Protesters took to the streets in cities and rural communities Saturday to rally against President Donald Trump’s policies in the third No Kings demonstration since the Republican’s return to office last year.

Organizers said there were more than 3,000 events across the nation expected to draw millions. It came one month after the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began. The war was among many issues that demonstrators said brought them out, also citing aggressive ICE actions toward immigrants, the rising cost-of-living and attacks on the constitution, and civil and voting rights.

Here is a look at some of the rallies from across the nation.

Zabi Sahibzada, refugee resettlement director for Jewish Social Services (JSS) in Madison, Wisconsin, has lived through war, displacement, the collapse of Afghanistan and the cataclysmic consequences of shifting U.S. policies abroad and at home.

Today, even as our country plunges into a new war in the Middle East, the Trump administration has pulled back from its commitments to people who helped the U.S. during the long, brutal war in Afghanistan. 

Sahibzada talks to his family every day as they cope with the hardships of living under Taliban rule. He had hoped to bring his family to the U.S. as part of a family reunification program for people who helped our country in Afghanistan. But that program was suspended by President Donald Trump. Now his family is in limbo. He is particularly concerned about his two daughters, ages 18 and 11, who can no longer go to school because of the ban on education for girls. 

Meanwhile, Sahibzada is managing a program that has been severely disrupted by the Trump administration, which set a record-low refugee admissions ceiling of only 7,500 people for Fiscal Year 2026 — down from 125,000 the previous year — with most slots reserved for white South Africans. JSS is no longer resettling hundreds of refugees from around the world in South Central Wisconsin. Instead, the group is focused on continuing to serve the people it has already resettled here. Part of that work involves fielding panicked calls from people who are losing their status as the Trump administration strips protections from those who fled to the U.S. seeking a safe haven from persecution.

Because of funding cuts, JSS, which traces its roots to the Madison Welfare Fund, created in 1940 to help resettle Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, has had to let go of most of its staff. “Currently we have three full-time case managers that are working with a huge population that’s already here, and we cannot afford more,” Sahibzada said.

JSS works with about 450 people, most of them in Dane County. Among the services the group provides are help with finding employment, health care, housing, language instruction and financial assistance for up to five years. The organization is scrambling to raise money privately to make up for the loss of federal funds. 

Sahibzada estimates that staff salaries cost JSS about $300,000 per year, with another $250,000 going to cover direct assistance for clients — but that amount rises and falls depending on need. This year, he expects need to rise significantly because of Trump administration policies, including the cancellation of Temporary Protected Status for people from Afghanistan and Haiti. 

“Those people, they’re not having documents anymore to work,” he said. “They’re losing their job, they’re losing their driving license, they cannot renew it. And then those will be knocking on our doors that they may need a lot of help … they’ll not be able to pay their rents, they’ll not be able to receive any other benefits from the government. And by the next few months, there will be cuts to health insurance. They’ll be cut from the food assistance or the cash assistance that a lot of people were depending on. So they will be coming and knocking on our doors, and that’s the gap that we may need to fill with the help from the communities.”

The gap, he estimates, will likely be between $300,000 and $400,000.

“I would say it’s a very chaotic moment for all the refugees and immigrants in the country,” Sahibzada said during a recent interview in his office on the west side of Madison.

Confronting chaos is, unfortunately, a familiar experience for Sahibzada.

A perilous escape from Afghanistan

Before he came to the United States from Afghanistan in 2022 on a special immigrant visa, Sahibzada worked for USAID in Afghanistan for more than a decade. As a software engineer, he helped create a text-messaging system that allowed farmers to get timely information about agricultural markets, and he was the main point of contact for people in rural areas in his region who wanted to get in touch with USAID-funded projects. “My name was the contact person on billboards and brochures and reference cards,” he said. “Everyone in the community knew my name. They knew my face.” 

That was a dangerous position to be in as the Taliban came back into power. Even before the U.S. withdrawal and the Taliban’s resurgence, Sahibzada began receiving threatening calls and social media warnings. He was approved for a special immigrant visa for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government — a program President Donald Trump suspended this year — but he had no idea how he would get out of the country, he said. The U.S. government offered to help him relocate to Doha, Qatar. 

