People in southern Wisconsin could be seeing more fireflies this summer as lifting drought conditions improve habitat for the insects, according to a UW-Madison entomology professor.
The post Have you seen more fireflies this year? appeared first on WPR.
Special Olympics Wisconsin has joined an international effort aimed at improving health care quality and access for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The post Special Olympics Wisconsin is part of global effort to improve health care quality, access appeared first on WPR.
Federal workers living in Wisconsin and Minnesota are among those who have been placed on administrative leave by the Environmental Protection Agency after voicing concerns about politicization of the agency.
The post EPA workers in Duluth placed on leave after signing letter criticizing Trump policies appeared first on WPR.
Two facilities assisting Wisconsin veterans who don't have housing are set to close at the end of September due to ongoing deficits and a political battle over state funding.
The post As politicians cast blame, facilities assisting homeless veterans set to close appeared first on WPR.
UW-Madison’s Keith Bechtol has played a hand in building the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile. A camera with 3.2 billion pixels will collect the data equivalent of all written language over all of human history.
The post A Wisconsin scientist helped launch a telescope that will create the greatest cosmic movie of all time appeared first on WPR.
Instead of hiking through the woods to find and identify birds, the BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin set up lawn chairs and blankets and waited for the birds to come to them.
The post BIPOC Birding Club of Wisconsin finds ‘bird joy’ at Tenney Park in Madison appeared first on WPR.
Transportation Secretary Kristina Boardman joined WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” to discuss how changes to state and federal funding will affect infrastructure in the state.
The post Wisconsin DOT secretary explains impact of transportation funding and fee increases from new state budget appeared first on WPR.
The plan no longer calls for allowing duplexes and triplexes in areas zoned for single-family houses.
The post One year of debate later, scaled-down Milwaukee zoning plan is approved appeared first on WPR.
WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” spoke with Wisconsin State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly about her thoughts on the new budget and the state joining a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s hold up of education funds.
The post State superintendent says Wisconsin budget doesn’t do enough to help struggling schools appeared first on WPR.
A northern Wisconsin town sued by the U.S. Department of Justice last year for not providing electronic voting machines to people with disabilities has lost its federal appeal.
The post US Appeals Court rules against town that removed voting machines last year appeared first on WPR.
White House budget director Russ Vought speaks with reporters inside the U.S. Capitol building on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday night moved one step closer to canceling $9 billion in previously approved funding for several foreign aid programs and public broadcasting after GOP leaders addressed some objections.
Nearly all the chamber’s Republicans voted to begin debate on the bill, though Maine’s Susan Collins, Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski opposed the procedural step along with every Democrat.
The 51-50 vote marked a significant moment for President Donald Trump’s rescissions request, which faced more headwinds in the Senate than in the House. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote.
Trump proposed doing away with $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that lawmakers had approved for the next two fiscal years as well as $8.3 billion from several foreign aid accounts.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting provides funding to National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting Service and local media stations throughout the country.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said before the vote that some of the progress stemmed from removing a spending cut for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global health program to combat HIV/AIDS launched by former President George W. Bush.
“There was a lot of interest among our members in doing something on the PEPFAR issue and that’s reflected in the substitute,” Thune said. “And we hope that if we can get this across the finish line in the Senate that the House would accept that one small modification.”
South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who had raised concerns about cutting funding for rural public broadcasting stations run by tribal communities, announced a few hours before the vote he’d reached an agreement with the White House.
“We wanted to make sure tribal broadcast services in South Dakota continued to operate which provide potentially lifesaving emergency alerts,” Rounds wrote in a social media post. “We worked with the Trump administration to find Green New Deal money that could be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption.”
Rounds said during a brief interview that $9.4 million will be transferred from an account within the Interior Department directly to 28 Native American radio stations in nine states.
“I had concerns specifically about the impact on these radio stations that are in rural areas with people that have basically very few other resources, and to me, they got caught in the crossfire on public broadcasting,” Rounds said. “And so I just wanted to get it fixed and I was successful in getting it fixed.”
White House budget director Russ Vought told reporters after a closed-door lunch meeting with Republican senators that he didn’t want to get “too far ahead” of discussions, but that his office was working with GOP senators to ensure certain local broadcast stations “have the opportunity to continue to do their early warning system and local reporting.”
Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Collins, who voiced reservations about several of the rescissions during a June hearing, said preserving full funding for PEPFAR represented “progress.”
But Collins said a few hours before the vote she still wants more details from the White House budget office about the exact source of the other $9 billion in cuts to previously approved spending.
“One of the issues, which I raised at lunch, is the total is still $9 billion and it’s unclear to me how you get to $9 billion, because he’s listed a number of programs he wants to, quote, protect,” Collins said, referring to Vought. “So we still have the problem of not having detailed account information from OMB.”
Collins, R-Maine, then held up a printed version of the 1992 rescissions request that President George H.W. Bush sent Congress, which she said was “extremely detailed” and listed each account.
“I would contrast that to the message that we got for this rescission, which just has a paragraph and doesn’t tell you how it’s broken down in each program,” Collins said, adding she’s still “considering the options.”
The Senate’s procedural vote began a maximum of 10 hours of debate that will be followed by a marathon amendment voting session that could rework the bill. A final passage vote could take place as soon as Wednesday.
The House approved the legislation in June, but the measure will have to go back across the Capitol for a final vote since the Senate is expected to make changes.
The effort to cancel funding that Congress previously approved in bipartisan government funding bills began last month when the Trump administration sent Congress this rescission request.
The initiative, led by White House budget director Vought, is part of Republicans’ ongoing efforts to reduce federal spending, which totaled $6.8 trillion during the last full fiscal year.
Vought expects to send lawmakers additional rescissions proposals in the months ahead, though he hasn’t said publicly when or what funding he’ll request Congress eliminate.
Once the White House submits a rescission request, it can legally freeze funding on those accounts for 45 days while Congress debates whether to approve, amend, or ignore the proposal.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press conference before the PEPFAR removal was announced that he hoped the Senate didn’t change the bill at all.
“I’ve urged them, as I always do, to please keep the product unamended because we have a narrow margin and we’ve got to pass it,” Johnson said. “But we’re going to process whatever they send us whenever they send (it to) us and I’m hopeful that it will be soon.”
Johnson said canceling the previously approved funding on some foreign aid programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting represented “low-hanging fruit.”
Federal funding for public media, Johnson said, embodied a “misuse of taxpayer dollars” on organizations that produce “biased reporting.”
“While at its origination NPR and PBS might have made some sense, and maybe it does now,” Johnson said. “But it shouldn’t be subsidized by taxpayers.”
Trump has also sought to encourage Republican senators to pass the bill without making any significant changes.
“It is very important that all Republicans adhere to my Recissions Bill and, in particular, DEFUND THE CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING (PBS and NPR), which is worse than CNN & MSDNC put together,” Trump wrote on social media last week. “Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
A federal judge has ordered Wisconsin to stop denying unemployment insurance to applicants who are also on Social Security Disability Insurance. (Getty Images creative)
Wisconsin residents who receive federal disability benefits and also work will no longer be denied unemployment compensation if they get laid off under a federal court order issued this week.
The order effectively ends enforcement of a 12-year-old state law that disqualifies people from unemployment insurance coverage if they collect Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) payments.
The order, released late Monday, comes a year after U.S. District Judge William Conley found that the Wisconsin law barring unemployment insurance for SSDI recipients unlawfully discriminates against people with disabilities.
The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) did not respond Tuesday to requests for comment on the order.
The law was passed in 2013 with only Republican support in the Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. It was based on the premise that most SSDI recipients didn’t work and that when they filed UI claims they were “double-dipping” and probably committing “fraud.”
That impression is false, according to Victor Forberger, whose legal practice is almost exclusively focused on unemployment insurance claims.
Many people with disabilities who qualify for SSDI are still able to do some kinds of work, and they often want and need to, Forberger said Tuesday.
“They need to do this work to support themselves,” Forberger said. The typical monthly SSDI benefit “is a bare minimum, and in some cases not even that.”
Forberger, working with two other law firms, filed a lawsuit in 2021 against Amy Pechacek, secretary-designee at the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD). The suit charged that banning SSDI recipients from filing for unemployment compensation when they lose work violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In a ruling July 17, 2024, Conley sided with the plaintiffs. Despite that ruling, DWD continued to reject unemployment insurance claims made by people receiving SSDI payments.
Conley’s new order, filed late Monday, instructs Pechacek and DWD to stop enforcing the UI ban for people on SSDI.
