Sheboygan's nickname, the “Malibu of the Midwest,” might be a bit tongue-in-cheek. But surfing genuinely is a year-round sport in the city. So, a WPR reporter gave it a shot.
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A Green Bay-area landlord is facing a federal lawsuit after he allegedly sexually harassed a young mother who rented one of his apartments and retaliated against her when she tried to stand up for herself.
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Health officials urge Wisconsinites to protect themselves from mosquito bites after a man from Barron County recently got sick from West Nile virus.
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A Lutheran group in Wisconsin has joined a national lawsuit that aims to block immigration agents from entering churches and places of worship.
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Wisconsin’s governor, environmental advocates and climate researchers say the Environmental Protection Agency is abandoning science in its proposal to weaken regulation of climate pollution.
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Sheriff Kalvin Barrett said deportation would allow the suspect to evade accountability for her alleged crimes, while U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is labeling the county as a "sanctuary jurisdiction" that won't help the federal agency "remove this public safety threat from the U.S."
The post Dane County sheriff holds woman charged in fatal crash for trial, denying ICE request appeared first on WPR.
When radio producer Alexandra Salmon first saw Sedella Yancey rap at a summer night concert in Madison, she was mesmerized by the musician’s stage presence and her talent at such […]
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The story behind the board game Monopoly.
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Wisconsin teachers are grappling with how to manage AI for themselves and their students, but the challenge of adapting to new technology in the classroom is not new.
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The AmeriCorps program helped fund 8,400 people working at 900 organizations around Wisconsin in 2024. The program faces an uncertain future after cuts from the Trump administration.
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The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
States led by Democrats should resist the temptation to conduct their own mid-decade redistricting in response to Republicans in the Texas Legislature moving to redraw U.S. House lines before the 2026 elections, officials with the nonpartisan election integrity group Common Cause said on a press call Tuesday.
While blasting Texas Republicans’ effort to remake congressional districts in the middle of a decade — instead of after the decennial census, as is typical — the officials said the creation of nonpartisan redistricting commissions that take the job out of politicians’ hands was a better policy than joining a redistricting arms race.
Common Cause, a national organization with several state chapters, is often aligned with progressive causes, but advocates for fair redistricting regardless of party.
Emily Eby French, the policy director for Common Cause Texas, said election infrastructure should be neutral, arguing against the suggestion from California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other Democrats that blue states pursue mid-decade redistricting for partisan advantage.
“Our election infrastructure is not supposed to have a thumb on the scale for either side,” French said.
“In Texas, conservatives press their thumbs so hard on the scale that it feels impossible to overcome,” she continued. “Maybe a quick fix would be to have Democrats press their thumbs on their own scales. But then it’s just rigged elections across America. The real solution is for Democrats to help us lift the Republican thumb off of the Texas scale and every other scale in America until we reach free and fair elections for everyone.”
Russia Chavis Cardenas, the deputy director for Common Cause California, added that Newsom should not “fight fire with fire.” Partisan redistricting processes inherently disadvantage communities of color, she said.
California’s independent redistricting commission, made up of five Democrats, five Republicans and four nonpartisan members, is the “gold standard … (an) independent and community-led process,” Dan Vicuna, senior policy director for voting and fair representation at Common Cause’s national office, said.
The state should not sacrifice that model for short-term political gain, he said.
Republicans held a 220-215 advantage in the U.S. House following the 2024 elections. Those elections happened on district maps drawn after the 2020 census.
The GOP House majority was helped in part by Texas’ 2020 district map, which produced Republican wins in nearly two-thirds of the state’s districts.
Civil rights groups sued over the new lines, claiming that some districts discriminated against Black and Latino voters.
Texas Republicans resisted calls to redraw the lines, but the U.S. Justice Department this month sent a letter urging state leaders to reconsider.
The letter “was sloppily and transparently creating a pretext for Texas legislators to redraw the state’s gerrymandered congressional map and somehow gerrymander it even more in favor of Republicans,” Vicuna said Tuesday.
President Donald Trump quickly dissolved that pretext, putting the issue in nakedly political terms on a call with Texas Republicans. Trump said the state’s lines should be redrawn to create five additional U.S. House seats, the Texas Tribune reported. A president’s party typically loses congressional seats during midterm elections.
