board will be responsible for approving any levy increases meant to fill the loss of state general aid and the $325 per pupil school revenue increase. 

“When we lose equalization aid, that does not mean that we get $7 million less budget authority, that means that the state will pay $7 million less towards our revenue limit number,” Hamdan said. “The board then will increase tax levies to make that up and that’s what the kicker is, we end up with a tax increase bump without getting more spending authority.”

Wiess said they are worried about whether community members will understand any property tax raises and the situation schools are in.

“My concern is that the message is going to be: ‘Our taxes were raised and we voted no. What did you do?’” Weiss said. “When you have to dive into the intricacies of the state funding formula, it’s not a quick answer to explain it. It’s very concerning.”

The long-term solution 

On a state level, Weiss and Hamdan said part of the issue is that state leaders have yet to address the long-term problem that schools face.  

“The whole point is that the state budget doesn’t keep up with our inflationary increases, and this state budget does not do that either,” Hamdan said. “It’s not that we don’t appreciate the movement and the increases, but the point is still being missed, that there’s a problem here, and it’s not being fixed.”  

Weiss said the pathway for a long-term solution can be found in the 2019 bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission report, which included raising the special education reimbursement to 60% and adjusting per pupil funding based on inflation. 

“I don’t know why it hasn’t been enacted, but that’s the type of action that’s needed at the state to fix this problem,” Weiss said. “It’s not a two-year budget cycle. It’s a long term plan. It’s not a band aid.”

Trump administration withholds money 

In addition to concerns about state funding, Wisconsin school districts are facing uncertainties about federal funding as the Trump administration has pushed ahead with trying to close the U.S. Department of Education and is withholding already approved funding for programs that support English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others.

Wisconsin gets about 8% of its funding for schools from the federal government, and over $72 million is being withheld from the state for these programs. 

About $1.6 million of that is meant for Kenosha Unified School District.

“We have staff attached to those grants,” Hamdan said. Withholding the funds, he said, “causes us to front that money while we wait for this other stuff to be figured out until we can claim reimbursement on it. The uncertainty is at an all-time high in my 20-year career.”

Wisconsin has joined a multi-state lawsuit against the Trump administration.

The funds were already approved by Congress and signed into law on March 15 and are typically distributed to states by July 1. The Department of Education notified state education agencies across the country on June 30 they would be withholding the funds without any specific explanation. On July 18, the Trump administration confirmed it would release a portion of the $6.8 billion in withheld funds, worth about $1.3 billion, for after-school and summer programs. 

Weiss said he thinks the district will eventually receive all the funds, but is still disappointed and worried about  federal funding. 

“I anticipate we’ll receive it,” Weiss said. “I don’t know when, but it does — moving forward, it makes me wonder what future budgets will look like, and well, what we will do for some of our students who have needs in those areas?”

Kenosha isn’t the only district concerned. 

Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Joe Gotthard and Verona Area School District Superintendent Tremayne Clardy warned at a press conference on July 9 that school districts will continue to be stuck in a cycle of seeking funding through referendum. 

“Although we have community support, public education, including our district, continues to feel the impact of decreased funding from the state and federal level,” Gothard said. “This defunding of public education has to stop.”

Weiss said that even with the federal and state challenges, the school district is going to continue doing “what’s right by our students” and working “to give them the best education we possibly can.”

Hamdan added that he hopes in general people understand that public education is at the core of communities. 

“Whether it’s building up the next workforce or creating the citizenry in your own community, your property values and what’s going to attract your businesses, public education is at the core of every single community and it needs to be supported.”

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Poll workers process ballots in Janesville, Wis., in November. A 2025 survey of local election officials found concern about federal cuts to election security. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Local election officials across the country fear the loss of federal support for election security, according to a new survey.

Sixty percent of local election officials expressed some level of concern, a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found. The center, a left-leaning pro-democracy institute, surveyed 858 officials between mid-April and mid-May.

The concern comes as President Donald Trump has curtailed federal election security work. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, in March halted its election security work. A month earlier, the Department of Government Efficiency task force also fired 130 cybersecurity workers at the agency.

And Trump in April ordered an investigation into Christopher Krebs, a former agency director who had vouched for the security of the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claims was stolen.

Federal cuts mean election officials are going to need more financial support from state and local governments, said Lawrence Norden, vice president of Brennan’s Elections and Government Program. The federal government has the advantage of being able to see the “big picture” and more easily share information with election officials across the country, he said.

