Public concern about rising costs is fueling hopes for a blue wave in the November midterm elections, as well as Democratic wins in Wisconsin that could deliver trifecta control of the Legislature, governor’s mansion and state Supreme Court.

But even if the would-be autocrat in the White House does not find a way to disrupt the midterms, the rise of affordability as the dominant public issue is a both blessing and a trap. The intense focus on micro (household) economics neglects a bigger battle Democrats must fight. 

It’s dangerous to make too narrow a response to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian threat. Democracy is menaced on two fronts: first the immediate attack on its institutional bedrocks — fair elections, equal justice, constitutional checks and balances — and second by the underlying cause of the civic emergency: a profound crisis in legitimacy arising from a chronic failure of government to deliver on the most pressing problems affecting peoples’ lives and futures. 

The long-term failures of the U.S. government to promote and protect a decent life for most people have  produced combustible political kindling, exploited by an authoritarian movement and its charismatic leader, to seize power  and ignite the most profound crisis in democracy since the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Thousands of our neighbors in Minnesota and Illinois, thrust into the first front of the struggle, are responding with courage and discipline. They are demonstrating the power of organized people and civil society groups with active members, aided by the elected officials they inspire to action, to hold the line for democracy. Grassroots defenders of democracy must continue to peacefully resist every authoritarian offensive, but if we fail to also address the underlying drivers of the crisis, victory will be fleeting.

Wisconsin’s crucial role

As a state that will determine the outcome of the 2028 presidential election, Wisconsin may be fated to play its most important role on the second front: the challenge of demonstrating that democracy is up to the task of meeting the challenges of 21st century life. To meet this charge we must come to terms with the depth of public discontent that has opened millions to the scapegoating rhetoric of authoritarian demagogues while demoralizing and disengaging still more who have come to believe, through embittering experience, they have no stake in democracy.

The affordability crisis is not transitory, it is a symptom of a long-term decoupling of the general economy, and democratic government itself, from the bread-and-butter worries of working people. The widespread realization that the economy is stacked against most people casts a pall over American politics. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, two-thirds of respondents believe the middle class is beyond the reach of most Americans. 

Until the late 1970s, majorities of voters could believe that a thriving economy would benefit them personally, and that most had a pathway to the middle class. There were glaring inequalities along racial, gender and geographic lines, yet for millions of working class people, including immigrants from around the globe and Black refugees from the Jim Crow South, macro and micro economics were conjoined.

After 50 years of economic rigging orchestrated by the ultra wealthy, the most rapacious corporations, and pliant politicians from both parties, this faith has been dashed. While lacking the suddenness of the 1929 crash, the cumulative effect is like a slow motion slide towards depression for the working and middle classes. In the richest country on Earth a stunning 60% of Americans worry about affording the basics of life, while in Wisconsin 35% of all households, and 60% of Black households, make less than a survival income.

This is no accident. As Harold Meyerson details in The American Prospect, through a half century of deliberate policy choices most of the benefits of growth have been funneled to the privileged few, resulting in a $79 trillion shift in assets to the top. If national income were distributed now as equally as in 1975, each wage earner would make an astounding $28,000 more per year on average. Combined with the deliberate encouragement of massive corporate monopolies with the power to jack up prices, this immiseration is pushing people to  a breaking point, making affording health care, housing, energy, food and education more and more challenging for the less than rich.

Despite its effectiveness in abetting the largest wealth transfer in history, government at all levels has been rendered stunningly inept when it comes to public works, social policy, and almost everything else that benefits the working and middle classes. 

A parallel crisis in the 1930s

In the New Deal economic order, there seemed to be nothing the government could not accomplish, from the work programs of the 1930s, to the economic mobilization against fascism, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the moon mission. Now everything from high speed rail to rural broadband, affordable housing, health care, child care, public education and cheap, renewable energy is tied up in knots.

While much of the blame can be placed on  the deliberate sabotage of government by an unholy alliance of grasping billionaires, big corporations, and right wing ideologues, a growing chorus of social critics also point the finger at a major shift in liberalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent books by Paul Sabin, Marc Dunkelman, Richard Kahenberg, Yoni Appelbaum, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and to significant degrees Bill McKibben and Gary Gerstle, make parts of a compelling case that the reaction against abuses of administrative power provoked liberals to overcorrect by creating so many regulatory and legal hurdles that government struggles to get anything big done that benefits the working and middle classes.

Further tarnishing public trust, this impotence does not apply to oligarchic power. The only force with the political and economic resources to cut through all the landmines and bottlenecks to bold action are the giant corporate monopolies, as we are seeing with the reckless buildout of highly unpopular AI data centers without guardrails to protect the public interest in affordable energy, clean air, and the stability of the climate on which we all depend.

The most useful historical analogy to our perilous situation is what Franklin Roosevelt confronted after Herbert Hoover’s futility in responding to the calamity brought on by that era’s economic royalists. Jonathan Alter and Eric Rauchway show that top opinion leaders of the era such as Walter Lippmann and William Randolph Hearst believed democracy too paralyzed to succeed, and openly advocated for Roosevelt to suspend Congress and assume dictatorial powers. 

Roosevelt was reportedly quite taken with the movie Gabriel Over the White House, a Hearst-funded production about a president seizing dictatorial power and curing the Great Depression. Ultimately, Roosevelt refused to take this path, although he fretted that failure would make him the last president. Democracy’s last near death experience in the 1930s has passed from collective memory only because Roosevelt did not fail. 

Drawing on reforms developed over three decades of progressive and labor organizing, Roosevelt amassed sufficient power to take radical action within the constitutional order to restructure and democratize the economy. Despite atrocious racial discrimination baked in by segregationist Democrats, the reforms tangibly improved material circumstances enough to restore the public’s belief that democracy could deliver. Despite receiving only half a loaf, even Black voters defected from the GOP in droves.

A difference between 1933 and 2026 is that authoritarians had not yet seized power, and despite sharp policy disagreements, Hoover and Roosevelt were committed to democratic norms. Today’s political crisis, like the crisis of the 1930s, is driven by economic elites capturing public policy and destroying democracy’s capacity to deliver what people need to thrive.

Divided Democrats

Within the big tent of the current pro-democracy coalition there is a comparable division to that of Roosevelt’s time on the necessity of structural reform. The division is even more dangerous now, in the face of an actual authoritarian takeover. This fissure is exemplified by the vast gulf between two of the most successful “blue wave” candidates of 2025: New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who gave the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union. 

Spanberger’s affordability agenda focuses on the cost of health care, housing, and utilities. Although strongly messaged, substantively she offers a series of opaque technocratic fixes and small bore policies that will not shift pricing power away from monopolies, nor raise the incomes of workers. For example, she nibbles around the edges of health care, yet keeps the foxes in the henhouse, leaving hospital monopolies, big insurance and Big Pharma in control of setting grossly inflated prices.

This contrasts sharply with Mamdani, who offers remarkably clear and understandable solutions — a rent freeze, fast free buses, a $30 minimum wage, free universal child care, paid for with a wealth tax — which would make one of the world’s most expensive cities more affordable for working and middle class New Yorkers. While Mamdani’s agenda is challenging to achieve in a system stacked against bold action, in contrast to Spanberger’s suite of solution-ettes, its clarity means voters can fulfil their democratic role by holding either the mayor or those who block his agenda accountable.

This divide among Democrats does not necessarily map on a left to center axis but on whether the affordability crisis requires small adjustments to an otherwise healthy system or structural reform that democratizes power and tangibly improves material circumstances. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), the co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, declares: “You do not save democracy by running around, yelling about saving democracy. You do it by demonstrating that democracy and Democratic values deliver better quality of life for normal people.”

Springing the affordability trap

Donald Trump is feeling the brunt of public outrage for his false sales pitches on affordability. If he actually had a program to lower prices and raise wages he would have built greater support for his authoritarian project. We may not be so fortunate if a more effective autocrat is elected in 2028.

This is why affordability is a trap for Democrats: winning elections on empty promises will only deepen the crisis in democracy, setting the table for future authoritarians. Josh Bivens writes for In These Times that creating a more equal and affordable economy requires a “sharp change” in the “policy path” of the last half century.

The only solution to the ails of democracy is deeper and more robust democracy. As I wrote in the Wisconsin Examiner after Gov. Evers ignored public pressure to fight for a better state budget, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on elected officials alone. It depends on more people organizing effectively to push them towards compelling and forceful action. Movements make leaders, not the other way around. 

We have already seen this happen on the first front of the fight to save democracy. Democratic leadership in Congress is fighting harder and using the power they have to more assertively check Trump’s lawless usurpations only because of immense pressure from organized people and everyday Americans. We must now apply this same pressure to demand that candidates and electeds fight to transform the rigged economy and ossified governing structures stacked against effective action. 

Because of Wisconsin’s enormous influence in presidential elections, we have a special obligation to light a fire under Democratic candidates for the Legislature and governor in a crowded primary field. We need more people to push the candidates, and more to join with organizing groups that are working to impel them to fight for bold and impactful reforms that a beleaguered and disillusioned people will feel in their daily lives. How Wisconsin Democrats run in 2026, and especially how they govern in 2027, will have a tremendous influence on how presidential contenders run in 2028, a year that could be democracy’s last best hope.

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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is calling for a nominating commission to try again to agree on a nominee to be the U.S. attorney for Wisconsin’s Eastern District after interim appointee Brad Schimel’s term in the position expires March 17. 

The judges in the district declined to retain Schimel for the job. Schimel previously served as the Republican attorney general under Gov. Scott Walker and in 2024 he ran unsuccessfully as a conservative for the state Supreme Court. 

Schimel was appointed U.S. attorney by Attorney General Pam Bondi in November after the nominating commission failed to reach consensus on who should fill the job in both the Madison and Milwaukee district offices. 

Last week, Baldwin said Schimel was a “clearly partisan actor” in the federal prosecutor role. 

Historically, Wisconsin’s two senators — including Baldwin and Sen. Ron Johnson — have worked together to name members of the nominating commission which agrees on candidates who are then recommended to the president and attorney general. Restarting the commission would require Baldwin and Johnson to agree on a charter. 

Across the country, the president has generally deferred to the home state senators when choosing U.S. attorneys. 

“I’m glad that the judges of the Eastern District of Wisconsin are respecting the process that Senator Johnson and I have to get high-quality, impartial prosecutors to serve Wisconsin,” Baldwin said in a statement. “It has not always been easy, but the hard work is worthwhile for the people we serve.”

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WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats tasked with overseeing defense left a classified briefing Tuesday incensed about President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, as the United States and Israel continue their joint bombardment and families prepare to bury seven American service members killed in the conflict.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he left the briefing “more doubtful than ever that there is clarity on objectives or exit strategy.”

