Legislative Republicans are asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed earlier this year by parents and educators from across Wisconsin alleging lawmakers have failed to adequately fund public schools.
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There are millions of Americans who have seriously considered harming others with a firearm but never acted on these thoughts, according to research from the University of Michigan published in March.
Researchers say this means there could be a critical but often overlooked window for intervention.
It also suggests there is a group of people who can be targeted for various forms of novel intervention, the authors of the study conclude.
Those more likely to report thoughts of shooting others were individuals who are younger, male, Black, living in the Midwest and in urban areas, according to the study.
For Vaun Mayes, a community organizer who also does violence interruption for the city of Milwaukee’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety, the study’s conclusions ring true.
“There are definitely usually signs of escalation prior to the results we see,” Mayes said. “Young people most definitely give notice before violence, and Black folks specifically culturally do as well.”
The study found that roughly 8.5 million people said they had seriously thought about shooting someone in the year before being asked. Over a lifetime, that number rises to more than 19 million.
Although most never acted on their thoughts, the study estimated that 1.5 million U.S. adults had brought a gun to a specific location with the intention of shooting someone.
Fewer than 1% temporarily handed their firearm over during a time of crisis.
The study found that gun owners are not the only people who are at risk of using a firearm, but those in the vicinity of gun owners as well.
In other words, access to a firearm, rather than ownership, is a key predictor.
James Bigham, a clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, pays a lot of attention to when and how firearms are accessed, especially during times of poor mental health or mental health crisis.
Access to a gun can turn a temporary crisis into a fatal outcome, Bigham said.
“If we could shift our culture where it’s normal … to transfer firearms during a time of crisis, we could really reduce the rates of death,” Bigham said.
Mayes said it’s because of the gap between consideration and action that violence interrupters can intervene to deescalate a situation.
The authors of the study suggest this is especially true in states with red flag laws.
Red flag laws, also known as Extreme Risk Prevention Orders, allow judges to issue court orders to temporarily restrict access to guns by individuals who could pose a threat to themselves or others.
More than 20 states have a version of a red flag law, but Wisconsin does not.
Wisconsin also has weaker gun storage laws than most other states.
For those who are interested in places to safely store a gun, the Wisconsin Gun Shop Project’s “Live Today – Put It Away” program partners with participating gun shops – including several in Milwaukee County – to provide firearm safety information and temporary off-site storage options, often for a low fee.
People can also go to the city of Milwaukee’s website to learn more about local violence interruption efforts.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Should gun violence intervention efforts start earlier? These researchers think so 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.
The Pabst Brewing Company can be held liable for injuries that an independent contractor suffered on the job, and may pay out damages, after a decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court Wednesday.
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Defense attorneys are calling for sanctions against the Kenosha County district attorney over actions in an ongoing homicide trial. A judge called the DA's actions "extremely unacceptable."
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Maritza Montejo, a Liberty Tax Service office manager, helps Aurora Hernandez, left, with her taxes at a Liberty Tax Service office on the last day to file taxes on April 15, 2026, in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The 2026 tax filing season closed Wednesday with the Trump administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill hailing success under last year’s massive tax cuts law, while Democrats said any benefits have been wiped out by skyrocketing gas prices, inflation and more.
More than 53 million Americans claimed at least one new benefit, averaging a tax cut of $800, under the tax cuts and spending package passed by congressional Republicans and enacted by President Donald Trump on July 4, according to the Department of the Treasury.
Originally titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but rebranded by Republicans as the Working Families Tax Cuts law, the measure made permanent Trump’s 2017 reduced tax brackets.
It also quadrupled the state and local tax deduction cap and increased the child tax credit by $200.
Democrats marked Tax Day by criticizing the law and pointed to increasing inflation and tariff costs as wiping out the value of tax relief, as both sides try to gain the advantage in messaging ahead of crucial midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
The new law cut taxes on tips until 2028 and on qualifying car loan interest until 2029.
As for Trump’s campaign promise for no tax on overtime, the law applies the advantage on up to $12,500 in overtime earnings for individuals, and $25,000 for joint filers, through 2028.
Additionally, eligible senior citizens can now deduct up to $6,000 for individuals, $12,000 for couples, until 2029.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Tax Day statement that Trump’s leadership upholds “the foundational principle that hardworking Americans should be rewarded, not punished with tax hikes, and the results of this tax season prove it.”
According to Internal Revenue Service statistics to date and made public Wednesday:
Bessent, acting IRS commissioner after a turnover of six IRS commissioners in 2025, said the agency has “worked tirelessly to ensure our tax system works for the people it is meant to serve.”
“From the shop floor to the kitchen table, taxpayers are feeling the difference of the largest tax cuts in our nation’s history, and millions of Americans are keeping more of what they earn and seeing their paychecks go further than ever before,” Bessent said.
The White House circulated a collection of statements from taxpayers Tuesday praising the new deductions.
Trump also held a photo opportunity Monday, when he received a McDonald’s delivery from a self-proclaimed “DoorDash Grandma” who lauded tax relief on her tips in a planned event. Trump subsequently pulled cash from his pocket and handed it to the woman, Sharon Simmons of Arkansas, who represented the tech delivery service.
Simmons, no newcomer to such GOP appearances, also testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in late July 2025, following the passage of the tax law, to praise the no tax on tips policy.
Frank Bisignano, IRS chief executive officer, told Senate tax writers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that the 2026 filing season was the “most successful tax filing season in IRS history.”
Trump created the IRS CEO position last year. Bisignano also serves as the commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration.
“This landmark legislation forms the cornerstone of the administration’s growth agenda. The latest numbers tell the story,” Bisignano told the Senate Committee on Finance during the panel’s annual oversight hearing examining tax collection.
The agency to date has seen over 134 million income tax returns filed for 2025 earnings, with 98% of them done electronically, according to IRS data. Bisignano hailed the issuance of 80 million refunds that on average totaled $3,400, up by 11% compared to 2024.
Senate Democrats on the panel panned the cost of the new tax regime and questioned whether a shrinking IRS staff will contribute to less enforcement.
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said “the lack of cops on the beat at the IRS is going to cost the Treasury in the United States $646 billion in unpaid taxes by the wealthiest people in America.”
According to reports, roughly 26,000 employees left the IRS last year as part of Trump’s civil service reduction incentives and firings.
“I remember you saying when you and I met before your confirmation that you are deeply concerned about the level of national debt in this country,” Bennet said to Bisignano. “It is $38 trillion and a lot of that is because of the completely unpaid-for tax bill that is the Trump tax bill.”
The cost of the tax bill will be realized in years to come, according to congressional scorekeepers.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the law will cost $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years — more than $4 trillion if accounting for interest that will accumulate on the nation’s debt.
An analysis by the Tax Foundation, which generally advocates for lower taxes, found tax revenue coming into U.S. coffers will drop by nearly $5.2 trillion over the next decade. Individual income taxes have been the government’s largest single source of revenue since 1944, according to data compiled by the Tax Policy Center, a partnership between the Urban Institute and Brookings Foundation.
Lawmakers who wrote the massive tax law accounted for some of the lost revenue by overhauling eligibility and work requirements for government health and food assistance for low-income Americans.
According to a recent report from the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, roughly 2.5 million Americans have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits since the tax law came into effect.
The CBO estimated the law’s changes to work requirements for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health care program, will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance.
Senate Republicans defended the law, saying it helped Americans by avoiding “the largest tax increase in American history.”
