California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom departs after speaking about the Election Rigging Response Act at a news conference earlier this month in Los Angeles. California Democrats promised to retaliate if Texas gerrymanders its congressional map, and approved a new map that will go before voters in November. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

When California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled his plan to retaliate if Republican-led Texas redrew its congressional districts to favor the GOP, he affirmed his support for less partisan maps — and then promised to “meet fire with fire.”

“We’re doing it mindful that we want to model better behavior,” Newsom told reporters in Los Angeles earlier this month, nodding to the independent system his state currently uses to draw districts. “ … But we cannot unilaterally disarm. We can’t stand back and watch this democracy disappear.”

President Donald Trump’s call for Republicans to redraw U.S. House districts so the party can win more seats in the 2026 midterm elections — to gerrymander them — has triggered a redistricting frenzy this summer that also threatens to prompt moves by Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and New York, among others. Ohio was already set to redraw its lines, even before the current fracas.

The battle for partisan advantage is placing Democratic politicians, advocates of less partisan maps and others who support curbs on gerrymandering in an uncomfortable position, pitting their desire for change against fears that Trump will take advantage of their scruples to wring more GOP seats out of a handful of key states. Some say they accept that Democratic states need to respond, while others warn retaliation will only yield short-term gains.

The Texas House passed a new map on Wednesday, clearing the way for a final vote in the state Senate and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature. In California, lawmakers passed their own map on Thursday, setting up a statewide vote in November over the new districts.

Other states are now likely to follow, as Republicans and Democrats scramble for a political leg up.

But gerrymandering opponents say the current moment has the potential to produce new energy for their movement. More people are paying attention to gerrymandering, they say, and new polls show the public opposes the practice. The rush to redraw maps demonstrates the need for Congress to set national limits, they say.

“I think that the gerrymandering wildfire that we’re seeing across the country right now calls real attention to the urgent need for a national standard,” said David Daley, an author of books on gerrymandering and a senior fellow at FairVote, a Maryland-based nonpartisan group that supports ranked choice voting and multimember House districts to end the practice. “We will never have reform if a handful of states can act on their own.”

At the same time, some gerrymandering opponents fear states will unravel hard-fought victories. They wonder whether temporary measures, such as California potentially setting aside the independent commission it uses to redraw maps, could become permanent.

‘An unprecedented time’

State legislatures exercise primary control over congressional redistricting in 39 states, according to All About Redistricting, a compendium of information on map-drawing hosted by Loyola Law School in California. While some states use other methods, only nine states rely on independent commissions, which typically limit participation by elected officials and are favored by many gerrymandering opponents.

Most states draw maps once a decade after the census, making the mid-decade maneuvers and counter-maneuvers highly unusual (six states currently have only one representative, eliminating the need to draw district lines). But just a few seats could determine who controls the U.S. House. Republicans currently hold 219 seats to Democrats’ 212, with four vacancies.

“We affirm that gerrymandering, both racial and political, disenfranchises voters,” Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause, an organization that has long advocated for changes to the redistricting process, said during a press call the day before Newsom’s announcement.

“But this is an unprecedented time of political upheaval,” she said. People don’t want to see a situation develop where maps are redrawn every two years, she added.

The new Texas map could ease the path for Republicans to win an additional five seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. Texas lawmakers rapidly advanced the redraw this week once Democratic state lawmakers returned to the state. They had traveled to other states to deny Texas House leaders the quorum required to approve the map, but returned after Newsom outlined California’s response.

Gerrymandering typically involves “packing” and “cracking.” “Packing” refers to the concentration of opposition party voters in a small number of districts to reduce competition elsewhere. “Cracking” means diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts.

Texas Republicans have been frank that they are pursuing the redraw for partisan advantage. But they emphasize that no prohibition exists, in Texas or nationally, against mid-decade redistricting and that a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court decision cleared the way for states to draw maps for partisan purposes, removing the power of federal courts to police political gerrymandering.

The new maps give Republicans a chance of winning additional districts but doesn’t guarantee victories, they add.

“The underlying goal of this plan is straightforward: improve Republican political performance,” Texas state Rep. Todd Hunter, a Republican who carried the bill in the Texas House, said during floor debate on Wednesday. He added a short time later: “According to the U.S. Supreme Court, you can use political performance, and that is what we’ve done.”

Tricky terrain

As Texas moves forward and California prepares to respond, Common Cause illustrates the tricky terrain anti-gerrymandering advocates are now navigating.

The group, headquartered in Washington, D.C., fought to enact the California Citizens Redistricting Commission in 2008. But earlier this month, Common Cause declined to condemn California’s retaliation, saying it will judge the effort by whether the maps are a proportional response to gerrymanders in other states, whether the process includes meaningful public participation, and whether the maps expire and are replaced after the 2030 census through the state’s regular redistricting process, among other criteria.

Newsom’s proposal, the Election Rigging Response Act, will ask California voters in November to temporarily set aside the state’s redistricting commission and approve the new map drawn by the legislature. The commission would resume drawing maps following the census.

Recent polling shows widespread public opposition to gerrymandering. A YouGov poll of 1,116 Americans conducted in early August found 69% believe it should be illegal to draw districts in a way that makes it harder for members of a particular political party to elect their preferred candidates. The poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The number of Americans who say gerrymandering is a big problem has jumped in recent years. In the YouGov poll, 75% of respondents said it is a major problem when districts are intentionally drawn to favor one party, up from 66% in a 2022 survey.

Some California Republicans have responded to Newsom’s proposal by defending the commission system. A group of Republicans sued in state court to block the plan, but the California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied a request to temporarily halt the effort.

‘Is this bad for reform?’

While members of the public might say they favor citizen-led commissions, they may not care deeply about the issue, said David Hopkins, a political science professor at Boston College who has written on polarization in American politics. He called gerrymandering a “classic process subject” that comes off as “inside baseball” to many people.

“The legislators in states that haven’t adopted commissions clearly don’t feel any particular political pressure to do so,” Hopkins said.

Some Republicans in states weighing a mid-decade gerrymander also discount the risk of a public backlash.

In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe may call a special session this fall to redraw the state’s map in hopes of gaining an additional GOP seat in the U.S. House. James Harris, a Missouri Republican consultant with close ties to GOP officials in the state, said he wasn’t concerned redistricting would create momentum to change the process.

Missouri voters in recent years have approved ballot measures favored by Democrats, including one in 2018 that empowered a nonpartisan demographer to draw state legislative districts, though not congressional districts. But Republicans led a successful campaign to convince voters to repeal the changes two years later.

Harris painted any new potential map as part of a national effort to help Trump — who received 58.5% of the vote in Missouri last November.

“I think the lens is wanting to make sure the president has a majority in Congress so he can actually govern for the last two years versus two years of investigations, gridlock,” Harris said.

Advocates of less partisan maps said lawmakers aren’t likely to surrender their own role in mapmaking. While some state courts may limit redistricting excesses, federal courts stopped policing partisan gerrymandering following the Supreme Court’s 2019 decision. And the high court may soon weaken the judiciary’s power to block race-based gerrymandering.

Samuel Wang, director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project, which supports eliminating partisan gerrymandering, said the “one good thing” about the redistricting battle is that it’s prompted voters to pay attention to an arcane and technical issue. That could be a positive in the long run, he said, “if people can keep a cool head.”

Wang has written online that any response to Texas should remain measured and proportionate. California offers Democrats the only clean option to strike back, Wang wrote. Five Democratic seats could be added by redrawing the state.

“Is this bad for reform? I mean, I’m torn,” Wang told Stateline. “Because on the other hand, Democrats have been, over the last few decades, vocal in their advocacy for voting rights in various forms and now that advocacy is in question because they find a need to fight fire with fire.”

“So I guess the way I would characterize it is if they can hold it in check and not do it in every single state and just engage in whatever they’re doing where it will make a difference,” he said, “then we might not lose all the progress that’s been made.”

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.

A member of the National Guard stands alongside a military vehicle parked in front of Union Station, near the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18, 2025. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday directing state National Guard units to be ready to assist local, state and federal law enforcement, a potential step toward a dramatic expansion of Trump’s use of military personnel for domestic policing.

The order calls for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ensure troops in the National Guard of every state “are resourced, trained, organized, and available to assist Federal, State, and local law enforcement in quelling civil disturbances and ensuring the public safety” and directs the secretary to establish “a standing National Guard quick reaction force” for “nationwide deployment.”

Hegseth will also work with adjutant generals to decide a number of each state’s Guard “to be reasonably available for rapid mobilization for such purposes,” the order said.

State National Guard units are generally controlled by the state’s governor, except in emergencies. 

In comments in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said the Guard deployment could rapidly “solve” crime in some major cities, but left doubt about his desire to overrule governors who do not want Guard troops in their cities.

Trump mobilized the District of Columbia National Guard, which he is able to do because the district is not a state, to assist local law enforcement this month. Guard troops from West Virginia, Louisiana, Ohio, Mississippi, Tennessee and South Carolina also have sent troops to the nation’s capital.

Free DC, a group that advocates for district self-governance, issued a lengthy statement calling the move dictatorial. 

“Trump is laying the groundwork to quell all public dissent to his agenda. If he is successful, it would spell the end of American democracy,” the group said. “We refuse to allow that to happen.”

Chicago next?

Following the deployment to Washington, D.C., Trump said “Chicago should be next.”

Democratic governors, such as Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, should request National Guard assistance, Trump said. But if they would not, Trump said he may not send troops.

Asked if he would send troops into cities over governors’ objections, Trump complained that governors could be ungrateful for federal deployment.

“We may wait,” he continued. “We may or may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do. The problem is it’s not nice when you go in and do it, and somebody else is standing there saying, as we give great results, say, ‘Well, we don’t want the military.’”

Pritzker slammed Trump on social media and said he would not accept Trump sending troops to his state’s largest city.

“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again and again: We don’t have kings or wannabe dictators in America, and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” he posted with a link to Trump’s comments.

The 1878 Posse Comitatus Act generally prohibits federal military forces from engaging in domestic law enforcement. 

‘I’m not a dictator’

Trump dismissed criticism that deploying the military for law enforcement purposes is antidemocratic, saying that most people agree with extreme measures to crack down on urban crime.

“They say, ‘We don’t need ‘em. Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator, he’s a dictator,’” Trump said of his critics. “A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we like a dictator.’ I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person. And when I see what’s happening to our cities, and then you send in troops, instead of being praised, they’re saying, ‘You’re trying to take over the republic.’ These people are sick.”

Trump earlier this summer called up the California National Guard to quell protests over immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, setting the stage for his actions in the district. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has challenged the president’s authority in a case that is still in court.

Trump over the weekend also fought with Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Democrat, on social media and threatened to send in troops to Baltimore.

Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)

A Dane County judge ruled last week that the criminal cases will be allowed to continue against two former attorneys and a campaign staff member of President Donald Trump for orchestrating the scheme to have Wisconsin Republicans cast false Electoral College votes for Trump in 2020. 

John D. Hyland denied the motion to dismiss in an Aug. 22 order. Last year, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed criminal charges against Kenneth Cheseboro, Jim Troupis and Mike Roman. 

Cheseboro, a Wisconsin native, was one of the main planners of the false elector scheme. The scheme led to Electoral College votes being cast for Trump in seven states and began the series of events that led to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Troupis, a former Dane County judge, worked as an attorney for the Trump campaign. Roman allegedly delivered the false paperwork from Wisconsin Republicans to the staff member of a Pennsylvania congressman in order to get them to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6. 

The three men each face 11 criminal charges related to felony forgery. Each charge carries a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. 

