President Donald Trump holds up a chart while speaking during an event announcing broad global tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House on April 2, 2025.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in early November on whether President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs are legal, according to an order the court released Tuesday.

The one-page unsigned order laid out an expedited timeline, which the administration had requested, for the consolidated legal challenges brought by a handful of business owners and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general.

A U.S. appeals court sided with the businesses and state officials late last month. In its 7-4 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling in May finding Trump’s unprecedented use of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to trigger global tariffs violated the Constitution.

The justices’ acceptance of the case is the latest in a string of legal challenges against the administration that have escalated to the high court since Trump took office in January. Recently the Supreme Court has handed the administration wins on immigration enforcement and withholding foreign aid.

Trump began imposing wide-reaching tariffs in February and significantly broadened them in the following months on goods from around the globe after declaring national emergencies — first over illegal fentanyl smuggling, and then declaring trade deficits an emergency. A trade deficit means the U.S. imports more goods from a country than that nation’s businesses purchase from U.S. suppliers.

As of July, the U.S. had collected roughly $122 billion in tariff revenue, according to a monthly tracker produced by the Peterson Institute on International Economics. 

Tariffs are taxes that the U.S. government collects from domestic businesses and purchasers when they import foreign goods.

In the administration’s appeal to the Supreme Court to fast-track the case, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent argued the government would face “catastrophic” economic fallout if it had to repay businesses for the tariffs already collected, particularly if the court waited until next year to take the case.

Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among states that challenged Trump’s emergency tariffs. 

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

Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador.  (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration paid El Salvador $4.76 million to detain up to 300 immigrant men for up to a year at a notorious mega-prison and barred the funds from being used to help asylum seekers, reproductive care or diversity initiatives, according to a court document filed Tuesday. 

It’s the first time the financial agreement has been made public after the White House initially said the deal amounted to $6 million. 

The payments were part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown and decision to invoke a wartime law to remove Venezuelan nationals. 

The four-page agreement between the United States and El Salvador verifies that the funds came out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law, which gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to a human rights law known as the Leahy Law. 

That human rights law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations. 

“The purpose of this grant is to provide funds to be used by the Salvadoran law enforcement and corrections agencies for its law enforcement needs, which includes costs associated with detaining the 238 TdA members recently deported to El Salvador,” according to the agreement.

Those who drafted the law raised concerns that those payments violated human rights laws, as more than 250 Venezuelan men were removed from the U.S. to the brutal prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, despite a federal judge’s order barring such action.

Congressional Democrats have asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House for a copy of the financial agreement for months, over concerns the funds were being used in violation of human rights. 

March flight to El Salvador

On March 15, the Trump administration sent 238 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua. 

The agreement, dated March 22, noted the men could be detained up to a year. 

It also bars any of the $4.76 million to be used to help asylum seekers seek legal counsel for the U.S. asylum process, for access to abortion, funds for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency that provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinians or for programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

The men were released back to Venezuela as part of a prison swap in July, but they remained at CECOT for four months. Some of those detained, including Kilmar Abrego Garica, of Maryland, whose mistaken deportation captured national attention, detailed psychological and physical torture. 

No protection from torture

The document was obtained through a lawsuit by Democracy Forward, which specifically argued the financial agreement between El Salvador and the U.S. “was created without any legal basis.” 

“The correspondence between the U.S. State Department and El Salvador confirms what we have long suspected: the Trump-Vance administration did nothing to meaningfully ensure that individuals disappeared from the U.S. to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison were protected from torture, indefinite confinement, or other abuses,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “The agreement did, however, go to lengths to ensure that the funds the U.S. provided to El Salvador not be used to provide reproductive health care or to assist asylum seekers in accessing resources and counsel.”  

That case is being overseen by District of Columbia Judge James Boasberg, who also ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes carrying men removed under the wartime law. Instead, the planes landed in El Salvador. 

Secretary of U.S. Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks at the Rx and Illicit Drug Summit at the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 24, 2025. (John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released its strategy to Make America Healthy Again on Tuesday, which officials hope will reduce chronic diseases and align federal policy with their beliefs. 

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a briefing on the strategy the 128 “recommendations are things that I’ve been dreaming about my whole life.”

Kennedy said he hoped to implement several of the changes before the end of the year, including defining what constitutes an ultra-processed food, updating water quality standards for forever chemicals known as PFAS and changing infant formula standards. 

The report also includes potentially controversial elements that address access to vaccines, a topic several Republican senators rebuked Kennedy over during a lengthy hearing last week. 

The 20-page strategy follows the MAHA Commission’s release of its first report in May that outlined four areas of concern — nutrition, physical activity, environmental factors and “overmedicalization.”

The proposals in the new report range in scope from issues that have largely been addressed to initiatives that are likely to cause concerns among doctors and reputable medical organizations. 

For example, the strategy calls on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to “develop guidance on diagnostics and treatments for food allergies,” even though doctors are already able to diagnose and treat those conditions. 

The report also calls on the FDA to “improve regulatory processes for over-the-counter sunscreen, which has fallen behind other countries.”

Vaccine plan to come

The White House Domestic Policy Council and HHS intend to draft a separate plan addressing the childhood vaccine schedule, vaccine injuries, vaccine science, “misaligned incentives” and “scientific and medical freedom.”

Kennedy indicated during the briefing that he may seek to overhaul the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, claiming that 99% of vaccine injuries are not reported, in part, because doctors are not compensated for doing so.  

“We are recasting the entire program so that vaccine injuries will be reported; they will be studied; that individuals who suffer them will not be denied, or marginalized, or vilified, or gaslighted,” Kennedy said. “They will be welcomed and we will learn everything we can about them.”

The report doesn’t include any plans to reduce pesticide use or to seek solutions to end mass shootings, though Kennedy and others at the event said those are issues the administration will look into. 

“The firearms question is a complex question and it’s not an easy question,” Kennedy said. “The violence is what we’re concerned with.”

Kennedy said that guns have been around for a while and that they also exist in other countries that don’t have nearly the number of mass shootings as the United States, before talking about psychiatric drugs, video games and social media. 

“We are looking at that at NIH,” Kennedy said, referring to the National Institutes of Health. “We are doing studies now. We’re initiating studies to look at the correlation and the potential connection between overmedicating our kids and this violence.” 

Kennedy deferred a question about pesticides to White House Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Haley, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin. 

Haley referenced a section in the newly released report titled “cumulative exposure” that said USDA, EPA and NIH will use new approach methodologies “to improve methods for evaluating human health and environmental risks of chemical contaminants.”

Rollins told reporters that pesticides require study before being approved and that they are needed to ensure a stable food supply. 

“Is it a perfect process? Arguably there is no perfect process,” Rollins said. “But it is a strong process that our farmers stand by. And a crop protection tool, such as pesticides, is absolutely essential for America not to compromise our food supply system at this point.”

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

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday said the Trump administration can temporarily hold on to $4 billion in foreign aid funding approved by Congress, overturning a lower court’s order and continuing a struggle over who controls the nation’s purse strings. 

The one-page ruling from the emergency docket, signed by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., came just one day after the administration appealed the lower court’s ruling. 

While the original lawsuit over withheld foreign aid began in February and stemmed from an executive order, the Trump administration sent Congress a rescissions request covering some of the spending in late August. 

The proposal is part of the formal process laid out in a 1974 law that allows the president to ask lawmakers to cancel previously approved spending. 

Congress typically has 45 days to approve, modify, or disagree with a rescissions request. During that time the president can legally freeze the funding and only has to spend it if lawmakers don’t approve the plan.  

This particular rescission request, however, was sent to lawmakers within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year, creating a dispute that complicated the nature of the original lawsuit. 

That maneuver, sometimes called a pocket rescission, is considered illegal by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and several members of Congress, though White House budget director Russ Vought believes it’s within the bounds of the law. 

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in the Trump administration’s appeal that the federal district court’s order to spend the funding “requires the Executive Branch to rush to obligate the same $4 billion that the President has just proposed rescinding between now and September 30, and thus puts the Executive Branch at war with itself.”

“Just as the President is pressing for rescission and explaining to Congress that obligating these funds would harm U.S. foreign policy interests, his subordinates are being forced to proceed to identify and even negotiate with potential recipients,” he added. 

The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday doesn’t address whether the justices agree with the administration that it can refuse to spend the billions in foreign aid since it sent the rescissions request close to the end of the fiscal year. 

Roberts wrote “that the September 3, 2025 order of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, case Nos. 1:25-cv-400 and 1:25-cv-402, is hereby partially stayed for funds that are subject to the President’s August 28, 2025 recission proposal currently pending before Congress pending further order of the undersigned or of the Court. It is further ordered that a response to the application be filed on or before Friday, September 12th, 2025, by 4 p.m. (EDT).”

