Leaders of Wisconsin colleges and universities are speaking out against pending cuts to federal financial aid after they cleared the U.S. House on Thursday.
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Northland College has faced years of financial woes stemming from rising costs and declining enrollment. The college’s president and Ashland’s mayor recently reflected on the impact and legacy of the university.
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The Universities of Wisconsin would have to provide students with around-the-clock access to virtual mental health providers under a new Republican proposal.
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After 40 years of federal support, a University of Wisconsin-La Crosse program training teachers to provide physical education for students with disabilities will no longer receive a critical grant.
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The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
This report has been updated.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.
The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.
President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”
Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.
“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”
Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.
“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”
Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”
Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”
“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.
“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.”
The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.
The legislation would:
The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.
The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.
A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.
Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.
Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.
Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.
An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.
House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.
Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.
Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.
“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”
The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.
Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”
Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.
“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”
Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate.
The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.
While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.
“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.
On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”
Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.
However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000.
Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”
“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”
Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.
“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”
The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.
The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.
New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.
“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”
While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.
“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.
“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”
He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.
“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”
Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”
“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”
House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”
“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.
The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax.
Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”
“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,” Larsen said.
“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”
House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.
“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.
Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”
“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”
The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’
“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”
Two UW-Platteville female students died in a “targeted and isolated” dorm incident Monday. Both women lived in the Wilgus Hall dormitory.
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The Universities of Wisconsin ranked 44th out of 50 states in public funding in 2024 — a drop of one spot from 2023.
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Some state Republican lawmakers hope President Donald Trump’s recent executive order restricting funding for so-called “gain-of-function” research will accomplish their goal of clamping down on what they see as dangerous pathogen studies in Wisconsin.
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Med Wise Rx is an education program to help older Wisconsinites communicate with their pharmacists and safely manage many prescriptions.
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After sitting vacant for more than a year, Eau Claire's former Sacred Heart Hospital has been purchased by a fundraising foundation for the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
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Haverford College President Wendy Raymond testifies before the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce on Wednesday, May 7, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — A trio of college presidents from across the nation Wednesday took heat from U.S. House lawmakers, as Republicans expand their drive to penalize higher education institutions they say have failed to combat antisemitism.
The presidents of Pennsylvania’s Haverford College, DePaul University in Chicago and California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo appeared before the House Committee on Education and Workforce to detail the steps the schools have taken to address antisemitism at their schools.
But it was the Haverford president, Wendy Raymond, who drew the most outrage from Republicans, including a tense exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, when Raymond could not say how many students have been disciplined recently for antisemitic conduct.
Stefanik called Raymond’s responses “completely unacceptable.”
The hearing in the GOP-controlled House education panel — the first on antisemitism since President Donald Trump took office — came as his administration takes drastic steps to withhold billions of dollars in federal funding from several elite institutions across the country over claims that the schools are harboring antisemitism on their campuses.
Harvard University has had grant funding yanked by the administration for permitting “intolerable” harassment of Jewish students.
Trump officials have also attempted to make elite institutions align more with the administration ideologically.
GOP lawmakers have focused on antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and college protests that surfaced across the country last year over the war in Gaza. Now they are moving on beyond the Ivy League.
Chairman Tim Walberg said “the scourge of antisemitism has taken root far beyond the country’s best-known ivory towers, and it’s our responsibility as a committee to unearth and address antisemitism at these schools, too, and others, especially as antisemitism is at a historic high in the United States.”
“Antisemitism is proliferating at colleges across the country, both private and public, in rural, urban and suburban settings,” the Michigan Republican said.
Republicans on the panel expressed particular dissatisfaction with testimony offered from Haverford’s Raymond.
The small liberal arts college, founded in 1833, is located in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Raymond acknowledged that in reaction to the war in Gaza, “events have occurred on our campus that are inconsistent with our values” and apologized to Haverford’s Jewish community. She did not elaborate on the incidents.
She said the college has taken “significant steps to address these issues and strengthen our policies.”
“That includes updating our policies, strengthening campus safety programs, deepening engagement with the Jewish community, launching programs to combat antisemitism and forming our ad hoc committee on free expression.”
Asked by Walberg how many students have been expelled or suspended for antisemitic conduct since Hamas’ 2023 attack, Raymond was the only one of the three presidents who could not provide concrete numbers.
Raymond said Haverford does not publicize that information but that suspension and expulsion are “normal parts” of their disciplinary process.
Stefanik took aim at Raymond’s refusal to offer more details on any actions taken by the school regarding antisemitism.
During a heated exchange between Stefanik and Raymond, the Haverford president said: “Respectfully, representative, I will not be talking about individual cases here.”
Stefanik fired back, saying: “Respectfully, president of Haverford, many people have sat in this position who are no longer in the positions as president of universities for their failure to answer straightforward questions.”