“That was a time where it was not easy to go through the custom borders in Afghanistan, like, through the airport,” he said.  “I was afraid, like … how can I just go and will they allow me, or will they just keep me in prison, or will they just, I don’t know what will happen to me.”

“Thankfully, I made it to the airplane,” he said. He attributes his escape in part to the fact that he used an unfamiliar, formal name on his passport. “When I was working with USAID, my name was Sunny, which is like my nickname,” he explained. But on his passport, “I just put my last name as Sahibzada, which is our family name. So that helped me. When I was going to the airport, I was like, OK, whatever they’re having on their list will be not similar as what I have on my passport.” As a result, he thinks, he was able to slip past the Taliban and fly to Doha and from there, after a month-long process of vetting and background checks, to Wisconsin, where he has been living and working since December 2022. 

After resettling in Madison, Sahibzada got a job with the Milwaukee transit system, and commuted to work for a couple of months. He started at JSS in 2023 as a program manager and was promoted this year to direct the resettlement program.

During the time he has worked at JSS, much has changed.

A lot of clients call JSS with legal questions, worried that they might be deported. “We are connecting them with legal service providers,” Sahibzada said, “because we cannot answer.”

The group is planning “know your rights” and emergency preparedness training sessions for April, and working on creating a hotline for ICE sightings, staffed by volunteers speaking multiple languages, coordinated statewide with Wisconsin’s eight refugee services agencies.

Meanwhile, Sahibzada calls home every morning and evening to talk with his family, including his parents, his wife and his two daughters and three sons. “It’s really hard just staying home, not going out, and not going to school,” he said of his daughters. When he talks to them, “They’re always asking me, ‘What’s gonna happen?’ And I’m just giving them sometimes, like some false hopes that it will get better, which I don’t think it will in the very near future, but this is the hope that I’m giving.”

His family, seeking to join him in the U.S., traveled to Pakistan during the Biden administration and waited for months to have their papers processed by the U.S. embassy there. But their visas expired and they were forced to return to Afghanistan. Now, with the new U.S. immigration restrictions, things have gotten even more difficult. Sahibzada continues to hold out hope that things will eventually improve.

 “I’m hopeful that it gets changed, either with this administration or any other administration in the future,” he said. “I’m hopeful that this will change and people will be turning back to their normal life.”

More information about making a donation or volunteering is available on the JSS website

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A St Croix County school district that has become the target of right-wing politicians and activists for allowing students to use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity is now being investigated by the Trump administration Department of Education over the practice.

The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced in a press release Thursday it was investigating the New Richmond School District “based on reports that the District is allowing biological men to use female restrooms.” 

The head of a Wisconsin LGBTQ+ rights group Friday called the administration’s action an attempt to “bully” school children. 

“The law protects trans girls and their ability to use the girls’ bathroom,” said Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin. “A federal department’s press release does not, and cannot, change law. However, a federal administration can bully our kids, and that is exactly what this announcement of an investigation is.”

The New Richmond district superintendent, Troy Miller, was not available for comment early Friday afternoon. 

New Richmond policy attacked, defended

The Trump administration’s action follows its increased targeting of states that allow students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, including threatening to withhold federal funding. It also follows increasing attention on the New Richmond district’s policy from right-wing advocacy groups such as Moms for Liberty and Wisconsin Republican political campaigns.

A public discussion of the district’s policy arose at a Jan. 29 meeting of the district’s school board, the Hudson Star Observer reported, with community members speaking for and against allowing students to choose the restroom they use. Opponents of the policy included a school board candidate, the newspaper reported.

Videos posted from a meeting in February to the Facebook page NR Students Against Moms for Liberty show a handful of students speaking in favor of allowing students to use the restrooms they are comfortable with. 

