When can someone be ordered to take medications against their will? The Wisconsin Supreme Court is weighing that question when it comes to people facing criminal charges.
The post When can a court force someone to take meds? The Wisconsin Supreme Court weighs a case. appeared first on WPR.
For now, Wisconsin will avoid costly requirements to meet air quality standards for ozone pollution in parts of southeastern Wisconsin under a recent federal appeals court order.
The post Wisconsin, businesses get reprieve from strict smog regulations under court order appeared first on WPR.
At age 18, Peter Kussow of Waukesha County is headed into the professional world of baseball. In July, the right-handed pitcher was selected in the fourth round of the 2025 MLB Draft.
The post Major League Baseball signs Wisconsin high school graduate appeared first on WPR.
A Wisconsin law restricting the sale of some vape products in the state remains in effect after federal judge denied a trade organization’s request for a preliminary injunction to block enforcement.
The post Lawsuit fails to block enforcement of Wisconsin’s vape ban appeared first on WPR.
Charles Schulz comic strip art; a 15th-century Ming dynasty celadon dish; a Eugene Sartory bow and French violin.
The post Antiques Roadshow:Vintage Los Angeles 2020 appeared first on WPR.
A Philip Margetts archive; Patek Philippe ladies’ watches; Japanese silk needlework circa 1910.
The post Antiques Roadshow:Vintage Salt Lake City 2020 appeared first on WPR.
A visit to the Basque Block in Boise, Idaho; clams with chorizo; Worcestershire sauce; shrimp and garlic; Spanish-style sizzling garlic shrimp.
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WASHINGTON, D.C.—Growth Energy, the nation’s largest biofuel trade association, submitted comments to the U.S. Treasury and U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) today, calling on the agencies to act quickly to make the most of the Section 45Z clean fuel production tax credit, which was enhanced and extended by the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) in July.
“The Trump administration and Congress delivered a huge win to American farmers and biofuel producers by extending and enhancing the 45Z tax credit in the OBBB. Now we need Treasury and IRS to finish the job by answering key questions and making regulatory decisions that maximize the credit’s benefits,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to weigh in on this process on behalf of America’s ethanol producers, and we look forward to seeing the investments in energy dominance that this credit will unlock once taxpayers know the rules of the road.”
Specifically, Growth Energy’s comments on the 45Z tax credit called on Treasury and IRS to:
These comments build upon and supplement Growth Energy’s comments on IRS Notices 2025-10 and 2025-11, as well as our comments on the IRS’ proposed rulemaking on prevailing wage requirements surrounding the 45z tax credit.
Read the full comment here.
The post Growth Energy Calls on Treasury, IRS to Give Ethanol Producers Greater Certainty on Revised 45Z Tax Credit appeared first on Growth Energy.
Michele Gay, co-founder of Safe and Sound Schools and mother to a student who was killed in the 2014 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, is attending the Transporting Students with Disabilities and Special Needs (TSD) Conference in November to talk about safety for all students in all educational settings, including the school bus.
At her TSD keynote on Friday, Nov. 9, Gay will discuss “Developmentally Appropriate Safety Education” and how schools can develop safety curriculum and training that supports and accommodates the unique needs of students and staff of all ages, abilities and educational levels. During her keynote, Gay looks to empower student transportation professionals to provide the appropriate kinds of training that will ensure student safety.
She will discuss how transportation can prepare staff to quickly and safely handle situations on or near the school bus, while keeping the physical and psychological safety of the students as the focal goal. As a very visible sign of students’ presence, the school bus can often be a target, and Gay looks to equip student transporters to protect the “rolling classroom” and the students onboard.
Gay began her work in the educational field as an elementary school teacher at the age of 21. She became a mom of three. She described one daughter, Josephine Grace or “Joey” as she was affectionally called, as “especially special” with many unique traits that came along with an autism diagnosis. Gay said she lived the day-to-day experiences of supporting a child with visual impairment, apraxia of speech, fine and gross motor skills. She shared that her daughter always made the most of life and that her goal as a mother and educator was to help her daughter navigate the world with those unique challenges.
Gay was a guest on the School Transportation Podcast, where she shared more about the reason why behind her work for student safety. Listen to the full episode here.
After the devastating shooting Dec. 12, 2014, and Joey’s murder along with that of 19 other 6- and 7-year-old students and six adult school staff members, Gay and her family was faced with the heartbreaking reality of the dangers that students encounter. She then founded Safe and Sound Schools, a national non-profit school safety advocacy and resource center, alongside Alissa Parker, who lost her daughter Emilie in the Sandy Hook shooting. Since then, Gay has been sharing how communities can create a comprehensive and sustainable approach to safety.
An experienced and educated advocate, Gay has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education and a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction. She has addressed national audiences through media outlets, schools, law enforcement agencies and more. She continues to be a leading advocate for student safety, inspired by Josephine and all children like her.
Save $100 on main conference registration with the Early Bird Discount, available through Oct.4. The TSD Conference will be held Nov. 6 through Nov. 11 at Embassy Suites Dallas-Frisco Hotel and Convention Center Visit tsdconference.com to register and view the conference agenda, which includes four keynotes and dozens of educational sessions all focused on transportation of students with special needs.
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With the new school year underway, the New York Association for Pupil Transportation (NYAPT) is drawing urgent attention to the dangerous and ongoing issue of motorists illegally passing stopped school buses. The organization is calling on all New York drivers to be extra vigilant as school buses are back on daily routes across the state.
In a statement released last week, NYAPT emphasized the critical need for motorists to obey traffic laws designed to protect student safety, especially during boarding and drop-off times. According to a statewide survey of school bus drivers conducted by NYAPT, incidents of motorists passing stopped school buses remain a serious threat to student safety.
“Providing New York’s school-age children a safe school bus ride to and from school each day is our top priority, and we urge all motorists to do their part and be extra cautious as schools reopen,” said Marc Medina, NYAPT president and transportation director for the Farmingdale School District on Long Island. “We are asking drivers to avoid distractions while driving, be aware that school buses are back on the roads, and always to stop when they see those red lights flashing on a school bus because students’ lives depend on it.”
NYAPT remindeds motorists that New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law mandate all vehicles must stop when approaching a school bus with flashing red lights, regardless of the direction of travel even on multi-lane or divided highways. Red lights on a bus indicate that a child is either boarding or exiting the vehicle.
Additionally, school buses on routes have federally mandated stop arms that extend during student loading and unloading.
A first-time offense can result in a fine ranging from $250 to $400, five points on a driver’s license, and up to 30 days in jail. Repeat offenders within a three-year span can face steeper fines, longer jail terms, and eventual license revocation.
“Riding a school bus is the safest way for a student to get to and from school each day, and we ask motorists who share the road with our school buses to do their part to keep it that way,” said NYAPT Executive Director David Christopher.