“I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate. I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war,” Blumenthal said.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that since the beginning of the war in Iran, “approximately 140 U.S. service members have been wounded over 10 days of sustained attacks.” 

“The vast majority of these injuries have been minor, and 108 service members have already returned to duty,” he said. “Eight service members remain listed as severely injured and are receiving the highest level of medical care.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, asked at a press briefing about a Reuters news report that as many as 150 U.S. troops have been injured in the war, replied, “I know it’s within that ballpark,” but deferred to the Pentagon for the exact numbers.

Seven U.S. troops have died, the Pentagon has said.

‘The most fighters, the most bombers’

Military and defense intelligence officials conducted the closed-door update for senators shortly after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, alongside Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Gen. Dan Caine, said from the Pentagon that Iran should expect “yet again the most intense day of strikes” Tuesday.

“The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes — intelligence more refined and better than ever,” Hegseth said.

The secret briefing occurred a day after oil prices took a rollercoaster ride, peaking at $119 a barrel before falling below $90, due to Iranian officials’ effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s petroleum passes.

Giving mixed signals Monday night, Trump said the war in Iran is “going to be a short-term excursion,” but added later the U.S. military “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.” 

Dems unsure of end game

Many Senate Democrats have criticized the administration for not coming before Congress to debate the war publicly.

“We’ve been calling over and over again for them to come out of the classified rooms to allow us to have these conversations as much as we can in an open setting,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., said after leaving the briefing, held in a secured compartmented information facility, or SCIF, underneath the U.S. Capitol.

“I have to think about what I can and can’t say — it is concerning, it is disturbing, and I’m not sure what the end game is or what their plans are. They certainly have not made their case,” Rosen said.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said “a range of four individuals” briefed lawmakers, including a major general and personnel from the Joint Staff Intelligence and Defense Intelligence Agency, two organizations.

Telling reporters that “wild horses” could not get him to discuss the classified briefing, Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said he hasn’t received a request from Democrats, including ranking member Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., for an open hearing.

Schumer demands hearings 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., issued a joint press release with Reed and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., just after the classified briefing demanding public hearings “on Trump’s war of choice.”

“Public hearings featuring cabinet-level witnesses have been a standard part of congressional oversight throughout our history, including recent military conflicts, as well as during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, our founders were clear about the role of Congress in matters of war as the representatives of the American people,” the senators wrote.

South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said he feels lawmakers are getting enough information from the administration, but he indicated that what happens after the bombing stops will largely be left up to civilians in Iran.

“That’s not our focus,” he said. “Our focus was on eliminating the threat to our people in the Middle East, to our allies, and to be able to address the threats before they became a lot worse in a very short period of time.”

Rounds said he believes that once the war ends, it will “be up to the Iranian people to determine whether they want to join the free world.”

“The Iranians are very smart people. They’re well educated. They can run their country if given the opportunity,” he said. “But if they just come to bring in another group of religious zealots, then they’re going to continue to have problems. And I think they realize that.”

Progress seen by Montana’s Sheehy

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized the administration for not having clearer goals or an exit strategy. 

“Here we are, well into the second week of attacks, and there are still contradictory descriptions of the goals and contradictory descriptions of how we intend to accomplish this work.” she said. 

Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy said he believes the U.S. military has “made great progress” during the first week-and-a-half of bombing. 

He said he expects the war will end once the United States and Israel have eliminated “the regime’s ability to continue to spread terror around the world and continue to control regional waterways and continue to try to kill Americans and our allies, not just in the region, but around the world.”

Shaheen, ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said she hopes the administration will publicly release its investigation into whether a U.S. missile struck near a girls school in Iran. 

“Hopefully they will release the investigation,” she said. “Certainly I don’t believe there is any deliberate intent to target civilians in Iran in that way, but the fact that there are so many different explanations for what’s happening raises concerns.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump on Monday told House Republicans, who were gathered in Florida for a policy retreat, that he expects the war in Iran will wrap up “quickly,” though he didn’t give a specific date or detail exactly what he wants to do before ending the hostilities. 

“We took a little excursion because we felt we had to do that to get rid of some evil,” he said. “And I think you’ll see it’s going to be a short-term excursion.”

Trump added later in his speech that the U.S. military “will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.”

During a press conference afterward, Trump said the U.S. military had struck 5,000 locations inside Iran but that he was holding off on bombing some of the country’s larger targets to see if its leaders would allow ships to safely travel through the Strait of Hormuz.

The danger of navigating the key shipping route during the war has been a factor in rising oil prices and other market volatility globally.

“We’ve left some of the most important targets for later in case we need to do it,” he said. “If we hit them, it’s going to take many years for them to be rebuilt, having to do with electricity production and many other things. So, we’re not looking to do that if we don’t have to.”

Trump said “when the time comes,” the U.S. Navy and undisclosed partners will escort ships through that narrow channel.

“I hope it’s not going to be needed,” he said. “But if it’s needed, we’ll escort them right through.”

Trump said he was “disappointed” that Iranian leaders over the weekend selected Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader. He is the son of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by military strikes shortly after the war began. 

Trump declined to answer if the country’s new leader could soon become the target of similar military action, saying that would be “inappropriate.”

No new laws without elections bill

Trump also focused on legislative requests for Congress during his speech and at the press conference, calling on House Republicans to restructure a bill they already passed that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote and identification to cast a ballot, among other changes. 

Trump said he wants three additional elements written into a new bill. 

The first would be nationwide restrictions on mail-in ballots unless the person is a member of the military based overseas, someone with a disability, someone who is ill or someone who is traveling. 

Trump told GOP lawmakers to add in a provision that would lead to “no men in women’s sports” and language blocking transgender youth from surgery. 

“Now, that should be the easiest thing to get passed that you’ve ever had,” he said.

Trump said if the House GOP passed the reworked bill that Republicans would “win the midterms at levels that you can’t even believe.”

He expressed confidence that Senate Republicans would be able to move such a bill through that chamber, but didn’t detail how that would happen with the 60-vote legislative filibuster still in place. 

“We’re not going to sign a watered-down version like has been sent up there. Let’s go for the gold, and let’s just not accept anything else,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you what, I’m willing to just sort of say, I’m not going to sign anything until this is approved. I really am.”

Democrats unmoved

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said during a floor speech earlier in the day that Trump’s position would not change Democrats’ minds that the legislation is “Jim Crow 2.0.”

“Donald Trump is saying, in effect, unless Congress helps him undermine democracy, he’s prepared to hold the rest of the country hostage,” Schumer said. “This is what he does. He’s a thug, He’s a bully. He can’t ever argue on the merits, so he threatens.”

Schumer said that would mean any bills Congress approves to try to lower the cost of living wouldn’t take effect. 

“No bill to bring down gas prices. No bills to make groceries more affordable. No bills to increase housing. Not until the Save Act passes. That’s what Donald Trump is saying,” Schumer said. “Democrats will make sure that never happens.”

Like many churches, Christ Presbyterian Church on Madison’s near east side displays “welcome” banners outside its front doors. Unlike most churches, those doors are always locked to protect the clients and staff of the Community Immigration Law Center, which works out of offices in the church. 

The locked doors are just one of the many ways CILC has been forced to change as the administration of President Donald Trump seeks to massively decrease the immigrant population in the United States. 

The names of staff members are no longer publicly available on the organization’s website. Legal clinics to provide advice to asylum seekers are no longer being held because the administration has effectively stopped the asylum process. 

Already bursting at the seams of its office spaces in the church, CILC is working this year to grow its staff from eight lawyers and four paralegals to 10 lawyers and 16 paralegals in an effort to fill the gaping need across Wisconsin for immigration attorneys. 

The organization has also beefed up its rapid response capabilities, so when a community organization such as Voces de la Frontera hears about an immigration arrest, that person and their family can be quickly connected with an attorney through CILC. 

Grant Sovern, one of CILC’s co-founders, says that until the last few months, the organization was doing pretty well keeping up with cases — about 300 detention cases since Trump took office.  But with the Trump administration reversing protective orders that had been issued under President Joe Biden and continuing to upend longstanding policies, reinterpret rules and threaten the arrest of new classes of immigrants, CILC needs to do its best to make sure the government is adhering to the law and the Constitution, he adds. 

“The only chance we have for due process is applying the legal system, because the Constitution is still almost working in most of the cases,” Sovern says. “But you can’t just do that on your own. And in immigration, that’s more true because the federal government has a ton of discretion in how they apply those laws and the day-to-day workings of this immigration court.” 

CILC’s legal director, Aissa Olivarez, grew up in the Rio Grande valley near the U.S.-Mexico border. After five years teaching first grade, she attended law school at UW-Madison with the intention of practicing immigration law. She has stayed in Wisconsin because she saw a greater need here than in her home state of Texas, where there’s already robust infrastructure to assist immigrants. 

Growing up Mexican-American near the “militarized border” prepared her for all the tactics that Trump’s ICE has spread across the country, she says. But over the last year, the fear that ICE has caused in Wisconsin’s immigrant communities — particularly as surges of federal agents in neighboring Minnesota and Illinois drew headlines — has put a heavy burden on the CILC staff to be there for their clients. 

“How do we make this sustainable from an emotional point of view?” Olivarez says. She notes that she and her staff are often the first people detained immigrants meet with after their arrest. “And so oftentimes we get a long story or a lot of information that we may not need, but we know how important it is to listen, to lend an ear and to get the facts so that we can complete our mission of making sure that people get strong and good legal advice, but also the mission of just being a human in that space, and providing individuals with the space to talk, with the ability to discuss and ask questions and bring humanity.” 

But, she says, that can mean “we are carrying a very large emotional load, especially watching the way that the dismantling of people’s rights and the dismantling of our immigration courts is happening. There’s a lot of grief involved, and a lot of grief that we have to navigate, knowing oftentimes what people are facing, what they’re going through, and also worry for our own families.” 

Olivarez says it can be daunting to face the caseload, knowing there are about 1,000 days left in Trump’s term, understanding the pace is not likely to let up and trying to avoid burning out. But she feels CILC is playing an essential role for migrant communities across the state. 

“Can we keep up with that in an emotional way? Because the stakes are so high, because it means permanent separation from a family member, permanent exile from the United States, that we are well enough so that we can do the work. But we also haven’t faced this as an organization before,” she says. “And it’s really easy — because of all of the stories we hear and the people we see in these facilities — to lose hope. But I can tell you, the people who are not losing hope are the people who are being impacted. You know, they want to keep fighting. They stay strong through months and years of detention, and it’s a complete privilege and honor to be able to be trusted by the community in that way.” 