“That is going to be difficult for states to replicate,” Norden said. “It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but they have to start rethinking how they’re sharing information about what they’re seeing with each other.”

Cybersecurity has long been a concern of states — and not just in elections. Only 22 of 48 states that participated in a voluntary 2023 cybersecurity review conducted by federal agencies met or exceeded recommended security levels.

In the Brennan survey, 36% of local election officials said they were very concerned about federal cuts to election security services, while 24% said they were somewhat concerned and 21% said they were a little concerned. Nineteen percent said they were not concerned at all.

Sixty-one percent of local election officials expressed some level of concern over cuts to the federal cybersecurity agency specifically, with 32% saying they were very concerned. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

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A Planned Parenthood clinic in Salt Lake City is pictured on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. (Photo by McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Monday, blocking a provision in Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law that would have barred Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for one year.

District Court Judge Indira Talwani wrote in a 36-page opinion that Planned Parenthood established “a substantial likelihood of success on their equal protection claim” since the new law “burdens” the organization’s First Amendment rights. But she limited the protections to only certain Planned Parenthood clinics.

“A preliminary injunction maintains Planned Parenthood Members’ ability to seek Medicaid reimbursements—and maintain their status quo level of service to patients,” Talwani wrote. “And an injunction requiring Defendants to continue funding Medicaid reimbursements in accordance with the status quo imposes no additional Medicaid costs on Defendants, where there is no dispute that Medicaid funds will still be provided only for reimbursable healthcare services.”

Congress has barred federal taxpayer dollars from going to abortion services with limited exceptions for decades. But GOP lawmakers used their sweeping tax and spending cuts package to eliminate Medicaid funding from going to Planned Parenthood for other types of health care, like annual physicals and cancer screenings.

The original House version of the bill included a 10-year moratorium on Medicaid reimbursements to Planned Parenthood, but that was changed to a one-year prohibition in the Senate.

Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit challenging the new law just days after President Donald Trump signed it during a ceremony on the Fourth of July.

Talwani, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama, issued a temporary restraining order the same day the case was filed, blocking that provision’s implementation.

The Trump administration argued against the court issuing a preliminary injunction, writing in a 58-page motion submitted last week that Planned Parenthood’s “constitutional claims are utterly meritless.”

“All three democratically elected components of the Federal Government collaborated to enact that provision consistent with their electoral mandates from the American people as to how they want their hard-earned taxpayer dollars spent,” the brief states. “But Plaintiffs—Planned Parenthood Federation of America (“PPFA”) and its members (together, “Planned Parenthood”)—now want this Court to reject that judgment and supplant duly enacted legislation with their own policy preferences.”

Talwani wrote in her ruling that it would apply to “Planned Parenthood Association of Utah and other Planned Parenthood Federation of America Members who will not provide abortion services as of October 1, 2025, or for which the total amount of Federal and State expenditures under the Medicaid program under title XIX of the Social Security Act for medical assistance furnished in fiscal year 2023 made directly to them did not exceed $800,000.”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah — the three organizations that filed the suit — issued a written statement after the ruling that they were “disappointed that not all members were granted the necessary relief today.”

“Patients across the country should be able to go to their trusted Planned Parenthood provider for birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment,” they wrote. “This is about patients and their right to get care — no matter their insurance. The court has not yet ruled on whether it will grant preliminary injunctive relief to other members. We remain hopeful that the court will grant this relief. There will be nothing short of a public health crisis if Planned Parenthood members are allowed to be ‘defunded.’”

The Department of Justice declined to comment whether it would appeal the preliminary injunction, though a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said it doesn’t agree with the ruling.

“We strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” HHS Director of Communications Andrew Nixon wrote in a statement. “States should not be forced to fund organizations that have chosen political advocacy over patient care. This ruling undermines state flexibility and disregards longstanding concerns about accountability.”

The Trump administration filed a notice later Tuesday it intends to appeal the preliminary injunction to the United States Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit. 

Don Millis and Ann Jacob, the former and current chairs of the Wisconsin Elections Commission, testify Tuesday, Feb. 4, at an Assembly hearing on a commission rule for election observers. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin was one of several states included in the U.S. Department of Justice’s request for statewide voter registration data — files that include data on millions of Americans. However, after WEC pointed DOJ to state law that would require the Department to pay $12,500 for the data, it has not followed up on the request, according to a Wisconsin Elections Commission spokesperson. 

