Republican lawmakers watch Gov. Tony Evers’ final State of the State address, shaking their heads, making side comments and pulling their phones out during portions of the speech. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Before Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) announced his retirement Thursday, it was obvious something had changed. The longest serving speaker in Wisconsin history, known for keeping Assembly Republicans on a tight leash, slipped out of a caucus meeting late Wednesday night. Capitol reporter Baylor Spears tracked him down at a fundraiser at the Madison Club, where, she reported, Vos told her his caucus was meeting without him. Later that evening, Assembly Republicans announced that Vos had suddenly dropped his yearslong opposition to letting Wisconsin expand postpartum Medicaid coverage for new mothers for one year. Vos’ last-minute change of heart allowed eight Republicans facing competitive reelection races to hold a late-night press conference proclaiming the news that they planned to pass postpartum coverage, along with another measure extending life-saving breast-cancer screenings that Vos was suddenly permitting to come up for a vote. Vos himself didn’t bother to attend. 

With both Vos and Gov. Tony Evers retiring, the two most powerful politicians in the state — and the often dysfunctional dynamic between them — are going away. It’s the end of an era characterized by toxic partisanship, although probably not the last we’ll see of divided government in our 50/50 state. 

Still, as Vos relaxes his grip, Wisconsin Republicans are starting to wrap their heads around the new reality that they no longer hold complete control over what was once, effectively, a one-party state. 

New, fairer voting maps have already eroded gerrymandered GOP supermajorities in the Legislature that previously endured even when Democrats won every statewide race. In the upcoming November elections, the new maps will, for the first time, take full effect.

The creation of more competitive districts has not immediately ushered in an atmosphere of productive bipartisanship in the Capitol. But it did cause enough of a thaw that Wisconsin could finally join the other 48 states that have already expanded postpartum Medicaid. Republicans running in newly competitive districts can campaign on this bit of belated progress. Two cheers for Wisconsin! We’re 49th!

At the Vos-less press conference Wednesday night, Republicans gave emotional testimony about “the women who need this protection.” They thanked the speaker for finally listening to their pleas. Then, instead of reaching across the aisle, they delivered a scorching rebuke to Democrats who had been pushing for months for a vote on both of the women’s health bills they were celebrating. When the bills were not scheduled, Democrats vowed to bring them up as amendments to other bills, holding up action on the floor and threatening to put their GOP colleagues in the embarrassing position of having to vote down their efforts.

“I’m very angry at what happened today — very angry,” Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston) said. “I talked to my Democratic colleagues and told them that I was close, that it was going to get done, but then they throw this crap at us today. It almost blew it up.”

By speaking up, Democrats nearly ruined Republicans’ efforts to gain support within their own caucus, according to Snyder. That analysis caused Democratic Minority Leader Greta Neubauer to roll her eyes. “It seems that the bills are going to the floor after years of Rep. Pat Snyder telling us that these bills were going to be passed and them not being passed, so it does seem like our actions made a difference today,” Neubauer said. 

Partisan habits die hard. For much of the most recent legislative session, Republicans formed a Sorehead Caucus whose sole aims were rehashing grievances about their loss of power and trying in vain to recreate the dominance they enjoyed when they controlled every branch of government. 

Back in 2018, when Evers won the first time, breaking the GOP stranglehold by beating former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, Republicans held a lame duck session to claw back the incoming governor’s powers. Eight years later, as Evers is about to leave office at the end of his second term, they’re still at it. Motivated by spite over Evers’ line-item veto extending their modest, two-year increase in school revenue limits for the next 400 years, they have insisted on starving school districts of state funds, punishing not only Wisconsin schoolchildren but also the property taxpayers who, in the absence of state funding, are forced to pick up the tab. 

In a similarly spiteful vein, Republicans just killed off the popular, bipartisan Knowles Nelson stewardship program, setting up the 36-year-old land conservation effort to die this summer. Over and over in hearings on whether to renew the program or drastically cut it back, Republicans cited a state Supreme Court decision that held they cannot anonymously veto individual conservation projects. GOP legislators said the decision — written by the most conservative justice on the Wisconsin Supreme Court — left them no option but to gut the program just to show who’s boss. 

As Henry Redman reports, a handful of conservation-minded Republicans could have joined forces with Democrats to save the program, but Republican bill authors insisted on negotiating only within their own caucus, ignoring Democratic efforts to make a deal and instead trying to please the program’s far-right enemies by making deeper and deeper cuts before finally giving up and letting the program lapse.

This style of governing — a hangover from the Walker era — might satisfy certain politicians’ hunger for power, but it’s ill-suited to getting anything productive done for the people who live in the state.

Let’s hope Vos’ departure marks the end of the petty partisanship that has blocked progress in Wisconsin for far too long.

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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. 

Brent Ganger, far left, and Luke Ganger, second from left, brothers of Renee Good, watch a forum on Department of Homeland Security use of force organized by congressional Democrats on Feb. 3, 2026. Good was killed by a federal immigration officer Jan. 7. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Renee Good’s family, distraught and in disbelief over her killing, took some comfort in the past few weeks thinking her death might prompt change in the country, her brother Luke Ganger said Tuesday. 

“It has not,” Ganger told congressional Democrats at a forum on the disproportionate use of force by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents. “The deep distress our family feels because of (Renee’s) loss in such a violent and unnecessary way is complicated by feelings of disbelief, distress and desperation for change.”

Brent Ganger, another brother of Good, also appeared at the forum, saying Good “had a way of showing up in the world that made you believe things were going to be okay.”

Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, was fatally shot by a federal agent Jan. 7 in Minneapolis. 

Her death prompted widespread outcry over the immigration enforcement tactics of President Donald Trump’s administration. 

“The completely surreal scenes taking place on the streets of Minneapolis are beyond explanation,” Luke Ganger said. “This is not just a bad day or a rough week or isolated incidents — these encounters with federal agents are changing the community and changing many lives, including ours, forever.” 

Backlash over the administration’s immigration efforts grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti, also a U.S. citizen, in Minneapolis on Jan. 24. 

Administration officials have defended the immigration crackdown, including the aggressive tactics used in Minneapolis and other cities.

“The president is never going to waver in enforcing our nation’s immigration laws and protecting the public safety of the American people in his ardent support of” Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday.

First-hand accounts

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Rep. Robert Garcia of California hosted the forum. More than 20 Democrats in the House and Senate joined them. 

The unofficial forum is one of several events put on by congressional Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers, over the past year to protest a host of actions from the administration. 

Three witnesses across Illinois, Minnesota and California — all U.S. citizens — offered harrowing accounts of their encounters with immigration agents in recent months, detailing the trauma, fear and mental distress as a result. 

Marimar Martinez was shot five times by an immigration agent in Chicago. Aliya Rahman, a Minneapolis resident with autism and a traumatic brain injury, was dragged out of her car by agents while on her way to a doctor’s appointment and said she was later refused medical care in DHS detention. And Martin Daniel Rascon was shot at by agents while traveling in a car with family members. 

“Why do we continue to wait for more public executions when we have already seen the evidence in our TVs and computer screens?” Martinez asked the panel. “We have heard the testimonies, we have watched the pain unfold in real time — how many more lives must be lost before meaningful action is taken?”

The meeting came the same day the House passed, and Trump later signed, a funding package that includes a two-week stopgap measure for DHS, as Congress and the administration try to iron out a solution to Democrats’ demands for additional restraints on immigration enforcement following Pretti’s death. 

Many Democrats in Congress have vowed not to support a Department of Homeland Security funding bill that does not include such restraints. Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Investigations Subcommittee of the Senate committee that oversees the Department of Homeland Security, made that explicit Tuesday.

“Some day we should have a truth and justice commission to investigate the systematic failing,” he said. “But for right now, I can promise that I will not support another dime for the Department of Homeland Security unless there is this fundamental, far-reaching reform and restraint in effect — a rebuilding of the agency.” 

Report blames DHS tactics for fatalities

Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, released a report ahead of the hearing Tuesday on Democrats’ findings regarding the deaths of Good and Pretti.

The report claims that the administration’s “extreme policies, violent tactics, and culture of impunity led to the killings.”

The report also argues that “the available evidence suggests that the Trump Administration is attempting to cover up misconduct” and is also “continuing its cover-up by impeding thorough and impartial investigations into the shootings.” 

“We’re seeing ICE, CBP, other parts of DHS, all across our country, terrorize communities,” Garcia said at the forum, pointing to warrantless searches, arrests and detainments of individuals with no prior criminal history and people being sent to detention centers and released without explanation. 

“Now, American citizens — innocent people — have been brutalized … and to be clear, we’ve seen people dragged from cars, beaten, gassed, attacked with crowd-control weapons, blinded, like back in my home state of California, left with broken ribs, run off the road, beaten, injured, disfigured and shot,” he said.  

Rep. Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., a member of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, speaks outside of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 3, 2026. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Dozens of U.S. House Democrats and leaders of several caucuses rallied on a chilly Tuesday morning outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters in the nation’s capital, demanding the resignation, firing or impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Democrats criticized Noem for the monthslong immigration operation in Minnesota in which federal immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens — 37-year-old Renee Good, a poet and mother of three, on Jan. 7, and 37-year-old Alex Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse, on Jan. 24. 