The lawsuit was filed as a class action. In an order June 11, Conley certified two classes of people with claims under the litigation: Those who applied for unemployment benefits in Wisconsin after Sept. 7, 2015 and were denied because they received SSDI benefits; and those who had received UI benefits after that date, but then were ordered to pay them back because they also were on SSDI.
The plaintiffs and DWD still differ on how to handle remedies for the two classes of people.
DWD wants to reprocess their claims from the start, and argues in a court brief that some of them might still not qualify for unemployment insurance for other reasons. The plaintiffs want the order to include a provision for supplemental filings and hearings.
Conley’s order requires both sides to work out a remedy agreement by Aug. 18, and if they can’t, to each submit a proposed order and identify their differences.
The judge rejected two other proposed classes: UI claimants who were penalized after failing to report their SSDI income, and SSDI recipients who never filed for unemployment insurance after losing a job.
The penalties in the law were not part of the lawsuit, Conley wrote. Identifying who might have applied for UI and did not was “unknown and unknowable,” he added.
Forberger said Tuesday that there may be several thousand people who were on SSDI and were denied unemployment compensation as a result. Once the remedy details are resolved, he expects that notifying everyone who qualifies for payment will be a complicated and time-consuming task.
“We’ve got to do a lot of outreach and a lot of explanation,” Forberger said.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, speaks at a rally on Friday, March 14, 2025, in Washington, D.C, protesting the U.S. Education Department’s mass layoffs and President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the agency. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education has emerged as central in the struggle over control of the power of the purse in the nation’s capital.
Democrats in Congress are pushing back hard on the Trump administration’s freeze of $6.8 billion in funds for after-school programs and more at public schools, some of which open their doors a few weeks from now. California alone lost access to $939 million and every state is seeing millions of dollars frozen.
At the same time, the Supreme Court on Monday slammed the door on judicial orders that blocked the dismantling of the 45-year-old agency that Congress created and funds.
The nation’s highest court cleared the way for the administration to proceed, for now, with mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Department of Education that President Donald Trump ordered earlier this year.
In her scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “the majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote that the president “must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them.”
“That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers,” she wrote. “Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”
Just a day after the Supreme Court’s decision, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at a Tuesday press conference that while he hasn’t had a chance to digest the Supreme Court’s order, he also knows that “since its creation, the Department of Education has been wielded by the executive branch.”
“I think that was the intent of Congress, as I understood it back then. We have a large say in that, but we’re going to coordinate that with the White House,” the Louisiana Republican said.
“If we see that the separation of powers is being breached in some way, we’ll act, but I haven’t seen that yet,” he added.
Two letters from Senate and House Democrats demanding the administration release the $6.8 billion in federal funds for various education initiatives also depict the Education Department as a key part of the tussle between the executive branch and Congress.
Just a day ahead of the July 1 date when these funds are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year, the department informed states that it would be withholding funding for programs, including before- and after-school programs, migrant education, English-language learning and adult education and literacy, among other initiatives.
Thirty-two senators and 150 House Democrats wrote to Education Secretary Linda McMahon and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought last week asking to immediately unfreeze those dollars they say are being withheld “illegally.”
“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the senators wrote in their letter.
The respective top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee and its subcommittee overseeing Education Department funding, Sens. Patty Murray of Washington state and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, led the letter, alongside Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
In the lower chamber, House Democrats wrote that “without these funds, schools are facing difficult and unnecessary decisions on programs for students and teachers.”
“No more excuses — follow the law and release the funding meant for our schools, teachers, and families,” they added.
Georgia’s Rep. Lucy McBath led the letter, along with the respective top Democrats on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, its subcommittee on early childhood, elementary and secondary education and its panel on higher education and workforce development: Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon and Alma Adams of North Carolina.
Meanwhile, a coalition of 24 states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Monday over those withheld funds, again arguing that Congress has the power to direct funding.
The states suing include: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, both Democrats, also signed onto the suit filed in a Rhode Island federal court.
“Not only does Congress require that Defendants make funds available for obligation to the States, Congress, in conjunction with (Education Department) regulations, also directs the timing of when those funds should be made available,” the coalition wrote.
