The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday rebuked ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including moves to shift some of its core functions to other agencies.
Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia — who hosted a spotlight forum alongside several colleagues — said “over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.”
Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, brought in education advocates and legal voices pushing back against the administration’s ongoing attempts to axe the agency.
The lawmakers and witnesses expressed particular alarm over the administration’s six interagency agreements, or IAAs, announced with four other departments in November 2025 that transfer several of its responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.
‘Illegal’ transfers
Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said that “while these agencies all provide important services for our nation, none of them are adequately prepared to take on the massive portfolio of programs that these interagency agreements strip from (the Education Department).”
Harrington, who previously served as a senior adviser at the department, pointed to a “lack” of institutional knowledge at the four departments compared with career employees at the Education Department who have gained expertise from spending decades running the affected programs.
Rachel Homer, director of Democracy 2025 and senior attorney at Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that is leading the ongoing case challenging the department’s dismantling efforts in federal court, pointed out that Congress creates and decides which agencies exist.
“Congress charges those agencies with performing certain functions, Congress determines the mission of those agencies, and the executive branch’s obligation is to carry that out, is to implement those laws faithfully,” said Homer, who previously served as chief of staff of the Office of the General Counsel at the department.
The advocacy group is representing a broad coalition in a legal challenge against the administration’s attempts to gut the agency.
That challenge, consolidated with a similar suit brought by Democratic attorneys general, was expanded in November in the wake of the interagency agreement announcement to include objections to those restructuring efforts.
“These transfers through the IAAs, they’re illegal,” Homer added. “That’s not what Congress has set up — that’s not how Congress has instructed the agencies to function.”
Mass layoffs, downsizing
Meanwhile, the administration’s attempts to wind down the department have also included mass layoffs initiated in March 2025 and a plan to dramatically downsize the agency ordered that same month. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily greenlit these efforts in July.
Trump has sought to end the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to send education “back to the states.” This effort comes while much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.
“I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say I can’t believe we’re here having to actually defend the existence of the Department of Education,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.
“As Education committee members, we came here to work on improving education and opening doors of opportunity and addressing the civil rights disparities, but here we are having to defend the actual existence of the Department of Education,” the Oregon Democrat said.
Civil rights in the spotlight
Employees at the Office for Civil Rights — tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — were targeted in March as part of a broader Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort and put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded.
Though the agency moved to rescind the RIF against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded, a Government Accountability Office report released earlier in February found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees who were not working between March and December 2025.
The government watchdog also found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.
“We’re extremely concerned of what this means for OCR to actually uphold its statutorily defined duty of protecting the civil rights of students in schools, including the rights of Black students, other students of color, girls, women, students with disabilities and members that identify with the LGBTQI+ communities,” said Ray Li, a policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.
Li, who previously served as an attorney for OCR, called on Congress to ensure that the unit “remains in a functioning Department of Education” and not transferred to the Department of Justice or another agency.
He also urged Congress to provide “adequate funding for OCR” and to “play an important role in transparency, sending oversight request letters to get information on the quantity of complaints that are being received, the types of discrimination that they allege, how OCR is processing those complaints and what the basis of dismissals are.”
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a policy announcement event at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Jan. 8, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Congress has approved the first public health funding bill since President Donald Trump began his second term, with lawmakers largely rejecting his proposed spending cuts and the elimination of dozens of programs.
A bipartisan group of negotiators instead struck a deal to increase funding on several line items within the Department of Health and Human Services’ annual appropriations bill, including for major initiatives at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“When you look at the differences between what was proposed and what was agreed to, it is astonishing,” House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said during a hearing on the bill in late January.
The Trump administration’s budget request, released in May, called on Congress to cut funding for the Department of Health and Human Services by $33 billion, or 26.2%.
The president asked lawmakers to implement an $18 billion funding cut to the NIH, which he argued would bring the agency in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda.
The Trump administration proposed a $3.6 billion cut for CDC programs, including the elimination of the National Center for Chronic Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and Public Health Preparedness and Response, all of which it said could “be conducted more effectively by States.”
The James H. Shannon Building, or Building One, on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by Lydia Polimeni/National Institutes of Health)
The budget request said more than $1 billion should be cut from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, though it said the administration was “committed to combatting the scourge of deadly drugs that have ravaged American communities.”
Trump also requested lawmakers zero out any funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which he deemed “unnecessary.” The federal program helps millions of low-income households meet their home energy needs, via states and tribes.
The final spending bill Congress approved rejected nearly all of the major cuts.
Collins, Murray both praise final product
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the bills “reflect months of hard work and deliberation and contributions from members of both parties and on both sides of the Capitol.”
“Funding for NIH is not decreased, as was proposed in the administration’s budget,” she said. “Rather, it is increased by $415 million, including increases of $100 million for Alzheimer’s research and $10 million more for diabetes research, with a focus on type 1 diabetes.”
U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, speaks with reporters inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 29, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
Collins also touted an increase in “funding for low-income heating assistance, which is absolutely crucial for states like Maine and is an issue that I have worked for years on with my Democratic colleague Jack Reed of Rhode Island.”
Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said the difference between Trump’s budget request and the final bills was like the difference between “night and day.”
“Our bill rejects President Trump’s asks to rubber stamp his public health sabotage,” she said. “Instead, it doubles down on lifesaving public health investments. It rejects Trump’s efforts to slash opioid response funds. It rejects his proposal to chop the CDC in half. It rejects his call to end programs like title X, the teen pregnancy program, essential HIV initiatives, and more.”
Rare bipartisan agreement in Trump’s second term
Senators from both political parties indicated last summer they weren’t fully on board with Trump’s budget proposal and used a hearing with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in May and a separate hearing with NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya in June to highlight their concerns.
The Senate Appropriations Committee approved its HHS spending bill on a broadly bipartisan vote in July, while the House Appropriations Committee approved its funding bill in September without any Democratic support.
Neither of the original bills went to the floor for debate and amendment votes, though negotiations to find compromise on a final bill began late last year after the record-breaking government shutdown ended in November.