They blamed Noem for aggressive tactics used by ICE and other federal immigration agents in Customs and Border Protection and criticized the use of warrantless arrests as well as the presence of officers who are masked and unidentifiable. Such practices, as well as the deadly shootings, led to a partial government shutdown as lawmakers negotiate new constraints on immigration enforcement for the Homeland Security funding bill. 

Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly, who represents parts of Chicago where aggressive immigration enforcement occurred late last year, said more than 180 lawmakers have co-sponsored her articles of impeachment against Noem.  

“Kristi Noem brought a reign of terror to cities across the country,” Kelly said. “Everywhere they go, ICE causes death and destruction. She seems to get her kicks and giggles out of tearing families apart.”

Kelly said if Noem does not step down, Democrats will move forward with impeachment proceedings, which will likely only occur if Democrats flip the GOP-controlled House in the November midterm elections. 

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.  Noem is a former Republican member of the House from South Dakota.

Unannounced visits

Democrats also slammed Noem’s attempts to block members of Congress from conducting unannounced oversight visits at detention centers that are permitted under a 2019 appropriations law.

A federal judge earlier this week placed a temporary bar on a second policy from Noem that required a seven-day notice for lawmakers to conduct oversight visits. 

“We’re gonna be able to exercise our oversight responsibilities and duties without any impairment or pushback from ICE or the Secretary (Noem),” said Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Most recent DHS data shows that there are more than 70,000 people in ICE detention custody across the country. It’s nearly double the number of people detained during the last fiscal year of the Biden administration, when nearly 40,000 people were in ICE detention when Biden left office in January 2025.

Other Democratic caucus leaders rallying outside ICE headquarters included the second vice chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Lucy McBath of Georgia; the chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, Grace Meng of New York; the chair of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, Teresa Leger Fernández of New Mexico; and the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Greg Casar of Texas. 

The Progressive Caucus has vowed to oppose any approval of funding for ICE following Pretti’s death.

 

However, even if the Homeland Security bill for fiscal year 2026 is not approved, DHS still has roughly $175 billion in funding for immigration enforcement that was provided from President Donald Trump’s signature tax cuts and spending package signed into law last summer.   

Casar called for an end to Trump’s mass deportation campaign and immigration enforcement across the country.

“We are united as Democrats and united as a country, marching in the cold in Minneapolis, facing tear gas from coast to coast, marching to demand that we impeach Kristi Noem, that we end Donald Trump’s mass deportation machine, and that we focus on the well-being and the constitutional rights of everyday people in the United States,” Casar said.   

Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who represents parts of Minneapolis, said her district is “currently under occupation” from ICE and CBP. She said students are afraid to go to school and immigrants are terrified to go to hospitals “because our hospitals have occupying paramilitary forces.”

Last week, a man rushed at Omar and used a syringe to squirt apple cider vinegar on her during a town hall where she called for ICE to be abolished and addressed concerns about immigration enforcement in Minneapolis. She was unharmed, but the attack followed an increase in threats to members of Congress, and the president has verbally attacked her multiple times.  

Body cameras

Following the shootings in Minneapolis and sharp criticism from Republicans in Congress, Noem on Monday announced that immigration agents across the country would receive body cameras. 

But California Democratic Rep. Norma Torres said body cameras were not sufficient, and she urged legal observers to keep recording and documenting ICE and CBP officers.

“Body cameras are not going to be enough if they continue to hide the evidence,” she said. 

House Democrats were joined by about 200 protesters calling for Noem to resign. 

Don Powell, 67, of Austin, Texas, said he and his wife have been traveling around to anti-ICE protests.

“It’s just the immorality of how they are treating children and adults. Nobody deserves to be treated that way for the crime, in theory, that they committed of crossing a border,” Powell said.

He also expressed objection to the Trump administration’s policy of deporting immigrants to “some foreign country they’ve never been to.” 

Those removals of an immigrant from the U.S. to another place that is not their home country are known as third-country removals. The Trump administration is currently being sued over the practice by immigrant and civil rights groups. 

Jeanne Ferris, 71, of Bethesda, Maryland, said she’s been to 16 anti-ICE rallies this year and attended 119 anti-Trump rallies in 2025.

“I’m opposed to the felon-in-chief forming his own private army and letting them loose on the American public and everybody else that happens to be there,” Ferris said.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., answers reporters’ questions after holding a press conference on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on the government funding package that will end the ongoing partial government shutdown once it becomes law. 

The Senate voted Friday evening to approve the legislation after President Donald Trump and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., brokered a deal to remove the full-year appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security and replace it with a two-week stopgap. But the partial shutdown began early Saturday morning because the House had not yet acted on the same measure.

The additional time is supposed to give Republicans and Democrats more leeway to broker a deal on constraints to immigration enforcement after federal officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota within the last month. 

Trump wrote in a social media post that lawmakers in the House need to accept the package cannot change further. 

“I am working hard with Speaker Johnson to get the current funding deal, which passed in the Senate last week, through the House and to my desk, where I will sign it into Law, IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote. “We need to get the Government open, and I hope all Republicans and Democrats will join me in supporting this Bill, and send it to my desk WITHOUT DELAY. There can be NO CHANGES at this time. We will work together in good faith to address the issues that have been raised, but we cannot have another long, pointless, and destructive Shutdown that will hurt our Country so badly — One that will not benefit Republicans or Democrats. I hope everyone will vote, YES!”

House Speaker Mike Johnson said during a Sunday interview on the Fox News show “Fox and Friends” that he was confident lawmakers would approve the funding package Tuesday. 

“I don’t understand why anybody would have a problem with this, though. Remember, these are the bills that have already been passed, we’re going to do it again,” the Louisiana Republican said. 

The House voted in January to approve two separate bundles of appropriations bills and to pass the full-year Homeland Security bill before sending all six government funding bills to the Senate as one package. 

The other six annual government spending bills have already become law. 

Johnson added during the interview that negotiations between the president and Senate Democrats were an important step. 

“I think there’s some healthy conversations in good faith that’ll be had over the next couple of days, and I look forward to that,” he said. 

Some of those policy negotiations that Senate Democrats are unified on include the banning of unidentified and masked federal immigration agents, requiring the use of body cameras and the end of roving patrols, among other things. 

But House Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee on Sunday issued a letter, urging their caucus to reject funding for DHS.

“Democrats must act now to demand real changes that protect our communities before Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) receive another dollar in funding,” they wrote. “This is what our constituents elected us to do – to hold ICE and this administration accountable when they fail to adhere to the Constitution or follow the law.”

In the letter, House Democrats are pushing for the Trump administration to end the months-long immigration operation in Minneapolis and requiring immigration agents to get judicial warrants, among other things.

A masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent knocks on a car window in Minnesota on Jan. 12, 2026. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Wednesday detailed the “common sense” changes they want to implement for federal immigration enforcement, saying reforms must be added to a funding package that needs to become law before the weekend to avoid a partial government shutdown. 

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after a closed-door lunch that lawmakers in the conference are united on several policy restrictions.

They include:

• The end of roving patrols;
• Tightening the rules governing the use of warrants;
• Requiring Immigration and Customs Enforcement to coordinate with state and local law enforcement;
• Implementing a uniform code of conduct that holds federal law enforcement to the same set of standards that apply to state and local agencies;
• Barring the wearing of masks;
• Requiring the use of body cameras;
• Mandating immigration agents carry proper identification. 

“These are common-sense reforms, ones that Americans know and expect from law enforcement,” Schumer said. “If Republicans refuse to support them, they are choosing chaos over order, plain and simple. They are choosing to protect ICE from accountability over American lives.”

Schumer said Democrats want to negotiate with Republicans, but called on Senate GOP leaders to separate out the funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security from a package that includes five other full-year appropriations bills. 

The bills must become law before a Friday midnight deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown. 

Schumer said he expects senators could “very quickly negotiate a bipartisan proposal” on restrictions to federal immigration activities.

Thune, White House weigh in

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said shortly before Schumer spoke that he isn’t ruling out any options for funding the government.

“These are all hypotheticals at this point, and I will reserve optionality to consider that,” Thune said. “But I think the best path forward, as I’ve said, is to keep the package intact. And if there are things that the Democrats want that the administration can agree with them about, then let’s do that.”

Thune expressed concern that any changes to the six-bill government spending package, which includes funding for the Department of Defense, would require it to go back to the House for final approval before it could become law. 

The House is out this week and isn’t scheduled to return to Capitol Hill until 

Monday, possibly causing a brief funding lapse if Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., doesn’t call that chamber back early. 

A White House official said in a statement to States Newsroom the administration wants to avoid a shutdown and is committed to a “productive dialogue with the Congress.”

“A demand for agreement on legislative reforms as a condition of funding the Department of Homeland Security with a government funding deadline just 48 hours away is a demand for a partial government shutdown,” according to a White House official. “This bipartisan appropriations package, which the Democrats agreed to and have now walked away from, has been under negotiation for more than a month. The White House urges congressional Democrats not to subject the country to another debilitating government shutdown.”

