More than 200 American mayors are calling on the federal government to reverse changes that will cost states billions and push millions of people off the food stamp program.

This week, the United States Conference of Mayors asked the U.S. Senate’s agriculture committee to reconsider the deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,  enacted in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In addition to imposing new eligibility and work requirements for recipients, the law will require states for the first time to fund some SNAP benefits themselves beginning in fall 2027.

The 210 mayors who signed a letter to Senate leaders said they are on the “front lines of a deepening food security crisis” and said the federal government should be expanding access to food, not creating new obstacles.

That letter was signed by Democratic and Republican mayors leading major cities such as Baltimore, Las Vegas, Oklahoma City and St. Louis, as well as smaller communities including Lima, Ohio; Manhattan, Kansas; and Muskegon, Michigan. The U.S. Conference of Mayors is a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 leaders of cities with populations of 30,000 or more.

“When we’re talking about how to make sure that our residents are fed, that is something that worries Republican mayors, it worries Democratic mayors, it worries independent mayors. It worries everybody,” Matt Tuerk, the Democratic mayor of Allentown, Pennsylvania, said in an interview with Stateline.

Tuerk, who leads the national organization’s Children, Health, and Human Services Standing Committee, said his constituents are already struggling with the high costs of housing, utilities and groceries. 

“Now they’re worrying about their ability to even pay for those needed groceries without those SNAP benefits,” he said. 

Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.

Federal officials have argued that changes were necessary to root out fraud and waste from the food stamp program. 

Tuerk said philanthropic groups don’t have the resources to serve as the national safety net, and city and states are already facing tight budgets that cannot fill the void left from federal cuts. 

“And there’s no adequate replacement for food,” he said. “And I can say that as a kid who had a free lunch card … Without food stamps, I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

The mayors are also asking Congress to delay implementation of new requirements that some experts expect could cost states more than $9 billion.

The new law will penalize states depending on their payment error rates — a technical calculation by the feds of SNAP overpayments and underpayments, not fraud. States with a payment error rate above 6% will have to fund 5% to 15% of their benefit payments. Previously, the feds provided the aid.

Last month, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement new error rate data was “further proof that state accountability is severely lacking” in the SNAP program.

But the mayors group said states need more time to improve their error rates and budget for additional costs.

“Rising costs of living, stagnant wages, and reduced federal support are converging to create conditions that municipal governments are increasingly challenged to address on their own,” the mayors’ letter said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

WASHINGTON — Advocates and public health experts urged Republicans in Congress on Wednesday to implement a two-year delay on requiring states to begin sharing the costs for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. 

Provisions of the Republican-backed law that President Donald Trump signed last year that go into effect in October 2027 will require states with high SNAP error rates — the percentage of benefits that are overpaid, underpaid or go to recipients who are ineligible — to begin covering some of the program’s costs. It marks a stark change for SNAP, which is solely funded by the federal government. 

In an online briefing hosted by the left-leaning think tank Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Invest in Louisiana, speakers said Congress should use the government funding process to protect access to affordable food for American families. 

Sharon Parrott, the center’s president, said that Republicans are “looking right past this emergency” and using their current budget resolution to help farmers struggling with increased costs that have resulted from Trump’s tariffs and oil prices that have been driven up by the war with Iran — but not low-income grocery shoppers.

“Republican leaders in Congress are ignoring the urgent need to help low-income families and kids who are losing SNAP and can’t afford groceries,” she said. “Congress could use the budget process to help both farmers and families. At a minimum, Congress needs to slow down the hasty implementation of the massive cost-shift in SNAP costs to states.”

She said that since the GOP law, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, altered SNAP eligibility requirements, more than 4.5 million people have stopped receiving food assistance benefits. Nearly one-third, 1.5 million, are children. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the changes to SNAP would reduce federal spending by nearly $190 billion over the next 10 years.

Local leaders push back

Wednesday’s briefing comes amid similar calls from community organizations and state and local leaders from across the country. 

On Monday, the United States Conference of Mayors sent a letter to leaders of the Senate Agriculture Committee asking them to reconsider SNAP changes enacted over the last year and shifting funding to states. 

“At a time when many Americans continue to face economic challenges, we should be working to expand opportunity and food security, not create new barriers to assistance,” the letter, signed by more than 200 mayors, read. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement Monday that Republicans and Democrats must work together to draft a farm bill that restores SNAP and protects funding for food assistance. 

Schumer added that he will not support any farm bill that does not provide states more time to prepare to shoulder the program’s costs. 

Time is running out to get a cost-shift pause through Congress. 

The House is scheduled to adjourn Friday, and won’t be back in session until Aug. 31. Even then, it will just be back for a few weeks, before again adjourning for almost all of October. The Senate will adjourn after the first week in August and will similarly be out for the beginning of September and almost all of October. 

All about the error rates

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act will require most states with error rates of above 6% to cover between 5% and 15% percent of the benefits’ total cost. States under a 6% error rate will be exempt. 

But some states with the highest SNAP error rates — of about 13.3% or higher — will be given an extension to lower their error rates before being forced to bear some of the program’s costs. Depending on the error rate, the states will be granted up to an extra two years to begin sharing costs. 

“Congress can act right now to stop the bleeding and steer us away from this oncoming childhood hunger crisis by extending that same two-year delay to every state — not just the few that benefit from the existing carveout,” said Ty Jones Cox, the budget and policy center’s vice president for food assistance. 

States with the highest error rates in fiscal 2025 included Alaska at 23%, and Delaware and New Mexico both at approximately 16%, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data. 

Cox said the center estimates nearly half of U.S. states will likely have to pay $100 million or more because of the cost-sharing changes. 

“These are huge costs,” she said. “States are working hard to reduce their error rates, but they’re up against the wall. The law didn’t give them any time or resources to do so.”

Cox said that states that plan to maintain SNAP benefits will have to find the funding from other places, if they are unable to generate more revenue. She said some states may choose to eliminate summer EBT or end universal school meals to continue funding the program. 

Given the steep costs, some states, such as Alabama, have floated the possibility of cutting their SNAP programs entirely if they are unable to lower error rates, Parrott said. 

Public health impacts

The effect of losing SNAP benefits extends beyond food insecurity, said Andrew Racine, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

Besides clean air and water, and a supportive family and environment, he said, food is the most important determinant of a child’s health and future success. 

Racine added that the long-term benefits of SNAP are not being taken into account when decisions regarding its future are made. 

“The benefits of SNAP accrue to that child, accrue to that family, but they accrue to people around them,” he said. “[If] you have a child who’s not suffering from hunger in the classroom, and their ability to concentrate is improved, that has impact on their fellow classmates who are not on SNAP.”

Emily Berge, the former president of the Eau Claire city council and a candidate in the Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, was working the window of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau milkshake stand at the Trempealeau County fair on July 18 when a woman asked her if she knew the Farm Bureau was for Republicans. 

To Berge, who had been at an event with the left-leaning Wisconsin Farmers Union the day before, the critique didn’t make sense. 

She’s running an underdog campaign against Rebecca Cooke — a former political fundraiser, business owner and waitress who nearly won the seat in 2024 and entered the race with massive advantages in fundraising, name recognition and support from high-profile national Democrats. Left, right or center, she is looking to pick up every vote she can get.