A petroleum refinery in Louisiana. Last week, a federal appeals court ruled that Wisconsin doesn't need to comply with stricter air quality rules to decrease smog in three southeastern Wisconsin counties. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

A federal appeals court has ruled that the state of Wisconsin and businesses operating in certain parts of southeastern Wisconsin will not be required to meet more stringent air quality standards for ozone pollution — giving state regulators and industry a reprieve from what they say were “costly and burdensome requirements.”

On Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state’s request to temporarily postpone a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Late last year, the EPA reclassified areas of Milwaukee, Kenosha and Sheboygan counties as being in “serious nonattainment” of the agency’s 2015 ozone standards. In February, the state filed a lawsuit for the review of the EPA finding. 

The enforcement of the EPA standard would have forced the state to revise its plan for complying with national air quality standards under the Clean Air Act, and hundreds of businesses would have had to assess if their existing permits need to be renewed or revised. The state complained that these measures would have cost the Department of Natural Resources and the state’s businesses millions of dollars when most of the ozone pollution over the areas is caused elsewhere and settles over southeast Wisconsin after drifting across Lake Michigan. 

Environmental groups have said that even if Wisconsin’s industries aren’t creating most of the ozone pollution, the businesses have a duty to work to protect the health and well-being of the state’s residents. In 2018, Clean Wisconsin sued the EPA to force the agency to declare the three southeastern Wisconsin counties aren’t complying with federal air quality rules. 

Ozone pollution, also known as smog, occurs most often in the summer when air pollution from vehicle exhaust and industrial processes reacts with sunlight. The pollution can be harmful to people’s respiratory systems. 

“The fact that southeastern Wisconsin has been reclassified as in serious nonattainment for ozone means that residents of those counties are at higher risk of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and Wisconsin should be implementing all possible policies and strategies to reduce ozone pollution to protect public health,” Clean Wisconsin attorney Katie Nekola said in a statement to Wisconsin Public Radio. 

But business groups and the state have argued the costs are too high for a problem that doesn’t start in Wisconsin. DNR analysis has found that less than 10% of the ozone pollution in the state is caused by Wisconsin industry. 

The state Department of Justice said in its lawsuit that the “change triggers costly permit requirements, complex regulations, and stringent emissions offset mandates,” which could create $4 million in added costs for the state and cost an estimated 382 businesses between $1 million and $6.9 million.

Scott Manley, a lobbyist for Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, said the court’s Friday order grants relief from the “crushing and job-killing ozone regulations.” 

“Data from both the DNR and EPA indicate that the vast majority of ozone pollution in eastern Wisconsin is caused by emissions originating from outside our state borders,” Manley said in a statement. “It’s unfair to punish Wisconsin businesses for pollution they didn’t create, and [the] order is the first step toward righting this wrong.”

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Wisconsin already doesn’t allow immigrants without legal authorization to apply to BadgerCare. There are two programs, Medicaid Emergency Services and BadgerCare Plus Prenatal Plan, that will provide coverage for those without legal status. (Photo by Thomas Barwick/Getty Images)

A Republican bill that seeks to stop Wisconsin from using public funds to support health services for immigrants who lack legal authorization to reside in the U.S. is poised to advance on Tuesday. 

The bill — AB 308 — would prohibit state, county, village, long-term care district and federal funds from being used to subsidize, reimburse or provide compensation for any health care services for a person not lawfully in the U.S.

It is the latest bill that Republican lawmakers have introduced targeting immigrants. Another bill introduced and passed earlier this year seeks to require local law enforcement officers to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. 

The bill is coauthored by Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan) and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) and currently has 25 other Republican cosponsors. No Democrats are signed onto the bill. 

During the bill hearing last week, Dallman focused mostly on Wisconsin’s Medicaid program, BadgerCare, arguing that he wants to prevent the state from ever taking steps similar to Minnesota and other states that expanded their Medicaid programs to cover immigrants who lack legal status. Wisconsin already doesn’t allow immigrants without legal authorization to apply to BadgerCare.

In 2023, Minnesota expanded its Medicaid program to cover residents without citizenship or legal residency status, but that was repealed after Republicans threatened a government shutdown to force Democrats to eliminate the expansion. 

The cost estimate for the program was nearly $200 million, Dallman noted.

“These are enormous price tags for individuals who are not here lawfully. This condition should not be the case here in Wisconsin with a state budget that is currently already very lean,” Dallman said. “We must prioritize our citizens over those who are here unlawfully. While Wisconsin currently does not allow undocumented immigrants to enroll in BadgerCare, this bill preemptively… ensures that Wisconsin does not become like Minnesota or Illinois.”

Dallman noted that the bill includes a carve out to ensure that it won’t lose Wisconsin money or put it out of step with federal law.

According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau summary, the prohibitions in the bill would not apply to the extent that a payment is required under federal law or the application of the prohibitions would result in the loss of any federal funds.

“This bill is not about immigration,” Dallman said, but it is about “protecting our constituents and their hard-earned tax dollars that they send into our state.”

In written testimony, Wanggaard said the bill would extend the current restrictions to “all other health services paid for by the State of Wisconsin.” Wanggaard, who did not attend the public hearing, wrote that the bill would ensure Wisconsin “is not the next test dummy extending health benefits to illegal aliens.”

Democrats and advocates said they are concerned about the sweeping effects the bill could have on all Wisconsinites. 

William Parke-Sutherland, government affairs director at Kids Forward, said the bill would be unworkable as law and would affect every health care provider in the state.

“This bill is entirely short sighted, and nobody has thought about how this would create a state in which we do not want to live,” Parke-Sutherland said. “If a child is at the school and is sick, does the school nurse need to figure out how to verify their status before they provide any degree of care?… I just don’t think that people have thought through the consequences of us in Wisconsin having to live in a situation where we all need to carry our papers.” 

Parke-Sutherland noted that there are already strict citizenship requirements people need to meet to enroll in nearly all Medicaid programs.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) outlines the restrictions on its website as well as  two programs available to noncitizens. One is Medicaid Emergency Services, which provides short-term medical coverage for people who have a medical emergency and aren’t eligible for BadgerCare Plus or Wisconsin Medicaid, and the other is BadgerCare Plus Prenatal Plan, which provides health care coverage for pregnant mothers who are not eligible for BadgerCare Plus due to immigration status or being in prison or jail.

“This is trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, and it’s creating way, way, way more problems,” Parke-Sutherland said. “If you are creating a situation where you’re prohibiting funding for services for people who are unlawfully present, then you are creating a need for people to verify their status in order to receive health care.” 

In a fiscal analysis, the Department of Corrections said it is concerned the bill could violate the 8th Amendment. A 1976 Supreme Court decision in Estelle v. Gamble established that the deliberate failure to deal with an inmate’s medical needs constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. 

Wanggaard refuted the analysis in written testimony, saying the bill language means it would only apply to state programs that require enrollment. 

“It does not mean that, for example, an illegal immigrant in the state prison system could not receive health care services from DOC,” Wanggaard said. 

The language of the bill, however, says that “no funds of this state or of any county, village, town, or long-term care district… and no federal funds passing through the state treasury shall be authorized for or paid to any person to subsidize, reimburse, or otherwise provide compensation for any health care services for an individual who is not lawfully present in the United States.”

Rep. Karen Kirsch (D-Greenfield) said her Republican colleagues are taking a page from President Donald Trump and his administration by downplaying the effect of the bill. 

“They’re watching how Trump handles things,” Kirsch said. “They’re pushing the envelope on every interpretation of every word and every piece of legislation to go target people, to go after people… They’re watching how he handles things, and I think that they’re mimicking that at the state. They’re trying to make it sound like, ‘Well, this is all so reasonable. This is not a big deal. Don’t worry about it.’ And then if it passes, then we’re going to see it’s way… way worse.”

Kirsch said she is concerned about the potential “chilling effect” that the bill could have, discouraging individuals and families from seeking care when they need it. 

“[Republicans are] trying to raise this to the public consciousness, and then people are going to be confused,” Kirsch said. “‘Is this a way that they’re going to find me, if I’m an undocumented person?… Even if I do qualify for care, maybe something’s going to happen to me?’ It can have this overall chilling effect of confusion of whether or not people feel safe enough to get care.”

Kirsch took issue with the argument that the bill would protect taxpayers’ money. 

“When they do have access to health care, that also keeps our health care prices down because they’re not showing up in our emergency rooms, they’re doing preventative care, they’re taking care of their diabetes, and they’re not showing up with some serious diabetes complication in our emergency room,” Kirsch said. 