“Had the 2017 tax cuts expired, taxpayers earning less than $400,000 would have faced a more than $2.6 trillion tax hike over the next decade,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
The panel’s highest-ranking Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., slammed the new law for terminating a free alternative for tax filing, IRS Direct File, enacted under former President Joe Biden’s own budget reconciliation megabill.
The limited pilot program offered a free filing portal directly through the IRS and was available to 19 million taxpayers in 2024.
“Direct File in America died on Mr. Bisignano’s watch,” Wyden said, adding the program’s termination again puts taxpayers at the mercy of “tax software giants who overcharge for a service that ought to be free.”
Rather, the IRS offers Free File, an option available to taxpayers under a certain income level, now capped at $89,000, via a handful of tax preparation software companies that contract with the federal government.
A 2019 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report described the program as “fraught with complexity and confusion.” Estimates show roughly 14 million free-file-eligible taxpayers were led to pages where they were prompted to pay for add-ons and extra services.
Taxpayers at any income level have the option to file for free via fillable PDF forms, but that option requires manual entry without guided prompts.
Wyden said the arrangement is a “multi-billion dollar rip-off.”
Bisignano called Direct File an “unnecessary and less popular duplicate of programs.”
The Democratic National Committee pounced on Tax Day to highlight Trump’s policies and use of taxpayer funds. Affordability is front and center in the upcoming midterm elections.
Though Trump campaigned on lowering prices and taxes, DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement the president has so far given Americans “a reckless trade war that has hiked prices, and a deadly and costly taxpayer-funded war with Iran.”
“This Tax Day, Americans are seeing lower-than-promised refunds hit their bank accounts that won’t even cover the higher costs Trump has forced them to shoulder. It couldn’t be clearer: Trump and the Republican Party are on the side of billionaires, big corporations, and wealthy special interests,” Martin said.
Angeline Lake reflects nearby mountains in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest in Washington state. The U.S. Forest Service will be undergoing a major reorganization. (Photo by Alex Brown/Stateline)
A sweeping reorganization of the U.S. Forest Service signals that the agency is planning to lean heavily on states to help manage millions of acres of federal land, foresters across the West say.
State officials and timber industry leaders say they’ve been given scant details about the plan, which will move the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City, restructure its regional management, and close scores of research stations in dozens of states.
While they wait for the dust to settle, they’re preparing for the Forest Service — with its workforce slashed by the Trump administration — to ask more of its partners under the new model.
“The Forest Service itself is unable to uphold its mission and cannot alone manage the many challenges on these landscapes,” said Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group. “The transition from regional offices to more state-level offices is a recognition that partnerships are the future for the Forest Service.”
But many forestry veterans fear the shake-up will cause more attrition in an agency that’s already shrunk because of Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce. Some see a clear sign that moving the headquarters to Utah — a state whose leaders are often hostile to federal land ownership — is designed to undermine the Forest Service’s management of its lands.
The closure of 57 research stations, some agency partners fear, will threaten critical science that states and other forest managers rely on to learn about wildfire behavior, timber production and a host of other issues.
Some observers noted that the agency is required to seek congressional approval to relocate offices, which could trigger legal challenges to the plan if lawmakers do not weigh in.
Meanwhile, some foresters feel the uncertainty swirling over the agency will cause chaos as the West heads into a dangerous fire season amid record temperatures and drought.
The plan announced on March 31 will relocate Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz and his headquarters staff to Salt Lake City. The agency will close its nine regional offices, each of which oversee national forests across multiple states. Replacing those offices will be 15 state directors, mostly in Western states.
Many state leaders, from both conservative and liberal states, say they welcome the opportunity to deepen their partnerships with the Forest Service and play a greater role on federal lands. But they’re still anxious to see more details about the agency’s new structure and concerned that national forests remain deeply understaffed.
“There are definitely a lot of vacancies in key positions that need to be filled,” said Jon Songster, federal lands bureau chief with the Idaho Department of Lands. “I hope that a lot of that remaining expertise is not lost, but shifted to the forest level where it’s desperately needed. Hopefully with all these changes there will be opportunities to put more people in some of those key gaps.”
The Forest Service manages nearly 200 million acres of land, mostly in Western states. With a mandate to manage the land for multiple uses, the agency oversees timber harvests, livestock grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat.
Under President Donald Trump, the Forest Service has lost about 16% of its workforce — nearly 5,900 employees — through buyouts, layoffs and early retirements. Trump’s proposed budget for 2027 would cut billions of dollars from the agency’s funding.
Many observers view the reorganization plan as an effort to force out more longtime agency leaders. The moves are expected to affect about 5,000 employees across the various offices that are relocating.
“If this were a stand-alone proposal where the American public and the public agency employees had trust in the administration, a lot of it makes sense,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President Bill Clinton and remains a vocal conservation advocate. “But the level of trust is at rock bottom.”
In its announcement, the agency said that the new state-based model will bring decision-making closer to the forest level and reduce bureaucracy. The Forest Service did not grant a Stateline interview request.
State foresters, who are responsible for managing the forests in their states, say they’ve been given few details other than the new office maps released by the agency. They don’t know when the transitions will happen, which officials will be staffing the new offices or what authority they will have.
“They’ve made the statement that they need to rely more on states,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “If you’re going to lean on us, it might help us to know what that means.”
In recent years, the Forest Service has increasingly partnered with states, tribes, counties and nonprofits to carry out projects on federal lands. Foresters say agreements such as the Good Neighbor Authority have become a critical tool, allowing more work to happen in national forests even as the feds’ own capacity shrinks.
“We’ve seen some of that institutional knowledge (at the Forest Service) dwindle a little bit,” said Utah State Forester Jamie Barnes. “Building these partnerships, if you do see a decline on one side or the other, you can bridge that loss. We’re working together, making joint decisions so we can get timber off the landscape here in Utah.”
Some foresters said they welcome the chance to work more closely with the Forest Service, but they’re concerned that the agency has not recovered from Trump’s workforce cuts. Reassigning hundreds of employees to new locations could lead to more attrition.
In Wyoming, state officials are excited to have Forest Service leaders working in close proximity. But State Forester Kelly Norris acknowledged that the move could be “bumpy,” given the lack of details and ongoing workforce shortages in the agency.
“The logistics of this may be a lot harder implemented than said,” she said. “We see this as a positive for us, but I do think that this is going to be a real long transition.”
Idaho, Utah and Wyoming are among the Western states that share the Trump administration’s goal of increasing timber production on federal lands. Trump has moved to limit environmental reviews and protections for endangered species to speed up logging projects.
Some Forest Service veterans feel the move to increase states’ role will prove destructive in some parts of the West.
“We’re putting the governance of the forests more subject to states’ interests,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for civil employees. “I would be concerned that the values that don’t have strong lobbying groups, such as watershed integrity, may be subjugated to extractive values like timber, mining and grazing.”
Several agency veterans stressed that the Forest Service’s state directors should be career professionals, not political appointees.
By relocating its headquarters to Salt Lake City, the Forest Service said in its announcement, the agency is moving leaders closer to the forests they manage.
But some are skeptical the move will bring stronger management to the West. During Trump’s first term, he moved the Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Grand Junction, Colorado. Only 41 of the 328 employees subject to the transition actually relocated.
“Shaking things up is going to get people to abandon their positions, and that’s the intent,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends whistleblowers in the federal service. “It’s a long-term dismantling of the scientific backbone and staff. The theory is that the federal government will abandon a lot of the public lands and then states will be forced to fill in those gaps.”