Wisconsin’s 3rd CD is currently represented by U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and leans Republican at its baseline, according to the Cook Political Report. 

Whoever wins the Democratic primary is going to have to pick off some people who have voted for Van Orden, President Donald Trump or both while not losing the support of organic farmers in Viroqua or tattoo artists in La Crosse.

For Berge, that means slinging milkshakes in Galesville, riding the tilt-a-whirl with Democratic state legislators in West Salem, grinding coffee beans with baristas in La Crosse and attending every county fair, dairy breakfast, cranberry festival and parade between Platteville and Eau Claire. 

After announcing her candidacy in April last year over the objections of the national Democratic party, Berge and her husband Mike realized by November that their old Subaru Outback wasn’t up for the rigors of a congressional campaign and bought a used Hyundai. In the subsequent eight months, they’ve driven 18,000 miles criss-crossing the district. 

Cooke, who previously worked for the centrist group Third Way, has burnished her moderate bonafides by forcefully denouncing left-wing policy proposals such as defunding the police and abolishing ICE while touting endorsements from the centrist congressional Blue Dog Caucus, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, a member of the fiscally moderate New Democrat Coalition running as a centrist for the U.S. Senate. She’s also been endorsed by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders. 

The National Republican Congressional Committee still calls her “Commie Cooke.” 

At the end of the most recent reporting period, Cooke had raised $8.3 million since the start of 2025 — outraising Van Orden — and still has $2.4 million in cash on hand. Back in 2022, Cooke fought her way to  a surprise second-place finish in the Democratic primary for the seat. The winner of the primary, state Sen. Brad Pfaff, lost to Van Orden by 3.7 points. In 2024, Cooke won the primary and then lost to Van Orden by 2.7 points, although she outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin in the district on the same Democratic ticket. 

This year her name recognition and support from national Democrats, including an early endorsement from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, vaulted her to the front of the 2026 race. 

This spring, her campaign touted internal polling that put her more than 40 points ahead of Berge. 

But with three weeks before the Aug. 11 primary, political observers, voters and the Berge campaign feel like the gap is closing. 

Grassroots candidate vs. ‘the Establishment’

An oversimplification of the race would be to describe it as a contest between Berge the progressive and Cooke the moderate. That characterization is somewhat true: On healthcare for example, Berge supports Medicare for All while Cooke has called for more incremental policy changes. 

One of the biggest spats of the primary campaign has centered around LGBTQ issues, with Cooke repeatedly fumbling and recanting when asked in several forums if she would vote for a federal ban on conversion therapy. 

Cooke’s back and forth drew criticism from Van Orden for “flip-flopping”

During a May forum in La Crosse, Cooke said the question of conversion therapy should be left to local decision makers. At a June forum in Platteville she said she wouldn’t vote for a conversion therapy ban only to release a statement soon after saying she misunderstood the question and she would vote for a ban. At the final forum of the campaign last week in Eau Claire, Cooke said she does “not support conversion therapy whatsoever” but did not say how she’d vote on a ban. 

Berge, a trained mental health counselor, has been unequivocal in her support of a federal ban on conversion therapy at each forum and noted that she led Eau Claire’s efforts to pass a local ban on the practice. 

More than any particular policy difference, in an election cycle in which the brand of the Democratic party establishment has become toxic, the race has become a swing-seat contest between a candidate who appears determined to shake every hand in western and central Wisconsin against a consultant-backed candidate with poll-tested talking points.

Recently filed campaign finance reports show that Cooke’s campaign has spent almost $500,000 on political consultant fees since January of this year. Across her entire campaign, Berge has spent $578,000.

“It’s kind of that classic tension between the national party and local activists,” Anthony Chergosky, a political science professor at UW-La Crosse, said. “I think that we have seen some ideological differences between the two, but also I think maybe like a bit of a broader conversation here about the value of a competitive primary and the extent to which national political figures should be intervening in these nomination contests.”

Berge, drawing on her experience serving as the president of the Eau Claire common council, is convinced that voters in this cycle are less focused on the exact policy particulars and more interested in someone who comes across as authentic and promises to act with the best interests of the people at heart. 

“It’s not necessarily what, but it’s how. It’s how you show up,” Berge told the Wisconsin Examiner. “That’s what I learned on council. That’s why I ran for council. You know, it’s how you show up, how you lead. It’s about being a bridge between your constituents, city hall or D.C. I think that’s what people want.” 

Without the cash to pay for its own polling, the Berge campaign is instead looking for other clues that she has the late momentum. On rural roads and residential streets in the district, Berge’s red, white and blue signs far outnumber Cooke’s green ones. The campaign chose to go without an office to save the rent money, but it does have 600 volunteers making calls, writing postcards and helping manage the campaign Reddit account. 

“We just always get different new people joining us,” Berge said. “I mean, I kind of have my core group of volunteers who have been with me since day one, but we’re like a snowball going down the mountain, you know, and we’re just collecting more and more people, and so we can just keep going and growing and growing.” 

The Berge campaign also believes that over multiple campaign cycles, voters’ views on Cooke have solidified — and not necessarily in a positive way. Near constant Republican messaging accusing her of being far left-wing, support from the DCCC in a cycle when voters are incensed with national Democrats, questions swirling around her background of political work — made worse by her recent request to delay the filing of her personal financial disclosures until after the primary — and bad blood from previous campaigns have soured people on Cooke, Berge campaign staff say. 

Additionally, Berge’s supporters say, Cooke’s reputation with the 19 county parties within the district has been harmed by the perception of a coronation by people outside the district and the fact that she hasn’t shown up much. 

“Certainly, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin is aware of how unhappy most of the county parties in the third district were with that early DCCC endorsement,” Jill McMullen, chair of the Monroe County party said. 

McMullen added that Berge has been far more visible in her area.

“I certainly think having more time on the ground in the county has made a difference for the Berge campaign in terms of name recognition and seeing her as an individual with a real response and plan for various policies,” she said. “Let’s put it this way: all of the candidates for a 3rd CD race have been invited to attend many events, and Emily has been the most engaged thus far. As far as I’m aware, more people within the party have actually been at events with Emily Berge than with the Cooke events, because there was only one Cooke event since the campaign started last summer.”

The same pattern holds in Portage County, the far eastern wing of the district and the home of former state Rep. Katrina Shankland, whom Cooke beat in the contentious 2024 primary.

Gary Hawley, co-chair of the Portage County party, said hurt feelings about Shankland and the Cooke campaign’s failure to show up until recently have left the county “heavy Berge.” 

Campaign finance reports show that Cooke recently placed a $3 million television ad buy and has spent nearly $500,000 on direct mail to voters. 

In a statement, Cooke touted the support she’s received from local elected officials and unions. 

“Our campaign is meeting with Wisconsinites in every corner of our district and building the coalition to flip this seat,” she said. “I’m proud to have earned support from over 50 local leaders who know I’ll fight for their communities, 15 Wisconsin labor unions because I’ll fight for working people, and trusted leaders like Senators Tammy Baldwin and Bernie Sanders who know I’ll be their ally in taking on the career politicians and elites squeezing the rest of us. I will keep working to earn every single vote to win, because Wisconsin deserves a representative who will take on Trump and fight to lower prices, go after the corruption, and actually put us first.” 