Schumer said during his press conference the White House “has had no specific, good, concrete ideas.”

Alex Pretti killing

Congress has approved half of a dozen full-year government funding bills, but hasn’t yet cleared the remaining measures, which make up a huge swath of government spending. 

A partial government shutdown would affect the Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury. The Executive Office of the President, Supreme Court and judicial branch would also go without funding. 

Democrats’ insistence for additional guardrails on how federal immigration officers operate follows the death of 37-year-old Alex Pretti, the second person in Minneapolis shot and killed by federal immigration agents.

ICE would still be able to operate during a shutdown, due to an influx of funding from the massive tax and spending cuts package Republicans passed and President Donald Trump signed into law last summer.

The “One Big Beautiful Act” provided the Department of Homeland Security with $170 billion for immigration enforcement spread across four years, with $75 billion of that going directly to ICE. 

The Homeland Security appropriations bill at the center of the current dispute in Congress keeps ICE flat funded at $10 billion for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1 and will end on Sept. 30.

In the wake of the Jan. 7 shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross, Democrats and Republicans agreed to some changes for the department that are provided for in the bill. That includes $20 million for body cameras for ICE and other federal immigration officers, $20 million for independent oversight of detention facilities and a $1 billion cut to Customs and Border Protection funding, which totals $18.3 billion.  

Border Patrol agents’ shooting of Pretti on Jan. 24 spurred Democrats to call for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign and demand additional reforms at DHS. 

No masks, body cameras required

Maine independent Sen. Angus King said Wednesday while the funding bill up for debate allocates money for optional body cameras, he wants to require immigration agents to wear them and to identify themselves. 

“I think one of the things that should be in it is no masks,” King said. “There’s not a law enforcement agency in the United States that wears masks. I’ve never encountered that before in my life.”

King added he wants to see increased “accountability” for federal immigration officers, including “independent investigations of injuries to either detainees or private citizens.”

The top Democrat on the panel that deals with Homeland Security funding, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, said the proposed changes are a start.

“I’ve got a much longer list of reforms that I would like, but we’re operating in a world of possibility, and I think that these reforms are things that we could get done in the next couple days, or the next week,” he said. 

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said she’s okay splitting off the Homeland Security spending bill from the rest of the package. 

Murkowski also said she believes Trump should replace Noem.

“Ultimately it’s his call as to who he keeps in this position, whether it’s Secretary Noem or someone else. I understand that. And he’ll decide,” she said. “I just think that he deserves better.”

Two ‘losers,’ Trump says

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis also called for Noem’s resignation, and for White House senior advisor Stephen Miller to be removed. Miller is the main architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, and played a pivotal role in the president’s first administration.

On Tuesday during an interview with ABC News, Trump called Tillis and Murkowski “both losers” for calling for Noem’s resignation and criticizing her handling of immigration operations in Minnesota. The president has stood by Noem.

“I’m kind of excited about being called a loser,” Tillis said. “Apparently, that qualifies me for DHS secretary and senior advisor to the president.”

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds didn’t entirely rule out supporting a five-bill funding package if GOP leaders agree to remove the DHS appropriations bill. 

“I won’t get ahead of the president on it … but even if you do that, the House still has to approve that,” Rounds said. “The question is, logistically, can they get back in time to do it by Friday night?”

Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, ranking member on the House Homeland Security Appropriations subcommittee, wrote in a social media post that while the current bill isn’t perfect, it “is better than those alternatives.”

“But the worst thing Congress could do is allow a powerful department to operate with a blank check under a continuing resolution or shut the government down entirely.”

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem at a roundtable discussion with local ranchers and employees from U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Jan. 7, 2026 in Brownsville, Texas. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A growing number of U.S. House Democrats are pushing for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s impeachment after another fatal shooting of an American citizen by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis this month.  

At least 164 members — more than three-fourths of all House Democrats, who total 213 — backed an impeachment resolution against Noem as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the office of Illinois Rep. Robin Kelly, who authored the measure. 

“Kristi Noem should be fired immediately, or we will commence impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives. We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Whip Katherine Clark and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said in a statement Tuesday.

Kelly’s three articles of impeachment against Noem accuse the secretary of obstruction of Congress, violation of public trust and self-dealing. The resolution came after the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good by a federal agent in Minneapolis.  

Democratic calls for Noem’s impeachment grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis Jan. 24. 

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken heat for its immigration enforcement tactics and appeared to dial down its rhetoric following the shooting. 

Republicans control the U.S. House with a narrow 218-member majority.

In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Tuesday, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the department, said, “DHS enforces the laws Congress passes, period,” adding that “if certain members don’t like those laws, changing them is literally their job.” 

“While (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers are facing a staggering 1,300% spike in assaults, too many politicians would rather defend criminals and attack the men and women who are enforcing our laws and did nothing while Joe Biden facilitated an invasion of tens of millions of illegal aliens into our country,” McLaughlin said. “It’s time they focus on protecting the American people, the work this Department is doing every day under Secretary Noem’s leadership.”

Here’s a list of the Democratic co-sponsors, as of Tuesday afternoon, per Kelly’s office: 

Alabama

• Rep. Terri Sewell
• Rep. Shomari Figures

Arizona

• Rep. Yassamin Ansari
• Rep. Adelita Grijalva

California

• Rep. Nanette Barragán
• Rep. Julia Brownley
• Rep. Salud Carbajal
• Rep. Judy Chu
• Rep. Lou Correa
• Rep. Mark DeSaulnier
• Rep. Laura Friedman
• Rep. John Garamendi
• Rep. Jimmy Gomez
• Rep. Jared Huffman
• Rep. Sara Jacobs
• Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove
• Rep. Doris Matsui
• Rep. Dave Min
• Rep. Kevin Mullin
• Rep. Luz Rivas
• Rep. Linda Sánchez
• Rep. Brad Sherman
• Rep. Lateefah Simon
• Rep. Eric Swalwell
• Rep. Mark Takano
• Rep. Mike Thompson
• Rep. Norma Torres
• Rep. Juan Vargas
• Rep. Maxine Waters
• Rep. Sam Liccardo
• Rep. Scott Peters
• Rep. Raul Ruiz
• Rep. Robert Garcia
• Rep. Mike Levin
• Rep. Gil Cisneros
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi

Colorado

• Rep. Diana DeGette
• Rep. Brittany Pettersen
• Rep. Joe Neguse
• Rep. Jason Crow

Connecticut

• Rep. John Larson
• Rep. Joe Courtney
• Rep. Jahana Hayes
• Rep. Rosa DeLauro

Delaware

• Rep. Sarah McBride

District of Columbia 

• Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton* 

Florida

• Rep. Lois Frankel
• Rep. Maxwell Frost
• Rep. Darren Soto
• Rep. Kathy Castor
• Rep. Frederica Wilson
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Georgia

• Rep. Nikema Williams
• Rep. Hank Johnson

Hawaii

• Rep. Jill Tokuda

Illinois

• Rep. Nikki Budzinski
• Rep. Sean Casten
• Rep. Danny Davis
• Rep. Chuy García
• Rep. Jonathan Jackson
• Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi
• Rep. Mike Quigley
• Rep. Jan Schakowsky
• Rep. Eric Sorensen
• Rep. Bill Foster

Indiana

• Rep. André Carson
• Rep. Frank Mrvan

Kentucky

• Rep. Morgan McGarvey

Louisiana 

• Rep. Troy Carter

Maine

• Rep. Chellie Pingree

Maryland

• Rep. Sarah Elfreth
• Rep. April McClain Delaney
• Rep. Kweisi Mfume
• Rep. Johnny Olszewski
• Rep. Steny Hoyer

Massachusetts

• Rep. Bill Keating
• Rep. Stephen Lynch
• Rep. Jim McGovern
• Rep. Seth Moulton
• Rep. Lori Trahan
• Rep. Jake Auchincloss
• Rep. Ayanna Pressley
• Rep. Richard Neal

Michigan

• Rep. Haley Stevens
• Rep. Shri Thanedar
• Rep. Rashida Tlaib
• Rep. Debbie Dingell

Minnesota

• Rep. Angie Craig
• Rep. Betty McCollum
• Rep. Kelly Morrison
• Rep. Ilhan Omar

Mississippi

• Rep. Bennie Thompson

Missouri

• Rep. Wesley Bell

Nevada

• Rep. Dina Titus
• Rep. Steven Horsford
• Rep. Susie Lee

New Hampshire 

• Rep. Chris Pappas

New Jersey

• Rep. LaMonica McIver
• Rep. Rob Menendez
• Rep. Donald Norcross
• Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman

New Mexico

• Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández
• Rep. Melanie Stansbury
• Rep. Gabe Vasquez

New York

• Rep. Yvette Clarke
• Rep. Adriano Espaillat
• Rep. Dan Goldman
• Rep. Tim Kennedy
• Rep. Jerry Nadler
• Rep. Paul Tonko
• Rep. Ritchie Torres
• Rep. Nydia Velázquez
• Rep. Laura Gillen
• Rep. Gregory Meeks
• Rep. Grace Meng
• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
• Rep. George Latimer
• Rep. Pat Ryan
• Rep. John Mannion

