Rep. Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah) criticized heavy spending in state legislative races, which is likely to continue this year, as he announced his retirement Monday. His departure creates an open race for a swing Assembly district that could help determine control of the Assembly. 

Kaufert said in a statement that family and health concerns have led him to retirement. 

“After a great deal of thought and reflection, there comes a time when you simply know it is time,” Kaufert said.  “Family and health concerns have led me to this decision, but it is not one I make lightly.  Representing the Fox Valley has been an honor and privilege.”

Kaufert represents Assembly District 53, which encompasses Neenah, Menasha and part of Appleton. Kaufert was the mayor of Neenah from 2014 to 2022 and also previously served in the state Assembly from 1991 to 2015. 

With new, more competitive legislative maps adopted in 2024, Kaufert came out of retirement to run for the state Assembly in 2024 and won in a close race to the Democratic candidate by about 360 votes — a result that helped Republicans maintain their majority during the 2025-26 legislative session. 

“Making a difference and standing up for those who need a voice — the little guy — has been at the heart of everything I have done,” he said. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) thanked Kaufert for his service in a statement. 

“Dean’s decision to return to the Legislature for one more term speaks to his commitment to public service and to this institution. He didn’t have to come back but he chose to step forward and serve again, and we are better for it,” August said. 

Kaufert’s retirement means Republicans will not have the advantage of incumbency in the race for his seat and opens up the race for the district, which will help determine control of the state Assembly in 2027. 

Republican lawmakers currently hold 54 seats in the Assembly to Democrats’ 45 seats, meaning Democrats  would need to hold all their seats and win five additional seats in November to win the majority. 

Kaufert is now the eighth Assembly Republican to decide against running for reelection this session — the first from a swing district. 

Devin Remiker, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, said in a social media post that the seat is crucial for an Assembly majority, noting that when the district elected Kaufert, it also voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race by 4.4 percentage points. The district recently voted for Justice-elect Chris Taylor, the Democratic-backed candidate in the April state Supreme Court race by 27.5 percentage points. 

“Republicans see the writing on the wall and the big victory in April has made it clearer than ever that change is coming to Wisconsin this November,” Remiker said. 

Other Republican lawmakers are planning their reelection bids including two incumbents from swing districts: Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R-River Falls) and Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R- De Pere). 

In his announcement, Kaufert said the political environment in the state Assembly has improved and has led to more bipartisan work, but criticized the increasing negativity and spending in campaigns for office. 

“Campaigns have become increasingly more negative, with vicious personal attacks and an overwhelming influx of out-of-state special interest money,” Kaufert said. “The ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality — where opponents are too often demonized and unfairly personally attacked — has taken a real toll on me and my family.”

Kaufert said that both parties are to blame, but called the amount of spending by Democrats on his seat, which pays a salary of about $60,000, “ridiculous.” In 2024, Kaufert’s Democratic opponent spent $1.76 million in his campaign for the seat. Kaufert spent $1.24 million, according to campaign finance reports.

Spending on campaigns will likely continue to increase this year, especially with control of the chambers on the line, and Democrats are already investing in the seats that could help determine control.

The Assembly Democratic Campaign Committee, the fundraising arm for the Assembly Democratic caucus, contributed $1 million to Rep. Steve Doyle’s reelection campaign, according to his latest campaign finance reports. It was the most of any Assembly incumbents, according to WisPolitics. The Onalaska Democrat is one of the most “vulnerable” Democratic incumbents, having won his last election in 2024 by just 223 votes. 

Wisconsin election campaign finance laws, adopted in 2015 under the leadership of former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature, allow political parties to accept unlimited donations from individuals and corporations and transfer unlimited funds to state-level candidates, including those for Assembly. 

WASHINGTON — The California man said by federal prosecutors to have opened fire just outside the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, where President Donald Trump was in attendance alongside Cabinet members and lawmakers, was charged Monday with attempting to assassinate the president, administration officials said.

The 31-year-old identified by authorities as Cole Tomas Allen was also arraigned in Washington, D.C., federal court on charges of interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

He faces up to life in prison if convicted of attempting to kill the president. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet members all safely evacuated the Washington Hilton ballroom.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said, “There will be additional charges as this investigation continues to unfold.”

“But make no mistake, this was an attempted assassination of the president of the United States, with the defendant making clear what his intent was, and that intent was to bring down as many of the high-ranking Cabinet officials as he could,” Pirro said at a Monday afternoon press conference with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Allen was not charged with assault on a federal officer, as Pirro had said Saturday night he would be.

One Secret Service agent was shot in the chest but was protected by a bulletproof vest. Blanche said that particular agent had fired five times at Allen. The suspect was not hit but fell to the ground and scraped his knee, according to Blanche and Pirro.

Blanche would not elaborate further on ballistics, including details about a shot Allen allegedly fired.

“All the evidence is being examined very carefully and expeditiously, and we’ll know more soon,” Blanche said.

The federal prosecutors’ complaint is sealed. 

Suspect took train from Los Angeles to Washington

According to a signed affidavit, Allen made a reservation for the Washington Hilton on April 3, for the dates of April 24-26. He left Los Angeles on April 23 and traveled by train to Washington, D.C., via Chicago, according to the court filing, which also includes what investigators and Trump have described as a “manifesto.”  

Allen arrived at the Washington Hilton around 3 p.m. Eastern Friday, a day ahead of the high-profile correspondents’ dinner that annually draws administration officials, lawmakers, celebrities and often the president himself. 

Trump, opting to skip the event in previous years, was attending the dinner for the first time. Vice President JD Vance and many of Trump’s Cabinet members were in attendance, as was House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. — several in the presidential line of succession. 

According to the affidavit, at 8:40 p.m. Allen “approached and ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun” at a security checkpoint on the hotel’s Terrace level leading to the Concourse level, where the dinner was ongoing.

“As he did so, U.S. Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. U.S. Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time. Officer V.G. drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at ALLEN, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot. ALLEN was subsequently arrested,” according to the affidavit.

Allen was carrying a 12-gauge pump action shotgun and a .38 caliber pistol, according to the court document. Pirro also said the suspect had on him “at least three knives and all kinds of paraphernalia.”

When pressed by a journalist on how investigators know that Trump was Allen’s primary target, Blanche said he could not share details. 

“We’re a day-and-a-half into the investigation. As we talked about earlier, we were able to get multiple devices from various locations, the hotel room and also where he lived in California. We have started that process. There’s nothing more that would be appropriate to share at this time, until we have thoroughly gone through it, which we’re doing,” Blanche said.

Trump publicly shared photos of the man identified as Allen, shirtless and handcuffed on the hotel floor, Sunday night.

Leavitt blames Dems for political violence

During Monday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described Saturday’s incident as an attempt on Trump’s life, and she denounced political violence while blaming Democrats and the left for “fueling” it. 

“This political violence stems from a systemic demonization of him and his supporters by commentators, yes, by elected members of the Democrat Party and even some in the media,” Leavitt said.

“Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence,” she said. 

Blanche also decried critics for “calling the president horrible names for no reason and without evidence, without proof.” 

Republican party campaigners also delivered a similar message Monday, implicating Democrats’ “reckless, inflammatory rhetoric against President Trump and Republicans.” The committee’s chair, Joe Gruters, also accused Democrats in a statement released Monday of not speaking out against the attack.

Trump routinely namecalls and ridicules his political foes and the press on his social media platform, Truth Social, and in speeches. In a post Friday, the president called Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a “Low IQ individual who is not smart enough to be ‘running’ the Democrat Party.”

Upon the death in March of former FBI director and decorated combat veteran Robert Mueller, Trump wrote on social media, “Good, I’m glad he’s dead.”

During a November press gaggle on Air Force One, Trump told a female reporter from Bloomberg, “Quiet, Piggy,” as she asked a question.

Homeland Security funding

Leavitt also blamed Democrats for the monthslong shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, under which the Secret Service operates.

“This is a national emergency, and every member of Congress needs to put their country over party and get the Department of Homeland Security funded,” Leavitt said. The shutdown occurred after Democrats insisted on new guardrails for federal immigration agents following the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

Leavitt said Trump “continues to have trust in the Secret Service” and “was satisfied with the response.” 

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will convene a meeting with top DHS leadership, members of the Secret Service and White House operations officials “to ensure safety and the security of the president,” Leavitt said.

The ballroom

Leavitt also advocated for the president’s proposed ballroom construction, calling it “critical for our national security” during large events where several officials and lawmakers in line for the presidency gather together.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation legally challenged the construction of the ballroom, for which Trump demolished the East Wing in October. 

Blanche shared a letter on social media Sunday urging the trust to drop its lawsuit by 9 a.m. Eastern on Monday and blaming it for putting “the lives of the president, his family and his staff at great risk.”

The organization responded in a letter that it would not drop the case.

The Trust’s President and CEO Carol Quillen said in a statement the organization is “grateful” to law enforcement for keeping Trump and all guests safe over the weekend.

“We are not planning to voluntarily dismiss our lawsuit, which endangers no one and which respectfully asks the administration to follow the law. Ballroom construction is continuing unabated until June 5th at the earliest because the injunction is on hold,” Quillen said in a statement provided to States Newsroom.

“We have always acknowledged the utility of a larger meeting space at the White House. Building it lawfully requires the approval of Congress, which the administration could seek at any time.”

The U.S. Supreme Court could be ready to overturn a Missouri state court verdict that favored a man who sued the manufacturer of the popular herbicide Roundup for lacking any warning that the product carried a risk of cancer after oral arguments in the case Monday.

The arguments focused on whether states could enforce their own labeling requirements of pesticides, or whether federal law preempted any deviation among states. Members of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority emphasized the need for uniformity across the country.

The U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case in favor of Monsanto, the Missouri-based company that manufactures Roundup and has been owned since 2018 by German pharmaceutical company Bayer. The company faces thousands of lawsuits claiming exposure to Roundup increased a risk of cancer and that the company failed to warn consumers when it reasonably should have known of the risk.

Monsanto denies that the product causes cancer, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has consistently agreed.

John Durnell, a St. Louis resident, sued the company in 2019 claiming that exposure to Roundup over two decades led to his developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. A Missouri trial court awarded him $1.25 million, and appeals courts affirmed the ruling.