Chergosky said that Cooke’s initial financial advantage and name recognition might be too much for the Berge campaign to overcome — though a close-fought Cooke win could portend something about her support heading into November.

“I do think as we get towards the primary, the candidates will start setting expectations in terms of what would be a good night for them, in terms of what would be a good night, a night that feeds momentum into the general election,” he said. “I think it is widely expected that Cooke will win the primary. So perhaps the more interesting question is the margin of victory …  because that could tell us something about the enthusiasm for her within the Democratic Party base.” 

Still, the Berge campaign sees a path. 

Both candidates are from Eau Claire, but Berge’s recent local government service there could be enough to sway a big win in the district’s second largest county. Shankland won 84% of the vote in Portage County in 2024.

If Berge performs well there while squeaking out a lead in the hub of La Crosse County and chipping away at Cooke’s 2024 margins in the more rural counties, it could be enough to pull off the upset. 

“On our worst night we give her a heart attack,” Nicholas Padesky, Berge’s campaign manager, said of Cooke. 

At each stop Berge made during a packed Saturday of campaigning, Berge’s staff had to drag her away from conversations with voters. She said that she might have disagreements with lots of voters on the issues, but she’ll work to make sure they all know she cares about them. 

“I may not have agreed with Emily on that, but I know she cares deeply about our community,” Berge said, describing voters’ experience with her in local government, which she hopes to translate to her campaign. 

And she believes she can get that message across without selling out the progressive voters and marginalized communities at the core of the Democratic primary electorate — saying she can see opportunities for compromise on lots of issues, including guns, data centers and zoning issues, but not on civil rights. 

“If it’s about civil rights or human rights or constitutional rights, if it’s about humanity, I’m not gonna compromise,” she said.

WASHINGTON — As many as 20,000 unaccompanied immigrant children are at risk of losing their federally funded legal representation due to the Trump administration withholding appropriated funds, immigration attorneys warned Tuesday.

For more than six months, the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement has not released $65 million Congress appropriated for legal representation of unaccompanied children in immigration cases. That means children may have to press their immigration claims on their own, vastly raising the probability they will be deported, the attorneys said.

“Children are now facing the real possibility of representing themselves alone against experienced government attorneys,” Ana Devereaux, an attorney at the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, said during a virtual press conference. 

Shaina Aber, the executive director for Acacia Center for Justice, a national group that partners with at least 100 legal organizations to provide services to children, said the lack of funding is already being felt. Several of the group’s partners have declined to continue the partnerships because they have not been reimbursed, she said. 

Aber said the funds were withheld because attorneys refused to hand over to the administration sensitive case data from the unaccompanied children, such as medical records and the types of legal relief the minors are seeking. 

“These children should not, and should never be, leveraged in a political game,” she said. 

HHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

‘Children are children’

Without a lawyer, fewer than 10% of immigrant children win the right to remain in the United States while their case goes through immigration court, said Elizabeth Young, a former immigration judge. 

Some children going through the courts are too young to speak, she said during the press conference. 

“A legal system that values fairness cannot expect children to carry that burden alone,” Young said. 

Devereaux said the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center is operating on reserves and has continued to provide legal services for about 1,100 children. 

“Children are children, regardless of their nationality,” Devereaux said. 

Stripping away the legal services for children, Aber said, is “yet another system of mass deportations.”

Additionally, the Trump administration does not plan to renew its contract with Acacia, which ends July 31, Aber said. 

Instead, the administration is eyeing a small Texas state commission that aids low-income people with criminal defense to provide legal services for immigrant children. The commission does not have experience handling immigration cases or unaccompanied minors, Aber said. 

Lawmakers push to release funds

Democratic members of Congress have also called on the Trump administration to release the funds, which Congress approved. 

Last month, more than 70 lawmakers demanded that ORR reimburse the legal groups. 

“Ultimately, we are concerned that these payment delays may be an attempt to circumvent requirements that ORR continue funding legal services for unaccompanied children,” they wrote. “The federal government must meet its obligations under the law.”

Congress created the Unaccompanied Children Program, which, among other things, provides funding for legal representation of migrant children. Free legal representation is not generally provided for immigrants but there is a carveout for unaccompanied children. 

There are about 100 organizations across the U.S. that provide those legal services. 

The move from the Trump administration to withhold funds has sparked several lawsuits. Last year, a preliminary injunction was put in place that ordered the federal government to continue funding legal services for unaccompanied children. 

But advocates have not received any funds since December and were back in court this month. 

Last week, federal Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court for the District of Northern California probed whether the Trump administration should be held in contempt over the withholding of funds after 11 groups claimed they have still not received any reimbursements, according to El Paso Matters.

Those groups are the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, Estrella del Paso, Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project, Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Immigrant Defenders Law Center, National Immigrant Justice Center, Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, Social Justice Collaborative and the Vermont Asylum Assistance Project. 

Upcoming funding shifts in the federal food stamp program are poised to cost states billions of dollars, heightening fears that more Americans will lose access to the nation’s largest food assistance program.

Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act made major changes to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, including new eligibility and work requirements. Already, more than 4 million Americans have lost SNAP benefits, putting more pressure on food banks and food pantries across the country.

But beginning in fall 2027, states for the first time must begin to fund some SNAP benefits themselves. Analyses of newly released data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show states could be on the hook for more than $9 billion. Some states, county officials and advocates fear this will remove more Americans from the safety net program and even push some states to consider dropping out of SNAP altogether.  

The new law will penalize states depending on their payment error rates — a technical calculation by the feds of SNAP overpayments and underpayments, not fraud. States with a payment error rate above 6% will have to fund 5% to 15% of their benefit payments. Previously, the feds provided the aid.

In USDA’s most recent analysis, the error rate slightly improved across the states in fiscal year 2025, but officials said states still made a collective $10.1 billion in improper payments. 

“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a June news release. 

As many as 36 states will face new cost share requirements in the fall of 2027. And nearly half of those are expected to be on the hook for $100 million or more a year, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

For example, in Michigan, the current error rate could cost the state $300 million a year, the center estimates. Texas could be on the hook for an estimated $725 million and New York may need to spend more than $1 billion. 

“States are going to have to make some really painful decisions as they have to balance their budgets about how they are going to cover those costs, and if they can’t fully cover the required cost-sharing requirement, by raising revenue or cutting elsewhere in their budget,” said Katie Bergh, senior policy analyst at the center. 

The change is heightening fears that states will slow down benefit approval, cut access or even choose to drop out of the program altogether, Bergh said. While advocates and some officials have unsuccessfully pushed Congress to reverse its SNAP changes, many are now asking for at least a delay in implementation to give states time to improve their payment error rates.

After USDA released its new data last month, New Jersey Human Services Commissioner Stephen Cha said the error rate measurement is “fundamentally flawed.” Though the state significantly cut its error rate from 14.33% to 6.86%, it could still be on the hook for an estimated $100 million. 