Natalia Lucak, the daughter of Czech immigrants, is CILC’s senior program manager. Lucak previously ran the organization’s asylum clinics, assisting asylum applicants with getting the proper paperwork filed to the right agencies. 

Now, she’s working with immigrants in Wisconsin — many of whom have come to the country with legal status only to lose that status because of Trump administration policy changes — to prepare for what happens if ICE arrests them. 

When Lucak started working in immigration law during President Barack Obama’s second term, “the goal and the hope was to help people stay here,” she says. Now she feels like she’s had her “wings clipped” because her job has become all about managing and assessing risk. 

Her job has become “preparing people for the possibility of being detained and advising them that you know what could happen if they’re detained, the likelihood of success in their case,” Lucak says.

“Now it’s just a very different calculus, especially when I talk to families, and as they think about, you know, what would happen to their children if they’re detained?” she says. “How would prolonged detention impact the family? And how much risk are they willing to take to stay here and just hope that things are okay when we are seeing increased detention numbers across the country and certainly in Wisconsin in the last few weeks.” 

For the first time, Lucak says she’s helping families weigh if it’s better to leave the country on their own before they get arrested and deported. There is a lot for her clients to weigh, all while they’re scared for the safety of their loved ones.  

“This administration is random. It’s just by luck that you’ve avoided [arrest] so far And that luck may run out, and who knows when? And so let’s plan,” she says. “People are crying often doing these consultations, and especially if they have kids, maybe they have U.S. citizen kids.”

The questions can be endless. 

“I’ve had various clients who have kids who are special needs, and so they’re U.S. citizens,” Lucak says. “They’re accessing certain programs here. And you’re kind of deciding, do we leave on our own? Do we uproot? Do I risk being deported and being separated from my child? Would my child stay here? My child go with me? How would my child come with me? Like even preparing, does your child have a passport? Like, does your child, if you’re gonna leave, or if you’re detained and deported, and your child needs to follow, that child needs a passport. There are all these documents you need to get in line. And so it’s really just like, do you have a family plan, who’s gonna pick up your kid if you’re detained there at school?” 

Even amid all the uncertainty, all the stress and the burden of being a small staff working out of some church offices to thwart the full weight of the federal government, Lucak says she and her colleagues plan to just keep trying to figure it out. 

“We are gonna find ways to fight and make them follow the law, make them follow due process, make them do these things,” she says. “And you know, they do have our back up to a wall because of all the power that they hold, especially when it comes to immigration.”

She adds that the staff has to be nimble “and not hold being too precious about things that worked under Biden. Like it’s not going to work anymore, and we just have to do it differently.”

President Donald Trump promoted his second-term record in a wide-ranging speech at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas on Friday, building on themes from his State of the Union address earlier in the week.

But he did not issue a highly anticipated endorsement just days before a heated U.S. Senate primary that’s pitted incumbent John Cornyn against two challengers, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Before the event, Trump told reporters he had “pretty much” decided on who he would endorse in the midterm election contest, but wouldn’t do so Friday, according to a White House pool report.

While leaving the White House en route to Texas earlier in the day, Trump also suggested he might direct a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, saying the Cuban American community would appreciate such action.

“We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years,” he told reporters. “They’re in big trouble, and we could very well (do) something good, I think, very positive for the people that were expelled or worse, from Cuba that live here.”

Tensions are high between the United States and Cuba. The Cuban government said Thursday its border patrol killed four Cuban expatriates living in the United States who sought to infiltrate the country in a speedboat.

Little discussion of energy policy

The Texas speech was advertised as an address on energy, and Trump spoke in front of signs reading “American Energy Dominance” and against a backdrop of oil tankers. 

But he hardly mentioned the issue apart from short sections at the start and end of his remarks in which he claimed credit for lowering gas prices. 

Instead, the president jumped from topic to topic, defending his administration’s controversial record on immigration enforcement and a military operation in Venezuela while attacking Democrats as out of touch and ramping up calls for election administration changes he said would keep the party from winning future elections. 

Among them are the House-passed SAVE America Act, which would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. While it has little chance of Senate passage, Trump has continued to advocate for it.

He claimed, without evidence, that Democrats can only win elections by cheating. If Congress makes changes to national elections laws, the party would be shut out, he said.

“They will never win because their policy is no good,” he said. “They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everyone. They want open borders so that the world’s criminals can pour into our country, which we’ve done a good job. I’ll tell you what: ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has done such a great job.”

Midterm stakes

Trump joked early in the appearance that he was advised to not make political statements.

But several of his digressions were focused on elections this year and beyond.

After exulting, in sometimes exaggerated language, his record through one year of unified GOP control, he said it was crucial for Republicans to maintain their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. 

Noting that Democratic members did not stand and applaud at several points of his State of the Union address, a point that Republicans have seized upon repeatedly as a campaign issue in the days since the speech, Trump said the Democrats were “crazy.”

“They’re crazy,” he said. “We got to win midterms. We brought this country back. We don’t want to lose the midterms. We got to win the midterms.”

Election forecasters project the most likely outcome of November’s midterms is for Democrats to gain control of the House while Republicans keep the Senate. Very few seats are seen as toss-ups.

Trump also teased a potential third presidential term, which would violate the Constitution’s prohibition of more than two terms. He said he was entitled to another term because an election was “stolen” from him, a reference to the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden and ever since has claimed, without evidence, wrongly decided.

“Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more?” he asked the crowd. “Well, we’re entitled to it because they cheated like hell in the second.”

Texas Senate GOP battle

In the Senate contest, Trump shouted out Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt, without indicating which he might favor.

Election Day is Tuesday, though with three major candidates, it is likely headed for a May runoff between Cornyn and Paxton.

Trump wore a version of his signature red hat with the phrase “Gulf of America” across the front instead of the usual “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico early in his second term. Corpus Christi’s port is on the gulf.

Venezuela 

At the open and close of the roughly hourlong speech, Trump promoted his energy policy and criticized Biden for regulations that Trump said slowed energy production. 

By boosting production and bringing in oil from Venezuela after deposing leftist President Nicolás Maduro in January, Trump said he has brought down the price of gas and consumer products across the board.

Biden and congressional Democrats “waged a radical-left war on American oil and natural gas like you’ve never seen before,” he said. “They were killing our country…. All of that changed my first day back in office.”

The latest government statistics, though, show that energy costs in January were about the same as they were when Trump took office, dropping only .1%, while inflation in the economy as a whole stubbornly continues at about 2.4%.

U.S. involvement in Venezuela, following Maduro’s capture, would also help spur the energy sector, Trump said. 

The new government, led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has been receptive to selling crude oil to the United States, where it will be refined, Trump said Friday. The arrangement would benefit both countries, he said.

Vice President JD Vance did not utter the word “tariffs” a single time during his upbeat speech at a Plover, Wisconsin, machining plant Thursday. The visit, aimed at shoring up vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden ahead of the 2026 midterms, was part of a post-State of the Union victory lap Vance is taking to market the so-called Golden Age of prosperity President Donald Trump claims he and the Republicans have delivered to rural and blue-collar voters.

It’s a tough sell. 

The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released the day before Vance parachuted into Wisconsin, shows Trump hitting a second-term low with Wisconsin voters, with 44% saying they approve of the job he’s doing and 54% saying they don’t approve. Across partisan affiliations, the rising cost of living is voters’ No. 1 concern, while 55% of respondents told pollsters tariffs are hurting Wisconsin farmers. Manufacturers are not happy, either.

“I can tell you from my experience running our company, from everyone I talk to in my networks — 95% of people in manufacturing — 99% do not support the tariffs,” said Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, a Wisconsin-based company with locations across the Midwest.

Shivaram spoke on a press call with Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin ahead of Vance’s speech Thursday. Many business owners, he said, are afraid to publicly share their criticisms of the Trump administration. When he meets other leaders of manufacturing companies in boardrooms, he said, “It’s like, look, we can’t say anything about how dumb the tariff policy is, because we’re going to be the next one whacked on X.” But, he added, “it’s costing all of them, all of us, a lot of money.”

Tariffs have caused “chaos and uncertainty” for businesses, agreed Kyle LaFond, owner and founder of American Provenance and Natural Contract Manufacturing, a small business that makes personal care products. “Last year, when these tariffs were first instituted, I absorbed those costs as much as possible. I did that for about eight months,” LaFond said. “But that is not a sustainable business practice.” Ultimately, he said, businesses have to pass along the cost to their customers:  “Tariffs are just attacks on the American consumer.” 

There’s a reason slim majorities of Wisconsin voters chose Trump in 2016 and 2024. Vance put his finger on it in his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.”

Wisconsin manufacturing workers and farmers suffered tremendously from global trade deals. Democrats and Republicans alike brushed aside their pain and tried to tell them that the booming stock market and increasing corporate profits were worth the crashing prices and job losses. Never mind the communities ruined and all the families that fell out of the middle class.

Trump and Vance spoke to those voters. In his convention speech, Vance cleverly tied global trade deals supported by both political parties to immigration.“Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us,” he said, “our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor.”

But the immigrants who make up 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms did not drive the collapse of Wisconsin’s small-farm economy. They, too, were displaced by globalization that drove down prices and accelerated a “get big or get out” economy that has taken a heavy toll on working people on both sides of the border. The arrival of immigrants willing to work long hours for low pay on farms that were forced to expand rapidly to stay afloat was a blessing to farmers who simply couldn’t find American workers to fill those jobs.

Today’s increasingly virulent, demagogic attacks on those hardworking immigrants should make everyone queasy. 

Alex Jacquez, a former White House economic official in the Biden administration who also worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, sees Vance’s rise as a big win for the populist right. Vance’s criticism of global trade deals that hollowed out American manufacturing, and his appeal to the “forgotten” American workers who have never recovered from outsourcing, struck a nerve with voters across the industrial Midwest. 

“But I think the question is whether the actual policies put forward are having the outcomes that they intend here,” Jacquez said in a phone interview Thursday.

Trump ‘s failure to deliver the economic miracle he advertised, along with devastating cuts to health care and the safety net, pose a looming problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The solution they’ve hit on is a combination of bluster, bullying and straight up lies. 

In his Plover speech, Vance doubled down on Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants and Democrats in the State of the Union. Following up on Trump’s racist characterization of the entire Somali immigrant community in Minnesota as “pirates” responsible for plundering public aid, Vance  blamed “‘illegal aliens” for fraud in public benefits programs and voting. He brought up Trump’s lurid descriptions of crimes committed by immigrants and, like Trump, excoriated Democrats for not standing up and cheering as the president subjected grieving parents to a gory rehash of violent attacks on their children.