Washington state Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, speaks with reporters inside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Sept. 19, 2025. Also pictured, from left to right, are Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker and Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
Republicans and Democrats brokered a final agreement on the HHS funding bill in late January, the first time bipartisan agreement was reached during Trump’s second term.
Congress previously approved a series of stopgap spending bills to keep HHS up and running, mostly on funding levels and policies last set during the Biden administration.
The House originally voted on Jan. 22 to send the package that included funding for HHS to the Senate. But it stalled after federal immigration agents shot and killed a second U.S. citizen in Minnesota and Democrats demanded changes to the spending bill for the Department of Homeland Security.
The Senate voted 71-29 on Jan. 30 to send the package back to the House after removing the full-year DHS spending bill and replacing it with a two-week stopgap. The House then voted 217-214 on Tuesday to clear the package for Trump, who signed it later in the day, ending a four-day partial government shutdown.
The package also holds funding for the departments of Defense, Education, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury.
‘Months of hard work turned into results’
House Appropriations Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., said during floor debate last month the process that led to the final bills proved lawmakers “can make tough decisions.”
“This is where months of hard work turned into results,” Cole said. “You see, we aren’t here for just another stopgap temporary fix. We’re here to finish the job by providing full-year funding and specifically this package addresses core areas of national consequence — defense; labor, health and education; and transportation and housing development.”
Congress is supposed to pass the dozen full-year appropriations bills by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, though it hasn’t completed all of its work on time in decades.
Oklahoma Republican Rep. Tom Cole speaks with reporters following a closed-door meeting of the House Republican Conference inside the Capitol on Jan. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
Cole said during debate the programs funded “aren’t abstract concepts on a page, they affect how Americans live, work, learn and travel every day.”
DeLauro said the package of bills represents “a strong bipartisan, bicameral agreement that rejects the Trump administration’s efforts to eviscerate public services and reasserts Congress’ power of the purse.”
“It provides funding levels, removing ambiguity that the White House sought to exploit in the past,” DeLauro said. “It establishes deadlines for required spending, provides minimum staffing thresholds to prevent agencies from being hollowed out and increases notification requirements to ensure the administration is complying with the laws that Congress makes.”
HHS ends up with $210 million bump
The bill provides HHS with more than $116 billion, $210 million more in discretionary funding than the previous level and a rejection of Trump’s request to cut $33 billion, according to a summary from Murray’s office.
NIH will receive $48.7 billion in funding, $415 million more than its current spending level, showing that lawmakers were unwilling to slice its budget by $18 billion as requested.
Congress bolstered funding for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration by $65 million to a total of $7.4 billion, according to Murray’s summary. Trump asked lawmakers to reduce its allocation by more than $1 billion.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 23, 2023. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
A $3.6 billion funding cut for the CDC was also rejected, with appropriators agreeing to provide the Atlanta-based agency with $9.2 billion.
A summary of the bill from DeLauro’s office says negotiators were able to keep funding for domestic and global HIV/AIDS activities, Firearm Injury and Mortality Prevention Research and Tobacco Prevention and Control, among other programs that House Republicans originally proposed to zero out.
The legislation bolstered, instead of eliminated, funding for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, according to a summary from Cole’s office.
The bill, it said, “reprioritizes taxpayer dollars where they matter most: into lifesaving biomedical research and resilient medical supply chains, classrooms and technical programs that set Americans up for success, and rural hospitals and primary health care to support strong and healthy families.”
CDC program axed
The legislation does eliminate the CDC’s Social Determinants of Health program, which the agency’s website states are “nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes.” Those can include whether a person has access to clean air and water, a well-balanced diet, exercise, a good education, career opportunities, economic stability and a safe place to live.
HHS’ Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion writes that “people who don’t have access to grocery stores with healthy foods are less likely to have good nutrition. That raises their risk of health conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity — and even lowers life expectancy relative to people who do have access to healthy foods.”
Cole’s summary of the HHS spending bill says that program “promoted social engineering while distracting grant recipients from combating infectious and chronic diseases.”
The American Public Health Association urged Congress to approve the bill, writing in a statement the compromise “rightly maintains funding for most public health agencies and programs.”
“While the bill is not perfect and we disagree with cuts to several HHS agency programs included, overall, the agreement rejects the devastating cuts and nonsensical agency reorganizations proposed by the Trump administration and is a positive outcome,” APHA wrote. “Importantly, the bill also includes language to ensure that CDC and other health agencies maintain an adequate level of staffing to carry out their statutory responsibilities.
“The bill will also ensure that Congress exercises its oversight over any future proposed agency reorganizations.”
The funding package President Donald Trump signed Feb. 3, 2026, includes $79 billion for the U.S. Education Department, representing a rejection by Congress of the president's plan to close the department. (Photo by kali9/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s attempts to dramatically slash funding for the U.S. Department of Education amid a broader push to dismantle the agency hit a major roadblock this week in the form of bipartisan approval of a spending law that gives the department a small raise.
The president signed a measure that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal year 2025 funding levels and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump wanted.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote in a social media post after the signing that the law was a direct rebuke of several Trump priorities, including eliminating the department.
“Our funding bills send a message to Trump,” she wrote. “Congress will NOT abolish the Department of Education.”
The measure also rejects efforts to dramatically reduce or fully slash funding for a host of programs administered by the department for low-income and disadvantaged students.
Trump and his administration have sought over the past year to take an axe to the 46-year-old agency as part of a quest to send education “back to the states.” Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.
Those dismantling efforts included six interagency agreements with four other departments in November that would shift several Education responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.
The spending package also holds full-year funding for the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, State and Treasury. The measure includes a two-week stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security.
‘Inefficiencies’
The measure does not offer ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the Education Department’s responsibilities to other agencies — despite efforts from Senate Democrats to block such transfers.
However, in a joint explanatory statement alongside the measure, lawmakers expressed alarm over the “assignment of such programmatic responsibilities to agencies that do not have experience, expertise, or capacity to carry out these programs and activities and lack developed relationships and communications with relevant stakeholders, including States.”
Lawmakers added they were “concerned that fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs to the American taxpayer, and cause delays and administrative challenges in Federal funding reaching States, school districts, and schools.”