The concern over illegal passing of stopped school buses extends far beyond New York. A nationwide survey conducted by the National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services (NASDPTS) across 36 states and the District of Columbia revealed that approximately 31 percent of the nation’s school bus drivers reported a staggering number of motorists illegally passing stopped buses. During the one-day count, the participating states reported a total of 114,239 school bus drivers documented 67,258 vehicles passing their buses unlawfully on a single day. However, New York did not hare its numbers with NASDPTS.
In addition to safety concerns, NYAPT is highlighting another pressing issue affecting school transportation: The ongoing shortage of school bus drivers. A recent survey revealed that 60 percent of NYAPT members report needing to hire additional school bus drivers.
“While Gov. [Kathy] Hochul and the legislature have made important policy changes to assist schools with recruiting and retaining school bus drivers, many school transportation departments are still struggling to address the driver shortage problem,” Christopher added. “We ask that parents and caregivers who experience delays in school bus service or have transportation routes temporarily paused due to a lack of drivers be patient and have backup plans for transporting their children.”
Related: (STN Podcast E267) I Believe in This: Illegal Passing Drops & Michigan Pupil Transportation Leader Speaks
Related: Combatting Illegal Passing with Awareness, Technology
Related: Robinson Named Sole 2025 Inductee into NAPT Hall of Fame
Related: Updated: Fatal Motorcoach Crash During Band Trip Raises School Bus Safety Lessons
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Every maintenance professional has their own unique way of going about their craft, and every bus garage has its own feel. But when experts discuss approaches to parts purchasing and inventory management, certain best practices rise to the top.
For starters, fleet uniformity goes a long way toward achieving reduced downtime, mechanic familiarity with equipment, effective inventory management, and cost containment, explained a group of fleet directors and lead mechanics, some having earned the designation of School Transportation News Garage Stars in recent years.
“The last 15 years weve been buying Blue Birds,” said Chad Eaton, fleet manager with the Eagle County School District in Colorado. “It just simplifies everything: inventory, repairs, training. If you’ve seen an issue once on a Blue Bird, the next time it comes up, you know exactly what to do. It might take you 10 minutes instead of a half hour.”
Ryan Waters, head bus garage technician with the Lake Shore Central School District in Angola, New York and a 2024 Garage Star, agreed that “standardization” is a foundational best practice. “That helps us the most. If we run the same lights, the same tires on everything, we have to keep less parts in stock,” he explained.
Tim Dooley, bus mechanic supervisor at the North Kansas City School District in Missouri, added his district runs all Thomas Built Buses. “It might not always be the cheapest [solution] up front, but standardizing the fleet saves us a lot in the long run, when it comes to stocking parts and training mechanics,” Dooley said. “Keeping one manufacturer simplifies inventory and service. We looked at other brands, but the potential savings didn’t outweigh the added complexity.”
Andrew DeBolt, fleet management coordinator with Californa’s San Jose Unified School District, purchases original equipment manufacturer parts for consistency with service manuals and wear indicators. “Using OEM parts means the wear indicators match the service procedures,” he said. “It keeps everything consistent.”
San Jose also operates with an all-Thomas Built Buses fleet, necessitating fewer parts to stock, a simpler diagnostics process, easier training for mechanics and better pattern-failure predictability.
DeBolt, a 2020 Garage Star, said he operates a hybrid inventory management system that consists of stocking high-use items like tires, mirrors and other common parts while relying on local vendors for just-in-time delivery of infrequent items. He noted the system is streamlined yet responsive to the department’s needs.
“When I started, we had parts for buses we hadn’t owned in 15 years. Now we keep it tight. If we only use it once or twice a year, we don’t stock it,” he said. Proactive maintenance is another must-do, according to the garage experts. “We try to be proactive. If we see it’s close now, let’s just do it,” DeBolt commented. “Don’t wait until it becomes a bigger issue.”
Dooley said an important aspect of maintenance North Kansas manages is inspecting the brakes every time a bus is in the shop. “I keep a spreadsheet to monitor wear, and once a set drops to 30 percent, we schedule the replacement,” he said. “If the bus is already in the shop, we take care of it right then. No sense pulling it twice.” DeBolt applied that strategy to brakes and tires, acknowledging “there is a tradeoff.
“If you’re purely focused on trying to get every last penny out of that tire, you would run it down till it was at its minimum spec and then swap it out at that point, but you run the risk of a collateral issue (such as) a tire coming apart, taking out mud flaps and doing body damage,” he said. “Even if they have 8/32ths of tread left, we say, ‘They’re 10 years old and they’re coming off the bus.’ We sacrifice a little bit of service life on a brake pad or a tire, but we’re saving two weeks of shop time by the time we cut the mangled metal back, weld it and get it undercoated.
San Jose Unified, which buys tires through California’s state school bus tire program to secure better pricing, opts for recaps on rear axles to stretch tire life and save dollars. But DeBolt noted the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept students at home and buses off the road for an extended period, skewed maintenance cycles and caused some tires to age out before wearing out.
“We save 50 percent with recaps, but only if the tire’s being consumed in three or four years. Now we’re seeing 10-year-old tires,” he said. “All these tires that we had been using for recap on the rear axle, now they’re so old they’re failing. It kind of caught up to us.”
Waters’ department in Lake Shore, which maintains 57 buses and another 20 to 30 district vehicles, does use retread tires but does not keep casings longer than five years. When buying new tires, he opts for higher-end Goodyear options that he said improve longevity and cost effectiveness. “Even if you’re buying a tire that’s twice as expensive, if it lasts twice as long it’s less maintenance work for us to do, so it’s worth it in the long run,” he noted.
Waters said he initially tried multiple vendors before settling on one that consistently meets the district’s expectations. A requirement to secure at least three bids and the practice of conducting ongoing price checks with competitors maintains accountability. Decision-making is based on best value and service, not just price. “Sometimes paying a little bit more for a part will get us the better service. Value really does figure into it. It’s just not low bid,” he said.
While the COVID pandemic didn’t significantly disrupt tire deliveries, it did cause major price hikes. Those sharp price increases have largely remained in place. While a simmering global trade war has threatened to increase prices on bus parts from other countries, DeBolt said the uncertainty hasn’t influenced his approach to tire purchases, prioritizing U.S. manufactured brands.
“In the past, we’ve used other brands and had varying levels of success, but we’ve had the best success with Bridgestones, specifically the Bridgestones made in the U.S. And then Goodyears. Their stuff is all made in the U.S., too. The rubber quality is better. The build quality is better.” Does a commitment to purchase quality parts at a higher price fall into the best-practices category? Absolutely,” DeBolt insisted.
Eaton, who has 26 years of experience with Eagle County under his belt, shared a similar philosophy. The district runs only Michelin XZE2s on its bus steer axles and Michelin XDN2s on drive axles. “We’ve been buying these same tires for as long as I’ve been here. The tires are expensive up front, but they last. We tend to age them out before we wear them out,” he said. “It’s about value, not price. We’ve been doing it this way for so long because it works.”