Stefanik was pointing to multiple university presidents she grilled who appeared before the House education panel for hearings regarding campus antisemitism and later resigned, including leaders at Harvard, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Raymond had said that there “have been some” disciplinary actions taken by Haverford related to antisemitism but did not offer details.
“For the American people watching: You still don’t get it. Haverford still doesn’t get it. It’s a very different testimony than the other presidents who are here today, who are coming with specifics,” Stefanik said.
DePaul’s president, Robert Manuel, detailed a number of steps the university is taking, including implementing a new ID verification and mask policy, placing new limits on campus protests and suspending the operations of a student group that Walberg claimed is “at the very center” of the school’s “antisemitism problem.”
Cal Poly’s president, Jeffrey Armstrong, said “when alleged antisemitism or harassment occurs, we investigate and impose immediate university discipline.”
He also said the university is enhancing its mandatory student orientation and biannual employee training to provide greater education and awareness on antisemitism.
At the end of her heated exchange with Raymond, Stefanik said “this is completely unacceptable, and it’s why this committee has stepped in, because higher education has failed to address the scourge of antisemitism, putting Jewish students at risk at Haverford and other campuses across the country.”
Meanwhile, Democrats on the panel criticized Republicans on the committee for pursuing hearings on antisemitism when the Trump administration has made huge cuts to the U.S. Department of Education, including its Office for Civil Rights that’s tasked with investigating discrimination complaints.
Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the panel, said “in its first three months, the Trump administration has closed down seven of 12 OCR regional offices, all of which conduct investigations into discrimination on campus, whether it be based on antisemitism or race, national origin, gender or disability.”
The Virginia Democrat also pointed to reports of nearly half of the OCR staff being laid off. “One is left to wonder: how can OCR carry out its important responsibilities with half the staff?” he said.
Scott added that the administration’s move to dismantle OCR “raises reasonable doubt about the plans for addressing antisemitism on campus as well as racism, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia or the needs of students with disabilities.”
Republican proposals to overhaul how families pay for college could affect nearly half of the students attending the Universities of Wisconsin and about 40 percent of students at the state’s private schools.
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It’s been one year since UW students in Madison and Milwaukee set up encampments to demand their campuses divest from Israel and protest the war in Gaza.
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Bascom Hall, University of Wisconsin-Madison. (Ron Cogswell | used by permission of the photographer)
With the 100th day of President Donald Trump’s second term in office approaching, University of Wisconsin-Madison professors and staff met Thursday to take stock of the growing threats to higher education and U.S. democracy and to discuss collective action to push back.
UW-Madison professor Mark Copelevitch said the threats to higher education are “unprecedented because it’s happening in America” yet compared the current moment to a movie that historians and experts have seen “over and over again.”
Copelovitch described the current U.S. system of government as competitive authoritarianism. He said comparisons for what is happening today don’t have to go back to 1930s Germany — recent examples are Viktor Orban in Hungary and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey.
“Universities are centers of independent ideas and dissent. Professors are attacked by populist and nationalist leaders as being the radical elite,” Copelovitch said.
University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty, including Copelovitch and other professors were gathered for panels organized by the Public Representation Organization of the Faculty Senate (PROFS) and the Academic Staff Professionals Representation Organization (ASPRO) to discuss shared challenges and the prospects for collective action to defend higher education.
UW-Madison is facing an array of challenges to its operations due to the federal government as over $12 million in research grants to UW-Madison have been cut and caps on indirect cost reimbursements for research grants at 15% represent another significant cut to research funds, and dozens of students across UW campuses and other schools had their visas cancelled. Copelovitch said it is part of a greater attempt to exert influence over the shape of universities across the country.
“What’s happening at Madison [is] terrible and horrible and has real world consequences specifically here,” Copelovitch said. “But again, it is part of a broader pattern that is affecting all the universities across the country. So far, most universities have treated the problems as institution-specific symptoms… That is the big challenge right now. How do you get dozens, if not hundreds of institutions, to start acting collectively to push back against this?”
The panelists said one of the big challenges that universities face is explaining to the public how their budgets work and the impacts of potential cuts.
UW-Madison Veterinary Medicine Research Administration Director Jenny Dahlberg said one lost grant will be “much more broad reaching” than some imagine. “This is an entire generation of scientists that no longer will have opportunities to conduct research. That is alarming,” she said.
Dahlberg said faculty and staff need to find a way to protect their ability to speak freely about research and to train the next generation.
Copelovitch said universities will have to communicate to the public about their budgets and recent attacks on academic freedom, and explain that if those things continue it “ultimately means that the universities that people think they’re going to send their kids to eventually are just not going to exist in that format.”