Due to those concerns, the funding measure directs the Education Department and the agencies that are part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.
The briefings are supposed to include information on “staffing transfers, implementation costs, metrics on the delivery of services” and the “availability of technical support for programs to grantees,” among other matters.
The Education Department clarified when announcing the interagency agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities and will continue its oversight of these programs.”
‘Necessary’ staffing levels
The funding agreement also mandates that the department “support staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities funded in (the law) in a timely manner.”
The department took heat last summer when it froze $6.8 billion in funds for K-12 schools and informed states just a day before the money is typically sent out.
The measure also maintains the total maximum annual award for the Pell Grant from the prior fiscal year at $7,395, according to a summary from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The government subsidy helps low-income students pay for college.
Trump’s budget request called for cutting nearly $1,700 from the maximum award for the 2026-2027 award year, a proposal that stoked alarm last year from leading House and Senate appropriators in both parties overseeing Education Department funding.
Funding levels maintained for TRIO, GEAR UP
The administration also called for defunding the Federal TRIO programs and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, in fiscal 2026 — a move rejected in the measure.
The Federal TRIO Programs include federal outreach and student services programs to help support students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and GEAR UP aims to prepare low-income students for college.
Appropriators maintained funding for the programs at fiscal 2025 levels — with $1.191 billion for TRIO and $388 million for GEAR UP, per the Senate Democrats’ summary.
The administration also sought to axe funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, which, according to the Education Department, “supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education through the provision of campus-based child care services.”
Instead, the measure allocates $75 million for the program.
The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on the funding package.
The administration expressed its support for the entire, multi-bill package, in a Jan. 29 statement of administration policy that barely mentioned the education provisions.
On July 4th, in the towns and counties of rural western Wisconsin, there were celebrations like on any other Independence Day: grilling bratwurst, drinking Leinenkugel’s, fireworks showering high in the summer night.
That very same day, a thousand miles away in Washington, DC, HR1— also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) — was signed into law. Yet for people here, the passage of the bill was a mere blip in the national headlines. It was not apparent that it would become an economic earthquake, triggering a tsunami of devastating after-effects soon to crash down on our rural communities.
The massive tax cut and spending bill is the most dramatic restructuring of federal budget priorities in six decades. The president called the OBBBA his “greatest victory” and the “most popular bill ever signed.” The White House issued only a scant 237-word press release summarizing the 900-page law; the substance of the law itself was barely mentioned. When it was enacted, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they knew “little or nothing” about what was in the bill.
When asked about his support of the bill, my own representative from Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, Derrick Van Orden, dismissed any suggestion that the White House had influenced his vote. “The president of the United States didn’t give us an assignment. We’re not a bunch of little bitches around here, OK? I’m a member of Congress, I represent almost 800,000 Wisconsinites.”
The OBBBA permanently extends the 2017 tax cuts and locks in a historic upward transfer of wealth. The top 1% of households receive an average tax cut of $66,000. Working families earning $53,000 or less get a tax cut of just $325. Roughly $1 trillion dollars will flow to the richest households over the next decade, while Medicaid, nutrition assistance, and health coverage are drastically scaled back, pushing 15 million people off insurance.
‘I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective’
Last August, 70 of us gathered on a Saturday in Woodville, Wisconsin, population 1,400, with the understanding that something consequential was happening in our nation, yet struggling to figure out how we can respond. We filled a community center on Main Street for six hours: teachers, farmers, retirees, retail workers, students, small business owners. People brought notebooks and coffee. The windows were open. Ceiling fans spun slowly overhead.
“I’m tired of complaining, feeling like a victim, worried about what’s going to happen next,” one of our members put it plainly. “I want to be part of a strategy, something that’s actually effective.”
I organize with Grassroots Organizing Western Wisconsin (GROWW). Our work has always started from a simple question: How does power move in the places we live? Since the organization began, our focus has been on local issues like housing, agriculture and rural broadband. But, at that meeting in Woodville, we were trying to name what was happening: how the political chaos in our federal government was flowing down to our families, counties, schools, cities, hospitals, town boards. And, most importantly, what we could actually do about it.
GROWW members Joan Pougiales, Allison Wilder, Stephanie May, Abi Micheau, Ryan Jones, Abe Smith, Jennifer McKanna, and Tina Lee | Photo courtesy GROWW
That day in Woodville we made a plan. It did not involve protest or messaging. Our organizing has never been about reacting the fastest or shouting the loudest. Power is built methodically: identifying who makes decisions, who feels the consequences, and where solidarity can be established and strengthened before a harm is normalized and written off as inevitable. That is why we started with listening.
“Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
– Eric Schnurer, public policy consultant
During the following three months we sat down face to face with nearly 100 local leaders across four counties. We met in offices, conference rooms and coffee shops. We spoke with school superintendents, sheriffs, county administrators, hospital executives, clergy, elected officials, business owners. We asked the same questions over and over: what were people experiencing in their jobs, what pressures were they under, what was keeping them up at night?
Many people we spoke with were overwhelmed by the effort required to stay focused on their jobs: the to-do lists, budgets, hiring, planning. One program director told us her job was mostly “putting out fires.” When we asked how they were reacting to federal policy changes, most people didn’t have much to say. Unless it was affecting them today, they didn’t have the luxury to worry about it.
Each conversation made clear how county governments in rural Wisconsin are lifelines, not faceless bureaucracies. They plow snow, run elections, maintain roads, administer BadgerCare and SNAP, respond to mental health crises, operate nursing homes, and answer 911 calls. And they are already stretched thin.
Funding was the issue mentioned the most. A county administrator walked us through the elaborate gymnastics required to balance a county budget under state-imposed levy limits that make raising revenue nearly impossible: wheel taxes, bond sales, consolidating services. One-time fixes layered on top of structural gaps. Again, it came back to resources. Not culture wars, not ideology. Money.
Delaying the pain
What surprised us most was what we did not hear. Despite anxiety about shrinking budgets, very few people mentioned the One Big Beautiful Bill. It had not yet made a mark on their daily work. That is not accidental. The new law is designed to delay the pain, disperse responsibility, and conceal the damage out of public view until it feels inevitable.