The North Kansas City district contracts its tire work to a company that’s a trusted partner. “They handle most of our tire changes unless it’s something urgent in the morning like a flat. Having that partnership in place really saves us time and keeps our fleet moving,” Dooley said. “We’ve used Goodyear, Continental, BF Goodrich, whatever is available. We don’t have a strong brand preference, but I do feel that Continental and Goodyear wear better than the Michelins that come standard.”
The school district does not run retreads on any of its buses. “Every tire that we put on is new,” he said. “That’s an investment in safety and reliability that pays off in the long run.”
Meanwhile, Eaton said he believes in investing in premium tires for long-term value and buying the same brand and types of tires. “We only need to stock the two kinds of tires steer and drive which really helps us manage inventory efficiently,” he added. Of course, even the top pros have their own approaches to their craft.
When it comes to purchasing, Dooley said he doesn’t spend a lot of time shopping for different prices. “I’d rather work with vendors I trust, who can get me what I need quickly and keep our fleet on the road,” he said. “Midwest Bus Sales knows our fleet, and they’ve talked about going back to a consignment setup, where they stock the shelves and bill us as we use parts. For a district with two garages like ours, that kind of support would be a big help.”
All four districts have made the transition to LED lighting for reliability and reduced maintenance times. Eaton said all of the Eagle County district’s new bus orders come pre-equipped with LED lighting and First Light illuminated stop arm systems and front and back school bus signs.
“We’re even retrofitting our older buses with First Light’s stop arms and school bus signs,” he said. “We’ve had great experience with their products. They’re bright, reliable and add visibility.”
It’s also important to take unique local conditions intoconsideration when purchasing parts and managing inventory.
“Living up here in the mountains in Colorado, we’re required to have drive-line retarders…and we have the exhaust brakes through the Cummins engines we run, so we’re very fortunate that having those two secondary braking systems on our buses means we don’t go through a lot of brakes,” Eaton said.
On the other hand, Dooley noted that North Kansas City goes through brake shoes fast. “About 20 boxes every two weeks,” he estimated. “So, I buy drums and shoes by the pallet. It’s more efficient and more cost-effective to stay ahead of demand like that.”
DeBolt recommended developing and maintaining open, honest and ongoing relationships with the district fiscal department as a budgeting best practice. He avoids “crying wolf” so that his budget requests are trusted and taken seriously.
“When I go to them and ask for money, they know it’s legitimate. That trust makes a huge difference,” he suggested. “We don’t guess with variable costs like fuel. We agree on a number, but we all understand it may need to be adjusted later.”
When possible, Waters makes a point of purchasing from vendors that offer longer warranties and then keeping track of warranties on specific parts. “One company might have a three-year warranty, another one might have a five-year warranty,” he explained.
He said he prefers paperless inspections and maintenance, using a system that automatically generates work orders and alerts based on input. “We don’t have paper in our buses. We have tablets,” he said. “If drivers have an issue, they put it in the tablet. It sends me an email and creates a work order. I can go on there, look at the codes of everything.”
Eaton said investing in training, whenever possible and practical, is another value-added best practice. “We definitely try to get into any training that’s available to keep them up to snuff with standards. But any time you can stay on top of your game in ever-changing industry, that helps cut down on your downtime, too,” he said.
Best practices shouldn’t be shaped by how many or few vehicles a district operates, DeBolt noted. “We’re all driving the same equipment big or small fleet. The best practices don’t change that much,” he said.
Two keys to success above all, DeBolt insisted, are the ability to gather crucial information and roll with the punches. When it comes to the former, he said a search for better fuel economy led to the use of low rolling resistance tires and other cost savings. As to the latter, DeBolt underscored the value of honesty: “Our mantra is, we can deal with anything as long as we know what we’re dealing with.”
Editor’s Note: As reprinted from the August 2025 issue of School Transportation News.
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A customer enters a CVS store in October 2023 in Los Angeles. Pharmacies in Black and Latino neighborhoods and those with more residents on Medicaid are less likely to regularly dispense buprenorphine — one of the main medications used to treat opioid use disorder. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Pharmacies in Black and Latino neighborhoods are less likely to dispense buprenorphine — one of the main treatments for opioid use disorder — even though people of color are more likely to die from opioid overdoses.
The drug helps reduce cravings for opioids and the likelihood of a fatal overdose.
While the nation as a whole has seen decreases in opioid overdose deaths in recent years, overdose deaths among Black, Latino and Indigenous people have continued to increase.
Many medical and health policy experts fear the broad domestic policy law President Donald Trump signed in July will worsen the problem by increasing the number of people without health insurance. As a result of the law, the number of people without coverage will increase by about 10 million by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
About 7.5 million of the people who will lose coverage under the new law are covered by Medicaid. Shortly before Trump signed the bill into law, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University estimated that roughly 156,000 Medicaid recipients will lose access to medications for opioid addiction because of the cuts, resulting in approximately 1,000 more overdose deaths annually.
Because Black and Hispanic people are overrepresented on the rolls, the Medicaid cuts will have a disproportionate effect on communities that already face higher barriers to getting medications to treat addiction.
From 2017 to 2023, the percentage of U.S. retail pharmacies regularly dispensing buprenorphine increased from 33% to 39%, according to a study published last week in Health Affairs.
But researchers found the drug was much less likely to be available in pharmacies in mostly Black (18% of pharmacies) and Hispanic neighborhoods (17%), compared with mostly white ones (46%).
In some states, the disparity was even worse. In California, for example, only about 9% of pharmacies in Black neighborhoods dispensed buprenorphine, compared with 52% in white neighborhoods.
The researchers found buprenorphine was least available in Black and Latino neighborhoods across nearly all states.
Dr. Rebecca Trotzky-Sirr, a family physician who specializes in addiction medicine, said many communities of color are “pharmacy deserts.” Even the pharmacies that do exist in those neighborhoods tend to “have additional barriers to obtain buprenorphine and other controlled substances out of a concern for historic overuse of some treatments,” said Trotzky-Sirr, who wasn’t involved in the study.
In addition to its federal classification as a controlled substance, buprenorphine is also subject to state regulations to prevent illegal use. Pharmacies that carry it know that wholesalers and distributors audit their orders, which dissuades some from stocking or dispensing it.
Dima Qato, associate professor of clinical pharmacy at the University of Southern California and an author of the Health Affairs study, said that without changes in policy, Black and Hispanic people will continue to have an especially hard time getting buprenorphine.
“If you don’t address these dispensing regulations, or regulate buprenorphine from the aspect of pharmacy regulations, people are still going to encounter barriers accessing it,” she said.
Medicaid covers 47% of nonelderly adults who suffer from opioid use disorder.
In neighborhoods where at least a fifth of the population is on Medicaid, just 35% of pharmacies dispensed buprenorphine, Qato and her team found. But in neighborhoods with fewer residents on Medicaid, about 42% of pharmacies carried the drug.