But the Supreme Court, which is the first federal court to hear the case, seemed inclined to protect federal supremacy. The EPA, which regulates labeling requirements for herbicides, does not require the kind of warning the Missouri jury said was appropriate.

Federal law typically trumps state law, which Monsanto and the Justice Department emphasized Monday. Industry groups across the economy tend to support federal supremacy because it saves companies from complying with 50 separate regulatory schemes across states.

‘Is that uniformity?’

An exchange between Ashley Keller, the attorney for Durnell, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, whom President Donald Trump appointed in his first term, may hold the key to the court’s ultimate ruling.

Keller argued that Congress in the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, which governs herbicide use, did not include a clause to expressly say that the federal law would preempt any state claims.

There was no issue of a difference between state and federal law, Keller said. Instead, a particular jury decided a single case based on unique facts, he continued. Different juries in other cases may have decided differently.

But Kavanaugh seemed not to accept that argument. He rephrased a similar question several times, and, even as Keller objected, appeared to dismiss the idea that the Missouri verdict was compatible with a national standard.

“You think it’s uniformity when each state can require different things?” he asked.

Keller rejected that framing. 

“The label’s illegal in one state and legal in another state,” Kavanaugh responded. “That’s uniformity?” 

Keller said he didn’t agree with that premise either, saying the label is not illegal based on the state but based on the facts presented at trial and the jury’s interpretation.

“The label subjects you to liability in one state and does not subject you to liability in another state,” Kavanaugh continued. “Is that uniformity?”

“I don’t think it’s state by state,” Keller said. “I think it’s jury by jury.”

Paul Clement, a well-known conservative appeals lawyer, represented Monsanto in the case, and described Keller’s argument as chaotic. It would not just open up separate regulatory regimes in each state in the country, but subject manufacturers to liability based on the makeup of any particular batch of citizens on a state court jury.

“It’s worse than 50 states,” he said. “It’s every jury is a new day.” 

A host of agencies in countries across the globe have all done studies on glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, Clement said.

“It’s probably the most, like, studied herbicide in the history of man, and they’ve all reached the conclusion based on more data and the kind of expert analysis they can do that there isn’t a risk here,” he said. “You shouldn’t let a single Missouri jury second-guess that judgment.”

Liberal justices seek consumer protections

The court’s liberal justices spent more time questioning why states shouldn’t be allowed to enforce stricter regulations.

Justice Elena Kagan asked Principal Deputy U.S. Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris, who argued on behalf of the federal government in favor of throwing out the verdict against Monsanto, if she agreed with Clement’s argument.

Harris said she largely agreed, noting that 50 states setting up separate regulations on labeling pesticides would cause confusion.

But Kagan asked why uniformity should be a higher goal than safety, saying a certain state government might have a better understanding than the EPA.

“It does undermine uniformity, I appreciate that,” Kagan said. “On the other hand, if it turns out that they (state regulators) were right, it might have been good if they had an opportunity to do something to call this danger to the attention of the people while the federal government was going through its process.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also pointed out that the EPA only registers herbicides once every 15 years, meaning that states might have better information than the EPA, especially later in that cycle.

“Lots of things can happen in science in terms of developments about the product,” she told Clement. “So if the product can become misbranded because of new information, I guess I’m just wondering why you think that you couldn’t have a situation where it would be perfectly rational for either the EPA or the states to bring to the attention of that manufacturer this new information and process a claim related to it.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday appeared likely to allow law enforcement to continue seeking warrants for the location history of cellphones near crime scenes, even as the justices wrestled with how far the government must go to protect Americans’ privacy.

Some of the justices appeared to be searching for a middle ground during oral arguments in a case out of Virginia challenging what is known as a geofence warrant that was used to catch a bank robber. Several justices asked skeptical questions of both sides, though no one voiced explicit support for prohibiting such warrants altogether.

As smartphones have become ubiquitous, along with apps that track users’ movements, the high court is once again wading into how the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, applies in the digital era. The justices’ decision, of tremendous interest to state attorneys general, will shape how easy or difficult it is for investigators to sweep up location data.

Over the past two decades, geofence warrants have become a major tool of law enforcement. At a basic level, they allow police to identify phones within a geographic area for a certain period of time. 

The data can be tremendously valuable to investigators, offering a way to develop suspects in crimes where their identities aren’t otherwise known. Underscoring their importance, a broad bipartisan coalition of states has urged the justices to uphold the warrants.

But civil liberties advocates say geofence warrants ensnare people in digital dragnets, handing the government data on anyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They argue that accessing data on anyone within a certain area — the geofence — amounts to a general warrant prohibited by the Constitution.

Summing up the high court’s uncertainty in Monday’s arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett told U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Eric Feigin, who was arguing in favor of law enforcement access to location data, that while he had described his opponent’s position as maximalist, “there’s a risk of the government’s position being maximalist the other way.”

“I was just going to say this seems very complicated from the user’s point of view, frankly,” Barrett said at a different portion of the argument.

Credit union robbery

The case before the Supreme Court, Chatrie v. United States, arises from a 2019 robbery of a federal credit union in Midlothian, Virginia. Okello Chatrie was convicted of armed robbery after surveillance footage showed the robber using a cellphone. A detective then obtained a geofence warrant directed at Google for devices within 150 meters of the credit union within an hour of the robbery.

Google initially provided anonymized data in response to the warrant. The detective then requested and received additional location data on nine users. Finally, the detective received de-anonymized information on three users, without obtaining an additional warrant.

While Google has since changed the way it stores location history data to limit geofence warrants, other apps and tech firms collect the data. Lawyers for Chatrie argue that geofence warrants open the door to the authorities requesting information on everyone at a sensitive location — perhaps an abortion clinic or a political convention — at a particular time.

“The warrant authorized the government to direct Google to search every single person’s account to find those people who were within the geofence. That is a general warrant,” Adam Unikowsky, a lawyer for Chatrie, told the court.

4th Amendment debate

The Supreme Court’s last major decision on 4th Amendment rights and phones came in 2018, when the justices ruled that law enforcement generally needs a warrant for location data derived from when phones connect to a cell site. That data is generated by just having a cellphone, and the justices found that a phone is now a basic element of participating in society.

By contrast, the Trump administration argues location history data isn’t protected by the 4th Amendment because users voluntarily share it with Google and other tech firms by turning on location tracking on their phones. Because the information was turned over with their consent, users have no reasonable expectation of privacy.

“Petitioner here is asking for an unprecedented transformation of the 4th Amendment into an impregnable fortress around records of his public movements that he affirmatively consented to allow Google to create, maintain and use,” Feigin said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the court’s three liberal justices, argued that if the government can access location data without a warrant because Chatrie consented to sharing it with Google, then the government could obtain all sorts of other data shared with the company, such as photos and calendar entries.

“If this is consent, that means the government can seek those documents for any reason, not just the commission of a crime — or no reason, correct?” Sotomayor said.

“Correct. It would not be a search, so no search warrant would be required,” Unikowsky replied.

Red and blue states back geofence warrants

Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have filed a court brief arguing that geofence warrants can be more precise than many traditional investigative methods when supported by probable cause and appropriately tailored. In the brief, they urged the justices not to prohibit geofence warrants altogether.

State attorneys general across the political spectrum signed on to the brief. They include Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Washington.

Geofence warrants can generate critical leads when the perpetrators of crimes are otherwise unknown, they wrote. When suspects are unknown but the suspected wrongdoing is linked to a specific place and time, location data provides one of the narrowest available tools for finding leads, the brief argues.

“This Court should make clear that the Constitution does not categorically ban those investigative methods,” the states’ brief reads.

Google brief

In a court brief, Google said geofence warrants result in invasive searches that are overbroad. Geofence searches, by their nature, have a high risk of sometimes sweeping in thousands of innocent users, the company said.

Even small geographic areas covering short periods of time can include hundreds of thousands of people, Google argued. Geofence parameters set by law enforcement often cover more ground than the location of the crime, with private homes, apartments, government buildings, hotels, places of worship and busy roads all included.

Lawyers for Google wrote that the company takes no position on whether the warrant in the Chatrie case complies with the 4th Amendment.

“But Google firmly believes that, based on the private nature of Location History data, law enforcement was required to obtain a warrant to access that data,” the brief says.

Orin Kerr, a Stanford Law School professor and one of the nation’s foremost experts on the 4th Amendment, predicted after the oral argument that the justices would likely rule that geofence warrants can be constitutionally drafted. 

However, he was uncertain whether the court would rule on whether the geofence search that identified Chatrie’s phone was a search under the 4th Amendment.

“They’ll probably say that geofence warrants have to be limited in time and space,” Kerr wrote on social media.

National leaders warned the Detroit NAACP of an ongoing attack on democracy during what organizers say is the largest sitdown dinner of its kind in the world Sunday.

Speakers at the 71st annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner, including U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Attorney General Letitia James, said efforts to obtain Michigan ballot data, require proof of citizenship to vote and potentially weaken the Voting Rights Act present a major threat to the rights of Americans.

James received the Ida B. Wells Freedom and Justice Award, which she said she shares with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel after Nessel pledged to deny the federal government access to Michigan’s ballots from the 2024 presidential election.

“This award’s namesake once said, ‘The way to right wrongs is to light the truth upon them, to shine light in the darkness,’” James said. “AG Nessel is the holder of that light of liberty in Michigan, just as our ancestors grabbed the torch of freedom and used it to light the way forward for all of us.”

Jeffries said the election of President Donald Trump in 2024 “was definitively a setback,” but said that “a setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback.”

He said 2026 will be the year of the “great American comeback.”

“We’re not here to step back,” Jeffries said. “We’re here to push back at all times and ensure that this country will have a free and fair election in November.”

The Democratic leader – who was introduced by several speakers as the next speaker of the House – said that “when the gavels change hands,” Democrats will pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act “so we can end the era of voter suppression in the United States of America once and for all.”

The theme of this year’s dinner was “Liberty or Oppression – The Choice is Ours.”

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said the “choice between liberty and oppression is really one between apathy and action.”

“They don’t want Detroit to have a voice. They can’t defend their record of failure, so they want to rig the game to win. But not on my watch, not on your watch, not on our watch,” Whitmer said. “I know it’s hard to feel energetic right now, but nothing changes if we take a back seat.”