Cha reiterated previous calls for Congress and the Trump administration to eliminate or delay the changes.

“Penalizing states will do nothing to improve payment accuracy or meaningfully address waste, fraud, or abuse,” Cha said in a statement. “Instead, they impose a significant financial and administrative burden on State and county governments, threatening our ability to effectively administer SNAP and meet the critical needs of families across New Jersey.”

In a statement to Stateline, a USDA spokesperson noted states have had decades to improve erroneous payments. “Perhaps now, States will stop spending other people’s money so recklessly,” the statement said. 

Looming budget pressures

In 10 states — California, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — counties administer the SNAP program. 

The National Association of Counties has said the cost shift will threaten not only food access, but could squeeze the ability of counties to fund public safety, emergency management and infrastructure needs.

“These cost shifts threaten to destabilize county budgets, forcing reductions in staffing and delaying critical nutrition assistance for vulnerable residents,” association CEO Matthew Chase said in a letter last year to congressional leaders. 

The National Conference of State Legislatures, which represents lawmakers and legislative staff, said states are committed to administering SNAP benefits accurately and to being held accountable for their performance. But in a statement, the organization said USDA’s most recent data “make clear that additional time is needed” to implement meaningful improvements. 

State efforts to improve their payment accuracy also have substantial tradeoffs.

This spring, the Urban Institute and the American Public Human Services Association surveyed all SNAP agencies across the country. Thirty-nine states responded to the survey, representing a 78% response rate.

The survey found that SNAP administrators are investing in staffing, technology and automation to respond to the federal law. But many states are turning away from efforts to improve timeliness and may have to reduce staffing and benefits to comply. 

In the survey, 29% of states identified narrowing eligibility policies as a potential risk and 11% saw a wholesale withdrawal from SNAP as a potential risk. 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, said churches, food banks and other organizations would ensure that people are fed there.

Stitt, the chair of the bipartisan National Governors Association, said he believes federal programs like SNAP are operated with “a lot of fraud and abuse.” He also suggested that the program had become too seamless, with cards that resemble credit cards allowing recipients to easily purchase groceries. 

“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed,” he told Stateline. “Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…” 

“Nobody’s going to go hungry in Oklahoma,” he said. “…I can assure you people were eating, getting married, graduating from high school before we even had anything called SNAP benefits.”

The error rate

The federal focus on error rates is incentivizing states to slow down or entirely halt benefits in some cases, said Gina Plata-Nino, SNAP director at the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to combat hunger.

That’s because states face no penalty for wrongfully denying benefits, she said, only for paying too much or too little in benefits. The rate, calculated by a random sample of households, adds the number of overpayments and underpayments together. And states can still be penalized for overpayments they later recover from recipients. 

Missouri could be on the hook for $150 million in food benefits due to error rate

“There is no oversight in terms of the people who are eligible and being cut off,” Plata-Nino said. 

In Massachusetts, nearly 175,000 people lost SNAP benefits between July of last year and May of this year. And understaffing at the Department of Transitional Assistance has caused thousands of incoming phone calls from residents to get disconnected, according to the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, a poverty law and policy center.

That organization has pushed for more caseworkers, though a legislative budget proposal last week would cut $26 million from existing operations, said Victoria Negus, senior economic justice advocate at the institute.  

“What is happening is a version of what I’ve been calling ‘can’t see the forest for the payment error rate trees,’” she said. “They have set up this system that forces states to try to meet a number that is almost impossible for them to meet without fully decimated access to SNAP, because it takes time to methodically and carefully reduce payment error rates.”

In Alabama, officials said the state continues to prioritize staff training, automation and other changes to reduce the state’s error rate. The current error rate of 9.52% could cost the state an estimated $170 million.

Tennessee taxpayers could foot bill for some SNAP costs if state’s error rate doesn’t improve

Alabama’s legislature has set aside nearly $150 million for the SNAP program. But state Sen. Greg Albritton, a Republican who leads the budget committee, told the Alabama Reflector in April that those funds won’t be released unless the state can reduce its error rate to 6% or develop another plan to cover costs of the federal cuts. 

Kathryn Shoupe, spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Human Resources, noted that the federal data can be over a year old. She also noted that it isn’t evidence of fraud, but usually unintentional reporting errors from recipients.

LaTrell Clifford Wood, the hunger policy advocate at the anti-poverty nonprofit Alabama Arise, said the state needs hundreds more employees to fully meet the need. She noted that more than 52,000 people have already lost SNAP benefits in Alabama. And with rising grocery prices, she said the focus on the error rate will force difficult budgetary decisions that could affect other parts of the state budget, such as education.

“It is a metric with moral ambiguity,” she said. “We are putting paper pushing over people.” 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

One year ago, President Donald Trump signed the first piece of legislation Republicans in Congress had introduced at the start of his second term.

Passed using the complicated budget reconciliation process that enabled GOP lawmakers to enact the legislation without Democratic votes, HR 1 paired $4.5 trillion in tax cuts over 10 years with $1 trillion in cuts to federal healthcare programs as well as other initiatives to cut federal spending.

With the legislation’s first birthday on July 4, critics of the Trump administration and Democratic politicians have been using every opportunity to highlight the legislation’s role in driving unpopular results.

Healthcare cuts are among the most prominent of those outcomes. They include a series of changes to Medicaid — the state-federal health insurance program for people at or below the federal poverty guideline, with annual incomes of just under $16,000 per year for a single person or $33,000 for a family of four.

For medical and hospital care, Medicaid is called BadgerCare in Wisconsin. Medicaid also covers long-term care services for people who qualify, including home healthcare for the elderly and people with disabilities, and goes under a variety of names including Family Care and IRIS.

On Tuesday, the anti-Trump political activist group Indivisible and members of the healthcare union SEIU Wisconsin gathered in front of the Wisconsin Republican Party headquarters in Madison with an out-of-service ambulance to denounce  cuts to healthcare attributed to HR 1.

“We are here to give voice to the millions of Americans who have lost access to healthcare and to the tens of thousands of Wisconsinites who have lost healthcare,” said Jean Grow, co-leader of Indivisible’s Milwaukee chapter.

The group aimed its barbs not just at Trump but at Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the party’s nominee for governor in the November 2026 election, who voted with the rest of his party in the U.S. House of Representatives for HR 1.

“Who in this state is primarily responsible for these cuts? Tom Tiffany,” Grow said, to hearty jeers from the crowd of about two dozen during the lunchtime protest.

HR 1 also cut the federal nutrition assistance program SNAP — known as FoodShare in Wisconsin — by 20% by 2034, about $187 billion.

The changes will pass on to most states a portion of the program’s costs, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington says could lead “the lowest-income people, including children, older adults, veterans, and people with disabilities” in every state to lose access to food assistance.

The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act “has been brutal for Wisconsin families,” said Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski, a Democrat who is running for lieutenant governor, at a press conference Wednesday at the Democratic Party’s Capitol Square offices that focused on Tiffany’s record.

“We know that the impact it’s going to cause — things like potentially 270,000 Wisconsinites are going to lose healthcare,” said Godlewski. “We know tens of thousands of Wisconsinites are going to lose access to FoodShare.”