Following the letter, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, called a special session to address redistricting, among other things.
In addition to Newsom, leaders in the Democratic strongholds of New York and Illinois are considering retaliating by initiating their own mid-decade redistricting processes, according to a New York Times report.
Other prominent national Democrats are calling for the party to be more aggressive in redistricting.
U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego wrote on X last week that Democrats should break some heavily Democratic majority-minority districts to help win more seats.
In follow-up posts responding to replies, Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, wrote that Democrats should gerrymander districts in their favor.
“It’s bad when everyone does it,” the first-term senator and former House member wrote about gerrymandering. “But Dems should not unilaterally disarm till GOP does.”
Gallego’s post was retweeted by Jessica Post, a campaign strategist who previously led Democrats’ state legislative campaign arm. But the party’s current establishment is largely not commenting.
A July 23 memo to Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee contributors from Heather Williams, who succeeded Post as the group’s president, mentioned the Texas redistricting, but said it only raised the stakes for statehouse races in the next three election cycles in advance of 2030 redistricting.
“Today, as Donald Trump and his allies in the states are openly pushing to draw new, gerrymandered seats in Texas to protect the GOP’s meager House majority leading up to 2026, it’s clear this is just a preview of what’s to come,” Williams wrote. “The 2030 redistricting fight has already begun.”
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the official campaign arm for House Democrats, did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.
Vicuna, with Common Cause, urged reporters not to see redistricting not as a partisan conflict, but as an issue of voter representation.
“This familiar framing that makes redistricting entirely about a political fight between parties is also kind of the problem,” he said. “This is ultimately about fair representation for communities, getting to have a say, being at the table when decisions are made about whether they can have fair representation. And I think that’s what we’re really talking about here, not just the food fight between the parties.”
Emil Bove, President Donald Trump's nominee to be a judge for the 3rd Circuit, testifies during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday night confirmed President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, to a lifetime position on the federal appeals bench, in the face of whistleblower allegations and criticism from former judges and advocates.
Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine broke with their party and joined all Democrats in a 50-49 vote to oppose Bove’s confirmation to the U.S. Appeals Court for the 3rd Circuit, which handles cases for Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Bove, 44, currently holds the position of principal associate deputy attorney general at the U.S. Justice Department. Trump initially appointed Bove as acting attorney general at the start of the president’s second term.
The former federal prosecutor and private defense attorney faced numerous accusations of misconduct throughout his confirmation process.
Democrats walked out of a July 17 committee vote to advance Bove’s nomination, largely protesting the GOP-led panel’s refusal to hear further testimony from a whistleblower who alleged Bove suggested defying a federal court order.
Longtime Justice Department senior official Erez Reuveni, who served in the first Trump administration, blew the whistle on Bove for a March 14 meeting during which he allegedly suggested subordinates tell the federal courts “f— you” if a judge ordered a halt to Trump’s deportation flights to El Salvador. A second whistleblower corroborated the alleged comment, according to a CNN report Sunday.
Senate Democrats, former judges and advocates also voiced concern over Bove’s alleged unethical behavior, including questions about his role as a top Justice official in the dismissal of federal bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and in the firing of prosecutors who worked on cases probing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Bove has denied any wrongdoing.
Critics also pointed to a trail of allegations from Bove’s former colleagues in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York that he created a hostile work environment, as first reported by Politico in February.
On Monday, the Washington Post reported that a third whistleblower had come forward, this time alleging the top Justice Department office misled the Senate Committee on the Judiciary in testimony regarding the dropped charges against Adams.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the committee tasked with vetting judicial nominees, said on the floor ahead of the vote that Democrats “grossly mischaracterized” allegations against Bove.
“I have serious concerns with how my Democratic colleagues have conducted themselves — the vicious rhetoric, unfair accusations and abuse directed at Mr. Bove,” the Iowa Republican said.
Grassley said he asked Bove to put in writing his response to the latest whistleblower accusations.
“In his letter, Mr. Bovey flatly denies the allegations that he misled the committee,” Grassley said.
In the seven-page letter made public by Grassley Tuesday evening, Bove dismissed the accusations as a “partisan smear campaign” and a “sham.”