An analysis earlier in July by New America, a left-leaning think tank, found that the top five school districts with the greatest total funding risk per-pupil include those in at least two red states: Montana’s Cleveland Elementary School District, Kester Elementary School District and Grant Elementary School District, along with Oregon’s Yoncalla School District 32 and Texas’ Boles Independent School District.
The think tank notes that program finance data was not available for Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Wisconsin.
In an aerial view from a helicopter, the migrant detention center dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz" by Florida Republicans is seen at the site of the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport on July 4, 2025 in Ochopee, Florida. (Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Former top immigration officials from the Biden administration warned Tuesday that billions for immigration enforcement signed into law earlier this month will escalate the rapid detention and deportations of immigrants.
During a virtual press conference with the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, the former Department of Homeland Security officials said they expect to see a trend toward states building “soft” temporary detention centers similar to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” the name given by Florida Republicans to an Everglades detention center.
Funding for those initiatives will come from President Donald Trump’s tax break and spending cut bill signed into law earlier this month that provides roughly $170 billion for immigration enforcement, the former officials said.
Trump’s massive tax and spending cut bill provides $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, making it the nation’s highest-funded law enforcement agency, to hire 10,000 new agents and carry out deportations. Another $45 billion will go to ICE for the detention of immigrants and $450 million in grants to states to partake in border enforcement.
Billions more are provided for border security and for the military to partake in border-related enforcement.
Andrea Flores, who directed border management for the National Security Council under former President Joe Biden said she expects to see states running their own immigration detention centers similar to the “Alligator Alcatraz” center that state officials quickly erected to hold immigrants. That state-run facility in the Florida Everglades is expected to house up to 5,000 immigrants.
Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff in the Biden administration, said the quickly built detention centers will likely create an unsafe environment for immigrants brought there. The lack of experience and training for employees running those centers will also put migrants at risk, he said.
“People are gonna get hurt,” he said. “They’re gonna die.”
He added that with the arrest quotas that immigration officials have been given, roughly 3,000 arrests a day, “ICE is going to focus on those (immigrants) that are easily reachable, those who have been complying and checking in,” either with immigration officials or appearing in immigration court.
“Hitting quotas is not in the national security interest,” Houser said.
Houser said with the rapid arrest and detention of immigrants, the need for detention centers will likely lead to states building the “soft sided” detention centers in “some of the most rural parts of the country where they cannot be properly staffed and resourced.”
Flores said if states work to build their own centers like the one in Florida, there will likely be a lack of oversight because DHS has significantly fired federal employees that ran the watchdog that conducted oversight of ICE — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties.
Flores currently serves as the vice president of immigration policy at FWD.us, which focuses on immigration policy and reform.
Royce Murray, a former DHS assistant secretary for border and immigration policy and a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official during the Biden administration, said she is concerned that the Trump administration will now be able to ramp up third-country removals with the increase in funding.
Any removals to a third country “have to be to a country that is safe,” she said.
If an immigrant has a final order of removal but their home country will not accept their deportation, then the United States typically looks for another country that will accept the removal — a third country.
The Trump administration has tried to secure agreements with countries to take deportees, such as Mexico and South Sudan, which recently ended a civil war, but is still experiencing violence. The State Department warns against travel to South Sudan, but the Trump administration won a case before the Supreme Court seeking to use the East African country for third-country removals.
Murray said that the Trump administration is using third-country removals to “create a climate of fear” and get immigrants to self-deport.
She said if third-country removals are going to take place, they “need to be a place where people can successfully integrate.”
Wisconsin has joined a lawsuit against the Trump administration's action to withhold $6.8 billion for education progams supporting English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others. (Photo by Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images)
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul joined 23 states and the District of Columbia Monday in suing the Trump administration for withholding $6.8 billion meant for six U.S. Department of Education programs, which help support English language learners, migrants, low-income children, adult learners and others.
The funds, approved in the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act 2025 and signed into law on March 15, are typically distributed to states by July 1. However, the Department of Education notified the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction as well as other state education agencies on June 30 that they would be withholding the funds.
“Depriving our schools of critical resources is bad for our schools, bad for students, and bad for Wisconsin,” Attorney General Josh Kaul said in a statement. “This unlawful funding freeze should be stopped.”