Kirsch also noted that undocumented immigrants pay sales tax and contribute to the state’s economy. She referenced a 2024 report from the University of Wisconsin School for Workers that found that undocumented immigrants specifically contributed $240 million in state and local taxes in 2022.

According to the Wisconsin Lobbying website, the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, Inc., Kids Forward, the Wisconsin chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, the Wisconsin Association of School Nurses and the Wisconsin Council of Churches are registered against the bill. The only group registered in favor is FGA Action, a Florida-based nonprofit that advocates for conservative policies in statehouses around the country.

David Gwidt, Deputy Communications Director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said in a statement to the Examiner that the legislation if enacted “could result in absurd circumstances for medical and mental health providers across the state and exacerbate this fear and uncertainty experienced by our immigrant neighbors.” 

The Assembly State Affairs Committee plans to vote on whether to advance the legislation Tuesday, setting it up for a floor vote later this week.

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The federal courthouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Another trial in the killing of 17-year-old Alvin Cole by then-Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah began Monday, with attorneys battling over whether Mensah used excessive force when he killed Cole following a foot chase in 2020. U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman is presiding over the case, as he did when the case went to trial earlier this year, ending in a hung jury. Mensah has claimed that Cole pointed a gun in his direction, making him fear for his life and triggering his decision to fire five shots at Cole.  

An all-white, eight-member jury was selected out of a pool of 36 potential jurors, with an even split of men and women. None of the jurors are from Milwaukee. Two indicated that they have close relatives who served in law enforcement, though they said this would not sway their decision-making. 

Attorney Kimberley Motley, representing Cole and his family, used a projection screen to display a photo of Cole when he was younger. She told jurors that sometimes kids do stupid things, which in this case was running from the police, but also that running alone does not give grounds for officers to use deadly force. “Some kids ran faster, some kids ran slower, and Alvin was one of the slower kids,” Motley said. 

Motley noted that Mensah was not the first officer on the scene. Yet he was the only officer to fire. She stressed to the jury that Mensah, not Cole, “is the only one on trial,” and that jurors can acknowledge that police have a hard job while also finding that Mensah used excessive force. 

Cole was Mensah’s third shooting over a five-year period at Wauwatosa PD, a fact not shared with jurors. In his opening statement, attorney Joseph Wirth told jurors that foot chases are incredibly dangerous and unpredictable and that Cole made “catastrophically bad” decisions and “the escalation of danger” was “enormous”. After firing a gun he was carrying, Wirth said Cole went into a crouch-like position, fired at Olson, and then turned towards Mensah before he was killed. One of the key issues in the case has been conflicting statements from police officers on the scene, with Mensah saying the gun was only pointed at him, Officer David Shamsi (who was closest to Cole), saying the gun hadn’t moved at all, and Officer Even Olson saying that the gun was pointed towards him and away from Mensah. 

“Sympathy for loss of life can exist at the same time as your duty as a juror to uphold the law,” Wirth told the jurors. He asked them to “clear your minds of sympathy” and reiterated that “Alvin Cole made catastrophically bad decisions.”

Both civilian and law enforcement witnesses were called to the stand Monday, beginning with UW-Milwaukee film and documentary teacher Sean Kafer, who’d reviewed squad and deposition videos for the trial. Kafer testified that he added a red circle to a version of the squad video depicting the shooting, and removed background noise. The video was played multiple times for jurors. Wirth also played versions of the squad video. The low quality of the video was one of the issues noted by the jurors who failed to reach a unanimous decision in the last trial. 

Shamsi, now an FBI agent and a major in the U.S. Army Reserve with combat experience, was working overtime the night of the shooting. He was among the officers who “floated” to the area in case they were needed. 

After the first shot went off, Shamsi testified that Cole ended up on his hands and knees, with the firearm still in his right hand. Mensah came from behind Shamsi, who said that he did not see Cole turn or take a shooter’s stance as Wirth said in opening statements.

Video from Shamsi’s squad car was also played capturing him talking to other officers, including investigators from the Milwaukee Police Department who’d come to take his statement. In those videos, Shamsi can be heard saying “he was crawling” and that Shamsi was right next to “dude” when the shooting happened. When asked about Cole aiming the gun, Shamsi said, “I did not see it move.” Shamsi cautioned, though, that the situation was chaotic and rapid, and that he may not have noticed everything. He added that it was a deadly situation, and that he was prepared to fire if needed. 

Shenora Statten-Jordan, a principal at Messmer High School testified that she was leaving a Mayfair-area restaurant when the shooting happened. Driving her white SUV beside her husband and two children in the back, Statten-Jordan testified to seeing lights and commotion near the Cheesecake Factory parking lot. As her vehicle approached she could see other officers responding, hear the shots, and see a boy fall to the ground onto his stomach with his legs still kicking “as if he was still running.” 

Wirth attempted to establish, as he’d done in the last trial, that Statten-Jordan was not in a position to actually see the shooting. Video from Shamsi’s dash camera and a passing Milwaukee County bus, however, showed that Statten-Jordan was where she’d testified she was. After witnessing the shooting, she was interviewed by the Greenfield Police Department as part of the shooting investigation. Statten-Jordan said she’d offered to go back to the scene with officers, but that they didn’t take her up on the offer.

The last witness of the day was Wauwatosa officer Jeffrey Johnson, who left his own patrol sector to respond to the mall that day. Johnson recalled meeting Shamsi, chasing the teens and hearing the shots that ended Cole’s life. Johnson testified that Cole had fallen to his hands and knees, and that from his position 20-25 yards away that he, like Shamsi, did not see Cole move. Nor did Johnson fire his weapon, although he drew it after the first shot was fired. Johnson said that although he didn’t see Cole move while on the ground, a lot was going on. Johnson said that officer training does not require a gun to be pointed at you to justify firing. 

The trial is expected to last until late Wednesday or early Thursday, when the case will be turned over for deliberations. Dr. Weislaw Tlomak, Chief Medical Officer of the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office, is expected to begin testimony Tuesday.

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A customer enters a CVS store in October 2023 in Los Angeles. Pharmacies in Black and Latino neighborhoods and those with more residents on Medicaid are less likely to regularly dispense buprenorphine — one of the main medications used to treat opioid use disorder. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Pharmacies in Black and Latino neighborhoods are less likely to dispense buprenorphine — one of the main treatments for opioid use disorder — even though people of color are more likely to die from opioid overdoses.

The drug helps reduce cravings for opioids and the likelihood of a fatal overdose.

While the nation as a whole has seen decreases in opioid overdose deaths in recent years, overdose deaths among Black, Latino and Indigenous people have continued to increase.

Many medical and health policy experts fear the broad domestic policy law President Donald Trump signed in July will worsen the problem by increasing the number of people without health insurance. As a result of the law, the number of people without coverage will increase by about 10 million by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

About 7.5 million of the people who will lose coverage under the new law are covered by Medicaid. Shortly before Trump signed the bill into law, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University estimated that roughly 156,000 Medicaid recipients will lose access to medications for opioid addiction because of the cuts, resulting in approximately 1,000 more overdose deaths annually.

Because Black and Hispanic people are overrepresented on the rolls, the Medicaid cuts will have a disproportionate effect on communities that already face higher barriers to getting medications to treat addiction.

From 2017 to 2023, the percentage of U.S. retail pharmacies regularly dispensing buprenorphine increased from 33% to 39%, according to a study published last week in Health Affairs.

But researchers found the drug was much less likely to be available in pharmacies in mostly Black (18% of pharmacies) and Hispanic neighborhoods (17%), compared with mostly white ones (46%).

In some states, the disparity was even worse. In California, for example, only about 9% of pharmacies in Black neighborhoods dispensed buprenorphine, compared with 52% in white neighborhoods.

The researchers found buprenorphine was least available in Black and Latino neighborhoods across nearly all states.

Barriers to treatment

Dr. Rebecca Trotzky-Sirr, a family physician who specializes in addiction medicine, said many communities of color are “pharmacy deserts.” Even the pharmacies that do exist in those neighborhoods tend to “have additional barriers to obtain buprenorphine and other controlled substances out of a concern for historic overuse of some treatments,” said Trotzky-Sirr, who wasn’t involved in the study.

In addition to its federal classification as a controlled substance, buprenorphine is also subject to state regulations to prevent illegal use. Pharmacies that carry it know that wholesalers and distributors audit their orders, which dissuades some from stocking or dispensing it.

Dima Qato, associate professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Southern California and an author of the Health Affairs study, said that without changes in policy, Black and Hispanic people will continue to have an especially hard time getting buprenorphine.

“If you don’t address these dispensing regulations, or regulate buprenorphine from the aspect of pharmacy regulations, people are still going to encounter barriers accessing it,” she said.