The DOJ requests for voter data from at least nine states have raised concerns about what the Trump Administration plans to do with the information as President Donald Trump has remained fixated on disproven  conspiracy theories that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Correspondence from US DOJ to WEC – 6.17.25

Through the spring and early summer, DOJ officials have requested information from state election authorities based on allegations that states have violated federal election laws. The June 17 letter sent to Wisconsin alleges that Wisconsin has not complied with the Help America Vote Act, a 2002 law meant to streamline and modernize the election process. 

The letter requested that WEC give DOJ Wisconsin’s statewide voter registration list, provide information on how the state manages the files of  voters who become inactive by moving elsewhere or dying and how it verifies voter citizenship. Most of the questions surround topics that have been common complaints among purveyors of election conspiracy theories over the past half decade. 

On July 2, WEC’s chief legal counsel Jim Witecha sent a letter in response to DOJ on behalf of the six election commissioners. The letter gives detailed answers to many of the questions while asserting that state law prevents the commission from simply handing over the voter data. 

State law requires that the elections commission charge a fee for obtaining voter registration data and the price for obtaining the full list is set at $12,500.

USDOJ Response Letter

“Wisconsin law requires the Commission to charge a fee for access to voter registration data and makes no exceptions for elected officials, government agencies, journalists, non-profits, academics, or any other group,” the letter states. 

More than two weeks later, the DOJ has not yet filed a request to purchase Wisconsin’s voter rolls, according to WEC spokesperson Emilee Miklas. 

Information about DOJ’s request to WEC is located on the state agency’s FAQ webpage, along with answers to questions that have been repeatedly raised by election deniers in the state.

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President Donald Trump holds up the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" that was signed into law during an Independence Day military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Alex Brandon - Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law will add $3.394 trillion to deficits during the next decade and lead 10 million people to lose access to health insurance, according to an analysis released Monday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The updated assessment of the sweeping tax and spending cuts law came weeks after nearly every GOP lawmaker voted to approve the legislation ahead of a self-imposed Fourth of July deadline. The law made permanent the 2017 tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term and provided billions to carry out his plans of mass deportations, an immigration crackdown and increased defense spending.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, wrote in a statement that it is “still hard to believe that policymakers just added $4 trillion to” deficits after Republican lawmakers “have spent months or years appropriately fuming about our unsustainable fiscal situation.”

“This is a dangerous game we are playing,” MacGuineas wrote. “It has been going on for years, and it was brought to new levels with this bill. And it is time to stop.” 

CBO released numerous reports throughout the months-long process showing how various parts of the bill would affect federal spending and health care access, but the scorekeeper needed additional time to evaluate changes Republicans made during the last few days of debate.

The latest figures are similar to a preliminary report CBO released earlier this month projecting the final version of the package, which underwent considerable changes in the Senate, would likely lead to a $3.4 trillion increase in deficits between 2025 and 2034.

That total was significantly higher than the $2.4 trillion increase in deficits CBO expected the original House version of the bill would have had during the next decade.

Health spending to fall by more than $1 trillion

Republicans’ numerous changes to health programs, predominantly Medicaid, will reduce federal spending during the next decade by $1.058 trillion.

The law made more than a dozen changes to the state-federal health program for lower income individuals and certain people with disabilities, though some of those have larger budget impacts than others.

Language barring Medicaid spending from going to Planned Parenthood for one year would actually increase federal deficits during the 10-year window by $53 million.

The CBO score shows that policy change would decrease federal spending by $44 million this fiscal year and another $31 million during the next fiscal year, before increasing deficits by $91 million during fiscal year 2027 and continuing.

That section of the law is on hold for the moment after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order earlier this month that required the Trump administration to continue paying Planned Parenthood for routine health care coverage for Medicaid enrollees.

Federal law for decades has barred the federal government from spending taxpayer dollars for abortion services with limited exceptions, so the one-year prohibition on Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood would have blocked patients enrolled in the program from going to their clinics for routine health appointments, like annual physicals and cancer screenings.

The CBO report didn’t include a state-by-state breakdown of the effects of the health care changes in the law, but the agency is expected to release more detailed analysis of the health impacts in the coming weeks.