The Wisconsin DPI said in a statement that the federal agency gave no specific explanation for the action. Instead, the U.S. Department of Education said that “decisions have not yet been made concerning submissions and awards for this upcoming academic year” and “accordingly, the Department will not be issuing Grant Award Notifications obligating funds for these programs on July 1 prior to completing that review. The Department remains committed to ensuring taxpayer resources are spent in accordance with the President’s priorities and the Department’s statutory responsibilities.”
The withholding of funds comes as the Trump administration continues to pursue closing the Department of Education with a plan to lay off more than 1,000 agency employees and resume drastically cutting the agency after getting the greenlight from the U.S. Supreme Court Monday. The Trump administration has also withheld other funds this year, including for grants for mental health in schools. A spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said in a statement about the review of education funding that “initial findings have shown that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda.”
The multi-state lawsuit argues that the freeze of the $6.8 billion violates federal laws and regulations that authorize and fund the programs, federal laws, including the Antideficiency Act and Impoundment Control Act, that govern the federal budgeting process and the constitutional separation of powers doctrine and the Presentment Clause.
The coalition of states is requesting that the court provide declaratory relief by finding the freeze is unlawful and offer injunctive relief by requiring the release of the funds.
Over $72 million is being withheld from Wisconsin. Without the funding, school districts face funding shortfalls for programs that have already been planned, DPI may have to lay off 20 employees and programs at Wisconsin’s technical colleges are in trouble with $7.5 million in adult education grants being withheld.
State Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that Wisconsin schools depend on the federal funding distributed through an array of programs to support students. There are five programs affected: Title I-C, which supports migrant education, Title II-A, which goes towards teacher training and retention, Title III-A, which supports education of English language learners, Title IV-A, which is for student enrichment and after-school programs and Title IV-B, which supports community learning centers.
“Make no mistake, stopping this money has had and will continue to harm our families and communities,” Underly said.
Wisconsin schools have received funding through these federal programs for decades to help carry out related programs. According to DPI, federal funding makes up about 8% of funding for Wisconsin schools with nearly $850 million coming into the state.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin alongside 31 other U.S. senators penned a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, calling on them to release the money.
“This delay not only undermines effective state and local planning for using these funds to address student needs consistent with federal education law, which often takes place months before these funds become available, but also flies in the face of the nation’s education laws which confers state and local educational agency discretion on permissible uses of federal formula grant funds,” the senators wrote. “We are shocked by the continued lack of respect for states and local schools evidenced by this latest action by the administration.”
“It is unacceptable that the administration is picking and choosing what parts of the appropriations law to follow, and you must immediately implement the entire law as Congress intended and as the oaths you swore require you to do,” the lawmakers said.
The lawmakers also said the “review” being undertaken by the administration appears to be intentional to delay the funding and will result in budget cuts for schools. They said it is happening “with no public information about what the review entails, what data the administration is examining or a timeline for such review.”
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
A Social Security Administration field office in San Jose, California. An email message from the agency about the tax cut bill that President Donald Trump signed July 4 has drawn sharp criticism. (Photo by Michael Vi/Getty Images)
Updated 2 p.m. Tuesday, 7/15/2025
Retired professor Larry White says the email message he got on July 4 from the Social Security Administration was unlike any he’s ever seen from the agency.
“The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill,” the email message began — using the official name of the massive legislation signed by President Donald Trump that cuts taxes and also slashes spending on Medicaid and SNAP, along with making numerous other policy changes.
White, 71, who lives in Madison, has been getting Social Security Administration email since he retired from the Beloit College psychology faculty in 2019. But until the July 4 message, he said, every single one has been straightforward, factual — and nonpolitical.
The message included a misleading description of one provision in the new law. The Social Security Administration later published a correction.
That alone angered White. But that the message was sent at all was just as irritating, he told the Wisconsin Examiner.
The email, including a quote from Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, “appeared to value currying favor with the president over telling Americans the truth,” White said. “I want our federal agencies to be independent, nonpartisan offices that act with integrity and serve the public, not the president.”
The Social Security message claims that the legislation “ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits…”
“This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano stated.
As was soon widely reported, however, the message itself was off the mark.
“I was surprised to see SSA send this out as an email to such a large list since this seems more about politics than anything specific to the program,” said J. Michael Collins, a household economics expert at the University of Wisconsin. Collins directed a Social Security research center at the UW until the Trump administration shut it down earlier this year.