The dinner came one day after a gunman opened fire near the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., reportedly targeting Trump.

Jeffries condemned political violence and thanked law enforcement for protecting the attendees at both events.

“Here in America, we should be able to agree to disagree without ever being disagreeable with each other,” Jeffries said. “At the same time, I can assure you that we will continue to speak truth to power at all times as we navigate our way through the trials, the turbulence and the tribulations of this moment.”

James said political violence “has no place in society,” adding that she has faced threats to her own life.

But she added that she continues to “yearn and pray for a compassionate, civil, competent and inclusive government in Washington, D.C.”

The Detroit NAACP also honored civil rights activist Ruby Bridges, who was the first Black child to attend the formerly whites-only William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana in 1960.

Jeffries said “our community has always had the ability to imagine a better future here in America and then work hard to bring it about.”

James said Bridges set an example for everyone to follow.

“If a 6-year-old Ruby Bridges can find the courage to walk through an angry, screaming mob just to get to school, so can we,” James said.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday will hear oral arguments on the Trump administration’s efforts to strip temporary legal status from 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that could open them up to deportation.

The case has the potential to have an impact on multiple lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s efforts to end protections for more than 1.3 million immigrants from all over the globe with Temporary Protected Status, granted because they hail from countries deemed too dangerous for return. 

The effort to end TPS designation is part of President Donald Trump’s broader efforts to curtail immigration and strip legal status for people, opening them up to his mass deportation drive. 

“The decision will have the capacity to impact everyone with TPS,” José Palma, a coordinator for the National TPS Alliance, told reporters. 

Palma is a TPS recipient from El Salvador.

At the start of the second Trump administration there were 17 countries with a TPS designation. Former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended the status for 13 countries — Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

Noem argued that she determined the countries no longer met the threshold for TPS and that the designation was not in the interest of the United States.

The moves sparked multiple lawsuits from immigration advocates and TPS recipients. Lower courts have mostly blocked the terminations from taking effect, but it’s still resulted in loss of work authorizations, healthcare and deportations of some people with temporary status, Palma said.

In the TPS Haiti and Syria case before the justices, which was consolidated from two separate cases, lawyers argue that DHS did not follow proper government procedures in revoking the status. 

They also contend that the termination of a country destination was predetermined and motivated by racism, especially the targeting of Black immigrants such as Haitians. 

“The most damning evidence is President Trump’s own words, his own actions,” Sejal Zota, one of the attorneys on the Haiti TPS case, told reporters during a briefing. “During his last campaign, he falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were eating the pets of the people in Springfield (Ohio). And days later, after the pets comment, he promised to revoke Haiti’s TPS and send them back to their country.”

Even after the justices rule, the outcome of the cases is not final because both cases were in preliminary stages at the district court level before the Trump administration took the two cases to the Supreme Court, skirting the typical appeals courts. 

A ruling is expected in late June or early July, and then both cases would go back to the lower courts to continue on the merits argument. However, the practical effect, if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the government, would be that Haitians and Syrians would be potentially subject to deportation. 

History of TPS

Congress created TPS in 1990 and instructed the attorney general to consult with appropriate agencies, such as the State Department, to designate a country that is too unsafe to return to due to war, major disasters or other extraordinary circumstances. 

When Congress created DHS in 2002 – in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack – that authority was transferred over to the secretary of Homeland Security. 

A designation lasts six,12 or 18 months, and each recipient has to undergo a background check in order to remain in the U.S. and have valid work permits. Congress did not place any limits on how many times a country can be renewed for TPS, citing the potential for long-term conflicts like civil war.

Zota, one of the attorneys on the TPS case for Haiti, said the Trump administration has “attempted to reverse-engineer the facts to justify its politically … motivated decision to terminate Haiti’s TPS.”

She said the State Department has warned people not to travel to Haiti due to gang violence, kidnappings, terrorist activity and civil unrest. 

The State Department advises people if they still plan to travel to Haiti to make sure to leave dental records and DNA in case their family needs to identify their remains. 

“Our own government has conceded the peril there,” Zota said. 

Haiti was first given a TPS designation after the devastating 2010 earthquake. The designation was renewed multiple times due to the disaster and then again after Haiti’s president was assassinated by gangs in 2021, leading to further destabilization, violence and food shortages. 

What is the role of the courts?

Ahilan Arulanantham, an attorney arguing on behalf of TPS holders from Syria, said one of the questions the justices will be presented with is whether the courts have any role in making sure that the federal government complies with making TPS decisions, such as making sure that the country determinations are made in coordination with relevant agencies. 

He added that the Trump administration is not coordinating with the State Department to evaluate country conditions, which he argues is not following proper administrative procedure.

“You’ll hear a lot of talk in the Supreme Court argument about whether we’re challenging a determination with respect to TPS decisions, and that’s because there’s a provision of the TPS statute which says there’s no judicial review of any determination with respect to a termination of TPS,” Arulanantham said to reporters.

Arulanantham is also the co-director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law.

He said that the Trump administration is arguing about that TPS statue and whether the courts have any say.

“We think it means that the courts are not allowed to second-guess decisions about whether countries are safe,” he said. “The government thinks it means that … the courts aren’t allowed to look at any of this and that any decision they make, any rule that they set for TPS, is immune from review entirely.”

In briefs to the high court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer has argued that the lower courts should not interfere with the DHS secretary’s decision.

Arulanantham said there’s a “huge amount” at stake in the Trump administration’s argument about review of TPS designations. 

“If the government is correct, then they can terminate TPS without conducting any country conditions review at all,” he said. “They can do it for reasons that are completely arbitrary.”

Other TPS decisions

This is not the first time a TPS case has appeared before the justices during the second Trump administration. 

The high court twice allowed the Trump administration to remove TPS for more than 300,000 of the 600,000 Venezuelans in the program. Because those decisions were made on an emergency basis, the justices did not give any legal reasoning before sending the cases back to the lower courts. 

Federal judges have often cited the lack of opinion from the high court when issuing a ruling to block the Trump administration from ending TPS designation from other countries. 

Wednesday’s oral arguments will be the first time the justices will hear a TPS case and give a decision on their ruling about the Trump administration’s move to revoke protections. 

The alleged shooter at Saturday night’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, D.C., wrote a “manifesto” ahead of his planned attack, President Donald Trump said in a Sunday morning interview on Fox News and later in the day on the CBS show “60 Minutes.”

Meanwhile, Trump and MAGA allies online said security flaws exposed by the incident prove the need for a new secure ballroom at the White House. Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Cabinet officials were safely evacuated from the Washington Hilton after shots were fired by a suspect said by officials to be armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives.

Multiple news reports Sunday identified the suspected shooter as 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, and The Associated Press said he is a tutor and amateur video game developer. The White House has not released that information publicly and spokespeople did not return a message Sunday.

Fox News Host Jacqui Heinrich used the name in her interview with Trump, who did not use it himself but did not correct Heinrich when she named Allen and called the manifesto “anti-Trump” and “anti-Christian.”

Trump said the document revealed a “hatred” for Christianity.

“The guy is a sick guy,” he said. “When you read his manifesto, he hates Christians. That’s one thing for sure: He hates Christians.”

The New York Post published what the outlet said was the full text of the manifesto, which sought to reconcile the attack with Christian teachings, rather than mock the religion itself. The document was also referenced in the CBS interview, with host Norah O’Donnell saying it characterized members of the administration as targets.

The document lays out a series of objections to a planned attack and the writer’s rebuttals.

“Objection 1: As a Christian, you should turn the other cheek,” Allen wrote, according to the New York Post. 

“Rebuttal: Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed,” he continued. “I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial. I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes.”

Noting this was what he characterized as the third assassination attempt of Trump in less than two years, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson wrote on social media that a Trump trademark is a calm demeanor under pressure.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the past several years, and he is at his strongest in times of crisis and turmoil,” the Louisiana Republican wrote. “It is a primary reason why his time in office is so historic. Adding to that history, he has now survived a third assassination attempt.”

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said Sunday on news shows that the gunman appeared to be targeting administration officials but did not say it was specifically Trump. The White House put out a statement with the headline, “President Trump Stands Fearless After Third Assassination Attempt.”

Arraignment Monday

Blanche also said he expects the suspect to be arraigned in D.C. federal court on Monday. Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia, said Saturday night the man would be charged with using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon. 

The suspect traveled from Los Angeles to Washington by train, switching trains in Chicago, Blanche said in a Sunday morning interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.” That mode of travel would have allowed him to transport the weapons that officials said were found on him across the country without facing a security check, unlike an air flight.

Blanche said he did not think any additional laws to increase security on trains were needed.

The shooter was staying at the Washington Hilton, the longtime site for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, for days before the attack, Blanche said. 

At the time of the interview, Allen was not cooperating with the investigation, Blanche said.

Asked if there was any foreign connection to the planned attack, Blanche said many details of the shooter’s plans were yet unknown.

“We’re still looking into motivation, and that’s something that hopefully we’ll learn over the next couple of days,” Blanche said. “We do believe, based upon just a very preliminary start to understanding what happened, that he was targeting members of the administration. We don’t have specifics beyond that.”

Blanche added that the law enforcement agent injured by a shot to his bulletproof vest Saturday night was doing well and had received a call from Trump.

“The president spoke with him last night,” Blanche said. “He was in great spirits. He apparently didn’t really even want to go to the hospital, although he was certainly injured.”

Ballroom pitched as security fix

Trump, a host of right-wing influencers and at least one Democratic member of Congress called for the construction of a new ballroom for the White House in response to the incident.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, Sunday morning. 

“This event would never have happened with the Militarily Top Secret Ballroom currently under construction at the White House,” he continued. “It cannot be built fast enough! While beautiful, it has every highest level security feature there is plus, there are no rooms sitting on top for unsecured people to pour in, and is inside the gates of the most secure building in the World.”

The initial White House announcement of the ballroom, in July, emphasized space needs for large events and gave only a passing mention to security updates, saying the Secret Service would provide them.

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat who is among the senators who most commonly cross party lines, posted on social media Sunday that a new ballroom was a necessity, calling on opponents to drop their “TDS,” or Trump Derangement Syndrome, a name to describe people who oppose anything Trump does.