We decided to look into the law’s ramifications. We did our own research, and what we learned is that rural and small-town communities in western Wisconsin are in for a slow-motion fiscal disaster, and that regular people will be the ones who pay the price.
Starting in 2027, the federal government is scheduled to cut its share of SNAP administrative costs in half. In counties like Dunn, that shift could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in new local costs. A smaller administrative budget means fewer staff, which means slower processing, higher error rates, and federal penalties that reduce funding even further. The OBBBA seems designed to trigger countless downward spirals that degrade programs until they can be declared broken.
The repercussions for Medicaid follow the same pattern. At Golden Age Manor, the beloved county-run nursing home in Amery, where most of the services are Medicaid funded, even modest reimbursement cuts will translate into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars lost each year. At the same time, more uninsured residents will still need care.
Across our counties, more than 10,000 people rely on ACA Marketplace coverage for their health insurance. Since federal tax credits expired at the end of 2025, families face premium increases averaging around $1,600 a year. Some will pay far more. Many will drop coverage altogether. When they do, costs will shift to county-funded behavioral health systems and other services already operating at the limits of their resources.
One sheriff described what that will look like in practice: “When someone is in a mental health crisis, our deputies already spend hours driving them across the state because there are no beds here,” he said. “If people lose coverage, those crises do not go away. They show up as 911 calls.”
We must act before the tsunami arrives
A tsunami is set in motion by a distant earthquake that no one feels. Life happens on shore while energy gathers fiercely far out at sea. Only a seismograph sounds the alarm. Once the wave arrives, entire cities are engulfed, communities washed out to sea. Trump’s massive tax cut and spending law was that earthquake. We have decided to act before the wave arrives.
Local governments will be forced to navigate what policy expert Eric Schnurer described as “fiscal and operational crises,” but few people will be able to connect what happens to a bill passed last year. “Most Americans don’t realize how dramatically state and local governments — which most directly affect their daily lives — are about to change.”
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state.
County budget hearings were held in November. They often happen with no public comment, gaveled in and gaveled out in a matter of minutes. Last year we showed up and filled the rooms. We brought letters we had drafted, breaking down projected budget impacts county by county. We delivered testimony from the podium. Our goal was not to blame our county leaders, but to signal our alignment with them.
After one hearing, a county administrator, a self-identified fiscal conservative, met with us and said, “Every point you raised in your letter was correct. Our county government has to brace for what’s coming, and you made that clear to everyone in the room.”
The people who will be hit hardest
We know our county boards are not responsible for causing this disaster, yet they will be forced to deal with it, while we, the residents, will be the ones who feel the cuts most deeply. Our members of Congress who voted “yes” for this bill are the ones responsible for this mess.
Letters and testimony are not enough. What we need is power. For regular people like us, there is but one path to power: organizing. That means we have to talk to those who will be most affected, inviting them to see their personal stake in this fight. The single parent in River Falls, juggling two part-time jobs and relying on SNAP to keep food on the table. The kid with asthma in Boyceville, whose parents rely on ACA coverage, now at risk of losing access to care. The retired farmer outside Balsam Lake, whose wife’s long-term care at Golden Age Manor nursing home is covered through Medicaid.
Our long game is to begin the conversation about what it will take for Congress to repeal the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The path to repeal will be fraught with political roadblocks and fiercely opposed by the corporate class, which has been true for every consequential victory working people have ever won in this country. Repealing the law must become a defining issue in every political conversation in America – at dinner tables, at bus stops, and on Reddit threads – starting now and continuing until the law is gone.
While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents
Cracks are already beginning to form. Earlier this month, Rep. Van Orden, along with 17 other Republicans in the House of Representatives, backpedaled on his support of the OBBBA by voting to extend ACA tax credits (more than 30,000 people are expected to lose health insurance in Van Orden’s district). However, the opposition stiffens. Shortly after the vote, in a disciplinary move, Americans For Prosperity announced it was pausing support for those who defected.
Cutting services, expanding the machinery of repression
As I write, immigration agents are spilling into western Wisconsin from Minneapolis, swarming small towns and rural communities across the region. They are driving unmarked vehicles with out-of-state plates. Some members of our organization have built rapid response networks in solidarity with immigrant-led groups. Meanwhile, our neighbors are being terrorized, taken from their homes, and families are being ripped apart. Some local Mexican restaurants and grocery stores have closed their doors. Just sixty miles west, in Minneapolis, two American citizens have been killed by ICE agents.
This is not a coincidence. While showering billionaires with tax benefits, the OBBBA also massively expands the machinery of repression. It quadrupled the budget of ICE, expanding its force by 10,000 agents and thereby transforming the agency into one larger than most national militaries. On one hand, the administration subjects us to the cruel spectacle of paramilitary raids, disappearances and death. On the other, the administration dismantles the social safety nets that keep people alive, then redistributes public resources to the wealthiest few. A loud disruptive culture war creates a smokescreen for a quiet methodical class war.
The fight for Congress to repeal the OBBBA will be a David versus Goliath fight. It is a fight about whether the super-rich will be able to bleed us dry and starve our local institutions. Whether our neighbors will die as wealth is extracted from above. Whether daily life for a majority of Americans will be defined by relentless top-down class war.
This fight will not be won by politicians, consultants, or pollsters. It will be won by regular people who have decided to build a movement town by town, county by county, state by state. The ramifications of the OBBBA are so wide and deep that a new political coalition will be necessary, one big enough to include anyone who isn’t a billionaire. Republicans, Democrats, independents, libertarians, socialists, and people who’ve lost faith in politics altogether. White people, brown people, Black people, young people, old people. The poor, the working class, the middle class.
An unwavering commitment to big tent politics and multiracial solidarity is how we defeat the divide-and-conquer tactics this administration relies upon. Building trust and power across differences. Not reinforcing divides through purity tests or theoretical debate. Listening for common ground and shared humanity. Seeing every person as a potential ally, not an enemy to defeat. We must organize, strategize and mobilize until regular Americans have won the freedom to make ends meet, live with dignity, and have a voice in the decisions that affect us.