The actual change that the message refers to is to income taxes paid by all people 65 or older with incomes $75,000 a year or less for single filers and $150,000 a year or less for couples — regardless of whether they’re collecting Social Security or not, Collins explained.
While the message appears to single out Social Security income, “there is no new exemption of SSA income from federal income taxes, just a new deduction for all people 65+ regardless of income source,” Collins told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email message.
For people who are 64 or younger and who get income from Social Security, there’s no comparable tax cut, he added.
To be sure, the reduction does give some help to taxpayers 65 or older who collect Social Security.
A 2022 IRS tax tip explains that half of Social Security income is taxable for a single person whose income is $25,000 to $34,000 and for a married couple filing jointly whose income is $32,000 to $44,000.
For a single person with income over $34,000 or a married couple with income over $44,000, 85% of their Social Security income is taxable.
Social Security beneficiaries with incomes below the $75,000 or $150,000 ceiling will get relief from those tax bills — along with everyone else 65 or older whose income also falls below those limits.
The tax break also lasts just a few years, ending in 2028 — stretching the claim that qualifying beneficiaries “will no longer” pay income taxes.
The email message produced a sharp blowback.
“I was appalled — it was really unprecedented,” Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone interview. “They’ve taken an agency that’s supposed to be above politics and made it an arm of propaganda.”
Altman recalled that when Social Security checks were mailed in October 1972, President Richard Nixon suggested including an insert in which he could take credit for a benefit increase — even though he had initially opposed it. The commissioner at the time, Robert Ball, threatened to resign if Nixon followed through, and Nixon backed off, Altman said.
As originally worded, the email message appeared to suggest two separate tax cut provisions — one for Social Security recipients 65 and older and one for others:
“The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned.”
On July 7, the Social Security Administration added a correction and changed the second sentence in that paragraph to, “It does so by providing an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older…”
The correction was previously reported by HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney.
The morning that he received the Social Security message, White, the retired Beloit professor, wrote back to Bisignano directly — guessing at a direct email address for the Trump-appointed Social Security Commissioner.
“Commissioner Bisignano, When did the Social Security Administration become so blatantly political? I thought government agencies like the USPS were supposed to just go about their business from one administration to the next, but clearly that’s not the case with the SSA. You have become an unabashed mouthpiece for Trump. Shame on you!”
“I was upset that the head of a major federal agency would act in a way that undermines the public’s trust,” White told the Wisconsin Examiner.
“For years, Trump has expressed contempt for America’s once-revered institutions — courts, universities, the press, medical experts, climate scientists, long-time allies abroad … the list is a long one,” White added. “Trump wants to diminish any group or individual who questions his aims or methods.”
The email message appears to play directly to that characteristic of the president, he said, and White fears that will diminish the agency in the public eye.
“What upsets me is that the commissioner of the SSA foolishly wrote a letter that will prompt millions of Americans to question the integrity of the SSA,” White said. “It takes years for an organization to build up a good reputation, but it can be fatally damaged almost overnight.”
Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote to the Social Security Administration this week, criticizing the agency’s July 3 email that promoted the passage of the Trump administration’s tax- and spending-cut mega-bill.
“We are appalled that the agency distributed misleading and blatantly inaccurate information regarding tax changes affecting older Americans, transforming the agency into a partisan megaphone for Donald Trump while sowing confusion and distrust in Social Security among Americans,” Baldwin and Wyden wrote in a letter to Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. Eight other Democratic senators along with independent Bernie Sanders signed the letter.
“The Republican reconciliation bill does not amend, reduce, or eliminate federal taxes on Social Security benefits,” Baldwin’s office said in a statement. “Contrary to the release’s claim that taxes would be eliminated on 90% of benefits, about half of beneficiaries will still owe some amount of income tax on their benefits.”
People receiving Social Security benefits must still file income tax returns, according to Baldwin’s office. The senator’s statement warned that the “misleading and blatantly inaccurate information” in the email “could lead to Americans making benefit claims against their best interests or even missing payments on taxes they owe.”
The letter also criticizes as inadequate the correction that the Social Security Administration posted with the online version of the July 3 email and notes that it wasn’t sent to the recipients of the original message.
“During your confirmation process, you pledged to the Finance Committee and to the American public that you would run SSA ‘in an independent and nonpartisan manner,’” the senators told Bisignano in their letter. “You have failed in this instance.”