“I understand that a lifetime appointment to a federal court of appeals is a serious matter. I welcome serious scrutiny of my record and my service to this country. My record includes 32 appeals, 13 trials, nearly a decade as a federal prosecutor, clerkships in federal trial and appellate courts, successfully defending the President of the United States, and helping lead the Department of Justice,” Bove wrote.
“Principled evaluation of that record, separated from the raw political warfare by Democrats that has tainted this process, confirms that I will be a fearless, independent judge committed to justice and the rule of law,” he continued.
Senate Democrats railed against the nomination Tuesday.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said ahead of the vote the allegations against Bove “were not minor episodes of prosecutorial misconduct.”
“What we’re about to do is so wrong, so unusual, that even if these remarks will have no effect whatsoever, I feel obliged to come to the floor,” the Rhode Island lawmaker said.
Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, wrote in a social media post that “Three credible whistleblowers have come forward with serious allegations against Emil Bove, a Trump judicial nominee. Republicans are ignoring them and rushing to confirm Bove anyway.”
“They’re afraid of the truth… and Donald Trump’s wrath. Shameful,” Durbin, of Illinois, continued.
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon by the Not Above the Law Coalition, the organization’s leaders said Bove is “unfit for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.”
“His record of misconduct and disdain for the rule of law is a direct threat to judicial independence and Americans’ rights and freedoms. Any senator who votes to confirm Bove is making clear that their loyalty lies with Donald Trump, not the people they serve or the Constitution they swore to uphold,” the statement continued from the coalition’s co-chairs, including Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen; Praveen Fernandes, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center; Kelsey Herbert, campaign director at MoveOn; and Brett Edkins, managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America.
Susan Monarez, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, testifies during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on June 25, 2025. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Susan Monarez as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday.
Monarez — whom the Senate confirmed on a party-line vote, 51-47 — will now be responsible for the national public health agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. The Atlanta-based agency has faced backlash as HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pursues a vaccine-skeptical agenda.
GOP Sens. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Dan Sullivan of Alaska did not vote.
Monarez was the acting director of the CDC between January and March. She previously served as the deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, which is part of HHS.
Monarez, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology and immunology, will be the first person without a medical degree to hold the title since 1953.
The White House originally selected former Florida U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon to lead the CDC but withdrew the nomination in March.
Monarez’s confirmation followed a procedural vote earlier Tuesday that saw her advance, 52-47, along party lines.
Kennedy continues to face scrutiny after he fired all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, in June and named eight new members — a number of whom are viewed as skeptical of vaccines.
Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, launched an investigation alongside seven Democratic members of the committee Tuesday regarding Kennedy’s firings and replacements within the critical vaccine panel.
“By removing all 17 of ACIP’s members and replacing them with eight individuals handpicked to advance your anti-vaccine agenda, you have put decades of non-partisan, science-backed work — and, as a result, Americans’ lives — at risk,” the senators wrote in a letter to Kennedy.
Those seven Democratic committee members include Sens. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Lisa Blunt Rochester of Delaware, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Andy Kim of New Jersey and Tim Kaine of Virginia.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, center, announces his agency's plans for deregulation from an Indianapolis trucking facility on Tuesday, July 29, 2025. At left is Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and at right is Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. (Photo by Leslie Bonilla Muñiz/Indiana Capital Chronicle)
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency submitted a proposal Tuesday to rescind a 2009 finding that has provided the foundation for the agency’s regulation of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, drawing strong opposition from Democrats and climate groups.
Administrator Lee Zeldin said the EPA would scrap what is known as its endangerment finding, established under President Barack Obama. The determination called climate change a danger to human health and therefore gave the EPA power to regulate the greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide from cars and trucks.
The finding provided the framework for numerous EPA regulations, including a 2024 rule requiring increasingly strict tailpipe emissions standards.
But Zeldin, who announced the proposal during an appearance in Indianapolis, said that framework created uncertainty for auto manufacturers and buyers and hurt the wider economy.
President Donald Trump’s EPA would eliminate the finding, he said.
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” Zeldin said in a written statement. Under Obama and President Joe Biden, the agency “twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”
The announcement touched off outrage from congressional Democrats and groups that advocate for strong action to curb the climate crisis.