A September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’” (Photo by Sue Barr/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Several U.S. Senate Democrats launched an investigation into how the Trump administration’s child care funding cuts and policy changes are affecting rural families, in a Sunday letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Raphael Warnock of Georgia led four of their colleagues in urging the respective heads of Rural Development at the Department of Agriculture and the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services to offer up more information on their “current capacity to support child care, particularly in rural communities.”
Joining Warren and Warnock are Sens. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland, Alex Padilla of California and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
“Despite child care being one of the biggest costs American families face, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to the federal programs that aim to make child care more accessible and affordable, including ACF and USDA’s Rural Development Office,” the senators wrote to acting Under Secretary for Rural Development Todd Lindsey and ACF’s Assistant Secretary Alex Adams.
USDA Rural Development and ACF work to expand access to child care in rural areas.
The senators pointed to a September poll from First Five Years Fund, an advocacy group, which found that 4 out of 5 rural Americans “say the ability of working parents to find and afford quality child care is either in a ‘state of crisis’ or ‘a major problem.’”
The group said the administration’s slashing of staff at agencies and programs that support affordable child care, including ACF and Rural Development at USDA, are raising concerns that the administration is “failing families across the country and adding to the affordability crisis facing working-class families.”
Cuts from federal child care fund to Dem states
The senators raised alarm over some of the administration’s most sweeping actions regarding child care programs, including attempts to cut off nearly $2.4 billion from the multibillion-dollar Child Care and Development Fund, or CCDF, to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York earlier in January.
All are led by Democratic governors and the administration cited concerns about allegations of fraud.
CCDF — administered within the Office of Child Care under ACF — provides federal funding to states, territories and tribes to help low-income families obtain child care.
The five Democratic-led states sued in a New York federal court over the freeze, which also included $7.35 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program and $869 million from the Social Services Block Grant — totaling more than $10 billion when combined with CCDF.
“States are challenging the legality of this freeze, but the consequences would be devastating should the courts permit the administration to permanently withhold the funds,” the senators wrote.
Days prior to the announced freeze, the administration said states had to provide “justification” that federal child care funds they receive are spent on “legitimate” providers to get those dollars.
That demand followed allegations of fraud in Minnesota child care programs, which had prompted HHS to freeze all child care payments to the state.
The administration also announced earlier in January it would be rescinding multiple Biden administration child care rules that “required states to pay providers before verifying any attendance and before care was delivered.”
Head Start in rural America
The Democrats argued that President Donald Trump has also “attacked Head Start at every turn since his inauguration.”
ACF administers Head Start, which provides early childhood education, nutritious meals, health screenings and other support services to low-income families.
The senators noted that “Head Start is especially crucial in rural communities, where it is often the only licensed child care program available.”
During the record-long government shutdown in 2025, scores of Head Start centers experienced lapses in funding grants as a result.
Even prior to the shutdown, Head Start already experienced chaos during the Trump administration, such as reports of delays in accessing approved grant funding, regional office closures and firings at ACF’s Office of Head Start.
Flood of workers departing USDA
Meanwhile, USDA saw more than 20,000 employees leave in the first half of 2025, according to a report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General. More than one-third of the agency’s Rural Development unit left during that time.
“Instead of strengthening the programs that aim to address the rural child care crisis, President Trump is firing the people who administer them,” the senators wrote.
On top of that, the agency in March confirmed it would be slashing around $1 billion in previously announced funding for programs to help child care facilities, schools and food banks purchase from local farmers.
USDA also faced backlash during the shutdown for refusing to tap into a multibillion-dollar contingency fund in order to keep benefits flowing for the country’s main food assistance program known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
The senators urged Lindsey and Adams to respond to their inquiries by Feb. 16.
USDA did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In response to a request for comment, ACF said Monday it is “currently reviewing the U.S. Senators’ letter and will respond to them directly.”
The Madison Social Security Administration field office. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Wisconsinites are holding rallies across the state Wednesday to call on Congress and the Trump administration to increase funding for operations at the Social Security Administration.
Staff reductions and office closures in the last year have created bottlenecks in service for members of the public who need help from the agency, according to Jessica LaPointe, the Wisconsin-based president of American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 220. The union represents field operations employees for the Social Security Administration across the country.
“We’re struggling to meet the needs of the public,” LaPointe said, with more than 10,000 people a day becoming eligible for the federal retirement program.
Along with AFGE, the Wisconsin Alliance for Retired Americans will be rallying outside Social Security offices in eight Wisconsin communities Wednesday.
“When they start closing offices, that hinders our senior citizens,” said Ross Winklbauer, president of WARA. “They call into Social Security if they have a question or to file a claim, and they’re sitting on the phone for hours because of short staffing and not getting their questions answered.”
WARA will take part in a rally starting at 12 noon outside the Social Security offices in the Milwaukee suburb of Greenfield along with AFGE. Rallies are also planned in Eau Claire, Madison, Racine, Rhinelander, Stevens Point, Wausau and Wisconsin Rapids. Winklbauer said WARA has about 100,000 members in the state, mostly union retirees, and about 1,000 active participants.
The rallies are part of a national day of action in anticipation of the possibility that the government will shut down at the end of January if Congress can’t agree on a budget for the rest of the year, LaPointe said.
Talks are underway between congressional Republicans and Democrats to enact the rest of the government’s spending plan for the current year by the upcoming deadline.
Nevertheless, LaPointe said the most recent shutdown that started Oct. 1 and ran for a record 43 days brought home to many field office workers in the Social Service Admin. the limits of their compensation, especially if they are furloughed.
In a report released Wednesday, the Strategic Organizing Center said its review of 36,000 Social Security workers’ pay rates showed that 54% — just over half — were paid less than what theMIT Living Wage Calculator has set as a living wage for the regions of the U.S. where they live. The developers of the calculator at the MIT Living Wage Institute define a living wage as “the rate that a full-time worker requires to cover the costs of their family’s basic needs where they live.”