While Trump and GOP congressional leaders initially called HR 1 the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” critics quickly mocked it as “the Big Ugly Law” or variations on that theme. In September, the Republicans rebranded the bill as “The Working Families Tax Cut.”

The CBPP, however, found that the tax cuts are “tilted to the wealthiest households.”

The Congressional Budget Office “finds that the new law’s program cuts and tax cuts will make households with incomes in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale worse off: they will lose more from the cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and other programs than they will gain in tax cuts,” the  CBPP reported in February.

For the bottom 10% by income, average annual incomes will fall by $1,200 — 3.1% — the CBPP reported, citing the CBO. Meanwhile, the top 10% will see their annual incomes rise $13,600 on average.

HR 1’s advocates said the healthcare spending reductions would only address waste, fraud and abuse.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) said during a virtual press conference in June that the changes — such as new work-reporting requirements for some Medicaid participants — would impose administrative burdens and red tape that will block people who are qualified to receive benefits.

“They’re trying to kick people who are fully eligible off the program,” Baldwin said. The press conference was organized by the advocacy groups Protect Our Care and Main Street Alliance.

Most of the Medicaid changes won’t take effect until 2027. Enrollment in the program has already been dropping, however. Federal data tracked by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families show that in Wisconsin, more than 75,000 Medicaid recipients had left the program in the first five months of 2026.

Dr. Kristen Dall-Winther, a family physician in Birchwood, Wisconsin, also took part in the press conference with Baldwin.

“I see how access to affordable healthcare can make the difference between something that’s a manageable condition and a medical crisis. I also see the difficult choices patients are forced to make when healthcare becomes too expensive, which it generally, universally is now,” Dall-Winther said. “When funding is reduced, healthcare providers face greater financial strain, especially in rural areas where many of our facilities are already operating on razor-thin margins.”

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, established in 1989 to help Wisconsin obtain and maintain its natural areas expired Tuesday. Cause of death, according to advocates, was legislative obstinance. 

Initially created through a bipartisan piece of legislation, the program has helped local governments build boat launches, playgrounds, bike paths and hiking trails in every corner of the state; helped land trusts and non-profits obtain and conserve thousands of acres of forest land and helped the Department of Natural Resources grow and manage Wisconsin’s state parks. 

“Every single community has a boat launch, or a playground, or a neighborhood park, or a bike path that was funded with Knowles Nelson dollars,” said Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, an alliance of 40 land trusts around Wisconsin.  “So, the state just looks a lot different than it would if we didn’t have Knowles Nelson, and we all have more opportunities to get outside and enjoy all these places that make Wisconsin special than we would have without the program.”

Since its inception, the program has enjoyed broad support from voters and been seen as a national model for land conservation systems. However, in recent years, a handful of Republican legislators — largely representing the northern parts of the state — began to sour on the program’s aims. 

This group has argued that too much land in northern Wisconsin has been conserved, leaving  struggling local governments without enough of a property tax base to fund their budgets or grow their communities. An analysis by the Examiner found that most of the public land in northern Wisconsin is national forest land and that land purchased through Knowles-Nelson is a tiny portion of Wisconsin’s public lands portfolio. 

Opposition to the program was supercharged after the state Supreme Court ruled that the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee was unconstitutionally exercising its power by allowing members to anonymously hold up any proposed land acquisitions through Knowles-Nelson. 

The decision angered legislators who had previously been able to quietly stop projects in their districts, and the program suddenly faced energized opposition. Proposals that aimed to bring together bipartisan support to continue the program from Gov. Tony Evers, a handful of Republicans and the Legislature’s Democratic caucus failed to gain traction during the most recent legislative session. 

“Scoring a few political points in the Capitol at the expense of your community and of your voters just encapsulates what people hate about politics right now,” said Carlin. “What happened this session is a very small number of Republican senators decided that political retribution inside the Capitol in Madison was more important than good policy for their constituents. That’s bad governance. It undermines their own communities, and I would hope that they are questioning that choice, perhaps regretting it. I think we’re all going to be looking to see what happens in November, and to see, gosh, are there consequences for choosing to govern like that?” 

With the program’s expiration this week, legislative Democrats have stated that if voters elect Democratic majorities in the Legislature and a Democratic governor next year, re-authorizing the program will be among the first priorities. 

Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said at an event Tuesday morning at Governor Gaylord Nelson State Park in Waunakee that with trifecta control of government, Democrats would bring the program back.

“Senate Republicans … have ensured that towns and cities across our state do not have the money to repair boat launches or keep our trails safe,” she said. “They have made it impossible for the state to preserve more of our landscape, giving developers free rein. They have decided to disregard the will of the residents, and no wonder why the Republican party is losing so much at the polls. The expiration of this program today is just another example of Republican failures, but my message to Wisconsin is very simple: Vote for Democrats in November, and we promise, especially with the Democratic trifecta, we will bring the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Program back in full force, so people can enjoy nature regardless of their zip code, every single place in the state of Wisconsin.” 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay), one of the authors of the failed Democratic bill to reauthorize the program, told the Examiner Monday that the expiration was just a “pause.” 

Habush Sinykin said that she’s working on ways to get a Knowles-Nelson bill through the Legislature no matter the result of the November elections. 

“We’ll find out just in a matter of months what we have to work with,” she said. “But we have quite a bit of give with regard to how we can keep the program going forward productively, in terms of funding and for oversight mechanisms. And again, I would be certainly grateful to be able to work across the aisle and with legislators in my own party to come up with the Knowles Nelson reauthorization program that makes sense for Wisconsin. It contributes so much to our state and local economies and quality of life. It really is a wise investment.” 

Even if a bill to restart the program is introduced immediately at the start of the next session and fast tracked to the governor’s desk, it could be close to a year before the program is back on track. Carlin said that because of the long-term planning required for the type of land acquisitions funded through Knowles-Nelson, the “ripple effects go way beyond that 12-month period of time.” 

“Every single land trust and every single local government is cash strapped, and they are strained for capacity as well. There’s more to do than there is people and money to get it done,” he said. And so, as the future of Knowles Nelson became more and more uncertain, you know, land trusts, they really ramped down their land acquisition planning. Because if they don’t have a sense of how the heck they’re going to fund a project, they don’t pursue it. And so what that means is, is fewer conversations are happening with prospective landowners, that fewer negotiations about land purchases are happening. And that’s not an on/off switch; it takes a while to ramp that up and to get going again.” 

Carlin added that the state knows there’s a growing maintenance backlog for the state’s outdoor recreation facilities and a need to help communities across the state build infrastructure to manage the effects of climate change. 

“By pulling the rug out from under ourselves to make those investments for a year, we’re causing delays that might wind up lasting three years or five years until we get ourselves back on track, even when Knowles Nelson is fully funded,” he said. “So you know what’s done is done, and now we’ve just got to figure out how to fix it and get back on track as quickly as possible.”

Federal officials have cut off more than $2.4 million in federal funds for 2026-27  and 2027-28 targeting teen pregnancy prevention that would have gone to the Wisconsin health department, according to federal records.

The funds would have gone to a variety of nonprofits and agencies in counties  with the highest rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, federal grant information reviewed Monday showed.