Rosenthal and others noted that Utah’s political leaders are hostile to federal land ownership. U.S. Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican, led an effort last year to sell off millions of acres of federal land, which drew widespread backlash before it was withdrawn. Utah’s state government has also sued the federal government, seeking to claim control of 18.5 million acres of federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management.
“Why would you move the headquarters of a public lands management agency to the state that is the most anti-public lands in the country?” said Dombeck, the former Forest Service chief.
Dombeck also noted that the Forest Service chief frequently reports to the White House, testifies in congressional hearings and coordinates national policy with other agency leaders. Moving the position out of D.C., he said, makes little sense.
In a webpage set up to respond to news coverage of the move, the Forest Service said it is a “myth” that the transition is designed to reduce its workforce or transfer federal lands to the states.
But some agency veterans are skeptical.
“It’s hard not to reach the conclusion that this is an effort to weaken federal agencies and federal management of these lands,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “You’re going to lose some good staff as part of the reorganization, as they move chairs across the deck of the Titanic.”
Meanwhile, some state leaders are concerned that the uncertainty caused by the reorganization and Trump’s staffing cuts could lead to chaos as wildfire season approaches. With record temperatures and drought drying out much of the West, foresters expect a challenging fire season this summer. The Forest Service remains the nation’s largest wildland firefighting agency, even as the Trump administration seeks to consolidate wildland fire operations into a separate service under the U.S. Department of the Interior.
“I’ve got federal firefighters, fire managers, and all they’re talking about is what’s happening at (the Forest Service),” said Geissler, the Washington state forester. “I don’t feel like having a bunch of distracted firefighters on my hands going into a summer fire season.”
Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
The Sugar Maple Square poll in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on primary Election Day, May 21, 2024. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Austin Anthony)
The Department of Justice’s stated reason for obtaining sensitive personal data on millions of voters masks the Trump administration’s true intention for obtaining state voter lists, Michigan’s top election official asserted in federal appeals court Monday.
Attorneys for Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson made the allegation in a brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument reflects a concern broadly held among Democratic state election officials that the Trump administration wants to compile voter data in an effort to influence the upcoming midterm elections.
The Justice Department, under President Donald Trump, is suing 29 states for refusing to provide voter information. It says it needs the data to evaluate efforts to clean and maintain voter rolls, including whether noncitizens are registered to vote.
But Benson’s brief says that “appears to be a pretext for improper purposes.”
Michigan and other states argue the Trump administration is instead effectively building a nationwide voter registration list — a move not authorized under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, a federal law to combat voting discrimination that the Justice Department has cited in demanding states turn over voter data.
“Collecting Michigan’s voter data to conduct its own list maintenance and to use Michigan’s list as part of creating a national voter file is not encompassed within the purpose stated in DOJ’s demand, which is simply ‘to ascertain Michigan’s compliance with the list maintenance requirements’” of federal election laws, Benson’s brief says.
“Moreover, creating a national voter file of U.S. Citizens is beyond any purpose contemplated by the (Civil Rights Act).”
After U.S. District Court Judge Hala Jarbou ruled in February that the Justice Department isn’t entitled to Michigan’s unredacted voter list containing driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers, the department appealed to the 6th Circuit.
Over the past year, Trump has attempted to exercise greater power over federal elections, which, under the U.S. Constitution, are run by the states.
“Trump does not have the authority to create a Trump voter list,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat whom the Justice Department is suing for not providing voter data, said in an interview earlier this month.
Studies have shown noncitizen voting is extremely rare, though Trump has long fixated on the prospect of noncitizen voting and other forms of election fraud. Last year, Trump signed an executive order that would have unilaterally required voters to provide documents proving their citizenship. The order was struck down in court, but Trump is pressuring the U.S. Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, which would implement similar proof of citizenship rules.
Michigan state officials and other critics of the Justice Department’s voter data effort point to actions by Trump and remarks by a DOJ attorney as evidence that the Trump administration is already compiling a national voter list.
Trump’s recent executive order to restrict mail-in ballots directs the Department of Homeland Security to build lists of voting-age citizens in each state and then share those lists with state officials. Homeland Security operates a powerful computer system, called SAVE, that can verify citizenship by checking names against information in federal databases.
And at a federal court hearing in Rhode Island in late March, Justice Department Voting Section Acting Chief Eric Neff said his department intends to share voter lists with Homeland Security, according to a transcript. He said DOJ and DHS have already entered into a use agreement to govern the sharing of data, though he didn’t detail its requirements.
A DOJ attorney, James Tucker, has denied any effort to create a national voter file.
“There is not going to be a national voter registration database,” Tucker said at a hearing in Maine on March 26 — less than a week before Trump signed the executive order.
But David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, likened the Justice Department’s litigation strategy to a legal Titanic and the executive order to an iceberg: The order effectively creating a nationwide voter list could sink a strategy that denies such a goal exists.
“The DOJ … has been trying to assure the courts that this data is not going to be used to create a national voter list,” Becker said during a press briefing this month.
The Justice Department didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday.
The Justice Department has so far failed to persuade any federal judges that it’s entitled to state voter data. Judges have dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuits against California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon.
At least a dozen states, all Republican led, have voluntarily provided their voter lists. The Justice Department has also reached a settlement agreement with one state, Oklahoma, to obtain its data.
When Jarbou, a Trump appointee, dismissed the Justice Department’s lawsuit for Michigan’s voter roll, she ruled that the Civil Rights Act doesn’t require the disclosure of the information. The law, signed by President Dwight Eisenhower, empowered federal officials to investigate state and local discrimination against Black voters.
The law requires states to preserve election records for at least 22 months after a federal election, including any documents that come into the possession of an election official. Jarbou wrote in her decision that the state’s voter registration list is created by election officials but isn’t a document, such as a voter registration application, that comes into their possession.
When the Justice Department filed its brief in March, it argued that Jarbou misinterpreted the Civil Rights Act. “The CRA’s text … does not exclude self-generated documents,” the department’s brief says.
The Justice Department’s appeal of the Michigan loss has advanced the furthest, with state officials filing their brief on Monday. The DOJ has pushed for quick timelines in the appeals, arguing that court rulings are needed ahead of the midterms to ensure the fairness of elections.
Regardless, 18 local election officials from across the country, including seven in Michigan, on Monday filed a brief in the case arguing that the Justice Department hasn’t provided a legitimate basis to obtain election records under the Civil Rights Act.
As election misinformation has proliferated in recent years, local election officials face increasing requests for information, the group wrote. They are accustomed to providing public voter registration information, with steps in place to exclude sensitive, nonpublic data.
Courts act as a “backstop” to enforce bans on disclosing sensitive information in response to records requests from the public, the local election officials argue.
“Courts should perform that same function for requests for records under the CRA,” the group said.
Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt speaks to the press Friday (Screenshot via YouTube)
Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt called a press conference Friday to push back against reports about a U.S. citizen who claimed last month that she was detained by federal immigration agents and held at the Dodge County Jail. Schmidt announced he is filing a civil lawsuit against the woman who made the allegations, saying, “it is important that we correct the facts, so today we’re here to talk about the fact vs. the fiction in the Sundas Naqvi allegations that were made.”
In early March, Naqvi, 28, of Skokie, Illinois, claimed that she and her co-workers had been detained by federal immigration authorities at the O’Hare airport in Chicago after returning from a work trip abroad. Naqvi’s family and Kevin Morrison, a Cook County commissioner, said that Naqvi had been taken to the Broadview Detention Facility and was then transferred across state lines to the Dodge County Jail, then released without aid or transportation in the pre-dawn hours.