The reason Democrats didn’t stand up during Trump’s speech, Vance suggested, is that “they answer to people who have corrupted this country. They answer to people who opened the border. They answer to people who got rich off of illegal immigrant labor. … We want American workers to get rich for working hard, not illegal aliens.”

Sucker-punching Democrats on immigration was a goal of the State of the Union speech. And Republicans will keep on punching. Their sanctimonious horror at the very idea of their colleagues not standing up and cheering for the victims of violent criminals is a way of changing the subject away from the spectacle of masked federal immigration agents spreading murderous mayhem in Midwestern neighborhoods, and, of course, the fact that none of this is making American workers better off. 

As Jacquez pointed out, “Certainly Trump has cracked down on immigration, but that doesn’t seem to be redounding to the benefit of native-born workers. We’ve seen the unemployment rate creep up even while fewer immigrants are working these days on the manufacturing side.”

“We lost manufacturing jobs in every single month of 2025,” he added. “There has been no resurgence whatsoever in actual people getting jobs in manufacturing and, in fact, in many sectors, some of the trade policies that Trump has advanced have been actively harmful.”

At the end of his speech, Vance took questions from local media that reflected the immediate concerns of voters in western Wisconsin. 

What can his administration do to stop the closure of rural hospitals that are creating a health care desert in the district he was visiting?

Vance blamed the problem on the Biden administration, although rural hospital closures did not begin under Biden and are severely exacerbated by Medicaid cuts under Trump. Vance also claimed the Trump administration is now turning things around with the rural hospital fund included in the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” — $200 million of which was awarded to Wisconsin in December.

Derrick Van Orden also pumped the rural hospital fund in remarks ahead of Vance’s speech, saying it’s “just a lie” that Democrats care about rural health care, because they didn’t vote for the massive tax- and spending-cut bill that contained the rural health care fund. 

KFF projects the fund will only make up for about one-third of the Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid in rural areas. And that offset is temporary. The rural health fund expires in five years. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, 250,000 people are losing their health care coverage because of the Medicaid cuts and changes to the Affordable Care Act passed by Republicans. Those losses are concentrated in rural areas, and have a cascading effect on rural hospitals and entire rural economies.

Van Orden, who has spent his whole political career calling for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, reversed course and voted with Democrats to extend ACA subsidies last month — right after voting to block the same measure when Democrats brought it up the day before. 

In answer to a question on the health care worker shortage and the aging population of rural Wisconsin, Vance took a swipe at college students who major in women’s studies. The Trump administration — which has focused on repealing a pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment, resumed garnishing the wages of student debtors and imposed less affordable repayment plans — wants to make it easier for people to study to become doctors and nurses without getting “layered up with debt,” Vance declared.

Will the Trump administration withhold Medicaid money from Wisconsin as it recently announced it will do to Minnesota, as punishment for the state’s refusal to hand over the sensitive, personal information of food assistance recipients and of voters?

In answer to that question, Vance said it was outrageous that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have refused to hand over the data Trump is demanding, and left the open the option of withholding federal Medicaid money, saying Democrats “like to cheat” in “voter rolls and welfare rolls.” 

Asked about farmers facing wildly fluctuating commodity prices, Vance celebrated the administration’s success in getting China to open up its market to U.S. soybeans. That’s a head-scratcher, since China was purchasing about half of all U.S. soybeans a year ago, before it stopped amid a trade war caused by Trump’s tariffs. That was a big problem for Wisconsin farmers who were suddenly stuck sitting on a bumper soybean crop after losing their biggest buyer. Even with the new deal, those farmers will not be made whole, Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, told Wisconsin Public Radio, and China has now found new markets, setting up a long-term business loss.

Among Vance’s many preposterous claims, perhaps the most incredible was the picture he tried to paint of a caring, empathetic Trump, who wakes up every morning asking what he can do to solve the problems of the American people. Do even Trump’s supporters buy the idea that the man who made $4 billion off the presidency after just one year in office is driven by selfless concern for the needs of others? 

On one occasion, Vance said, during a discussion of the soaring stock market, Trump asked earnestly what could be done for people who don’t own any stocks. The answer, he said, was Trump’s brilliant plan to give low-income workers a $1,000 federal match for retirement. That idea was actually signed into law by Biden four years ago.

Asked for his further ideas for investing in rural communities, Vance said his administration will mostly “just listen” to voters. He held up Van Orden as the administration’s point man for keeping in touch with constituents in rural Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Van Orden is so notorious for avoiding in-person contact with voters, Democrats have made a regular practice of visiting his district to hold town halls from which he is reliably, notably absent. 

The claim that either he or the Trump administration is concerned about solving the problems of Wisconsin voters is the biggest lie of all. 

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Rep. Derrick Van Orden stands out among vulnerable House Republicans: He has not softened his rhetoric on President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics, despite public outcry over the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minnesota.

The Wisconsin Republican, whose seat is one of Democrats’ targets in the 2026 midterms, supported an investigation into Alex Pretti’s killing, but said his “support for federal law enforcement” would remain “unwavering.”

Van Orden told NOTUS he is holding firm in his support for the Trump administration’s deportation efforts because of the crime committed by unauthorized immigrants.

He cited a video posted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week alongside the caption, “American citizens raped and murdered by those who have no right to be in our country.”

“That’s why I back ICE,” Van Orden said. “Watch that video, and then you would never ask me that question again.”

“If you can look at that thing and see all these people that have been brutally murdered and the families that have been destroyed because of these criminal, illegal aliens, and you’re willing to turn your back to it, that means you have an alternative purpose or an alternative objective,” Van Orden said.

Van Orden’s hard-line position in support of the president’s mass deportation agenda in one of this year’s most competitive races will test the Trump agenda in the very part of the country that helped secure the president a second term in the White House.

His district includes the farmland and exurbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, spanning Wisconsin’s border with Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. Van Orden won by a margin of 2.8 percentage points in 2024. Trump won the district by more than 7 percentage points. In a midterm cycle that favors Democrats, and at a time voters are losing trust in Republicans’ immigration agenda, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race as a “toss up.”

“We’re not a border state. It’s not something that was on the agenda prior to Trump. And obviously, people like Derrick Van Orden have taken the most extreme possible positions on an issue that I’m not sure was top of mind for most Wisconsin voters,” said Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator and Wisconsin resident.

Van Orden has shown his MAGA bona fides through issues like immigration and trade, where he has defended the president’s actions.

He followed the administration’s lead, expressing support for body cameras on immigration officers, a reform that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she would implement after Pretti was killed. Democrats want to standardize that policy in a DHS funding bill.

“It allows good cops to be good cops, and it holds police officers that may not be doing what they should do accountable publicly,” Van Orden said. “And that makes the force better, that makes the American population trust law enforcement more.”

He said he will await the results of a full investigation into Pretti’s death, but has laid the blame for the rise of political violence squarely with Democrats, as many in the administration and Trump’s circle have done.

“This is unfortunately true for many Democrats. They’re willing to put those American lives, throw them into the garbage can for political power, which means they have no business being in power,” Van Orden said.

There are issues where Van Orden has broken with the conservative mainstream. In January, he voted to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to prevent coverage loss, though he is opposed to the program. He has advocated for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which he used as a child, though he voted for cuts to the program in the budget reconciliation bill.

Faced with a frustrated agricultural industry, Van Orden introduced a bill to create a path to temporary worker status for immigrant agricultural workers who self-deport and pay a fine. Wisconsin farms employ a large immigrant labor force.

“He has this interesting dichotomy of picking some of those softer issues that might appeal to independents and some others, versus his very strong pro-Trump issues where, obviously that’s going to settle well with the MAGA voters and the pro-Trump Republicans,” said independent political strategist Brandon Scholz, who formerly ran the Wisconsin Republican Party.

In contrast, other House Republicans facing heated reelection bids this year have moderated their positions on immigration enforcement, calling for a reassessment of the country’s immigration policy.

“Congress and the president need to embrace a new comprehensive national immigration policy that acknowledges Americans’ many legitimate concerns about how the government has conducted immigration policy,” Rep. Mike Lawler wrote for The New York Times.

Van Orden declined to comment on other Democratic demands for DHS reforms, which include a ban on masks and identification requirements for immigration agents, until the party funds the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service and the U.S. Coast Guard.

It is these nonimmigration agencies within DHS that Van Orden’s constituents are affected by during the partial government shutdown, which has left some without paychecks and blocked others from receiving their boating licenses to go out on the district’s many lakes, he said.

That message may work with his constituents, Scholz said. While Republican voters in Wisconsin may be concerned about immigration, the issue has not historically been top of mind for them.

“There are other issues for them that may be more critical to making a decision on what they’re going to do, i.e. economic issues,” Scholz said.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Vulnerable House Republicans have softened on immigration. Derrick Van Orden hasn’t. 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.

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Wisconsin doesn’t have more registered voters than the adult population.

The claim, recently recirculated by President Donald Trump, combines two voter lists to misrepresent the number of active, eligible voters in Wisconsin.     

Wisconsin’s adult population is around 4.8 million, according to Jan. 1 estimates from the state Demographic Services Center.

On Feb. 1, Wisconsin had around 3.6 million active, registered voters, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The state has 4.6 million inactive voters on a separate list. Voters move to the inactive list if they die, move to a new state or are convicted of a felony, for example.

Adding those two numbers produces a total of 8.2 million, more than the state’s total population.

State law requires an inactive list for record-keeping purposes. Plus, it helps clerks prevent fraud by catching someone registering under a dead person’s name, for example.

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

Sources

• Wisconsin Elections Commission: February 1, 2026 Voter Registration Statistics
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: FAQs
• Wisconsin Demographic Services Center: Official Final Estimates, 1/1/2025

Does Wisconsin have more registered voters than adults? 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.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeated his hardline stance on immigration during his record-long State of the Union on Tuesday, previewing a potential midterm campaign message as his party faces an uphill battle to keep a majority in the House.

“The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump said.

His nearly two-hour speech before Congress came on the 11th day of a partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. He called on Democrats to immediately fund the agency. 

Democrats have refused to approve new funding for DHS unless changes are made to enforcement tactics following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal immigration officers. 

Another vote to move forward on approving funding for DHS failed, 50-45, Tuesday mere hours before the president’s address to Congress.

Immigration enforcement has continued during the shutdown because the department has a separate funding stream Congress provided last year through the massive tax cuts and spending package. 

Rhetoric remains

Despite the controversy the months-long immigration operation in Minneapolis has created, Trump defended the operation and his views on immigration more generally, possibly signalling he does not plan to tone down his rhetoric in an election year.