“Troupis does not show that the First Amendment protects the right to commit forgery, does not show that the government violated his right to due process by entrapping him into that forgery, and does not show prosecutors must exercise discretion to charge an accused of his preferred offense,” Hyland wrote in his order denying the motion to dismiss.

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President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott hold hands during a roundtable event at the Hill Country Youth Event Center in Kerrville, Texas, on July 11, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s push to bolster the GOP’s narrow congressional majority in next year’s elections has prompted a rare nationwide mid-decade redistricting battle that has rapidly taken shape over the past weeks. 

Indiana GOP lawmakers’ White House visit this week highlights how the race to redraw congressional districts for partisan advantage may soon expand beyond Texas and California — two states that have reached new stages in their dueling redistricting efforts. Missouri could also be on its way to redrawing its map to favor Republicans.

“Drawing districts to put your thumb on the scale is almost as old as the country,” said David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati who conducts research on gerrymandering, elections and voting rights.

“The revolutionary twist is: Almost all of the history of gerrymandering has been about personal gain and about advancing your friends’ interests — this is a real dramatic turn toward using gerrymandering for national political control.”

The national scuffle originated with Trump urging Texas to draw a new congressional map to defend the GOP’s razor-thin control of the U.S. House. The map could give Republicans five new congressional seats in the 2026 midterms.

The GOP has 219 U.S. House seats, with Democrats holding 212 spots and four current vacancies — a slim margin that has created hurdles for U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, as he tries to enact Trump’s agenda and cater to both the demands of the president and the GOP conference’s factions. 

As Republicans in the Hoosier State face mounting pressure to join in on the redistricting fight, Indiana GOP state lawmakers are headed to the White House on Tuesday.

The meeting was scheduled before Vice President JD Vance’s Aug. 7 meeting with Indiana GOP leadership as part of the administration’s redistricting push but after redistricting was added to Texas’ special legislative session agenda in July, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. 

As of last week, Republican Indiana Gov. Mike Braun remained noncommittal about whether he would call a special session to redraw the state’s lines, per the Capital Chronicle. 

California, Texas redistricting battle heats up 

The Indiana lawmakers’ visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. comes as Lone Star State Republicans inch closer to adopting a new congressional map and California Democrats fight back with their own effort. 

The Texas Senate on Saturday approved the new map, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he would “swiftly” sign into law.

Texas lawmakers approved the new congressional map after two weeks of delays following widespread opposition from Texas’ Democratic legislators. 

But the Golden State is ramping up its retaliatory efforts against Texas Republicans.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a legislative package Aug. 21 that calls for a special election, in which voters will decide the fate of a new congressional map that could give Democrats five more seats in the U.S. House. 

Newsom has framed the effort as pushing back against political hardball by Trump. 

“We got here because the president of the United States is struggling,” Newsom said shortly before signing the legislative package. 

“We got here because the president of the United States is one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history. We got here because he recognizes that he will lose the election. Congress will go back into the hands of the Democratic Party next November. We got here because of his failed policies,” he said. 

The California governor added that Texas “fired the first shot.”

“We wouldn’t be here if Texas had not done what they just did, Donald Trump didn’t do what he just did.” 

Meanwhile, Trump said Monday that the Department of Justice will file a lawsuit over Newsom’s redistricting efforts.

More states could follow 

Missouri could also soon follow in Texas’ redistricting footsteps to give the GOP more of an advantage in the upcoming midterms. 

Trump took to social media Aug. 21 saying “the Great State of Missouri is now IN,” adding that “we’re going to win the Midterms in Missouri again, bigger and better than ever before!”

The administration has put pressure on Missouri in recent weeks to redraw their lines to help defend Republicans’ majority in the U.S. House by eliminating one of two Democratic districts in the state.

Though Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe said no decisions about calling a special legislative session had been made, a spokesperson for the Republican said he “continues to have conversations with House and Senate leadership to assess options for a special session that would allow the General Assembly to provide congressional districts that best represent Missourians,” according to the Missouri Independent.

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore said Sunday he is considering redistricting efforts in the state, where the GOP currently holds just one of eight congressional seats. 

“I want to make sure that we have fair lines and fair seats, where we don’t have situations where politicians are choosing voters, but that voters actually have a chance to choose their elected officials,” Moore told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” 

“We need to be able to have fair maps, and we also need to make sure that if the president of the United States is putting his finger on the scale to try to manipulate elections because he knows that his policies cannot win in a ballot box, then it behooves each and every one of us to be able to keep all options on the table to ensure that the voters’ voices can actually be heard, and we can have maps.”

President Donald Trump waved and pointed to the crowd as he exited the stage following his remarks at the Iowa State Fairgrounds July 3, 2025 at an event kicking off a yearlong celebration leading up to America’s 250th anniversary. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are sparring on social media over whether the Judiciary Committee chairman should abandon a century-old tradition that allows senators to block the advancement of judicial nominees who would serve in the senators’ home states.

The practice, referred to as “blue slips,” has irked Trump, who has had some of his picks for the federal bench opposed by Democratic senators. 

Trump posted on social media over the weekend that he wanted GOP Senate leaders to move his judicial nominees through, regardless of the level of opposition from Democrats, and said Monday he would sue over the practice, which he called “unconstitutional.” 

“We’re also going to be filing a lawsuit on blue slipping,” he said in the Oval Office Monday morning. “You know, blue slips make it impossible for me as president to appoint a judge or a U.S. attorney, because they have a gentleman’s agreement — nothing memorialized.”

The White House comments came after Trump slammed the practice on social media over the weekend and told Grassley how to proceed.

“I have a Constitutional Right to appoint Judges and U.S. Attorneys, but that RIGHT has been completely taken away from me in States that have just one Democrat United States Senator,” Trump posted on social media. 

“This is because of an old and outdated ‘custom’ known as a BLUE SLIP, that Senator Chuck Grassley, of the Great State of Iowa, refuses to overturn, even though the Democrats, including Crooked Joe Biden (Twice!), have done so on numerous occasions,” he added. “Therefore, the only candidates that I can get confirmed for these most important positions are, believe it or not, Democrats! Chuck Grassley should allow strong Republican candidates to ascend to these very vital and powerful roles, and tell the Democrats, as they often tell us, to go to HELL!”

Grassley won’t end blue slips

Grassley responded on Monday morning that he wouldn’t be ending the blue slip tradition. 

“A U.S. Atty/district judge nominee without a blue slip does not hv the votes to get confirmed on the Senate floor & they don’t hv the votes to get out of cmte As chairman I set Pres Trump noms up for SUCCESS NOT FAILURE,” Grassley wrote. 

He wrote in a separate post that Alina “Habba was withdrawn as the President’s nominee for New Jersey U.S. Atty on July 24 &the Judic cmte never received any of the paperwork needed for the Senate to vet her nomination.” 

A federal judge on Thursday said Habba has no lawful authority to be New Jersey’s acting U.S. attorney.

Grassley was reelected in November 2022, for a six-year term that will end in January 2029. 

Tradition since 1917

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service writes in a report on the process that since “at least 1917, the committee’s use of the blue slip has been a feature of its consideration of such nominations.”

“After a President selects a nominee for a U.S. circuit or district court judgeship, the chairman sends a blue-colored form to the two Senators representing the home state of the nominee,” the report explains.

“The form seeks the home state Senators’ assessment of the nominee. If a home state Senator has no objection to a nominee, the blue slip is returned to the chairman with a positive response. If, however, a home state Senator objects to a nominee, the blue slip is either withheld or returned with a negative response. For the purposes of this report, any instance of a blue slip being withheld is treated the same as if a blue slip were returned with a negative response—that is, both instances indicate a nominee lacked the support of at least one home state Senator.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

Kilmar Abrego Garcia speaks to protesters who held a prayer vigil and rally on his behalf outside of the ICE office in Baltimore, Maryland, on Monday,  Aug. 25, 2025. Lydia Walther Rodriguez with CASA interprets for him. (Photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

BALTIMORE — Hundreds of protesters gathered at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Baltimore early Monday for a prayer vigil for the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration aims to re-deport to Uganda unless he pleads guilty to Justice Department charges.

As Abrego Garcia arrived for his Monday ICE check-in at the office, he was arrested and detained, one of his immigration lawyers, Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg, told the crowd. 

The crowd shouted “Shame!”

Sandoval-Moshenberg added that the ICE officials  at the time would not answer questions about where Abrego Garcia would be detained. 

“The only reason that they’ve chosen to take him into detention is to punish him,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said outside the office. 

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement to States Newsroom that “ICE law enforcement arrested Kilmar Abrego Garcia and are processing him for deportation.”

DHS said that ICE has placed Abrego Garcia in removal proceedings to Uganda, which has agreed to accept deportees from the United States.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys quickly filed a habeas corpus petition suit in a Maryland district court, where Judge Paula Xinis, who also ordered the Trump administration to return Abrego Garica after his wrongful deportation, has barred immigration officials from removing Abrego Garcia from the United States until 4 p.m. Eastern Wednesday. A habeas corpus petition allows immigrants to challenge their detention.

In a Monday afternoon emergency hearing with Xinis, the attorneys for Abrego Garcia, including Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he was being held in Virginia.

Sandoval-Moshenberg asked Xinis if she could order that Abrego Garcia not be moved from Virginia because he was concerned that Abrego Garcia could be moved. Xinis agreed, saying the order would give Abrego Garcia access to his legal counsel in his criminal case and habeas one.

Sandoval-Moshenberg said Abrego Garcia would accept refugee status that has been offered by Costa Rica’s government, but would not plead guilty to the charges. 

‘I am free and have been reunited with my family’

As Abrego Garcia walked into his ICE check-in with his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, he was greeted by cheers from hundreds of protesters. 

In Spanish, Abrego Garcia thanked those who attended.

“I always want you to remember that today, I can say with pride, that I am free and have been reunited with my family,” he said. 

Immigrant rights activists from the advocacy group CASA shielded the family and the attorneys as they entered the field office. 

Over the weekend, attorneys for Abrego Garcia’s criminal case in Nashville said in court filings that the Trump administration is trying to force the Maryland man to plead guilty to human smuggling charges by promising to remove him to Costa Rica if he does so, and threatening to deport him to Uganda if he refuses. 

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty and was released Friday to await trial in January on charges he took part in a long-running conspiracy to smuggle immigrants without legal status across the United States. 

His attorneys received a letter from ICE that informed them of his pending deportation to Uganda and instructed him to report to the ICE facility in Baltimore for a check-in. 

Sandoval-Moshenberg said that Monday’s check-in with ICE was supposed to be an interview but “clearly that was false.”

Sandoval-Moshenberg said the new lawsuit was filed early Monday in the District Court for the District of Maryland challenging Abrego Garcia’s potential removal to the East African country, or any third country, while his immigration case is pending. 

“The fact that they’re holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime is such clear evidence that they’re weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said. 

Trump mass deportations in spotlight

The Supreme Court in April ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of Abrego Garcia, who was unlawfully deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, his home country.  An immigration judge had granted him removal protections in 2019 because it was likely he would face violence if returned. 

The case has put the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation tactics in the national spotlight as well as the White House’s clash with the judicial branch as the president aims to carry out his plans of mass deportation. 

On Friday, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys moved to dismiss the case against him because of the coordination from Homeland Security and the Justice Department to force a guilty plea from him. 

“There can be only one interpretation of these events,” the lawyers wrote. “The (Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security) and ICE are using their collective powers to force Mr. Abrego (Garcia) to choose between a guilty plea followed by relative safety, or rendition to Uganda, where his safety and liberty would be under threat.”