Schmidt said during his press conference Friday that these allegations are false. “They gained significant attention, but they have not been supported by any — any — verified evidence at all,” he said. Schmidt noted that Morrison, a candidate in the Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat, held a press conference to air the Naqvi allegations in the leadup to a the election, which he lost.
Naqvi’s alleged detention took place against a backdrop of news reports and widespread public outrage over the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, which targeted Chicago and Minneapolis.
Research conducted by the Deportation Data Project found that 1,300 arrests made by federal immigration agents were listed as “collateral,” meaning they were not the intended targets of the enforcement, the Minnesota Reformer reported. The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office has also been criticized for assisting in detaining and transporting people arrested by federal immigration agents.
Schmidt said that the initial claims about Naqvi’s arrest were “coordinated messaging designed to generate outrage and media attention.” He showed a picture posted to social media showing Naqvi being reunited with her family after her alleged detention.
Schmidt said that there “is no record of booking, there is no record of detention, there is no record of release, no contact with the individual, no transfer to any federal agency.” He also blasted media outlets that covered Naqvi’s allegations as factual, repeatedly saying those kinds of stories hurt the reputation of law enforcement.
“Media coverage has impacts,” said Schmidt. “What you publish has impacts on more than just those readers and viewers. It has impacts on real human beings.” Schmidt showed hate mail the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office received after the Naqvi allegations surfaced, and revealed the names of the people who sent the messages. “These are the types of things that we as elected officials, that public officials get when media put out information that is not verified. And many times, it’s false information that goes out and we get these regularly. And I don’t think that the media understand the impact that these kinds of stories have on real people every single day.”
Schmidt stated that Naqvi had been briefly detained by Customs and Border Protection until 11:42 a.m. at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, after which she left and checked in at a Hampton Inn and Suites hotel in Illinois at 1:17 p.m, just minutes from the airport. While investigating the allegations, Schmidt made contact with a man he calls both a witness and a victim, who provided corroborating evidence refuting Naqvi’s story.
The witness — who Schmidt refused to identify citing Marsy’s Law — allegedly received texts from Naqvi telling him that she’d arrived to her hotel room, and asking to use his credit card to buy some food. Records from the hotel confirm when Naqvi checked in, and that she was not at the Dodge County Jail when she claimed. Naqvi also asked to use the witness’s card to pay for a spa treatment during this time. “Now I don’t know about you, and my staff have never recorded one, there is no spa at Broadview in Chicago Illinois,” said Schmidt. “I can also tell you there is no spa lady in our jail here in Dodge County.”
Schmidt said that on the morning Naqvi claimed she was released from custody, she’d actually asked the witness to drive her to Wisconsin to help her sister with car trouble. The witness allegedly told Schmidt in a recorded interview that he thought she was going to the Kenosha area, but it turned out Naqvi wanted to go to another hotel in Beaver Dam. Schmidt showed images and played video of Naqvi at a gas station with the witness, wearing the same striped black and white shirt she wore in a social media post that purportedly showed her being reunited with her family. Schmidt called the witness “a true gentleman” for holding the door open for Naqvi as they left the gas station.
It was around this time, Schmidt said, well-past 5:00 in the morning, that Naqvi claimed she was being released from the Dodge County Jail. The witness’s vehicle was also captured by several Flock cameras along the journey, Schmidt said. The sheriff wanted to check whether the timeline of events he believed occurred tallied with what the witness was saying. “So I put those times into A.I. and I said ‘what time would he have left?’” The software’s results lined up with what the witness described, Schmidt said.
Later, Schmidt played video of Naqvi at another location taking selfies. At 6:50 a.m. on the morning she was allegedly released, Naqvi’s sister and others arrived in a silver SUV to pick her up. The unnamed witness told Schmidt that he was then asked by Naqvi to pose for media as one of the coworkers who allegedly went with her on the overseas work trip, and who were allegedly detained with her upon returning to the country. Schmidt said that none of this happened, and that the witness refused to make those claims to the media, but did claim to be one of the coworkers to Naqvi’s attorney.
Schmidt said that the witness paid for Naqvi’s trip to Turkey, and that the trip was not related to or paid for by an employer. In fact, later media coverage reported that the company where Naqvi claimed to work denied that she worked there. Schmidt said that while Naqvi was overseas, she wanted to get a medical procedure for which the witness took out a $3,000 loan. Schmidt said that Naqvi spent about $25,000 of the witness’ money, maxing out his credit card. The witness did all of this, Schmidt said, because he believed he might be able to have a long term relationship with Naqvi.
The sheriff also discounted the images of Naqvi’s phone location showing her at Broadview and Dodge County. “I’m here to tell you that in the world of A.I., in the world of technology that they live in, things like this can be spoofed very easy,” he said. “I could do it on my phone in only a matter of minutes.” Schmidt noted that one of the screenshot images actually had two different time stamps. Schmidt also highlighted Naqvi’s past disputed allegations, including an accusation of sexual misconduct against a professor that the professor denied.
In 2019, Schmidt said, Naqvi made a report to the Skokie police that she was violently sexually assaulted. Although officers observed injuries, took forensic evidence and arrested an ex-boyfriend of Naqvi’s, they later determined the report was false, Schmidt said. Another 2020 report with the Skokie police made by Naqvi accused a driver of being impaired in a Walmart parking lot. The driver showed no signs of impairment, and claimed he met Naqvi on a dating app and was waiting for her to come out of the Walmart. The report was classified as disorderly conduct and categorized as not made in good faith, Schmidt said.
Schmidt said he has not had any success getting other law enforcement agencies interested in following up on what he regards as Naqvi’s bad acts, none of which are likely to be charged as crimes in the state of Wisconsin. He added that he does not know the status of any investigation the FBI may be doing, and the state police he reached out to in Illinois never got back to him. Schmidt said that he was told by local law enforcement officers that while they would like to act, that they can’t because Cook County prosecutors don’t take on cases of this nature. Later, Schmidt claimed that upon hearing this the witness allegedly said “it sucks to live in a blue state.”
Schmidt is filing a lawsuit in an attempt to hold Naqvi and anyone else involved in her allegations accountable, he said. “This is not a misunderstanding or a minor discrepancy,” said Schmidt. “This is not a violation of the constitutional or civil rights of Sundas Naqvi or those allegedly with her. The timeline claimed is not physically possible based on the evidence that we have, and that matters.” He also condemned the media and politicians for spreading false reports, saying they damaged respect and trust in law enforcement.
“Let me be clear,” said Schmidt, “ICE is not the enemy. Law enforcement is not the enemy.” Schmidt said that he won’t stand by “while false narratives are used to portray law enforcement as something it is not.” He added, “I take it personally when my staff are called liars. These are men and women who do the job the right way every day and those accusations are simply not supported by facts.”
Schmidt said that a criminal investigation is ongoing, in addition to the federal civil lawsuit he’s filed, which seeks $1 million in damages. He wouldn’t comment on whether any phones were forensically downloaded as part of this investigation, which Schmidt said he used a lot of his own time to pursue.
In a statement provided over email, Morrison said that he understands that a lawsuit has been filed, and that while he has not seen it, he cannot comment on pending litigation. Morrison did not comment on whether he has been in contact with Naqvi or her family. The Examiner reached out to the office of attorney Robert Held, who represented Naqvi and her family when the allegations were first made, but no comment has been forthcoming.
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Family and friends of a man who was shot and killed Tuesday by a Superior police officer demanded justice during a protest outside the Douglas County Courthouse Monday.
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Common Ground and its new branch, Tenants United, are leading efforts to hold private landlords accountable, starting with David Tomblin of Highgrove Holdings LLC.