North Carolina

• Rep. Alma Adams
• Rep. Valerie Foushee
• Rep. Deborah Ross

Ohio

• Rep. Joyce Beatty
• Rep. Shontel Brown
• Rep. Greg Landsman

Oregon

• Rep. Suzanne Bonamici
• Rep. Maxine Dexter
• Rep. Val Hoyle
• Rep. Andrea Salinas
• Rep. Janelle Bynum

Pennsylvania

• Rep. Brendan Boyle
• Rep. Madeleine Dean
• Rep. Chris Deluzio
• Rep. Dwight Evans
• Rep. Summer Lee
• Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon
• Rep. Chrissy Houlahan

Rhode Island

• Rep. Gabe Amo

Tennessee

• Rep. Steve Cohen

Texas

• Rep. Greg Casar
• Rep. Joaquin Castro
• Rep. Jasmine Crockett
• Rep. Lloyd Doggett
• Rep. Veronica Escobar
• Rep. Sylvia Garcia
• Rep. Al Green
• Rep. Julie Johnson
• Rep. Lizzie Fletcher
• Rep. Vicente Gonzalez

Vermont

• Rep. Becca Balint

Virginia

• Rep. Suhas Subramanyam
• Rep. James Walkinshaw
• Rep. Bobby Scott
• Rep. Don Beyer
• Rep. Eugene Vindman
• Rep. Jennifer McClellan

Washington

• Rep. Pramila Jayapal
• Rep. Emily Randall
• Rep. Adam Smith
• Rep. Marilyn Strickland
• Rep. Suzan DelBene

Wisconsin

• Rep. Gwen Moore
• Rep. Mark Pocan

*Norton is the non-voting delegate who represents Washington, D.C., in Congress. 

Pictures of Alex Pretti sit in front of his home on Jan. 26, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Pretti, an ICU nurse at a VA medical center, died Jan. 25, after being shot multiple times during a brief altercation with Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Monday urged Senate Democrats to advance the government funding package that must become law before the weekend to avoid a partial shutdown, rejecting their proposal to remove the Homeland Security funding bill.

Democrats in the upper chamber say they are ready to help pass five of the six bills, but insist the Homeland Security spending measure must be stripped and renegotiated to include more constraints on federal immigration enforcement after officers killed a second American citizen in Minnesota this weekend. 

“We absolutely do not want to see that funding lapse and we want the Senate to move forward with passing the bipartisan appropriations package that was negotiated on a bipartisan basis,” Leavitt said. 

Negotiators in Congress have reached bipartisan consensus on each of the dozen full-year government spending bills during the last few months, though the final bills still need to clear the Senate and become law.

Funding for hundreds of programs in those measures lapses Friday at midnight, when the stopgap spending law Congress approved at the end of the last shutdown expires.  

A partial shutdown would affect the Departments of Defense, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Labor, State, Transportation and Treasury. The Executive Office of the President, Supreme Court and judicial branch would also go without funding if a solution cannot be reached in time. 

Leavitt said during the briefing that “policy discussions on immigration in Minnesota are happening” and pointed to the phone call that President Donald Trump and Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz had earlier in the day. 

“But that should not be at the expense of government funding for the American people, which would include FEMA funding,” Leavitt said. “And we are in the midst of the storm that took place over the weekend and many Americans are still being impacted by that.”

The Homeland Security appropriations bill funds numerous programs in addition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. The Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency, National Flood Insurance Fund, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration are among the other agencies that rely on the bill for budget authority. 

Schumer demands removal of DHS bill 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a statement that Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., should remove the Homeland Security funding bill from the larger package before the deadline to avoid a lapse in funding. 

“The responsibility to prevent a partial government shutdown is on Leader Thune and Senate Republicans,” he wrote. “If Leader Thune puts those five bills on the floor this week, we can pass them right away. If not, Republicans will again be responsible for another government shutdown.”

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, in a brief floor speech urged lawmakers from both political parties to vote to advance the full funding package, calling the possibility of another shutdown “harmful, unnecessary and disastrous.”

“I hope we can come together in a constructive way to get this done and to ensure that we do not lurch into a dangerous and detrimental government shutdown,” she said. 

Collins did acknowledge the killing of Alex Pretti over the weekend, saying his “tragic death” had “refocused attention on the Homeland Security bill and I recognize that and share the concerns.” 

“I do want to point out to my colleagues that there are many safeguards that have been put in this bill that I would encourage them to review,” Collins added without going into detail. “And that the vast majority of the funding in this bill, more than 80%, is for non-immigration and non-border security functions.” 

A Senate Republican aide, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly, said GOP leaders are “determined to not have another government shutdown.” 

“We will move forward as planned and hope Democrats can find a path forward to join us,” the aide added. 

A Senate Democratic leadership aide said that “Republicans and the White House have reached out but have not yet raised any realistic solutions.”

‘Government shutdowns do not help anyone’

Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Katie Britt, R-Ala., wrote in a social media post that the array of programs in that bill “are critical to keeping Americans safe and must be funded.”

“We know from recent history that government shutdowns do not help anyone and are not in the best interest of the American people,” Britt wrote, referring to the shutdown of historic length that ended Nov. 12. “As we approach a government funding deadline, I remain committed to finding a pathway forward.”

Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union with Jake Tapper & Dana Bash” that he couldn’t “vote to fund this lawless Department of Homeland Security.” 

“And remember, it’s not just in Minnesota. They’re violating the law all over the country,” Murphy said. “I spent last week in Texas where they are locking up 2-year-old and 3-year-old kids who are here in the United States legally, just for the purpose of traumatizing them.”

Fetterman, Shaheen part ways

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman appeared to be the only member of his party in that chamber to support the entire package, writing in a statement he “will never vote to shut our government down, especially our Defense Department.”

“I reject the calls to defund or abolish ICE. I strongly disagree with many strategies and practices ICE deployed in Minneapolis, and believe that must change,” Fetterman wrote. “I want a conversation on the DHS appropriations bill and support stripping it from the minibus. It is unlikely that will happen and our country will suffer another shutdown.”

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen backed the strategy of pulling out the Homeland Security spending bill and allowing the other five government funding bills to become law before the shutdown deadline.

“The Senate then needs to have a real bipartisan discussion about what additional reforms we need to put in place to prevent tragedies like Minneapolis from happening across the country,” Shaheen wrote in a social media post. “I will vote against DHS’s funding until additional reforms are in place.”

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. 

A judge temporarily blocked the administration from freezing the funds earlier this month. A separate judge extended that order Friday. 

“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.” 

Federal agents block in and stop a woman to ask her for another person’s whereabouts Monday, Jan. 19, 2026 in south Minneapolis. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

WASHINGTON — The House Thursday passed four appropriations bills to fund the government and avert a partial shutdown, but Democrats largely objected to spending on the Department of Homeland Security amid aggressive immigration enforcement in communities across the country. 

Democrats have pushed for tougher oversight of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. In addition, members of the progressive wing of the caucus vowed to not approve any funding for DHS after federal immigration agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. 

The 37-year-old mother’s death led to massive community protests and  thousands of ICE agents have aggressively descended into Minnesota.

“(Homeland Security Secretary) Kristi Noem and ICE are out of control,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement. “Taxpayer dollars are being misused to brutalize U.S. citizens, including the tragic killing of Renee Nicole Good. This extremism must end.” 

The four bills — Defense; Homeland Security; Labor, Health and Human Services and Education; and Transportation, Housing and Urban Development — are the last remaining appropriations bills needed to avoid a partial government shutdown by Jan. 30. 

The Homeland Security funding bill passed 220-207. The remaining bills passed 341-88.

Democrats who joined Republicans in voting for the Homeland Security bill included Reps. Jared Golden of Maine, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state, Tom Suozzi of New York, Don Davis of North Carolina, Laura Gillen of New York and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas.

Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky voted against the DHS funding bill.

Separately, GOP Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the Rules Committee, added a provision to repeal a law that allows members of the U.S. Senate to sue for up to half a million dollars if their phone records were obtained by special counsel Jack Smith during his investigation into President Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election. In a rare move, the provision passed unanimously. 

Smith was also on Capitol Hill Thursday to testify about his investigation before lawmakers on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. 

The Senate will take up the appropriations bills when senators return from recess next week.

What does the Homeland Security bill include?

The Homeland Security bill provides $64.4 billion in funding for fiscal year 2026. It cuts funding for Customs and Border Protection by $1.3 billion, and maintains flat funding for ICE at $10 billion.

The bill attempts to put guardrails around immigration enforcement by allocating $20 million for body cameras for ICE and CBP officers. 

It also requires DHS to provide monthly updates on how the agency is spending the $190 billion it received from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” the president’s signature tax and spending cuts package signed into law last summer.  

The bill also restricts ICE to spending only $3.8 billion of its fiscal budget on detention. However, the agency will still be able to pull $75 billion from OBBBA, including for detention.