Another judge in Maryland had earlier ruled that ICE must give Abrego Garcia 72 hours of notice before removing him to a third country.  

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia while he was detained there, criticized the move by the Trump administration to re-deport him to Uganda. 

“The federal courts and public outcry forced the Administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump’s cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda – to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought,” he said in a Sunday statement. “As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk.”

Maryland Democratic Rep. Glenn Ivey, who represents the district where Abrego Garcia’s family lives, attended Monday’s rally. He slammed the Trump administration for moving to again deport Abrego Garcia.

“This started with a mistake,” he said. “They knew it was illegal. Instead of acknowledging it and bringing him back, they said, ‘We can’t bring him back.’ They lied.”

The Trump administration repeatedly stated in court that because Abrego Garica was in El Salvador, he was no longer in U.S. custody and could not be brought back despite court orders.

Wrongly deported in March

Abrego Garcia was wrongly deported in March and returned to the U.S. in June to face the charges filed by the Justice Department in May.

While Abrego Garica was at the notorious prison in El Salvador known as El Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, he detailed how he was beaten and psychologically tortured.

Because of his 2019 deportation protections, the Trump administration either had to challenge the withholding of removal or deport Abrego Garcia to a third country that would accept him. 

His attorneys in the Tennessee case attached the agreement with the government of Costa Rica to accept Abrego Garcia’s removal in Saturday court filings. 

“The Government of Costa Rica intends to provide refugee status or residency to Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his transfer to Costa Rica,” according to the agreement. “The Government of Costa Rica assures the Government of the United States of America that, consistent with that lawful immigration status and Costa Rican law, it does not intend to detain Mr. Abrego Garcia upon his arrival in Costa Rica.”

In that filing, the Trump administration late Thursday agreed to remove Abrego Garcia to Costa Rica if he remained in custody until Monday, pleaded guilty to the DOJ charges and served the sentence imposed.

Selah Torralba, an advocacy manager for the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said at Monday’s rally outside the ICE facility that she pushed for Abrego Garcia’s release while he was detained in Tennessee.

“After spending close to three months brutalized in a place that he should never have been sent to begin with, and another three months imprisoned in a state that is not his own, Kilmar was joyfully reunited with his family and children this weekend,” she said. “But it is impossible to celebrate that joy without acknowledging the cruel reality that our communities have known for far too long.”

Beer vendor Ryan Strnad points to Amerinca Family Field at his campaign announcement last week. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Ryan Strnad of Mukwonago knows he might be a “polarizing” candidate for governor, but he says it could work in his favor. A beer vendor for over 25 years, Strnad works three jobs, has never served in elected office and has broad political positions: he’s pro-labor, opposed COVID-19 restrictions, supports allowing access to abortion and is pro-cop.

The retirement of Gov. Tony Evers has made the 2026 race the first since 2010 to open a lane for anyone from either party to get in without having to challenge a popular incumbent. Most of the Democrats preparing for or considering a run for Wisconsin’s top executive office are current or former elected officials.

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez was the first Democrat to announce a bid to succeed Evers. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who also once served in the state Assembly, has announced plans to run; Sen. Kelda Roys, Attorney General Josh Kaul, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and state Rep. Francesca Hong are all potential Democratic contestants.

On the Republican side, Whitefish Bay manufacturer Bill Berrien is so far the only candidate officially running who hasn’t held elected office before — something that he is using to compare himself to President Donald Trump and as an argument for his candidacy.

Strnad, who officially launched his campaign last week, tells the Wisconsin Examiner that even his mom told him that he should “run for something smaller.” He sees the governor’s office as the place where he could have the most influence, however. 

“It’s a job I would love to have… I love state politics more than anything else,” Strnad says. “I would have a unique say of things. I can propose the budget. I can make some executive orders. And I can also sign and veto bills.”

For his campaign kick-off, in which he made good on his 2023 vow to run, Strnad stood at Mitchell Boulevard Park across the street from American Family Field where he has worked as a beer vendor for over 25 years. 

Strnad says that he’s not making “hands over fist” as a vendor, but it helps him afford his expenses. He also works two other jobs including third shift at a factory (he won’t say where)  and at a dry cleaning business.

He also loves the environment of the stadium. “Just walk into that ballpark and… being in the sun when the roof’s open or dealing with the fans… and listening to the music and going along with the crowd,” Strnad says. “Being part of the experience, that’s half of it right there.”

This will be Strnad’s first time running for office as a Democrat. As a Republican he ran unsuccessfully for the state Assembly in 2000 while living near the south shore in Milwaukee County. He sayst he switched parties because his labor beliefs align better with Democrats: He was introduced to unions when he started working as a beer vendor in 1998, after previously working as a stadium food vendor.

“There was no union with the food vendors,” Strnad says. “I had some real good union stewards who introduced me to the job, and I experienced how labor works.” Seeing the money being made at the stadium has made him want to ensure that employees benefit enough, too. 

In 2017, Strnad started “Drinks in Seats” — a political action committee and lobbying group to advocate on behalf of drink vendors — in part because the stadium’s management was  trying to grow the number of places where beer was sold on the premises, and he was concerned about the competition vendors would face. His group hasn’t been registered to lobby since the 2023-24 legislative session. 

In his campaign, Strnad says he would focus on labor issues, including repealing Act 10, which restricted the collective bargaining rights of most public sector employees, and getting rid of “right to work” policies, which make it illegal to require employees to join a union or pay dues as a condition of employment. He also wants to make it harder for employers to fire employees.

“Workers are doing their employers a favor by choosing to go and work for them and stay with them. It really hurts a lot when you go and tell an employee that they’re no longer working there,” Strnad said at his announcement press conference. 

Strnad said he would seek more bipartisanship as governor. He’s bothered that politics has “become a lot of us against them,” he said. 

He told reporters that he would be “trying to garner some support from the right as well” as Democrats. He was critical of Democrats’ supporting COVID-19 restrictions, which he blamed for Democrats’  struggle to win support from working class voters. 

“I cannot think of another Democrat who was vocal about coronavirus restrictions,” Strnad said. “I was rather vocal about how it was not fair to us to lose our jobs or work because of coronavirus restrictions.”

On abortion, Strnad said “any pregnant mother to be or mother who wants an abortion can have an abortion.” When it comes to the environment, he was critical of activists who are trying to to shut down oil and gas pipelines. “We do enough to support the environment anyway,” he said, and the fight against pipelines  is “costing people’s jobs.” 

Strnad lifted up a recycling bin. “Go to a store, get yourself one of these,” he said. “Just buy yourself one of these, $15 at your local hardware store, start recycling — Boom! You’re helping the environment right there.” 

Strnad also emphasizes his support for law enforcement and firearms,  including Wisconsin’s concealed carry law. 

“I back the police and I want to make it that every block in this country is a livable one,” Strnad tells the Examiner. 

While not a traditional candidate, Strnad says he hopes people are able to see themselves in him. “He’s one of us” is one of his campaign slogans. 

“I’m doing three jobs. I live in a rented apartment. I know what it’s like, you know, to be where they’re at,” Strnad says. “It’s been really now more than ever that decisions made at the Legislature, especially from a governor or especially from a president, have a direct impact on the everyday person’s life, especially those in the working class and the middle class.”

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Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Mukwonago.

From left, Republican state Reps. David Steffen and Ben Franklin and Democratic state Sen. Jamie Wall plans for closing Green Bay Correctional Institution at an Allouez Village Board meeting Tuesday, Aug. 19. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

Now that the Wisconsin budget has called for closing the aging Green Bay Correctional Institution, lawmakers, the governor’s office and the Department of Corrections are having to grapple with how to carry it out. 

“For the first time in ever, we finally have agreements in the Legislature and with the executive branch on how to move forward,” said state Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) after an Allouez village board meeting last week.

There are unresolved details that will need time to work out, Steffen said, but “we’re moving in the right direction.”

Steffen, state Rep. Ben Franklin (R-De Pere) and state Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) spoke to the village board Aug. 19 about plans to close the prison, located in the village adjacent to the city of Green Bay. Gov Tony Evers and DOC Secretary Jared Hoy were invited to the meeting but were unable to come, Allouez Village Board President Jim Rafter said. 

The 2025-27 Wisconsin budget includes money for preliminary plans to  revamp Wisconsin’s prison system and close the Green Bay prison. But what Evers originally proposed and what the document looked like when it reached his desk were far apart.

Pushing for a deadline

Evers originally called for $325 million for a series of projects that would enable the state to close the Green Bay prison in 2029 and transform Waupun Correctional Institution. 

What the Legislature passed — largely written by the GOP majority on the powerful Joint Finance Committee — includes $15 million for prison system construction planning related to the corrections department’s realignment, including closing the Green Bay prison.

When he signed the budget July 3, Evers vetoed the 2029 closing  deadline, arguing in his veto message that the Legislature had rejected his own plan for closing the prison, which also aimed for closure in 2029. The Legislature, he wrote, provided “virtually no real, meaningful or concrete plan” in place of his.

Republican lawmakers criticized Evers’ veto.  In a statement the day that the budget was signed, Steffen said that “only in government would four and a half years be too short of a deadline to finalize the closure of a crumbling building.” 

Republican lawmakers want to restore the deadline. Franklin said at last week’s meeting that he will introduce a bill in the fall to set a closing deadline and wants it to be Dec. 31, 2029. The bill should specify that the deadline could only be extended with approval from the Legislature, he said. 

Wall gave less weight to the impact of  setting a deadline. He pointed to Lincoln Hills, which houses male juvenile offenders. The facility has remained open for years after the original deadline to close it, Wall said, because the Legislature did not take the steps needed to meet that target date.

He also expressed concern that people might leave because of a deadline “that may or may not become real,” exacerbating ongoing staffing problems in the system. 

While the shortage of correctional officers improved after pay increased, vacancies have started rising again. The DOC and prisons across the country have experienced staffing troubles, which can lead to more restrictive conditions for incarcerated people. 

Vacancy rates published by the DOC for correctional officers and sergeant positions in adult prisons climbed to 35% in August 2023. The vacancy rate declined to about 11% in fall 2024, but it has since increased to 17%. At Green Bay and Waupun, it’s over 25%.  

“Historically speaking, from the time that I started there to the time that I left… if 10 new people would start at one point, usually half would quit,” former Green Bay corrections officer Jeff Hoffman told the Examiner last year. “Because they didn’t want to work in that environment.” 

Differences over prison system planning

Franklin said his proposed deadline bill will more specifically state how the $15 million will be spent.

Wall said the DOC is already developing a plan for spending the money, which will go through the state building commission. The plan is to direct the money to the  kind of facility changes that Evers proposed originally, he said.  

Franklin said Republicans will have to be flexible in adopting some of Evers’ proposals to restructure juvenile centers and medium and maximum security adult prisons. He said he doesn’t think everything will be adopted as Evers originally proposed, however. 

Franklin said he also wants to set milestone dates, for actions such as transfers of incarcerated people, which would provide “a barometer of where we’re at” ahead of the closing deadline. 

He said he also wants quarterly progress reports to the Joint Finance Committee.

Steffen said the committee and the Legislature should have the opportunity to see and understand plans and ask questions more than once and have time to deal thoughtfully with the situation instead of “in a pressure cooker budget environment.” 

Wall cautioned against moving too slowly, however. DOC has some projects that could go up for approval early in 2026, he said.

“And time is not necessarily on our side here when it comes to the state budget,” Wall said, noting that if the economy softens, that could affect the state budget. 

According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state could be facing a more difficult budget in 2027 than it has seen in recent years, with recently approved spending and tax cuts using up most of the surplus.