He made racist remarks about the Somali refugee population in Minneapolis, referring to them as “Somali pirates” and accusing them of widespread fraud. 

He blamed the Biden administration for “importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders.” 

“We will take care of this problem,” he said.  

Trump also made another racist remark that immigrants “don’t speak English,” and called on Congress to pass legislation to bar immigrants in the country without legal authorization from obtaining commercial drivers licenses.

He also called for Congress to end so-called sanctuary cities, local jurisdictions that have policies to bar cooperation with the federal government’s immigration enforcement. 

Trump also called for Congress to pass a national voter ID requirement law to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. 

The president did give a passing endorsement of legal immigration, saying early in the speech he would “always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

Many of the groups he has targeted as president, though, including Minnesota’s Somali population, have legal authorization to be in the country.

Padilla blasts Trump approach

Democrats have seized on the unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, where residential areas have experienced masked immigration agents and roving patrols. 

In a rebuke to Trump’s Speech, California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Democratic response that aired across Spanish networks. 

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Last summer, federal law enforcement officials forcibly removed and handcuffed Padilla at a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.

The incident represented a stark escalation of tensions between Democrats and the Trump administration after the president ordered 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to quell the protests in Los Angeles. 

After Padilla, California’s first Latino senator, was released, he gave an emotional speech on the Senate floor that accused the president of using his home state as a testing ground for deploying the U.S. military domestically. 

In his response Tuesday, he addressed the incident at the Noem press conference.   

“They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,” Padilla said. “As our parents taught us, if you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting. And I know you are still standing and still fighting too.”

WASHINGTON — Some congressional Democrats boycotted President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, opting to attend counter-programming to protest the administration’s actions.

Lawmakers took to alternative stages in Washington, D.C., in rebukes of what they see as Trump’s lack of regard for constitutional norms, immigration enforcement tactics and response to the affordability crisis hitting American families.  

“Our democracy is wilting under ceaseless attack from a president who wants to be a despot,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut at the “People’s State of the Union” rally on the National Mall.

“Millions of Americans are losing their health care because the president has chosen corruption to pad the pockets of his billionaire friends instead of helping average Americans,” said Murphy, who serves as the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. 

The rally, hosted by progressive media company MeidasTouch and progressive advocacy group MoveOn, countered the president’s address to Congress. Lawmakers brought their own guests to the event, who rebuffed ongoing actions by the administration. 

Tuesday night also featured the “State of the Swamp” at the National Press Club, hosted by DEFIANCE.org, a resistance effort against Trump; the Portland Frog Brigade, a coalition of “artist-activists” and COURIER, an advocacy media network. 

The “State of the Swamp” event brought in several Democratic lawmakers, former Trump administration officials, current and former Democratic state leaders, as well as leading voices against the administration. 

‘A lawless president’

Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, described the State of the Union as a “state of denial” during the event on the National Mall. 

“What’s going to happen under that Capitol is a bunch of lies — lies that Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to tell us about how great this country is doing right now,” he said. “But what is true, what is happening right now, is that Donald Trump and the Republicans have made this country sicker, poorer and less secure.”

Democratic lawmakers continued to blast the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Those criticisms grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens last month in Minneapolis. 

The Department of Homeland Security is shut down as Congress and the administration try to iron out a solution to Democrats’ demands for additional restraints on immigration enforcement following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Now we know the state of our union,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “We know it is under attack from a lawless president who is shredding our Constitution and who is attacking our democracy — a president whose private (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) army executes Americans and then calls the victims domestic terrorists.” 

Epstein files

Democrats also lambasted the administration’s handling of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which faced criticism for its piecemeal rollout of the files and heavy redactions. 

Several Democratic lawmakers invited survivors of Epstein as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. 

“We should be crystal clear about right now what is happening in our country,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, during the rally on the National Mall. 

“We have a president who is leading the single largest government cover-up in modern history — we have the single largest sex trafficking ring in modern history right now being covered up by Donald Trump and (Attorney General) Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice,” Garcia said. 

Trump, who has appeared in several of the files, had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, but has maintained he had a falling-out with the disgraced financier and was never involved in any alleged crimes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday to lambaste Democrats and the Biden administration, while pitching the Republican Party to voters ahead of this year’s crucial midterm elections. 

“Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before,” Trump said. “A turnaround for the ages. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages.”

The nearly two-hour speech included considerable back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans in the chamber, especially when Trump brought up his immigration enforcement activities or GOP efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Trump’s disdain for Democrats was on full display throughout the speech, when he alleged they wanted to “cheat” in elections and said Democrats pressing for lower costs and affordability was a “dirty, rotten lie.” 

“Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them,” he said. “We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting down.”

But there were several moments of bipartisanship, including when Trump recognized U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and his parents as well as the parents of the late U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, both of the West Virginia National Guard.

Beckstrom and Wolfe were shot just blocks from the White House the day before Thanksgiving while on duty in the District of Columbia. Beckstrom died as a result of her injuries the next day and Wolfe was badly injured. Both Beckstrom and Wolfe were awarded the Purple Heart by Major General James D. Seward, Adjutant General of the state of West Virginia, to the applause of lawmakers.

The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team was also able to briefly unite Republicans and Democrats when players appeared in the gallery overlooking the chamber, wearing their gold medals. 

Members of both political parties gave the group a standing ovation and chanted “USA, USA, USA!” before the players left after a few minutes. They had met with Trump at the White House earlier in the day.

Sign held by Rep. Al Green

But there were reminders of deep divisions throughout the speech of historic length — the previous record for a State of the Union speech that was recorded was held by former President Bill Clinton.

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green held up a sign at the beginning of Trump’s remarks that read “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES!” in reference to a racist meme in a video Trump shared on social media that depicted former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as primates.

A Sergeant at Arms employee escorted Green from the chamber a few minutes later as Republicans again chanted “USA!” Green last year was removed from the chamber during Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Trump didn’t just criticize Democrats during his speech, but also the Supreme Court justices who have ruled against his actions, most recently deciding that he overstepped by using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to implement tariffs. Four of the nine justices were seated in the chamber: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump said the tariffs decision was “unfortunate” and that the six justices who ruled against him “got it really wrong.”

Trump reiterated he would use other powers he believes he holds to keep the tariffs in place, arguing he thinks they are “saving the country.”

“They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before,” he said. “Congressional action will not be necessary.”

Trump claimed that if tariffs remain they could replace income taxes, though Congress would need to approve legislation to eliminate that part of the tax code. 

Homeland Security shutdown

Trump spoke at length about immigration and border security during his speech before calling on Congress to end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, which began on Feb. 14 when stopgap funding expired. Democrats have insisted on immigration enforcement reforms.

“Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, homeland security of the United States,” he said.

Trump told lawmakers in the chamber to stand if they believed “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Republicans stood and cheered loudly while Democrats stayed seated, with several of their members calling out their opposition to that part of the speech as well as Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement and deportation. 

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said repeatedly “you have killed Americans” as Trump spoke about the DHS shutdown.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib yelled “Alex wasn’t a criminal,” referring to Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, just weeks after federal immigration officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.

Tlaib later called out that Trump should release all of the Epstein files, referring to documents within the Department of Justice about the criminal investigation into child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

SAVE Act

Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

He said that Americans should only be able to vote by mail if they are ill, disabled, in the military or traveling, though that provision isn’t included in the SAVE Act. 

“Congress should unite and enact this common sense, country-saving legislation right now,” he said. “And it should be before anything else happens.”

The House voted mostly along party lines earlier this month to send the bill to the Senate, where it is unlikely to get the Democratic support needed to move past that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Trump alleged the only reason Democrats won’t help Republicans approve the legislation is because “they want to cheat.”

Boycotts of the speech

Some Democrats opted to attend other events or skip Trump’s speech entirely, citing the president’s immigration enforcement tactics, disregard for constitutional norms and record of false and misleading claims. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he decided not to go because Trump has “made a mockery of the State of the Union.”

“I have no obligation to be a backdrop to a partisan speech full of lies and vitriol,” Murphy said. “I’m heartbroken that I’m not going to be there. But he’s turned his speech into a joke.”

Many of those boycotting will attend counter-programming.

“The American people already know what the state of our union is,” said Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson. “It is marked by frustration, rising costs, and deep exhaustion. Families are stretched thin by higher prices. Communities are disturbed by fatal immigration enforcement tactics. And working people are watching the wealthiest Americans benefit while the middle class is left behind.” 

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger gave the Democratic response following Trump’s remarks, asking three questions in her 12-minute speech.

“Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no,” she said.

California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Spanish-language response.

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Shauneen Miranda and Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

U.S. Sen Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, will register a protest of President Donald Trump’s attempt to exert more control over election infrastructure by bringing her state’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, as her guest to the State of the Union Tuesday evening.

Trump has pressured senators to approve a House-passed bill that would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, involve the federal Department of Homeland Security in elections and disallow universal vote-by-mail that is popular in Washington, Oregon and other states.

Members of Congress often bring guests to the State of the Union to spotlight particular issues and Democrats this year are raising a host of objections to the president’s tariffs program and his immigration crackdown — including a weekslong operation in Minneapolis that resulted in two U.S. citizens’ deaths at the hands of immigration agents — and other issues.

Cantwell told States Newsroom in a phone interview hours before Trump’s address was set to begin that changing election infrastructure could have more long term effects on U.S. democracy than other Trump policies.

“I’m not saying that the tariff issue didn’t have an impact,” Cantwell said. “I’m not saying it’s not horrific that you killed two American citizens who were just trying to express their rights to free speech. But you could upend a lot by changing our election system overnight. I don’t know how you recover from that immediately.”

The Republican bill would amount to nationalizing elections, a contradiction of the Constitution’s provision that states administer elections, Cantwell and Hobbs said.

The framers of the Constitution gave that power to states to protect against the executive branch overreaching, Hobbs said.

The bill would violate that idea, Cantwell said.

“We would be basically saying, ‘It’s okay for a federal leader … and their agency, Homeland Security, to mess around and determine who’s eligible to vote,” Cantwell said. “The reason the separation of powers exist is … so that you didn’t have that federal control, so that people did have faith that they weren’t being manipulated by the federal power.”

The GOP’s championing of the bill follows President Donald Trump’s comments advocating to nationalize elections, a mid-decade campaign to redraw state congressional districts in Republicans’ favor and more than two dozen Department of Justice lawsuits demanding Democratic-led states turn over unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.

Senate rules at risk?

Cantwell’s worries about the bill, known as the SAVE Act, have grown after seeing Trump’s pressure campaign on Republicans, as well as a recent sign of support for the bill from moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine and comments from the bill’s Senate sponsor, Mike Lee of Utah, about adjusting the chamber’s rules to ensure the bill’s passage.

