Wisconsin Rep. Gwen Moore is calling for the federal school voucher program created under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” to be eliminated. 

Moore is leading U.S. House Democrats on a bill to repeal a provision creating a federal voucher program which allocates public money towards private schools in the form of a tax incentive. It’s the first federal school voucher program of its kind.

Under the program, donors would be given a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 when they donate to eligible “scholarship granting organizations.” The donations would need to be used for educational expenses including tuition and board at private schools, tutoring, technology and books. 

Moore said at a press conference Thursday held outside of the U.S. Capitol that a credit like this “doesn’t exist anywhere else for anything else in our tax code.”

“Instead of vouchers and tax cuts for billionaires, we could be investing more in Title I funding to serve low-income students,” Moore said. “We could put these monies into Head Start and special education. We could be securing universal school meals for our babies, and not just gutting SNAP and expanding vouchers.”

According to an estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the cost of the program could range to as high as $51 billion annually.

The governor of each state has until Jan. 2027 to opt into the program. Moore thanked Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers for rejecting the proposal repeatedly, including by vetoing a bill sent to him by state lawmakers that would have required Wisconsin to opt in. Evers said Republicans in Washington are giving “private voucher expansion carte blanche to run roughshod over public education in this country.” He also noted that the specifics of the program are not in place yet.

The final regulations for the program are expected in September, according to the New York Times. 

The only Democrats to sign on to the program are New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Other Democratic governors, including in New Mexico, Oregon and Hawaii, who have said they would reject the program also seem to be reconsidering.  

Moore said that she is uniquely positioned to understand the effects of school voucher programs because she represents a district that houses the Milwaukee Choice Program, which was enacted in 1990, and was the first modern school voucher program in the country. Nearly half of students in Milwaukee attend publicly funded private schools and independent charter schools. 

“We can tell you with our lived experience that it disproportionately benefits wealthy students who already attend private schools, and they sap monies from our public schools, which disproportionately and especially hurts disabled students and rural students,” Moore said. 

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who represents Madison, said voucher programs are a “failed experiment,” noting that 41% of all private schools that participated in the Milwaukee program closed between 1990 and 2015.

“To try to prop it up, as Donald Trump is trying to do, is just wrong,” Pocan said. “What we need to do is make sure that we support our public schools. The vast majority of our constituents attend those schools.”

Two candidates for governor have declared their support for letting Wisconsin opt in to the program: Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation CEO Missy Hughes, a Democrat.

“Denying Wisconsin families access to these scholarships for the sake of partisan politics is irresponsible, unfair, and counterproductive to our shared goal of improving educational outcomes for Wisconsin students,” Tiffany and the rest of Wisconsin’s Republican delegation wrote in a letter in October. 

In a statement, Hughes said joining the program could help bring money into public schools as many supporters of the program have argued. In addition to boosting taxpayer support for private schools, there could be scholarship granting organizations that provide resources to public school students for supplemental educational services and resources including tutoring, special-education services, school supplies, transportation and after-school programs.

Taxpayers in any state can donate to a scholarship granting organization and benefit from the tax credit, but only students in participating states would be eligible for scholarships from an organization. Students also wouldn’t be eligible for scholarships if their family makes more than 300% of the median income in their area.

“I will opt Wisconsin into the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit so that Wisconsin families, students, and communities benefit from resources that would otherwise flow to other states,” Hughes said in a statement. “I support Wisconsin participating in this program because I believe our students deserve every opportunity available to them.”

Hughes also said she would create a statewide scholarship granting organization to help “fast track the delivery of these dollars into Wisconsin’s public schools.”

The deadline for states to opt in is Jan. 1, 2027. While the general election takes place on Nov. 3, Wisconsin’s next governor will not be inaugurated until Jan. 4, 2027.

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In a field consisting mostly of current or former elected officials, Missy Hughes says her background — private sector experience in an agricultural co-op, then serving as the top economic advisor to Gov. Tony Evers — gives her a distinctive edge in the contest to be the Democratic nominee for governor.

For six years Hughes served as the secretary and CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a state agency tasked with helping Wisconsin’s economy grow and expand employment. Before that she was chief legal counsel at Organic Valley, a farmer-owned cooperative specializing in dairy products.

Hughes announced her campaign to seek the governor’s office in September, about two months after Evers announced he wouldn’t seek a third term.

“When Gov. Evers decided not to run and we were a few months into the Trump administration, I realized that my skills could really help the state during this really unpredictable time,” Hughes told a small gathering of Columbia County Democrats at the local party headquarters in Portage in mid-May.

As she has elsewhere, Hughes on that day cast herself as “a Democrat who understands the economy, who understands how to build the economy, who understands how Wisconsin’s economy works — whether it’s dairy or agriculture or manufacturing.”

She’s led with the economic argument at each of nearly a half-dozen forums over the last six months, using it not just as a big-picture case for her campaign but as the frame through which to address specific topics.

At a June 2 event organized by a coalition of unions, Hughes concurred with the rest of the Democrats on the stage in supporting an increase in the state government’s share of the cost of public schools to  two-thirds, taking the burden off local property taxpayers. Then came the moderator’s follow-up question about top education priorities and how the forum participants would navigate lobbies supporting the state’s private school voucher system and “an adversarial Legislature” to achieve their goals.

“The concern I have about the conversations we’ve had about public school funding, about healthcare — all of this costs a tremendous amount of money,” Hughes replied. “And we have to grow our economy. Communities are struggling because they don’t have economic opportunity.”