Highgrove Holdings is an out-of-state landlord with more than 260 properties, mostly on Milwaukee’s North Side. A significant number of homes are reportedly vacant or boarded.
Common Ground and Tenants United documented dozens of violations and examples of neglect, from mildew and mold to broken windows and holes in the ceilings.
Now both groups alongside other advocates and Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke have set out to “evict” Tomblin, owner of Highgrove Holdings, from control of his properties through a novel lawsuit filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
A complaint filed by the city of Milwaukee is asking a judge to appoint a third-party receiver to manage Highgrove’s portfolio if hundreds of alleged nuisance and code violations are not fixed within 60 days. If granted, it would effectively strip Tomblin of operational control over his Milwaukee properties.
“The point of this is to get them to comply,” Goyke said. “No one should need to be sued to be code-compliant. It shouldn’t come to this, but if this is what it takes, so be it.”
Last August during unprecedented storms, Ebony Martin’s ceiling fell in. Not only was she hospitalized as a result of the collapse, but she said her property management company, Highgrove Holdings Management, never fixed the leaks.
Stories like hers led Common Ground and Tenants United to get involved.
Tenants United formed several years ago during a campaign against the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee.
The group’s advocacy for Housing Authority residents led to a change in leadership and some operations.
Charlene “Peaches” Bell said she initially joined Tenants United as a resident of the Housing Authority because she saw a need for change and accountability. She’s still there because the need is still there.
“We have to help each other,” Bell said. “They say it takes a village. What kind of world will we have if we don’t do this now?”
Tenants United members said Highgrove Holdings has accumulated hundreds of code violations and leads the city in orders for lead abatement. They also pointed out rising delinquent property taxes and ongoing legal disputes with lenders and investors.
Tomblin, who previously lived in California and now resides in Washington, has marketed Milwaukee as a profitable market for investors. He cited strong returns tied in part to Opportunity Zones, federally designated areas intended to spur redevelopment.
Nearly 100 tenant leaders and community advocates gathered on March 26 alongside Goyke to announce a legal campaign targeting Tomblin’s company.
Tenant leader Kiante Shields, who helped launch the campaign, described the lawsuit as a turning point in holding corporate landlords accountable.
“This is about drawing a line,” Shields said. “If you neglect hundreds of homes, there are consequences, not just fines, but losing control.”
The lawsuit now heads to circuit court, where a judge will decide whether to order repairs or appoint a receiver to take over management.
Advocates say the case could set a precedent for how Milwaukee and other cities handle large-scale landlord neglect.
“This isn’t just about one landlord,” Shields said. “It’s about changing the system.”
‘This isn’t just about one landlord’: Tenants United pushes to improve housing conditions in Milwaukee 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.
Voters passed a $34.9 million referendum in November 2024 for the district to build a road and add parking lot spaces on the land, which is next to the school's athletic fields.
The post Racine County high school wins legal fight for 80 acres of farmland appeared first on WPR.
A loosely formed coalition of about 60 federal litigators is working with immigration attorneys in Wisconsin who represent clients being detained and facing deportation.
Gabriela Parra, an immigration attorney and partner at Layde & Parra S.C. in Milwaukee, said immigration policies are constantly changing, which adds new challenges.
Many cases now involve both immigration proceedings and federal civil rights issues, she said.
“If you haven’t done this, it’s a learning curve,” Parra said.
Federal litigators and immigration attorneys are working together to help meet this demand in Wisconsin.
The need for legal representation has grown as immigration enforcement has expanded.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement held an average of 69,600 people per day in detention in December 2025 – a 78% increase compared with the year before, according to an analysis by the Vera Institute of Justice, a national nonprofit working on issues related to mass incarceration and immigration.
But more than half the people in the immigration court system are fighting the government alone, according to immigration court data analyzed by Vera.
“There is a due process crisis right now happening in our immigration system,” said Elizabeth Kenney, associate director of Vera’s Advancing Universal Representation Initiative.
While people have the right to obtain an immigration attorney, the government does not have to provide one, said Timothy Muth, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin.
Kenney said not having legal representation has major consequences.
People who have attorneys are up to 10 and a half times more likely to get successful outcomes, Kenney said.
Parra said policy changes have added a federal civil rights dimension to many cases – changes that include how the Board of Immigration Appeals has interpreted immigration law.
The board sets binding rules for immigration judges and has authority over appeals in immigration cases.
Parra said there have been more than 80 decisions by the board since January 2025 that have affected immigration policy.
One Board of Immigration Appeals decision, known as Yajure Hurtado, requires immigration judges to treat many as subject to mandatory detention. The decision has significantly limited people’s access to bonds.
“Now you have individuals in detention unless you can file a habeas petition in federal court,” Parra said.
A habeas petition is used to argue that a person’s detention is unlawful.
Habeas petitions vary widely depending on a person’s situation, said Elisabeth Lambert, a federal civil rights attorney working with the network.
Some involve people who have lived in the United States for years and seek release on bond while their cases proceed. Others involve people who entered through legal processes but are later detained and denied bond.
There also are other barriers that make it harder for people to defend themselves, requiring different support in federal court.
For example, Lambert said, immigrants facing deportation don’t have a right to discovery. This means that the only way to get the records is through a specific type of federal records request.
A right of discovery allows defendants to access information that could be used against them from a prosecutor ahead of trial.
Lambert said records can face various delays and other barriers and may arrive after the deportation proceeding has already happened.
Lambert said the two court systems – immigration court and federal court – operate very differently.
Each of these legal spaces has its own sets of rules, norms and procedures, she said.
“It’s just a lot to learn very quickly in a very high-stakes situation,” Lambert said.
It works the other way, too.
“I couldn’t go into immigration court,” she said. “I don’t have the knowledge or the experience.”
In one case Lambert and Parra worked on together, a judge issued a restraining order barring ICE from moving ahead with a client’s removal proceeding until a Freedom of Information Act issue was resolved, she said.
Lambert anticipates similar litigation in the future.
“We think that this is going to be a pretty common issue – of the government withholding people’s immigration records as part of this effort to stack the deportation process against people who are seeking immigration relief.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Wisconsin attorneys team up with federal litigators as deportation cases grow more complex 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.
A member of the PAWS program at Stanley Correctional Institution (Photo courtesy Wisconsin Department of Corrections)
Elliott Landrum, 46, has spent decades of his life in the Wisconsin prison system. He told the Examiner that he was a handler for Louann, a puppy who went on to graduate and become a hearing assist dog.
“We can still make something out of our lives, and still do something to help someone else, and I think that’s the biggest part about the PAWS program,” Landrum said, referring to Wisconsin’s Prisoners Assisting With Service Dogs (PAWS) program.
Can Do Canines matches service dogs with clients to help with mobility issues, hearing loss, seizures, autism or type one diabetes, executive director Jeff Johnson told the Examiner last month. He said that the organization partners with five Minnesota prisons and four Wisconsin prisons.
“I also frequently hear from inmates that this is — I don’t know if redemption is the right word, but this is a way to give back that they haven’t really had before in their lives,” Johnson said. “They also get the unconditional love of a dog, and some of them haven’t had unconditional love from anything or anyone before this.”
Last month, Can Do Canines published an article about a woman named Colleen and her hearing assist dog Louann, who were matched together last year.
Colleen said that Louann loves people, the article states, and while Louann is trained to alert Colleen to a wide variety of sounds, her favorite alert is probably the doorbell. The article lists Jackson Correctional Institution, where Landrum participated in the dog training program, among those who made the partnership possible.