Medicaid covers nearly half — 47% — of nonelderly adults who suffer from opioid use disorder. In states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, another recent study found an increase in people getting prescriptions for buprenorphine.
“Medicaid is the backbone of care for people struggling with opioid use disorder,” said Cherlette McCullough, a Florida-based mental health therapist. “We’re going to see people in relapse. We’re going to see more overdoses. We’re going to see more people in the ER.”
Qato said the shortage of pharmacies in minority communities is likely to get worse, as many independent pharmacists are already struggling to stay open.
“We know they’re more likely to close in neighborhoods of color, so there’s going to be even fewer pharmacies that carry it in the neighborhoods that really need it,” she said.
Qato and her colleagues say states and local governments should mandate that pharmacies carry a minimum stock of buprenorphine and dispense it to anyone coming in with a legitimate prescription. As examples, they point to a Philadelphia ordinance mandating that pharmacies carry the opioid overdose-reversal drug naloxone and similar emergency contraception requirements in Massachusetts.
“We need to create expectations. We need to encourage our pharmacies to carry this to make it accessible, same day, and there needs to be urgency,” said Arianna Campbell, a physician assistant and co-founder of the Bridge Center, a California-based organization that aims to help increase addiction treatment in emergency rooms.
“In many of the conversations I have with pharmacies, when I’m getting some pushback, I have to say: ‘Hey, this person’s at the highest risk of dying right now. They need this medication right now.’”
She said patients frequently become discouraged due to barriers they face in getting prescriptions filled. The Bridge Center has been expanding its patient navigator program across the state, and helping other states start their own. The program helps patients identify pharmacies where they can fill their prescription fastest.
“There’s a medication that can help you, but at every turn it’s really hard to get it,” she said, calling the disparities in access to medication treatment “unacceptable.”
Trotzky-Sirr, the California doctor, fears the looming Medicaid cuts will cause many of her patients to discontinue treatment and relapse. Many of her patients are covered by Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program.
“A lot of our patients are able to obtain medications for treatment of addiction like buprenorphine, because of the state covering the cost of the medication,” said Trotzky-Sirr, who also is a regional coordinator at the Bridge Center.
“They don’t have the resources to pay for it, cash, out of pocket.”
Some low-income patients switch between multiple providers or clinics as they try to find care and coverage, she added. These could be interpreted as red flags to a pharmacy.
Trotzky-Sirr argued buprenorphine does not need to be monitored as carefully as opioids and other drugs that are easier to misuse or overuse.
“Buprenorphine does not have those features and really needs to be in a class by itself,” she said. “Unfortunately, it’s hard to explain that to a pharmacist in 30 seconds over the phone.”
More is known about the medication now than when it was placed on the controlled substances list about two decades ago, said Brendan Saloner, a Bloomberg Professor of American Health in Addiction and Overdose at Johns Hopkins University.
Pharmacies are fearful of regulatory scrutiny and don’t have “countervailing pressure” to ensure patients get the treatments, he said.
On top of that fear, Medicaid managed care plans’ prior authorization processes may also be adding to the pharmacy bottleneck, he said.
“Black and Latino communities have higher rates of Medicaid enrollment, so to the extent that Medicaid prior authorization techniques are a hassle to pharmacies, that may also kind of discourage them [pharmacies] from stocking buprenorphine,” he said.
In some states, buprenorphine is much more readily available. In Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah and Vermont, more than 70% of pharmacies carried the drug, according to the study. Buprenorphine availability was highest in states such as Oregon that have the least restrictive regulations for dispensing it.
In contrast, less than a quarter of pharmacies in Iowa, North Dakota, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C., carried the medication.
“We’re going to see more people becoming unhoused, because without treatment, they’re going to go back to those old habits,” McCullough, the Florida therapist, said. “When we talk about marginalized communities, these are the populations that are going to suffer the most because they already have challenges with access to care.”
Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
President Donald Trump speaks to the media in the Oval Office on Sept. 2, 2025. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Monday revealed a lewd image and inscription they alleged was a birthday note that President Donald Trump provided for the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book compiled by the financier’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, led by Kentucky Republican James Comer, obtained the drawing via a subpoena for records in the government’s 2019 federal sex trafficking case against Epstein.
“We got the Epstein note Trump says doesn’t exist. Time to end this White House cover-up,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California wrote on social media. Garcia is the top ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee.
Comer had not issued a comment or statement as of late Monday afternoon on social media or on the committee’s website, where the committee chair has been posting updates on the Epstein probe.
The image of the birthday note shows a cryptic message about a “wonderful secret” written within the outline of a woman’s body and breasts. A doodle depicting the name “Donald” — that appears similar to Trump’s signature — is placed in the location of the woman’s pubic hair.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the existence of the birthday message in July. Trump promptly sued the news outlet and denied that he created the note.
The Journal also published the image Wednesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement on social media Wednesday criticizing the news outlet’s latest story as a “hatchet job” and asserting that the president’s lawyers “will continue to aggressively pursue litigation.”
“The latest piece published by the Wall Street Journal PROVES this entire ‘Birthday Card’ story is false. As I have said all along, it’s very clear President Trump did not draw this picture, and he did not sign it,” Leavitt wrote on X.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries declined to comment on the birthday note at a previously scheduled press conference Monday afternoon.
Trump’s past relationship with Epstein has been under a microscope since the Department of Justice declared in July it would not be releasing any further information on the case, and that no incriminating client list of Epstein’s existed.
Epstein died in a Manhattan jail cell in August 2019, awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking minors.
Trump campaigned on releasing what he and his followers call the “Epstein files.”
The uproar over the investigative materials related to the government’s case has revealed a rupture among Trump’s voter base and some House Republicans who have reliably supported him.
Victims who shared stories of abuse inflicted by Epstein and Maxwell, who was convicted on federal charges of sex trafficking minors, stood alongside Democrats and Republicans, including Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, on Capitol Hill Sept. 2.
Massie’s discharge petition, co-led with Rep. Ro Khanna of California, to compel the release of all Epstein government files has the support of all Democrats, but is two Republican signatures short of forcing a floor vote on the issue.
Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez (D-Milwaukee) speaks at a press conference in January 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez of Milwaukee is leaving the Assembly Democratic caucus — a decision that comes after leadership alleged that she made comments about shooting three of her colleagues.
Ortiz-Velez has been at the center of several disagreements over the last several weeks with her colleagues, including a public dispute with the newly-formed Hispanic Legislative Caucus over resolutions to highlight Hispanic Heritage Month.
Ortiz-Velez said she was excluded from being an author on the resolution, though the leader of the caucus Rep. Priscilla Prado (D-Milwaukee) has said the caucus agreed to limit authors to members. Ortiz-Velez had earlier declined to be a part of the caucus. She decided to write her own resolution honoring Hispanic Heritage Month, and her resolution, which has Republican and Democratic cosponsors, is now being set up to be voted on this week.