“With this action, Trump and EPA Administrator Zeldin are putting massive corporate polluters in the driver’s seat at EPA and it will be everyday Americans who pay the price – with their health, their energy bills, their jobs, their homes, and even with their lives,” House Energy and Commerce ranking Democrat Frank Pallone of New Jersey wrote in a statement.
“The only winners from this proposal are corporate polluters who will be allowed to dump unlimited pollution into our communities without any consequences.”
In a Tuesday notice in the Federal Register, the EPA said it would rescind all greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles, consistent with its opinion that the endangerment finding was unlawful.
“The EPA no longer believes that we have the statutory authority and record basis required to maintain this novel and transformative regulatory program,” the agency said.
Supreme Court cases in recent years, including a decision that limited the EPA’s power to regulate power plants and a decision that denied federal agencies were due deference in drafting regulations, indicated the endangerment finding overstepped, the EPA said in a news release.
Repealing the finding would increase consumer choice, lower prices for goods delivered by truck and save $54 billion annually in associated taxes, the EPA said.
The agency will accept public comments on the proposal until Sept. 21.
Despite the Trump EPA’s assertion that the move would save money for Americans, climate groups said the opposite was true, and that the finding would hurt access to alternative energy sources.
“The reason (Trump) is doing this is not scientific,” former Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in an interview with States Newsroom. “It’s just his slavish devotion to his billionaire friends in the oil and gas industry that he wants to help, and destroy the ability of Americans to get clean and cheap — I want to emphasize cheap — electricity. This is not just a health issue. It’s a financial health issue, basically denying Americans the ability to get the most reasonably priced electricity in America.”
Inslee, a Democrat who sought his party’s presidential nomination in 2020 on a platform that emphasized climate issues, is a national spokesperson and executive with the advocacy group Climate Power.
“It’s a reckless move that will make Americans less safe and hurt our economy by slowing the growth of affordable clean energy and fueling the heat waves, storms, floods, and wildfires that threaten people’s homes and communities,” U.S. House Natural Resources ranking Democrat Jared Huffman, of California, said in a statement.
Democrats and environmental groups also argued the scientific evidence clearly showed greenhouse gas emissions were harmful.
“You can’t with a straight face argue that pollution is not endangering human health,” Inslee said. “Look at the deaths that are piling up. Flash floods and heat domes, asthma and cardiovascular events. This stuff is bad for human health. I don’t know how you can make the argument otherwise.”
Legal challenges from Democratic attorney generals are almost certainly imminent, Inslee said Tuesday afternoon.
“If a lawsuit hasn’t been filed yet, I’ll have to call (Washington Attorney General) Nick Brown and tell him to hurry up,” he said. “It’s been a couple hours now.”
In a statement, Brown said he would “consider all options if EPA continues down this cynical path. We won’t stand by as our children’s future is sacrificed to appease fossil fuel interests.”
U.S. Reps. Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velazquez, both New York Democrats, speak to the media opposite the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, where they unsuccessfully attempted to gain access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding facilities to observe on June 8, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Adam Gray/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The massive tax and spending cuts package signed into law by President Donald Trump earlier this month will affect not only Latinos using federal safety net programs but also those living in communities vulnerable to environmental pollution, Democrats and advocates said during a Tuesday virtual press conference.
The president’s domestic policy agenda bill that congressional Republicans passed without Democrats’ approval, through a process known as reconciliation, made permanent the 2017 tax cuts and provided billions of dollars for immigration enforcement by cutting funds for clean energy, environmental justice grants, food assistance and Medicaid, a health care insurance program for low-income people.
The bill will add $3.394 trillion to deficits during the next decade and lead 10 million people to lose access to health insurance, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Adriano Espaillat, Democrat of New York, said the bill passed through reconciliation reduces spending on “Medicaid dramatically and (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) dramatically.”
He said Democrats in their messaging should focus on the changes coming for Medicaid and how the cuts will impact people across the United States. Republicans’ numerous changes to health programs, predominantly Medicaid, will reduce federal spending during the next decade by $1.058 trillion.
“It’s really a conversation about life and death, because if you’re on Medicaid and now they’re cutting your benefits, the treatment that you receive to save your life could be in jeopardy,” Espaillat said.