“I’m grateful having her,” Colleen said, according to the article. “Besides having her helping me, she keeps me busy.”
Of the four prisons in Wisconsin that partner with Can Do Canines, Fox Lake, Stanley and Jackson Correctional Institutions are medium-security prisons, while Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility is minimum-security. Earlier this year, Stanley Correctional reached a milestone: a decade of training service dogs.
“For the inmate handlers, it teaches them people skills,” Johnson said. “They’re dealing with dogs — like patience and positive reinforcement and persistence and teamwork, ‘cause they have to work together as a team. And for many of these guys, those aren’t personal strengths of theirs going in.”
Johnson said there is essentially a separate part of each prison for the dog program and handlers. Each dog has two incarcerated handlers, who live together in a cell with the dog.
Lindy Luopa, puppy program manager at Can Do Canines, said over email that dogs are typically raised in a prison program for approximately eight months. At around the three and six-month marks in the prison program, they go out for two-week breaks in host homes, so they can hear the sights and sounds of a home environment and be exposed to a variety of public experiences.
Prison staff screen incarcerated people to decide who gets to be involved, Johnson said.
Incarcerated handlers work on all of the foundation skills of a service dog, Johnson told the Examiner, including sitting, staying, retrieving items and cleaning up items and putting them in a container.
The Wisconsin Department of Corrections stated in a 2018 press release that Can Do Canines was decreasing the cost to train service dogs by partnering with the DOC, increasing the number of dogs who could be trained and placed with people.
“We serve far more people each year because of the prison program and save money because these volunteers provide valuable training that we might otherwise have to hire more staff to provide,” Johnson told the Examiner.
Johnson said that after the dog’s prison stay, there is much more training involved to become a service dog, but the incarcerated handlers put them on that path.
(Video uploaded April 13, 2017 to Vimeo by Barbara Wiener.)
Can Do Canines didn’t have a prison program for a period of time due to the COVID pandemic, Johnson said.
“That was very difficult,” Johnson added. “You only have so many volunteers.”
William Ward, who is incarcerated at Stanley Correctional, said he participated in Stanley’s program from February 2020 to February 2025 and wants to see the dog program in more prisons. He said that while the dog program doesn’t involve a large percentage of prisoners, it provides the participants with something constructive to do at a prison where opportunities are limited.
Since 2016, nearly 300 dogs have received service dog training at Stanley Correctional, according to a Facebook post from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections last month.
For about three hours a day, handlers train the dogs on obedience and other skills with the help of Can Do Canines, the department said. More than 180 incarcerated people have volunteered in that role.
The DOC reported an overall success rate of over 71% for those dogs. The 10-year anniversary was recognized earlier this year during a celebration with Can Do Canines clients, staff, volunteers and other guests, the department said.
Chippewa Valley Correctional Treatment Facility reported that 31 puppies were successfully trained during fiscal year 2025. And in February of last year, six puppies came to Fox Lake Correctional Institution.
“We welcomed Shelby, Smudge, Skyler, Scout, Sailor and Solly to FLCI where they began their training,” Fox Lake reported.
Jackson Correctional Institution in Black River Falls reported raising 36 puppies in fiscal year 2025. In addition, the prison has worked with 50 3-year-old “finishing” dogs for a three-month program, as of Jackson’s annual report for fiscal year 2025.
Staff and incarcerated people at Jackson celebrated the graduation of their first group of Can Do Canines dogs in 2018, according to a 2018 DOC press release.
“The participating inmates feel a sense of pride in their accomplishments and are extremely grateful to others for the chance to give back,” Lizzie Tegels, the warden at Jackson at the time, said in the press release. “This program has also had a very positive effect on the climate at our institution.”
Randy Forsterling, a formerly incarcerated man, connected the Examiner with Landrum and three other men who said they are current or former participants in prison dog training programs with organizations such as Can Do Canines. One of them, Michael Lappen, was released from prison in 2023 and is currently on community supervision.
Like Landrum, Lappen said he was in the dog program at Jackson Correctional Institution. He said he was also in a dog program at Prairie du Chien Correctional Institution, and plans to volunteer with R-PAWS, a wildlife sanctuary program involving volunteer members that cares for injured and orphaned wildlife for release back into the wild.
Can Do Canines isn’t the only group working with incarcerated people to train dogs behind bars. In 2022, WISN 12 News reported on incarcerated people volunteering with the Journey Together Service Dog program at Oshkosh Correctional Institution.
Shaun Lynch told the Examiner he was in Oshkosh Correctional’s Journey Together program from January 2017 until April 2019.
“When I got to Oshkosh in 2016 I hadn’t seen a dog in nearly 20 years,” Lynch said in a message to the Examiner over the messaging app GettingOut.
Lynch has been in the state prison system since 1998 and has a life sentence, according to online Department of Corrections records. He said that he is going to school for his associate degree in small business entrepreneurship so that he can start his own program if he ever gets out of prison.
According to Lynch, he helped start a program called Paws for Patriots at Redgranite Correctional Institution, where he has been incarcerated since 2019. He said he started in March 2022 and is still in the program.
According to its most recent available report, Redgranite Correctional partners with Patriot K9’s, an organization that aims to help veterans “win the war against suicide, depression and anxiety” through service dogs and connections to needed resources.
Patriot K9’s website says that the dog training programs provide incarcerated people with employable skills, such as social skills and problem solving, and help make the transition to life outside prison go more smoothly.
“I hope I am able to inspire others to look beyond themselves and do something to give back, whether it’s training dogs or just giving back in some way that can help make a difference in someone’s life,” Lynch said. “I also hope that it shows people that no matter what you’ve done in your life you can change for the better and make a difference in someone’s life.”
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A newly signed state law could extend some federal health care coverage to Wisconsinites in the months before they're released from jail or prison.
The post It’s ‘life and death’: Wisconsin to extend Medicaid to those nearing release from prison appeared first on WPR.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley speaks at the first candidate forum of the campaign cycle. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is one of seven Democrats vying for the nomination in this year’s primary for governor, is calling domestic violence a “public health emergency” after learning about the killing of a Kenosha woman, Makayla Plaza, 28, allegedly by her estranged ex-husband. Plaza’s attempts to get a restraining order against her ex-husband were shot down by a Kenosha County judge.
In February, Plaza told the court she feared for her life and the lives of her young children. But the judge denied her request for a restraining order. Markus Plaza, her 33-year-old ex-husband, was taken into custody after a 24-hour man-hunt following her death on April 1 TMJ4 reported that law enforcement found the man, Marckus Plaza, hiding in the basement of a salon.
Makayla Plaza’s boyfriend said that her ex-husband would take her keys from her, lock her inside the house, and listen in on her phone calls. The Kenosha Police Department said that the husband had a history with the department, including an arrest for battery in February which resulted in no charges being filed.
In a statement released through his campaign, Crowley said that “I have been sitting with this since I heard the news because I am also grieving,” recounting how his own friend Nancy Metayer — vice mayor of Coral Springs, Florida — was allegedly killed by her husband just days ago. Metayer was soon to announce her campaign to run for Congress. “Two women. Two states. The same devastating, preventable outcome. How many more?” Crowley said in his statement.
“I need Wisconsin to understand that this was not a fluke,” Crowley said. “This was not an isolated failure.” Rather, he said, tragedies like Plaza’s death are the result of underfunded shelters, understaffed courts and setting the legal bar for protection “so impossibly high that a woman has to prove she is already in danger before we will act to prevent it.” He called for treating domestic violence as “the public health emergency it is.”