Last week her access to the Wisconsin State Capitol was revoked due to an alleged threat, though Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ office said the revocation was done in error, the threat was found to be not credible and her access restored.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) initially confirmed that Ortiz-Velez had left the caucus but declined to speak on the issue.
On Friday, however, eight Democratic leaders, including Neubauer, said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel that Ortiz-Velez “made a comment about shooting three members of our caucus who she has had personal disagreements with.”
“This is unacceptable behavior, especially given the heightened political environment and the murder of Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year,” the lawmakers said. “We are not in a position to ignore comments like these and referred it to Human Resources. After conversations with the Speaker’s office, we spoke with Capitol Police as well. We appreciated them looking into the matter and handling it from there.”
Former Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband were the victims of a politically-motivated assassination in June.
Ortiz-Velez told the Journal Sentinel that she did not make a threat, but rather used a “poorly worded hyperbole.”
“What I was trying to express is that I want peace with people, but others seem to keep attacking me, and if they attack me, I have a right to defend myself. And if someone perceived it differently, I’m very sorry, and I will be certain to refrain from that kind of language in the future,” Ortiz-Velez said.
Ortiz-Velez has previously split from her caucus on other votes. She was the only Democrat to vote for the new legislative maps that were drawn by Gov. Tony Evers and that Republican lawmakers decided to adopt, she was one of a handful of Democrats to vote for the recent state budget in July and also recently was the only Democrat on a bill, vetoed by Evers, that would have declared gig workers to be independent contractors.
According to WisPolitics, Ortiz-Velez also alleges that her colleagues were trying to keep her from testifying on AB 306, a Republican bill that would restrict an executive emergency powers, because she plans to accuse Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who plans to run for governor, of abusing his power during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I left the caucus because they’ve been terrible to me,” Ortiz-Velez told WisPolitics.
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Federal agents block people protesting an immigration raid at a licensed cannabis farm on near Camarillo, California, on July 10, 2025 . (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images.)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court’s ban on immigration agents’ racial profiling of Latinos in Southern California, backing President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The order is temporary as the suit continues in lower courts, but it indicates a majority of the court is likely to side with the Trump administration’s defense against a complaint that targeting Latino and Spanish-speaking workers for immigration enforcement violated the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment that bars unreasonable search and seizure.
The high court ruled that the officers could use “apparent ethnicity” as one factor in determining reasonable suspicion, as long as it is not the only factor.
“Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
“Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English,” he continued.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latin American member of the court, wrote a scathing dissent that the two other liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined.
“We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job,” Sotomayor wrote.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also slammed Monday’s decision from the Supreme Court.
“Today, the highest court in the country ruled that the White House and masked federal agents can racially profile Angelenos with no due process, snatch them off the street with no evidence or warrant, and take them away with no explanation,” she said in a statement. “This decision will lead to more working families being torn apart and fear of the very institutions meant to protect – not persecute – our people.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement that the decision from the high court will cause “racial terror in Los Angeles.”
“Trump’s private police force now has a green light to come after your family — and every person is now a target — but we will continue fighting these abhorrent attacks on Californians,” Newsom, a Democrat, said.
The ruling responded to an emergency appeal the administration made to the court last month, seeking to put on hold a temporary restraining order from Central California U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong.
The case in the lower court is ongoing.
The lower court blocked immigration agents from using “apparent ethnicity” as a method for determining if an individual violated immigration law.
Agents used a broad variety of factors to determine someone’s apparent ethnicity, including speaking Spanish or accented English, certain types of work and locations such as bus stops or car washes.
Kavanaugh also said that the civil rights groups and individuals targeted by immigration agents who brought the suit against the Department of Homeland Security lacked legal standing for the challenge “to seek a broad injunction restricting immigration officers from making these investigative stops.”
Sotomayor penned the dissent, criticizing Monday’s order for violating Fourth Amendment rights and allowing Latinos to be racially profiled.
“The Government, and now the concurrence, has all but declared that all Latinos, U. S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” she continued.
And she questioned Kavanaugh’s assumption that anyone who is a U.S. citizen and is questioned by an immigration officer will simply be let go once their citizenship is explained.
“That blinks reality,” she wrote, noting that two U.S. citizen plaintiffs in the suit tried to explain their citizenship status to an immigration officer.
“One was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning,” she wrote.
Sotomayor said the decision would create a second-class citizen status and require people to carry around proof of citizenship or legal status.
She added that the Fourth Amendment “prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individuals based solely on a set of facts that ‘describe[s] a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.”
“The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be ‘free from arbitrary interference by law officers,’” she wrote. “After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little.”
The administration’s mass raids this summer on Los Angeles-area Home Depot stores and other sites where day laborers gather sparked massive protests in the city that were the basis of National Guard troops and U.S. Marines deploying to the city, over Newsom’s objection.
A federal judge last week said the military members’ conduct violated a law against military personnel conducting domestic law enforcement.
The president has also deployed the National Guard of the District of Columbia and has directed thousands of federal law enforcement officers to set up checkpoints in the city to inquire about immigration status.
Thousands in the district on Saturday protested the deployment.
The president has threatened to send National Guard members to more predominantly Democratic cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and Portland, Oregon. He has said those deployments would help contain crime — despite violent crime in those cities decreasing in recent years — while also highlighting immigration enforcement.
Trump over the weekend posted an artificial intelligence-generated image that referenced the Vietnam War film “Apocalypse Now.”
The image is of Trump in a military uniform in front of the Chicago skyline with flames in the background.
The caption read: “I love the smell of deportations in the morning… Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” referring to the new secondary name Trump gave the Defense Department on Friday.
Speaking at an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Monday morning, Trump said that he “would love to go into Chicago” but was waiting on a request from Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker before he sent troops there. Pritzker, a Democrat, has been adamant that the city did not need or want National Guard troops.
E. Jean Carroll leaves the courthouse on Sept. 6, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Monday upheld that President Donald Trump must pay an $83 million penalty for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll in 2019, rejecting Trump’s argument that presidential immunity shields him from the punishment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Manhattan reaffirmed a lower court decision denying Trump’s claim that the 2024 U.S. Supreme Court decision granting presidential immunity protects him, and his assertion that the monetary punishment was excessive.
The three-judge panel wrote that Trump never argued “absolute” presidential immunity as the defamation case proceeded in 2020, and “hence, he may not do so now.” At the time, he argued for temporary immunity until he was out of office.
The decision was unsigned. The appeal was before Judges Denny Chin, who was appointed to the bench in 2010 by President Barack Obama; Sarah A. L. Merriam, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022; and Maria Araújo Kahn, appointed by Biden in 2023.
The case centered on Trump’s statements about Carroll after New York magazine published an excerpt of the writer’s new book in June 2019, in which she alleged Trump sexually assaulted her in a fitting room at the Bergdorf Goodman department store in 1996.