Speaking to reporters after the Allouez meeting, Steffen said that “we are generally in agreement on what to do with the buildings, the expansions at the other facilities and the closure” at Green Bay. 

But he said there will be incarcerated people who need somewhere to go. Republicans and Democrats differ on whether to expand the earned release program — releasing some people before their sentence is completed — or “find the space within the system” to move them, Steffen said. He raised the possibility of having local jails take in prisoners, a tactic the Department of Corrections has used to reduce overcrowding. 

Funding remains uncertain, Steffen added. 

Aging prison system

A 2020 draft report on the Department of Corrections’ website includes information about problems created by the infrastructure inside the aging prisons in Green Bay and Waupun. 

“There are a lot of issues with running facilities that are that old,” Hoy said in April about the Green Bay facility. “We shouldn’t be running prisons in that manner in 2025… We want to do more with our population than what those facilities can afford us to do.”

Prison reform advocates hold vigils outside the prison. Wisconsin Department of Corrections data shows that on average, prisoners at GBCI spend an average of 48.5 days in disciplinary separation, where an incarcerated person may be sent for committing a violation — the most of any prison listed.

While lawmakers push to close the Green Bay prison, it’s unclear what will become of Waupun, the state’s oldest prison, which has attracted scrutiny for a string of prisoner deaths, a lockdown and living conditions. 

The governor’s proposal in February aimed to close the prison temporarily and convert it to a medium-security institution and “vocational village” emphasizing job training and readiness at an  estimated cost of $245.3 million. The provision did not pass the Legislature. 

While Allouez’s Rafter wants to close the Green Bay prison, Waupun mayor Rohn Bishop has called for keeping Waupun Correctional Institution open. 

Bishop has pointed to the economic impact on Waupun and to the city’s history and heritage. In a column in December, he said the city donated the land to bring the prison there, generations of people in Waupun have worked at the prison and local churches have had outreach to incarcerated people.

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The FEMA Disaster Recovery Center at Weaverville Town Hall on March 29, 2025 in Weaverville, North Carolina. (Photo by Allison Joyce/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Federal Emergency Management Agency could look significantly different by next year’s hurricane season, with state and local governments shouldering more of the responsibility for natural disaster response and recovery.

Members of both political parties have long criticized FEMA, but a bipartisan bill moving along in Congress combined with President Donald Trump’s disdain for the agency may provide momentum for a big shift in emergency management.

Trump has said repeatedly he doesn’t support FEMA’s current structure and wants to see a special review council he put together propose a complete overhaul of the agency, possibly eliminating it entirely. That’s provoked deep concern among some local and state officials who don’t see how they would have the funding or background to handle a sudden natural disaster.

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said in June. “We’re moving it back to the states so the governors can handle it. That’s why they’re governors. Now, if they can’t handle it, they shouldn’t be governor.”

Trump’s FEMA Review Council, a 12-member board led by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, has until mid-November to write a report detailing its recommendations for the president.

But, as Noem has noted several times during the group’s two public meetings, Congress holds authority over FEMA and would need to sign off on any major changes.

Lawmakers, some of whom have spent years working on federal emergency management issues, aren’t waiting for the review council’s report to get started.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., ranking member Rick Larsen, D-Wash., Florida Republican Rep. Daniel Webster and Arizona Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton released their bill in late July, before the review council held its second meeting. It does not aim to eliminate FEMA.

“FEMA is in need of serious reform, and the goal of the FEMA Act of 2025 is to fix it,” Graves wrote in a statement. “This bill does more than any recent reforms to cut through the bureaucracy, streamline programs, provide flexibility, and return FEMA to its core purpose of empowering the states to lead and coordinating the federal response when it’s needed.”

Separately, a U.S. House spending committee is recommending a substantial boost in FEMA funding for the next fiscal year.

Make FEMA a Cabinet-level agency?

Stanton said during an interview with States Newsroom on Wednesday the Transportation Committee’s bill  “recognizes the challenges we have learned from past disasters; that sometimes the rules and regulations in place make it very difficult for victims of natural disasters to get the help that they need, whether it be housing or even financial assistance.”

The legislation, he said, focuses on four broad improvements:

• Making FEMA a Cabinet-level agency instead of housing it within the Department of Homeland Security;
• Emphasizing mitigation projects that lessen the impact of natural disasters;
• Streamlining processes that have become too complex over the years; and
• Adding flexibility so states can choose the type of housing or other support that best helps their residents following a natural disaster.

Stanton does not support Trump’s inclination to eliminate FEMA, arguing the federal government should help when local and state governments are overwhelmed by the scale of a natural disaster.

“That’s the whole point of it, that Americans help our fellow Americans at their point of greatest need,” he said.

But Stanton added he’s willing to read through the FEMA Review Council’s report once it’s released and work with its members to improve the agency.

“I’m open-minded,” Stanton said. “If they have good ideas that actually will strengthen FEMA, I’m all ears.”

The bill, while a sign of bipartisan progress in an increasingly polarized Congress, still has several steps to go before reaching Trump’s desk. To gain his signature, lawmakers may need to blend in some of the review council’s recommendations later this year.

A handful of outside groups, including the National Emergency Management Association, sent the committee a letter applauding the bipartisan group for its work so far but hinting they expect changes in the coming months.

“We recognize and appreciate that the legislation is part of an ongoing effort to modernize FEMA and ensure its programs reflect current and emerging challenges,” the four organizations wrote. “In that spirit, we also await the work of the FEMA Review Council and understand that its recommendations may inform refinements to the legislation.”

‘We’re going to have to turn to our own resources’

The review council’s two public meetings so far haven’t included much debate. The members have mostly shared general statements about grievances with FEMA and issued some warnings for state governments that rely heavily on the federal government.

Phil Bryant, former Republican governor of Mississippi, said that states should prepare to begin spending much more on natural disasters.

“We’re going to have to turn to our own resources,” Bryant said. “States are going to have to develop that emergency response fund, take some of their rainy day funds or funds that they may want to use for musical events and put it into disaster recovery.”

Larger states or those with strong economies may be able to absorb some of the cost that the federal government has carried for years, but other members of the council have cautioned their colleagues against going too far.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said the committee will need to clearly explain what costs state and local governments will be responsible for and which will be covered by the federal government.

He also highlighted the challenges of completely reshaping FEMA while it’s in the middle of responding to natural disasters ranging from hurricanes to wildfires to tornadoes.

“We’re going to be changing the tires on this car while this car is barreling 100 miles an hour,” Youngkin said.

Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa, Florida, signaled the panel’s recommendations should take into consideration that many small or rural areas won’t be able to raise the amount of funds they’ve received from FEMA.

“The locals should be prepared to respond to these incidents in the immediate aftermath,” Castor said. “But as was stated before, there are some — London, Kentucky, and Asheville, North Carolina — (where) this is probably the first time that they’ve probably experienced anything like this. And so we have to be there to help them through the worst of their time.”

Noem has been blunt in her assessment of FEMA, calling the agency “disastrous” and “incompetent.”

She’s also been clear that Trump doesn’t expect incremental changes but an entirely new approach to how the federal government responds to natural disasters.

“The president’s vision is that FEMA would not be in the long-term recovery model,” Noem said. “He wants the state and local governments and emergency management directors to lead response immediately when something happens in a state or jurisdiction and for us to be in a supporting role; a financial role that would be there much in a state block grant model.”

A wary eye on Trump panel

Local and state officials throughout the country are keeping a close eye on the Trump administration’s review council, wary of the implications a loss in federal disaster response would have on local and state governments.

Houston, Texas, Controller Chris Hollins said on a call with reporters in August the city has typically put away between $25 million and $30 million for natural disasters with the expectation that FEMA would help with additional costs.

After Trump proposed eliminating FEMA, Hollins began encouraging city leaders “to take a broader look at what’s going to be necessary to be self-reliant. But that’s an incredibly tall task.”

“If we’re all on our own, it’s going to put our individual finances in an extreme state of turmoil, because we’re either going to have to tax our citizens and our residents at extremely high rates to have enough money to be prepared, or we’re going to intentionally roll the dice and run the risk of being unprepared when these moments come,” Hollins said. “And you know, both of those are unacceptable predicaments.”

Minnesota Auditor Julie Blaha said on the same call that some communities will need years or even decades to build up the type of reserve needed to cover just one major natural disaster.

“In a small town it’s going to be pretty hard to put away millions of dollars, and by the time you can get a reserve of millions of dollars, you are likely to have another disaster,” Blaha said. “The only way to respond to that, you have to go into debt, and you have again increased costs.”

Two committees and a funding boost

Congress has a two-track system for determining the size and scope of federal departments like FEMA — authorizing committees, which set policy and generally determine each agency’s mission, and the appropriations committees that provide funding through annual bills.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee’s bipartisan bill represents a significant step on the authorizing side. But the legislation still has to make it through committee debate, the House floor and the Senate before it could reach Trump’s desk.

Separately, the House Appropriations Committee released a partisan bill earlier this summer that would provide a robust $31.8 billion for FEMA during the next fiscal year, $4.5 billion higher than the agency’s current spending level.

During debate on the legislation, Florida Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz proposed an amendment that would have blocked any federal funding from being used to eliminate FEMA.

“Yes, FEMA needs fixes but FEMA helps all of our communities and we can make it better and should be making it better without killing it,” Wasserman Schultz said. “The states cannot handle the responsibilities of FEMA in the aftermath of a storm on their own. That is simply not possible.”

Republicans opposed the amendment, arguing the spending panel shouldn’t do anything that would tie the hands of the review council, the authorizing committees, or Trump.

Oklahoma Republican Rep. Stephanie Bice sharply criticized FEMA during debate, saying the agency “isn’t working anymore” and has “become bloated.”

But Bice also made the point that federal funding is necessary, saying she was trying to address issues within her district “where FEMA hasn’t paid for disaster debris removal for two years.”

“These communities cannot afford the huge costs of debris removal for two years or more when FEMA doesn’t pay them, reimburse them for the services that they have provided,” Bice said. “This can’t continue.”

Dems say Congress in charge

Democrats on the committee, including Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, urged their GOP colleagues to support the amendment, pressing for any changes to FEMA to be made solely by Congress.

“If FEMA needs reforming, and I may certainly agree with that, we are the reformers,” Hoyer said.

North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who represents western sections of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene, said he opposed the amendment because he wanted to see a complete overhaul of FEMA — though he appeared to back the idea that lawmakers should decide what changes and when.

“There are few people in this room that have more up close and personal interaction with FEMA over the last eight months than I,” Edwards said. “Up until Sept. 27, FEMA was nothing more than a line item on a budget for me. Since Sept. 27, I’ve very much been getting an education.

“I can tell you that FEMA needs major reform and Congress is best suited to do that.”

Dr. Becky Uranga, an OB-GYN in the Boise area of Idaho, holds one of many babies she has delivered over her 14 years of practice. As OB-GYNs and specialists have left Idaho after the implementation of a near-total abortion ban, Uranga said she is shouldering more work and feeling unable to give as much of her attention to some patients as she used to. (Courtesy of Dr. Becky Uranga)

Before Dr. Harmony Schroeder left her OB-GYN practice in Idaho last year for Washington, she’d had many conversations with legislators and others about how to feel safe practicing in a state with a near-total abortion ban that includes criminal and civil liabilities for violating the law.

Schroeder wanted to stay. She’d practiced in Idaho for nearly 30 years, with a patient list of about 3,000 and a group of doctors she loved. She thought once elected officials understood that a ban would mean poorer medical care and more negative outcomes, things would improve.

Instead, they got even worse, as women were airlifted out of state during a period without protection for emergency abortion care under federal law.