Nutrition assistance cuts

Apart from Medicaid, two large projected deficit reductions in the law come in the agriculture title’s sections on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

A provision requiring states to pay for some portion of SNAP benefits starting in fiscal 2028 would save the federal government between $5.7 billion and $6 billion per year, totalling just less than $41 billion for the first seven years it will be in effect.

And new work requirements for SNAP would result in $68.6 billion less in federal spending over the 10 years starting in fiscal 2026, the CBO projected.

Federal student loan program

Republicans’ streamlining of the federal student loan program is projected to reduce federal spending in the next decade by $270.5 billion.

As part of a sweeping overhaul of higher education, the law limits repayment options for borrowers with any loans made on or after July 1, 2026, to either a standard repayment plan or an income-based repayment plan.

Extension and expansion of tax cuts

The extension of Trump’s 2017 tax law, plus new tax breaks, will cost $4.472 trillion over the next decade, according to the latest CBO score.

The United States collects the majority of its revenue from individual taxpayers, and the continuation of lowered income tax brackets, plus an increased standard deduction, will comprise the bulk of lost revenue over 10 years, adding up to $3.497 trillion.

Trump also campaigned on several other tax cut promises, including no tax on tips and overtime, as well as no tax on car loan interest. The temporary provisions come with stipulations and will end in 2029. Together they will cost $151.868 billion.

The child tax credit increases under the new law to $2,200, up from $2,000, though lawmakers did not increase the amount lower income families can receive as a tax refund. The CBO estimates the bumped-up tax credit will cost $626.345 billion over the next decade.

Lawmakers offset some costs of the bill by repealing clean energy tax credits, including ending tax credits for personal and commercial electric vehicles, nixing energy efficiency improvement credits for homeowners, and terminating clean electricity production credits. In all, Republicans saved $487.909 billion from axing the measures meant to address the effects of climate change.

Jacob Fischler, Shauneen Miranda and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

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

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Monday ordered the Trump administration to once again publish details about the pace at which it plans to spend money approved by Congress.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote in his ruling that Congress “has sweeping authority” to require the president to post a website detailing how it doles out taxpayer dollars throughout the year.

“As explained in this Memorandum Opinion, there is nothing unconstitutional about Congress requiring the Executive Branch to inform the public of how it is apportioning the public’s money,” he wrote. “Defendants are therefore required to stop violating the law!”

The ruling won’t take effect until Thursday at 10 a.m. Eastern, giving the Trump administration time to appeal and to seek the ruling be put on hold during the appeals process.

Sullivan was appointed to the federal district court by President Bill Clinton but was selected for two prior judicial appointments by President Ronald Reagan and President George H. W. Bush.

Website pulled down

More than two years ago, Congress began requiring the White House budget office to publicly post apportionment information and the Biden administration took that step, though Trump officials pulled down the website in March.

That decision led to two separate lawsuits, one from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and another from the Protect Democracy Project.

Apportionments are the first step the executive branch takes when spending money appropriated by Congress. The documents and their footnotes usually detail how quickly, or how slowly, departments and agencies plan to send money out the door throughout the fiscal year.

The documents and the public website would have been a window into whether the Trump administration was impounding, or refusing to spend, funding that lawmakers have said it should allocate on behalf of taxpayers.

Trump administration protested provision

An attorney for the Department of Justice argued during a May hearing the Trump administration believes the provision is unconstitutional and seeks to micromanage how the executive branch spends federal funds throughout the year.

The DOJ lawyer also said posting the information within two business days, as called for in the law, would require the White House budget office to divert staff from other work.

Lawyers for CREW and Protect Democracy Project told the judge the White House was in clear violation of the law and that the data is valuable information that helps the organizations monitor if a president were to cease spending on programs funded by Congress.

The watchdog organization attorneys noted during that hearing the Government Accountability Office is looking into dozens of instances where the administration held onto congressionally approved funding instead of spending it.

They said the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, wasn’t a helpful alternative to the website since it can take months or years for organizations to get a response to their request.

Public’s right to see decisions

Sullivan wrote in the 60-page ruling the Trump administration “complaining about the extra work” that goes along with posting the information on a public website represents “a management issue; not a constitutional one.”

“Here, Congress has determined that OMB’s apportionment decisions should be publicly available so that, among other things, it and the public can see whether they are consistent with congressional appropriations,” Sullivan wrote, adding the website aids Congress with “its undisputed oversight role.”