Most Dems say they can’t back any ICE funding

During Thursday’s debate of the bill, Republicans supported the Homeland Security bill, and argued that it contains other agencies beside immigration enforcement. 

But a majority of Democrats said they could not vote to approve the agency’s funding because of ICE’s actions.

“I think we should look at the bill in its totality,” GOP Appropriations Chair Tom Cole of Oklahoma said. “Encouraging people to believe we have massive bad actors in a particular agency… comparing law enforcement officers to the Gestapo or Nazis, that’s not true. The right thing to do is to fund the people who protect America.”

Foxx criticized Democrats for their concerns over ICE enforcement tactics. On the House floor, she defended the agency, arguing that “ICE agents are arresting some of the worst criminals imaginable.”

“The issue is that ICE is terrorizing communities and attacking people, including U.S. citizens,” countered the top Democrat on the Rules Committee, Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. “This is an out-of-control agency at war with communities across the country and they don’t give a damn that you are a U.S. citizen.”

The top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said he could not support voting for the bill because the Trump administration has weaponized the agency and “DHS has strayed from its core mission.”

“Republicans in control of Congress, however, are conducting zero oversight and do nothing but send blank check after blank check to DHS,” he said in a statement. “I have consistently supported the DHS workforce over the past two decades and continue to do so, but I cannot – in good conscience – vote to send another dime to CBP and ICE as they terrorize our communities and sully the constitution.”

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said she will vote against the bill, even though she is proud of several provisions, such as the increase to Federal Emergency Management Agency funding and a pay raise for air traffic controllers. 

But, she said, “It is impossible to ignore the impact ICE has had.”

“ICE is an agency that has shown itself to be lawless,” she said.

Republicans tout body camera provision

GOP Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, the chair of the panel that deals with funding for Homeland Security, defended the funding bill, and noted that it provides immigration officers with body cameras. He said funds are also provided in the measure for the Coast Guard and agencies dealing with cybersecurity. 

Cuellar of Texas, the top Democrat on that same panel, acknowledged that “this bill is not perfect.” 

“It’s better than the alternative, leaving the department with a blank check,” he said. “This bill flat funds ICE but at the same time, we strengthen oversight of ICE.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Betty McCollum said the ICE enforcement in Minnesota and across the country is one of the “worst cases of civil rights violations by the federal government in recent history.”   

“Minnesotans are being racially profiled on a mass scale, assaulted on our streets, kidnapped from our communities,” she said. 

Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey speaks at a press conference addressing reports that the Trump administration is sending around 100 federal immigration agents to Minnesota, specifically targeting the Somali community Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

Days after news leaked of a criminal investigation of Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey over their handling of immigration enforcement in Minnesota, the U.S. Department of Justice has delivered subpoenas to the offices of Walz and Frey, as well as St. Paul Mayor Kaohly Her, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty.

The New York Times first reported the delivery of the subpoenas, and other national outlets also confirmed that reporting.

The subpoenas are an extraordinary escalation of the ongoing conflict between the Trump administration and Minnesota, where heavily-armed, masked federal agents now outnumber all the metro police departments combined, frequently using tactics a federal judge has called unconstitutional.

When the investigation became public last week, Walz replied in a statement: “Two days ago it was Elissa Slotkin. Last week it was Jerome Powell. Before that, Mark Kelly,” he said, referring to the U.S. senators who made a video telling U.S. servicemembers that they can and must refuse illegal orders, as well as the chairman of the Federal Reserve, who has refused to lower interest rates as quickly as Trump desires. “Weaponizing the justice system and threatening political opponents is a dangerous, authoritarian tactic,” Walz said.

Ellison, who’s sued the Trump administration more than 30 times in the past year, said the investigation is being used to distract: “Instead of seriously investigating the killing of Renee Good, Trump is weaponizing the justice system against any leader who dares stand up to him,” referring to the Minneapolis woman shot by federal officer Jonathan Ross earlier this month. “Donald Trump is coming after the people of Minnesota and I’m standing in his way. I will not be intimidated and I will not stop working to protect Minnesotans from Trump’s campaign of retaliation and revenge,” Ellison said.

Frey called the investigation “an obvious attempt to intimidate me for standing up for Minneapolis, our local law enforcement and our residents against the chaos and danger this administration has brought to our streets.”

He added: “I will not be intimidated.”

Her, whose tenure as St. Paul mayor began earlier this month, said in a statement that Trump “promised retribution, and consistent with that promise, we received a subpoena today from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. I am unfazed by these tactics, and I stand firm in my commitment to protect our residents, neighbors and community.”

The Washington Post reported that “the subpoenas suggest that the Justice Department is examining whether Walz’s and Frey’s public statements disparaging the surge of officers and federal actions have amounted to criminal interference in law enforcement work.”

Walz, who announced earlier this month he won’t seek a third term, also used his statement last week to criticize the federal government for not properly investigating the killing of Renee Good by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross. “The only person not being investigated for the shooting of Renee Good is the federal agent who shot her,” he said.

Six prosecutors in the Minnesota Office of U.S. Attorney quit last week, The New York Times reported, because they objected to their bosses’ push to investigate the widow of Good and their ties to anti-ICE groups.

The ICE surge, which has put as many as 3,000 federal agents in the state — or nearly five times the number of sworn officers with the Minneapolis Police Department — is just the latest round of an ongoing conflict between Minnesota and the federal government. Fraud in Minnesota’s social programs — often funded in whole or part by the federal government — has caught the attention of right-wing media and activists, and the Trump administration has followed with a wide array of investigations of Minnesota programs across a range of agencies.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is auditing Hennepin Healthcare — Minnesota’s largest safety net hospital — for compliance with immigrant employment eligibility laws.

The Trump administration has frozen child care payments and halted small business grants. The administration also says it’s investigating possible housing assistance fraud and looking into Minnesota’s unemployment insurance program. The federal government has also attempted to withhold funds to Minnesota for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, but a federal court issued a preliminary injunction.

Earlier this week, Trump said he would cut all federal funding to Minnesota and other states that have sanctuary cities beginning Feb. 1, but it’s unclear what that means and few details have been released.

An aerial view of residential housing under construction at a planned community in Fontana, California, on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats began detailing their affordability agenda Thursday ahead of the November midterm elections, starting with a focus on housing. 

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during an event at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, that if Democrats regain control of the House and Senate they would pass legislation to expand rental assistance, reduce barriers to home ownership, build more housing and address predatory practices. 

Schumer listed several statistics he finds concerning, including that the median price of a home has gone up by 55% since the coronavirus pandemic, that rent has risen by one-third and that the average age for a first-time home buyer is 40. 

“That’s a record high,” he said. “That’s a devastating statistic that should shake up everyone in a position of power at the federal, state or local levels.”

Schumer said the outline for housing is just the first of several cost-of-living policy proposals Democrats will detail this year as they seek to sway voters in key districts and states to vote for their candidates over Republicans.

Democrats, he said, will also focus on how to curb the rising cost of groceries, electricity, child care and health care as part of the midterms messaging. 

On housing, Schumer said Democrats will focus on legislation that would 

• incentivize construction companies to build more housing to address shortages throughout the country;
• expand rental assistance, including Section 8 vouchers for low-income families;
• reduce barriers to home ownership;
• expand the low-income housing tax credit;
• allow the Department of Housing and Urban Development to use the Defense Production Act to purchase “housing materials in short supply”;
• create an agency focused on advanced research into housing issues, similar to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; and
• block “predatory companies” from being “allowed to gobble up entire neighborhoods so easily and turn them into profit machines.”

Democratic bills would provide down payment assistance, lower the cost of mortgage insurance, expand access to portable mortgages and “reform homeowners insurance which is now at a crisis level and so important for people who can’t afford that down payment,” Schumer said.  

Democrats have relatively good odds of winning back control of the House during the November midterm elections, especially since the president’s party tends to lose that chamber two years after taking power. 

Campaigns to regain control of the Senate will be much more difficult for Democrats, who face challenges keeping seats in Georgia and Michigan, while trying to flip Republican seats in Alaska, Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. 

Even if voters were to give Democrats control of Congress, leaders in the party would still need some Republican buy-in to move legislation past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster and need President Donald Trump to sign legislation into law, unless they had the two-thirds needed in each chamber to override a veto. 

A ‘family conversation’

Hawaii Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz said during a panel discussion with Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth that was moderated by CAP President and CEO Neera Tanden that he’s been “radicalized on housing” and pressed for members of the party to talk realistically about issues with supply and affordability. 

“And the reason is that our shortage nationwide, but especially in Hawaii, is so acute that people can’t make the math work anymore,” Schatz said. “In Hawaii, people are paying more than 50%, all-in, of their income for housing, either rental housing or paying a mortgage. And what I have come to realize is that we are the problem.”

Schatz argued that the government “is the primary impediment to alleviating the shortage” and said that realization has led him to have some “very difficult conversations.” 

In Hawaii, he said, there are environmental and cultural protections intended to safeguard “special places” but that have ended up applied more broadly, impeding housing development. 

“They were not originally conceived to prevent a walk-up apartment building on the corner of Eisenberg and King to house Native Hawaiian families,” Schatz said. “And yet those same laws are being weaponized against people in Hawaii even being able to live in the state of Hawaii.”