In neighborhoods where at least a fifth of the population is on Medicaid, just 35% of pharmacies dispensed buprenorphine, Qato and her team found. But in neighborhoods with fewer residents on Medicaid, about 42% of pharmacies carried the drug.

Medicaid covers nearly half — 47% — of nonelderly adults who suffer from opioid use disorder. In states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, another recent study found an increase in people getting prescriptions for buprenorphine.

“Medicaid is the backbone of care for people struggling with opioid use disorder,” said Cherlette McCullough, a Florida-based mental health therapist. “We’re going to see people in relapse. We’re going to see more overdoses. We’re going to see more people in the ER.”

Qato said the shortage of pharmacies in minority communities is likely to get worse, as many independent pharmacists are already struggling to stay open.

“We know they’re more likely to close in neighborhoods of color, so there’s going to be even fewer pharmacies that carry it in the neighborhoods that really need it,” she said.

‘There needs to be urgency’

Qato and her colleagues say states and local governments should mandate that pharmacies carry a minimum stock of buprenorphine and dispense it to anyone coming in with a legitimate prescription. As examples, they point to a Philadelphia ordinance mandating that pharmacies carry the opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone and similar emergency contraception requirements in Massachusetts.

“We need to create expectations. We need to encourage our pharmacies to carry this to make it accessible, same day, and there needs to be urgency,” said Arianna Campbell, a physician assistant and co-founder of the Bridge Center, a California-based organization that aims to help increase addiction treatment in emergency rooms.

“In many of the conversations I have with pharmacies, when I’m getting some pushback, I have to say: ‘Hey, this person’s at the highest risk of dying right now. They need this medication right now.’”

She said patients frequently become discouraged due to barriers they face in getting prescriptions filled. The Bridge Center has been expanding its patient navigator program across the state, and helping other states start their own. The program helps patients identify pharmacies where they can fill their prescription fastest.

“There’s a medication that can help you, but at every turn it’s really hard to get it,” she said, calling the disparities in access to medication treatment “unacceptable.”

Trotzky-Sirr, the California doctor, fears the looming Medicaid cuts will cause many of her patients to discontinue treatment and relapse. Many of her patients are covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.

“A lot of our patients are able to obtain medications for treatment of addiction like buprenorphine, because of the state covering the cost of the medication,” said Trotzky-Sirr, who also is a regional coordinator at the Bridge Center.

“They don’t have the resources to pay for it, cash, out of pocket.”

Some low-income patients switch between multiple providers or clinics as they try to find care and coverage, she added. These could be interpreted as red flags to a pharmacy.

Trotzky-Sirr argued buprenorphine does not need to be monitored as carefully as opioids and other drugs that are easier to misuse or overuse.

“Buprenorphine does not have those features and really needs to be in a class by itself,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain that to a pharmacist in 30 seconds over the phone.”

More is known about the medication now than when it was placed on the controlled substances list about two decades ago, said Brendan Saloner, a Bloomberg Professor of American Health in Addiction and Overdose at Johns Hopkins University.

Pharmacies are fearful of regulatory scrutiny and don’t have “countervailing pressure” to ensure patients get the treatments, he said.

On top of that fear, Medicaid managed care plans’ prior authorization processes may also be adding to the pharmacy bottleneck, he said.

“Black and Latino communities have higher rates of Medicaid enrollment, so to the extent that Medicaid prior authorization techniques are a hassle to pharmacies, that may also kind of discourage them [pharmacies] from stocking buprenorphine,” he said.

In some states, buprenorphine is much more readily available. In Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont, more than 70% of pharmacies carried the drug, according to the study. Buprenorphine availability was highest in states such as Oregon that have the least restrictive regulations for dispensing it.

In contrast, less than a quarter of pharmacies in Iowa, North Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C., carried the medication.

“We’re going to see more people becoming unhoused, because without treatment, they’re going to go back to those old habits,” McCullough, the Florida therapist, said. “When we talk about marginalized communities, these are the populations that are going to suffer the most because they already have challenges with access to care.”

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

President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office on Sept. 2, 2025. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Monday revealed a lewd image and inscription they alleged was a birthday note that President Donald Trump provided for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book compiled by the financier’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.

The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Kentucky Republican James Comer, obtained the drawing via a subpoena for records in the government’s 2019 federal sex trafficking case against Epstein.

“We got the Epstein note Trump says doesn’t exist. Time to end this White House cover-up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on social media. Garcia is the top ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee. 

Comer had not issued a comment or statement as of late Monday afternoon on social media or on the committee’s website, where the committee chair has been posting updates on the Epstein probe.

The image of the birthday note shows a cryptic message about a “wonderful secret” written within the outline of a woman’s body and breasts. A doodle depicting the name “Donald” — that appears similar to Trump’s signature — is placed in the location of the woman’s pubic hair. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of the birthday message in July. Trump promptly sued the news outlet and denied that he created the note.

The Journal also published the image Wednesday.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement on social media Wednesday criticizing the news outlet’s latest story as a “hatchet job” and asserting that the president’s lawyers “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”

“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false. As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” Leavitt wrote on X.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to comment on the birthday note at a previously scheduled press conference Monday afternoon.

Trump’s past relationship with Epstein has been under a microscope since the Department of Justice declared in July it would not be releasing any further information on the case, and that no incriminating client list of Epstein’s existed.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.

Trump campaigned on releasing what he and his followers call the “Epstein files.”

The uproar over the investigative materials related to the government’s case has revealed a rupture among Trump’s voter base and some House Republicans who have reliably supported him.

Victims who shared stories of abuse inflicted by Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking minors, stood alongside Democrats and Republicans, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, on Capitol Hill Sept. 2.

Massie’s discharge petition, co-led with Rep. Ro Khanna of California, to compel the release of all Epstein government files has the support of all Democrats, but is two Republican signatures short of forcing a floor vote on the issue. 

Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee) speaks at a press conference in January 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez of Milwaukee is leaving the Assembly Democratic caucus — a decision that comes after leadership alleged that she made comments about shooting three of her colleagues. 

Ortiz-Velez has been at the center of several disagreements over the last several weeks with her colleagues, including a public dispute with the newly-formed Hispanic Legislative Caucus over resolutions to highlight Hispanic Heritage Month. 

Ortiz-Velez said she was excluded from being an author on the resolution, though the leader of the caucus Rep. Priscilla Prado (D-Milwaukee) has said the caucus agreed to limit authors to members. Ortiz-Velez had earlier declined to be a part of the caucus. She decided to write her own resolution honoring Hispanic Heritage Month, and her resolution, which has Republican and Democratic cosponsors, is now being set up to be voted on this week.

Last week her access to the Wisconsin State Capitol was revoked due to an alleged threat, though Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ office said the revocation was done in error, the threat was found to be not credible and her access restored. 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) initially confirmed that Ortiz-Velez had left the caucus but declined to speak on the issue. 

On Friday, however, eight Democratic leaders, including Neubauer, said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel that Ortiz-Velez “made a comment about shooting three members of our caucus who she has had personal disagreements with.”

“This is unacceptable behavior, especially given the heightened political environment and the murder of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year,” the lawmakers said. “We are not in a position to ignore comments like these and referred it to Human Resources. After conversations with the Speaker’s office, we spoke with Capitol Police as well. We appreciated them looking into the matter and handling it from there.”

Former Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were the victims of a politically-motivated assassination in June. 

Ortiz-Velez told the Journal Sentinel that she did not make a threat, but rather used a “poorly worded hyperbole.” 

“What I was trying to express is that I want peace with people, but others seem to keep attacking me, and if they attack me, I have a right to defend myself. And if someone perceived it differently, I’m very sorry, and I will be certain to refrain from that kind of language in the future,” Ortiz-Velez said. 

Ortiz-Velez has previously split from her caucus on other votes. She was the only Democrat to vote for the new legislative maps that were drawn by Gov. Tony Evers and that Republican lawmakers decided to adopt, she was one of a handful of Democrats to vote for the recent state budget in July and also recently was the only Democrat on a bill, vetoed by Evers, that would have declared gig workers to be independent contractors.

According to WisPolitics, Ortiz-Velez also alleges that her colleagues were trying to keep her from testifying on AB 306, a Republican bill that would restrict an executive emergency powers, because she plans to accuse Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who plans to run for governor, of abusing his power during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I left the caucus because they’ve been terrible to me,” Ortiz-Velez told WisPolitics.

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Federal agents block people protesting an immigration raid at a licensed cannabis farm on near Camarillo, California, on July 10, 2025 . (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s ban on immigration agents’ racial profiling of Latinos in Southern California, backing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

The order is temporary as the suit continues in lower courts, but it indicates a majority of the court is likely to side with the Trump administration’s defense against a complaint that targeting Latino and Spanish-speaking workers for immigration enforcement violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment that bars unreasonable search and seizure.