The single largest grant had been allotted to Embolden WI, a nonprofit supporter of health equity and advocacy projects, to help fund a program to improve communication between healthcare providers and Wisconsin teenagers.

Providers and Teens Communicating for Health — PATCH for short — employs teenagers who “have conversations with healthcare professionals about what teens want and need when they show up in the healthcare system and how we can better serve them to make sure that they get the care they need and deserve,” said Amy Olejniczak, the founder and executive director of PATCH.

PATCH has been operating since 2010, hiring, training and paying the teen participants who conduct workshops and serve as consultants for healthcare providers, including providers who are working to prevent teen pregnancy.

“Our role as PATCH is take what we know about working directly with youth and to help other organizations doing more direct teen pregnancy prevention work around the state improve their youth engagement, and make sure that they are engaging youth in ways that are effective and improving the quality of work that they’re doing,” Olejniczak told the Wisconsin Examiner on Monday. “A lot of what we do is work to improve communication between teens and the adults that serve them.”

 About 300 Wisconsin teens have participated in PATCH since it launched, Olejniczak said. Currently 75 teens ages 14 to 18 take part all around the state.

In addition to putting on workshops for healthcare providers, they also hold peer workshops for other teens, “talking to other youth about how to start to manage their own healthcare experiences,” Olejniczak said.

The federal government cut the funds immediately on Friday, June 26. PATCH lost $130,000 for the July 1, 2026-June 30, 2027 fiscal year and another $130,000 for the July 1, 2027-June 30, 2028 fiscal year. 

An annual grant to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services was among 53 grants out of 67 grants under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program that were canceled Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Stateline reported the canceled grants totaled about $68 million and affected grant recipients in more than two dozen states. The canceled grants included funds awarded to universities, community organizations, state health departments and Planned Parenthood affiliates in some states.

The grants were canceled two years before their expiration dates because, recipients were informed, the programs did not align with agency priorities, one of the grantees who received a termination notice told Stateline — specifically that the program “normalizes or promotes sexual activity for minors.”

Teen birth rates have fallen dramatically over the past two decades, Stateline reported. Experts attribute the drop to fewer teens deciding to have sex earlier, sex education and better access to contraception, especially for girls.

The Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program was launched in 2010 in the HHS Office of Population Affairs.

On Monday, Embolden WI credited the federal program with helping to reduce teen birth rates nationally by 72% since 2007. The organization called that “a historic public health achievement that experts attribute to evidence-based programming, improved access to health information, and the kind of sustained investment in adolescent health that TPP was designed to support.”

Federal records that were still accessible Monday showed that the Wisconsin Department of Health Services was approved for $1,215,905 per year on a five-year cycle through June 2028. The funds were in turn distributed as subgrants around Wisconsin, including to Embolden WI for PATCH.

DHS did not respond Monday to a request for information about subgrant recipients affected by the federal action. A list that the department distributed includes public health departments in Bayfield, Clark and Oneida counties, the Verona Area School District and more than a half-dozen other nonprofits, with grants ranging from $10,000 to $125,000.

Olejniczak said the PATCH program has helped guide health providers and public health organizations to communicate with teens more effectively.

“We actually love working with med students and nursing and PA [physician assistant] students because they’re just getting started in their training. And we want to make sure that they’re thinking about their patients from their perspective,” she said.

The program works with a variety of local health clinics. For the teens who take part, the experience also serves as a job-readiness program, she said, leading some to enter healthcare professions such as nursing.

The grant covered about 25% of the PATCH annual budget. Olejniczak said PATCH and Embolden WI are seeking other sources of funding to replace what’s been cut so that the program can keep going.

The impact of the cuts goes well beyond just the effect on the PATCH program, she said.

“We know that teen pregnancy prevention has been effective — a lot of the work that has been done over the past decade has improved outcomes. So it’s really just devastating for public health overall,” Olejniczak said. “Our youth just got the message from their federal government that their health, well-being and transition to adulthood is not important.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has nominated a former Oklahoma state trooper to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency tasked with carrying out the president’s mass deportation campaign. 

Richard “Lance” Schroyer’s nomination on June 27 comes on the heels of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed the Trump administration to strip legal status for 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians, a move that opens them up to deportation. 

“Lance Schroyer has what it takes to DETAIN AND DEPORT Illegal Alien Criminals …,” Trump wrote on social media June 27. “…he LOVES the men and women of ICE.”

He’ll have to be confirmed by the Senate, and if he is, he’ll be the first Senate-confirmed ICE director in 11 years. 

The current acting director of ICE is David Venturella, a longtime federal immigration official and former vice president of the private prison company GEO that rakes in billions through federal contracts it holds to detain immigrants at its facilities across the United States.

Former acting ICE director Todd Lyons stepped down in May, following the shooting of two U.S. citizens by immigration officials in Minneapolis earlier this year.

$70 billion in new funding 

Schroyer will come into an agency that Congress recently funded until fiscal year 2029 at $70 billion, not including a separate funding stream of billions Republicans included in the president’s signature tax cuts and spending bill in 2025. 

Schroyer does not have much experience working for the Department of Homeland Security, but serves as an adviser to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who previously served as Oklahoma’s U.S. senator. 

Schroyer also worked to establish Oklahoma’s law enforcement partnership with the federal government to assist with immigration enforcement in the 287g program. He served in law enforcement for nearly 30 years.

Mullin noted Schroyer’s work with the 287g program. 

“Lance is coming straight from the operational field where he ran large scale operations and worked alongside state and federal partners to remove illegal aliens from Oklahoma under the 287g program,” Mullin said in a statement. “With over 29 years of law enforcement experience, Lance will play a vital role in helping deliver on the President’s mandate from the American people to target, arrest, and deport illegal aliens.” 

Oklahoma praise

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt also praised the announcement, along with Schroyer’s career in law enforcement. 

“He was a huge asset to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and now he’ll continue to make us proud at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” Stitt said in a statement. “Oklahoma yet again leads the nation. We have consistently supported President Trump’s work to keep our border secure, and we have led in enforcement actions against those here illegally who engage in criminal behavior.”

Schroyer is also the recipient of the Chief’s Award for his work in 2015, when he assisted a woman whose car crashed outside of his district, in the Tulsa Police Department’s jurisdiction.

“He found her face down with her head pinned between the end of the dashboard and the passenger door. The woman was choking and was unable to speak,” according to a press release from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. 

Schroyer called for first responders and stayed with the woman, according to the release. “In order to enable her to breathe, he moved the car seats and kicked open a jammed door in order to reposition the woman allowing her to breathe,” according to the release.

For his work, he was presented with the Chief’s Award, “honoring his dedication to the protection of lives and service to the public.”

Oklahoma Voice Editor Janelle Stecklein contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators from both political parties said Tuesday they had yet to see the text of the deal Trump administration officials struck over the weekend to end the war in Iran, though several indicated any final agreement will require their approval. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said administration officials have signaled they expect to share the text of the memorandum of understanding with lawmakers, though he didn’t know when. 

“Hopefully that’ll happen sooner rather than later,” he said. “But, you know, obviously it sounds like they’re not going public with it until later in the week. So we’ll see.”