Trump repeatedly made public statements and social media posts claiming Carroll’s story was “totally fabricated” and that he didn’t know her, despite being previously photographed with her.
Trump began to claim absolute presidential immunity in December 2022, years into the case, and a district court denied his request for a summary judgement, ruling that he had waived any claim to it by failing to raise it in previous court filings.
Trump appealed to the 2nd Circuit and argued in a September 2024 brief that “presidential immunity is fatal to Carroll’s claims” and that Trump cannot be held liable for defamatory statements he made.
The Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in July 2024 that former U.S. presidents enjoy absolute criminal immunity for “core Constitutional” powers and are “entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” but are not immune from criminal prosecution for “unofficial acts.”
Trump escalated the question of presidential immunity to the Supreme Court after being federally indicted on defrauding the American public by claiming falsely that he won the 2020 presidential election and allegedly conspiring to overturn the result.
Trump had also argued the dollar amount the jury awarded to Carroll — $65 million of which was for punitive damages — was “grossly excessive.”
The appeals court rejected that claim, highlighting that Trump continued to make defamatory remarks about Carroll during the yearslong litigation.
“For nearly five years, Trump never wavered or relented in his public attacks on Carroll,” the judges wrote, even though he was found guilty in a separate but closely related civil case — a jury in 2023 found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in the mid-1990s.
“The statements all shared common themes: Trump continued to assert that Carroll was lying about the 1996 sexual assault and that she was motivated to do so for personal, financial, and political reasons, and to imply that Carroll was too unattractive to be sexually assaulted. He also began to claim that Carroll’s lawsuit was part of a conspiracy to interfere with the 2024 election, and vowed to continue to make similar statements in the future.”
The judges said Trump’s behavior amounted to “extraordinary and unprecedented conduct.”
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 29, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling and allow it to withhold $4 billion in foreign aid that was previously approved by Congress.
The case is one of many lawsuits challenging the White House’s efforts to supersede Congress’ spending authority by canceling funding without lawmakers’ explicit approval.
This particular case became more complicated in late August when the Trump administration sent Congress a rescission request, asking lawmakers to cancel billions in foreign aid, including some of the funding subject to this lawsuit.
This “pocket rescission,” as it’s sometimes called, came within 45 days of the end of the fiscal year. Under the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law, they believe that allows them to cancel the funding even if Congress refuses to go along with the proposal.
The move is considered illegal by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office and evoked ire from senior lawmakers, including Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine.
“Article I of the Constitution makes clear that Congress has the responsibility for the power of the purse,” Collins wrote in a statement. “Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.”
The appeal to the Supreme Court filed Monday urges the justices to let the legislative and executive branches figure out the spending dispute on their own and criticizes a federal district court for ordering the Trump administration to spend the money.
“The injunction requires the Executive Branch to rush to obligate the same $4 billion that the President has just proposed rescinding between now and September 30, and thus puts the Executive Branch at war with itself,” wrote Solicitor General D. John Sauer. “Just as the President is pressing for rescission and explaining to Congress that obligating these funds would harm U.S. foreign policy interests, his subordinates are being forced to proceed to identify and even negotiate with potential recipients.”
The pocket rescissions request at the center of this case is separate from the one Trump sent Congress in early June that asked members to eliminate funding for numerous foreign aid accounts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Lawmakers approved that proposal in July after preserving full funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
Congress has yet to act on the second rescissions request as its leaders look for ways to fund the government ahead of an Oct. 1 shutdown deadline.
Attorneys for the organizations that brought the lawsuit — the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and Global Health Council — wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court submitted Monday that they opposed the Trump administration’s request to overturn the lower court’s preliminary injunction.
“USAID and the State Department have been under a duty to obligate these funds since at least March 2024, when Congress enacted the appropriations; they chose not to act sooner,” they wrote. “The government faces no cognizable harm from having to take steps to comply with the law for the short period while this Court considers its stay application.”
Protesters in Milwaukee take part in a 2019 march demanding action to address climate change. Fifteen young people are suing the state of Wisconsin for harming their future by allowing pollution that hastens climate change. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)(
Kaarina Dunn has grown up hearing stories of the Wisconsin winters her parents and grandparents got to enjoy. Winters with enough snow cover that the family of ski-enthusiasts could get on the slopes from Thanksgiving to Easter.
But despite the state’s continued connection with ice and snow, winters like those of her family’s past are gone. Climate change has caused Wisconsin’s winters to warm more than any other season. A number of recent winters have seen drought conditions with little to no snow across the northern part of the state — severely damaging winter tourism and canceling or modifying events such as the American Birkebeiner. While data shows that the amount of snowfall on average is similar to decades past, the weather doesn’t stay as cold throughout the winter, meaning that the snow melts before it can accumulate to the truly deep levels of previous generations.
“I hear all these great stories about how they got to ski over Thanksgiving, how they skied past Easter time, how they went on all these great trips around the state of Wisconsin to all these ski hills, mountains, all these amazing places,” Dunn, a 17-year-old Onalaska resident, tells the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I can’t help but feel incredibly saddened by this. I will never experience these things. These are family traditions, trips that my family would go on, with family members, with friends, and do all these amazing and fun things. And honestly, I do feel left out. I feel let down by my state. I can no longer enjoy these things due to the direct results of fossil fuels in the environment.”
Dunn is one of 15 young people suing the state of Wisconsin, arguing that state laws violate their constitutional rights and worsen climate change. The lawsuit mirrors a similar lawsuit from children in Montana, who successfully argued that the state had to consider the greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impact of permits involving fossil fuels.
The children are represented in the lawsuit by Madison-based Midwest Environmental Advocates and Oregon-based Our Children’s Trust.
In Wisconsin, the suit argues that state lawmakers have made a number of declarations that the state’s energy production should be decarbonized and the greenhouse gas emissions of that production should be reduced, but state laws prevent that from happening.
The state’s law for siting power plants requires that the state Public Service Commission determine that “[t]he proposed facility will not have undue adverse impact on other environmental values such as, but not limited to, ecological balance, public health and welfare, historic sites, geological formations, the aesthetics of land and water and recreational use.” However the law also prohibits the PSC from considering air pollution, including from greenhouse gas emissions, in that determination.
Additionally, the state set a goal in 2005 that 10% of Wisconsin’s energy come from renewable sources by 2015. That goal was met in 2013. However, now that the goal has been met, state law treats it as a ceiling on renewable energy the PSC can require.
“The Commission cannot require any electric provider to increase its percentage of renewable energy generation above the required level,” the lawsuit states, meaning that for more than a decade, Wisconsin’s energy regulators have been unable to push the state’s power companies to develop more renewable energy sources.
Coal and natural gas make up 75% of the energy produced in Wisconsin and renewable sources make up 17%.
Skylar Harris, an attorney for Midwest Environmental Advocates, says that children today are going to spend most of their lives dealing with the effects of climate change on their health and lifestyles yet don’t yet have the ability to vote and influence environmental policy.