Schatz said Democrats must be honest with voters about what their housing policies would mean for communities throughout the country, contending the party needs to “solve the politics” around expanded housing before it can tackle the policy debate. 

“I actually think we have to have this family conversation around the politics of housing and realize that some of our base voters in the suburbs, who are otherwise good all the way down the line on all the progressive issues, also want to prevent a nurse or a firefighter or the disabled or the elderly or the student from living anywhere near them,” Schatz said. “And we have to have that conversation in the progressive coalition.”

Rethinking inspections, other processes

Duckworth said some solutions to housing could come through rethinking the processes in place now, similar to how the Department of Veterans Affairs changed its approach to homeless veterans. 

“VA used to say, ‘You have to get clean and sober, and then we’ll give you a voucher to get into an apartment.’ And so it made no sense, right?” Duckworth said. 

“So we had to change the thinking to what the homelessness community had been working on, which is reduction of harm — get them into the housing and then work on getting them clean and sober,” she continued. “And by changing that thought, we were able to immediately start pulling veterans off the streets, put them into housing units where they immediately were also getting counseling, getting treatment.”

Duckworth compared the sometimes slow process of housing inspections that can stop construction with the way the government approaches vehicle safety as one possible way to get things moving faster. 

“With automobiles, we say, ‘This car that you’re manufacturing must be able to withstand a crash at 35 miles an hour into a brick wall.’ And then when they meet and get that car approved, when we go buy that car, we don’t have to take that car to get it inspected from top to bottom, like we do with homes,” Duckworth said. 

She added: “So why would we not say to homebuilders, especially (prefabricated) homes, if you come to VA and you are willing to get two models of your home, pre-inspected, pre-approved, then when a veteran builds a new home and they say, ‘Hey, I’m going to choose one of these models that already has a VA good housekeeping seal of approval,’ they can shortcut that inspection process.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on May 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats Wednesday introduced three articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, after a deadly shooting of a woman in Minneapolis by a federal immigration officer.

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

The three articles of impeachment were introduced by Illinois Democratic Rep. Robin Kelly. Nearly 70 Democrats have co-signed, but as the minority party in both chambers, any support or movement for the articles will likely only occur if Democrats win the midterm elections and flip the House. 

“She needs to be held accountable for her actions,” Kelly said. “Renee Nicole Good is dead because Secretary Noem allowed her DHS agents to run amok.”

On Jan. 7, 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by federal immigration officer Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis. Federal immigration officers have intensified immigration enforcement, leading to massive pushback from the community there and protests across the country. 

The articles from Kelly accuse Noem of obstructing Congress after lawmakers were denied oversight visits at DHS facilities that hold immigrants; violating public trust through due process violations of U.S. citizens’ and immigrants’ rights and aggressive warrantless arrests in immigration enforcement; and misusing $200 million in taxpayer funds by awarding a contract to a company run by the husband of DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, according to ProPublica.

A dozen members of Congress have sued Noem over those denied visits at ICE facilities to conduct oversight and were granted a stay to that policy by a federal judge. But Noem issued a new policy and last weekend several Minnesota lawmakers were blocked from visits to ICE facilities. 

A federal judge is currently probing to see if the new policy from Noem violates her court order from December. 

Kelly was joined by several Democrats, including Minnesota’s Angie Craig, who represents a swing district. 

“We are being terrorized by Homeland Security and ICE,” Craig said. “This has crossed a line. This rogue agency is violating the rights of American citizens in our communities, and last Wednesday … the escalation by ICE in our communities got Renee Good killed.”

Noem would not be the only Homeland Secretary to be impeached, should the House take that action. 

In 2024, Republicans impeached the Biden administration’s DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on the grounds that he lied to Congress that the southern border was secure and that he violated his duty when he rolled back several Trump-era immigration policies. 

The Senate, then controlled by Democrats, dismissed the articles of impeachment. 

A small crowd of far-right activists marched on the U.S. Capitol Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026 in a nonviolent protest. They followed the path of the march five years ago, when rioters attacked the Capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden's presidential election win. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Five years after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, the struggle to define the event and assign blame carried on in events across the city Tuesday that remained nonviolent, though still disturbing.

A crowd of no more than a few hundred of President Donald Trump’s supporters commemorated the deadly attack with a somewhat subdued march from the Ellipse to the Capitol that was in stark contrast to the riot five years ago.

Inside the Capitol, U.S. House Democrats gathered in a small meeting room, apparently unable to secure larger accommodations for an unofficial hearing that largely rehashed the findings of a House committee that spent 2022 investigating the attack.

Trump, meanwhile, addressed House Republicans three miles west at the Kennedy Center. In an hour-plus address, he blamed then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the violence on Jan. 6, 2021 and recommended the GOP lawmakers pass laws to make election fraud more difficult. Trump’s claim that his 2020 election loss was due to fraud sparked the 2021 attack.

“Our elections are crooked as hell,” he said, without citing evidence.

House Dems blast pardons 

Inside the Capitol, at a morning event that U.S. House Democrats organized and in which Republicans didn’t take part, lawmakers and experts criticized Trump’s pardons of people involved in the 2021 attack, one of his first acts after returning to office last year.

They also decried his continued recasting of the events of the day.

White House officials launched a webpage Tuesday that blamed the attack on Democrats, again including Pelosi, and restated the lie that initiated the attack: The 2020 election that Trump lost was marred by fraud and should not have been certified.

“Democrats masterfully reversed reality after January 6,” the page reads. “…In truth, it was the Democrats who staged the real insurrection by certifying a fraud-ridden election, ignoring widespread irregularities, and weaponizing federal agencies to hunt down dissenters.” 

Pelosi at the hearing on Tuesday condemned Trump’s version of the attack. 

“Today, that president who incited that insurrection continues to lie about what happened that day,” the California Democrat said.

Other Democrats and their invited witnesses also described the pardons as signaling that the president accepted — and even encouraged — his supporters to pursue illegal means of keeping him in power. 

Brendan Ballou, a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor who resigned shortly after Trump’s 2025 pardons, told the panel the executive action sent Trump supporters the “clear message” they were above the law.

“The January 6 pardons also fit into a broader narrative of what’s going on with this administration, that if people are sufficiently loyal and willing to support the president, either in words or financially, they will be put beyond the reach of the law,” he added. “It means that quite literally for a certain group of people right now in America, the law does not apply to them.”

Former ‘MAGA granny’ testifies

Homeland Security Committee ranking Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi led the panel discussion, with Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland and several others also sitting in on it.

The first panel of witnesses included Ballou, other experts and Pamela Hemphill, a former Trump supporter from Idaho who traveled to the nation’s capital five years ago to “be part of the mob” in support of the president before becoming an advocate for reckoning with the day’s violence.

An emotional Hemphill, 72 and once known as “MAGA granny,” apologized to U.S. Capitol police officers.

“Once I got away from the MAGA cult and started educating myself about January the 6th, I knew what I did was wrong,” Hemphill told the panel. “I pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime. I received due process and the DOJ was not weaponized against me. 

“Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the 6th,” she added.

She explained her decision to decline Trump’s blanket pardon of offenders convicted of crimes related to the attack, saying it papered over the misdeeds of people involved in the riot. She implored others not to accept revisions of the narrative about what happened in the attack.

Subsequent panels included current and former House members, including two, Republican Adam Kitzinger of Illinois and Democrat Elaine Luria of Virginia, who sat on the committee tasked with investigating the attack.

Flowers for Ashli Babbitt

The crowd of marchers, which included pardoned Jan. 6 attack participants, gathered in the late morning to retrace their path to the U.S. Capitol five years ago.

Organizers billed the march as a memorial event to honor Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by U.S. Capitol Police during the riot in 2021 as she attempted to break into the House Speaker’s lobby.

Far-right activists celebrating the five-year anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol marched in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026, from the Ellipse to the Capitol. Rioters in 2021 attempted to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election win. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

The crowd of roughly a couple hundred walked from the Ellipse, where Trump spoke to rallygoers in 2021, to just outside the Capitol grounds, where police contained the small crowd on the lawn north of the Reflecting Pool. 

Law enforcement officers permitted Babbitt’s mother, Michelle Witthoeft, and a few others to walk closer to the Capitol to lay flowers at roughly 2:44 p.m. Eastern, the time they say Babbitt died.

A group of counterprotesters briefly approached the demonstration, yelling “traitors.” Police quickly formed two lines between the groups, heading off any clashes.

Proud Boys former leader on-site 

Among the crowd was former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Trump commuted Tarrio’s sentence upon taking office for his second term.

While looking on at marchers, Tarrio told States Newsroom he was “just supporting.”

“It’s not my event. I’m just trying to help them with organizing and marching people down the street, I guess. But we’re here for one purpose, and that’s to honor the lives of Ashli Babbitt and those who passed away that day.”

When asked if marchers were also honoring the police officers who died in the days and months after the attack, Tarrio said he mourned “any loss of life” but added “I heard some suicides happened. I don’t know. I haven’t really looked into that. I’ve been in prison.”