Thune said he’s heard the deal sets up a 60-day framework for negotiators to reach agreement on more specifics, including about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. 

“I think at the end of the day the goal here is to make sure that Iran ends its nuclear program and whatever financial incentives they have should be conditioned upon that,” he said. “But we’ll see when we know more.”

President Donald Trump, speaking from the G7 convention in Europe, said he may hold a press conference in “a couple days” to release the text of the memorandum of understanding and appeared ready for a vote in Congress.

“What I would like to do is send it to Congress, saying you shouldn’t approve it. And I will get it approved. Whatever I say, they want to do the opposite,” he said. “It is not working too well for them, by the way.”

North Dakota Republican Sen. John Hoeven said he believes the plan is to vote to approve the Iran agreement at some point. 

“I think anytime you have Congress ratify something, it gives it longevity,” Hoeven said. “You can’t have the next president come in and change it with an executive order. So I think that’s a benefit. I think it helps strengthen it.”

Hoeven said he hasn’t heard from administration officials why they haven’t shared the text of the memorandum of understanding with senators, even in a classified setting. But he said he’s more focused on U.S. enforcement of agreements on Iran’s nuclear program in the long term. 

“The real issue is that we have something that we can enforce and that’s hard with Iran because they don’t honor any agreement,” Hoeven said.  

Is the agreement a treaty?

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy said he believes an agreement with Iran would represent a treaty and be subject to Senate approval. 

“It sounds like a treaty,” he said. “And if it’s a treaty, it certainly seems like it.”

That would require strong bipartisanship, since the Constitution sets a two-thirds threshold for the Senate to approve a treaty. 

Cassidy added it appears the administration will need the Israeli government — which initiated the attack on Iran with the United States — to stop its war in Lebanon in order to reach a final deal with Iran during the next two months.

“To make a deal, it takes two sides. In this case, maybe three, maybe four because you have Hezbollah and Israel,” Cassidy said, referring to a powerful Lebanese political party and militant group opposed to Israel. “Hezbollah can just stir it up with impunity if they want to under certain circumstances. So you tell me, I mean, it takes two to dance, and so now it takes four to dance. Can you pull it off in 60 days? I don’t know.” 

North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis said the administration needs to be as transparent as possible about what exactly is in the memorandum of understanding it’s reached with Iran. 

“Minimally, there has to be maximum transparency,” he said. 

Tillis said it “makes sense” for the Senate to approve any final deal, saying President Barack Obama made a mistake when he didn’t have lawmakers ratify the agreement his administration struck with Iran in 2015. That deal was named the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. 

“I’ve said repeatedly Obama made a mistake when he didn’t do the work to have it rise to the level of a treaty, and I believe that we should here,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s only good for two and a half years.”

Tillis said he wasn’t concerned Congress hasn’t received the text of the memorandum of understanding yet, but that it’s imperative the administration share those documents.

“Trust but verify,” he said.  

‘Essentially a surrender’

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said he “doubts” the memorandum of understanding is actually real, but that if it is, lawmakers should expect there are “side deals” the administration may not share. 

“If what’s reported is real, it’s Iran’s terms. I mean, it’s essentially a surrender. But I think that’s the only play we can make at this point,” he said. “We have to end this war and stop wasting money and stop killing Americans and civilians and stop driving up prices. So it’s a bad deal but he’s not going to get a better deal. So we just have to accept the humiliation. But I don’t even know if it’s real.”

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that lawmakers need to see the memorandum of understanding so she and others can “express our opinions.”

“But right now we can’t because it’s not fully out there,” she said. 

Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Mark Warner, D-Va., said he hadn’t seen the text of the memorandum of understanding or been briefed by administration officials. But he does believe the administration needs to submit it to lawmakers within five days, as outlined in a 2015 law. 

“My fear is that the details are not going to be as good as the president represents,” Warner said. 

Law requirements

Congress approved legislation in 2015 that requires any presidential administration to submit the text of a deal addressing Iran’s nuclear program within five days. Those documents don’t need to be sent to every lawmaker but are supposed to go to the congressional leaders as well as eight committees with jurisdiction. 

That transmission creates a 30-day review period for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee to hold hearings and briefings. 

The law created a pathway for Congress to approve a joint resolution of disapproval for any Iran nuclear deal. The House and Senate would likely need the support of at least two-thirds of members in order to override a likely veto from Trump. 

Congress overriding a presidential veto of a disapproval resolution would block the Trump administration from lifting sanctions on Iran, though that seems an unlikely scenario given both chambers are controlled by Republicans. 

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service says a joint resolution of disapproval taking effect “would not invalidate the agreement itself but would affect only the possibility of presidential sanctions relief to Iran; nevertheless, precluding the President from providing such relief would almost certainly result in a dissolution of the agreement by Iran.”

The law, officially titled the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, also clears the way for Congress to approve a joint resolution of approval. 

The CRS report says that “would, upon enactment, allow the President to waive sanctions, apparently even if the review period had not yet elapsed.”

Congress taking no action during the 30-day review period would allow the administration to begin sanctions relief as soon as that deadline passes. 

Stellantis just pulled the covers off a gigantic new global strategy, and buried beneath all the boring corporate jargon is something buyers will really care about. Affordable cars are back.

The company says it plans several new sensibly-priced vehicles for North America, including two models priced below $30,000, and seven coming in under $40,000, all before the decade ends.

Also: Stellantis Quietly Showed Dealers A New Chrysler Starting In The $20,000s

North America will receive 11 all-new vehicles by 2030 as part of a wider global product offensive involving more than 60 launches and 50 major refreshes. And rather than trying to push EVs to audiences that don’t necessarily want an electric car, Stellantis is still betting on a broad mix of powertrains. The company confirmed future plans include 29 EVs, 15 plug-in hybrids or range-extenders, 24 hybrids, and nearly 40 combustion or mild-hybrid vehicles.

The backbone of this new strategy is a fresh modular architecture called STLA One that will underpin more than 30 models globally. Launching in 2027, it’s designed to replace multiple existing platforms with one scalable setup, supporting everything from compact hatchbacks to midsize SUVs.

Stellantis says it’s engineered specifically for different propulsion systems and can feature steer-by-wire tech, STLA AutoDrive autonomy, and STLA Brain software architecture. It will also deliver something called STLA SmartCockpit to allow drivers more interaction with their cars, and EVs get cell-to-body battery integration to reduce cost and weight.

Related: Stellantis And JLR Want To Co-Develop And Build Cars In America

The automaker is also reshuffling its brand priorities. Jeep, Ram, Peugeot, and Fiat have now become the company’s four primary global brands and receive the lion’s share of future investment. Around 70 percent of development spending will go toward those names and the Pro One commercial vehicle business.

Other Brands Play Second Fiddle

Other brands still survive, though they’ll get what they’re given when it comes to hardware, rather than get a say in what that hardware is. Alfa Romeo, Dodge, Chrysler, Citroen, and Opel are positioned as strong regional players using shared technology and platforms. Maserati also gets a time extension with two new flagship E-segment models promised, while Lancia and DS continue operating as niche specialty brands. 