With manufacturing jobs declining and farmers struggling, “We have to recognize that the reality is we need more resources in this state. We have to grow,” Hughes observed.

“That’s what I want to bring back to this state,” she said. “Manufacturing and strong agriculture, those are the keys to our economy. They make up our economy. You all work in that economy. We all do and we have to build that. That’s how we pay for our public schools. And that’s how we make our public schools again the No. 1 place — the only place where Wisconsin parents want to send their children.”

Art, law and organic farming

Born Melissa Larkin, Hughes grew up in New York City’s northern suburbs. Her parents were doctors and her brother is a cardiologist. She graduated from Georgetown University in 1990 with a double major in political science and fine art. Drawing and sewing were her media, “but really drawing,” she says, and she still practices today.

Hughes got a law degree from the University of Wyoming in 1997. She wasn’t sure what kind of law she was going to practice — only that she wanted to be in the courtroom.

“I was going to be a courtroom litigator,” Hughes says. “And when I went to court the very first time in Gillette, Wyoming, I left saying, ‘I’m never doing that again.’”

Hughes didn’t like the combative nature of the work. “I’ve since said, ‘nothing ever good happens in court,’” she says. “I’d rather work outside to try to find solutions and move things forward than being in a court room.”

Hughes came to Wisconsin in 2002 and joined Organic Valley. The cooperative, headquartered in the Vernon County village of La Farge, was started in 1988 by a group of organic dairy farmers seeking alternative channels of distribution for their products. When Hughes arrived, about 500 farmers belonged and the co-op had “a couple of hundred employees, but it was on a rocket ship of growth,” Hughes told the Portage Democrats.

“I would sit at the table with farmers who were faced with losing their farms” in the face of unstable milk prices and rising costs. “They really had no stability and no future for how they can manage their farm and make a living and pass it on to the next generation,” she said.

Hughes’ job included handling government relations in Washington for the co-op and leading the Organic Food Association. By the time she left to join the Evers administration in 2019, she was general counsel and had the title of “Chief Mission Officer.” The co-op had grown to represent more than 1,500 farmers in states across the country and have 900 employees.

“It was incredibly fulfilling work,” Hughes says, “but it wasn’t easy, because we were fighting Big Ag, we were teaching consumers about good food.”

In her tenure at WEDC, Hughes became the face of Wisconsin’s economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And in the years that followed, she and the agency were at the forefront of a series of Evers administration gains, including corporate expansions and a federal grant to strengthen Wisconsin’s biohealth sector.

Cleaning up Foxconn

When Evers named her to the post, she says, he told her that he wanted her for her knowledge of rural communities and agriculture.

On her first day, she told the Portage audience, “they sat me down and said, ‘Great. Now you have to clean up Foxconn.’”

WEDC was created after former Gov. Scott Walker took office in 2011, replacing the Wisconsin Department of Commerce. The new public-private corporation included a board with business executives as well as lawmakers and had been created to deliver on Walker’s claim he would foster the creation of 250,000 new jobs — a goal his administration never reached.

Both the agency and its most prominent Walker-era project — a promised flatscreen manufacturing plant in Racine County that would be built by the Taiwan tech giant Foxconn in return for up to $2.85 billion in tax credits for the creation of 13,000 jobs — had become politically polarizing.

Scornful of the Foxconn deal that had been touted by Walker and President Donald Trump, then in his first term, Evers during his 2018 campaign talked of abolishing WEDC or at least rewriting the agreement with the company. Just before leaving office at the end of that year, Walker signed Republican lame-duck legislation curtailing the incoming Democratic governor’s powers, including a bill that blocked Evers from changing WEDC’s leadership until eight months into his term. Hughes took office when the restriction expired.

The Foxconn renegotiation took “a lot of time,” Hughes told the Portage group. In April 2021 — with Foxconn’s plans repeatedly changing and its flatscreen plant long abandoned — Evers and Hughes announced a new deal. In the end the company qualified for $80 million in tax credits.

WEDC’s most prominent role in its first eight years had been to encourage major business investments, whether by outside companies or expanding companies already in the state, and to negotiate incentives such as tax credits in return.

That continued under Evers and Hughes. But the COVID-19 pandemic that landed in March 2020 and walloped small businesses — especially the hospitality industry — also demanded a pivot at the economic development corporation.

Expanding to small business assistance

Early on, WEDC took the role of offering guidance for employers and enhancing workplace safety when the primary defenses against the virus were frequent handwashing and social distancing. After the federal government began sending pandemic relief funds to Wisconsin, WEDC became the primary vehicle for distributing them.

A second, larger round of relief, enacted in 2021 at the start of President Joe Biden’s administration, helped fund more business grant programs in Wisconsin. National researchers singled out Wisconsin as the leading state for funding small business with its pandemic relief funds.

WEDC also kept its attention on big business, with high-profile expansion projects for companies including Eli Lilly, Milwaukee Tool and Kikkoman, and a Microsoft data center on the land originally developed for Foxconn.

Small business and local economic development were always in theory part of WEDC’s portfolio — but overshadowed, Hughes says.

“We were always saying we can walk and chew gum at the same time — we can help small businesses and we can help big businesses, and we need to do both,” she says. But the small business support wasn’t emphasized, she adds. “It wasn’t measured. It was kind of pushed off to the side.”

Hughes says with WEDC’s decision to invest more deeply in local economic development work, the agency began to examine local tax data. “And when we did that, we saw there is great impact from the programs, so let’s keep doing it and do more of it.”