“That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,” Fetterman wrote. “After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.”

Montana Republican U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy said he would propose a bill to expedite the construction of the White House ballroom.

“This week I will introduce and seek unanimous consent for legislation providing express approval for construction of a Presidential ballroom,” he wrote on X. “It is an embarrassment to the strongest nation on earth that we cannot host gatherings in our nation’s capital, including ones attended by our President, without the threat of violence and attempted assassinations.”

And Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is a leader among the caucus’ far-right members, said ballroom construction should be included in an upcoming funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security.

“Any consideration of DHS reconciliation instructions this week & beyond should provide for construction of a secure ballroom on White House grounds – in addition to other concerns,” he wrote.

Three years after a miscarriage that caused a severe, nearly septic infection because a Tennessee hospital denied her an abortion, Katy Dulong was looking forward to telling her story in a trial that was scheduled to begin Monday.

But this week, the state appealed to a higher court based on a new law passed by the legislature in March, and the court put the trial on hold indefinitely. It will now be months before the lower court can proceed.

Dulong had complications that led to a miscarriage in November 2022 at 16 weeks of pregnancy, long before fetal viability. Under the state’s abortion ban, which had only been in place for a few months, the hospital sent her home to miscarry on her own. When that didn’t happen, severe infection started to set in 10 days later, when she was able to get doctors to agree to help. The experience left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Tennessee bill expands attorney general rights to appeal case rulings

The delay in the legal case feels like the state trying to silence her and the other plaintiffs, she said.

“It’s shocking to me that there’s anyone in this world that would have such opposing views to think that our voices don’t matter,” Dulong said in an interview. “How are they taking away our voice right now?”

In a motion to dismiss in February, the state argued it couldn’t be sued by the plaintiffs under a term called sovereign immunity, and in April, the Tennessee Legislature passed a law making it harder to sue the state on the constitutionality of a state or government action. Legislators passed another bill allowing the state to automatically appeal a decision related to sovereign immunity.

Nicolas Kabat, a staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who has been working on the case with the plaintiffs, said the state has tried to have the case dismissed four times without success, and said this is just the latest move to delay the trial. But he said the latest laws passed by the legislature allowing automatic appeals in the middle of a case, on the eve of a trial, make the situation unique.   

“There is nothing unusual about appealing an appealable order,” said Phil Buehler, press secretary for Tennessee Republican Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, in an email Thursday.

Similar lawsuits are ongoing or have already been resolved in several states with bans, including Texas and Idaho, where state residents have challenged the law based on their personal experiences. Plaintiffs in Idaho won their case in April 2025, when a judge said the near-total abortion ban does not mean a pregnant patient’s death has to be imminent or “assured” to perform an abortion. Complaints are also pending related to Texas hospitals allegedly not complying with federal law mandating emergency room treatment for a patient who needs an abortion as stabilizing care.

Women with serious pregnancy complications sue over state abortion bans

Allie Phillips, the lead plaintiff in Tennessee, joined several other women to sue the state in September 2023, alleging that the abortion ban put their health and lives in jeopardy when they were pregnant. They asked the state to clarify the law so that health is considered in an abortion decision, not just an immediate threat to a pregnant patient’s life. The way the law is written, attorneys argue, is too vague to allow for those exceptions.

Phillips and Nicole Blackmon, another plaintiff, had fetuses with anomalies related to the development of vital organs. Blackmon couldn’t afford to travel out of the state for an abortion, and eventually had to stop working because the pregnancy was affecting her health. She delivered a stillborn baby in her seventh month of pregnancy. Phillips raised enough money to seek an abortion in New York, only to find when she got there that the fetus had already died.

After the court granted a temporary block on the law as it relates to pregnancy complications, the state passed several laws that affected the case. The first bill, meant to clarify the state’s health exception for an abortion, was enacted in April 2025 but didn’t solve the issue, Kabat said. The language still wasn’t clear enough, and the court agreed and allowed the suit to continue.

Kabat said the legal team will continue its effort to clarify Tennessee’s laws so that stories like Dulong’s don’t happen to others.

“No matter how long this takes, we’re going to get the trial, we’re going to get these stories heard and we’re going to seek accountability from the state,” Kabat said.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org. 

An appeals court on Friday struck down the Trump administration’s closing of United States borders to asylum-seekers. 

An executive order by President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day last year, and later guidance to turn asylum-seekers around without a court hearing, are “unlawful” and “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum,” according to the ruling by a panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Advocates sued and said the administration’s action violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the right to seek asylum based on fears of persecution.

Trump’s proclamation on Jan. 20, 2025, said “the sheer number of aliens entering the United States has overwhelmed the system and rendered many of the INA’s provisions ineffective,” and that  “an invasion is ongoing at the southern border, which requires the Federal Government to take measures to fulfill its obligation to the States.”

The executive order, along with later guidance, required anyone crossing the border without permission to be turned around or quickly deported without a court date. As of March, about 2.7 million people had been released at the border with immigration court cases in recent years, according to a Stateline analysis. 

Those numbers peaked at more than 100,000 a month at times in 2023 during the Biden administration, and dropped quickly to a few hundred a month after Trump’s 2025 order. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, blamed the ruling on politics and called it “unsurprising.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. “We are sure we will be vindicated,” she wrote in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

President Donald Trump safely evacuated the White House Correspondents Dinner at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on Saturday night after shots were fired by an alleged lone gunman.

About two hours after the shots were fired, Trump, still wearing his tuxedo, addressed a roomful of reporters also in formalwear at the White House briefing room. Trump said one officer had been shot in the attack, but was saved by “a very good bulletproof vest.”

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a separate press availability that the officer and the suspect had been transported to local hospitals. 

The suspect was armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives, Washington Metropolitan Police interim Chief Jeffery Carroll said. As of Saturday night, investigators believed the suspect acted alone, though a full investigation was underway, Carroll said.

He would be prosecuted on two charges, using a firearm during a crime of violence and assault on a federal officer using a dangerous weapon, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said. He would be arraigned in federal court Monday, she added. 

No other casualties were reported, and the U.S. Capitol Police said all members of Congress in attendance were unharmed. The high-profile press dinner intended to honor the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel, often dubbed “nerd prom,” attracts about 2,600 attendees who pay $480 each for tickets.

Charged security checkpoint

The suspected shooter, who law enforcement said was a guest at the hotel, was a man from California who charged “a security checkpoint armed with multiple weapons,” from about 50 yards away, Trump said. 

He posted a photo on his social media platform of what appeared to be the suspect, lying shirtless flat on the floor. Some news media identified the individual but States Newsroom cannot yet confirm those reports.

Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, said in a statement on social media the incident occurred near the main magnetometer screening area at the dinner.

“He was running full-blast,” Trump said. 

Federal law enforcement on Saturday night was pursuing warrants to search the man’s home, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at the briefing with Trump.

Asked if he believed he was the target of the attack, Trump said, “I guess.” 

Trump said he’d been targeted, now apparently in a third assassination attempt in two years, because of his impactful record as president.

“It comes with the territory,” he said. “You take a look at what’s happened to some of our greatest presidents, and it doesn’t happen to people that don’t do anything,” he said.  

In a social media post before briefing reporters, Trump said he was in “perfect condition.”

Rescheduled dinner

At the White House briefing room podium, Trump praised the law enforcement response and committed to rescheduling the event in the next 30 days. The dinner, an annual celebration of the White House press corps, is “dedicated to freedom of speech,” he said.

“And we’ll make it bigger and better and even nicer,” he said. “I just want to thank everybody that was involved. I also want to thank the press, the media. You’ve been very responsible in your coverage, I will say. I’ve been seeing what’s been out.”

An initial press pool report from the hotel after the shooting occurred, sent at 8:39 p.m. Eastern, said “There was several loud bangs and the Secret Service with guns drawn rushed the pool out of the room. (The) Secret Service pushed us back screaming ‘Shots fired.’”

Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News said on social media shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern that she was behind the podium with other guests, “in a hold,” and Trump was still down the hall and did not want to leave.

Trump himself confirmed that in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. 

“Quite an evening in D.C. Secret Service and Law Enforcement did a fantastic job,” he wrote. “They acted quickly and bravely. The shooter has been apprehended, and I have recommended that we ‘LET THE SHOW GO ON’ but, will entirely be guided by Law Enforcement. They will make a decision shortly. Regardless of that decision, the evening will be much different than planned, and we’ll just, plain, have to do it again. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Frightened reporters seated at tables in the Hilton ballroom dove for the floor. Cabinet members and White House officials were hustled out of the room.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said on air that he heard “a really loud blasting away” and the next thing he knew he was being pushed to the floor by police. “I was just a few feet away from the gunman, and it was a really scary moment,” Blitzer said.

Reagan shooting

The annual formal dinner is hosted by an organization made up of journalists who cover the White House. Trump’s invitation to the event had been controversial given his frequent personal attacks on reporters and the news media in general.

The Hilton was also the site of another attack on a president when on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, gunman John Hinckley Jr. shot and wounded President Ronald Reagan while he was leaving the hotel. Reagan recovered after a stay in the hospital. Reagan’s press secretary, James Brady, also was wounded, as were police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy.

Details of the shooter’s motive and plan Saturday were not immediately clear. Trump said the public would know much more about him in the coming days.

Trump was injured in an assassination attempt during a campaign stop in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024. Another suspected assassin was arrested near Trump’s home in Florida on Sept. 15 of that year.

Jonathan Shorman contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — Family and friends of Virginia Roberts Giuffre gathered in the nation’s capital Saturday to mark one year since her death, and to demand justice for victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

On a stage across from the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, family members, advocates and women connected to Giuffre through shared horrors of sexual abuse held a vigil for her. 

They remembered the woman they say changed the world by sharing her story of abuse by the disgraced multi-millionaire who victimized roughly 1,000 women and girls, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

“Sis, today is your day,” Giuffre’s brother, Sky Roberts, said. “Today is Virginia’s Day, a day I know you would want us to be about celebrating survivors around the world, for both those that have come forward and those that have not, to be about inspiring us to continue speaking out, acting and reclaiming what many of us feel like we’ve lost.”

Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025 in Australia, where she had been living for several years. Giuffre had emerged as one of the most prominent victims after she challenged Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell and former British royal Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, alleging she had been trafficked and sexually abused.

Butterfly decorations, flowers and an artist rendering of Giuffre among animals and nature adorned the stage for the event attended by roughly 250 people.

The ceremony comes after nearly a year of renewed focus on the 2019 federal investigation of the disgraced financier. Interest reemerged and dogged Congress and President Donald Trump following an FBI memo in July that announced authorities found no reason to release further information going forward.

Trump, who campaigned on releasing the so-called Epstein files, and whose supporters for years stoked conspiracies, repeatedly dismissed the files last year as a “hoax.”

Shortly after Trump began his second term, former Attorney General Pam Bondi touted having Epstein’s client list on her desk.

All but one member of Congress voted in November to release the government’s investigative materials that led to sex trafficking charges against Epstein, who surrounded himself with powerful and wealthy figures, including Trump. The president denies any knowledge of the former hedge fund manager’s wrongdoings.

Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 awaiting trial.

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told the crowd Saturday, “There is a difference between misfortune and injustice.”

“If you were born into an abusive family, as so many of the Epstein survivors were, as you learn from Virginia’s remarkable book, that’s a misfortune,” Raskin said, referring to Giuffre’s posthumous memoir titled “Nobody’s Girl.”

The Maryland Democrat recounted well-documented evidence that the Justice Department had a 60-count indictment against Epstein ready in 2008, but that then-U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alex Acosta negotiated a plea deal for lesser state charges.

“If the whole of the government and the political elite organizes to block the truth and to repress change, that’s not just a misfortune, that’s an injustice, and we’re gonna do something about it,” Raskin said to cheers.

Advocacy groups, including the Women’s Law Project, Ultraviolet, World Without Exploitation and the National Organization for Women, helped stage Saturday’s memorial.

Giuffre’s book publicist, Dini von Mueffling, said shortly before Giuffre’s death she and Giuffre “wept and cheered” when they learned her book would be published by Penguin Random House.

“I so wish she could have seen that her brilliant book debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list and stayed on the list for 23 weeks — and then watch as Andrew lost his title,” von Mueffling said.

Mountbatten-Windsor, whose name and likeness appears in the Epstein investigative material, settled outside of court with Giuffre in 2022.

Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence for sex trafficking, though she was relocated to a lesser security prison by the Trump administration in August.

The Department of Justice, mandated by law, released millions of files related to the Epstein investigation in late 2025 and early 2026, though advocates and some lawmakers contend many redactions violate the law, and that many files remain unreleased.

By Jacques Abou-Rizk/Medill News Service

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Some time since President Donald Trump’s second term began, the White House removed a reference to April’s Arab American Heritage Month from its website. 

Former President Joe Biden’s 2024 proclamation now only exists in internet archives. As the month nears a close, Trump has ignored what many Arab Americans see as recognition for their contributions in America. 

Despite that snub, and even as the war in the Middle East continues, communities across the country celebrated the ninth annual National Arab American Heritage Month, including in Alexandria, Virginia, recently.

Amal and Warren David, co-founders of the Arab America Foundation, a 501(c)(3) dedicated to promoting Arab heritage, brought together hundreds of Arab American leaders, professionals, artists and activists in the Washington, D.C., suburb on April 16 for the national commemoration.

“We want to be joyful. We want to say we stand tall,” Amal David said to the couple hundred guests dressed in tuxedos and authentic Arab clothing at the Belle Haven Country Club. “Of course, we feel with our people, but it’s a form of showing resiliency.” 

The night brought together the diversity of the Arab American community. Members have roots in 22 nations in the Middle East and North Africa that speak Arabic and make up the Arab world. 

More than 3 million Arab Americans live in the United States today, approximately 134,000 of them in Virginia, the 10th-highest Arab population in the country. While more than 90% of Arabs worldwide are Muslim, nearly two-thirds of Arab Americans identify as Christian. 

Biden vs. Trump administration

Before Trump took office in 2025, Biden recognized the holiday every year of his term.

For example, in 2022, five years after the Arab America Foundation designated the month and began pushing for federal recognition, the Biden administration, Congress, the State Department and 48 states all recognized April as Arab American Heritage Month. 

But by 2026, the numbers had diminished. More than 30 states and 18 cities or towns, including Alexandria, released their own Arab American Heritage Month proclamations as of April 17. Only five states have permanent statutes for the April celebration. 

Amal David said the Arab America Foundation approached the Trump administration last year in hopes that he would issue a proclamation, but the group did not hear back. On April 15, U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Debbie Dingell, both Michigan Democrats, also re-introduced a resolution to recognize April as National Arab American Heritage Month at the federal level. 

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. 

In attendance at the Alexandria celebration was Arlington Councilman Abdel Elnoubi, an Egyptian American. He said he was not surprised with the lack of federal recognition from the Trump administration, but it’s part of the reason he continues to promote Arab Americans.

“I think especially with what’s happening in the world right now, it’s even more important and critical for us Arab Americans to be present, to be part of the conversation, to show our heritage and to show our contributions to this society more and more,” Elnoubi said. “Because the more people get to know you, the less they fear.” 

Arab Americans have made profound contributions across science, technology and the arts. Dr. Michael DeBakey, a Lebanese American, invented the artificial heart, Farouk El-Baz, an Egyptian American, pioneered the use of space photography, and Dr. Mona Hanna, an Iraqi American, helped expose the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. 

This year’s national celebration in Alexandria starred Yasmin Elhady, comedian and host of Hulu’s “Muslim Matchmaker.” The night was emceed by Emmy Award-winning journalist Ameera David, with music by vocalists Usama Baalbaki and Nibal Malshi. The two performed Arab classics alongside Alexandria Poet Laureate Emerita Zeina Azzam, a Palestinian American. 

Trump appointments

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee noted in April 2025 that the Trump administration had exceeded previous presidents in the number of Arab Americans in senior positions. 

Notably, Martin Makary, a British American of Lebanese background, leads the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American, is the president’s senior adviser on Arab and Middle Eastern Affairs. According to the Arab American Institute, Trump received 43.2% of the Arab American vote in 2024. 

“Having Arab Americans at the table brings needed perspective and strengthens decisions that impact all communities,” a statement from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee last year read. “We look forward to working with current and future appointments of highly-qualified Arab American professionals in the Trump administration, and we encourage the administration to continue this trend.” 

However, some Arab Americans cautioned that the U.S. role in warfare in the Middle East runs counter to their desire for peace in the region. 

Iran is not an Arab nation, but many Arab nations have been brought into the conflict. The U.S. government assists Israel’s military more than any other country, including $3.8 billion allocated annually through 2028. Israel bombed Lebanon, an Arab nation, earlier this month until a ceasefire was announced. 

“We deserve to see a stable, peaceful Middle East, and unfortunately our government continues with involvement over there and has not helped and has not brought us closer to that,” Elnoubi said. “So I really hope to start seeing a shift in our foreign policy.”

Issam Andoni, chairman of the Arab America Foundation board of directors, said Arab Americans have succeeded because they support one another.

“While it (may) look simple, I know very well that every one of you knows how hard it is,” Andoni said. “We come from different countries. We have different backgrounds. We have different beliefs … but as Arab Americans, we decide to come together and unite ourselves.” 

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order that disallowed immigrants claiming asylum at the southern border.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that immigration law allows those fleeing persecution to apply for asylum. 

“Congress did not intend to grant the Executive the expansive removal authority it asserts,” Judge J. Michelle Childs wrote, adding that they upheld a lower court’s ruling.

The three panel judges who heard the case were Childs, Justin R. Walker and Cornelia T.L. Pillard. Walker, a Trump appointee, filed a separate opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part from the majority.

Childs was appointed by former President Joe Biden and Pillard was appointed by former President Barack Obama. 

“The (Immigration Nationality Act) does not allow the President to remove Plaintiffs under summary removal procedures of his own making,” according to the ruling. “Nor does it allow the Executive to suspend Plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum, deny Plaintiffs’ access to withholding of removal under the INA, or curtail mandatory procedures for adjudicating Plaintiffs’ Convention Against Torture claims.”

The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

“This decision puts an end to the inhumane Trump policy of sending people, including families with little children, back to horrific danger without even a hearing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the appeal, said in a statement. “The court made clear that the president does not have the unilateral power to wipe away all of the asylum laws enacted by Congress.”

One of Trump’s first executive orders suspended entry to the southern border on the grounds that there was an “invasion,” which the administration claimed was a condition that allowed the president to invoke a section of the law to suspend asylum claims.

The executive order is part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, as he aims to conduct mass deportations of immigrants in the interior and cease migration to the U.S. through curbing access to asylum and refugee resettlement. 

In response to the order, immigration advocacy groups filed a class action lawsuit against the Trump administration. The groups who brought the suit were the ACLU, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, and Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project.

RAICES, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and the Florence Immigrant And Refugee Rights Project provide legal services to immigrants, and argued that Trump’s executive order harms the legal aid work of the individual plaintiffs.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice dropped its investigation Friday of the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell over building renovation costs, a move that could open the door for new Fed leadership next month — and signaled a victory for North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis.

U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said her office closed the probe after a request to the Fed’s inspector general to examine the cost overruns.

“The IG has the authority to hold the Federal Reserve accountable to American taxpayers. I expect a comprehensive report in short order and am confident the outcome will assist in resolving, once and for all, the questions that led this office to issue subpoenas,” Pirro wrote on X just after 10 a.m. Eastern.

Pirro said she “will not hesitate to restart a criminal investigation should the facts warrant doing so.”

Powell, whose term expires in May, has been the target of repeated public criticism from President Donald Trump, who threatened to fire the central bank’s chair if he did not lower interest rates.

The Trump administration’s criminal inquiry into Powell for a $2.5 billion renovation project at the Fed’s offices has been eyed with suspicion, including from his own party.

Tillis, R-N.C., said he would not vote for Trump’s pick to replace Powell, former Fed Board Governor Kevin Warsh, unless the administration dropped its “bogus” investigation.

A favorable vote by Tillis on the closely divided Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs is necessary to advance Warsh’s nomination, as all panel Democrats oppose him.