Europe’s side of the plan includes a fresh wave of compact crossovers, hybrids, and city EVs designed to better compete against Chinese rivals rapidly expanding across the continent. Those cars could include the return of the iconic back-to-basics Citroen 2CV. Stellantis is also teaming up with its long-time partner in China, Dongfeng, to build and sell Voyah-brand cars in Europe.

And earlier this week it announced it was partnering with Jaguar Land Rover to develop cars for North America, a deal that could help JLR sidestep punishing import tariffs on the European-built cars it sells in the US.

Stellantis

When Francis Wang ’21, MEng ’22 first joined the MIT Edgerton Center’s Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT), his approach to engineering projects was “to focus my energy and attention on a tidy problem with neat boundaries that I could completely control.”

“But on Solar Car, I realized it takes a very different mindset to manage a substantial project with many moving pieces. It takes engineering leadership,” he recalls.

Wang was determined to strengthen his leadership skills. When he became Solar Car captain, he applied and was accepted into the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program.

GEL’s courses and hands-on labs equip students with capabilities they need to lead and contribute to complex, real-world engineering challenges. The one- or two-year program for juniors and seniors complements MIT’s technical education, teaching teamwork, leadership, and communication skills in an engineering context. GEL students also benefit from personalized coaching, mentoring, industry networking, and career support throughout their professional lives.

“Before GEL, I saw the leadership parts of my role as a necessary evil to get to the actual interesting parts, which was the engineering,” says Wang. “The GEL Program gave me an understanding of how engineering leadership is crucial, because in the real world any project worth working on is larger than the scope of an individual engineer.”

In GEL he improved capabilities such as decision-making, taking initiative, and negotiating. He became a more effective SEVT team captain, able to navigate the challenges of taking an engineering project from concept to completion.

“It was often the case that the challenges I faced on Solar Car were not solely technical, involving aspects of communication, coordination, and negotiation. From GEL, I had the framework and the language to approach them,” says Wang.

Each year, 30-40 Edgerton students are accepted into the GEL Program. They come from a variety of teams and clubs including Arcturus, Assistive Technology Club, ChemE Club, Combat Robotics Club, Design Build Fly (DBF), Design for America, Electric Vehicle Team, Engineers Without Borders, First Nations Launch, MIT Electronics Research Society (MITERS), Motorsports, Robotics Team, Rocket Team, and Solar Electric Vehicle Team (SEVT).

“MIT’s best engineering students have GEL training and authentic project management experience with our competition teams,” says Professor J. Kim Vandiver, director of the Edgerton Center.

Edgerton project teams are entirely student-run organizations responsible for all levels of project and team management including fundraising, recruiting, designing, testing, risk mitigation, and project validation. The most successful teams have skilled leaders.

“Many of the excellent Edgerton project team students admitted to GEL are team or sub-team leaders who credit their GEL experience, particularly the experiential learning component, with improving their leadership skills,” says Leo McGonagle, executive director of GEL.

“It’s a win-win-win. GEL gets hard-working, motivated Edgerton Program students who are intent on self-development and improvement. Edgerton project teams often perform better with leaders who are GEL-trained. And the students gain leadership, teamwork, and communication abilities that they can use beyond their project team — in their capstones, course projects, internships, and jobs after MIT,” says McGonagle.

The overlapping connection between GEL and Edgerton truly becomes obvious when students begin to take ownership of project milestones.

“When you become the leader of a technical project, no one gives you a roadmap to team success,” says senior Hailey Polson, former captain of First Nations Launch team. “Technical expertise is not enough to leverage the talent and skills of an entire team or the ability to coordinate a multifaceted project; that’s where the tools, skills, and leadership theory I learned in GEL helped me bridge the gap between knowing how to accomplish our goals and actually leading my team successfully.”

Faris Elnager ’25 served as testing lead on the Motorsports team, which designs, manufactures, and competes with a formula-style electric race car every year.

“Making tough decisions was something that I learned in GEL. On Motorsports, I had to make high-stakes decisions about testing time that affected how we performed at a competition,” he says.

He found that GEL’s weekly Engineering Leadership Labs were a way to test for himself specific leadership capabilities that he could use to improve his Motorsports team.

“One of the most useful skills from GEL was evaluating your stakeholders and learning how to balance their needs. I remember thinking, we’re doing this right now in the [GEL] lab, and then we’re going back to the [Edgerton] shop to do this for real!” says Elnager. “It’s like a positive feedback loop. GEL labs make you better on project teams, and project teams make you better in GEL.”

Now a startup co-founder, Elnager says that the communication skills that he learned through Motorsports and GEL have been critical to his company’s early success. “You can build the best tech in the world. If you can’t pitch it to people, you’re never going to raise any money. Being able to explain a technical project to anyone, whether they're an investor or someone in your industry, is something that’s incredibly valuable.”

Adrienne Lai ’25 served as both mechanical lead and then captain of the Solar Electric Vehicle Team. She recalls how her GEL training would kick in on race day.

“It’s quite tricky to be captain of a build team, because there’s no adult to tell you what to do. You have to figure it all out for yourself. When you’re competing, it can be very chaotic. You are trying to maximize a score by driving more miles, but that comes with a trade-off of spending energy or ending the day in a more rural area, or with less sun, so there are a lot of trade-offs to consider. Sometimes someone just has to make a decision. I was very comfortable doing that because I had learned how to take initiative, which is one of the GEL capabilities,” she says.

Now a course assistant in GEL, Lai helps design scenarios that enable GEL students to become better and more resilient leaders. She particularly enjoys playing the role of an uncooperative supplier.

“We close our store randomly. We don’t have what they need. We won’t tell them what we have,” she laughs. “Students get very frustrated. They think that we’re just being mean. But from a real-world perspective, that is all very true. It simulates unpredictability, which is important not just in a job, but in life.”

The value of the engineering leadership skills learned in GEL and honed on Edgerton project teams carries forward into industry, graduate studies, and entrepreneurial ventures.

“GEL preparation, coupled with authentic project management on a competition team, prepares MIT students for great careers in industry,” says Vandiver.

Henry Smith ’25 says he still relies on skills such as negotiation, communication, and understanding stakeholder needs that he used when he was a Motorsports mechanical lead.

“I was doing high-level management, planning, and organization on the team. Being in the GEL Program really increased my value for the team and helped me be prepared to enter the job field. When I graduated, I wasn’t worried about being ready or not. It was a definite yes,” says Smith.

As project teams continue to address ambitious engineering challenges, the synergy between Edgerton and the Gordon Engineering Leadership (GEL) Program ensures that as students graduate, they’re prepared to not only become strong technical contributors, but confident leaders prepared to tackle complex engineering problems in the real world.

© Photo courtesy of Francis Wang

Offshore wind faces intensified operational and maintenance challenges from bigger turbines and aging fleets, risking project efficiencies, durability, and profitability   Shoreline Wind’s new white paper underscores an urgent need to review and update existing O&M strategies, as the industry enters new territories and matures globally   Esbjerg, Denmark, 16th September 2024 – With the offshore wind …

The post Larger turbines and aging assets pose fresh challenges for offshore wind O&M appeared first on Alternative Energy HQ.