She brings a similar focus to her policy agenda, which includes proposals for healthcare, childcare and small business. Economic growth informs those concerns “because you can’t grow the economy without those things,” she says.

Embracing ‘progressive,’ backing the budget deal

At a Madison West High School forum organized by students earlier this year, Hughes was asked what people’s biggest misconception about her was.

Her focus on business and the economy “makes people think that I’m very center and very moderate,” Hughes replied.

“I’m reasonable, there’s no doubt about that,” she said. But having worked at Organic Valley reflects “true progressive values,” she added, because a cooperative “is a very, very radical kind of a company” with a culture of long-term thinking and sustainable operation.

Even so, on several points related to education, Hughes has broken ranks with the other leading Democrats in the contest for governor.

She criticized presumed Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Tiffany for urging his party’s lawmakers to vote against the $1.8 billion deal Evers reached with GOP leaders in the Legislature that would have sent $300 to each taxpayer and $300 million in additional special education money to Wisconsin public schools.

But she also criticized Democrats who voted against the deal, charging in a statement she posted on social media May 14 that “certain self-serving Democratic candidates for governor … would rather boost their own personal political ambitions than serve our kids and taxpayers.”

In an interview with the Examiner later that same day, she defended the deal as an example that showed “compromises are never going to be perfect and everything that everybody wants.” But she also said that its collapse was “demonstrative of a whole broken system” in Wisconsin politics.

“We couldn’t find ways to work together in public, and to me that just shows that we have a lot of work to do in Wisconsin around building the policymaking muscle, and that’s really been diminished in the last two decades,” Hughes said. “We always had that as a strength, but we’ve lost that and we have to rebuild that.”

At the union forum June 2, Hughes was one of three Democrats who said they wouldn’t favor immediately ending Wisconsin’s taxpayer-funded private school voucher programs.

“As governor, I would be really, really realistic about what we can get done and what fights we pick,” Hughes said. “I don’t want to pick the voucher fight. I want to pick the fully funding public schools fight. I want to have a singular focus on making sure that when parents are choosing schools, they absolutely are choosing Wisconsin public schools because they are the best schools for their children.”

Hughes also issued a statement last week saying she would accept a federal voucher tax credit enacted last year, although the deadline for states to accept it will pass before a new governor takes office. Evers vetoed legislation that would have enabled Wisconsin to take part in the credit. 

Navigating talk about Trump

Lingering in the background behind the race for governor has been the Trump administration’s policies and the way they’ve upended the political and social atmosphere. Over the course of the campaign, Hughes has shifted, to some extent, to her own navigation of that subject.

From the start she has targeted Trump, particularly on the subject of tariffs, for driving up the price of household goods. At the same time, earlier in the campaign she turned attention back to Wisconsin.

Asked in an interview after a forum in Milwaukee in January about navigating how much to focus on criticism of Trump, Hughes said, “The key for a governor is, you can control what you can control, and you can’t control what’s happening in Washington right now.”

In that vein, she suggested then, the role of the state, the governor — and by implication one who aspires to be governor — is to step in and help businesses hurt by economic disruption coming from the White House. “Reacting to everything that’s happening, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” Hughes said that evening.

Four months later, she’s become more outspoken in criticizing Trump as well as Tiffany, whose endorsement by Trump led other GOP candidates to cede the field to the four-term Republican congressman.

She name-checked the president several times in talking to the Portage Democrats in mid-May, including criticizing Trump’s unfounded claims of stolen elections as well as the administration’s cancellation of clean energy projects that the state had received support for under the Biden administration.

Ahead of the president’s visit to the Chippewa Valley on June 5, Hughes publicly announced her participation in a protest in Eau Claire. And this week, in a social media post that began, “Enough with Trump’s corruption already,” she attacked Trump and tied Tiffany to the president.

Asked about the shift, she points to the fatal shootings of two people in Minneapolis during the surge of immigration officers there this winter along with the invasion of Venezuela and the war with Iran.

“At some point you kind of got to call it for what it is and start to say, ‘OK, this has just gone too far,’” Hughes says. “When you start to have lives on the line, when you start to really endanger the United States, when you start to endanger soldiers, you know, now you’re really — it’s time to say something.”

Even under those circumstances, however, Hughes says she wants to be circumspect in her language.

“I don’t say things like ‘fascist’ or ‘authoritarian,’”  she says. “You can still call out this bad behavior.”

She says she wants to be able to talk to anyone who might be persuadable.

“I live on this couple-mile-long dirt road, and I have a bunch of neighbors, and I don’t know how they voted,” Hughes says — but she guesses that they’re like the rest of Wisconsin, meaning that there’s a 50% chance they voted for Trump.

“I want to be able to talk to them about why I’m running for governor. And if I call names or if I say, ‘You were wrong for voting for Donald Trump,’ they’re not going to listen to what I have to say.”

Most Wisconsin residents “want to be closer to the center and are closer to the center,” Hughes says. “I want to keep people open and having the conversation.”

Editor’s note: The Examiner is running periodic profiles of the contenders in the Aug. 11, 2026 gubernatorial primary as well as the candidates in the general election Nov. 3. 

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Last July, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany authored legislation that will allow a Forest County concrete supplier to purchase 14 acres of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. In October, the owner of the business made his first ever political contribution — $520 to Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign. 

Tiffany’s bill, the Wabeno Economic Development Act, would allow Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix to buy the national forest land adjacent to the company’s current property for “market value.” The purchase of the land includes the mineral rights for extracting underground resources from the current public lands. 