Tillis’s office did not immediately respond for comment.

A federal judge last month blocked the administration’s subpoenas to probe the Fed and Powell.

The Department of Justice declined to comment and referred States Newsroom to Pirro’s social media post.

A White House official reaffirmed Pirro’s announcement Friday.

“American taxpayers deserve answers about the Federal Reserve’s fiscal mismanagement, and the Office of the Inspector General’s more powerful authorities best position it to get to the bottom of the matter. The White House remains as confident as before that the Senate will swiftly confirm Kevin Warsh as the next Federal Reserve Chairman to finally restore competence and confidence in Fed decision-making,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told States Newsroom in a statement.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., issued a statement dismissing the DOJ’s announcement as “an attempt to clear the path for Senate Republicans to install President Trump’s sock puppet Kevin Warsh as Fed Chair.”

“Let’s be clear what the Justice Department announced today: they threatened to restart the bogus criminal investigation into Fed Chair Powell at any time while failing to drop their ridiculous criminal probe against Governor (Lisa) Cook. Anyone who believes Donald Trump’s corrupt scheme to take over the Fed is over is fooling themselves,” she wrote on X and Bluesky late Friday morning, referring to Trump’s abrupt August firing of Feb Board Governor Cook over alleged financial fraud.

Cook successfully challenged her firing in two lower courts. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether Trump legally dismissed Cook. 

Trump, who routinely posts about news of the day on his own social media platform Truth Social, had not commented on the announcement as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern.

During an unrelated Oval Office event Thursday, Trump sidestepped a question about what he hoped to learn from Pirro’s investigation into Powell and the Fed.

Instead, Trump responded by saying he could have completed the Fed’s Washington, D.C., headquarters renovation for $25 million and “had money left over.”

“On top of that, he’s been terrible on interest rates because he should have lowered interest rates. That’s why call him Jerome ‘too late.’ ‘Too late’ — that’s his nickname — Jerome ‘too late’ Powell. He likes me a lot,” Trump said.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is looking to eliminate funding in fiscal 2027 for the agency that serves as the primary federal funding source for libraries and museums nationwide.

But congressional appropriators — who rebuffed similar efforts to gut the agency in fiscal 2026 — expressed little enthusiasm for the proposed cut in interviews with States Newsroom. Groups representing museums and libraries across the country also blasted the president’s proposal. 

The administration is requesting $6 million in fiscal 2027 for the agency, known as the Institute of Museum and Library Services, “for necessary expenses to carry out (its) closure.”

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies, noted that her panel did not agree to the same Trump request in fiscal 2026 to eliminate funding for the agency. 

“I personally have always been a fan of libraries, and it does a lot for local communities,” said Capito, a West Virginia Republican whose panel writes the annual bill to fund the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

“So, that’s what he does, he proposes, and then we look at it and make our own decisions,” she said. 

Last year’s request turned down

The spending package signed into law by Trump in February provides roughly $292 million for the agency this fiscal year — a sharp rejection of Trump’s efforts. 

Capito said that though her committee will consider the president’s fiscal 2027 request, “if you look at what we did last year, it shows that we kind of rejected that premise.” 

Rep. Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican and chair of the corresponding Appropriations subcommittee in the House, appeared noncommittal about pursuing Trump’s fiscal 2027 request to gut the agency.

In response to States Newsroom’s request for a phone interview, Aderholt provided a written statement. 

“We are reviewing the request from the Administration and the requests from every member of the House,” Aderholt said, adding that “this is a member-driven process, and we look forward to working with our colleagues in putting together a strong bill for the American taxpayers.” 

Legal battles

The agency was created by Congress in 1996 and has a mission to “advance, support, and empower America’s museums, libraries, and related organizations through grantmaking, research, and policy development.”

The administration has taken major steps to try to dismantle the agency, including through a March 2025 executive order. 

However, Trump’s Department of Justice reached a settlement earlier in April with the American Library Association — the nation’s largest library association — and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — the country’s largest union of cultural workers — that protects the agency and guarantees it will continue issuing grants and program operations. 

In another setback for the administration, the DOJ dropped its appeal this month in a case brought by 21 attorneys general, who challenged the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency and had secured a major court victory in November. 

‘The barbarians are at the door’

Meanwhile, leading Democrats on the House and Senate appropriations panels dealing with the agency’s spending were quick to lambaste Trump’s proposal in interviews with States Newsroom. 

Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member of the Senate subcommittee and a Wisconsin Democrat, described the agency as “such an incredibly valuable entity” and vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to protect it. 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full House Appropriations Committee and the spending subcommittee with jurisdiction over the agency, said the administration’s request is “just neanderthal.”

The Connecticut Democrat said “we’ll work to restore like we try to do every time,” while adding that Trump’s request indicates that “the barbarians are at the door.” 

Library, museum organizations push back

Leading library and museum organizations fiercely opposed Trump’s request and called on Congress to reject the proposal. 

In a statement, Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association, said Trump’s “continued attack” on the agency in the budget request and the March 2025 executive order to shutter it “shows the extent to which the administration is tone deaf to the needs of millions of Americans who rely on libraries every day: older adults and veterans who use library telehealth spaces; unemployed people who use library resources to find a new job or learn new skills; families who count on story time; and students and faculty who do research in school and academic libraries.”

John Chrastka, founder and executive director of EveryLibrary, said Trump’s proposal is “a direct threat to the infrastructure that millions of Americans rely on every day,” in a statement. 

Chrastka, whose organization is dedicated to building support for libraries, said “libraries are not optional,” but instead represent “essential public resources that support literacy, workforce development, and community connection in every state.”

The American Alliance of Museums blasted the proposal as “misguided and out of step with the American public and Congress,” noting that similar efforts in fiscal 2026 and prior budget cycles to yank funding for the agency were rejected due to “strong bipartisan, bicameral support in Congress and sustained advocacy from the museum community.” 

The Institute of Museum and Library Services declined to comment on Trump’s fiscal 2027 budget request. 

The Trump administration’s recently announced plans to radically restructure the U.S. Forest Service have raised concerns among advocates that forest land across Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest could suffer. 

The plan, announced late last month, will relocate the agency’s head office from Washington D.C. to Salt Lake City while closing regional offices and research stations across the country. In Wisconsin, the changes are expected to affect about 250 employees across the agency’s offices in Madison and Milwaukee and smaller stations spread across the state. 

Research stations in Prairie du Chien and Wisconsin Rapids are being evaluated for closure while the Madison office has been selected to serve as the state office covering Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin. 

These proposed changes come to an agency that has already seen staff attrition over the past year due to the Trump administration’s efforts to severely reduce the size of the federal government. Last year, Wisconsin saw a 19% attrition rate in its U.S. Department of Agriculture staffing level, which includes the forest service. 

Proponents of the reorganization say that moving the headquarters out west will bring decision-makers closer to the majority of the public lands managed by the agency. However, through a combination of logging activity in the Upper Midwest, New England and southeastern states, more timber is harvested each year in states east of the Mississippi River. 

But opponents have pointed out that Salt Lake City is the epicenter of the growing anti-public lands movement within the Republican Party. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) has worked to sell off millions of acres of federally owned land while the state of Utah has sued the federal government over its ownership of millions of acres of land in the state. 

The advocacy infrastructure surrounding the anti-public lands movement has at times worked to influence environmental policy in Wisconsin. 

In the large scope of the Forest Service’s public lands portfolio, Wisconsin’s Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest is just a drop in the bucket. But the existence of the national forest in the Northwoods makes the federal government the largest landowner in Wisconsin. 

The Trump administration has explicitly worked to make it easier for extractive industries such as logging and mining to work on public lands. Green Light Metals, a Canadian company, has conducted exploratory drilling on national forest land in Taylor County. Last week, Congress voted to allow mining in the Superior National Forest on the edge of  Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Environmental advocates and union representatives of Forest Service employees say that sweeping changes to the agency could have dramatic repercussions for the rural communities where agency employees often work and could do irreparable damage to the forests themselves and the scientific research conducted at Forest Service stations. 

Howard Learner, president of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said the plan was clearly an effort to undermine the Forest Service’s ability to conduct research while supercharging the extraction of resources from the country’s public forests. 

“The Trump administration’s effort to take apart, as an effective matter, the U.S. Forest Service is deplorable,” Learner said. “The U.S. Forest Service needs to do a job making sure that its forests, the vast lands across our country that are our national forests, are protected and managed.” 

He noted that the agency is currently proposing one of its largest timber sales ever in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which ELPC is working to stop, and that it’s much harder for regulators to protect the country’s forests if they’re based in a far-away office.

Several people from the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents many forest service staff members, said the changes were coming to an already demoralized group of staff members while noting that the biggest harm would be felt by the rural areas where the national forests are located.

“Most Forest Service offices are in very rural, poor communities, so if these people are forced to move to Salt Lake, that could be two or three, good paying, middle-class jobs taken out of Rhinelander or wherever they may be sitting,” said Warner Vanderheul, president of union’s Forest Service council.

Steven Gutierrez, a business representative in the federal workers union’s  land management division, said that staff members will be divided between those who can’t take any more meddling from the White House and those who stick it out in an effort to do what they can to defend the forests. 

“There’s a lot that are standing strong in solidarity right now, and saying ‘I’m going to hold the line to protect democracy,’” Gutierrez said. “And that just by being a civil servant and being a Forest Service employee, that’s their way of standing up against this tyranny that’s happening from this administration.” 

But, he said, others will leave and the risk from those departures is the end to all sorts of research projects. 

“Now programs get shut down because there’s no one there anymore,” he said. “That research, that institutional knowledge, gets lost because now nobody’s there to do it. Nobody knows what anybody was working on.” 

Jenny Van Sickle, a spokesperson for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, said she’s concerned about the drain of expertise from Wisconsin. 

“Moving these regional models to state-based models really complicates and piecemeals out decision-making with these arbitrary borders,” she said. “All of these waterways are connected. All of these forests are connected. So a comprehensive approach to management is vital.” 

She said that an organization such as the fish and wildlife commission can help supplement the research done by the Forest Service, but not fully replace it. She noted that the commission has recently worked with the agency to study American marten habitat, wild rice and tribal climate adaptation. Vanderheul said that Forest Service research conducted in Wisconsin has helped produce recyclable glue on U.S. postage stamps and less breakable bats used by Major League Baseball teams. 