“The Acts do not dictate how OMB should apportion funds, nor do they establish a congressional management role in the administration of apportionments,” Sullivan wrote. “The Acts merely require that the final apportionment decisions be made publicly available to provide transparency to Congress and the public.”

Sullivan rejected an argument from the Trump administration that publicly sharing details about the pace at which it’s spending taxpayer dollars was unconstitutional because it required “the disclosure of privileged information.”

“There is no evidence in the record remotely supporting the notion that the apportionment documents are presidential communications or are in any way subject to the presidential communications privilege,” Sullivan wrote. “Accordingly, the Court rejects this constitutional claim.”

Advocates applaud ruling

Cerin Lindgrensavage, counsel for Protect Democracy Project, wrote in a statement the judge’s ruling “makes clear that the executive branch cannot simply ignore appropriations laws they disagree with on policy grounds, no matter what President (Donald) Trump or OMB Director Russell Vought thinks.

“Congress passed a law making sure the American public could see how their taxpayer dollars are being spent, and we will continue to hold the administration accountable for making good on that promise.”

Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at CREW, wrote in a separate statement that the organization applauds “the court’s thorough and well-reasoned decision, which reaffirms Congress’s constitutional authority to require public disclosure of how taxpayer dollars are spent.

“Americans have a right to know how taxpayer money is being spent. Ensuring public access to this information serves as a critical check on the executive branch’s abuse and misuse of federal funds.”

Rachel Cauley, communications director for the White House Office of Management and Budget, wrote in a statement the administration strongly disagrees with the ruling.

“This leftist, anti-Trump judge undermines the President’s ability to effectively manage his agencies,” Cauley wrote. “Moreover, these progressive dark money groups have zero standing to claim injury for not having access to this privileged internal information.”

The Department of Justice did not return a request for comment about the ruling or whether the administration would appeal to the Circuit Court.

U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement that “the law is clear as day: every president is required to show the public how they are spending taxpayer dollars, and it is past time President Trump and Russ Vought get the website they illegally ripped down back up.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, didn’t immediately return a request for comment. 

Emma Widmar, shown with her dog Zander, has relied on Medicaid while managing complex health problems that she has had since she was 12. (Photo courtesy of Emma Widmar)

At the age of 26, Emma Widmar has been chronically ill for more than half her lifetime.

Widmar was 12 when her symptoms first showed up — severe allergies to food, hormones and her environment. At the age of 18 she qualified for Social Security disability payments as well as for Medicaid. The combined federal-state health insurance program pays for her ongoing medical care, frequent emergency room visits and necessary home care.

“I equate Medicaid to a lifeline,” Widmar says. “Some people might think that’s an exaggeration, but it isn’t. It ensures all my needs are met.”

With the enactment on July 4 of the mega-bill extending the tax cuts passed during President Donald Trump’s first term along with deep cuts in Medicaid and other safety net programs, Widmar is uncertain how her life might change.

After she graduated from Gateway Technical College, Widmar worked for four years for the Racine County Eye, an online journalism outlet. A case of respiratory syncytial virus — RSV — in January 2024 brought on severe neuropathy and hampered her breathing, forcing her to give up a job she had loved.

“I lost my ability to walk,” Widmar says. “It really wreaked havoc on my body and I couldn’t keep up.”

As complex as her health problems are, they’ve also become deeply familiar to her. 

 “It has been my life, and I simply can’t ignore it,” Widmar says. “It’s just the way that it is.”

While she and her family along with many others hope that science will one day unlock treatments for intractable illnesses such as hers, “these are chronic, lifelong conditions that right now there’s no cure for,” she says. For now, “it’s about finding the best quality of life for myself.”

Widmar lives with her parents in Mount Pleasant. Her mother is a primary caregiver.

Wisconsin’s home- and community-based care Medicaid waiver covers the cost of medications “that allow me to function,” she says.

 It also makes it possible for her to have additional home and personal caregivers. With Medicaid “those caretakers can be compensated,” Widmar says. “It ensures that I always have eyes on me and that I’m getting what I need.”

Her chronic food allergies require a special diet, with food that is more expensive than the typical grocery store purchase. Widmar’s disability has qualified her for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, known as FoodShare in Wisconsin.

“Health care and food assistance are not just line items in a budget — they are a matter of life and death for American families,” said Sondra Goldschein, executive director of Family Friendly Economy, which campaigned against the mega-bill and shared the stories of people affected by it, including Widmar.