“I’m a woman at New Richmond High School who uses the women’s bathroom, and I ask that you hear my perspective. As a woman, I’m not afraid to use the bathroom with someone who is transgender,” one student said. “While fear around potential violence in bathrooms is totally valid, potential worries about what can happen in the bathroom are misplaced. Trans people are not scary or pedophiles. They are our community members.”

In a presentation prepared for that Feb. 10 meeting, legal counsel for the school board defended the policy respecting gender identity. A 2017 federal appeals court ruling in the case Whitaker v. Kenosha Unified School District No. 1 Board of Education “defined ‘sex’ under Title IX to include gender identity,” according to the presentation slide — meaning that schools must allow students to use bathroom facilities consistent with their gender identity.

At a meeting in late February, Board President Bryan Schafer said district lawyers have told the board that the district is following current law and following case law, the Hudson Star Observer reported. School board members voted at that meeting to look into adding more school restrooms and rejected a call for an internal investigation.  

Republican politicians, candidates weigh in

A week after the issue first arose in January, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany posted on Facebook a demand that the district reverse its policy. Michael Alfonso, who is running in the 7th Congressional District race to succeed Tiffany, has posted on his campaign Facebook page at least five times in the last month about the policy, directing increased national attention to the district. State lawmakers from the area have also weighed in. 

Alfonso is the son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, who previously represented the 7th District, and recently was endorsed by President Donald Trump. 

“I would expect this from Madison or Milwaukee or some crazy liberal place but not northern Wisconsin,” Alfonso said in a video he filmed with his wife, Evita Duffy-Alfonso, on the way to a school board meeting. “This is why it’s so important for conservatives to remember that elections have consequences. There’s no reason that we should have liberal lunatics on our school boards. We need to make sure we’re getting out to vote in April and August and November because we have a very good chance to take our state back.”

The Department of Education press release Thursday said the agency’s Civil Rights Office “will determine whether the District violated Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX) by allowing students to access intimate facilities based on ‘gender identity,’ not biological sex.” The press release states that an unidentified student in the district has “fear, embarrassment, and anxiety” and no longer uses the restrooms while in school due to the district policy.

Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a statement that the department will investigate the complaint fully and address any violation promptly.

“Young women should never be forced to share intimate spaces with boys and men because school leaders care more about radical gender ideology than protecting girls’ safety, dignity, and privacy,” Richey said. “School board members who ignore these allegations are failing the families they serve.” 

Defending students’ choices, gender identity

Swetz of Fair Wisconsin said in a statement to the Examiner Friday that the Whitaker v. Kenosha decision is “very clear when it comes to accessing bathrooms in schools” in its finding that Title IX protects gender identity. 

“Wisconsinites and Americans are tired of this relentless bullying campaign against kids, families, educators, and schools,” Swetz said. These attacks are not only wrong, but also a significant misdirection of resources and focus.”

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), who is the mother of a transgender adult child and a co-chair of the state Legislature’s Transgender Parent and Nonbinary Advocacy Caucus, issued a statement Friday defending respect for students’ gender identity.

“Every student deserves to feel safe, respected, and supported at school. Schools have a responsibility to create safe and welcoming environments where all students can learn without fear of discrimination,” Ratcliff said. “Policies that recognize and respect students’ gender identity are consistent with the spirit of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the values of fairness and inclusion we strive to uphold in Wisconsin schools.”

Ratcliff said the local school board’s decision should be respected. 

“Local school boards are best positioned to make such decisions that reflect the needs of their schools while ensuring every child is treated with dignity and respect,” Ratcliff said. 

Nevertheless, there have been ongoing legal challenges over school bathroom policies in Wisconsin, and some school districts in Wisconsin have adopted policies that restrict transgender students. 

Just before Trump took office in January 2025, a federal judge overturned a Biden administration order extending Title IX to include protections for gender identity. On his first day in office, Trump reversed other Biden administration orders protecting gender identity and LGBTQ+ rights. Since then, the Trump administration has systematically erased references on federal websites to gender identity, labeling the concept as “gender ideology” and substituting “sex” in its place. 