“A massive reduction in the workforce and professionals that have dedicated their lives to research and protecting these ecological systems is concerning,” Van Sickle said.

President Donald Trump’s executive order on mail voting would shatter decades of U.S. Postal Service independence intended to shield it from partisan politics, postal experts and attorneys say.

Postal experts said Trump ordering the postmaster general to take any action — let alone on a matter as sensitive as elections — violates guardrails in federal law against presidential control of the mail. Multiple people with deep knowledge of Postal Service history said they couldn’t recall a similar order in the agency’s modern era.

“For the president to direct the postmaster general to do anything, including handling these ballots, is contrary to the statutes, contrary to law,” said James Campbell Jr., an attorney in the Washington, D.C., area who consults on postal law.

The order, signed March 31, attracted swift condemnation as an unconstitutional attempt by Trump to control state-run elections. If it stands, the directive would also represent a White House power grab over the Postal Service, which remains a key part of American life and business.

Trump’s order directs the postmaster general, who acts as the Postal Service’s CEO, to set out rules that would require states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to send ballots through the mail during federal elections. States that want to use the mail would be required to provide lists of mail voters to the Postal Service, which would be prohibited from delivering ballots to individuals not on a list.

A Board of Governors leads the Postal Service, and holds the power to hire and fire the postmaster general. No more than five of the nine governors may belong to the same political party. 

While presidents nominate the governors and the Senate confirms them, they serve seven-year terms. The length, in theory, insulates them from political pressure.

S. David Fineman, a Philadelphia attorney nominated to the Board of Governors by President Bill Clinton who served as its chairman from 2003 to 2005, said he had never heard of the White House or a president directing the postmaster general to take certain actions. He called the executive order highly unusual.

“The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board,” Fineman said.

The board currently has only four members, all appointed by President Joe Biden, and five vacancies. Trump has sent four nominations to the U.S. Senate this year. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not scheduled confirmation hearings for the nominees.

Cash-strapped service

Trump has expressed interest in having more control over the mail. 

Last year, he floated the possibility of merging the Postal Service with the Commerce Department, a move that would require approval by Congress. The Washington Post reported in February 2025 that Trump was expected to try to fire the Board of Governors and take control of the Postal Service.

The Trump administration takes a dim view of independent agencies. Many allies of the president subscribe to the unitary executive theory, the idea that the U.S. Constitution grants the president full power over the entirety of the executive branch — meaning Congress cannot constitutionally create agencies that exist outside of White House control.

Trump has moved to assert authority over a number of independent and quasi-independent agencies since taking office, most notably the Federal Reserve. The Department of Justice is investigating cost overruns on a Federal Reserve construction project, widely seen as a pretext to target Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate policy has angered Trump.

The Postal Service is under tremendous financial pressure — potentially making it more vulnerable to proposals to bring it under White House control. Mail volume peaked in 2006 at 213 billion pieces that year. The Postal Service today handles 109 billion pieces annually.

The current postmaster general, David Steiner, told a U.S. House committee last month that the Postal Service will run out of cash within a year without changes to its prices and operations. The Postal Service is generally funded through stamps and other forms of user revenue, not by tax dollars.

Steiner emphasized the independent nature of the Postal Service throughout his prepared testimony. He has laid out a number of options to improve the Postal Service’s financial stability, including changes to pension funding and raising its borrowing limit from $15 billion, a level that’s remained unchanged since 1992.

“It is important to remember that we face these challenges as a self-financed, independent establishment of the Executive Branch,” Steiner wrote.

Congress approved sweeping legislation in 1970 reorganizing the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, an independent corporation. Before that, the postmaster general was a Cabinet-level position nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

Trump’s order marks “a dramatic shift away from the intent of the 1970 legislation to insulate the Postal Service from interference,” Joseph M. Adelman, a history professor at Framingham State University in Massachusetts who has researched mail history, said.

Election security

The White House didn’t directly answer States Newsroom’s questions about Trump’s views on the independence of the Postal Service or the legal justification for the executive order.

“Election integrity has always been a top priority for President Trump, and the American people sent him back to the White House because they overwhelmingly supported his commonsense election integrity agenda,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.

“The President will do everything in his power to lawfully defend the safety and security of American elections and to ensure that only American citizens are voting in them.”

Jackson also called on Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship when registering. 

The Postal Service didn’t answer questions about how it plans to respond to the order. A USPS spokesperson said only that the Postal Service was reviewing it. 

Lawsuits

Steiner has indicated he’s awaiting a court decision on how to proceed. 

“If a court says that’s not what the law means, we’ll follow that,” Steiner told The New York Times after the executive order was signed. “And so from our perspective, we don’t get involved in policy or law, we just follow the law.”

The order on mail ballots faces at least five lawsuits. The Democratic National Committee, top Democrats in Congress and Democratic state officials have all sued. The legal challenges emphasize the Postal Service’s independence in federal law.

The lawsuit filed by the DNC, top Democratic lawmakers and other Democratic campaign groups, asserts the Postal Service is structured to operate independently of partisan politics. The complaint calls the Postal Service “indispensable” to voting by mail, noting that it delivered more than 222 million pieces of ballot mail in 2024, including nearly 100 million general election ballots.

A dozen Republican state attorneys general filed motions in court this week seeking to defend the executive order from the Democratic legal challenges. The motions call the order an example of cooperative federalism to provide states with optional resources to help protect their elections.

The GOP officials argue the Democrats lack standing to challenge the Postal Service provisions of the order and that their objections are premature because the Postal Service hasn’t finalized any new rules on mail ballots.

The order “simply directs” the Postal Service “to initiate rulemaking—it does not regulate the States directly and it does not directly inhibit anyone’s voting rights,” a court filing by the state attorneys general says.

The states involved in the Republican-led defense of the order include Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas.

Vote-by-mail 

Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.

American Postal Workers Union President Jonathan Smith said in a statement that the Postal Service doesn’t block mailers from sending letters or refuse to deliver letters because of the identity of the sender. Postal workers take extraordinary measures to ensure ballots reach their destinations promptly and securely, he said.

“Postal workers take the sanctity of the mail seriously, and every process and policy of the Postal Service ensures that mail is accepted, processed, and delivered, no matter who sent it or where it is going,” Smith said.

On Monday, more than 100 U.S. House Democrats sent a letter to Trump demanding he refrain from future actions that undermine the Postal Service’s independence and calling on him to rescind the executive order. The letter says the order sets “a dangerous precedent for political interference” in postal service operations.

Senate Democrats followed up with a letter to Steiner and the USPS Board of Governors on Tuesday, urging the Postal Service to not implement the order. The letter, signed by 37 senators, including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, calls the Postal Service’s independence a “hallmark” of its operations.

“The Postal Service doesn’t care which politicians you may support,” Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said on the Senate floor last week. “Its only priority is to deliver the mail to every community in the country.”

“The president is now trying to corrupt this mission,” Peters, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees USPS, said. “If the president is successful in forcing the Postal Service to play a role in running elections, he will completely erode the trust of this storied institution.” 

Wisconsin filed three lawsuits Thursday against online prediction market companies that the state Department of Justice accused of “working together to facilitate illegal sports betting throughout the state.”

“Except in limited circumstances, sports betting and other forms of commercial gambling have long been illegal in the state of Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said during a news conference Thursday afternoon. “No company is above this law, no matter how creatively those companies try to disguise the activity that they’re engaged in.”

The lawsuits were filed as Wisconsin prepares to renegotiate 11 tribal gaming compacts to include online sports betting under a law Gov. Tony Evers signed earlier this month. The legislation legalized online sports betting on the condition that the required computer servers are housed on tribal land.

Sports betting has been legal in Wisconsin since 2021, but only in person at tribal casinos.

The state’s lawsuits target online prediction markets that allow users to put money on the outcome of everything from major world events to sports outcomes.

The emergence of prediction markets including Kalshi and Polymarket has prompted states across the country to enact legislation and file lawsuits, Stateline reported in March.

The online platforms have been estimated to generate more than $13 billion every month, with the bulk of those revenues coming from sports betting, Stateline reported.

Kaul said Wisconsin was filing its own lawsuit, but a handful of other states, including recently New York, have filed similar suits citing their own state regulations.

“These companies have chosen to flout Wisconsin law by thinly disguising the sports betting that they facilitate through what are called event contracts,” Kaul explained. “But our position in this case is that event contracts are no different than ordinary sports bets. The companies collect a fee, we allege, for every bet that’s made, leading them to earn significant revenue from Wisconsinites through violations of our state’s gambling regulations.”

The goal of the suits is to shut down the platforms in Wisconsin, Kaul said. The state isn’t currently seeking monetary damages, but he said that possibility hasn’t been ruled out should there be a legal basis to demand them and the facts to support such a demand.

He said the suit was filed in response to “a huge increase in this type of activity” in the last few years.

Each of the three lawsuits is filed in Dane County circuit court as a “complaint to abate public nuisance” and accuse the defendants of “facilitating illegal sports betting throughout the state.” They ask the court to find them in violation of state law and to issue an injunction against the companies for sports-related trading by Wisconsin users.

One suit names Kalshi Inc., along with four affiliates; Robinhood Markets and two affiliates; and two Coinbase companies. The second names three companies doing business as Polymarket or affiliates of Polymarket. The third suit names Foris Dax Markets and North American Derivatives Exchange Inc., doing business as Crypto.com.

In a statement received late Friday, Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal pointed to a Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruling April 6 that states don’t have jurisdiction over prediction markets.

“Congress was clear — consumers deserve uniform, federal oversight over derivatives markets,” Grewal said. “As the Third Circuit held, state enforcement that seeks to prohibit prediction markets — like Wisconsin’s lawsuit [Thursday] against Coinbase and others — ‘is exactly the patchwork that Congress replaced wholecloth by creating the CFTC.’ Wisconsin should accept clear and consistent CFTC oversight of prediction markets — just as Congress intended.”

All of the businesses in the lawsuits list an identical street address in Wilmington, Delaware, except for the three Robinhood companies, which list an address in Dover, Delaware.

All three suits also include as defendants unnamed private individuals or entities that “facilitate” the platforms’ transactions.