Wisconsin has the tools and research it needs to make a difference, Crowley said, as well as the expertise of social workers, survivors and advocates. “What we have lacked — what Wisconsin has lacked for too long — is the political will to act,” he added. “I am done waiting.” If he is elected governor, he said, tackling domestic violence would be a priority, including changing how restraining orders are processed statewide, ensuring that survivors and their families have legal assistance and investing in mental health and substance use disorder treatment, as well as in domestic violence prevention and crisis support programs in all 72 counties.
“So to the women of Wisconsin who are living this right now — I see you,” said Crowley. “If you are afraid, if you are trying to find a way out, if you have asked for help and been turned away or doubted or made to feel like what is happening to you isn’t serious enough — I want you to hear this directly from me: You are believed. What is happening to you is real. You deserve a system that fights for your life the way you are fighting for it every single day.”
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Alabama state Sen. Kirk Hatcher, a Democrat, speaks outside the Alabama State House in March against a Republican-sponsored bill that could allow the state to take control over Montgomery's police department. In recent years, Republican lawmakers in GOP-led states have pushed for state takeovers of police departments and other municipal agencies. (Photo by Ralph Chapoco/Alabama Reflector)
In late March, a handful of Black faith leaders gathered on the steps of the Alabama State House to protest a bill that could allow the state to seize control of the police force in the capital of Montgomery.
Supporters of the Republican-sponsored proposal cast it as a response to Montgomery’s police officer shortage and public concern over unchecked crime.
Opponents called it a power grab aimed at a Democratic-led, majority-Black city, pushed by Montgomery’s white Republican state senator over the objections of the city’s mayor, police chief and its other state senator, a Black Democrat who represents a larger swath of the city.
“We’ve seen this before. This is nothing new,” Richard Williams, lead pastor of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Montgomery, told reporters and others gathered for the news conference. The bill “empowers the state to remove elected Black officials from their operational control of the Montgomery Police Department.”
The following day, the Alabama Senate’s Republican supermajority shut down any debate on the bill and approved it. Kirk Hatcher, Montgomery’s Black state senator, and other Democrats were not allowed to speak on the Senate floor until after it passed. The measure now awaits a vote in the House.
Similar efforts have played out in recent years in other states — including Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee — as Republican lawmakers push for state takeovers of police departments and other municipal agencies in Democratic cities that often have significant Black populations.
Society is collectively tolerating the loss of democracy in these limited pockets. They don’t understand it’s going to come for them eventually.
– Louise Seamster, a sociologist at the University of Iowa
Conservative lawmakers frame their proposals as necessary for improving public safety or financial accountability. Critics say the takeover efforts undermine democracy by overriding local control, exceeding the traditional bounds of state power while perpetuating racist stereotypes.
Many of the nation’s big cities with the highest murder rates are located in Republican-led states but are governed by Democrats — a dynamic that fuels tension between state and local leadership.
“It’s frustrating for the citizens of Montgomery whenever they’re the victims (of crime) and their neighbors are victims,” Alabama Republican state Sen. Will Barfoot, who represents a slice of Montgomery, told fellow legislators on the Senate floor in March. “You know that at the very least that it’s partially because Montgomery doesn’t have the law enforcement officers that they need.”
Barfoot did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.
The Montgomery Police Department hasn’t publicly released its staffing figures. Barfoot said on the floor that while he hadn’t been able to get those numbers, he estimated the department has around 220-230 officers, which he said falls short of the roughly 400 it would need to be staffed effectively.
In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe put the St. Louis police department under the control of a state-appointed board last year. Kansas City, Missouri, is the only other major city police department under state control. That arrangement dates from 1939, when the state assumed authority to combat corruption.
In 2023, Mississippi’s white Republican supermajority gave the state-run Capitol Police expanded jurisdiction over the state capital of Jackson, which has been called the “Blackest City in America,” and created separate appointed courts for the affluent, whiter parts of the city.
In Tennessee, state lawmakers are trying to create a state-controlled tourism board to oversee millions in surplus cash generated by Nashville. It’s the latest in a line of moves by the Republican-controlled state legislature to exert more influence in Democratic-led Nashville, including over its metro council, airport authority, electrical utility, and even its sports authority.
“Society is collectively tolerating the loss of democracy in these limited pockets,” said Louise Seamster, a sociologist at the University of Iowa whose research has focused on politics and urban development. “They don’t understand it’s going to come for them eventually.”
The state-local power struggle over the St. Louis police department dates to the eve of the Civil War. White secessionist leaders in Missouri took control of the St. Louis police to keep its officers from fighting against the Confederacy. Kansas City’s arrangement dates back to post-Civil War Reconstruction, when state lawmakers were trying to limit Black political influence and civil rights gains. Kansas City briefly regained control in 1932 before the state reasserted itself seven years later.
At the time of Reconstruction, the growth of Black governance was seen as a major threat to white political power at the local and state levels, Seamster said.
“All kinds of political arrangements, up to legalized and unsanctioned violence, were carried out to reset things to what white people in power thought was the norm, which was them in charge,” she said.
Fast-forward to the Obama era: In a 2012 ballot initiative, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved returning control of the St. Louis police department to the city.
But Republican state lawmakers tried in 2023 to repeal the measure, claiming St. Louis’ leaders at that time couldn’t decrease crime on their own. The effort failed after a nine-hour Democratic filibuster.
GOP lawmakers got it passed in 2025 with the backing of Kehoe, who’d made the effort a priority of his first year in office. He said state control would give law enforcement the tools it needed to combat high crime rates.
Missouri Democrats, noting that crime rates were decreasing, called the measure racist; Black Democrats held the city’s major offices at the time.
St. Louis has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, though police officials said their data shows the murder rate dropped to its lowest level in two decades during the first three months of 2025.
In Michigan, researchers found, financial stress alone didn’t explain municipal takeovers. Residents’ race and economic status, as well as a city’s reliance on state funding, were better predictors of state intervention, according to a 2021 study from University of Michigan researchers.
“Black communities show signs of being successful or having access to resources that might increase their autonomy or ability to develop,” said Seamster, who has studied city-state conflicts over resources. “Then it is often a trend where, formally or informally, white communities step in to take it back.”
In 2019, the Republican-led Georgia state legislature tried to take over operation of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, citing concerns over safety and corruption. Atlanta City Hall had been embroiled in a sprawling corruption scandal that eventually resulted in federal charges against multiple city staffers.
Then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms denounced the move as an “act of war” against the Democratic city, long a national hub of Black culture and business.
Many of the cities targeted for state intervention struggle with the kind of persistent poverty and structural disadvantages that contribute to higher crime rates.
Cities’ finances and power get siphoned away in myriad ways, Seamster said, from reduced state financial support or required power-sharing with a larger county, to more subtle changes, such as state decisions on how federal block grant funding is distributed that give cities less to work with.
Baltimore regained control of its police department last year after voters twice approved a ballot measure in the wake of a decade-long fight for local control. The police department had been under some form of state control since the Civil War.
Lifelong resident Ray Kelly became interested in the issue when a student in his community was arrested. He soon learned that to lobby for changes in the department, he’d have to leave Baltimore for the state capitol in Annapolis, nearly an hour’s drive south.
“Accountability starts at home, so the first place we naturally think we should go if we have an issue in our community is to our local representative,” he said, “and for 160 years the local representative had no authority, so it was like banging your head against the wall.”
Kelly is now executive director of the Citizens Policing Project, a nonprofit that was part of a coalition of Maryland organizations that worked for years to get the ballot initiative passed.
In the year since Baltimore gained control of its police, the Baltimore City Council has been holding regular public hearings on public safety.