“I think people are really starting to acknowledge the direness of the situation that we’re in and the situation that climate change is causing, and how it impacts our inherent rights such as life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” Harris says. “And courts are really starting to see that without the right to a stable climate, which is what we’re arguing for in this case, the rights to life, the rights to liberty, the rights to the pursuit of happiness, they mean nothing, because people can’t pursue them to the fullest extent.”
Harris says that if the lawsuit is successful, she believes that the PSC will use its new authority to deny permits for new or expanded fossil fuel burning power plants and push the state’s power companies to expand their renewable capacities.
In the Montana lawsuit, officials argued that the state can’t be held responsible for the effects of climate change on the children in that lawsuit because climate change is caused by emissions from across the globe. Harris says that yes, climate change is a global problem, but it gets fixed by individual governments doing something about it.
“Climate change is a global problem, but there is no such thing as a global government,” she says. “So if we are to address this global issue, that means every individual, every business and every government, including the state of Wisconsin, has to step forward and do its part. And that’s what we’re trying to make sure is happening with this lawsuit.”
The 15 children in the lawsuit represent a wide swathe of Wisconsin. They live in urban and rural parts of the state and include athletes who have had wildfire smoke affect their sports, farm kids who have had droughts and heavy rains affect their families’ livelihoods and members of the state’s Native American tribes who have seen their cultural traditions put at risk.
Dunn has spent much of her childhood fighting for environmental causes as president of her local 4-H club and has won three grants for environmentally focused projects from the Bloomberg Philanthropies Climate Action Fund. She says she joined the lawsuit because it can help her community and kids like her across the state.
“I began my environmental work because I always believed in doing the right thing,” she says. “I believe in fighting for my community, fighting for my family, fighting for my siblings, fighting for everyone, fighting for youth and fighting for families.”
She adds that the PSC “knows that what they are doing is wrong. The governor and the Wisconsin Legislature have indicated that they want renewable energy, and the Public Service Commission simply isn’t changing the laws, and the Legislature isn’t changing the laws.”
Dunn’s family has lived western Wisconsin’s Driftless Region for generations and she spent most of her childhood in Vernon County. She says the Mississippi River is “almost a family member.”
But massive rain events causing flooding and erosion triggered a massive boulder to tumble down a bluff and into her backyard, making her family fear that it wasn’t safe in their home anymore. They moved north to La Crosse County.
“We felt very unsafe in the childhood home that I planned to live my entire life in. We made the difficult decision to move cities, move counties, move school districts,” she says.
A member of her school’s tennis team, Dunn says hotter summers and poor air quality caused by wildfires elsewhere on the continent have forced her to change how and when she practices. Flooding has prevented her and her family from swimming off the dock at her grandparents’ home and affected the work done at their walnut tree farm.
Dunn says that for her, joining the lawsuit is about standing up and trying to force her state government to admit it has a role to play in mitigating climate change and responding to the ways in which climate change has harmed her life and the lives of the other kids in the suit.
“Ultimately, our country knows the science that is creating climate change, the fossil fuel industry, and especially Wisconsin, they can no longer stand behind saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We don’t know about it. There’s nothing that we can do,’” she says. “But ultimately, we have the science and technology to make changes and to save my life and my future children’s life and have a safe and healthy environment.”
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Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) speaks Friday at a press conference to promote her legislation that would extend enhanced tax breaks on the cost of insurance purchased through the Affordable Care Act. Business owners Kyle LaFond, left, and Evan Dannells also spoke in favor of extending the tax credits. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)
Federal legislation that would hold down the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans and nearly a quarter-million Wisconsin residents has quiet support from Republicans in the Senate, according to Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin).
So far, however, none of them have spoken out, Baldwin said at a news conference in Madison on Friday.
Baldwin has introduced a bill that would extend tax credits that have cut the health insurance costs for people who buy coverage on the federal marketplace, HealthCare.gov.
When the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010 and the HealthCare.gov marketplace was launched to make it easier and cheaper for people without health insurance to buy coverage, the law included tax credits to lower the cost of premiums for people with incomes up to 400% of the federal poverty guideline.
In 2021, the premium tax credits were supercharged to impart far greater savings to people buying insurance through the marketplace. The enhanced tax credits were extended in 2022 with a sunset at the end of this year.
The extra tax breaks helped insurance coverage through the HealthCare.gov marketplace rise to record highs in the last few years, both in the U.S. and in Wisconsin.
“This tax break, the enhanced premium tax credit, saves more than 230,000 Wisconsinites an average of $500 every single month” on their insurance premiums, Baldwin said. “Not extending these tax breaks and jacking up costs on the open marketplace will crush families — but also small businesses that are the fabric of our communities.”
In January Baldwin and New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) introduced legislation to make the enhanced tax credits permanent, in place of the lower tax credits that will resume when the enhanced credits expire Dec. 31.
A paper published Sept. 3 by the Georgetown University Law School Center on Poverty and Inequality reported that according to the Congressional Budget Office, without the enhanced credits 30 million more people will lack health insurance by 2034 — an average of 3.8 million a year.
For people with incomes between 100% and 150% of the federal poverty guideline, insurance premiums will go up by 7.9% between 2026 and 2034, the Georgetown researchers calculated.
For people with incomes between 150% and 400% of the federal poverty guideline, premiums would rise between 29% and 160% in the same period, according to the report.
The report also notes without the enhanced tax credits, people who lose Medicaid coverage due to cuts in the Republican megabill President Donald Trump signed on July 4 could be unable to afford insurance on HealthCare.gov.
“There are, in the Senate, Republicans who have quietly indicated that they want to extend breaks to make [HealthCare.gov] marketplace insurance affordable,” Baldwin said. “I don’t have a count yet to tell you that we have enough, but I’m encouraged by the conversations I’m having.”
In the U.S. House, a bipartisan bill has been introduced extending the enhanced credits for a year — “notably getting them past the midterm elections,” Baldwin said. But that’s not long enough for her.
“I don’t think this should be political,” Baldwin said. “I think this should be something that Democrats and Republicans should agree on, that people should be able to afford their health care coverage.”
Baldwin’s press conference was held at Access Community Health Center, which serves low-income Wisconsin residents. Joining Baldwin, Madison chef and restaurant owner Evan Dannells said that the passage of the ACA and the opening of the HealthCare.gov marketplace made health care newly available in his industry after years of the youngest group of workers going uninsured.
Before the ACA, for people who entered hospitality jobs in their late teens or early 20s, “it was essentially, fundamentally understood that you wouldn’t have health care until you were in your 30s,” Dannells said.
The ACA required insurers to cover young people on their parents’ plans up to the age of 26, then made it possible for them to find more affordable coverage at HealthCare.gov after that.
“I have a half dozen full time employees over the age of 26 at a restaurant, and so what they’re going to do is they’re going to leave for corporate jobs that have the buying power to get their premiums down,” Dannells said — something not possible for small employers.