“We don’t get paid enough to save for a rainy day,” LaPointe said. “We’re understaffed, we’re underpaid and we’re struggling to meet the needs of the public who are coming to us for their earned benefits.”
In January 2025, when President Donald Trump took office, the agency’s staff was at its lowest in 50 years, LaPointe said, and “the public was waiting too long for benefits and services.”
Since then, the agency instituted a buyout program, offering workers up to $25,000 to quit, and the staff dropped from 58,000 a year ago to about 50,000 now — “the largest single staffing cut in Social Security history,” LaPointe said.
About 2,000 field staff were lost in the last year — 10% of the field operations, she said, with the number of employees at some offices falling to single digits.
LaPointe said the agency has moved to “digital first” operations that favor online or telephone contacts instead of in-person visits. In addition, the agency has shifted to processing inquiries from the public nationally rather than at the local office she said — “where a customer out in California would be served by someone in Wisconsin, or a customer in Madison might be served by someone in New Jersey.”
In an email message, a Social Security Administration spokesperson depicted the digital shift as part of a modernization program so that “more Americans are choosing to resolve their needs online or over the phone.” The statement cited arecent audit by the Social Security Administration inspector general that found average hold times for callers had dropped to seven minutes by September 2025 from a high of 30 minutes in January.
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano “has pledged to have the right level of staffing to operate at peak efficiency and deliver best-in-class customer service to the American people,” the spokesperson said.
The Social Security Administration “is taking action to improve workplace satisfaction, support professional development, and enhance communication across all levels of the organization,” the spokesperson added.
LaPointe, however, said there’s been “a breakdown in community based service” with the new system, and Social Security staffers are no longer the face of government in the local community.
“You now have to have an appointment to do anything with Social Security,” LaPointe said. “It’s created a bottleneck of service to where people cannot get access to apply for benefits in a timely fashion.”
Frontline workers are concerned that a move toward using artificial intelligence technology to review benefit applications will increase errors — either benefit approvals that are mistaken or unwarranted denials, she said.
“It still takes a human being to adjudicate claims — every claim, whether on the phone, online or in person,” LaPointe said.
As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.
California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and five other states have set caps on health care spending in a bid to rein in the intense financial pressure felt by many families, individuals and employers who every year face increases in premiums, deductibles and other health-related expenses.
Hospitals and other health care providers are citing Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July, as one more reason to challenge those limits.
The law is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade, which mathematically should help the overall health care system meet the caps. But the law is also expected to increase the number of uninsured Americans, mostly Medicaid beneficiaries, by an estimated 10 million people. Health care analysts predict hospitals and other providers will raise prices to cover the double whammy of lost Medicaid revenue and the cost of caring for an influx of newly uninsured patients.
Whether regulators in some states will allow providers to justify higher prices and exceed the spending caps is unclear. Only California and Oregon can penalize providers financially if they fail to meet targets.
“Are we going to say, ‘That’s OK’? Or are we going to say, ‘Well, you exceeded the target. We’re still going to penalize you for that’?” said Richard Pan, a former state lawmaker and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability’s board. “That has not yet been decided.”
The California Hospital Association, the industry’s main state lobbying group, filed a lawsuit in October asking a state court to strike down the spending caps, which it argued fail to account for all the cost pressures hospitals face. Those pressures, it said, include an aging, sicker population; the rising cost of labor; expensive advances in medical technology; large capital outlays on required seismic retrofitting; and changes in federal policy, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The hospital group’s lawsuit also asserted that the state affordability office, by hastily imposing ill-considered cost-cutting targets, was undermining its other key mission of improving health care access, quality and equity.
California’s affordability office last year set a five-year target to cap statewide spending growth, starting at 3.5% in 2025 and declining to 3% by 2029. The annual caps apply to a wide range of health care entities, including hospitals, medical groups, insurers and other payers.
Earlier this year, it imposed much lower spending growth caps — starting at 1.8% in 2026 and declining to 1.6% by 2029 — for seven “high-cost” hospitals.
“The spending caps set by politically appointed bureaucrats could force cuts that result in many Californians traveling farther for care, facing longer emergency room wait times, experiencing more overcrowding and losing access to critical services,” Carmela Coyle, the hospital association’s president and CEO, said in an October press release.
The California attorney general’s office, which will represent the affordability agency, has not yet filed a response to the hospital group’s complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.
Hospitals’ pushback
California is not the only state taking a close look at hospital prices, which are widely considered a primary driver of health care costs.
“States, armed with information that points to payments to hospitals as a driver of what is way beyond affordable commercial premiums, have begun to take increasingly targeted actions focused on commercial hospital prices,” said Michael Bailit, founder of the Needham, Massachusetts-based consultancy Bailit Health, which has advised multiple states, including California, on ways to tame health care spending. “It is not surprising that the hospital industry is going to oppose such state actions.”
In its lawsuit, the California Hospital Association said the affordability office’s own report showed that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are largely responsible for high costs.
Hospitals in some states with cost growth limits, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have expressed objections similar to the ones raised in the California lawsuit. They could follow their counterparts in California if their lawsuit succeeds, said Peter Lee, who led California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, Covered California, for over a decade and is now a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.
Lee said the work of California’s affordability office and similar agencies in other states is just about the only systemwide effort being made to cut health care costs. They are basically saying, “‘Look, health care is taking money away from education, it is taking money away from the environment, it is taking money away from everything in the public sector, and in the private sector it is taking money away from wages,’” he said. “‘We don’t know how you, the health system, are going to do it, but it is your job not just to provide quality but to lower costs. Here’s the target.’”
To be sure, achieving the cost savings that California and those other states are seeking is no easy lift. It will ultimately require persuading large, financially powerful players that compete fiercely for health care dollars to adopt a different mindset and begin cooperating to reduce costs instead. And that, in many cases, will mean lower revenue.
But the status quo, as many people know all too well, means continued financial pain for millions.
In early 2020, Estevan Rodriguez, a bartender at California’s Monterey Beach Hotel, had surgery for a staph infection in his leg. The bill came to nearly $168,000. His insurance paid most of it, but he still owed $5,665, which took him two years to pay, more than $200 every month. “It may not be a lot to some people, but it was a lot to me,” Rodriguez said.