The bill passed despite widespread popular opposition. Widmar says she wants to encourage people “to continue voicing their opinions to policymakers, lawmakers and politicians,” not give up in resignation. “We are the ones that employ the government,” she says. “They work for us and we have to remind them of that.”

Widmar suspects most people wouldn’t consider her a typical Medicaid recipient — younger, coming from a middle-class upbringing and with a family that is able to support her. But that’s really the point: Medicaid, she observes, has helped people from all different backgrounds, regardless of class, race, ethnicity or education.

She also expects the spending cuts will ripple far beyond the Medicaid population.

“We’re altering health care as a whole, which will have an impact on everyone,” Widmar says.

For several years, the Affordable Care Act has helped drive down the number of people without health insurance. The mega-bill’s changes not just to Medicaid but also the ACA have been forecast to reverse that trend, increasing the uninsured population by 17 million over the next decade.

One Medicaid change, scheduled to take effect in 2027, will be the imposition of work requirements for some recipients. Nationally, two-thirds of Medicaid recipients already work full- or part-time, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization, and researchers have found that some people who qualify are excluded due to paperwork problems.

Widmar has already experienced a work requirement as part of her SNAP enrollment. When her illness made work impossible, the requirement was waived.

With the extent of her current disabilities, she hopes that she would qualify for an exemption from the coming Medicaid work requirement.

She might not know for sure until late 2026, however. Wisconsin won’t be able to draw up the details of how it implements the work requirement until the publication of the federal rules, which aren’t due until next June.

In her previous experience with SNAP, Widmar said work requirements didn’t always match the realities for people with disabilities.

“Unfortunately we don’t make it easier for people who are disabled to have a job and contribute,” she says. “It’s not a system that says, ‘We have a work requirement — do what you’re able to do…’”

When she was able to work, “I loved my job,” Widmar says. Her employer was understanding and accommodated her disabilities.

That was no small matter. Because of her condition, Widmar says, she can’t be alone: Her low blood pressure can cause her to faint unpredictably. Her hours also had to be flexible to match her erratic energy levels.

“It’s difficult to work and have a disability and be on these programs,” Widmar says. “It’s like an agility course you have to go through.”

While Widmar is concerned about what lies ahead for her when the changes to Medicaid take effect, her foremost worry is for people whose lives are more difficult.

“I have a support system to help me get through it. But there’s people that don’t know where to turn for help. And it’s really unfortunate for them,” she says.

For people living at or near poverty, she sees life on the verge of becoming more harsh.

“We’re already at bare bones,” Widmar says, “and now we’re taking away more from the most vulnerable populations.”

 

As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)

Regular energy consumers, not corporations, will bear the brunt of the increased costs of a boom in artificial intelligence that has contributed to a growth in data centers and a surge in power usage, recent research suggests.

Between 2024 and 2025, data center power usage accounted for $9 billion, or 174%, of increased power costs, a June report by Monitoring Analytics, an external market monitor for PJM Interconnection, found. PJM manages the electrical power grid and wholesale electric market for 13 states and Washington, D.C., and this spring, customers were told to expect roughly a $25 increase on their monthly electric bill starting June 1.

“The growth in data center load and the expected future growth in data center load are unique and unprecedented and uncertain and require a different approach than simply asserting that it is just supply and demand,” Monitoring Analytics’ report said.

Data centers house the physical infrastructure to power most of the computing we do today, but many AI models and the large AI companies that power them, like Amazon, Meta and Microsoft use vastly more energy than other kinds of computing. Training a single chatbot like ChatGPT uses about the same amount of energy as 100 homes over the course of a year, an AI founder told States Newsroom earlier this year.

The growth of data centers — and how much power they use — came on fast. A 2024 report by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission in Virginia — known as a global hub for data centers — found that PJM forecasts it will use double the amount of average monthly energy in 2033 as it did in 2023. Without new data centers, energy use would only grow 15% by 2040, the report said.

As of July, the United States is home to more than 3,800 data centers, up from more than 3,600 in April. A majority of data centers are connected to the same electrical grids that power residential homes, commercial buildings and other structures.

“There are locational price differences, but data centers added anywhere in PJM have an effect on prices everywhere in PJM,” Joseph Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics said.

Creeping costs

At least 36 states, both conservative and liberal, offer tax incentives to companies planning on building data centers in their states. But the increased costs that customers are experiencing have made some wonder if the projects are the economic wins they were touted as.