The high court ruled that the officers could use “apparent ethnicity” as one factor in determining reasonable suspicion, as long as it is not the only factor.

“Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.

“Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English,” he continued.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latin American member of the court, wrote a scathing dissent that the two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined.

“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote. 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also slammed Monday’s decision from the Supreme Court. 

“Today, the highest court in the country ruled that the White House and masked federal agents can racially profile Angelenos with no due process, snatch them off the street with no evidence or warrant, and take them away with no explanation,” she said in a statement. “This decision will lead to more working families being torn apart and fear of the very institutions meant to protect – not persecute – our people.” 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the decision from the high court will cause “racial terror in Los Angeles.” 

“Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target — but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians,” Newsom, a Democrat, said.

Temporary ruling

The ruling responded to an emergency appeal the administration made to the court last month, seeking to put on hold a temporary restraining order from Central California U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong. 

The case in the lower court is ongoing.

The lower court blocked immigration agents from using “apparent ethnicity” as a method for determining if an individual violated immigration law. 

Agents used a broad variety of factors to determine someone’s apparent ethnicity, including speaking Spanish or accented English, certain types of work and locations such as bus stops or car washes.

Kavanaugh also said that the civil rights groups and individuals targeted by immigration agents who brought the suit against the Department of Homeland Security lacked legal standing for the challenge “to seek a broad injunction restricting immigration officers from making these investigative stops.”

‘Fair game to be seized at any time’

Sotomayor penned the dissent, criticizing Monday’s order for violating Fourth Amendment rights and allowing Latinos to be racially profiled.

“The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” she continued. 

And she questioned Kavanaugh’s assumption that anyone who is a U.S. citizen and is questioned by an immigration officer will simply be let go once their citizenship is explained.

“That blinks reality,” she wrote, noting that two U.S. citizen plaintiffs in the suit tried to explain their citizenship status to an immigration officer. 

“One was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning,” she wrote. 

Sotomayor said the decision would create a second-class citizen status and require people to carry around proof of citizenship or legal status.

She added that the Fourth Amendment “prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that ‘describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.”

“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she wrote. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”

National Guard responds to protests over tactics

The administration’s mass raids this summer on Los Angeles-area Home Depot stores and other sites where day laborers gather sparked massive protests in the city that were the basis of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines deploying to the city, over Newsom’s objection. 

A federal judge last week said the military members’ conduct violated a law against military personnel conducting domestic law enforcement.

The president has also deployed the National Guard of the District of Columbia and has directed thousands of federal law enforcement officers to set up checkpoints in the city to inquire about immigration status. 

Thousands in the district on Saturday protested the deployment. 

Further deployments?

The president has threatened to send National Guard members to more predominantly Democratic cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and Portland, Oregon. He has said those deployments would  help contain crime — despite violent crime in those cities decreasing in recent years — while also highlighting immigration enforcement.

Trump over the weekend posted an artificial intelligence-generated image that referenced the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.” 

The image is of Trump in a military uniform in front of the Chicago skyline with flames in the background. 

The caption read: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” referring to the new secondary name Trump gave the Defense Department on Friday. 

Speaking at an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Monday morning, Trump said that he “would love to go into Chicago” but was waiting on a request from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker before he sent troops there. Pritzker, a Democrat, has been adamant that the city did not need or want National Guard troops.

E. Jean Carroll leaves the courthouse on Sept. 6, 2024, in New York City.  (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld that President Donald Trump must pay an $83 million penalty for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019, rejecting Trump’s argument that presidential immunity shields him from the punishment.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan reaffirmed a lower court decision denying Trump’s claim that the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision granting presidential immunity protects him, and his assertion that the monetary punishment was excessive. 

The three-judge panel wrote that Trump never argued “absolute” presidential immunity as the defamation case proceeded in 2020, and “hence, he may not do so now.” At the time, he argued for temporary immunity until he was out of office.

The decision was unsigned. The appeal was before Judges Denny Chin, who was appointed to the bench in 2010 by President Barack Obama; Sarah A. L. Merriam, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022; and Maria Araújo Kahn, appointed by Biden in 2023. 

Trump statements

The case centered on Trump’s statements about Carroll after New York magazine published an excerpt of the writer’s new book in June 2019, in which she alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996. 

Trump repeatedly made public statements and social media posts claiming Carroll’s story was “totally fabricated” and that he didn’t know her, despite being previously photographed with her. 

Trump began to claim absolute presidential immunity in December 2022, years into the case, and a district court denied his request for a summary judgement, ruling that he had waived any claim to it by failing to raise it in previous court filings.

Trump appealed to the 2nd Circuit and argued in a September 2024 brief that “presidential immunity is fatal to Carroll’s claims” and that Trump cannot be held liable for defamatory statements he made.

The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in July 2024 that former U.S. presidents enjoy absolute criminal immunity for “core Constitutional” powers and are “entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” but are not immune from criminal prosecution for “unofficial acts.”

Trump escalated the question of presidential immunity to the Supreme Court after being federally indicted on defrauding the American public by claiming falsely that he won the 2020 presidential election and allegedly conspiring to overturn the result.

‘Extraordinary and unprecedented conduct’

Trump had also argued the dollar amount the jury awarded to Carroll — $65 million of which was for punitive damages — was “grossly excessive.”

The appeals court rejected that claim, highlighting that Trump continued to make defamatory remarks about Carroll during the yearslong litigation. 

“For nearly five years, Trump never wavered or relented in his public attacks on Carroll,” the judges wrote, even though he was found guilty in a separate but closely related civil case — a jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s.

“The statements all shared common themes: Trump continued to assert that Carroll was lying about the 1996 sexual assault and that she was motivated to do so for personal, financial, and political reasons, and to imply that Carroll was too unattractive to be sexually assaulted. He also began to claim that Carroll’s lawsuit was part of a conspiracy to interfere with the 2024 election, and vowed to continue to make similar statements in the future.”

The judges said Trump’s behavior amounted to “extraordinary and unprecedented conduct.”

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

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling and allow it to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid that was previously approved by Congress.

The case is one of many lawsuits challenging the White House’s efforts to supersede Congress’ spending authority by canceling funding without lawmakers’ explicit approval.  

This particular case became more complicated in late August when the Trump administration sent Congress a rescission request, asking lawmakers to cancel billions in foreign aid, including some of the funding subject to this lawsuit. 

This “pocket rescission,” as it’s sometimes called, came within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year. Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law, they believe that allows them to cancel the funding even if Congress refuses to go along with the proposal. 

The move is considered illegal by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and evoked ire from senior lawmakers, including Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine.

“Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse,” Collins wrote in a statement. “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”

Administration sees executive branch ‘at war with itself’

The appeal to the Supreme Court filed Monday urges the justices to let the legislative and executive branches figure out the spending dispute on their own and criticizes a federal district court for ordering the Trump administration to spend the money. 

“The injunction requires the Executive Branch to rush to obligate the same $4 billion that the President has just proposed rescinding between now and September 30, and thus puts the Executive Branch at war with itself,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer. “Just as the President is pressing for rescission and explaining to Congress that obligating these funds would harm U.S. foreign policy interests, his subordinates are being forced to proceed to identify and even negotiate with potential recipients.”

The pocket rescissions request at the center of this case is separate from the one Trump sent Congress in early June that asked members to eliminate funding for numerous foreign aid accounts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Lawmakers approved that proposal in July after preserving full funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.

Congress has yet to act on the second rescissions request as its leaders look for ways to fund the government ahead of an Oct. 1 shutdown deadline. 

Attorneys for the organizations that brought the lawsuit — the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Global Health Council — wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court submitted Monday that they opposed the Trump administration’s request to overturn the lower court’s preliminary injunction. 

“USAID and the State Department have been under a duty to obligate these funds since at least March 2024, when Congress enacted the appropriations; they chose not to act sooner,” they wrote. “The government faces no cognizable harm from having to take steps to comply with the law for the short period while this Court considers its stay application.”

Protesters in Milwaukee take part in a 2019 march demanding action to address climate change. Fifteen young people are suing the state of Wisconsin for harming their future by allowing pollution that hastens climate change. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)(

Kaarina Dunn has grown up hearing stories of the Wisconsin winters her parents and grandparents got to enjoy. Winters with enough snow cover that the family of ski-enthusiasts could get on the slopes from Thanksgiving to Easter. 

But despite the state’s continued connection with ice and snow, winters like those of her family’s past are gone. Climate change has caused Wisconsin’s winters to warm more than any other season. A number of recent winters have seen drought conditions with little to no snow across the northern part of the state — severely damaging winter tourism and canceling or modifying events such as the American Birkebeiner. While data shows that the amount of snowfall on average is similar to decades past, the weather doesn’t stay as cold throughout the winter, meaning that the snow melts before it can accumulate to the truly deep levels of previous generations. 