U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered injuries during the riot, according to the Capitol Police. He died the following day from natural causes, according to the District of Columbia Office of the Medical Examiner.

Four responding police officers died by suicide in the following days and months.

As the march continued, a group of Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers on bicycles stopped Tarrio and asked him to confirm the march route to avoid any “confusion.”

When counterprotesters began to heckle the Jan. 6 attack supporters, Tarrio waved the marchers forward, “C’mon, c’mon, keep moving.”

Jan. 6 rioter Rasha Abual-Ragheb, 45, of New Jersey, addressed the crowd earlier and thanked “Daddy Trump” for her pardon. Abual-Ragheb, who pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating and picketing in the U.S. Capitol, showed off a tattoo on her arm reading “MAGA 1776.”

Willie Connors, 57, of Bayonne, New Jersey, stood on the edge of the crowd with a yellow “J6” flag tied around his neck. Connors said he didn’t enter the Capitol during the 2021 attack, but said he was in the district that day to protest the 2020 presidential election, which he falsely claimed was “robbed” from Trump.

“Donald Trump, I’ll take the bullet for that man. He’s my president,” Connors said. 

Senators and two current representatives seeking Senate seats in 2026 have been touring the state to highlight affordability and the effects of Republican policy choices, including tariffs and cuts to health care at the federal level. Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, second from left, listens as Christmas Tree farm operator Lance Jensen discusses his business with Hesselbein and Sens. Sarah Keyeski and Melissa Ratcliff, during a visit to Jensen's farm on Dec. 8. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein told the Wisconsin Examiner in a year-end interview that while she may have had a seat at the budget negotiating table this year, the Legislature still hasn’t engaged in as much bipartisan work as she had hoped. 

Democratic lawmakers entered this year with bolstered numbers under new voting maps, but still in the minority. The closely divided partisan breakdown in the Senate — 15 Democrats and 18 Republicans —  led to Republicans scrapping their plans to cut the University of Wisconsin budget and providing additional funding for K-12 schools, in budget negotiations with Democratic Gov. Tony Evers where Hesselbein had a seat at the negotiating table. But the current session still hasn’t matched up to Hesselbein’s “really high hopes at the beginning of the session that we were going to be able to do some really good bipartisan work.” 

Hesselbein noted that at the start of the session, lawmakers introduced three bills she thought were “really strong.”

“Unfortunately, Republicans are refusing to work with us on those issues,” Hesselbein said. “I am hopeful that they will go spend time with their families back home over the holidays, and they will realize that we can still get a lot of great things done for the state of Wisconsin in the spring.” 

One bill would provide school breakfast and lunch to students at no cost, another would make several policy changes aimed at helping bring down the costs of prescription drugs and the final one would expand the homestead tax credit to provide additional relief to low-income homeowners and renters.

Hesselbein said the “Healthy Schools Meals” legislation would help “every single kid, make sure they get a good nutritious lunch at school” and help “save the average family like $1800 a year on grocery costs.” She said the prescription drug legislation would help prevent more people from “choosing to cut their medicine in half” due to costs and the tax credit would help people stay in their homes longer. 

“These were three really common-sense bills. I still really think they are, and all we needed was two Senate Republicans to help us get these bills across the finish line and show that they care about the people of the state of Wisconsin and that they want to do some bipartisan work,” Hesselbein said. “Unfortunately, they weren’t interested in doing that work with us, and they don’t have a plan to help people with the rising costs in the state of Wisconsin.” 

Hesselbein said that passing helpful legislation, including the three bills she mentioned, could mitigate the upheaval of President Donald Trump’s administration.

“There’s so much chaos and confusion happening with the Trump administration that sometimes it’s hard to keep track of it day to day,” she said. “…What we can do as legislators in the state of Wisconsin is pass bills that actually help people.” 

Hesselbein said Senate Democrats continue to have conversations with Republicans in the hopes that they can get more legislation passed. One pressing concern is  the Knowles-Nelson stewardship program which, without legislative action, will sunset early in 2026. 

“We’re very worried about that happening, so our doors are open to any ideas they have,” Hesselbein said of her Republican colleagues, adding that she hopes a bill authored by Sen. Jodi Habush-Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) can move forward.

Hesselbein noted that the stewardship program, which was created in 1989 to fund land conservation in Wisconsin, has bipartisan roots. It is named after former Republican Gov. Warren Knowles and former Democratic Gov. Gaylord Nelson and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“This has never been a partisan issue,” Hesselbein said, noting that the program is popular with people across Wisconsin who love the outdoors, “whether they’re going hiking or they’re fishing, or they’re hunting.”

Hesselbein also said she is hopeful that the bill she coauthored, which would bolster education on menopause and perimenopause, will advance. It received a public hearing in the Senate earlier this year.

Wisconsin Senate is the ‘most flippable’ in 2026

Next year will be a definitive election year in Wisconsin with control of the Senate, Assembly and governor’s office up for grabs.

Hesselbein said she believes that the Wisconsin State Senate is “the most flippable chamber” in the United States — and Democrats are working hard towards that goal. Wisconsin’s 17 odd-numbered Senate districts are up for reelections in 2026. It’s the first time new legislative maps adopted in 2024 that reflect the 50/50 partisan divide in the state will be in effect for those districts.

Hesselbein said Democrats are focused on winning districts that previously went to former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, former President Joe Biden in 2020, Gov. Tony Evers in his two elections and to Mary Burke, who lost to former Gov. Scott Walker in 2014. 

Two seats targeted by Democrats to flip are Senate District 5, which is currently held by Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) and Senate District 17, which is currently held by Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green).

“Fair maps and great candidates matter, and we already have people on the field that are out there knocking on doors listening to voters today on a cold day in Wisconsin… We have people that want to be elected to do the right thing for the people in the state of Wisconsin,” Hesselbein said.

Democratic candidates in Wisconsin and nationwide are hammering a message about affordability. Through the State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, senators and two current representatives seeking Senate seats in 2026 have been touring the state to highlight the effects of Republican policy choices, including tariffs and cuts to health care at the federal level. They also recently launched an ad titled “Aisle 5.”

The ad opens as a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska) and Hesselbein, declare: “Same groceries from the same store. Same people in power, calling the shots and driving the prices up.”  The words “Senate Republicans” pop up on the screen. “My colleagues and I are fighting every single day against tariffs that make beef, eggs, and even cheese more expensive,” Hesselbein says. “But guess what? They don’t care. We can’t keep hoping they’re going to make the right choice because they’ve shown us they won’t.”

Hesselbein vowed in the interview with the Examiner that under Democratic control the Senate will have more floor sessions, be more transparent and “be actually doing the people’s work.”

“When Senate Democrats are fortunate enough to be the majority, we will continue to work with our Republican colleagues and get the best policies to help the people in the state of Wisconsin, especially when it comes to rising costs,” she told the Examiner. 

Senate Democrats’ ability to pursue their agenda will not only rely on winning the majority, but will also depend on who wins the consequential gubernatorial race, though Hesselbein said she is prepared to work with whoever wins. 

“I was able to work with a Republican governor when Scott Walker was there. I was able to pass some bills,” Hesselbein said. “I’m hoping we have a Democratic governor so we can finally start listening to the people of the state of Wisconsin and get things done because we’ve been waiting a long time.” 

Hesselbein said she doesn’t plan to endorse anyone in the Democratic primary for governor. 

Many of the candidates have legislative experience including state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) and state Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) as well as Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Exec. David Crowley, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey. Other Democratic candidates include former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes and former Department of Administration Sec. Joel Brennan.

“I have too many friends,” Hesselbein said of her decision not to make an endorsement. “I have been in caucus with some of them… They are really good people, and when the going got tough, they never ran from an argument or anything, so I’m really looking forward to seeing how that race shapes up.” 

Hesselbein said she is looking forward to seeing each candidate’s platform and a “robust” discussion among them. 

“What are the plans that they have for the state of Wisconsin? How do they see us addressing rising costs and affordability? What is their plan for K-12 education, higher education? For the environment and all the things that we’ve been hearing about for years that people in the state of Wisconsin want us to effectively address,” Hesselbein said.

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Student protesters shout during a “Hands Off Our Schools” rally in front of the U.S. Department of Education’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in April. Students from several colleges and universities gathered to protest President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle the department. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Tuesday blasted ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including plans to shift several of its responsibilities to other Cabinet-level agencies.  

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted a forum on the issue with several Democratic colleagues. The lawmakers, joined by education leaders, advocates and leading labor union voices, said the restructuring would lead to a loss of expertise, create more bureaucracy and weaken support for students and families. 

The administration announced six agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State as part of a larger effort from the administration to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department. 

Trump has sought to axe the agency in his quest to send education “back to the states” and tapped Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fulfill that mission. Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels.

Losing expertise

Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed the transfers as “illegal” because of federal laws assigning specific responsibilities to the Education Department.

“Congress already passed the laws on this,” she said. “Every one of the programs that’s moving out of the Department of Education specifically says we have allocated the money for a program in the Department of Education, not in whatever random other place Secretary McMahon decides to put it.” 