The 14 acres involved in the sale amounts to a miniscule portion of the more than 685,000 acres of federal land in Forest County. Tiffany and other northern Wisconsin officials have frequently complained that the massive amount of public land in the area prevents the growth of private industries. 

But Tiffany also has a history of opposition to public lands, including joining with right-wing anti-conservation groups working to prevent Wisconsin from protecting large swathes of the state’s Northwoods. In Forest County, he assisted efforts to rewrite local land use policy to be friendlier to extractive industries such as logging and mining. 

Tony Smith, the company’s owner, wrote a letter to Tiffany in January 2022 asking for help because his current property was running out of the raw materials he uses to make concrete. 

“We are currently projected to run out of aggregate materials in the next 2-3 years,” Smith wrote. “I have talked to Forest Service district ranger, Mike Brown, several times about the possible trade of these properties and he stated, ‘this would not be a priority to them.’ Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix currently owns the west and north side of the proposed property to trade, and we are aware there is adequate material there to continue running Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix for many years to come. I have also searched privately owned properties in Forest and surrounding counties with no luck in finding material within a sustainable distance to remain profitable.” 

Last June, Tiffany introduced the legislation, stating in a news release that the sale would allow the company to stay in business. 

“This conveyance will deliver long-term economic growth and protect local jobs for the people of Wabeno and Forest County,” Tiffany said. “It will ensure Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix stays open and continues serving the community for years to come.”

The bill passed the House in a 410-1 vote in July. Aside from Rep. Derrick Van Orden, who didn’t vote, all of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation voted in favor of the bill. On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted to advance the legislation. 

A few months after the bill advanced out of the House, Smith gave $520.51 to the gubernatorial campaign of the lawmaker writing legislation that directly benefits his business. State and federal campaign finance records show that Smith has no prior history of political giving. 

In a statement to the Examiner, Tiffany’s campaign noted the bill’s bipartisan support and touted the legislation as an example of Tiffany fighting for small businesses. 

“Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix, a small business with roughly 17 employees, contacted my office in January 2022 after years of getting nowhere with the U.S. Forest Service,” Tiffany said in a statement supplied by the campaign. “I first introduced this bill in 2024, and it has since earned strong bipartisan support, including from Wisconsin Democrats Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan. Standing up for Wisconsin small businesses when federal agencies fail them is part of my job, and I’ll continue to fight for them.” 

The campaign ignored questions about the contribution from Smith. 

In a news release, the Sierra Club of Wisconsin complained that handling the sale through legislation prevents the public from getting to weigh in on the transaction. Sales conducted through the standard U.S. Forest Service process are subject to public input. 

“Tom Tiffany’s track record shows he’s willing to sell the public lands — which belong to all of us — off to the highest bidder for private profit,” Sierra Club spokesperson Megan Wittman said.

Smith was unavailable for comment Thursday afternoon but his statement will be added later if he responds to the Examiner’s request.

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The Trump administration has issued final rules on how states should ensure that millions of Medicaid enrollees prove they’re working or completing other activities, such as job training, volunteering, or being enrolled in an educational program.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released the rules on June 1. That deadline was set last year in the GOP tax-and-spending law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which established a work requirement for certain people enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities.

Medicaid agencies are scrambling to rework IT systems and make sure they have staff to effectively enforce the rules, while also keeping enrollees from losing coverage for administrative reasons, such as difficulty navigating state eligibility portals.

The newly announced regulations offer a clearer picture of what roughly 18.5 million Medicaid enrollees will have to do to prove they qualify for benefits.
Jim Torres, who helps people enroll in health coverage at the Samuel U. Rodgers Health Center in Kansas City, Missouri, said a “very small percentage” of his clients have heard of the changes coming to Medicaid.

“These folks have very busy lives. They’re doing the best they can to get by,” he said. “It’s just not a top-of-mind thing for most of them.”
Health policy researchers and consumer advocates said enrollees should keep a few things in mind as the Jan. 1, 2027, rollout approaches in most states.

1. The Work Rules Won’t Apply to Everyone.

The new rules will apply to people covered through what’s known as Medicaid expansion. Since 2014, more than 40 states and the District of Columbia have decided to allow more people into their Medicaid programs, generally low-income adults without dependents. Georgia and Wisconsin offer coverage to some people in this group, so they’ll be subject to the rules.

Children and pregnant people, as well as individuals with disabilities who receive Social Security payments — all groups that already qualify for Medicaid — won’t be subject to the rules. Nor will people determined to be “medically frail,” or too sick to work.

People subject to the work rules are “crowding out” people in the Medicaid program who are “truly in need,” CMS Director Mehmet Oz claimed during a June 1 press call. “Work requirements are going to turn this around, we hope.”

The rules are set to take effect in most places in January. Nebraska started enforcing them in May. Montana plans to start in July but won’t kick people off until October. Arkansas will do a “soft” launch in July — it will start enforcing the rules but with no penalties until next year.

2. States Will Take Your Word That You’re Too Sick To Work. For Now.

Federal officials have stressed that states should make the process of reporting hours and requesting exemptions as simple as possible for Medicaid enrollees by creating automated systems and using existing data sources, such as unemployment and education records.

If states cannot determine you’re performing 80 hours of qualifying activities a month using those data sources, you may be allowed to “self-attest” to that in 2027, health policy researchers said.

People will also be allowed to “self-attest” that they are too sick to work in 2027, and do so one time in 2028. Then states will start asking for proof, if they can’t find it through available data.