“I hear all these great stories about how they got to ski over Thanksgiving, how they skied past Easter time, how they went on all these great trips around the state of Wisconsin to all these ski hills, mountains, all these amazing places,” Dunn, a 17-year-old Onalaska resident, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I can’t help but feel incredibly saddened by this. I will never experience these things. These are family traditions, trips that my family would go on, with family members, with friends, and do all these amazing and fun things. And honestly, I do feel left out. I feel let down by my state. I can no longer enjoy these things due to the direct results of fossil fuels in the environment.” 

Dunn is one of 15 young people suing the state of Wisconsin, arguing that state laws violate their constitutional rights and worsen climate change. The lawsuit mirrors a similar lawsuit from children in Montana, who successfully argued that the state had to consider the greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impact of permits involving fossil fuels. 

The children are represented in the lawsuit by Madison-based Midwest Environmental Advocates and Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust. 

In Wisconsin, the suit argues that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening. 

The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination. 

Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require. 

“The Commission cannot require any electric provider to increase its percentage of renewable energy generation above the required level,” the lawsuit states, meaning that for more than a decade, Wisconsin’s energy regulators have been unable to push the state’s power companies to develop more renewable energy sources. 

Coal and natural gas make up 75% of the energy produced in Wisconsin and renewable sources make up 17%. 

Skylar Harris, an attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, says that children today are going to spend most of their lives dealing with the effects of climate change on their health and lifestyles yet don’t yet have the ability to vote and influence environmental policy. 

“I think people are really starting to acknowledge the direness of the situation that we’re in and the situation that climate change is causing, and how it impacts our inherent rights such as life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Harris says. “And courts are really starting to see that without the right to a stable climate, which is what we’re arguing for in this case, the rights to life, the rights to liberty, the rights to the pursuit of happiness, they mean nothing, because people can’t pursue them to the fullest extent.” 

Harris says that if the lawsuit is successful, she believes that the PSC will use its new authority to deny permits for new or expanded fossil fuel burning power plants and push the state’s power companies to expand their renewable capacities. 

In the Montana lawsuit, officials argued that the state can’t be held responsible for the effects of climate change on the children in that lawsuit because climate change is caused by emissions from across the globe. Harris says that yes, climate change is a global problem, but it gets fixed by individual governments doing something about it. 

“Climate change is a global problem, but there is no such thing as a global government,” she says. “So if we are to address this global issue, that means every individual, every business and every government, including the state of Wisconsin, has to step forward and do its part. And that’s what we’re trying to make sure is happening with this lawsuit.”

The 15 children in the lawsuit represent a wide swathe of Wisconsin. They live in urban and rural parts of the state and include athletes who have had wildfire smoke affect their sports, farm kids who have had droughts and heavy rains affect their families’ livelihoods and members of the state’s Native American tribes who have seen their cultural traditions put at risk. 

Dunn has spent much of her childhood fighting for environmental causes as president of her local 4-H club and has won three grants for environmentally focused projects from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Climate Action Fund. She says she joined the lawsuit because it can help her community and kids like her across the state. 

“I began my environmental work because I always believed in doing the right thing,” she says. “I believe in fighting for my community, fighting for my family, fighting for my siblings, fighting for everyone, fighting for youth and fighting for families.”

She adds that the PSC “knows that what they are doing is wrong. The governor and the Wisconsin Legislature have indicated that they want renewable energy, and the Public Service Commission simply isn’t changing the laws, and the Legislature isn’t changing the laws.” 

Dunn’s family has lived western Wisconsin’s Driftless Region for generations and she spent most of her childhood in Vernon County. She says the Mississippi River is “almost a family member.”

But massive rain events causing flooding and erosion triggered a massive boulder to tumble down a bluff and into her backyard, making her family fear that it wasn’t safe in their home anymore. They moved north to La Crosse County. 

“We felt very unsafe in the childhood home that I planned to live my entire life in. We made the difficult decision to move cities, move counties, move school districts,” she says. 

A member of her school’s tennis team, Dunn says hotter summers and poor air quality caused by wildfires elsewhere on the continent have forced her to change how and when she practices. Flooding has prevented her and her family from swimming off the dock at her grandparents’ home and affected the work done at their walnut tree farm. 

Dunn says that for her, joining the lawsuit is about standing up and trying to force her state government to admit it has a role to play in mitigating climate change and responding to the ways in which climate change has harmed her life and the lives of the other kids in the suit. 

“Ultimately, our country knows the science that is creating climate change, the fossil fuel industry, and especially Wisconsin, they can no longer stand behind saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We don’t know about it. There’s nothing that we can do,’” she says. “But ultimately, we have the science and technology to make changes and to save my life and my future children’s life and have a safe and healthy environment.”

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) speaks Friday at a press conference to promote her legislation that would extend enhanced tax breaks on the cost of insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act. Business owners Kyle LaFond, left, and Evan Dannells also spoke in favor of extending the tax credits. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Federal legislation that would hold down the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans and nearly a quarter-million Wisconsin residents has quiet support from Republicans in the Senate, according to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin).

So far, however, none of them have spoken out, Baldwin said at a news conference in Madison on Friday.

Baldwin has introduced a bill that would extend tax credits that have cut the health insurance costs for people who buy coverage on the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010 and the HealthCare.gov marketplace was launched to make it easier and cheaper for people without health insurance to buy coverage, the law included tax credits to lower the cost of premiums for people with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty guideline.

In 2021, the premium tax credits were supercharged to impart far greater savings to people buying insurance through the marketplace. The enhanced tax credits were extended in 2022 with a sunset at the end of this year.

The extra tax breaks helped insurance coverage through the HealthCare.gov marketplace rise to record highs in the last few years, both in the U.S. and in Wisconsin.

“This tax break, the enhanced premium tax credit, saves more than 230,000 Wisconsinites an average of $500 every single month” on their insurance premiums, Baldwin said. “Not extending these tax breaks and jacking up costs on the open marketplace will crush families — but also small businesses that are the fabric of our communities.”

In January Baldwin and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced legislation to make the enhanced tax credits permanent, in place of the lower tax credits that will resume when the enhanced credits expire Dec. 31.

A paper published Sept. 3 by the Georgetown University Law School Center on Poverty and Inequality reported that according to the Congressional Budget Office, without the enhanced credits 30 million more people will lack health insurance by 2034 — an average of 3.8 million a year.

For people with incomes between 100% and 150% of the federal poverty guideline, insurance premiums will go up by 7.9% between 2026 and 2034, the Georgetown researchers calculated.

For people with incomes between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty guideline, premiums would rise between 29% and 160% in the same period, according to the report.

The report also notes without the enhanced tax credits, people who lose Medicaid coverage due to cuts in the Republican megabill President Donald Trump signed on July 4 could be unable to afford insurance on HealthCare.gov.

‘Encouraged by conversations’

“There are, in the Senate, Republicans who have quietly indicated that they want to extend breaks to make [HealthCare.gov] marketplace insurance affordable,” Baldwin said. “I don’t have a count yet to tell you that we have enough, but I’m encouraged by the conversations I’m having.”

In the U.S. House, a bipartisan bill has been introduced extending the enhanced credits for a year — “notably getting them past the midterm elections,” Baldwin said. But that’s not long enough for her.

“I don’t think this should be political,” Baldwin said. “I think this should be something that Democrats and Republicans should agree on, that people should be able to afford their health care coverage.”

Baldwin’s press conference was held at Access Community Health Center, which serves low-income Wisconsin residents. Joining Baldwin, Madison chef and restaurant owner Evan Dannells said that the passage of the ACA and the opening of the HealthCare.gov marketplace made health care newly available in his industry after years of the youngest group of workers going uninsured.

Before the ACA, for people who entered hospitality jobs in their late teens or early 20s, “it was essentially, fundamentally understood that you wouldn’t have health care until you were in your 30s,” Dannells said.

The ACA required insurers to cover young people on their parents’ plans up to the age of 26, then made it possible for them to find more affordable coverage at HealthCare.gov after that.

“I have a half dozen full time employees over the age of 26 at a restaurant, and so what they’re going to do is they’re going to leave for corporate jobs that have the buying power to get their premiums down,” Dannells said — something not possible for small employers.

“This is essentially the beginning of the dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act with no plan and process for the future,” Dannells said.

Kyle LaFond, owner of a Middleton manufacturing firm that makes custom cosmetic products for celebrity brands, said the ACA and the HealthCare.gov was “a godsend” for small employers such as his company. “These subsidies are important because, of course, now more than ever, folks are living paycheck to paycheck,” he said.