Rep. Raul Ruiz, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the cuts to Medicaid are “devastating,” especially to hospitals in rural communities.
“First, what hospitals will do is they will close services that aren’t the money-making services for a hospital, like pediatrics, labor delivery and mental health, and then beyond that, they’ll eventually just close their hospital,” said the California Democrat, a former emergency room doctor.
“This is devastating because usually these rural hospitals serve a high Latino population, medically underserved, resource-poor areas,” Ruiz said. “If you have a medical emergency and you don’t have a local emergency department or hospital to go to, chances of your survivability during an emergency greatly drops.”
Antonieta Cádiz, the executive director of Climate Power En Acción, said that most of those effects, such as new reporting requirements for Medicaid patients that could result in people losing coverage, won’t be felt until after the midterm elections in 2026, when those changes go into effect.
Climate Power En Acción is an arm of the clean energy advocacy group Climate Power that focuses on reaching out to Latinos about the impacts of climate change.
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, said the bill will also affect Latino communities because of its more than $170 billion increase for immigration enforcement.
She said Democrats should lean into immigration policy and push back against the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown and plans for mass deportations.
“Democrats need to take this opportunity and need to be able to bring people in to share in their vision of what a functional immigration system is,” she said. “It is very frustrating that we are not seeing again, more Democrats really leaning in on this issue.”
Espaillat acknowledged that Democrats’ communication strategy on immigration “has been one of our weaknesses.”
“We at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus have done a good job at first, exposing the inequities and irregularities and discriminatory practices of immigration to the degree that now we’re seeing,” he said.
“In addition to that, I think it’s important that we message on Medicaid … SNAP, and then, of course, environmental justice is one that’s also a real path for which we are working on having a very structured and disciplined message,” Espaillat continued.
Cádiz said the bill Republicans passed will lead to a loss of clean energy jobs and it also lessens incentives for energy efficient appliances, which will lead to higher energy bills for Latinos. Compared to the average U.S. family, Latino households pay roughly 20% more in energy costs, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
“It guts clean energy programs crucial for savings amid rising heat and energy demand, leaving us with higher bills,” she said of the bill. “This is a direct attack on Latino families, workers and every person struggling with rising costs to meet essential needs.”
She added that environmental justice grants totaling $300 million were eliminated, while roughly 15 million Latinos live in communities with high levels of air pollution.
Espaillat said that the cuts to clean energy programs provided by the Biden administration’s massive climate and clean energy bill, which also passed through the process of reconciliation but under Democratic control, benefited local communities.
“Now there’s going to be a major disinvestment for these programs,” he said.
A medical worker prepares to vaccinate people at a pop-up COVID-19 vaccination clinic in a rural Delta community in April 2021 in Leland, Miss. The Mississippi State Department of Health, like other state health departments, is concerned about the potential loss of federal funding. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Between 2016 and 2022, as congenital syphilis cases rose nationally and especially in the South, Mississippi saw a one thousand percent increase — from 10 to 110 — in the number of newborn babies who were hospitalized after contracting the disease, known to cause developmental issues, intellectual disabilities, and even death.
So in 2023, the state Department of Health mandated that all medical practitioners screen for the disease in pregnant mothers, and it has been running advertisements to spread awareness.
Annual congenital syphilis cases in Mississippi rose from 62 in 2021 to 132 in 2023, according to state data. The number fell to 114 last year. There have been 33 cases so far this year.
That work won’t stop despite potential budget cuts, Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer, said in an interview. “We’re going to keep doing what we have to do, you know, to keep it under control.”
State by state, public health departments take a similar approach: They monitor, treat and try to stem preventable diseases, alongside their host of other duties. But in the coming year, health department officials — with their agencies already strapped for cash — fear they’ll find it much more difficult to do their jobs.
President Donald Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 would cut the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention budget by more than half, from $9.3 billion to $4.2 billion. The proposal serves as a wish list from the administration, a blueprint for the Republican-controlled Congress as it works through upcoming spending legislation.
If lawmakers hew to Trump’s vision, then state and county public health departments would be hit hard. States contribute to their own health departments, but a lot of them rely heavily on federal funding.