But after the initial rollout, the burden of proof is likely to still fall on many enrollees, said researchers and consumer advocates.

People may need to dig up pay stubs, medical records, and doctors’ notes and submit them for state review, said Morgan Henderson, who has studied Medicaid work programs in Georgia and Arkansas at The Hilltop Institute, a research center at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

“The higher this manual reporting burden, the less people are going to do it,” he said. “That means that we’re going to see coverage drop-offs.”

3. The Rules Are Tougher Than Expected for People Too Sick To Work.

One of CMS’ primary goals has been to “protect vulnerable populations” through “strong exemptions to make sure people who can’t reasonably be expected to work are not subject to the requirements,” Dan Brillman, a deputy administrator at the agency, said during the June 1 press call.
Consumer and patient advocates, however, said the final rules’ exemptions are more restrictive than expected. Enrollees will eventually have to provide documentation, such as a statement from a medical professional, to prove that a health condition keeps them from working. And each individual state will have to determine the severity of beneficiaries’ medical conditions.

“Someone could be medically frail in Nebraska but not medically frail in Delaware,” said Carolyn Sheridan, associate director of state policy for the National Organization for Rare Disorders, which lobbies for patients with rare diseases. She said her group had hoped the rules would offer a standardized definition of who counted as medically frail and not leave the decision up to states.

Trump administration officials have publicly crusaded against fraud in government health programs, such as Medicaid, and states could face financial penalties for incorrectly granting people exemptions from the work rules, said Jennifer Tolbert, who researches Medicaid at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

“States may be more cautious,” she said. “That will likely lead to people losing coverage who may still be eligible.”

4. Only Certain Qualifying Activities Count.

Enrollees can satisfy the rules by working 80 hours a month. They can also be enrolled in college courses, volunteer through a community organization, or do “in-kind” work that doesn’t result in pay.

The rules set out, in detail, how many academic credit hours translate to 80 hours a month — students need to be enrolled in six credit hours per semester to meet the “half-time” requirement. An unpaid internship can count toward the 80 hours.

People can also prove they’re volunteering with “a document from a community service organization.”

Consumer advocates say it might be hard for people to obtain proof they’re performing these kinds of informal activities. But supporters of the rules say volunteerism can already be tracked.

“If you run into trouble with the law and the judge says, ‘Hey, you need some volunteering and community service to serve your time,’ there are already ways that we verify that,” said Niklas Kleinworth, who works on state health policy for the conservative Paragon Institute.

5. You Have Time To Prepare.

Make sure your state Medicaid agency has your current mailing address and keep your eye on your mailbox, said researchers and consumer advocates. State Medicaid agencies must inform you in two ways if you’ll be subject to the rules — by either regular mail or email, and by one other form of communication, such as a text or phone call or by posting a notice online.

“The important stuff comes by mail,” Henderson said.

And check in with your state Medicaid agency, said researchers and advocates. Some states, including Arkansas, California, and Wisconsin, have already posted information about the work rules on their websites. If you can’t find what you’re looking for there, visit or call a local office. A caseworker should be able to tell you whether you’ll be subject to the rules.

“Get ahead of this,” said Joan Alker, who is executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families and studies Medicaid. “So that you don’t end up going to the pharmacy one day and they say ‘Oh, you’re not insured anymore’ when you’re trying to get your prescriptions refilled.”
KFF Health News correspondent Samantha Liss and senior correspondent Rachana Pradhan contributed to this report.

Have you tried to prove your eligibility for Medicaid under new rules that require people to show they are working, going to school, or participating in another qualifying activity? Click here to contact KFF Health News.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a challenge to the state’s congressional maps. The case is the second congressional maps lawsuit the Court has accepted in recent weeks, again raising the ire of the Court’s conservative minority. 

The case, Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed last summer and argues that Wisconsin’s congressional districts are illegally gerrymandered for partisan advantage. Following a law enacted by Republicans under former Gov. Scott Walker, the case was sent to a panel of three circuit court judges. In March, the panel dismissed the case, finding that it was too similar to previous failed challenges against the congressional maps. 

Late last month, the Court also agreed to hear an appeal of a different judicial panel’s decision in Wisconsin Business Leaders for Democracy v. WEC, which challenged the maps on the grounds that they’re illegally anti-competitive. 

As in the previous case, the Court’s liberal majority agreeing to hear challenges to the congressional maps — which currently give Republicans control of six of the state’s eight districts — drew pointed criticism from conservative justices Rebecca Bradley and Annette Ziegler. 

“An astonishingly activist court will once again revisit precedent it doesn’t like in order to do the bidding of its political masters,” Bradley wrote. “The Democratic Party bought multiple seats on this court to achieve yet another outcome unobtainable democratically. Like last time, the United States Supreme Court will likely reverse the majority’s unlawful ruling and protect our Republic. No kings. No queens either.”

With less than five months until this year’s November elections, and the candidates for those elections having already filed to get on the ballot, neither map challenge will be completed in time for new maps to be in place before the midterms. 

But the ongoing lawsuits keep Wisconsin involved in the ongoing national battle over gerrymandering congressional maps. Republicans across the country have moved to draw maps that will protect the party’s slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision weakening the Voting Rights Act that kicked off a round of southern states redrawing their maps to reduce Black political representation.

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Forty-six percent of U.S. adults — regardless of insurance type — reported struggling to afford healthcare last year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research think tank.

The report analyzed findings from a December 2025 survey of 10,000 working-age adults across the nation. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the research comes at a time of U.S. cost-of-living concerns and economic woes. 