Schroeder felt like she was either compromising care for women or compromising herself by risking jail time.

Providers convicted of breaking the law face up to five years in prison, revocation of their medical license and at least $20,000 in civil penalties.

“People said, ‘Oh, we would never really put you in jail,’” she said. “Sometimes it felt like the legislature was giving us a pinky swear.”

Schroeder is one of 114 OB-GYNs who left Idaho or stopped practicing obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to data from a peer-reviewed study published in JAMA Open Network, a division of the Journal of the American Medical Association. That number represents 43% of the 268 physicians practicing obstetrics statewide, a higher figure than previous reports indicated.

The study showed 20 new OB-GYNs moved to Idaho during that same period, for a net loss of 94 physicians.

It’s not the only state with a ban experiencing shifts in numbers of obstetrics providers, but it is one of the most acute. Physicians in Texas, Tennessee, Oklahoma and other ban states have spoken to the media and researchers to say they are leaving the state or retiring from the practice because of bans, and while the numbers may not always be statistically significant, the departures are often in states that already have maternal health care shortages. 

The states with the highest percentage of maternity care deserts as of 2024 were North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri, Nebraska and Arkansas, according to March of Dimes. With the exceptions of North Dakota and Nebraska, every state in that list has a near-total abortion ban in place.

Out of the 55 OB-GYN physicians Idaho lost just in 2024, 23 moved out of the state, 12 retired, and 16 either shifted their practice to gynecology only or moved from a rural to urban practice site. The remaining moved elsewhere in state. All of those who moved away moved to a state that did not have abortion restrictions similar to Idaho’s.

As of 2018, four years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that ended federally protected access to abortion, Idaho needed 20 more OB-GYNs to meet demand, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Schroeder likes her new practice in Washington, but she is still sad about the realities that forced her to leave.

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” she said. 

Study proves ‘what we feared was happening’

Susie Keller, CEO of the Idaho Medical Association, said the losses feel worse because Idaho already consistently ranked at the bottom of nationwide rankings for physician-to-patient ratios even while the population has exploded in recent years.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ranked Idaho lowest in 2019 for overall patient-to-doctor ratios, and the conservative Cicero Institute ranked it 50th in 2024. According to a report from the Idaho Coalition for Safe Healthcare, the ratio of patients to obstetricians increased from 1 per 6,668 Idahoans to 1 for every 8,510 Idahoans between August 2022 and November 2023.

Keller said the medical association has tried hard to find solutions that would help retain physicians, including failed efforts over the past two years to add a health exception in the abortion law.

“Every time there’s been some sort of event that sustained this difficult environment or made it worse, we heard about folks leaving,” Keller said.

The study, which was led by Dr. J. Edward McEachern, is a clear demonstration of what Keller said the medical association already knew anecdotally. It’s also proof, she said, for the elected officials who have accused them of fabricating stories or data and exaggerating the situation. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said in June 2024 that Idaho doctors who left were doing so because they made “the vast majority of their money” from performing abortions, but he did not provide evidence for that claim. Republican Rep. Brent Crane, who is chairman of the committee where abortion-related legislation would be considered, said in April 2024 that hospital legal counsel was being disingenuous with providers about the vagueness of the law because they want to undermine and ultimately repeal it.

“This kind of dialed-in study really gives us a very clear picture of what we had feared was happening,” Keller said.

Among clinics, not everyone is in agreement about the problems. Scott Tucker, practice administrator for Women’s Health Associates in Boise, said the providers they have lost over the past three years were mostly due to other factors. Increases in clinic wait times are up across the valley because of population growth, he said, and there is a national shortage of OB-GYNs and primary care providers.

“(Idaho’s abortion ban) really hasn’t impacted us much, other than we get a lot of questions and a lot of requests for contraception counseling,” Tucker said.

He added that while it’s never easy to recruit new physicians, and the ban has created extra challenges, they’ve onboarded a new physician once every nine months for the past four years and have two candidates slated to start in 2026. Much of the interest comes from candidates in the Midwest and the East, he said, and “much of what they’re hearing is hyperbole.”

‘I don’t know if it’s fair to the public for them to never feel like this is a problem’

Dr. Becky Uranga practiced with Schroeder for 14 years at OGA, a physician-owned OB-GYN clinic in the Boise area. She watched Schroeder leave, along with another doctor at OGA who went into a different medical field and one who retired.

In June, another longtime OB-GYN announced his departure. Dr. Scott Armstrong, who had practiced in the area for 26 years, sent a letter to patients saying his last day at OGA will be on Oct. 17, when he will move back to the Midwest “to help care for my aging parents and embark on a new chapter in my life.”

Uranga said the practice will have eight practicing OB-GYNs by October — down from 12 a few years ago. And the closure of other labor and delivery units in the area, which is the most populous in the state, has increased workloads for clinics like OGA as well. Uranga’s practice provides the full spectrum of obstetrics and gynecological care for women of all ages, including surgeries and labor and delivery.

“All those people (from the closed clinics) then came to us,” Uranga said.

What used to be two or four deliveries on average in a 24-hour shift is now five to six.

“That’s a lot, and it’s a really special moment that you want to be all in, present and available for whatever could happen … and it doesn’t feel like that anymore,” she said.

When a physician leaves, especially ones that have been practicing for a long time, Uranga said it leaves a hole. Schroeder had 3,000 patients, and many of them were receiving care for menopause, which she specialized in. Uranga sought out extra training to become board certified in menopause care to fill that gap.

While they juggled the transition with fewer physicians, OGA temporarily limited new patients for certain services, including some Medicaid patients. Uranga also isn’t traveling to a rural area of Idaho anymore to provide surgeries, something she and Schroeder used to do together.

When she’s not doing clinic visits, patient calls, surgeries or deliveries, she’s helping with organizing and fundraising efforts for the reproductive rights ballot initiative that would restore abortion access in Idaho. And in between all that, she’s scheduling recruiting calls with potential physicians.

She recently had to tell a recruitment coordinator that they need to be transparent up front about Idaho’s abortion laws, because she wasted too much time talking to candidates who responded with a hard no after learning about the medical environment.

“My nurse will tell you that I am fitting people in before, during, and after (hours) all the time, which isn’t fair to my family, it’s not fair to my nurse, and I don’t know if it’s fair to the public for them to never feel like this is a problem,” Uranga said.

This story has been updated.

The spread of artificial intelligence worries biosecurity experts, who say the technology could lead to accidental or deliberate creation and release of dangerous diseases and toxic substances. (Photo by LuShaoJi/Getty Images)

Artificial intelligence is helping accelerate the pace of scientific discovery, but the technology also makes it easier than ever to create biosecurity threats and weapons, cybersecurity experts say. 

It’s an issue that currently flies under the radar for most Americans, said Lucas Hansen, cofounder of AI education nonprofit CivAI.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased awareness of biosecurity measures globally, and some instances of bioterrorism, like the 2001 anthrax attacks, are well known. But advancements in AI have made information about how to create biosecurity threats, like viruses, bacteria and toxins, so much more accessible in just the last year, Hansen said.  

“Many people on the face of the planet already could create a bio weapon,” Hansen said. “But it’s just pretty technical and hard to find. Imagine AI being used to [multiply] the number of people that are capable of doing that.”

It’s an issue that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke about at a Federal Reserve conference in July. 

“We continue to like, flash the warning lights on this,” Altman said. “I think the world is not taking us seriously. I don’t know what else we can do there, but it’s like, this is a very big thing coming.”

AI increasing biosecurity threats

Hansen said there’s primarily two ways he believes AI could be used to create biosecurity threats. Much less common, he believes, would be using AI to make more dangerous bioweapons than have ever existed before using technologies that enable the engineering of biological systems, such as creating new viruses or toxic substances. 

Second, and more commonly, Hansen said, AI is making information about existing harmful viruses or toxins much more readily accessible. 

Consider the polio virus, Hansen said. There are plenty of scientific journals that share information on the origins and growth of polio and other viruses that have been mostly eradicated, but the average person would have to do much research and data collection to piece together how to recreate it. 

A few years ago, AI models didn’t have great metacognition, or ability to give instructions, Hansen said. But in the last year, updates to models like Claude and ChatGPT have been able to interpret more information and fill in the gaps. 

Paromita Pain, an associate professor of global media at the University of Nevada, Reno and an affiliated faculty member of the university’s cybersecurity center, said she believes there’s a third circumstance that could be contributing to biosecurity threats: accidents. The increased access to information by people not properly trained to have it could have unintended consequences. 

“It’s essentially like letting loose teenagers in the lab,” Pain said. “It’s not as if people are out there to willingly do bad, like, ‘I want to create this pathogen that will wipe out mankind.’ Not necessarily. It’s just that they don’t know that if you are developing pathogens, you need to be careful.”

For those that are looking to do harm, though, it’s not hard, Hansen said. CivAI offers demos to show how AI can be used in various scenarios, with a goal of highlighting the potential harms the technology can cause if not used responsibly. 

In a demo not available to the public, Hansen showed States Newsroom how someone may use a current AI model to assist them in creating a biothreat. CivAI keeps the example private, so as to not inspire any nefarious actions, Hansen said. 

Though many AI models are trained to flag and not to respond to dangerous requests, like how to build a gun or how to recreate a virus, many can be “jailbroken” easily, with a few prompts or lines of code, essentially tricking the AI into answering questions it was instructed to ignore.

Hansen walked through the polio virus example, prompting a jailbroken version of Claude 4.0 Sonnet to give him instructions for recreating the virus. Within a few seconds, the model provided 13 detailed steps, including directions like “order the custom plasmid online,” with links to manufacturers. 

The models are scraping information from a few public research papers about the polio virus, but without the step by step instructions, it would be very hard to find what you’re looking for, make a plan and find the materials you’d need. The models sometimes add information to supplement the scientific papers, helping non-expert users understand complex language, Hansen said. 

It would still take many challenging steps, including accessing lab equipment and rare materials, to recreate the virus, Hansen said, but AI has made access to the core information behind these feats so much more available. 

“AI has turned bioengineering from a Ph.D. level skill set to something that an ambitious high school student could do with some of the right tools,” said Neil Sahota, an AI advisor to the United Nations, and a cofounder of its AI for Good initiative.

CivAI estimates that since 2022, the number of people who would be capable of recreating a virus like polio with the tools and resources publicly available has gone from 30,000 globally to 200,000 today because of AI. They project 1.5 million people could be capable in 2028. An increase in the number of languages that AI models are fluent in also increases the chances of a global issue, Hansen said. 

“I think the language thing is really, really important, because part of what we’re considering here is the number of people that are capable of doing these things and removing a language barrier is a pretty big deal,” he said.

How is the government addressing it? 

The current Trump administration and the previous Biden administration introduced similar strategies to addressing the threats. In Biden’s October 2023 Executive Order “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI,” Biden sought to create guidelines to evaluate and audit AI capabilities “through which AI could cause harm, such as in the areas of cybersecurity and biosecurity.”

Trump’s AI Action Plan, which rolled out in July, said AI could “unlock nearly limitless potential in biology,” but could also “create new pathways for malicious actors to synthesize harmful pathogens and other biomolecules.” 

In his action plan, he said he wishes to require scientific institutions that receive federal funding to verify customers, and create enforcement guidelines. The plan also says the Office of Science and Technology Policy should develop a way for nucleic acid synthesis — the process of creating DNA and RNA — providers to share data and screen for malicious customers.

Sahota said the potential benefits of bioengineering AI make regulating it complicated. The models can help accelerate vaccine development and research into genetic disorders, but can also be used nefariously.