Don Moynihan, a University of Michigan professor and previously a UW-Madison faculty member, said conversations about whether universities are too reliant on federal funding miss the point. He said that investments into research at universities were part of a deal between universities and the government created at the end of World War II.
“If you will help us with our goals of building out research infrastructure, we will ensure a steady flow of resources into that research infrastructure,” Moynihan said. “Now, we have one of those partners basically withdrawing from the partnership and not just withdrawing from the partnership, but also trying to dictate what the other party does, even though they’re bringing less resources to the table and that activity violated that contract.”
Moynihan said there’s no way to manage the budget holes that could be created by cuts and that it’s not really feasible that the private sector could fill to gap.
“You’re going to accept or live with a much smaller campus that does much less research… and that story will be true across lots of other research areas,” Moynihan said.
Moynihan said the Trump’s administration’s letter to Harvard University, which demanded changes to its administration, student admissions process and called for audits into “DEI” across the campus, lays out a “full menu” of administration priorities. The administration said it would also be cutting over $2 billion in federal grants to the school.
Moynihan said that it’s clear that individual universities making side deals won’t be a viable strategy.
“Without collective action, there is not going to be any effective pushback against this administration,” Moynihan said.
Copelovitch said that he has been “heartened” to see the pushback in the last few weeks. UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin signed a letter together with hundreds of other higher education leaders to speak against the “unprecedented government overreach” and the “political interference now endangering American higher education.”
Copelovitch said discussions about universities banding together, including a recent proposal that Big Ten schools form a NATO-like agreement, will also be key.
“No chancellor or provost is going to stick their neck out and lead the fray. Harvard is doing it a little bit, and Harvard can afford to do it, but leaders of any individual public institution are not going to do that, so there’s a need to speak collectively,” Copelovitch said.
The upheaval in U.S. institutions has gone beyond higher education, and at a separate event, titled “The Fragility and Performance of Democracy in the U.S.” hosted by the Elections Research Center on Thursday afternoon, focused on analyzing Trump’s attacks on the U.S. administrative state and the consolidation of executive power .
UW-Madison professor and director of the Elections Research Center Barry Burden said he didn’t think “any of us imagined we would see the kind of chaos that we’ve experienced these first 100 days,” but said the second Trump administration “has been so massively disruptive” and is “pushing the limits of what a democratic system can handle.”
“It is doing things that previously seemed illegal, impossible, unimaginable or unconstitutional, and they’re happening daily and often with people who are not really part of the government or part of his party — people like Elon Musk and others — being brought in to do the hatchet work on federal agencies,” Burden said.
Burden said that Trump is showing warning signs of a “personalized” president, which is often a warning sign for democracies.
“We’ve seen in other countries where a fairly elected leader, and [Trump] is a fairly elected leader, can nonetheless abuse the government against their enemies and make it a kind of weapon — whether it’s using the IRS for political purposes, or threatening judges or intimidating universities or journalists,” Burden said. “All of those things are using his power as president to get parts of society to bow to him and serve his interests.”
Burden said the protests being held across the country at state Capitols, in small cities and towns — including in Wisconsin — in recent weeks are a sign that civil society is starting to rise up in opposition.
“We’ve seen the public come back out of its hiding,” Burden said. He added that unpopularity amongst the public and public resistance — along with accountability by the courts and the media — are what has been essential in resisting autocrats in eastern Europe and Latin America as well. “It’s all hands on deck, really, to stop a democratic government from sliding away.”
Burden said that people need to understand their place in upholding democracy.
“Democracy needs people to keep it flourishing,” Burden said. “It doesn’t operate on its own. We often think of it as a kind of system. You write a constitution, and it exists, and it’s in place, and it will just continue. That’s not how it works. It has to be sustained and tended to and protected. It takes a whole bunch of different actors. It takes the public being vigilant. It takes journalists, media outlets holding government accountable, and transmitting what’s happening. … and it takes political parties to govern themselves and keep bad elements out of government.”
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Some visa terminations have been restored at Universities of Wisconsin campuses following a sweeping walk back by President Donald Trump's administration Friday.
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Advocates for faculty and staff at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said it’s time for collective organizing against federal attacks on higher education.
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Wisconsin's education department won’t sign or submit documents to the Trump administration certifying the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, state Superintendent Jill Underly told WPR on Friday.
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Northland College’s board has hired an appraiser as it seeks to sell the Ashland campus and other real estate once the college closes this spring.
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With the UW-Madison’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs under fire and its chief diversity officer position vacant, the university has created a new position: special advisor to the chancellor and provost.
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The center is expected to cost $419 million, and will consist of a 395,000-square-foot facility. School leaders say it will allow them to accept an extra 1,000 engineering students each year.
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