And Cantwell said she expects Trump to mention the issue during Tuesday’s address.

Under Senate rules and tradition, 60 of the 100 senators must approve a procedural vote to move to final passage of nearly all legislation. With Republicans holding 53 seats, that means bills must have bipartisan support to pass the chamber. 

Lee has said he wanted to tweak Senate rules so that opponents of a bill would have to continuously speak on the floor to block consideration of a bill that would otherwise have the support to pass.

Cantwell said she and Hobbs would seek out opportunities Tuesday evening to bring Republicans to their side of the issue.

“He and I got a busy night tonight,” she said. “We gotta go buttonhole a bunch of Republican senators.”

Noncitizens and voting

Republican supporters of the bill say it will enhance election security and ensure that noncitizens do not vote in U.S. elections.

But noncitizens are already barred from federal elections and instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare, even in studies by conservative groups.

And the bill presents several provisions that could reduce voter participation, Cantwell and Hobbs said. 

Many Americans do not have a passport or easy access to their birth certificate. Nearly 70 million married women have changed their names, creating an additional barrier to voter registration.

“I don’t think they’re thinking about these things,” Hobbs said.

The bill would also imperil Washington’s universal vote-by-mail system in which every voter is sent a ballot that can be returned through the mail. 

Vote by mail “has nothing to do with partisanship,” Hobbs said. “It’s about convenience of the voter to be able to take the time to choose the people they want to choose. It’s about security, it’s about transparency, it’s not partisanship.”

The system, which for years was popular among Republicans and Democrats for its convenience, became a partisan issue when Trump partially blamed his 2020 election loss on the mail-in voting increase put in place during that COVID-era election.

“We’re here to evangelize that this system has enfranchised people to vote more and have a higher turnout, which is what our goal should be,” Cantwell said Tuesday. “That’s why the League of Women Voters are on our side in this debate and against the SAVE Act, because the whole goal is to have a more participatory government and vote by mail is delivering that.”

After years of states pushing legislation to accelerate the development of data centers and the electric grid to support them, some legislators want to limit or repeal state and local incentives that paved their way.

President Donald Trump also has changed his tone. Last year he issued an executive order and other federal initiatives meant to support accelerated data center development. Then last month, he cited rising electricity bills in saying technology companies that build data centers must “pay their own way,” in a post on Truth Social.

As the momentum shifts, lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed legislation that aims to rein in data center development by repealing tax exemptions, adding conditions to certain incentives or placing moratoriums on data center projects. Virginia lawmakers, for example, are considering ending a data center tax break that costs the state about $1.6 billion a year.

“Who is actually benefiting from these massive data centers that, in many cases, are the size of one or two shopping malls combined?” asked Michigan Democratic state Rep. Erin Byrnes, who introduced a proposal to repeal the state’s data center tax exemptions. “They have a large footprint in terms of land and energy usage. And by and large, it’s not going to be the average resident who lives near a data center who’s going to benefit.”

Over the past few years, more data centers have been built in an effort to meet the demand for digital processing power, which has rapidly increased as more artificial intelligence systems come online. Data centers house thousands of servers that are responsible for storing and transmitting data required for internet services to work.

But as local communities voice growing outrage over rising electricity prices and environmental concerns brought by data centers, such as water and energy use, lawmakers in several states are hoping to slow data center development. By limiting incentives or placing moratoriums on new projects, state legislators are hoping to give themselves more time to determine whether the massive facilities are worth losing millions or more in tax revenue each year.

Some experts also say that developers and tech companies have exaggerated some of the benefits they bring to local communities. While the promise of new jobs sounds attractive, local leaders may face other concerns, such as the effects of diverting construction resources away from other purposes and higher energy costs caused by AI, said Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University in Indiana.

“A lot of households — and the people that are elected by households — and local governments are becoming more unnerved by the public pushback to data centers,” Hicks said.

Tech developers and data center operators are concerned, however, that the changes could hurt the rapidly growing industry. And most states and localities already require developers using incentives to follow certain requirements, said Dan Diorio, the vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, a lobbying group for the data center industry.

State lawmakers have to consider how changes to incentive programs could upend years of construction, which has long-term business impacts, Diorio said.

“I think data centers are very much the backbone of the 21st-century economy,” he said. “We’re generating economic activity in states, contributing to state-level GDP, contributing significantly to labor income and state and local tax revenue, and creating significant amounts of jobs. I mean, we’re just jumping into something preemptively here.”

Incentives granted

At least 37 states offer incentives that are available to data centers, including sales tax exemptions and property tax abatements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Sales tax exemptions, the most common incentive, allow data center developers to buy computers and other equipment at a much lower cost.

“I think these are one of many factors that the data centers are looking at, along with the cost of electricity, the cost of construction, land and things like that,” said Nicholas Miller, a policy associate at NCSL. “These incentives are one way that states are trying to pitch themselves as competitive to this industry.”

In 2020, Maryland implemented a program that exempts data centers from sales and use taxes if they provide at least five jobs within three years of applying to the program and invest at least $2 million in data center personal property. The first four years of the program cost the state $22 million — but $11 million of that came in 2024 alone, as the costs grew, Democratic state Del. Julie Palakovich Carr said.

Concerned about this and the impact of data centers on residents’ electricity bills, Palakovich Carr introduced legislation this year that would repeal the state’s sales and use tax exemptions for personal property used at data centers. The measure, which is under consideration in the House, would also restrict localities in the state from eliminating or reducing assessments for personal property used in data centers, which drew opposition from the Maryland Association of Counties.

The amount of money states are forfeiting to provide tax breaks for data centers is increasingly concerning, Palakovich Carr said.

“Unfortunately, that’s the turn we’re seeing across many other states,” she said. “The price starts out maybe in line with what we think it’s going to be. But over time it just costs more and more.”

Similar bills that would repeal or halt state incentives for data centers have been filed in Arizona and Georgia.

“When we look at potential subsidies for businesses, I’m really looking at it from a frame of incentivizing new behavior rather than just giving away money for things that the companies were going to already do anyways,” Palakovich Carr said. “I think it’s really important that once these things get put in place, we look at the data and see what’s happening on the ground.”

In 2024, Michigan enacted sales and use tax exemptions on certain data centers through at least 2050.

Now, with developers looking at more than a dozen sites for potential data centers, public sentiment has soured, said Byrnes, who had voted against the measure. Communities across the state began organizing in an effort to stop data centers from coming to their neighborhoods because of environmental concerns and energy costs, she said.

The outcry prompted Byrnes to co-sponsor a bipartisan package of three bills that would repeal the 2024 law.

“We’re taking a stand with this legislation to say that we don’t believe data centers should be offered these exemptions,” she said. “I believe it aligns with public sentiment.”

Lawmakers in a handful of states — including New York, Oklahoma and Vermont — have filed bills that would place a temporary moratorium on all data center projects and require studies of their impacts.

Georgia Democratic state Rep. Ruwa Romman introduced a measure this session that would put a moratorium on new data center projects until March 2027. The proposal would give the legislature time to study the impact of data centers on the state’s natural resources, environment and other areas.

“We have such a beautiful state and it would be a damn shame to completely and utterly wreck it and its landscape for short-term gain,” Romman said. “These data centers aren’t bringing jobs. They’re saying they’re bringing the revenue, but there’s a ton of fine print on the revenue that’s coming in. So, I’ve been urging my colleagues from every side of the political spectrum to just take a beat.”

In 2021, the Oklahoma legislature approved a measure from current Republican House Speaker Kyle Hilbert that excludes new data centers from qualifying for an exemption program that allows certain manufacturers not to pay property taxes for their first five years in business. Any data centers that qualified for the program in the five years prior to the law, however, can continue to apply for exemptions.

This year, as more project proposals were made, Hilbert introduced legislation to ensure no data centers could “slip through the cracks.”

“These aren’t the days of being able to build a data center, cut deals with NDAs, then start turning dirt before the constituents even know what’s happened,” Hilbert said. “Those days are over, and data centers need to be proactive in their messaging and talking to people about their concerns.”

Costs vs. benefits

Last year, Virginia, home to the most data centers in the country, gave up $1.6 billion in sales and use tax revenues from data centers, state data shows. That’s a 118% increase from the previous year, according to a report from Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that focuses on economic development incentives. Another report from the group said Georgia is expected to lose at least $2.5 billion to data center sales tax exemptions this year, 664% higher than the state’s previous estimate.

Virginia state lawmakers are considering legislation that would require data centers to achieve high energy efficiency standards and decrease their use of diesel backup generators in order to be eligible for the state’s sales and use tax exemption. The measure, which passed the House, is now moving through the Senate.

Before the end of his term, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, suggested a provision in his proposed state budget that would extend the data center tax incentive from 2035 to 2050. The Senate’s budget bill, however, would end the incentive altogether on Jan. 1, 2027. It’s not clear if state leaders, including current Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, support the measure.

While states can put a specific number on the tax losses, it’s much more difficult to determine how much data centers contribute to local communities and the state, Miller said.

Virginia brings in a significant amount of revenue from the property taxes for each facility. Local construction firms, restaurants and other small businesses also benefit from ongoing projects, he said.

“This is the big question,” Miller said. “With all economic development projects, it’s generally a lot easier to measure the cost of the incentive directly versus the benefits.”

The changing incentive landscape may cause instability within the data center industry, said Diorio, of the Data Center Coalition. Data center projects are large-scale capital investments that play out for several years, but changing policies could upend that progress.

“When states look at these policies or consider abrupt ends to programs, that creates significant market uncertainty,” Diorio said. “It will have a significant long-term impact on the viability of that market for data center development. Industries are very responsive to market signals, and any kind of uncertainty will bring up a red flag because you’re looking to invest for the long haul.”

Stateline reporter Madyson Fitzgerald can be reached at mfitzgerald@stateline.org.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Republican lawmakers have heard farmers’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Their response? Short-term pain, long-term gain.

Farmers faced a shrunken export market and operating costs after Trump enforced steep tariffs on key trading partners and farm materials last year. In response, the Trump administration will begin disbursing a $12 billion bailout to farmers due to “unfair market disruptions” at the end of this month.

Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin, a major agricultural producer, acknowledge the 2025 to 2026 crop season challenges, which resulted in an estimated $34.6 billion in losses for the industry, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But they’re arguing that the success of specialty crops and rosier-than-expected economic indicators are evidence farmers can withstand any turmoil the tariffs have caused.