“AI in itself is not good or evil, it’s just a tool,” Sahota said. “And it really depends on how people use it. I don’t think like a bad actor, and many people don’t, so we’re not thinking about how they may weaponize these tools, but someone probably is.”

California aimed to address biosecurity in SB 1047 last year, the “Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act,” which sought to regulate foundational AI models and impose obligations on companies that develop them to ensure safety and security measures. 

The act outlines many potential harms, but among them was AI’s potential to help “create novel threats to public safety and security, including by enabling the creation and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, such as biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons.”

After passing in both chambers, the Act was vetoed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September, for potentially “curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”  

Pain said few international frameworks exist for how to share biological data and train AI systems around biosecurity, and it’s unclear whether AI developers, biologists, publishers or governments could be held accountable for its misuse. 

“Everything that we are talking about when it comes to biosecurity and AI has already happened without the existence of AI,” she said of previous biothreats.

Sahota said he worries we may need to see a real-life example of AI being weaponized for a biological threat, “where we feel the pain on a massive scale,” before governments get serious about regulating the technology.

Hansen agrees, and he predicts those moments may be coming. While some biological attacks could come from coordinated groups aiming to pull off a terroristic incident, Hansen said he worries about the “watch the world burn” types — nihilistic individuals that have historically turned to mass shootings. 

“Right now, they look for historical precedent on how to cause collateral damage, and the historical precedent that they see is public shootings,” Hansen said. “I think very easily it could start to be the case that deploying bio weapons becomes pretty normal. I think after the first time that that happens in real life, we’ll start seeing a lot of copycats. And that makes me pretty, pretty nervous.”

Tourists pass by members of the National Guard stationed outside Union Station in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18, 2025. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has authorized the thousands of National Guard troops deployed to the District of Columbia to carry their weapons as they patrol the city, the Pentagon said Friday.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said he is considering declaring a “national emergency” to keep troops in the nation’s capital for longer than the 30 days allowed under the law, and also said he’s eyeing the Democratic-led cities of Chicago, New York and San Francisco for additional military deployments.

Carrying weapons would be a significant escalation in the show of force for the troops in the district.

“At the direction of the Secretary of Defense, (Guard) members supporting the mission to lower the crime rate in our Nation’s capital will soon be on mission with their service-issued weapons, consistent with their mission and training,” a Defense Department official said in a statement to States Newsroom.

The final decision will be made by Brig. Gen. Leland Blanchard II, who is the interim commanding general of the D.C. National Guard, and any coordination will occur with D.C. Metropolitan Police and federal law enforcement, the Defense Department official said.

There are 800 D.C. National Guard members now in the district, joined by more than 1,260 members from six GOP states called to assist Trump’s federal takeover of the 62 square miles of the district that is home to 700,000 residents.

National Guard members from the Republican-led states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia began arriving in the district this week.

It’s unclear if the 2,060 National Guard members will carry their “service-issued weapons” while on duty.

The change comes days before students in the district return to school.

The Pentagon did not respond to States Newsroom’s question on what type of weapons the National Guard members would be carrying, such as rifles or hand guns.

Typically a standard-issue weapon for most of the U.S. military is a M4 assault rifle, which is a variant of the AR-15.

More cities for military force

The president told reporters Friday in the Oval Office that Chicago, New York and San Francisco could be next for military deployment, similar to the federal takeover of the district.

“After we do this, we’ll go to another location and we’ll make it safe also,” Trump said. “Chicago is a mess…And we’ll straighten that one out probably next. That’ll be our next one after this.”

Because the district is not a state, the president has the sole authority over its National Guard members.

State governors have control over their National Guard members, but the president earlier this summer federalized California’s National Guard to respond to immigration protests — a test case for use of the state-based military forces. The Guard has since left Los Angeles.

Trump declared a “crime emergency” in the district on Aug. 11, even though violent crime in the district is at a 30-year low.

The president also invoked the district’s Home Rule Act in order to use the Metropolitan Police Department’s 3,400-member police force for immigration enforcement.

National Guard troops have been sent to patrol Metro stations, the tourist-heavy National Mall and near federal buildings across the district.

“The D.C. National Guard remains committed to safeguarding the District of Columbia and serving those who live, work, and visit the District,” the Department of Defense official said.

Potential Trump declaration of ‘national emergency’

It’s unclear how long the National Guard will remain in the district and the president Friday said he is considering declaring a “national emergency” to keep troops in the nation’s capital.

Troops are currently staying in local hotels around the district, according to a Joint Task Force-District of Columbia spokesperson.

“If I have a national emergency, I can keep the troops there as long as I want,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Earlier Friday, Trump had said he was unsure of how long he would keep National Guard members in the district.

“The big question is how long do we stay? Because we want to make sure it doesn’t come back,” Trump said at another back-and-forth with reporters. “So we have to take care of these criminals and get them out.”

On Thursday, Trump visited a U.S. Park Police facility in a district neighborhood known as Anacostia, where he addressed local and federal law enforcement officials as well as National Guard members.

“You’re incredible people,” Trump said. “You make the country run.”

He thanked them for their service and had White House officials hand out hamburgers he said were cooked at the White House and pizza from a local restaurant.

Louisiana Illuminator Reporter Wes Muller contributed to this story. 

Republican lawmakers on the committee proposed a vote on the motion Thursday after Gov. Tony Evers told agencies to skip lawmakers in the final steps of the rulemaking process. Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Committee on Legislative Organization voted by paper ballot along party lines Friday afternoon to direct the Legislative Reference Bureau not to publish any rule that hasn’t gone through a review by the Legislature in accordance with Wisconsin law.

Republican lawmakers on the committee proposed a vote on the motion Thursday after Gov. Tony Evers told agencies to skip lawmakers in the final steps of the rulemaking process. There are 27 administrative rules, including one to address the state’s policy on gray wolf management, that Evers submitted to the LRB for publication. Of those, 13 have not been reviewed by a standing legislative committee and are yet to be published. 

It’s the latest step the administration has taken in testing the bounds of the recent Evers v. Marklein II ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The majority found in the case that the state laws giving the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules broad powers to block administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

The statutes cited in the Republicans’ motion Thursday were not included in the Court’s ruling.

“We are following the law and maintaining the fundamental checks and balances of lawmaking,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma) said in a joint statement about the motion on Thursday. “The governor is flagrantly disregarding the rule of law and egregiously abusing the power of his office.”

Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback said Republicans were defying the law in an email Thursday. 

“Republicans are reaching new levels of lawlessness, whether it’s President Trump trying to take over Washington DC, Republicans in Texas trying to rig maps and elections in their favor, or Republicans in Wisconsin who appear poised to disobey decisions made by our state’s highest court,” Cudaback wrote in an email message. “Republicans are not above the law — they should follow the law like everyone else is expected to.”

The measure passed 6-4. Republicans on the committee, including Vos, Felzkowski, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Sen. Dan Feyen (R-Fond du Lac), Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth) and Rep. Scott Krug (R-Rome), voted for the motion. Democrats on the committee, including Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton), voted against it.

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Then-White House National Security Advisor John Bolton (R) listens to President Donald Trump as he and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte talk to reporters in the Oval Office at the White House July 18, 2019. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — FBI agents raided the home and office of former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, a one-time adviser to President Donald Trump who has become a frequent critic of the president, to investigate Bolton’s handling of classified documents, according to multiple media reports.

The raid on a former Trump adviser’s house represents an escalation from the Justice Department in targeting critics of Trump, whom he vowed to go after should he return to the White House for a second term.

Speaking to reporters Friday, Trump said he was not briefed on the raid of Bolton’s house in the wealthy suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, and office in Washington, D.C., according to White House pool reports.

But the president noted his longstanding feud with his former adviser.

“I’m not a fan of John Bolton,” Trump said. “He’s a real sort of a low life. He could be a very unpatriotic guy. We’re going to find out.”

Earlier this year, the president revoked the security detail for Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security advisor from 2018 to 2019 and as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration in 2005 and 2006.

Following his time in the Trump administration, Bolton, who was an important member of the Bush administration’s national security team that favored active military involvement in the Middle East, emerged as a chief Republican foreign policy critic of Trump, authoring a 2020 book that blasted the president and widened the public rift between the two men.

Bolton has not been charged with a crime and is not in custody, according to The Associated Press, which cited a person familiar with the matter.

The first Trump administration launched an investigation into Bolton to probe if he improperly used sensitive information in his book. The current search involves federal officials investigating Bolton’s actions over the last four years, according to the New York Times, which cited a federal law enforcement official.

Trump documents case

Trump himself was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents after the FBI raided his Florida golf course and main residence of Mar-a-Lago in 2022. A federal judge dismissed the resulting criminal charges against Trump.

FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on social media that “NO ONE is above the law,” and that FBI agents were “on mission.”

The FBI declined to comment.

In 2020, the Department of Justice opened a criminal investigation into Bolton’s book and tried to block its publication, but were stymied in court.

Patel also wrote a 2023 book where he lists Bolton, along with a dozen other people, as members of the “deep state” who are working against Trump, according to the Times. 

Wisconsin lawmakers heard testimony Thursday on a bill to make tips for restaurant servers and other workers exempt from Wisconsin's state income tax. (Getty Images)

Wisconsin policymakers approved more than $1.3 billion in tax cuts in the latest state budget but the exclusion of a “no tax on tips” proposal has lawmakers pushing ahead with a bill that would line up state law with a new federal law. 

Bill coauthor Rep. Ron Tusler (R-Harrison) said during a hearing in the Assembly Ways and Means committee that lawmakers should help working class people who are “trying to get themselves to that middle class” with Assembly Bill 38. A hearing on the bill was held in the Senate in May, though it has yet to come up for vote in either chamber. 

“When I was a younger man, I was a waiter at Perkins, and I received tips. I also received tips for a couple years as a valet, and folks that receive tips aren’t just waiters and valets, but also housekeepers, bartenders, delivery drivers, massage therapists, hairdressers, taxi drivers, tour guides,” Tusler said. “Those are the type of people we’re talking about, trying to help with this bill, trying to not tax and as representatives, these are great folks for us to target, and as Christians, we should always be trying to help the poor.”

President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” signed into law on July 4 includes a federal provision that will allow workers to deduct up to $25,000 in tips annually from their taxable income. Those earning more than $150,000 aren’t eligible for the deduction. 

The Wisconsin bill and a recent amendment to it seeks to implement the same policy when it comes to the state income tax, which currently considers tips as taxable income. The deduction would apply to tips whether paid by cash or credit. Similar to the federal law, the provision will go into effect starting tax year 2025 and sunsets after tax year 2028 — around the end of Trump’s second term in office. 

“Any time that we can allow people to keep more of their hard-earned money — that’s going to be something that I’m supporting,” Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) told the committee.

Erin Vranas, co-owner of Parthenon Gyros located in downtown Madison and chair of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association’s Board, said many restaurant employees are struggling with semi-unpredictable income. 

“Every dollar matters, so this bill really could help provide meaningful relief,” Vranas said, adding that it would also help restaurants trying to recruit and retain employees. “Wisconsin restaurants face ongoing workforce shortages, and I understand this isn’t just a restaurant thing, but we definitely feel it in this industry. AB38 will help us recruit and retain staff, making restaurant jobs more competitive and sustainable. When employees keep more of their hard-earned tips, then they’re more likely to stay and grow and see hospitality as a sustainable career, which strengthens both our businesses and Wisconsin as a state.” 

The minimum wage for tipped employees in Wisconsin is currently $2.33 per hour. Employers are required to make up the difference if an employee’s combined wages and tips do not equal the regular minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.