The Massachusetts Democrat said that if the transfers go through, “we’ve got now four federal agencies that have no experience with education suddenly in charge of more than 50 different educational programs, including ones that fund literacy, education for veterans, kids in rural school districts — you name it, it’s moving somewhere else.” 

Even before the announcements of interagency agreements, the Education Department had seen several changes since Trump took office, including layoffs of hundreds of employees that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in July could temporarily proceed.

In a late Tuesday statement to States Newsroom, department spokesperson Madi Biedermann said the transfers were part of a wider effort to initiate a sorely needed overhaul of the federal education bureaucracy.

“The opposition is protecting a system that produces dismal results for our students,” she said. “The Trump Administration demands better than the status quo.”

‘Nothing but chaos’

Under one of the agreements, the Education Department said the Labor Department would take on a “greater role” in administering elementary and secondary education programs currently managed under the Education Department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said “nobody wins, the least of all, students and educators,” when the Labor Department takes on massive education programs, noting the current workforce at Education has the right experience.

“Our staff have decades of experience with the complicated programs we’re talking about today,” Gittleman said. “These moves will cause nothing but chaos and harm for the people they’re intended to help.” 

In general, the agreements “swap a highly efficient system for a chaotic, underfunded one spread across multiple agencies,” Gittleman said.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, also rebuked the administration’s efforts to gut the agency.

“What is happening here is not simply the dismantlement of the Department of Education,” she said. “It is taking away — it is abandoning the federal role in education.” 

Weingarten, who leads one of the largest teachers unions in the country, added that “we should be, as a nation, expanding the federal role in public education, not supplanting states.” 

Rhode Island commissioner condemns Brown shooting

Angélica Infante-Green, Rhode Island’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said the administration’s attempts to gut the agency are “already putting our nation’s education system and our students at a disadvantage.”

Communication from the Department of Education “lacks detail,” she added.

“We get these one or two sentences with edicts that often conflict with state and federal law. What do we do? The chaos has resulted in protracted legal battles across the country, raising serious constitutional questions,” she said. 

At the top of her remarks, Infante-Green also expressed her condolences for the victims, their families and the entire Brown University community after two students were killed and nine others were injured in a shooting on campus over the weekend. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., center, joined by Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., left, and Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., speaks to reporters following a Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on Dec. 9, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Heather Diehl/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate in long-anticipated votes failed to advance legislation Thursday that would have addressed the rising cost of health insurance, leaving lawmakers deadlocked on how to curb a surge in premiums expected next year. 

Senators voted 51-48 on a Republican bill co-sponsored by Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy and Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo that would have provided funding through Health Savings Accounts for some ACA marketplace enrollees during 2026 and 2027. 

They then voted 51-48 on a measure from Democrats that would have extended enhanced tax credits for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act Marketplace for three years. A group of Senate Democrats in November agreed to end a government shutdown of historic length in exchange for a commitment by Republicans to hold a vote on extending the enhanced subsidies.

Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted for the Democrats’ bill. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voted against both bills. 

Neither bill received the 60 votes needed to advance under the Senate’s legislative filibuster rule. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., criticized the ACA marketplace and the subsidies for leading to large increases in the costs of health insurance. 

“Under Democrats’ plan insurance premiums will continue to spiral, American taxpayers will find themselves on the hook for ever-increasing subsidy payments,” Thune said. “And don’t think that all those payments are going to go to vulnerable Americans.”

Thune argued Democrats’ bill was only an extension of the “status quo” of a “failed, flawed, fraud program that is increasing costs at three times the rate of inflation. 

Thune said the Republican bill from Cassidy and Crapo would “help individuals to meet their out-of-pocket costs and for many individuals who don’t use their insurance or who barely use it, it would allow them to save for health care expenses down the road.”

Schumer calls GOP plan ‘mean and cruel’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the three-year extension bill was the only option to avoid a spike in costs for people enrolled in ACA marketplace plans. 

“By my last count, Republicans are now at nine different health care proposals and counting. And none of them give the American people the one thing they most want — a clean, simple extension of these health care tax credits,” Schumer said. “But our bill does extend these credits cleanly and simply and it’s time for Republicans to join us.”

Schumer referred to the Cassidy-Crapo proposals as “stingy” as well as “mean and cruel.”

“Under the Republican plan, the big idea is essentially to hand people about $80 a month and wish them good luck,” Schumer said. “And even to qualify for that check, listen to how bad this is, Americans would be forced onto bare-bones bronze plans with sky-high deductibles; $7,000 or $10,000 for an individual, tens of thousands for a couple.”

After the votes failed, Schumer outlined some of the guardrails Democrats would put in place regarding negotiations with GOP colleagues.

“They want to talk about health care in general and how to improve it — we’re always open to that, but we do not want what they want — favoring the insurance companies, favoring the drug companies, favoring the special interests and turning their back on the American people,” he said. 

Health Savings Accounts in GOP plan

The Cassidy-Crapo bill would have the Department of Health and Human Services deposit money into Health Savings Accounts for people enrolled in bronze or catastrophic health insurance plans purchased on the ACA marketplace in 2026 or 2027, according to a summary of the bill. 

Health Savings Accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts that consumers can use to pay for medical expenses that are not otherwise reimbursed. They are not health insurance products.

ACA marketplace enrollees who select a bronze or catastrophic plan and make up to 700% of the federal poverty level would receive $1,000 annually if they are between the ages of 18 and 49 and $1,500 per year if they are between the ages of 50 and 64. 

That would set a threshold of $109,550 in annual income for one person, or $225,050 for a family of four, according to the 2025 federal poverty guidelines. The numbers are somewhat higher for residents of Alaska and Hawaii.  

The funding could not go toward abortion access or gender transitions, according to the Republican bill summary. 

Members of Congress have introduced several other health care proposals, including two bipartisan bills in the House that would extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits for at least another year with some modifications. 

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been reluctant to bring either bipartisan bill up for a floor vote, though he may not have the option if a discharge petition filed earlier this week garners the 218 signatures needed. 

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick wrote in a statement the legislation represents a “solution that can actually pass—not a political messaging exercise.”

“This bill delivers the urgent help families need now, while giving Congress the runway to keep improving our healthcare system for the long term,” Fitzpatrick wrote. “Responsible governance means securing 80 percent of what families need today, rather than risking 100 percent of nothing tomorrow.”

But Johnson said Wednesday that he will put a package of bills on the House floor next week that he believes “​​will actually reduce premiums for 100% of Americans who are on health insurance.” Details of those bills have not been disclosed.

Thune told reporters that if “somebody is successful in getting a discharge petition and a bill out of the House, obviously we’ll take a look at it. But at the moment, you know, we’re focused on the action here in the Senate, which is the side-by-side vote we’re going to have later today.” 

Alaska’s Murkowski said lawmakers can find a compromise on health care by next week “if we believe it is possible.”

Political costs

The issue of affordability and rising health care costs is likely to be central to the November midterm elections, where Democrats hope to flip the House from red to blue and gain additional seats in the Senate. 

The Democratic National Committee isn’t waiting to begin those campaigns, placing digital ads in the hometown newspapers of several Republicans up for reelection next year, including Maine’s Collins and Ohio’s Jon Husted. 

“Today’s Senate vote to extend the ACA tax credits could be the difference between life and death for many Americans,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a press release. “Over 20 million Americans will see their health care premiums skyrocket next year if Susan Collins, John Cornyn, Jon Husted, and Dan Sullivan do not stand with working families and vote to extend these lifesaving credits.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt blasted Senate Democrats’ proposal during Thursday’s press briefing, calling it a “political show vote” meant to provide cover for Democrats, whom she blamed for creating the problem. 

Trump and Republicans would “unveil creative ideas and solutions to the health care crisis that was created by Democrats,” she said. “Chuck Schumer is not sincerely interested in lowering health care costs for the American people. He’s putting this vote on the floor knowing that it will fail so he can have another talking point that he can throw around without any real plan or action.”

Shauneen Miranda and Jacob Fischler contributed to this report. 

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Sedition – typically words intended to incite insurrection against the government – is not punishable by death.

The federal crime is seditious conspiracy, where two or more people conspire to overthrow the government. 

It is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

President Donald Trump on Nov. 20 said: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

His reference was to Democratic lawmakers who two days earlier reminded members of the military to disobey illegal orders. 

Trump’s post prompted a rebuke from U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., among others.
Milwaukeean Victor Berger, the first Socialist elected to Congress, was convicted in 1918 of espionage, for his opposition to World War I, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The House refused to seat him on grounds of sedition. But he returned to Congress after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction in 1921.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• New York Times: ‘Sedition’: A Complicated History
• Cornell University Legal Information Institute: Sedition
• U.S. Code: 18 USC 2384: Seditious conspiracy
• New York Times: Trump Accuses Democrats of Sedition, ‘Punishable by Death,’ Over Message to the Military
• Wisconsin Historical Society: Victor Berger and Emil Seidel
• University of Wisconsin-Madison History Department: Wisconsin’s 1918 Special Election for Senate and the Trial of Victor Berger
• Newsweek: What US Law Says About Sedition and Troops Defying Illegal Orders

Is sedition punishable by death? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.