“Our farmers understand that we have to level the playing field. And how do you do that? You do that with these tariffs,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden said. “In order to get to the long term, you have to get through the short term, and that’s the reason that this money’s going back to people in the agriculture industry.”

A bipartisan group of agricultural experts said the Trump administration’s policies have “significantly damaged” the American farm economy in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leadership this month, as first reported by The New York Times.

“It is clear that the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” they wrote.

Wisconsin agriculture experts told NOTUS the administration’s bailout is undesirable and insufficient to cover many farmers’ lost revenue this year.

“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.

“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”

Republicans in the state, however, are standing behind the president’s agenda, pointing to the administration’s stated goal to boost the manufacturing industry through baseline tariff rates for all countries, reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Wisconsin, at the end of the day, is going to benefit as we bring manufacturing back to the state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee for governor.

He blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for sending manufacturing companies packing for cheaper operations in China. Trump replaced NAFTA during his first term in office with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a deal Tiffany applauded.

Trump administration officials have defended tariffs in cable television appearances and in congressional hearings as key to transforming the American economy, even as some agricultural industries languish. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether instability in the agricultural markets is a result of Trump’s tariff policies.

“It has nothing to do with the tariffs,” Bessent said.

Still, there are some signs the administration could be responsive to the backlash. The Trump administration is planning to roll back tariffs on some steel and aluminum goods due to concerns the tariffs are hurting consumers, the Financial Times reported.

The soybean industry is one of the hardest hit by tariffs, which temporarily cost farmers the U.S.’ largest soybean trading partner, China. Although China fulfilled its initial purchase agreement last month and has agreed to purchase tens of millions more metric tons over the next few years, American soybean producers withstood an unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases by China.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Republicans are looking past the short-term pain of Trump’s tariffs 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.

OTTAWA, Kan. — When Kansas began requiring residents to prove their U.S. citizenship before voting more than a decade ago, Steven Wayne Fish tried and failed.

A first-time father in his 30s at the time, he wanted a say in debates over public school funding despite having never voted before. But Fish, who was born on a since-decommissioned Air Force base in Illinois, couldn’t find his birth certificate, leaving him unable to register for the 2014 general election.

A federal court eventually blocked the Kansas law following a lawsuit in which Fish was the namesake plaintiff. For years, the Fish legal case served as a warning to politicians who wanted voters to produce documents proving their citizenship.

That’s changing, as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress try to impose a similar proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirement nationwide through a long-shot proposal called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or SAVE America Act.

Blue states would have a major tool to push back. Whether they would use it is less clear.

States have the power to set separate rules for state and local elections and to apply federal restrictions only on residents voting in federal races, according to interviews with more than a dozen election experts, officials and lawmakers. Operating two distinct election systems, a process called bifurcation, would give states more freedom over who can vote in races for governor, state legislature and other down-ballot contests.

Bifurcation would ensure that individuals like Fish could still cast a ballot in some contests, even if they couldn’t vote for members of Congress or president.

“It’s very strange and surreal,” Fish told Stateline about a potential national requirement during an interview on Tuesday in Ottawa, Kansas, where he works at a warehouse. Those looking back at his state, he said, will see “it did not work at all.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, states regulate the times, places and manner of federal elections, though Congress has the authority to override them. But Congress has far less authority over state and local elections.

Brandon Fincher, managing editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice, said a national proof-of-citizenship requirement would likely generate interest in bifurcation. “I think it absolutely would,” said Fincher, who wrote a dissertation that found states are likely to adopt dual systems when their voter registration rules are threatened by federal mandates or court orders.

Bifurcation wouldn’t restrain Congress from imposing voting restrictions on federal elections. It also wouldn’t stop any changes Trump has threatened to make through executive order, but those would almost certainly face immediate challenges in federal courts. The president has no unilateral authority under the U.S. Constitution to direct how states run elections.

In the past 30 years, only a handful of states have tried a two-tier system, according to Fincher’s research. Costs and administrative barriers tend to discourage states from pursuing a dual system, election experts and officials said.

Kansas briefly had one more than a decade ago. It came amid legal fights over the state’s 2011 proof-of-citizenship law and allowed voters who signed a sworn statement that they were citizens, but didn’t provide documentation, to cast ballots for federal races but not in state and local elections.

Arizona is the only state that currently operates a two-tier system — requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state and local races, but not in federal.

Still, the country is littered with current smaller-scale efforts and past examples where states operated multiple election systems.

More than 20 cities allow some form of noncitizen voting in local races, for example, even though only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, according to Immigrant Voting Rights, a site that tracks legal noncitizen voting. Before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed universal suffrage to women, some states allowed women to vote in some contests but not all. And Maryland lawmakers are currently weighing a plan to bifurcate its elections for some absentee ballots.

Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, said more proposals to bifurcate state and federal elections could follow any congressional action.

“We’re always going to see that any time there are major federal policy changes being considered that some states are going to consider, at the very least, a system where state and local elections don’t meet those requirements,” Orey said.

Maryland weighs ‘insurance policy’

In Maryland, state lawmakers are weighing bifurcating a small portion of their absentee ballots depending on the outcome of a looming U.S. Supreme Court case involving mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia offer so-called grace periods for ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but arrive afterward, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Trump administration argues these ballots cannot be counted. A ruling in that case, expected later this year, will affect millions of Americans.

If the White House wins, twin bills being considered in Maryland’s House and Senate would direct election officials to tabulate all votes on those ballots except for federal offices.

Maryland state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat sponsoring one of the bills, called the legislation an “insurance policy.”

The sponsor of the Maryland House bill, Democratic state Del. Kris Fair, said lawmakers would have to wait and see on federal actions before deciding whether the bifurcation could be expanded to cover additional restrictions on voting, but he didn’t rule it out.

Fair said additional bifurcation would be a “complicated conversation.” But he added that Maryland legislators would always seek to reduce as many barriers to voting as possible while keeping elections safe and secure.

“Every time the federal government is acting, seeking to restrict access and seeking to disenfranchise voters, we are going to immediately look at the books and see how we can bring enfranchisement back to the largest number of Maryland voters that we can,” Fair said.

A national battle

Republicans face tremendous pressure from Trump, who has called for “nationalizing” elections, to act ahead of the midterms in November to decide control of Congress.

They say new nationwide election standards are needed to guard against voter fraud, though instances of fraud are very rare. Trump has long pushed the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, and his administration has taken steps to keep attention focused on that race, including an FBI seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, last month.

The SAVE America Act narrowly passed the U.S. House last week and has majority support in the Senate, but faces a likely filibuster that would take 60 votes to overcome — which it does not have. The measure would require the public to produce a U.S. passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. It would take effect immediately if signed into law.

The Trump administration has cast anyone opposed to the legislation as motivated by a desire to cheat.

“They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them and to rob the United States citizens of their vote,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference in Arizona last week.

US House approves bill mandating proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement to Stateline that Trump is “committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.”

Just a handful of years ago, some Republican legislators considered bifurcation in response to Democratic proposals during the Biden administration that sparked fears of a nationalized election system.

When a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022 tried to pass sweeping election legislation that included automatic voter registration, a conservative backlash led to the introduction of bills in some statehouses that sought to assert greater state authority over elections.

In 2023, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that since 2020, legislation had been offered in five states — Alaska, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Texas — that would have separated state and federal elections. One 2021 Alaska measure would have directed state officials to stop holding elections for president and Congress if new federal law created a significant conflict with Alaska regulations. No state moved forward with separating its elections.

“If the Federal Government nationalizes the election system, undermining the long tradition of mutual cooperation, or worse, the sovereign rights of a state to manage its internal election affairs, then Alaska should simply tell the federal government to run their own election, bifurcating the election process,” Mike Shower, a then-state GOP senator who sponsored the measure, wrote in a statement at the time.

Shower, now a candidate for lieutenant governor, didn’t respond to an interview request sent to his campaign.

Election officials predict complications

Whatever the motivation behind considering bifurcation, election officials and experts say the burden of running a dual system is high.

Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, called the scenario a “nightmare” for election administrators because they would have to implement state and federal requirements while paying for it all.

Jamie Shew, clerk of Douglas County, Kansas, an area that includes the sprawling University of Kansas campus, said an upcoming primary election there has about 113 ballot styles — variations of ballots that voters receive depending on where they live and what party they belong to. A bifurcated system would only increase that.

“It just adds this layer of administration and complication,” said Shew, a Democrat. “It’s one of those things that as an election administration keeps you awake, because do we have it right?”

Even setting aside bifurcation, enforcing a proof-of-citizenship requirement could be costly for election officials. Bob Page, the nonpartisan registrar of voters in Orange County, California — an area with about 3.2 million residents — estimates the additional cost in his jurisdiction could exceed $6 million a year.

Page told Stateline in an email that assuming each voter could be served in 10 minutes, his office would need 59 additional staff members. He emphasized that he takes no position on legislation and will implement any changes in the law.

In Douglas County, Shew said that as Congress has debated a proof-of-citizenship requirement, he’s heard from election officials around the country who want to know about Kansas’ experience. When the state law was in effect, Shew said, he hired two additional temporary staff members to help process voter registrations.

Despite serving a university community, Shew said many of the issues his office encountered involved older voters who couldn’t locate a birth certificate or had certificates with incorrect information. In one instance, a birth certificate for someone born at a house decades ago listed when a doctor showed up, but not the date of birth. In other cases, birth certificates spelled names incorrectly.

“There’s a lot of stuff we’re going to have to record,” Shew said of the proposed SAVE America Act requirements. “If you get 100 [voter] registrations in a day, I’m going to have to go back to bringing in temporary staff just to handle that amount of extra paperwork.”

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican running for governor, didn’t directly answer Stateline’s questions about whether he supports the SAVE America Act or has any concerns about the ability of election officials in the state to implement the measure if it becomes law. Schwab told The Associated Press in 2024 that Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement “didn’t work out so well.”

In a short written statement to Stateline this week, Schwab noted only that Kansas has had a voter ID requirement — which is different from a proof-of-citizenship requirement — for more than a decade and that all states with one benefit.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who championed the state’s proof-of-citizenship law while he was state secretary of state and personally defended it in court, didn’t answer questions from Stateline.

Fish, the Kansas resident who tried unsuccessfully to register to vote in 2014, said he eventually found his birth certificate in the back of a baby book, but not before it was too late for that election. A resident of Garnett, a city of about 3,200 people, Fish said he’s learned not to bring up the legal challenge often.

Many people don’t understand how it could happen to an average person, he said, adding they believe there must be a reason the person trying to register was at fault.

“It’s not really something you can change their minds on if they’re on that side,” Fish said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

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Editor’s note: This is a static version of the interactive story found at this link.