Uninsured adults were most likely — 60% — to report at least one affordability problem.

Researchers defined affordability challenges as: trouble paying family medical bills in the past year, a family member not getting healthcare they needed due to costs, or the family having medical debt at the time of the survey. 

Almost 40% of adults with private employer coverage, roughly 54% of those with Marketplace or plans, and 57% of adults with Medicaid reported having problems affording medical care.

More than a third — about 35% — of all surveyed adults said a family member had unmet healthcare needs because of costs.

The survey also found disparities in care affordability.

Adults with disabilities, for example, were more likely to have trouble affording healthcare for their families at almost 69% of those surveyed, compared with 40% of adults without disabilities. And the majority of Black and Hispanic adults reported struggling to afford care, compared with about 42% of white adults and 28% of Asian adults.

Health conditions also coincided with affordability troubles: More than 7 in 10 people who suffered strokes reported problems affording care for their families, followed by 70% of those with COPD, chronic bronchitis or emphysema, and about 64% of those with cancer and heart disease.

Half of adults living in the South — a region home to several states that haven’t expanded Medicaid eligibility — and those in rural areas of the country also reported affordability challenges, in contrast with roughly 45% of adults in urban areas.

Survey results also showed about 1 in 5 adults with private health insurance coverage reported large increases in insurance premiums — but adults with individual Marketplace plans were nearly twice as likely to report large premium increases as those with employer coverage. 

According to health policy research organization KFF, the average Marketplace deductible surged by about $1,000 per person this year, as more enrollees shift to higher-deductible plans after enhanced subsidies expired.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — On a recent weekday evening, Avram Kline kicked a soccer ball to his son on the bright green pitch in Brooklyn Bridge Park, where the skyscrapers of Manhattan loom just across the East River.

Kline is a self-described soccer superfan who founded the Newcomers Football Club, a mutual aid group to support asylee and refugee players from all over the world — Chad, Morocco, Senegal, South Sudan, Syria and other nations — who found their footing in the United States by gathering to cook food, teach each other their languages and, most of all, to play soccer.

“People who play together, even on a casual basis, without even knowing each other, are already friends, and they already have a bond of trust, because the game is based on trust,” said Kline, 56.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup, which begins on Thursday, is expected to draw between 5 million and 7 million soccer fans to the 11 U.S. host cities. New York City, which is hosting games in partnership with East Rutherford, New Jersey, is expecting 1.2 million fans. But as the games begin, Kline and many others say the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and the planned presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents is casting a pall over an event that is supposed to bring the world together.

“To say that you might get racially profiled, you might get interviewed, or you might be pulled aside. Yeah, that’s incredibly embarrassing,” Kline said.

This week, White House border czar Tom Homan told CBS News that ICE officers will provide security during the games, but that they will focus primarily on public safety, not immigration enforcement.

But many soccer fans, stadium workers, civil rights groups and some city officials are skeptical. They say the presence of immigration agents at World Cup games is more likely to cause disturbances than prevent them, citing recent altercations between protesters and ICE agents at detention facilities, including in Newark, New Jersey.

“Can anyone really trust ICE or this administration when they say they will not be engaging in immigration enforcement at stadiums or around fan clubs or fan festivals or watch parties?” said Jamil Dakwar, director of the human rights program at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I don’t think anyone really can take their word for it, given the record of the last year and a half.”

In April, the ACLU and more than 120 other groups issued a travel advisory warning soccer fans, journalists and players that they could be arbitrarily denied entry to the country, be arrested or detained, or be subjected to surveillance or racial profiling as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Earlier this week, Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who was set to be the first Somali to referee a World Cup tournament, was denied entry into the U.S. at Miami International Airport. U.S. Immigration officials told Stateline that Artan was “inadmissible due to vetting concerns.” At the end of last year, the Trump administration included Somalia on a list of 39 countries whose nationals are subject to enhanced travel restrictions.

World Cup participants Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran and Senegal are also on the list. On June 6, Aymen Hussein, a striker for the Iraqi team, was also reportedly detained and questioned for nearly seven hours at Chicago O’Hare International airport. While Hussein was let into the country, the team’s photographer was denied entry.

Lauren Bis, acting assistant secretary for public affairs at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement to Stateline, “International visitors who legally come to the United States for the World Cup have nothing to worry about.” Bis also said that only someone’s status living in the country illegally would make them a target for immigration enforcement and added, “Speculation to the contrary is ill-informed.”

Grassroots and local efforts 

Oscar Morales and Melinda Fox have protested ICE enforcement activity in neighborhoods in Atlanta, which is also hosting World Cup games. When they discovered they lived in the same Old Fourth Ward neighborhood, which is hosting a massive watch party this week, they were determined to spread the word that federal immigration officers might show up.

During the past few weekends, Fox and Morales and several other volunteers knocked on doors and conducted public training sessions to inform people of their right to decline to speak to immigration agents who don’t have a warrant. They’ve also encouraged local businesses to post signs saying ICE would not be welcome.

“People were very scared of what happened in Minneapolis, like they are just seeing how ICE agents are escalating things,” Morales said.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law in 2024 that tightened the state’s ban on so-called sanctuary policies, threatening localities with a loss of funding and misdemeanor charges for failing to cooperate.

Georgia’s stance has put Atlanta in a tough spot, Democratic city councilmember Kelsea Bond told Stateline.