And around half of local public health department funding comes from federal sources, primarily the CDC, as noted in a 2022 report from the National Association of County & City Health Officials.
Medicaid cuts are likely to worsen mental health care in rural America
“The federal government provides a lot of funding, but the actual implementation of public health programs happens at the state and local level,” said Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at KFF, a health policy research group. “Each state has its own approach, in many ways, to how public health programs are overseen, how they’re funded, how they are implemented.”
In announcing his department’s share of the proposed budget, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump’s goals align with “new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”
But many local health leaders point to the longtime mission of state public health departments in preventing the spread of disease.
“Local public health is on the front lines preventing communicable disease, operating programs to prevent chronic disease, ensuring our septic and well water systems are safe,” said Dr. Kelly Kimple, acting director of North Carolina’s Division of Public Health within the Department of Health and Human Services.
“I’m very concerned,” Kimple said, “especially given the magnitude of funding that we’re talking about, as we can’t keep doing more with less.”
Other federal budget cuts also have states worried.
Many state public health departments grew alarmed when the Trump administration announced in March that it would be clawing back $11.4 billion in COVID-era funding for grants that were slated to extend into 2026.
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia sued. A federal district court in Rhode Island temporarily blocked the cuts, and the case remains tied up in court.
The court’s preliminary injunction may not protect temporary staff or contractors, though. Public health departments have been laying off staff, cutting lab capacity and reducing immunization clinics, said Dr. Susan Kansagra, chief medical officer for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
Historically, public health departments receive funding in “boom and bust” cycles, meaning they tend to get more federal support during emergencies, said Michaud, of KFF. But “since the Great Recession of 2008, there was a general decline in public health support funding until the COVID pandemic.”
For example, KHN and The Associated Press reported that between 2010 and 2019, spending on state public health departments declined by 16% per capita and spending for local health departments fell by 18%.
Nationally, syphilis cases reached historic lows in the 2000s, thanks to robust prevention efforts and education from public health officials. By 2022, however, cases reached their highest numbers nationally since the 1950s.
“In the wake of the COVID emergency, you’ve seen a sort of backlash to what people had been calling the overreach of public health and imposing vaccination requirements and lockdowns and other public health measures,” Michaud told Stateline.
Public health departments and officials go back to the 19th century, when there was a greater emphasis on sanitation efforts to prevent spread of diseases such as smallpox, cholera and typhoid, which were rampant at the time.
By the end of the century, 40 states had established health departments, which to this day are responsible for water sanitation, tracking the spread of disease, administering vaccinations, furnishing health education, providing screenings for infants and some prenatal care for moms at local clinics, offering family planning services, and tracking and treating sexually transmitted infections, among other things.
What we're seeing now is a complete upheaval of the funding going into public health.
– Josh Michaud, associate director of global health policy at KFF
Kimple pointed to measles as a current example of a disease that’s spreading fast. When North Carolina’s health department detected a case in the state, she said, the department “identified and contacted everyone who might have been exposed, helped people get tested, worked with doctors to make sure they knew how to respond.”
That’s the legacy of local public health, Michaud said.
“The federal government cannot decide, ‘This public health program will happen in this state, but not that state,’ that kind of thing. And cannot declare a national lockdown. The COVID pandemic tested a lot of those boundaries. It really is a state and local responsibility to protect public health. And that’s always been the case, since the beginning of our country,” Michaud said.
“And what we’re seeing now is a complete upheaval of the funding going into public health.”
Kimple said she’s seen recent progress in her state in the support for funding public health.
“North Carolinians viewed our work as highly important to improving health and well-being in the state, and appreciated the local presence, the reliable information, the role in prevention and efforts to protect, in particular, vulnerable communities,” she said.
Similarly, Edney said that Mississippi state lawmakers were showing more support, despite some setbacks in 2016 and 2017. New federal cuts could throw a wrench in the health department’s economic plans and its ability to reach small communities.
“Now the federal rug is being pulled out from under us,” he said.
Edney said he expects the federal share of his department’s public health funding to fall from its current 65% to around 50%.
Edney said he’s been trying to strengthen Mississippi health department’s longevity by diversifying its revenue streams by, for example, accepting private donations.