“I’m not convinced that boosting data centers, from a state policy perspective, is actually worth it,” said New Jersey State Sen. Andrew Zwicker, a Democrat and co-sponsor of a bill to separate data centers from regular power supply. “It doesn’t pay for a lot of permanent jobs.”

Energy cost has historically followed a socialized model, based on the idea that everyone benefits from reliable electricity, said Ari Peskoe, the director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program. Although some of the pricing model is based on your actual use, some costs like new power generation, transmission and infrastructure projects are spread across all customers.

Data centers’ rapid growth is “breaking” this tradition behind utility rates.

“These are cities, these data centers, in terms of how much electricity they use,” Peskoe said. “And it happens to be that these are the world’s wealthiest corporations behind these data centers, and it’s not clear how much local communities actually benefit from these data centers. Is there any justification for forcing everyone to pay for their energy use?”

This spring in Virginia, Dominion Energy filed a request with the State Corporation Commission to increase the rates it charges by an additional $10.50 on the monthly bill of an average resident and another $10.92 per month to pay for higher fuel costs, the Virginia Mercury reported.

Dominion, and another local supplier, recently filed a proposal to separate data centers into their own rate class to protect other customers, but the additional charges demonstrate the price increases that current contracts could pass on to customers.

In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission convened a technical conference to assess the adequacy of PJM’s resources and those of other major power suppliers, like Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc., ISO New England Inc., New York Independent System Operator, Inc., California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO) and Southwest Power Pool (SPP).

The current supply of power by PJM is not adequate to meet the current and future demand from large data center loads, Monitoring Analytics asserts in a report following the conference.

“Customers are already bearing billions of dollars in higher costs as a direct result of existing and forecast data center load,” the report said.

Proposed changes

One of the often-proposed solutions to soften the increased cost of data centers is to require them to bring their own generation, meaning they’d contract with a developer to build a power plant that would be big enough to meet their own demand. Though there are other options, like co-location, which means putting some of the electrical demand on an outside source, total separation is the foremost solution Bowring presents in his reports.

“Data centers are unique in terms of their growth and impact on the grid, unique in the history of the grid, and therefore, we think that’s why we think data centers should be treated as a separate class,” Bowring said.

Some data centers are already voluntarily doing this. Constellation Energy, the owner of Three Mile Island nuclear plant in central Pennsylvania, struck a $16 billion deal with Microsoft to power the tech giant’s AI energy demand needs. 

But in some states, legislators are seeking to find a more binding solution.

New Jersey Sen. Bob Smith, a Democrat who chairs the Environment and Energy Committee, authored a bill this spring that would require new AI data centers in the state to supply their power from new, clean energy sources, if other states in the region enact similar measures.

“Seeing the large multinational trillion dollar companies, like Microsoft and Meta, be willing to do things like restart Three Mile Island is crazy, but shows you their desperation,” said co-sponsor Zwicker. “And so, okay, you want to come to New Jersey? Great, but you’re not going to put the basis (of the extra cost) on ratepayers.”

New Jersey House members launched a probe into PJM’s practices as the state buys its annual utilities from the supplier at auction this month. Its July 2024 auction saw electrical costs increase by more than 800%, which contributed to the skyrocketing bills that took effect June 1.

Residents are feeling it, Smith said, and he and his co-sponsors plan to use the summer to talk to the other states within PJM’s regional transmission organization (RTO).

“Everything we’re detecting so far is they’re just as angry — the other 13 entities in PJM — as us,” Smith told States Newsroom.

Smith said they’re discussing the possibility of joining or forming a different RTO.

“We’re in the shock and horror stage where these new prices are being included in these bills, and citizens are screaming in pain,” Smith said. “A solution that I filed in the bill, is the one that says, ‘AI data centers, you’re welcome in New Jersey, but bring your own clean electricity with them so they don’t impact the ratepayers.”

Utah enacted a law this year that allows “large load” customers like data centers to craft separate contracts with utilities, and a bill in Oregon, which would create a separate customer class for data centers, called the POWER Act, passed through both chambers last month.

If passed, New Jersey’s law would join others across the country in redefining the relationship between data centers powering AI and utilities providers.

“We have to take action, and I think we have to be pretty thoughtful about this, and look at the big picture as well,” Zwicker said. ”I’m not anti-data center, I’m pro-technology, but I’m just not willing to put it on the backs of ratepayers.”