In addition to Moms For Liberty, the right-wing Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) has also called attention to the New Richmond district. WILL recently put out model policies that would separate bathrooms based on sex.

“This is a welcome decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title IX and protect girls’ privacy,” WILL Deputy Counsel Cory Brewer said in a statement. “For too long, school districts in Wisconsin have allowed policies that force young girls to share private spaces with biological males.”

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WASHINGTON — As they seek to curb President Donald Trump’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement, congressional Democrats are looking to formalize some guidelines previous administrations used.

Of the 10 policy proposals Democratic leaders offered in negotiations to reopen the Department of Homeland Security, which has been in a funding lapse since Feb. 14 in the midst of widespread uproar over the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis last month, seven have been employed in at least some form by previous administrations.

Democrats are asking the Trump administration to reinstate policies it has rejected in its controversial push to carry out mass deportations. Prior policies Democrats want to formalize include use-of-force standards, allowing unannounced visits by members of Congress to facilities that detain immigrants and obtaining judicial warrants before entering private residences.

“Many of the things the Democrats are asking for are to revert to prior policies,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a senior DHS official during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. “Some of them are responding to the ways this administration is carrying out its operations that previous administrations did not.”

Formalizing the policies in law, as part of a deal to pass a fiscal 2026 funding bill for the department, would make them more permanent.

“Policies and guidance … apply as the current leadership applies them,” Cardinal Brown said. “They’re not absolutes, and they can be changed much more frequently.”

But an agreement between congressional Democrats and the White House on changes to immigration enforcement appears elusive. The White House’s response to the proposals was “incomplete and insufficient,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a Feb. 9 statement. 

No recent movement on negotiations

Democrats late Monday sent over a counterproposal to Republicans and the White House, but did not make public what those changes were, according to a statement from party leaders.

While there is bipartisan support for some of the proposals, like requiring body-worn cameras, others, such as barring immigration agents from wearing face coverings and requiring judicial warrants to enter private property, have been rejected outright by the Trump administration.

A White House official said the “Trump Administration remains interested in having good faith conversations with the Democrats.” 

“President Trump has been clear – he wants the government open,” according to the White House official.

Even with the department shut down, immigration enforcement will continue, due to $170 billion in funding in the massive tax cuts and spending package Trump signed into law last year. 

Democrats’ proposals do not include consequences if DHS doesn’t comply, which raises an issue of effectiveness, said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, an advocacy group that aims to provide free or low-cost legal services for immigrants.

“When Congress is negotiating policy measures, are they also putting teeth to those policy measures, and are they yanking away the funds that we know ICE and CBP will use to violate guardrails to begin with?” Altman said.

Changes demanded after Minneapolis deaths

After Renee Good was shot and killed by immigration officer Jonathan Ross on Jan. 7, lawmakers amended the Homeland Security funding bill to add guardrails, such as appropriating $20 million for body cameras and adding a requirement for DHS to report how funds from the tax cuts and spending package are being spent.

But a second death in Minnesota, that of intensive care unit nurse Alex Pretti on Jan. 24, spurred Democrats to reject funding for DHS without stronger policy changes to the enforcement tactics used by immigration officers at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. 

Only three of the 10 proposals from Schumer and Jeffries, both of New York, would be entirely new. 

They are: prohibiting ICE and other immigration enforcement agents from wearing face coverings, barring racial profiling after the Supreme Court cleared the way for the practice last year, and standardizing uniforms of DHS agents.

The heads of ICE and CBP rejected Democrats’ request to have their immigration officers forgo face coverings when asked during an oversight hearing before the House Homeland Security Committee last week. 

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, along with congressional Republicans, have argued that masks and face coverings prevent their officers from being doxed. 

Local cooperation

Other proposals, including barring of immigration enforcement of so-called sensitive locations such as religious places, child care facilities, hospitals and schools, would expand previous DHS guidance that restricted enforcement in such places.

The Democratic proposal calls for enforcement to be prohibited at those sensitive locations. Prior guidance allowed for the practice on a limited basis.