He said he dropped his Hulu subscription, switched to a lower-cost cellphone, and got cheaper car insurance. He started going to food banks rather than the grocery store, he said, and had a lot less time with his kids, because he was constantly working to pay off the hospital bill.
Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Rodriguez had his surgery, is one of the seven hospitals identified by California’s affordability office as high-cost. A study by the office attributed high hospital prices in Monterey County to a lack of market competition “rather than higher operating costs or superior quality of care.”
The Monterey hospital referred a request for comment about its “high-cost” designation to the California Hospital Association. CHA spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea declined to comment beyond the language of the lawsuit and Coyle’s press release statement.
Reduced competition
Health care analysts worry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce market competition even further by stressing already weak hospitals, leading some to shut services, merge with larger health systems, or close. One study estimates 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing nationwide.
Less competition, in addition to fewer Medicaid dollars and an increase in uninsured patients, will only strengthen the incentive of health systems with the requisite market clout to raise their commercial prices, increasing premiums for employers and individuals.
“We think commercial prices will continue to increase as health care providers, and hospitals in particular, will seek to preserve or increase their revenue,” said Rachel Block, a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation that focuses on health equity.
That in turn could pose a challenge to state affordability regulators tasked with overseeing compliance with growth targets for health care spending.
California’s affordability office is required to consider mitigating factors, including changes in federal and state laws. But some of its board members have expressed skepticism about letting hospitals offset Medicaid losses with higher commercial prices.
“There’s a lot of talk about using HR 1 and other federal policies as an excuse to raise prices on commercial payers,” Ian Lewis, an affordability office board member and policy director for UNITE HERE Local 2, a hospitality workers union in the Bay Area, said at the agency’s July board meeting, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s no more blood to be squeezed from this stone.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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.
A vacant hallway at Vaughan Regional Medical Center in Selma, Alabama, on Tuesday, Sep. 3, 2024 in Selma, Alabama. (Will McLelland for Alabama Reflector)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled Monday hundreds of millions of dollars each state will receive this fiscal year as part of a massive $50 billion rural health fund baked into Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law.
The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program — authorized under GOP lawmakers’ mega tax and spending cut package Trump signed into law in July — is designed to offset the budget impacts on rural areas due to sweeping Medicaid cuts.
Half of the $50 billion will be distributed equally among each state between fiscal years 2026 and 2030, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the remaining $25 billion, doled out over the same time period, is being allocated to states based on several factors, such as steps states are taking to improve access to care in rural communities.
Texas will get the highest first-year award at $281.3 million, followed by Alaska at $272.2 million, California at $233.6 million, Montana at $233.5 million and Oklahoma, at $223.5 million.
New Jersey is receiving the lowest first-year award, at $147.2 million.
“Thanks to Congress establishing this investment and President Trump for his leadership, states are stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care, and support the communities that keep our nation running,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement alongside the announcement.
Oz added that “CMS is proud to partner with every state to turn their ideas into lasting improvements for rural families.”
Meanwhile, the nonpartisan health research organization KFF found that the program would only offset a little more than one-third of the package’s estimated $137 billion cut to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas over the next decade.
Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said she hopes her "fellow assemblymen continue to put pressure on their leadership" to pass postpartum Medicaid expansion. Felzkowski spoke at a Republican press conference about postpartum Medicaid expansion in April. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) said in a year-end interview with the Wisconsin Examiner that the year has been one of “very steady growth” and top priorities for her in the remaining legislative session include passing legislation to help bring down the cost of health care, advancing medical cannabis legislation and passing additional tax cuts.
Felzkowski pointed to the state budget in which lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers increased funding for roads and transportation costs, cut taxes including for retirees, increased special education funding and dedicated funding to mental health initiatives. She was one of four Senate Republicans to vote against the state budget, a vote she said she took because of her opposition to increasing the state’s hospital assessment without health care reforms.
A slimmed down, 18-member Republican majority in the Senate this session and several GOP senators who took a stand against a compromise budget deal gave Senate Democrats an opening to come to the budget negotiating table, and to win compromises on school funding as well as stop cuts to the University of Wisconsin system.
Felzkowski said the slimmer margins this year have been normal.
“If you look back for the last 30 years, when the Republicans are in control, we are normally at 18-15 margin in the Senate,” Felzkowski said. “When we were up to like 22, that was kind of a gift, so we are a very strong Republican majority right now.”
Felzskowski said working on health care affordability will be her top priority when lawmakers return in January. This includes working on health care price transparency and working to advance her legislation that would make changes to the regulation of pharmacy benefit managers — third-party companies that manage prescription drug benefits between health plans, employers and government programs.
Health care and prescription drugs
Felzkowski’s bill would allow patients to use any licensed pharmacy in the state without facing penalties and require benefit managers to pay pharmacy claims within 30 days.
“Our neighbors to the south in Illinois just passed their version of PBM reform,” Felzkowski said, adding that her bill has passed out of committee and lawmakers are now discussing whether it will receive a full Senate vote.
Felzkowski’s health care price transparency legislation would require hospitals to make publicly available to consumers the standard costs of “shoppable services,” which would be defined as those that can be scheduled in advance such as x-rays, MRIs and knee replacements.
“What is one thing that you buy that you have no idea what it’s going to cost? It’s health care. That’s absolutely ridiculous,” Felzkowski said. “Other states have passed it. They’re starting to see the fruition of it and it does work. There’s a reason we have the fifth highest health care costs. It’s because our Legislature has not done anything to help bring those costs down and it’s time that we actually start doing that.”
Felzkowski, who has been a longtime advocate for legalizing medical cannabis, said the Senate is “closer than ever” to having a vote on the floor on a proposal to do so, but she believes the chances of the Assembly advancing legislation remain “slim.”
Felzskowski said she hopes legislation to extend Medicaid coverage for postpartum women from 60 days after giving birth to one year isn’t dead this session. Wisconsin is one of two states in the U.S. that haven’t accepted the federal extension.