Part 1: A struggling regional carrier

The legacy network

Air Wisconsin Airlines has not been spared by the nationwide decline of regional air service. The 60-year-old carrier laid off hundreds of employees in Appleton and Milwaukee last year after terminating a contract to provide aircraft, crews and services to American Airlines in January 2025. The airline’s planned pivot to charter service and federally subsidized connections to underserved airports didn’t pan out, prompting another round of layoffs by the spring.

But the company’s troubles didn’t entirely ground its fleet. Flight tracking data indicate that Air Wisconsin continued to provide regional air service through the end of 2025, primarily connecting its Wisconsin hubs to mid-sized Midwestern airports as it had for decades.

The sale

In January, Harbor Diversified Inc., the Appleton-based parent company of Air Wisconsin, sold the company’s operations and 13 of its jets to CSI Aviation, a New Mexico-based air charter company and longtime federal contractor owned by former New Mexico Republican Party chair Allen Weh.

Air Wisconsin sent recall notices to the company’s furloughed flight attendants after the sale to CSI Aviation, and the Association of Flight Attendants — the union representing the furloughed workers — negotiated an immediate raise for returning members. In a January press release announcing the recall notices, the union noted that only a third of the furloughed flight attendants opted to return.

Neither CSI nor Harbor Diversified responded to requests for comment.

CSI is central to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

It has provided charter services for ICE since 2024, transporting detainees and deportees both directly and through subcontractors.

The company entered its current $1.5 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security in November of last year.

Demand for private charters surged after 2010, when the Obama administration moved away from relying solely on the U.S. Marshals Service.

Air Wisconsin isn’t alone. Avelo Airlines began deportation flights last spring, but backed out last month following intense public backlash.

A transformed network

CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier.

Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.

Flight data indicates Air Wisconsin planes made at least 125 trips in January 2026, up from roughly 60 in December 2025. Thicker lines on the map indicate more frequent routes.

Part 2: Air ICE

Many of Air Wisconsin’s new destinations are within easy reach of ICE detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana, including some of the agency’s largest.

The Minnesota operation

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is among the busiest in the country, but Air Wisconsin rarely provided service to the Twin Cities in the final months of 2025.

That changed in January, just weeks after the Trump administration dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for an immigration enforcement offensive dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Hundreds of immigrants detained in the operation have since departed the airport in shackles, loaded onto charter flights bound for ICE detention facilities farther south.

Alexandria

The modest airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, is now the epicenter of ICE’s deportation flight operations. Air Wisconsin has flown to or from Alexandria at least 30 times since the airline’s acquisition by CSI, on par with the airline’s service to Madison and outpacing service to Appleton, home to the airline’s corporate headquarters.

The GEO Group, an international private prison operator, runs an ICE detention facility on the airport’s tarmac. A dozen other ICE facilities sit within easy reach. Among them is the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in custody on Dec. 14, 2025. ICE acknowledged the incident in a press release four days later, though the agency did not specify the cause of Rodriguez’s death.

El Paso

Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility, sits just east of El Paso International Airport. Air Wisconsin flights took off from or landed in El Paso at least 32 times in January and early February, second only to Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.

The camp drew national attention in early January after Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, died by asphyxiation after guards pinned him to the floor of a cell. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a homicide.

Lunas Campos’ death came a month after Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old from Guatemala and detained at Camp East Montana, died in an El Paso hospital; ICE attributed Gaspar-Andres’ death to liver and kidney failure.

Another detainee, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died at the camp on Jan. 14 in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” — an explanation his family questions. ICE agents detained Diaz in Minneapolis only days before his death.

Back at home

Air Wisconsin hasn’t entirely withdrawn from its home state hubs. Many of the airline’s remaining pilots, flight attendants and ground crew are still Wisconsin-based, and Milwaukee remains the airline’s primary hub.

The airline is now hiring for more than a dozen Wisconsin-based positions — including legal counsel.

About the data

Wisconsin Watch used FlightAware AeroAPI data (Sept 2025 – Feb 2026) to reconstruct patterns before and after the Jan. 9 sale to CSI Aviation.

Hubs on these maps represent the 10 airports most frequently used. While the routes align with ICE operations, the data does not confirm if specific flights carried detainees.

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE (static version) 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.

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Air Wisconsin turns to ICE 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.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told governors Friday during a meeting at the White House he has no plans to surge federal immigration operations in states where it’s not wanted. 

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said during an afternoon press conference with several other governors that Trump was asked during the closed-door meeting about what lessons he learned from immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, where federal officers killed two U.S. citizens. 

“The president said, ‘We’ll only go where we’re wanted.’ And said, for example, ‘I won’t go to New York unless Kathy calls and says she wants me to come to New York,’” she said. “I took that as a very positive outcome from this meeting. And I would want to hold him and the administration to that statement.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, vice chair of the National Governors Association, said Democratic governors were able to express “how problematic” actions by immigration enforcement officials have been, especially after Republicans in Congress drastically increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection in their signature tax and spending cuts law.  

“We were actually encouraged to hear the president say that one of the takeaways from Minnesota was that he only wants to go places that he is welcomed. So we were very glad to hear that,” he said. “I want to be very clear that until we can have an accountable agency, the type of surge that we saw in Minnesota is not welcome in the state of Maryland.”

Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said during the press conference at the NGA’s winter conference there have been “no problems” with federal immigration enforcement actions in his state. 

“Why? Because it was a completely integrated operation under which local, state and federal partners worked together,” he said. “We did not allow people to break our laws and get in the way and impede law enforcement in doing their lawful duty.” 

Landry said Trump “made it very clear, if you don’t want our help, we won’t give you any help.”

Tariffs ruling interrupts meeting

Governors from throughout the country traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to attend their annual winter conference and meet with Trump at the White House, though that meeting was diverted somewhat after the Supreme Court ruled on tariffs. 

Trump is scheduled to host a black tie dinner for some of the governors this weekend, though he decided not to invite certain Democrats to that event, provoking controversy throughout the lead-up to the governors’ meeting. 

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, chairman of the National Governor’s Association, said during the afternoon press conference the morning meeting with Trump included 12 GOP and 10 Democratic governors. 

“It was overall a really productive meeting and a great show of ‘Hey, here is how the governors can come before the president and bring up issues that affect all of us,’” he said. 

Moore said the White House meeting was “productive” and “a chance for us to be able to share our thoughts and our perspectives and our ideas with the Cabinet secretaries and the agency heads and with the president himself.”

“We had a chance to talk about the things that matter to the people of our states. We had a chance to speak with Cabinet secretaries about energy prices and how we have to have a singular focus to bring energy prices down,” he said. “We had a chance to speak with the Transportation secretary about transportation issues. In the case of Maryland, it was the American Legion Bridge and the Francis Scott Key Bridge.”

Moore added the meeting was an important opportunity to “speak truth to power” and show that bipartisanship still exists on certain issues.

Sewage spill, Gateway Tunnel 

Moore said he didn’t bring up Trump blaming him for a sewage spill that began with a discharge into the Potomac River in the District of Columbia, opting instead to use the meeting to focus on talking with Cabinet secretaries on infrastructure, natural disaster relief and housing. 

“I am here to focus on helping the people of my state,” he said. “I am not going to spend a second talking about a petty attack that the president of the United States had.”

Hochul said she appreciated the Cabinet secretaries were at the meeting and that governors were able to talk with them about several issues. 

“I was able to talk about the Gateway Tunnel and keeping the funding on for the largest infrastructure project in America today,” she said, referring to a project to build new rail track between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River. “We’d like to keep our offshore wind on and not have to go to court constantly to get that turned back on.”

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said he was able to speak directly with Trump about the state’s ongoing recovery needs from Hurricane Helene.

“We’ve got to rebuild houses. We’ve got to rebuild roads and bridges. We’ve got to rebuild businesses. And we cannot do that in North Carolina without the partnership of the federal government,” he said. “We have a $13.5 billion request with (the Office of Management and Budget) and with the Congress. And I asked the president and he said that they are eager to talk about that. 

“So I came away very encouraged that he will bring renewed focus from this administration to help western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene.”

Landry said the Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs, which was released during the meeting, “completely overshadowed, which, in my opinion, was getting ready to be a very productive meeting with the president.”

“It was unfortunate that the Supreme Court came out with a bad ruling at that time because I think we were going to have a great meeting,” he said. 

Trump vowed to keep the tariffs in place under other authorities he believes he holds during an afternoon press conference at the White House, where he also rebuked the six Supreme Court justices who wrote “that (the International Economic Emergency Powers Act) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Hochul disagreed with the assertion the Supreme Court’s decision wasn’t the right one. 

“I think the Supreme Court, many of whom are appointees by the president, sided with supporting the Constitution and doing what’s right,” she said. “So we support this decision and hope that we can continue to find ways to work together to drive down costs, not do the opposite as we saw tariffs do in our states.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to keep tariffs in place using different authorities after the Supreme Court ruled he exceeded his power under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. 

During the afternoon press conference in the White House briefing room, Trump repeatedly criticized the six justices who wrote “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing and I’m ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said. 

Trump’s disdain of Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor did not stop there. 

He said the justices’ opposition to his tariff policies meant they were a “disgrace to our nation” as well as “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Samuel Alito and Thomas joined Kavanaugh’s dissent.

Trump appointed Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh during his first term.

But, Trump said, the ruling would not change the tariffs he has implemented under IEEPA since he planned to institute the same tax on goods coming into the country under different laws. 

“The good news is that there are methods, practices, statutes and authorities as recognized by the entire Court in this terrible decision, and also as recognized by Congress, which they refer to, that are even stronger than the IEEPA tariffs available to me as president of the United States,” he said. 

Trump said he would sign an order later in the day to “impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”

Trump didn’t commit to returning the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. government has collected from IEEPA tariffs, saying the ruling didn’t address that issue. 

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Trump said he didn’t plan to ask Congress to pass any new laws or give the president broader tariff authority. 

“I don’t have to. I have the right to do tariffs. And I’ve always had the right to do tariffs. It has all been approved by Congress, so there’s no reason to do it,” he said. “All we’re doing is we’re going through a little bit more complicated process, not complicated very much, but a little more complicated than what we had. And we’ll be able to take in more tariffs.” 

Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress, which will likely be attended by many, if not all, of the Supreme Court justices, on Tuesday night. 

Trump said he “couldn’t care less” whether the justices attend the speech, which is held in the House chamber. He said they are “barely” still invited, even though the president, who leads the executive branch, doesn’t hold the authority to exclude guests from either chamber of Congress, which makes up the separate but equal legislative branch.  

Justices can, however, choose not to attend.