In April, Bond helped push through two resolutions expressing the city council’s opposition to ICE facilities inside the city limits and requesting that the Atlanta Police Department chief establish policies under which employees would document any suspected misconduct from ICE agents when they are present during police activities.

“I was getting emails and questions from my own constituents and supporters,” Bond said. “I was very deliberate about working with immigrants’ rights organizations to build support for this initiative, and we had dozens of community members come out to city hall to speak in the public safety committee meeting and ensure that both of these ICE-related resolutions got passed.”

In California, Cesar Zamaro works as a bartender at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, another World Cup site. Zamaro is a member of UNITE HERE Local 11, a union representing more than 2,000 bartenders, cashiers, dishwashers, cooks and other food workers at SoFi Stadium. On Wednesday, the union approved a contract that, along with wage increases, includes language giving workers the right to strike if ICE “threatens worker safety during the World Cup,” according to a news release.

“It takes away your desire to get to work when you know that you might be harassed or you might be detained for no reason,” Zamaro said.

Zamaro and other organizers say they are seeking a commitment from FIFA that they will be protected. Stateline reached out to FIFA but did not receive a response.

Not the right place for ICE?

Logan Kennedy, an assistant professor of criminal justice at East Carolina University, said that in the past, ICE has helped provide security for large sporting events. However, Kennedy noted that under the Trump administration, the agency has become much more aggressive in its immigration enforcement.

“We’ve seen an increase in collateral arrests. There’s a lot of discretion in those situations, and it can be seen as overly authoritative in a lot of ways,” Kennedy said. “And it really damages public perceptions of not only ICE in general, obviously, but also that has a widespread impact on every type of police agency in the United States.”

Kennedy said it would undermine ICE’s legitimacy to target World Cup participants or fans.

“This would just make us look horrible, number one, from an international perspective, and two, really reduce our legitimacy from a policing standpoint.”

In Kansas City, Missouri, Democratic Mayor Quinton Lucas said the city will cooperate with law enforcement but will not participate in “immigration acquisition.”

“Are we going to get into a civil war with ICE? I certainly hope that’s not necessary, but the best group that can control that is ICE itself and the Trump administration itself,” Lucas told Stateline.

Back on the pitch at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Kline reflected on all the ways club members became a part of his family and role models to his son. Kline said soccer fans are likely to fight back if one of their own is targeted.

“At any party that takes place in the public area with other soccer fans, citizens like me, there’s no way in hell that ICE would be able to do their thing,” Kline said.

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

The New World screwworm has arrived in the United States.

For years, ranchers across Southern states have prepared for a potential invasion of the flesh-eating parasite that can wreak havoc on livestock, pets and even humans. 

Though the United States went decades without a confirmed case of the invasive pest, it’s now made its way across the U.S.-Mexico border. Officials have confirmed one case in a New Mexico dog and five cases in Texas, including cattle, a dog and a goat. 

The New World screwworm poses potentially life-threatening risks to pets, wildlife and livestock. While the risk is concentrated in a few states, experts say a massive invasion could ripple across the American economy through higher grocery prices.

Is it a fly or a worm?

Contrary to its name, the screwworm grows into an adult fly that’s about the size of a common housefly. The adult fly has orange eyes, a metallic blue or green body, and three dark stripes along the back. 

The name screwworm refers to the larvae (maggots) that burrow into open wounds, feeding as they go “like a screw being driven into wood,” according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The maggots burrow into the flesh of living animals through wounds as small as a tick bite or in body openings such as the eyes or nose. That means ranchers must keep close watch over newborn calves with exposed umbilical cords and may need to rethink branding and tagging operations that could provide an entry for the pests. 

What to look for 

The screwworm can infest livestock, pets, wildlife, birds and, in rare cases, people.

Infested animals can exhibit foul-smelling wounds with visible maggots as well as lesions in navels, ears or other sites. Texas A&M says animals may bite or lick at wounds and could display unusual restlessness or lethargy. 

“Pay attention to your animals, pay attention to any wildlife that might be around your property, if they’re acting like they’re in distress,” New Mexico Livestock Board Executive Director Belinda Garland told Source New Mexico this week. “Be aware, but there’s no need to panic.”

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says people may feel or see maggots moving within a wound, or in their ears, noses, eyes or mouth. The larvae can cause painful sores that worsen within a few days. People may also experience bleeding and a foul-smelling odor from the site of the infestation. 

People should immediately see a healthcare provider, who must remove each maggot, sometimes surgically, the CDC says. 

For animals, USDA has approved emergency use of several medications for prevention and treatment of the parasite. Those include ivermectin, the drug that many people hoarded for off-label use during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Will this cost me?

The New World screwworm could raise prices at the grocery store. In fact, it probably already has: American beef prices are near record highs after ranchers liquidated herds to the smallest level in 75 years because of drought and other operating disruptions, including a halt on cattle imports from Mexico. 

In an effort to stop the screwworm, the U.S. banned live Mexican cattle imports, which traditionally occupy American pastures and feedlots before going to slaughter. Last month, David Anderson, professor and extension specialist in livestock and food product marketing at Texas A&M University, told Stateline that the move likely exacerbated meat prices. 

Beef prices have increased faster than inflation in recent months, according to the most recent consumer price index report. While ground beef prices fell 1.27% in May, that drop followed a 2.7% increase in April, CNBC reported, and beef prices remain up 12.9% year over year.

The pest could also impact dairy supplies, according to the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. While ranchers can hold back cattle during an outbreak, dairies may be forced to dump milk during an outbreak. 

What’s being done to stop it?