Baldwin said she will campaign to attach her proposal to one of “several must-pass bills coming up in the days and the weeks ahead.”

Avoiding the ‘cliff’

While the enhancements increased the value of the tax credits for people with incomes up to 400% of the poverty guideline, they also made tax credits available for the first time to people with higher incomes — up to more than 1000% of the guideline.

Baldwin told the Wisconsin Examiner that those higher income groups were added to avoid “what we call a cliff.” That occurs when a person’s income rises even slightly above a benefit’s income ceiling — suddenly cutting off the benefit and possibly demanding they make a repayment. Many safety-net programs have cliffs, she explained.

In Wisconsin, most Medicaid programs have income limits, and many are only available to people with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline, she said. People who may work several part-time jobs and usually qualify for Medicaid can find themselves kicked off the program if they have a brief boost in their income, due to overtime work, for instance.

“Then you have to do all sorts of work to get back on, and then you have to be very mindful that you don’t get an extra hour or a raise” that could lead to being kicked off again, Baldwin said.

“So we were trying to avoid there being the sort of equivalent cliff in the Affordable Care Act marketplace tax credits,” Baldwin said.

For that reason, her bill would continue the tax credits available to the higher income population, she said, “and I would be committed to not reintroducing a cliff.”

Baldwin criticized GOP lawmakers for passing the Republican megabill that extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts without considering an extension of the enhanced ACA credits.

“You would think including tax breaks for tens of millions of families to afford health care would be a centerpiece of that legislation. Right? Wrong,” Baldwin said.

Instead, she charged, the bill made cuts to Medicaid and the federal nutrition program SNAP to pay for tax cuts “in favor of the biggest corporations and the wealthiest Americans.”

 

U.S. President Donald Trump stands with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon after signing an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. The order instructs McMahon to shrink the department, which cannot be dissolved without congressional approval. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s aim to shutter the Education Department faces steep hurdles in Congress, where Republicans’ legislative efforts to abolish the agency remain stalled and appropriators have rejected many of his proposed cuts to education spending.

After campaigning last year on a pledge to shut down the department, Trump came into office promising to follow through, and made some preliminary moves.

He said he wanted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job” and signed a sweeping executive order in March calling on her to facilitate the closure of the Education Department to the extent she is permitted to by law.

He won a key victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in July that temporarily cleared the way for the administration to move ahead with mass layoffs at the agency, a plan to dramatically downsize the department outlined in that March executive order and his directive to transfer certain services to other agencies. 

Court documents show that the department is planning to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff affected by those sweeping layoffs stemming from a separate legal challenge against the administration’s actions earlier this year. 

But after a dizzying array of cuts and changes in the months since Trump took office looking to dismantle the agency, the GOP-controlled Congress — the only body that can abolish the 45-year-old department it created — is throwing up roadblocks to elimination.

Bills stalled

For starters, the handful of GOP bills in Congress to close down the department face a difficult path in the Senate, which requires at least 60 senators to advance most legislation. 

Republicans hold just 53 Senate seats. 

In the House, at least four Republicans — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, David Rouzer of North Carolina, Barry Moore of Alabama and Nathaniel Moran of Texas — have introduced bills this year to eliminate the department. Those bills were referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce, which has not voted on any of them. 

In a brief interview at the Capitol on Sept. 3, the committee’s chair, Michigan Republican Tim Walberg, said he still intended to eventually dismantle the agency, but had not committed to any particular bill.

“Our intentions are to ultimately dissolve the Department of Education — we know we have to do that in a way that makes sense and so, we’ll take a look at all bills,” Walberg told States Newsroom. 

“I can’t say whether they will all come up or not, but we know that, working with the secretary of Education, we’re going to right-size it, and some things we’ll eliminate, other things we’ll shift, as we’ve done already, over to the Department of Labor to take on some workforce areas,” the Michigan Republican said. 

The chair acknowledged that there would not be enough votes in the Senate to abolish the agency. 

“So what we can do that seems right for our students, for our parents and for our teachers, we’ll do,” Walberg said. 

GOP efforts to dismantle the department are also underway in the Senate. 

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, alongside Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Tim Sheehy of Montana, reintroduced a measure in April to abolish the agency. 

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul also reintroduced a bill in March with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Bernie Moreno of Ohio to shutter the department. The measure is a companion bill to Massie’s legislation. 

A spokesperson for Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said the Louisiana Republican is “working with the administration and colleagues on how Congress can best codify the President’s reforms into law,” in a statement to States Newsroom.

The spokesperson noted that “President Trump and Republicans are committed to returning education authority to local communities best equipped to meet the needs of students and families.” 

Senate rebuffs Trump spending cuts

The administration’s attempts to dramatically scale back funding for the department in fiscal 2026 have not been met with much enthusiasm by appropriators in the Senate. 

The House and Senate Appropriations committees share jurisdiction over the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year. 

The Senate committee advanced a bipartisan bill in July, which largely rejects Trump’s proposed cuts to education spending and his attempt to dismantle the department. 

The bill tightens requirements for the department to have the necessary staffing levels to fulfill its statutory responsibilities and prevents the agency from transferring certain programs to other federal agencies. 

The legislation also allocates $79 billion in discretionary funding for the coming fiscal year, roughly the same as the current level, which could be seen as a slap in the face to the administration’s budget request that called for $12 billion in spending cuts at the agency. 

House includes deep cuts but keeps Pell spending

Meanwhile, the House Appropriations subcommittee dealing with education spending advanced its spending proposal for the agency on Sept. 2, sending the bill to the broader panel. 

The bill aligns much more with the administration’s spending cut priorities and education agenda, calling for $67 billion in discretionary funding at the department.

Part of the bill also reduces funding for Title I grants — which support school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families — by $5.2 billion, according to a summary from committee Republicans. 

The majority notes that “despite outsized investment, America’s public schools continue to fail children and families.”

But spending proposals in both the House and Senate reject the administration’s request to significantly reduce the maximum award for the Pell Grant, a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college. 

Instead, each proposal maintains the maximum award at $7,395. 

House and Senate appropriators have several steps to go before they can even reach the negotiating phase on the bill — which also includes spending on other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services — and get it closer to becoming law.

It’s possible there might not even be a final agreement for months as lawmakers struggle to come to an overall agreement on how much to spend in the coming fiscal year, but the Senate’s bipartisan plan might give that chamber more of an advantage if those negotiations take place. 

UVALDE, TEXAS - MAY 25: A child crosses under caution tape at Robb Elementary School on May 25, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. According to reports, during the mass shooting, 19 students and 2 adults were killed, with the gunman fatally shot by law enforcement. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

As a former county reporter in northwest Wisconsin, I always tried to find a local angle to a national or regional story.

I’ve been  thinking the two former papers I used to work for – Spooner Advocate and Sawyer County Record – were probably looking for readers who have friends or relatives with some connection to the recent mass shooting Wednesday, Aug. 27, at the Annunciation Catholic Church in South Minneapolis that left two youngsters dead and 21 others injured.

I  Googled the church’s location and realized that I had been just six blocks from it early this spring when I visited the Russian Art Museum. The church is also 10 or 15 minutes north of where my sister, Charlotte, lives.

Later, Charlotte called me and said she and my other sister, Alma, had attended the church for Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve mass. Charlotte mentioned that a neighbor had a daughter who attended the same pre-K-8 Catholic school as the students who were  fired upon.

Without knowing any victims, just the proximity of the church to my previous visit and my sisters’ and the neighbors’ experience, there is some connection I have with that tragedy, be it ever so thin.

A couple of years ago, when I worked for the Sawyer County Record, I did a story on a woman who works in Hayward whose son had been attending Michigan State University when a man went on a short shooting rampage in February 2023 on campus.

It was after doing that story of the local boy to the Michigan State University shooting, that it hit me that more and more of us are having some connection to a gun shooting, especially school shootings.

We may not have witnessed the shooting, and we hopefully didn’t have any loved one injured or traumatized, but still we might be one or two or three or four persons removed from the tragedy, like the  woman whose son was in proximity to the Michigan State shooter.

It’s just logical with more and more of these mass shootings more of us would have these connections.

There are those directly impacted by mass shootings, the victims and their families, but there are scores more that are indirectly connected, and because of those connections the tragedy has more importance. The event becomes less abstract as you hear about a friend’s daughter or niece or cousin who had to hide under her desk to avoid rounds of gunfire echoing through the halls of education. It becomes less abstract as the mother of the Michigan State University student describes her fear when she heard about the gunman and knew her son might be shot.