“This is essentially the beginning of the dismantlement of the Affordable Care Act with no plan and process for the future,” Dannells said.
Kyle LaFond, owner of a Middleton manufacturing firm that makes custom cosmetic products for celebrity brands, said the ACA and the HealthCare.gov was “a godsend” for small employers such as his company. “These subsidies are important because, of course, now more than ever, folks are living paycheck to paycheck,” he said.
Baldwin said she will campaign to attach her proposal to one of “several must-pass bills coming up in the days and the weeks ahead.”
While the enhancements increased the value of the tax credits for people with incomes up to 400% of the poverty guideline, they also made tax credits available for the first time to people with higher incomes — up to more than 1000% of the guideline.
Baldwin told the Wisconsin Examiner that those higher income groups were added to avoid “what we call a cliff.” That occurs when a person’s income rises even slightly above a benefit’s income ceiling — suddenly cutting off the benefit and possibly demanding they make a repayment. Many safety-net programs have cliffs, she explained.
In Wisconsin, most Medicaid programs have income limits, and many are only available to people with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline, she said. People who may work several part-time jobs and usually qualify for Medicaid can find themselves kicked off the program if they have a brief boost in their income, due to overtime work, for instance.
“Then you have to do all sorts of work to get back on, and then you have to be very mindful that you don’t get an extra hour or a raise” that could lead to being kicked off again, Baldwin said.
“So we were trying to avoid there being the sort of equivalent cliff in the Affordable Care Act marketplace tax credits,” Baldwin said.
For that reason, her bill would continue the tax credits available to the higher income population, she said, “and I would be committed to not reintroducing a cliff.”
Baldwin criticized GOP lawmakers for passing the Republican megabill that extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts without considering an extension of the enhanced ACA credits.
“You would think including tax breaks for tens of millions of families to afford health care would be a centerpiece of that legislation. Right? Wrong,” Baldwin said.
Instead, she charged, the bill made cuts to Medicaid and the federal nutrition program SNAP to pay for tax cuts “in favor of the biggest corporations and the wealthiest Americans.”
U.S. President Donald Trump stands with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon after signing an executive order to reduce the size and scope of the Education Department during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House on March 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. The order instructs McMahon to shrink the department, which cannot be dissolved without congressional approval. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s aim to shutter the Education Department faces steep hurdles in Congress, where Republicans’ legislative efforts to abolish the agency remain stalled and appropriators have rejected many of his proposed cuts to education spending.
After campaigning last year on a pledge to shut down the department, Trump came into office promising to follow through, and made some preliminary moves.
He said he wanted Education Secretary Linda McMahon to “put herself out of a job” and signed a sweeping executive order in March calling on her to facilitate the closure of the Education Department to the extent she is permitted to by law.
He won a key victory in the U.S. Supreme Court in July that temporarily cleared the way for the administration to move ahead with mass layoffs at the agency, a plan to dramatically downsize the department outlined in that March executive order and his directive to transfer certain services to other agencies.
Court documents show that the department is planning to bring back more than 260 Office for Civil Rights staff affected by those sweeping layoffs stemming from a separate legal challenge against the administration’s actions earlier this year.
But after a dizzying array of cuts and changes in the months since Trump took office looking to dismantle the agency, the GOP-controlled Congress — the only body that can abolish the 45-year-old department it created — is throwing up roadblocks to elimination.
For starters, the handful of GOP bills in Congress to close down the department face a difficult path in the Senate, which requires at least 60 senators to advance most legislation.
Republicans hold just 53 Senate seats.
In the House, at least four Republicans — Thomas Massie of Kentucky, David Rouzer of North Carolina, Barry Moore of Alabama and Nathaniel Moran of Texas — have introduced bills this year to eliminate the department. Those bills were referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce, which has not voted on any of them.
In a brief interview at the Capitol on Sept. 3, the committee’s chair, Michigan Republican Tim Walberg, said he still intended to eventually dismantle the agency, but had not committed to any particular bill.
“Our intentions are to ultimately dissolve the Department of Education — we know we have to do that in a way that makes sense and so, we’ll take a look at all bills,” Walberg told States Newsroom.
“I can’t say whether they will all come up or not, but we know that, working with the secretary of Education, we’re going to right-size it, and some things we’ll eliminate, other things we’ll shift, as we’ve done already, over to the Department of Labor to take on some workforce areas,” the Michigan Republican said.
The chair acknowledged that there would not be enough votes in the Senate to abolish the agency.
“So what we can do that seems right for our students, for our parents and for our teachers, we’ll do,” Walberg said.
GOP efforts to dismantle the department are also underway in the Senate.
Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, alongside Sens. Jim Banks of Indiana and Tim Sheehy of Montana, reintroduced a measure in April to abolish the agency.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul also reintroduced a bill in March with Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Bernie Moreno of Ohio to shutter the department. The measure is a companion bill to Massie’s legislation.
A spokesperson for Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said the Louisiana Republican is “working with the administration and colleagues on how Congress can best codify the President’s reforms into law,” in a statement to States Newsroom.
The spokesperson noted that “President Trump and Republicans are committed to returning education authority to local communities best equipped to meet the needs of students and families.”
The administration’s attempts to dramatically scale back funding for the department in fiscal 2026 have not been met with much enthusiasm by appropriators in the Senate.
The House and Senate Appropriations committees share jurisdiction over the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.
The Senate committee advanced a bipartisan bill in July, which largely rejects Trump’s proposed cuts to education spending and his attempt to dismantle the department.
The bill tightens requirements for the department to have the necessary staffing levels to fulfill its statutory responsibilities and prevents the agency from transferring certain programs to other federal agencies.
The legislation also allocates $79 billion in discretionary funding for the coming fiscal year, roughly the same as the current level, which could be seen as a slap in the face to the administration’s budget request that called for $12 billion in spending cuts at the agency.
Meanwhile, the House Appropriations subcommittee dealing with education spending advanced its spending proposal for the agency on Sept. 2, sending the bill to the broader panel.
The bill aligns much more with the administration’s spending cut priorities and education agenda, calling for $67 billion in discretionary funding at the department.
Part of the bill also reduces funding for Title I grants — which support school districts with high percentages of students who come from low-income families — by $5.2 billion, according to a summary from committee Republicans.
The majority notes that “despite outsized investment, America’s public schools continue to fail children and families.”
But spending proposals in both the House and Senate reject the administration’s request to significantly reduce the maximum award for the Pell Grant, a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.
Instead, each proposal maintains the maximum award at $7,395.
House and Senate appropriators have several steps to go before they can even reach the negotiating phase on the bill — which also includes spending on other agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services — and get it closer to becoming law.
It’s possible there might not even be a final agreement for months as lawmakers struggle to come to an overall agreement on how much to spend in the coming fiscal year, but the Senate’s bipartisan plan might give that chamber more of an advantage if those negotiations take place.
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