Then-acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello rescinded the policy shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January last year. There are several lawsuits brought by religious groups challenging the move by the Trump administration.

A requirement that immigration officials gain permission from local and state governments before undertaking large enforcement operations like the one in Minneapolis would build on previous policies of federal-local cooperation.

But that measure would be a long shot, Cardinal Brown said.

“I think that’s going to be a hard one,” she said. “The federal government has the authority to enforce immigration law anywhere in the country it wishes.”

She said a more realistic option would be for the federal government to inform or coordinate with local authorities for large-scale immigration operations. 

Another proposed requirement that DHS officials present identification also builds on a previous policy.

Another proposal builds on DHS policy of targeted enforcement by ending “indiscriminate arrests,” without warrants.

Under current immigration law, if an officer encounters a person believed to be in the U.S. unlawfully and can escape before a warrant is obtained, a warrantless arrest is lawful.

Democrats want to increase standards on the forms ICE uses to authorize an arrest. These administrative forms are not signed by a judge but instead by an ICE employee.

Judicial warrants

The remaining proposals would revert DHS policies to those in place under prior administrations’ guidance. Those include use-of-force standards, use of body cameras when interacting with the public, allowing members of Congress unannounced oversight visits at detention centers that hold immigrants and requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property.

An internal ICE memo, obtained by The Associated Press, showed that Lyons instructed ICE agents to enter private residences without a judicial warrant – a departure from longstanding DHS policy.

“This judicial warrant issue is so disturbing,” said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, or AILA.  

He said the question of whether a warrant is needed to enter private property was already decided under the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. 

“The fact that it’s being discussed now is really frightening,” Johnson said.

Body cameras

Providing funds for DHS to acquire body cameras for immigration officers is one proposal Democrats and Republicans seem to have agreed on.

Earlier this month, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that body cameras would be provided to all immigration agents in Minneapolis, and said that as “funding is available, the body camera program will be expanded nationwide.”

During an oversight hearing on Capitol Hill, Lyons said about 3,000 ICE officers currently have body cameras with another 6,000 cameras on the way. Scott said  roughly 10,000 Border Patrol agents, about half the total force, have body cameras.

But body cameras are not a guarantee against misconduct, Altman said.

CBP officials were wearing body cameras when Pretti was shot and killed. Scott said that footage would be released after the investigation is over.

“We see officers in the field right now wearing body-worn cameras engaging in abuse and violence on the daily,” Altman said. 

Oversight visits

One of the proposals would also end a DHS policy to require members of Congress to provide seven-day notice of oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants, despite a 2019 appropriations law that allows for unannounced visits.

Since last summer, several lawmakers have been denied oversight visits at ICE facilities prompting them to sue in federal court. 

On the day funding for DHS lapsed, Feb. 14, the Department of Justice submitted a brief, noting that because of the shutdown, unannounced oversight visits by lawmakers can be denied. 

The administration argued that during the shutdown, immigration enforcement has been funded by the tax cuts and spending bill, which does not include language allowing unannounced visits, rather than regular appropriations. 

“There is no lawful basis for the Court to enjoin Defendants’ conduct so long as the restricted funds have lapsed,” according to the document.

WASHINGTON — Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s faith calls him to address hunger, health access and community care, he said during an event Thursday at the progressive Center for American Progress that previewed a potential campaign in the 2028 cycle.

The Trump administration has “hijacked” faith, the Democrat said, leading to harm instead of helping people. He pointed to the repercussions of the major tax cuts and spending package Republicans passed last year that paid for tax cuts by making changes to food assistance and health care that will result in millions of people losing access to those safety nets.

“Are we using faith to help people or to hurt people?” he said. “It’s that simple.”

More than 100,000 people are expected to be kicked off SNAP and 25 rural hospitals are at risk of closing in Kentucky alone, he said.

“The reason why I talk about faith is it motivates me. (It’s) why I’m willing to get up no matter how mean and cruel the world has gotten and fight to make it just a little bit better,” he said.

Upcoming White House bid?