“I hope that my fellow assemblymen continue to put pressure on their leadership… Deep red states, blue states as well as purple states across the nation have postpartum care for 12 months and they’ve done it because it’s the return on investments for taxpayers as well as being the right thing to do,” Felzskowski said. “We see baby thrive, we see mom thrive, and it actually lowers the cost down the road.”
Fate of WisconsinEye
Felzkowski said Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos are having discussions about solutions to the shutdown of WisconsinEye, the nonprofit service that provides video coverage of legislative hearings, floor sessions and Wisconsin state government business. WisconsinEye halted its livestream and pulled down its video archive last week due to a lack of funding.
“Even if we do something temporary to get us through a session… just get through until April and then do a really deep dive on what should be the next step,” Felzkowski said, adding that that includes looking at how other states cover their state government.
“The transparency is important,” she said, adding they want to ensure people still have access to government proceedings and a record is still being kept of it all.
Felzkowski said she hopes Republicans can get one more tax cut done before the end of the legislative session next year.
New tax cuts in the works
A few of the ideas legislators are considering include eliminating taxes on tips and overtime.
“Anytime we can return money to our citizens is a good thing,” Felzkowski said, adding that state Republicans would like to align Wisconsin tax cuts with federal policy. The federal megabill approved in July included a tax deduction on tips and overtime that will be available from 2025 through 2028.
This December, Wisconsin residents are experiencing the highest property tax hikes since 2018, according to a recent Wisconsin Policy Forum report. The report explained that state budget decisions including Evers’ veto that allows school districts an annual $325 per pupil increase for the next 400 years as well as lawmakers’ decision to not provide any increase to state general aid this year have led to the hikes.
Asked whether lawmakers will look to solutions for lowering property taxes, Felzkowski said it would take a new governor.
“We have given [Evers] numerous chances to reverse that 400-year veto and he keeps vetoing the bill, so it’s on the governor’s plate right now,” Felzkowski said. “Until we get a different governor in the East Wing and we can start seriously addressing education and all the things that are wrong with it, I don’t know what to say.”
Felzkowski said that even with the state budget surplus there wasn’t enough state money for the general aid increase.
“There were a lot of mouths to feed on that budget,” Felzkowski said. “With increasing revenues all over, there was not enough money out there to backfill that $325… We would have had to have raised taxes dramatically to do that. The dollars didn’t exist.”
Felzkowski said on education that she hopes Wisconsin will opt into the new federal education tax credit program. The program would provide a dollar-to-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to a qualifying “scholarship granting program” to support taxpayer-financed private-school vouchers. Evers would need to opt the state into the program by Jan. 1, 2027, but so far has said he won’t.
Confident GOP will hold Senate in 2026
Wisconsin Republicans have held control of the state Assembly and Senate since 2010, and next year will test the strength of that majority when the state’s 17 odd-numbered Senate seats will be up for election for the first time under new legislative maps adopted in 2024.
Last year when the maps were in place for the 16 even-numbered seats, Democrats were able to flip four seats. In 2026, Republicans will need to make sure Democrats cannot flip two additional Senate seats to hold control of the body.
Felzkowski expressed confidence that they will do so.
“We will come back with a strong Republican majority. We have better policies, we have better ideas and we run great candidates,” Felzkowski said.
There will be several key, competitive districts in 2026 including Senate District 5, which is currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), Senate District 17, which is currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Senate District 31, currently represented by incumbent Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) who will face a challenge from Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp).
“We’re going to run on the same policies we’ve always run on: lower taxes, strong freedoms, strong economies, strong education and government getting out of your way so that you can live the American dream,” Felzkowski said. “The Democrats are going to run on an anti-Donald Trump policy, more government, more influence in your life. It’s all they’ve ever run for.”
Felzkowski said she didn’t think that 2025 election results in other states were going to be applicable in Wisconsin, though she said the new maps could be challenging for Republican candidates.
“Wisconsin is kind of a unique state. We’re a very purple state,” Felzkowski said. “We knew those candidates in Virginia were going to win, I mean, it’s a blue state so I mean you can’t really base us on what happened in Virginia and New Jersey… We’re going to be running in Democratic-gerrymandered seats, so we’re going to have to work very hard, but we will win.”
Wisconsin also has an open race for governor on the ballot next year. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is considered the frontrunner in the GOP primary, and Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann, are the current Republican hopefuls.
Felzkowski said she probably won’t endorse in the Republican primary for governor, but she is looking for a candidate who is a “conservative reformer who’s willing to take on the tough issues from health care, education, and corrections, lowering taxes” as well as someone who will do “a deep dive into our agencies,” adding that she hopes they’ll work to root out “waste, fraud and abuse.”
The Democratic field of candidates is much larger including Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), Milwaukee County Exec. David Crowley, former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former Department of Administration Secretary Joel Brennan and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded almost $5 billion less in research grants to U.S. institutions in the 2025 fiscal year than the year prior, a 13.6% reduction, according to an Association of American Medical Colleges report released in August.
The NIH committed $30 billion for research from July 2024 through June 2025, down from the $34.7 billion it obligated from July 2023 to June 2024. More than $3.5 billion of that funding difference was specifically in medical research and development while another half-billion was lost in career training for scientists.
Wisconsin’s share dropped by $84.4 million, or about 14%.
Disruptions in NIH research support have caused most states to lose tens and even hundreds of millions of dollars. They have also halted multiple clinical trials and research projects, including studies on post-tuberculosis lung disease and reducing infectious diseases spread by water.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Americans who earn less than $18,000 are estimated to see a slight federal tax cut under President Donald Trump’s big bill, but the net effect of the bill is likely to lead to a loss in household resources.
The average federal tax change from current levels for the bottom 20% of American earners is a reduction of $150 by 2026 and a reduction of $160 by 2030, according to estimates from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In contrast, the average income earner will receive a $2,860 cut while the top 1% of earners will see a $75,410 cut on average.
Lower income earners already pay little in taxes. Reductions in Medicaid and SNAP benefits are likely to affect lower income earners disproportionately, resulting in a projected net decline of 2.9% in their household resources.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
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