They’re “packed,” Kelly said, adding that one hearing had such a huge turnout that both the hearing room and the overflow room were full, with even more residents standing outside to listen.
Kelly counts that as one visible and positive result of getting local control restored.
“The ultimate goal is to have local people be able to shape how the operations of the police department happen on a day-to-day basis, and not have to travel all the way to Annapolis to do it,” he said.
“People will be more involved as they learn we don’t have to write the state senator anymore, and we can just go to City Hall.”
Barfoot, the Alabama Republican state senator who represents a portion of Montgomery, told lawmakers he’s gotten more calls and messages about his bill proposing a takeover of the Montgomery police department than any other piece of legislation in his eight years in office.
Most of them have been supportive, he said.
Montgomery citizens, he said on the Senate floor, are “tired of turning on the news and hearing about the violence that we’ve had here in Montgomery. We’re tired of having the thefts that are occurring. We’re tired of having the robberies, the home invasions. And believe me, that is across Montgomery.”
He pointed to other large cities in Alabama that he said had a much higher number of officers per 1,000 residents than Montgomery, and criticized the city for going through five different police chiefs in the past seven years.
Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Hatcher say Barfoot never consulted them before introducing the bill. Barfoot acknowledged those “missteps” on the Senate floor, but said he’d since held a public hearing and said those leaders didn’t reach out to him, either. The current police chief spoke against the bill before lawmakers.
Montgomery leaders say the bill unfairly singles out their city. As written, it applies only to Montgomery and Huntsville, a Republican-led city. It would give law enforcement in those cities five years to have a certain number of police officers per resident before the state steps in.
After Huntsville leadership approached lawmakers with concerns about the bill, sponsors lowered the staffing requirements to 1.9 officers per 1,000 residents to give Huntsville some “breathing room,” Barfoot told local media. Huntsville now meets the requirements.
But Montgomery is about 150 officers short of the bill’s mandate, Barfoot estimated. If it doesn’t hire the required number of officers within five years, the state can take over and charge the city for filling those vacancies.
Williams, the Montgomery pastor, called that restitution clause a “financial weapon.”
After the Senate passed the bill, Hatcher chastised his Republican colleagues for withholding resources from people who need it and voting against public safety measures that law enforcement wants. An Alabama law enacted in 2022 allows gun owners to carry a handgun without a permit, background check or safety training.
“What I’ve come to believe is that when everybody around you has everything they need, that’s the safest we will be,” Hatcher said. “When people have health care, when people have food, SNAP benefits, that’s the safest we’ll be.”
Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A health care worker gives pills to an incarcerated woman. Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill seeking a federal waiver to extend Medicaid coverage to people in state prisons. (Getty Images)
Under a bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin will seek health care coverage from the federal government for certain services for incarcerated people.
A statement from Evers’ office said that AB 604 — now Wisconsin Act 233 — aims to improve health outcomes and reduce disruptions in care and rates of people committing new crimes.
As people with substance use disorders return to the community from jail or prison, they are especially vulnerable to dying from an overdose. Supporters of the new law hope it will aid them.
A federal “inmate exclusion policy” limits incarcerated people’s ability to use Medicaid, but under the new law the state will apply for a waiver, taking advantage of an exception outlined by the federal government.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services will submit a request for a waiver to conduct a demonstration project to provide incarcerated people with health care coverage for certain services for up to 90 days before release.
The department will request coverage for case management services, medication-assisted treatment for all types of substance use disorders and a 30-day supply of prescription medications. If the waiver is approved, incarcerated people would have to be otherwise eligible for coverage under the Medical Assistance program in order to qualify.
As of Nov. 21, 19 states have approved waivers and nine states including Washington D.C. have pending waivers.
The Wisconsin Department of Health Services must submit the waiver request by Jan. 1, 2027. The department told the Examiner in November that it needed the authority that the bill would provide before it starts work on putting together the details of the waiver.
Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), one of the lawmakers who introduced AB 604, said in a statement Wednesday that the bill gives incarcerated people “a greater chance of maintaining sobriety, preventing overdose, and remaining healthy after they rejoin the community.”
The criminal justice advocacy organization WISDOM was among groups that expressed support for the bill. Tom Denk, the co-president of one of WISDOM’s affiliates, said in an emailed statement that this law is very personal to him and called it “a step forward.”
Denk, who was released from prison to extended supervision in 2022, said he’s had friends in and out of facilities and had too many die because of a lack of services.
He said that “my own struggles, the trauma, and the deaths of some of my best friends are what motivated me to get involved in advocating for a better system.”
“Medications, and access to medical care, will literally save lives,” Denk said. “Too many people don’t have either, when they’ve left facilities.”
Denk also emailed the Examiner a statement signed by Bev Kelley-Miller, who wrote that she lost her 22-year-old daughter, Megan Kelley, to a preventable heroin overdose. Kelley-Miller wrote that her daughter had an ankle bracelet “but that didn’t stop her from using.”
Kelley-Miller, who expressed support for AB 604, wrote that substance use disorder is a medical condition and that using substances is not a choice once you are addicted.
“I wish Megan was still here,” Kelley-Miller wrote. “Since she’s not, I advocate for others to receive the care they need to live.”
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A man was arrested over the weekend after authorities say he stole a school bus from a high school parking lot and later abandoned it at a nearby store, reported ABC 13.
According to the news report, officers responded Saturday afternoon to a Dollar General near Glasgow High School after school officials reported that the stolen bus had been located. The vehicle showed visible scratches on the rear-passenger side and front that appeared to be recent.
Glasgow Independent Schools Superintendent Chad Muhlenkamp said GPS data indicated the bus was started at approximately 4:34 a.m., left school property and traveled along Coral Hill Road before making a stop. The bus was later parked at the Dollar General around 5:27 a.m.
Security camera footage identified the suspect as 18-year-old Tayesean M. Barlow. The footage reportedly showed Barlow entering the bus with a flashlight and appearing to have what looked like a drum magazine attached to a handgun in his waistband. He was later seen sitting in the driver’s seat, starting the bus and driving away. Police said he briefly stopped to speak with someone out of view before continuing and eventually parking the bus.
According to the article, officers later went to Barlow’s home on Coral Hill Road, where his mother told them she was aware of the situation and had instructed her son to return the stolen bus. Barlow then came outside and was taken into custody.
While being held at the Barren County Detention Center, Barlow reportedly told police he had been with friends at a local apartment complex and decided to leave after “things got a little crazy.” He said he entered the bus after finding it unlocked, located the keys and drove it home because he did not want to walk.
Barlow remains jailed on a $25,000 cash bond. He faces charges including theft by unlawful taking, second-degree criminal mischief, unlawful possession of a weapon on school property, and operating a vehicle with a suspended or revoked license.
Related: Louisiana Family Arrested Amid Accusations of Stealing School Bus
Related: Teen Arrested After Stolen Vehicle Pursuit Ends with School Bus Crash
Related: Alabama Stolen School Bus Found, Man Charged
Related: Stolen School Bus Chased into Indiana Cornfield
The post Stolen Bus Driven from Kentucky School District to Nearby Store appeared first on School Transportation News.
A bipartisan group of prosecutors say they couldn't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that either mayor broke any laws.
The post Criminal charges won’t be filed against Green Bay, Wausau mayors appeared first on WPR.
Antitrust lawsuits from across the country against three fire truck manufacturers — including two based in Wisconsin — will now be centralized in a federal court in the Badger State.
The post Antitrust suits against fire truck manufacturers will be centralized in Wisconsin federal court appeared first on WPR.
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