Beshear, 48, is widely expected to make a presidential run in 2028, and did not rule out a bid when members of the audience asked how he would govern if he won the presidency. 

Like previous presidential hopefuls, he’s gearing up for a book tour. He told the think tank his upcoming book explores how his Christian faith has led him through challenging times as governor, from the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic to deadly tornadoes, and how he believes those values can heal the deep polarization of the country.

“In the end, where we’ve got to go is … I hope that you would say that you are an American long before you’d say you are a Democrat or Republican,” Beshear said.

Beshear was a top candidate for 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ running mate before she selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Immigration

An audience member asked Beshear how he would address immigration if he were president. The issue has dominated political discourse since the deadly shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis last month. 

Beshear said that every federal immigration officer needs to be retrained, and he expressed concerns about what he called constitutional violations, such as agents entering private residences without a judicial warrant.

“What we see with (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is an out-of-control law enforcement agency,” he said. “They are so overly aggressive compared to any other law enforcement group in the nation.”

He said enforcement operations like the one in Minneapolis “will continue in other places if the current leadership continues and if they are not fully retrained.”

Beshear said the country needs comprehensive immigration reform that addresses long-term undocumented immigrants in the country and also provides a steady workforce. 

“I think that there is a reasonable way to go forward on immigration,” he said. 

RFK as campaign model

Another audience member asked Beshear if a potential 2028 Democratic presidential run would resemble Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign style that aimed to unite the country deeply divided in the midst of the Vietnam War, massive poverty and the Civil Rights Movement. Kennedy was a top candidate for the Democratic nomination before his June 1968 assassination.

Beshear said he would.

“Absolutely,” he said. “When I think about his campaign … you think about hope, you think about connection. He made you feel that progress was possible, that we could go up against huge adversaries like poverty and we could do better.”

WASHINGTON — Democratic members of Congress said Wednesday the Trump administration was using the “authoritarian playbook” when it tried to secure a grand jury indictment against them for releasing a video that reminded members of the military and intelligence communities they can refuse illegal orders. 

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin said during a joint press conference they don’t expect this will be the last time administration officials seek to punish them for the video. They also expressed frustration and dismay that more Republicans haven’t spoken out.

“This isn’t the judicial system at work,” Kelly said. “It’s not supposed to be a president deciding right out of the gate here that members of the United States Senate should be hanged, calling for our execution. And then, I guess when he realized that was not a good idea, or somebody told him that that’s ridiculous. Then he went with prosecution for something that is in the First Amendment.”

Slotkin, a former CIA officer, said the unsuccessful attempt to convince a District of Columbia federal grand jury to indict her and the other five lawmakers in the video is not something she expected to happen in America.

“If things had gone a different way, we’d be preparing for arrest,” Slotkin said.  

The Department of Justice and the office of United States Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro did not respond to a request for comment. 

No word from Justice Department

Slotkin said she and the other Democrats learned about the attempt to indict them from news articles. The Justice Department didn’t reach out to say what they were trying to charge the lawmakers with or what law they allege they may have violated. 

Kelly noted during the press conference that he is waiting to learn if a federal judge will issue a preliminary injunction, blocking the Defense Department from downgrading his retirement rank and pay as a Navy captain for appearing in the video. 

Kelly, Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan, and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander, all Democrats with backgrounds in the military or national security, posted the video on Nov. 18.

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Trump reaction, DOD investigation

President Donald Trump reacted on social media a few days later, falsely claiming the video represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The Defense Department opened its investigation into Kelly later that month and Secretary Pete Hegseth announced in January that officials had started the process to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank and pay. 

Kelly filed a lawsuit shortly afterward, asking a federal court to block the Defense Department from moving forward and alleging its actions violated his constitutional rights, including the First Amendment. 

House members speak out

The four House Democrats in the video held a press conference of their own in the afternoon, criticizing the Trump administration for seeking a grand jury indictment and hinting at possible legal action of their own. 