Susan Quam, executive vice president of the Wisconsin Restaurant Association, said she only knows of two restaurants that  pay the minimum wage. Those restaurants have a $100 per person check average and employees typically make $20 per customer “every single time they work, so we’re talking about folks who are making $100 to $150 dollars an hour in tips.” WRA, a nonprofit trade association that represents thousands of food, beverage and hospitality businesses, supports the bill.

“The vast majority of our members tell us that they’re paying well above that $2.33 to their tipped employees, some of them higher than the $7.25 minimum wage,” Quam said. “The marketplace is dictating what that base wage is, not necessarily the fact that they are getting tips.”

Tusler explained that employees would still need to report tips, both because there is a limit on the tax deduction and because tipped employees need a record of their full income when applying for loans. 

“It would make it more difficult for those tip earners to borrow money for their houses or their cars,” Tusler said.

He told the committee the bill would also cut down on confusion between the federal and state policies when people are filing taxes. 

The tax break also wouldn’t cost the state much, Tusler said. The Department of Revenue estimates that the state brings in about $33.7 million a year from tips and would lose about that much in each year of the biennium under the proposal. 

“That’s it,” Tusler said. “We have a $111 billion budget.”

The recent bipartisan state budget cut taxes by about over $1 billion, but the tips proposal was not included in the budget passed by the Republican-led Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers last month. Evers had included a similar proposal in his budget proposal, but Republican lawmakers threw it out when they started working on the budget. 

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Jacque, previously introduced the idea of exempting cash tips from taxes in 2019, though it never became law. 

The idea picked up steam nationally when President Donald Trump started campaigning on the idea, which led Republican lawmakers to reintroduce the proposal in Wisconsin this year.  

The coauthors of the bill expressed frustration that no Democrats have signed onto the bill yet, noting that Evers has supported something similar before. 

“This was something where Gov. Evers basically took that previous proposal… cut and pasted that into his budget proposal, so it’s not like there was ever any indication that this wasn’t something that shouldn’t have bipartisan support,” Jacque said. “And I certainly hope that it will going forward.”

Rep. Joan Fitzgerald (D-Fort Atkinson) said during the hearing that she and her husband, who is a bartender, have discussed the issue extensively since it started gaining popularity around the 2024 election and questioned whether a bigger conversation about helping lower-income workers needs to be had. 

“I would say encouraging employers to have better benefits, higher pay, better working conditions are also ways we get people to realize the American dream,” Fitzgerald said. “Cutting taxes might be one small part of that, but there’s a broader array of things that we can do, and if, and if that’s your goal, and it’s my goal, then I say we attack some of those other issues.” 

Jacque said he understands that tax relief needs to be multifaceted, but said that if the state starts “mandating things on employers that potentially raise costs…, you aren’t going to have customers and those jobs aren’t going to be supported.”

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Vaccine misinformation pushed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could put American lives at risk. (Eric Harkleroad/KFF Health News)

President Donald Trump’s administrations have been notorious for an array of “alternative facts” — ranging from the relatively minor (the size of inaugural crowds) to threats to U.S. democracy, such as who really won the 2020 election.

And over the past six months, the stakes have been life or death: Trump’s health officials have been endorsing alternative facts in science to impose policies that contradict modern medical knowledge.

It is an undeniable fact — true science — that vaccines have been miraculous in preventing terrible diseases from polio to tetanus to measles. Numerous studies have shown they do not cause autism. That is accepted by the scientific community.

Yet Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has no medical background or scientific training, doesn’t believe all that. The consequences of such misinformation have already been deadly.

For decades, the vast majority Americans willingly got their shots — even if a significant slice of parents had misgivings. A 2015 survey found that 25% of parents believed that the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine could cause autism. (A 1998 study that suggested the connection has been thoroughly discredited.) Despite that concern, just 2% of children entering kindergarten were exempted from vaccinations for religious or philosophical objections. Kids got their shots.

But more recently, poor government science communication and online purveyors of misinformation have tilled the soil for alternative facts to grow like weeds. In the 2024-25 school year, rates of full vaccination for those entering kindergarten dropped to just over 92%. In more than a dozen states, the rate was under 90%, and in Idaho it was under 80%. And now we have a stream of measles cases, more than 1,300 from a disease declared extinct in the U.S. a quarter-century ago.

It’s easy to see how both push and pull factors led to the acceptance of bad science on vaccines.

The number of recommended vaccines has ballooned this century, overwhelming patients and parents. That is, in large part, because the clinical science of vaccinology has boomed (that’s good). And in part because vaccines, which historically sold for pennies, now often sell for hundreds of dollars, becoming a source of big profits for drugmakers.

In 1986, a typical child was recommended to receive 11 vaccine doses — seven injections and four oral. Today, that number has risen to between 50 and 54 doses by age 18.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which renders judgments on vaccines, makes a scientific risk-benefit assessment: that the harm of getting the disease is greater than the risk of side effects. That does not mean that all vaccines are equally effective, and health officials have done a lackluster job of fostering public understanding of that fact.

Older vaccines — think polio and measles — are essentially 100% effective; diseases that parents dreaded were wiped off the map. Many newer vaccines, though recommended and useful (and often heavily advertised), don’t carry the same emotional or medical punch.

Parents of the current generation haven’t experienced how sick a child could be with measles or whooping cough, also called pertussis. Mothers didn’t really worry about hepatitis B, a virus generally transmitted through sex or intravenous drug use, infecting their child.

That lack of understanding spawned skeptics. For example, since 2010, the vaccine for influenza, which had been around for decades, has been recommended annually for all Americans at least 6 months old. In the 2024-25 season, the rate of flu vaccination was only between 36% and 54% in adults; in other years, it has been lower than that. “I got the flu vaccine, and I still got the flu” has been a common refrain of skeptics.

“Pre-covid, there were people who took everything but flu,” said Rupali Limaye, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, who studies vaccine demand and acceptance. “Then it became everything but covid. Now it’s everything — including MMR and polio.”

Even as the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed helped develop covid vaccines, conservative media outlets created doubts that the shots were needed: doubts that mRNA technology had been sufficiently tested; doubts that covid-19 was bad enough to merit a shot; concerns that the vaccines could cause infertility or autism.

Trump did little to correct these dangerous misperceptions and got booed by supporters when he said that he’d been vaccinated. Once vaccine mandates came into play, Trump strongly opposed them, reframing belief in the vaccine as a question of personal liberty. And if the government couldn’t mandate the covid shot for school, it followed that officials shouldn’t — couldn’t — mandate others.

Thus 100 years of research proving the virtues of vaccination got dropped into a stew of alternative facts. You were either pro- or anti-vaccine, and that signaled your politics. Suddenly, the anti-vax crowd was not a small fringe of liberal parents, but a much larger group of conservative stalwarts who believed that being forced to vaccinate their kids to enter school violated their individual rights.

Even within the Trump administration, there have been some who (at least partly) decried the trend. While Marty Makary, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner, defended Kennedy’s decision to roll back the recommendation that all Americans get annual covid boosters — saying the benefits were unproven — he noted it should not be a signal to stop taking other shots.

As “public trust in vaccination in general has declined,” he wrote, the reluctance to vaccinate had harmed “vital immunization programs such as that for measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccination, which has been clearly established as safe and highly effective.”

Nonetheless, Makary’s boss, Kennedy, continued to promote bad science about vaccines broadly, even as he sometimes grudgingly acknowledged their utility in cases like a measles outbreak. He has funded new research on the already disproven link between MMR shots and autism. He has halted $500 million in grants for developing vaccines using mRNA technology, the novel production method used for the first covid vaccines and a technique scientists believe holds great promise for preventing deaths from other infectious diseases.

In my 10 years practicing as a physician, I never saw a case of measles. Now there are cases in 40 states. More than 150 people have been hospitalized, and three, all unvaccinated, have died.

Alternative facts have formed what David Scales, a physician and sociologist at Weill Cornell Medical College who studies misinformation, calls “an unhealthy information system.” It is an alternative scientific universe in which too many Americans live. And some die.

This story can be republished for free (details).

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside a lower court’s ruling, allowing the Trump administration to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in National Institutes of Health grants that addressed diversity, equity and inclusion issues.

The 5-4 ruling narrowly divided the court, with Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting from their colleagues.

The Trump administration originally requested the Supreme Court to intervene in the case in July, when Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an application arguing “the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay out some $783 million in terminated grants.”

Sauer wrote the case was similar to one the Supreme Court had ruled on earlier this year, determining that a district court erred when it blocked “the Department of Education from terminating DEI-related grants.”

In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that “such claims likely belonged in the Court of Federal Claims, that the district court accordingly lacked jurisdiction.”

Sauer wrote in his application to the Supreme Court that the lower courts in the NIH grants case chose to ignore the justices’ prior ruling.

“The district court’s order directs the NIH to continue paying $783 million in federal grants that are undisputedly counter to the Administration’s priorities,” Sauer wrote. “This Court has already intervened to stay a materially identical order … and the same course is even more warranted here given the district court’s brazen refusal to follow controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

Democratic AGs weigh in

Democratic attorneys general for Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington and Wisconsin opposed the Trump administration’s request in a 49-page filing.

“The federal government’s application spins a tale of lower courts disregarding established legal guardrails to block routine agency decisions,” they wrote. “That narrative bears little resemblance to reality; indeed, it gets things exactly backward.”

The Trump administration’s decision to cancel the NIH grants, they wrote, came “without providing any meaningful explanation of their decisions.

“Defendants then executed the directives by, among other things, canceling hundreds of research grants to the plaintiff states’ public universities for projects investigating heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, alcohol and substance abuse, mental-health issues, and countless other health conditions.”

The American Public Health Association also opposed the Trump administration’s efforts to get the Supreme Court to throw out the lower court’s rulings.

The APHA wrote in its own filing that the Trump administration “failed to consider the reliance interests at stake—namely, the impact to researchers’ career progression, the risk to human life, and the damage to the overall scientific endeavor and the body of public health.”

Siding with Trump administration

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh disagreed, siding with the Trump administration and setting aside the lower court’s rulings in the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote a concurring opinion.

Gorsuch sharply rebuked the district and appeals courts in his opinion, in which Kavanaugh joined in part and dissented in part.

“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote. “In Department of Ed. v. California … this Court granted a stay because it found the government likely to prevail in showing that the district court lacked jurisdiction to order the government to pay grant obligations.”

Barrett appeared to agree, writing in her concurring opinion that “the District Court likely lacked jurisdiction to hear challenges to the grant terminations, which belong in the Court of Federal Claims.”

In a dissenting opinion, Jackson wrote that the justices did not take enough time to seriously consider the ramifications of their decision in the Education Department case when they spent “a mere nine days” deciding whether a federal district court or the Court of Federal Claims holds jurisdiction when the government terminates “federal grants en masse.”

“I viewed the Court’s intervention then—in an emergency stay posture, while racing against a fast-expiring temporary restraining order—as ‘equal parts unprincipled and unfortunate,’” Jackson wrote. “As it turns out, the Court’s decision was an even bigger mistake than I realized.”

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump speaks to the media as, left to right, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon look on after signing executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on April 23, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

A New York state appeals court on Thursday overturned as overly punitive a nearly $500 million civil penalty against President Donald Trump, but left in place a finding of fraud based on records that inflated the value of Trump’s business holdings.

A five-judge panel of the New York Appellate Division for the First Department disagreed over aspects of the case and the trial court’s ruling that awarded $465 million to the state after finding Trump liable for fraud, issuing three opinions that spanned more than 300 pages.