This report has been updated with a statement Tuesday from Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
As federal aid ran out, advocates called on lawmakers to fund the Child Care Counts program using state dollars, as Evers proposed. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
This summer Democratic and Republican legislators along with the Gov. Tony Evers participated in closed-door negotiations to come up with the 2025-27 state budget. All of the parties involved are touting the budget as a historic advance for children and patting themselves on the back for compromising with each other and the work they accomplished. In other words, they played well in the sandbox together. While yes, the state budget has never included funding for child care in its history, as we were one of only six states that didn’t, crowing about it now is kind of like touting the fact that you’ve just changed a diaper for the first time when your child is 2 years old. It’s not something to brag about, and the new state budget is nothing to brag about either.
On the surface, as you read the claims about historic investments in child care and K-12 schools, you might think the budget really solved some big problems. Take Evers’ statement celebrating “Over $330 million to support Wisconsin’s child care industry and help lower child care costs for working families, a third of which is in direct payments to providers.” That means only $110 million is to continue the direct investment to all 4,700 eligible regulated child care programs. The original amount for this program was $480 million. Child care is receiving less than 25% of the requested amount. You might have surmised from Evers’ victorious statement that parents will see a decrease in tuition costs with the new budget. However, the opposite is going to be occurring, and tuition increases will start in August. The $110 million will cause child care rates to increase next month because the new state investment is less than a third of what Child Care Counts, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act, originally provided.
The purpose of that money was to stabilize a field that had been declining for decades. It increased teachers’ wages while holding down tuition costs for parents. It worked. The data showed a decline in closures and it raised the average child care educator’s wage from $11 an hour to $13 an hour in Wisconsin. (In our state, over 50% of early child care teachers have some college education or degree, with an average of 10 years experience.)
This month the ARPA funds run out, and for the past few years, knowing the federal funding would be ending, families, child care providers, and businesses have been advocating for the state to fill the gap and to subsidize child care. We know that for every $1 a state invests in early childhood education, the rate of return is between $10-$16. Not only does quality early child care give children an opportunity for greater success as adults, it also supports our workforce, families and the economy.
Regardless of the research and well-being of children, the gatekeepers of our tax dollars on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee deleted Evers’ $480 million direct state investment budget request for child care. Instead, child care funding was determined behind closed doors with Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein and Evers in one corner and Rep. Vos and Senate Majority Leader Devin Lemahieu in the other. It should be noted that no one in that space is considered an expert in child care policy. What came out of this room was a compromise for the sake of compromise.
The $110 million for child care won’t come from state dollars. It’s the interest that has accrued on the federal ARPA funds. It will be allocated directly to child care providers over the next 11 months, until June of 2026. It comes to about 70% less than the original amount paid through CCC. This is why, starting in August, there will be significant closures of child care centers and home daycares in rural areas of the state — already considered a child care desert. Tuition will increase at the child care operations that try to stay open. So no, working families will not “see a decrease in childcare costs” as stated by Evers.
And when the $110 million ends next year, there is nothing to replace it. The Wisconsin Legislature will gavel out in March and not gavel in until January of 2027, as legislators will be campaigning the rest of 2026. There won’t be an opportunity to pass emergency legislation funding child care. Rates will increase again and closures will continue.
The remainder of the $330 million in child care funding in the new state budget is for several new programs. A $66 million state investment for 4-year-olds to access “school readiness” in their child care program. This will help parents as the state will pay for their “preschool” time, but it replaces tuition for part of the school day. Child care programs that have school districts with all-day, free 4K will likely find it almost impossible to compete with public schools when they still need to charge for the remainder of the day plus wrap-around care.
In addition, there is a $28 million pilot project to deregulate the child care field, which ends in July 2027. This move comes directly from the Republicans’ playbook. The pilot project will incentivize providers to increase their ratios, meaning more children per teacher, lower quality and safety for children and more stress on teachers.
Another harmful policy in the new budget is that 16-year-olds are now allowed to be assistant teachers and count as adults in the ratio. Coupled with the pilot project mentioned above, this means a classroom of 14 toddlers can be supervised by one 18-year-old and one 16-year-old. This reduces the quality, safety, care and education for the children in our programs. Recall that while these decisions were being made behind closed doors, there were no experts in child care policy in the room. This policy was made without consideration of our state accreditation program, YoungStar, and our national accreditations. Any program that participates in the pilot project will no longer qualify to be accredited. And in Wisconsin, accreditation is not just a certificate to state you are following high safety standards, but our YoungStar program is tethered to our Wisconsin Shares (subsidy for child care). Programs with a five or four-star rating receive a bonus subsidy rate. It can mean a considerable loss of funding for providers to participate in the new pilot project.