“My lawyers just sent a letter today to the Department of Justice, putting them on notice that there will be costs,” Crow said. “We will not just sit back and let them lob false allegations after false allegations at us.”

Crow declined to answer several questions about what exactly he meant and his office did not return a request for details from States Newsroom. 

Houlahan said Trump administration officials do not get to pick which parts of the Constitution they are going to respect and which they are going to ignore, especially when criticized by members of Congress.  

“The First Amendment is not optional. It is not conditional. It does not expire because someone who’s in power is threatened by it,” Houlahan said. “It does, thankfully, limit the power of our government, especially when that power is tempted to punish lawful speech.”

Deluzio said the Trump administration’s actions show they wanted to “throw us in prison for stating the law.”

“I have little doubt that Donald Trump and those around him are willing to abuse their power. We’ve seen it with us, with other perceived political opponents,” Deluzio said. “There has to be accountability and there has to be justice. And I know that all of us will see that through.”

Goodlander said it was “truly sad and it is downright dangerous” that Trump became “so unglued by a cornerstone and completely uncontroversial principle of American law” that illegal orders should not be obeyed.

“A principle of law that was born of the hard-earned, the unparalleled tragedies of the Holocaust. A principle that has always guided us,” Goodlander said. “A principle that makes us who we are as Americans.”

U.S. jobs increased by 130,000 in January, buoyed by hires in health care, social assistance and construction.

But in another sign of anemic hiring last year, estimates for 2025 were revised down by more than a million jobs to a level of low growth rarely seen outside of recessions. 

The revisions show the United States added only 181,000 jobs last year — the first year of the new Trump administration — one of the lowest increases ever outside recessions. 

Jobs dropped in 2020 at the height of the pandemic and in 2008-2009 in the Great Recession, but otherwise the last time was a lower increase in jobs was in 2003, when they rose 124,000 after two years of decreases, during a period labeled a “jobless recovery” by economists.  

Economist Claudia Sahm, who had predicted 2025 would be “a year without jobs, but no recession” before the annual revisions based on more complete data, said Wednesday that “the downward revisions are huge” in an X post.

The new revisions changed the most for January 2025, which went from a gain of 111,000 to a loss of 48,000 jobs. Only one month, October, saw an upward revision: A reported loss of 173,000 jobs was trimmed to a loss of 140,000 jobs. There are now four months of job losses reported last year, up from three. 

Overall, the number of total U.S. jobs at the end of the year was revised down by 1,029,000, from a little more than 159.5 million to a little less than 158.5 million. 

State by state jobs estimates for January are not yet available. 

There have been about 29,000 layoffs announced so far in 2026,according to notices tracked by WARN Tracker. They include 7,705 layoffs in California, 6,109 in New Jersey, 3,999 in Pennsylvania, 3,483 in Washington state and 2,607 in Texas. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Disaster relief for six Wisconsin counties inundated by historic flooding back in August has again been denied by the federal government. It’s the second time that Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington, Grant, Milwaukee, Door and Grant counties have been denied assistance from the Trump administration since the floods drowned parks, damaged homes and trapped people in their cars in the middle of the night. 

This latest denial was in response to an appeal filed by Gov. Tony Evers in November, after the first denial came from  the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). At the time, Evers stressed that the extreme storms had left over $26.5 million in disaster costs. 

In a statement Monday, Evers called the new denial “completely unsatisfactory,” saying that the Trump administration  had again denied the  relief for Wisconsin “without any explanation” and calling for the decision to be reversed. “Wisconsinites have been hard at work to build back from these historic flooding events, but folks are not out of the woods yet,” said Evers. “Efforts to rebuild will cost tens of millions of taxpayer dollars that local communities will be on the hook for, and it’s really disappointing to see our federal leadership turn their backs on Wisconsin, our families, and our communities in our time of need. We will continue to advocate to the Trump Administration and our federal partners that Wisconsin needs these resources to rebuild and recover, and we will continue to do what we can to support our local partners however we can in the meantime.” 

FEMA’s letter to Evers said that assistance “is not warranted,” but does not otherwise explain the rationale for the denial. 