The lawsuits focus on sports betting, although the platforms also host transactions involving other kinds of events and predictions. Kaul said the state alleges sports-related gambling is “a very large part” of the activity on Kalshi and other platforms.

The suits describe transactions on the platforms as “indistinguishable from an ordinary sports bet” as defined in Wisconsin law.

Crypto.com, for example, “relabels its sports bets as ‘event contracts,’ meaning contracts traded between buyers and sellers at agreed upon prices that mimic the odds of a sports-related outcome,” the lawsuit naming Crypto.com states. “Parties to these ‘event contracts’ wager money on whether a given sports-related outcome will occur, just as when people bet on that same outcome using traditional casino-style sportsbooks.”

On April 3, 2026, the suit states, “traders could buy contracts taking the position that the University of Michigan would win its Final Four matchup with the University of Arizona for around $0.54, which reflected a roughly 54% projected chance of Michigan winning. When Michigan won, event contract holders who bet on that team winning received $1 per contract and those who instead bet on Arizona winning received nothing.”

Kaul said there was “no direct relationship” between the lawsuits and the enactment of the new law allowing online sports betting. “What we are alleging is violations of Wisconsin law, and the allegations would be the same whether or not there had been the new legislation passed.”

This report was updated 4/27/2026 with a statement from Coinbase. 

Medicinal marijuana products that are legal at the state level will see looser federal regulation under an order the U.S. Department of Justice published Thursday, while a process that could remove the drug in all forms from the federal list of the most dangerous drugs is set to begin in late June.

The order, signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, shifts many marijuana products from Schedule I — the Drug Enforcement Administration’s list of drugs with the greatest potential for abuse and least legitimate use — to Schedule III. 

That will open the door to greater research and provide an effective tax break for businesses that sell medicinal marijuana that is legal under state law.

The move follows President Donald Trump’s executive order last year directing the DOJ to move toward rescheduling.

“The Department of Justice is delivering on President Trump’s promise to expand Americans’ access to medical treatment options,” Blanche said in a statement. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information.”

The order applies to state-licensed medical marijuana products in the states that allow medicinal use of the drug.

The move means those businesses can deduct business expenses from their federal taxes and researchers have access to state-legal products. As a Schedule I drug, only cannabis grown in a federal facility could be studied, severely limiting the supply available to researchers.

The DEA also scheduled a hearing on broader reclassification to begin June 29 and end no later than July 15. That hearing will explore the possibility of rescheduling marijuana products that could include recreational use.

The order likely has no immediate impact on the difficulty marijuana businesses have had accessing the banking system. Institutions that lend to even state-legal businesses could be prosecuted on federal money laundering charges for offering banking services to businesses that violate federal drug laws.

‘Historic’ shift

Moving a limited number of products from Schedule I, which includes drugs such as heroin and cocaine, to Schedule III, which includes highly regulated prescription drugs such as acetaminophen with codeine, does not satisfy advocates who have called for complete legalization. 

But it does represent a major shift in the federal government’s official position on cannabis, several pro-legalization groups said.

“It’s historic because the federal government, historically, has denied the existence of medical cannabis, even as a concept,” Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the advocacy group the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in an interview. 

The federal government was in recent memory “outright hostile” to medicinal marijuana, Armentano added. The order “finally acknowledges and recognizes not only the legitimacy of marijuana as a medicine, but also the legitimacy of these state programs, and it is trying now to integrate these state programs into our own existing federal regulatory schemes.”

Forty states and the District of Columbia allow medicinal marijuana.

Jasmine Johnson, CEO of Florida-based cannabis company GŪD Essence, wrote in an email that the federal government’s acknowledgement of cannabis’ legitimate medical value was the most important part of the order. 

“That shift alone helps move the industry out of decades of stigma and opens the door for expanded research, more institutional participation, and a more rational regulatory framework,” she wrote.

Medicinal vs. recreational

Recreational use will see no immediate changes from the order. In the 24 states in which recreational use, also called adult use, is legal, businesses that sell both medicinal and recreational products may experience confusion.

Chuck Smith, the CEO of Colorado Leads, an industry group, said in a statement that for Colorado cannabis businesses, “the immediate effects of this order are significant but relatively narrow.”

“Hybrid businesses should expect a transitional period in which federally covered medical activity and federally non-covered adult-use activity may be treated differently for registration, tax, and compliance purposes,” Smith said.

Such businesses would likely not see a tax benefit “when it comes to producing and selling, arguably, the products that consist of the majority of their business,” Armentano said.

Ryan Hunter, the chief revenue officer for Colorado-based marijuana company Spherex, called the DOJ order “a very silly announcement,” noting that it created a third regulatory category of a single plant species.

“Though this is all the same plant,” hemp and medical marijuana “are now considered Schedule III substances under the Controlled Substances Act (similar to Tylenol + Codeine),” while non-medical use is still considered Schedule I, he wrote in a statement. “My mind boggles at these arbitrary and artificial distinctions, but here we are.”

Eventual changes

Johnson, the Florida CEO, said she expected regulators to eventually merge how they treat different uses of the drug.

“The distinction between medicinal and recreational use has always been more regulatory than practical. From an operator’s standpoint, the same plant, supply chain, and compliance standards exist regardless of how it’s categorized,” she wrote. 

“Over time, we’ll likely see a continued shift toward a more unified framework that reflects how consumers actually engage with cannabis, rather than maintaining rigid distinctions that complicate operations.”

Amal Khalifa “felt human” for the first time after she fled Egypt in 2019 for the United States and found kind treatment from police when she reported being a victim of domestic violence.

“When I walked into that precinct I felt like a human being for the first time in my whole life,” Khalifa said. “I like the system here — it is there to help the people.”

Khalifa still faced a long road to asylum, which she gained last year, based on her fear of returning home to Egypt. As a government worker there she faced persecution for reporting corrupt activity by criminals and illegal pressure from the outlawed but powerful Muslim Brotherhood, she said.

But leaving her former fiancé after she got to the United States meant she had to support herself as her asylum case proceeded, and she was able to do that by working as an auditor for the New York State Department of Labor. She credits her ability to earn a living with legal work permission she could get after establishing her case.

That option to work could close soon for asylum-seekers for the foreseeable future.

Currently asylum-seekers must wait six months after filing an asylum request before they can work legally, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend that to one year. The new rule is open for comment until Friday. No effective date has been announced.

The proposal would also pause any new requests for work permission during times of high asylum case processing backlogs. Since the backlog is now 1.4 million asylum cases, that would effectively stop new and renewal work request applications for anywhere from 14 to 173 years, the administration estimates.

The rule would “make it impossible for asylum-seekers to work legally to support themselves,” and would result in more poverty and off-the-books workers competing with legal workers for jobs, according to a February statement from The Forum, a coalition of immigration-related advocacy groups.

At least half a million asylum cases would be affected immediately, if the rule takes effect, causing wage loss of $27 billion to $127 billion a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated.

Not only new requests are affected — renewals will have to go through the same process and, if they’re even granted, would be shorter based on a rule change from December 2025. That new rule limits employment authorization and renewals to 18 months instead of the previous limit of five years.

“This makes it harder for people to gain work authorization and also more arduous to stay work-authorized,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that researches immigration policy.

The rule is meant to discourage “frivolous” asylum cases and “allow our asylum system to prioritize those actually seeking refuge from danger,” according to a February statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security.

“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy path to working in the United States, overwhelming our immigration system with meritless applications,” the statement said.

Amy Grenier, associate director for government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said there are less drastic ways to curb frivolous asylum claims. For instance, the Migration Policy Institute has proposed new policies such as posting asylum officers at borders who are trained to make quick decisions on cases before the applications clog immigration courts.

“This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws,” Grenier said. “The administration will cause hardship for American businesses that rely on these legal workers, worsen asylum backlogs and harm people already fleeing for their lives.”

The move is likely to exacerbate the number of immigrants not authorized to work, especially the millions who arrived earlier this decade and sought asylum.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis found that nearly 550,000 immigrants without legal status left the United States last year, including through deportations and voluntary departure. That has put a lid on job growth but has also kept unemployment stable, the report concluded.

Two groups that recruit asylum-seekers for jobs told Stateline they’re opposed to the proposed new rules. Many industries need immigrants such as Khalifa with valid asylum cases and professional experience in their home countries.

“Immigration is a vital part of the solution to labor shortages, especially in health care,” said Avigail Ziv, chief program officer at Upwardly Global, an organization that helps work-authorized immigrants, refugees and asylees restart their careers in the U.S. The group helped Khalifa find her state job in New York.

“In the U.S. right now there’s over 270,000 underemployed immigrants that have been trained in health care in their home countries,” Ziv said.

Another group that helps asylum-seekers find jobs is Tent Partnership for Refugees, whose CEO Gideon Maltz said, “When the U.S. government curtails employment authorization for those who are already here and working, they’re not only hurting people seeking refuge, they’re undercutting the companies and communities that depend on their labor.”

Employers in manufacturing, hospitality and logistics need more workers, Maltz said, and “refugees and asylum-seekers have been helping keep those industries running, reliably stepping into the hardest-to-fill jobs and contributing from Day One.”

Many asylum-seekers waiting for work authorization work in low-paying gig economy jobs such as food delivery, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, which interviewed hundreds of asylum-seekers in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area for a research project.

The New York State Labor Department, in an attempt to clear clogged migrant shelters, set up a program in 2023 to connect asylum-seekers with valid work permission to jobs. Employers who participated included those in the industries of home health care, food processing, parking and building services, according to information the department sent to Stateline at the time.

The proposed federal rule suggests that American workers could benefit from the changes, and that employers would benefit by hiring available Americans. States could benefit as well, the department said, if lower immigration numbers reduce the strain on social services.

There were similar attempts by the first Trump administration to curtail work permission for asylum seekers, but they were all struck down in court, sometimes on technicalities.

A one-year waiting rule, as well as longer permitted processing times, were struck down in 2022 after a judge ruled that an acting Department of Homeland Security secretary did not have the authority to implement the rules in 2020. A 2018 court ruling also forced fast 30-day processing of work permission requests for asylum-seekers.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Upwardly Global’s role in helping asylum-seekers get jobs. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.