The state will not stop doing its “core” work, he said, regardless of federal funding.
“We’re not going to cut back on services at the county health department, because what we do now is all mission critical,” Edney said.
Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
Children, with one of their teachers, at the Waunakee child care center operated by Heather Murray. (Photo courtesy of Heather Murray)
I have owned and operated a child care center for the past 19 years. Not only do I make sure staff and the bills are paid, I clean toilets, clean windows and change diapers. I have devoted my life to educating and caring for young children. I didn’t go into this profession to line my pockets with money. But everyone in my field deserves a living wage and to know they are supported in their community. My goal is to create a safe and nurturing learning environment for the children who enter my center. My belief is that their parents have decided to partner with us to make sure their children are getting the best possible environment to learn and grow.
Creating this high-quality environment for children has become increasingly hard over the years for child care providers in Wisconsin. Parents can’t pay more and providers need to keep qualified staff and pay them a liveable wage. For my center, wages for employees went up by $4 an hour recently to keep up with the other businesses in my community.
I started advocating and organizing around child care and early education right before the latest state budget cycle. I found there were some pretty big hurdles to jump over to get our legislators to listen to child care providers.
I’ve heard legislators tell providers “all you want is money.” I’ve heard them say “these women just need to learn how to run their business.” My favorite observation is: “We don’t need child care. Women should just stay home and take care of their children.” It wasn’t easy to get anyone at the Capitol to take providers seriously. In the last state budget child care received no funding. Wisconsin was one of six states that did not put any state money into child care or early education. Gov. Evers did find a way to support providers with direct payments using federal money, which helped keep many providers’ doors open throughout the state.
Meanwhile, advocates and early educators kept coming to hearings, talking about what we do on a daily basis and how that is important to our communities and the state.
Providers across Wisconsin held Community Conversations and Day Without Childcare events. Many elected officials from both sides of the aisle received tours of centers. Providers also sent letters to the editor and talked with every type of news outlet that would listen. I am so proud of all the providers who stepped up and continued to push this message that what we do is important and we deserve support. As a result, ideas at the Capitol started to shift.
I spoke to legislators from both sides of the aisle. I heard legislators starting to talk about the “child care crisis” and realize that it wasn’t happening just because we didn’t know how to run our businesses. They started to say out loud that parents shouldn’t have to pay 25% of their income for child care. Legislators who previously wouldn’t have said they supported child care investment said they would try and get something done.
In the end, the new state budget wasn’t ideal but it did do two things: Direct payments will continue to go to providers for the next year and early education is finally funded with state dollars in the Wisconsin budget.
Does this budget solve everything? No. Does it provide the $330 million Evers sought in direct payments to providers? No. Did Wisconsin for the first time put state money into early education? Yes — including $110 million in direct payments to providers Does it deregulate child care, increasing the number of infants and toddlers one staff person can care for and allowing 16-year-olds to count as full-time assistants? Yes.
I absolutely do not think deregulation is the answer to the child care crisis. I believe it is harmful to children. I will not be participating in the deregulated infant/toddler program outlined in this budget. I know I cannot get staff in my center to continue work when I ask them to take care of three more toddlers on their own. A single teacher in this proposed program would take care of seven toddlers ages 18 months and up. Right now that same teacher is expected to care for four toddlers that age. Even though some states have this ratio, the National Association for the Education of Young Children clearly states best practice is 1:4 for this age group.
I would also not hire a 16-year-old as an assistant teacher to add to my staff. I don’t believe 16-year-olds are ready to handle large groups of small children and provide the quality time and interaction they need; 16-year-olds are still children themselves. And since they are in school themselves, they are not that much help with the labor shortages centers experience all day long.
I’m grateful that Gov. Evers made child care a priority, and that our state finally joined the majority of other states in providing some support for this essential resource in the state budget.
Advocating for policy changes is a constant back and forth. Much of the time you don’t get what you want. This means that we must go back in two years, to make Wisconsin’s child care support better and more durable. Child care advocates have created a strong network and we are not done advocating for the change needed for providers to keep their doors open and for educators to earn a living wage. I believe child care is infrastructure and a public good. Together with other child care providers, I will continue to advocate and educate our leaders about how a well supported child care system is essential to our community and our economy.
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