Two judges concluded that the finding of liability against Trump was correct, two said errors in the trial court meant a new trial should be held, and one judge said the case was wrongly decided.

Still, all five judges agreed the penalty was excessive, and the two judges who’d called for a retrial joined the two upholding the decision “for the sole purpose of ensuring finality, thereby affording the parties a path for appeal” to the state’s highest court, according to the decision.

Loan applications

A New York state court found last year that Trump committed financial fraud by submitting loan applications that exaggerated the value of some of his real estate assets, which resulted in more favorable loan terms from banks.

Writing the determinative opinion Thursday, Appeals Justice Peter Moulton said New York Attorney General Letitia James was within her power to sue over the statements, even though they were between private parties and did not involve the state.

The state has an interest in upholding “market hygiene” and discouraging fraudulent behavior, he wrote. But the fine went too far, he said.

“While the injunctive relief ordered by the court is well crafted to curb defendants’ business culture, the court’s disgorgement order, which directs that defendants pay nearly half a billion dollars to the State of New York, is an excessive fine that violates the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution,” Moulton wrote.

The amendment says that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”

Trump celebrates

One judge, Justice David Friedman, said he would have thrown out the case entirely, arguing that James overstepped her authority by bringing the civil case because no one was actually harmed. Most of the valuations were not fraudulently high and even if they were, would have resulted in the same favorable terms Trump received, Friedman wrote.

“All parties to these private transactions profited handsomely from the deals, from which there was no discernable negative effect on the public interest,” he wrote. “This action does not serve to protect the consuming public… This action does not protect the integrity or operation of the public securities market…, given that defendants do not issue publicly traded securities.”

In a post to his social media site, Truth Social, Trump exaggerated the court’s finding, saying it cleared him of wrongdoing.

“TOTAL VICTORY in the FAKE New York State Attorney General Letitia James Case!” Trump posted. “I greatly respect the fact that the Court had the Courage to throw out this unlawful and disgraceful Decision that was hurting Business all throughout New York State… The amount, including Interest and Penalties, was over $550 Million Dollars. It was a Political Witch Hunt, in a business sense, the likes of which no one has ever seen before.”

In a statement, James pledged to appeal the opinion, while highlighting that the appeals court had affirmed the finding of fraud.

“The First Department today affirmed the well-supported finding of the trial court: Donald Trump, his company and two of his children are liable for fraud,” she wrote. “It should not be lost to history: yet another court has ruled that the president violated the law, and that our case has merit.”

Thursday’s order does not affect Trump’s May 2024 criminal conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.

A state Supreme Court ruling hasn't ended the friction between Republican lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers over administrative rulemaking. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

Republican leaders of the Legislature moved Thursday to block the Evers administration from bypassing legislative committees in implementing administrative rules.

Republican leaders of the Joint Committee on Legislative Organization (JCLO), with members from both the Assembly and the Senate, sent committee members a motion Thursday instructing the Legislative Reference Bureau not to finalize or publish any rules unless they have gone through a review by the Legislature in accordance with Wisconsin law.

The motion came two days after a published report that Gov. Tony Evers  instructed cabinet heads to skip the Legislature in the final steps of the rulemaking process.

It is the latest development in an ongoing feud between the Democratic governor and Republican leaders in the Legislature over the power of the executive branch to write rules in order to carry out state laws.

In a memo Aug. 12, Evers told department secretaries, “There no longer remains any statutory requirement to wait for legislative committee review before promulgating a rule once I have approved it.”

The governor’s memo cited the July 8 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in the case Evers v. Marklein that curtailed the power of the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) to block executive branch rulemaking.

In the 4-3 decision, which has become known as Evers v. Marklein II, the Court majority ruled that state laws giving JCRAR broad powers to block administrative rules indefinitely were unconstitutional.

“This is good and important news as it means we can — and must — continue the people’s work in earnest,” Evers wrote in the memo, first reported by WisPolitics.com. “Accordingly, I am directing agencies to submit rules that have made it through that relevant part of the process to the Legislative Reference Bureau for finalization and publication.”

The motion distributed to JCLO members Thursday takes direct aim at the assertion in Evers’ memo.

The motion states that “the Legislative Reference Bureau (LRB) shall neither finalize nor publish any rules or proposed rules that failed to comply with the standing committee statutory requirements of s. 227.19 (2) to (4), Stats., including rules or proposed rules that have already been submitted to the LRB.”

Those statutes require that when administrative rules are in final draft form, the Legislature must be notified, a detailed report on the rule must be submitted, and the rule must be reviewed by a standing committee of the Legislature.

There are 27 administrative rules submitted to the Legislative Reference Bureau currently awaiting publication in the Administrative Register.

The bureau director, Rick Champagne, told the Wisconsin Examiner on Thursday that 13 of those rules have not yet completed standing committee review. Those have been classified as not to be published.

“Evers v. Marklein II did not address the constitutionality of standing committee review of proposed administrative rules,” Champagne wrote in an email message.

Among the rules held up pending review are one addressing the state’s policy on gray wolf management and one on surface water degradation. 

The remaining 14 rules have completed the standing committee review and are before the Joint Committee for the Review of Administrative Rules or have completed that process, according to Champagne.  

“I believe these are ready for publication under Evers v. Marklein II,” Champagne told the Examiner.

“JCLO has the authority to direct the manner in which the LRB will carry out its statutory duties,” Champagne added.  “The Wisconsin Supreme Court, in Evers v. Marklein II, did not eliminate standing committee review of proposed administrative rules.  If JCLO so directs, the LRB will not finalize or publish any proposed administrative rules that have not completed standing committee review.”

The paper ballot votes on the motion are due Friday and results are expected to be posted by the end of the day. The motion is expected to pass given the committee’s GOP majority.

The committee’s Republican co-chairs, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate President Mary Felzkowski, issued a press release Thursday calling Evers’ action to sidestep submitting rules to the Legislature for committee review a “direct contradiction” of the Court’s ruling.

“In Evers v. Marklein, the Wisconsin Supreme Court clearly stated that the Legislature ‘alone maintains the ability to amend, expand, or limit the breadth of administrative rulemaking in other branches” of government, the press release said. “Governor Tony Evers is attempting to circumvent statutory requirements that are part of the rule-making process and that no court has held to be invalid in any respect.”

“We are following the law and maintaining the fundamental checks and balances of lawmaking,” Vos and Felzkowski said in a joint statement. “The governor is flagrantly disregarding the rule of law and egregiously abusing the power of his office.”

Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, countered with a charge that the Republican lawmakers were defying the law. 

“Republicans are reaching new levels of lawlessness, whether it’s President Trump trying to take over Washington DC, Republicans in Texas trying to rig maps and elections in their favor, or Republicans in Wisconsin who appear poised to disobey decisions made by our state’s highest court,” Cudaback wrote in an email message. “Republicans are not above the law — they should follow the law like everyone else is expected to.”

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A homeless encampment near the Lincoln Memorial is cleared by employees of the Washington, D.C., government on Aug. 14, 2025. City officials put notices at the camp that they would be breaking it down after President Donald Trump issued his "crime emergency" order. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Officials have already cleared dozens of homeless encampments in the District of Columbia in recent days as President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the nation’s capital for a “crime emergency” at the same time takes aim at people without housing.

Advocates working to end homelessness within the district and across the country raised alarm to States Newsroom over these removals and their impact on people without housing and the providers trying to serve them. The drive to push out homeless people came after Trump in July signed an executive order that attempts to overhaul federal policy on homelessness, declaring: “Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.”

Multi-agency teams had eliminated 48 encampments in the District of Columbia as of Tuesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a briefing. 

Metropolitan Police Department patrol units “are actively working with city officials to locate and clear additional encampments and remove homeless residents off of Washington’s streets,” she said.

Leavitt told reporters days prior that homeless people in the city would be “given the option to leave their encampment, to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services,” and would be “susceptible” to fines or jail time if they refused.

A day before Trump declared his “crime emergency” in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 11, the president wrote on social media that homeless people must move out “IMMEDIATELY.”

“We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capital,” he wrote. 

Days later, bulldozers and garbage trucks were at work dismantling campsites.

According to WTOP News last week, leaders in the surrounding area of Montgomery County, Maryland, were preparing for a potential rise of homeless people in the county as a result of the president’s crackdown.

An annual point-in-time count released in May from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments saw 5,138 people experiencing homelessness in the district on one night in 2025 — a 9% decrease compared to 2024.

Homeless people’s belongings tossed

Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director at the National Homelessness Law Center, said “things seem so fluid and so chaotic that it’s hard to get an accurate representation” of where Trump’s campaign to get homeless people out of sight stands.

Rabinowitz said last week he witnessed the tossing of people’s belongings and the evictions of people experiencing homelessness, noting that “it was fast, it was chaotic, it was expensive, and it didn’t help anybody.”

“We know that clearing encampments makes it harder for people to get into housing,” he added. “People’s IDs that they need to get into housing are destroyed, people’s medications that they need to stay healthy are thrown away, people’s bikes that they need to get to work are often trashed.”

Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said the practice and policy of fining, ticketing and arresting people rather than creating housing and services for them is “devastating” — both to people experiencing homelessness and the providers who serve them.

Oliva said outreach workers can lose track of people that they’ve been working with for a long time, destroying trust between the two.

“That’s some of what I’ve seen over the last week here — as providers are trying to keep people as safe as possible, it’s getting harder to track them down to make sure that they can provide the services that are necessary for folks.”

Street outreach teams at work

Lara Pukatch, chief advocacy officer at Miriam’s Kitchen, said the organization, which works to end chronic homelessness in Washington, D.C., is “deeply concerned about what’s happening.”

Pukatch said the group’s street outreach teams “have really been working almost around the clock to address what’s going on,” including sharing information with people living outside when they hear about threats of encampment evictions to make sure they know what’s happening and the options they have.

“This also involves working nights, working weekends, connecting people to the life-saving supplies and supports that they’ve always needed, but in addition, really working hard with people to make sure that they’re safe and that they are not going to be further harmed or traumatized by what’s happening in the city.”

July executive order

Trump’s federal takeover in Washington, D.C., and the encampment clearings build off of the sweeping July executive order he signed.

The order says it aims to end federal support for “Housing First” policies that “deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.” The “Housing First” model focuses on providing immediate housing, with services offered afterward.

The order also calls on Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner to ensure that programs receiving federal housing and homelessness assistance require people with “substance use disorder or serious mental illness” obtain treatment or mental health services in order to participate.

Part of the order also encourages involuntary civil commitment expansion, where individuals with mental health conditions are placed into treatment facilities against their wishes.

Administration officials who say they are fighting crime in the district have also emphasized actions of homeless people. Vice President JD Vance, talking to National Guard troops at Union Station on Wednesday with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, said when he visited the transit center with his children two years ago, they were “screamed at by violent vagrants and it was scaring the hell out of my kids.” 

Now, he said, “DC is already safer than it was nine days ago. We’re going to make it safer still to come. This is your city. You should feel free to come and visit here, have a meal, see all these incredible monuments, and actually enjoy yourself.”

Supreme Court decision

Oliva, of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, noted that while the events of the past week are “certainly alarming,” they mark a broader trend that has gained steam, beginning with the 2024 Supreme Court decision that allowed cities to punish homeless people for sleeping outdoors, even where there is no shelter available to them.

“What we’ve seen since President Trump came into office is a series of policies put in place — or attempted to put in place — through executive orders that really don’t do anything to address the root causes of homelessness because we know that homelessness itself is not actually a criminal issue, it’s an economic issue,” she said.

Though the president’s federal takeover has a 30-day limit, Trump wants an extension, leading to questions about how long these actions will continue.