The politicians who wrote the budget deal behind closed doors neglected to consider the increased cost or loss of insurance for providers when we increase the teacher-to-child ratio and when we allow 16-year-olds to count as adults.
The same group of non-experts also decided to allow policies that, in 2023, were already proposed and had failed to become law due to the overwhelming outcry from families, providers and the medical field against a policy that reduces quality and safety for our children. The state is throwing millions of dollars in the garbage for these policies, which won’t benefit child care programs and will cause actual harm to Wisconsin children.
Enacting policies like these without holding hearings raises the question: Who is representing us? The public already overwhelmingly said no to these policies two years ago. Furthermore, funding for child care is one of the top priorities that the JFC heard from voters throughout the state at budget listening sessions. Surveys show that the majority of both Republican and Democratic constituents support funding early child care. The only real compromise made in this budget was the compromise of safety and quality of our youngest children in the state.
So how did school-age children fare in the state budget? Again, we are reading about record-setting investments in schools, along with the biggest investment our state has ever made for children with disabilities. Evers proclaimed that the new budget “secures the largest increase to special education reimbursement rate in state history.” You might think, great, finally children with disabilities will receive the support and resources they need. But you would be wrong. Evers’ budget request was for a 60% reimbursement for children with disabilities. After all, 90% reimbursement is the amount that Wisconsin voucher and charter schools have already been receiving for children with special needs. Unfortunately, the new budget allows public schools a maximum of 42% in 2026 and 45% in 2027 reimbursement, which is a far cry from the 60% request — the rate of the 1980s. Yes, the increase in this budget is technically the largest increase in recent years, but it is still miles away from the finish line.
To make matters worse, the budget also provided a $0 per-pupil increase in general aid funding to public schools; however, a provision was placed in the budget paperwork that guaranteed voucher and charter schools would receive additional funding for their general aid in the budget. I can’t recall a year when no new general funding was provided in a budget to public schools in Wisconsin. Last year Wisconsin saw a record number of public schools go to referendum to squeeze additional funding from their communities to compensate for the lack of state and federal funding. Under the new budget, we will see another record number of schools going to referendum next year. We will also likely see more schools close, specifically in rural, poorer areas where the communities cannot be squeezed any more than they already have been. As you can imagine, this budget will only continue to widen the education gap in quality between the wealthy and the poor.
Not to be all doom and gloom, there was one category of children that fared quite well with the new budget: our juvenile offenders. The budget will invest $1 million per juvenile offender. Yes, $1 million per kid. Remember when it was mentioned that investing in our youth early on saves us tenfold later on? The children in our juvenile justice systems are children who were not given the opportunity for quality early child care, children who were raised in poverty, children who have been abused, children who experience trauma, children with mental health issues.
The children in our juvenile systems are those who have been failed by our state. Their families could not afford child care, so they were shuffled from one person to another. They lived with violence and addiction in their homes. And when they got to school at age 5, they were already on a trajectory of despair; the school systems cannot afford to provide all the services and support these children need, especially for those who have suffered trauma at an early age.
Our new state budget only prioritizes these children once they are ready to be locked away.
Unfortunately the hype about Wisconsin making record investments in our children is terribly overblown. Instead, the truth of the matter is that we are putting in the minimum, and this budget keeps us on the lowest tier as a state for investment in our public schools and our young children compared to other states. Meanwhile, we continue to be among the biggest spenders on our juvenile offenders.
Our political leaders have misled us.
I don’t think most Wisconsinites care whether their representatives can compromise or not. I think we would all rather have elected politicians who will actually represent us with integrity. Represent us with values that prioritize our children, families, workforce and our economy. This is our common humanity. We can stop generational poverty. We can stop children from going hungry, we can support children who have been abused and neglected, and we can give children a chance in life. But we just made the choice not to do that.
Correction: An earlier version of this commentary misstated the amount of Gov. Tony Evers’ budget request as 90% instead of 60%. We regret the error.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Login