After a mass shooting happens, we hear people argue  that it’s not the guns causing the deaths but the shooters, and then others advocate for legislation that would keep guns out of the hands of people likely to commit such atrocities.

After a mass shooting, we’ve become too familiar with how this debate over guns unfolds, and many of us are frustrated that very little ever changes.

However, I believe we will have sensible gun legislation so those with mental illnesses don’t have access to a gun, and red flag laws will help law enforcement identify those who are more likely to go on a shooting spree and secure weapons before a tragedy occurs.

I think it is inevitable because attitudes are going to change as more and more of us have these direct and indirect connections to mass shootings.

And a connection to a tragedy changes attitudes.

When drug overdose deaths were a thing that appeared to mostly happen in far-away cities, there wasn’t that much support in rural Wisconsin for attacking the problem. But when overdose deaths began to occur in the suburbs and rural communities, the reality of the drug epidemic hit home, and widespread support for addressing it grew. 

We are slowly, incrementally, each finding some point of connection to a mass shooting just because there have been so many of them: 503 mass shootings in 2024 alone.

The question in my mind is not if the legislation will happen, but how many people will have to die before enough of us, regardless of political affiliation, demand  sensible gun legislation.

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Duck on the Menominee River | Laina G. Stebbins

State agencies are warning Wisconsinites to limit the amount of ducks that they eat, or to avoid certain birds entirely, due to PFAS contamination. Waterfowl harvested around Green Bay were shown to have high levels of the man-made “forever chemicals,” which persist in the environment forever and have been linked to several chronic diseases including cancers. 

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and Department of Health Services (DHS) are advising people not to eat mallards from around lower Green Bay from Longtail Point to Point au Sable, and south of the mouth of the Fox River. Additionally, mallards and wood ducks living around Green Bay from the city of Marinette across to Sturgeon Bay should not be consumed frequently — no more more often than once per month for mallards and only one meal per week for wood ducks. 

Back in 2022 levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), another man-made chemical, in waterfowl led to similar advisories in lower Green Bay. Further assessments found concentrations of PFAS in breast muscle tissue, according to a DNR press release. In 2023 and 2024, more samples were taken from ducks, with all samples taken during July and August when the birds were most likely to represent local breeding populations. Those efforts revealed elevated levels of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), which is a type of PFAS, in the breast muscles of the birds. The inquiry suggested that both adult and juvenile ducks in lower Green Bay have higher concentrations of PFOS than in the northern portion of the bay. 

PFAS chemicals were first developed as part of U.S. government nuclear and atomic weapons research during the Manhattan Project. After the project ended private companies, particularly DuPont, began researching the compounds for commercial use. Over the subsequent decades, PFAS was used in products including  non-stick Teflon pans, fast food wrappers, and firefighting foam. The chemicals do not degrade in the environment, nor within the body, and have been linked to cancers and other chronic diseases. 

The DNR tracks PFAS consumption advisories spanning multiple species including deer, fish and waterfowl. On Sept. 4, deer and fish advisories for PFAS were issued for the Town of Stella and surrounding waterbodies in Oneida County. All fish in the Moen Lake Chain were included in a “do not eat” advisory due to PFAS contamination, and a similar warning was distributed against the consumption of deer liver near the Town of Stella.

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An aerial of the the Pentagon, May 12, 2021. (Photo by Air Force Tech. Sgt. Brittany A. Chase)

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War.

Just before Trump signed the order in the Oval Office late Friday afternoon, he and Pete Hegseth, the secretary in charge of the department, who stood next to Trump during the signing, said the renaming reflected their intention to return to a more aggressive mindset for the military.

“It’s restoring, as you’ve guided us to, Mr. President, restoring the warrior ethos,” Hegseth said. “The War Department is going to fight decisively, not endless conflicts. It’s going to fight to win, not not to lose. We’re going to go on offense, not just on defense. Maximum lethality, not tepid legality. Violent effect, not politically correct. We’re going to raise up warriors, not just defenders.”

The text of the order calls “Secretary of War” a “secondary” title for Hegseth. “The Secretary of Defense is authorized the use of this additional secondary title — the Secretary of War — and may be recognized by that title in official correspondence, public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non-statutory documents within the executive branch,” reads the order.

Defense Department history

The Department of War and the Department of the Navy were Cabinet departments from the nation’s founding until 1947, when Congress combined them, along with the Department of the Air Force, into a new National Military Establishment. Congress changed that name to the Defense Department two years later.

Trump said Friday that renaming 76 years ago revealed a “political correctness” in the military that contributed to poorer results on the battlefield. The U.S. has not won a major war since the reorganization, he said.

“We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct or wokey, and we just fight forever and then, we wouldn’t lose, really, we just fight to sort of tie,” he said. “We never wanted to win wars that every one of them we would have won easily with just a couple of little changes or a couple of little edicts.”

Congress to be asked to act

Because the department’s name came from an act of Congress, it’s unclear if Trump has the power to rename it with an executive order. 

The president said Friday he didn’t know if it would be necessary for Congress to be involved, but that he would ask lawmakers to approve the change.

“I don’t know, but we’re going to find out,” he said when asked if Congress would codify the renaming. “But I’m not sure they have to … There’s a question as to whether or not they have to, but we’ll put it before Congress.”

Trump added that the cost of replacing signage and other materials associated with the department would be minimal.

The order says: “Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of War shall submit to the President, through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, a recommendation on the actions required to permanently change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War. This recommendation shall include the proposed legislative and executive actions necessary to accomplish this renaming.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the department who has often clashed with Trump, including on defense spending, said on social media that the name change was not meaningful without greater financial investment. 

“If we call it the Dept. of War, we’d better equip the military to actually prevent and win wars,” the former Senate Republican leader wrote. “Can’t preserve American primacy if we’re unwilling to spend substantially more on our military than Carter or Biden. ‘Peace through strength’ requires investment, not just rebranding.”

Marchers sang protest songs and led "Trump must go now" chants as they walked down 16th Street NW in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 6, 2025 during the "We Are All DC" demonstration against the deployment of National Guard troops in the nation's capital. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Thousands marched in Washington, D.C., Saturday to protest President Donald Trump’s continued deployment of National Guard troops and the increased federal law enforcement on the streets of the nation’s capital.

The large demonstration, dubbed by organizers as the “We Are All DC” march, trailed down the district’s 16th Street NW toward the White House and came after several days of Trump’s heightened threats to send National Guard troops to Chicago, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans and other Democratic-led cities.

The district’s Democratic attorney general sued the Trump administration Thursday arguing the ongoing presence of National Guard troops amounts to illegal military occupation.

Guard members from the District of Columbia and seven states had already been deployed in Washington as of this week when Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Friday he would add 300 soldiers and 16 support staff, becoming the eighth state to send troops.

On Friday, Trump added Portland, Oregon, to the list of cities where he wants to deploy the Guard.

Demonstrators carried signs bearing the message “End the Occupation,” “Free DC” and “Get the ICE Out,” in reference to recent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in the district.

Marchers walked down H Street NW in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 6, 2025 during the “We Are All DC” demonstration . (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

Dozens of organizations participated in the march, including labor unions, faith-based organizations, immigration advocates, the League of Women Voters D.C. chapter and the D.C. Democratic Party.

Gail Hansen, 71, of Washington, D.C., said she wants to see a decreased ICE presence.

“I believe in freedom, and I think we’ve all gotta let everybody know that what’s happening on our streets is unacceptable,” Hansen told States Newsroom. “ICE needs to go home. The National Guard needs to go home. FBI needs to get out of our streets. We are doing just fine in D.C.” 

Charlotte Stone, 18, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, held a cardboard sign above her head depicting a caricature of Trump with a Hitler mustache and a message that read “Ignoring it is what the Germans did.”

“I’m disgusted with this country, I’m here with my friends, and we’re freshmen at George Washington University, and we’re disgusted. We need to do something about it,” Stone told States Newsroom.

The Washington Metropolitan Police Department released statistics Tuesday claiming overall crime had decreased by 8% in the district over the previous seven days. 

Protesters carry Banksy-style banner depicting a man throwing a sandwich as a nod to former Justice Department employee Sean Dunn, who threw a Subway hoagie at federal agents on Aug. 10 at 14th & U St NW in Washington, D.C. The marchers were part of the “We Are All DC” demonstration on Saturday, Sept. 6, 2025. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom) 

Trump’s 30-day emergency to federalize law enforcement in D.C. ends Sept. 10. On Tuesday, district Mayor Muriel Bowser announced an agreement with the administration to continue a collaboration between local police and federal law enforcement.

On Saturday morning, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself with a burning Chicago skyline behind him and a message referring to the 1979 Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.” 

He wrote on his platform Truth Social, “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” in reference to his unofficial renaming of the Department of Defense on Friday.