Evers declared a state of emergency on Aug. 11, as communities across Wisconsin picked themselves up from the storms. A ceaseless downpour began on Aug. 9, though the extent of the flooding wasn’t apparent to many until after the sun went down. In Milwaukee County, the Wisconsin State Fair had to close early as people fled the grounds in waist-high water. People who traveled the roads that evening found themselves trapped by floodwaters, requiring rescue from local authorities and neighbors. 

Swaths of Hart Park in Wauwatosa were left underwater, and the storm’s aftermath left neighborhoods strewn with downed trees and abandoned vehicles. Flooding also challenged emergency response in Waukesha County, though no injuries or missing persons reports had been received by the sheriff’s department. In Milwaukee, reports of people missing from homeless encampments emerged in the days after the floods. 

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley called the denial for disaster relief “deeply disappointing” in a statement Monday. “My administration has worked to rebuild and recover after last summer’s historic storms and flooding,” said Crowley. “Without federal assistance, the financial burden of these public infrastructure repairs falls to local governments to cover. Communities rely on intergovernmental partnerships in times of crisis, and this decision by the Trump administration erodes that public trust. To move forward, my administration will continue working with the State of Wisconsin, our municipalities, and community partners to identify responsible funding solutions to rebuild our roads, bridges, parks, and public buildings. Our residents should not be forced to shoulder the full cost of disasters beyond their control, and we will continue advocating for the resources our community deserves.”

Leaders from the other counties, most of them Republican-leaning, that were denied disaster relief have not commented. The executives for Door, Washington, and Ozaukee counties could not be reached and Robert Keeney, the county board chairman for Grant County, refused to comment on the denial. 

Hillary Mintz, public information officer for Waukesha County, told Wisconsin Examiner that the county was disappointed by the denial. Although Mintz expressed gratitude that federal assistance for individual residents was approved by the Trump Administration, she explained that the county had estimated in the fall that an additional $300,000 in public repairs would also be needed. Mintz said that Waukesha County is working out how to plug that gap, but that its needs may not be as severe as some communities in Milwaukee, which are still dealing with storm damage.

This article has been updated with comment from Waukesha County.

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President Donald Trump gives a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 21, 2026. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education reinforced the right to prayer in public schools in guidance issued Thursday.

Under the guidance to state and local education agencies, students, teachers and school officials have “a right to pray in school as an expression of individual faith, as long as they’re not doing so on behalf of the school,” the department said. 

President Donald Trump’s administration has sought to protect religious liberty in public schools and beyond, and a growing number of GOP state legislators have tried to infuse Christianity in public education. 

Trump announced the guidance during remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, calling the move a “big deal.” 

The president predicted that Democrats would sue over the guidance, but said he was confident his administration would win any legal challenge. 

The guidance also makes clear that “public schools may not sponsor prayer nor coerce or pressure students to pray.”

In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that school-sponsored prayer in public schools violates the Constitution. 

The new guidance calls on school officials to “allow the individuals who make up a public school community to act and speak in accordance with their faith, provided they do not invade the rights of others, the school does not itself participate in religious action or speech as an institution, and the school does not favor secular over religious views or one religious view over another.” 

The guidance leans on a handful of recent Supreme Court rulings surrounding religious expression and religious freedom in public schools, such as Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which found that the actions of a Washington state high school football coach who prayed at the 50-yard line after games were constitutionally protected. 

The Education Department is required by law to periodically reissue guidance on prayer in schools, according to the department.

Trump had previewed Thursday’s guidance while speaking in September 2025 at a Religious Liberty Commission hearing. 

The president established that commission in May 2025 in an effort to “safeguard and promote America’s founding principle of religious freedom.”

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the administration is “proud to stand with students, parents, and faculty who wish to exercise their First Amendment rights in schools across our great nation,” in a statement alongside the announcement.

“Our Constitution safeguards the free exercise of religion as one of the guiding principles of our republic, and we will vigorously protect that right in America’s public schools,” she said.