USDA has created screwworm monitoring, reporting and quarantine protocols for animals. But because the disease does not create food safety concerns, the agency will not stop any movement of animal products, including meat.

To eradicate the flies, the federal government plans to breed sterile male flies and then release them into areas with established populations. The sterilized males will mate with females, which will then lay unfertilized eggs. With females mating only once in their lifespan, officials say this method progressively reduces and eliminates the fly population.

USDA just broke ground on a $750 million sterile fly facility in Edinburg, Texas, that aims to produce up to 300 million sterile flies per week when it opens next year. The agency has also invested in sterile fly facilities in Mexico and Panama.

Political blame game

The arrival of the screwworm has ignited political attacks from Washington, D.C., to the Southern border.  

At a U.S. Senate oversight hearing earlier this week, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar raised concerns about how deep cuts to USDA employment affected the department’s ability to combat issues such as the screwworm threat. She noted that the department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service lost 25% of its staff, including more than 300 veterinary services employees. 

The Trump administration has sought to deflect blame on previous President Joe Biden. 

In that same hearing, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins blamed the previous administration and Mexican cartels’ “refusal to crack down” for allowing the screwworm to migrate north. 

“Everyone took their eye off the ball years ago, and unfortunately, because of the border policies, it’s coming our way,” Rollins said.

Meanwhile, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller has called on the federal government to deploy targeted baits that kill screwworm flies before they reproduce. Miller recently lost his GOP primary for reelection.

“The science is settled. The tools are available,” Miller said in a news release this week. “What’s missing is urgency from the USDA.”

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

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that administration officials were close to brokering an end to the hostilities with Iran and predicted there could be a signing ceremony in Europe as soon as this weekend. 

“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran and we’re going to be subject to finalization of documents, which should get done over the next few days, probably have a signing, maybe in Europe, and it’s a great thing,” Trump, who has earlier said deals were in the offing that did not come to fruition, said from the Oval Office.

Trump said Iran’s Supreme Leader had approved the agreement, which he referred to as “a very strong memorandum of understanding that is a little conceptual.” There was no immediate confirmation of the agreement on social media accounts on which Iranian leaders often post.

The deal, Trump said, would ensure Iran will not be able to develop or purchase a nuclear weapon and will end the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a main oil shipping route, once signed.

Trump said he didn’t plan to attend the signing ceremony himself, but would likely send Vice President JD Vance. 

He projected the end of the conflict, which began in late February, would lower gas prices that rose sharply after the United States and Israel began a joint bombing campaign. 

Israel not part of deal

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office posted on social media that the country doesn’t consider itself subject to the agreement brokered between the United States and Iran. 

“President Trump spoke this evening with Prime Minister Netanyahu regarding the emerging memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran to enter into negotiations,” the post said. 

“Even though Israel is not a party to the memorandum of understanding, the Prime Minister expressed his appreciation for President Trump’s commitment that the final agreement at the conclusion of negotiations will include the removal of enriched material, the dismantling of enrichment infrastructure, limits on missile production, and the cessation of Iran’s support for its terrorist proxies in the region.”

The war led to considerable debate on Capitol Hill, where Democrats forced floor votes on several War Powers resolutions, questioning whether Trump had the authority to engage in a protracted bombing campaign without a formal declaration of war or an authorization for use of military force from Congress. 

The Trump administration sent a letter to lawmakers on May 1 declaring the war “terminated,” but bombing resumed this week after an Iranian drone shot down a U.S. helicopter. 

Strikes vowed, then called off

Trump posted on social media a couple hours before his Oval Office appearance that he had “cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening.”

“Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others,” Trump wrote. “The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.”

The announcement was a reversal from one Trump posted earlier in the morning, where he wrote the U.S. military planned another round of intense bombing and would seek to control an island in the Persian Gulf. 

“At some point in the not too distant  future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America,” he wrote. 

Trump on Thursday declined to give a firm deadline for when U.S. and Iranian officials would sign a formal end to the hostilities, only saying he believes it will happen “pretty quickly.”

Trump said he “might look at” providing financial aid to American farmers who experienced rising costs, including for fertilizer, as a result of the war, though he didn’t commit to it. 

“The farmers have a problem with fertilizer, but that’s all coming down now,” he said. “And your fuel is going to be, I think it’s going to be lower than it was four or five months ago.”

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has failed to refund more than $145 billion in tariffs that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled unlawful, a pair of U.S. Senate Democrats said in a Wednesday letter to the administration’s chief of customs.

Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Edward Markey of Massachusetts demanded that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott pay out refunds to small businesses for the tariffs that the court later determined President Donald Trump was not actually empowered to set. 

In their letter, the senators condemned what they called the administration’s continuous efforts to complicate and dodge the refund process and sought full compensation for all importers who together paid roughly $166 billion in tariff taxes under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. 

Small businesses “deserve better, and the CBP needs to answer for this debacle,” they wrote. 

President Donald Trump aggressively placed tariffs on countries across the globe early in his second term, making the import taxes a centerpiece of his economic agenda.

But the U.S. Supreme Court found Trump’s stack of global tariffs, which he began implementing in early 2025, to be illegal in a February ruling, saying that his use of the emergency tariff act exceeded his powers as president. 

Soon after,the U.S. Court for International Trade instructed CBP to issue refunds to the businesses that had borne the costs. 

But according to court documents filed May 26, the Trump administration has refunded only about $20.6 billion of the tax money, while another roughly $85 billion remains in the processing stage, leaving more than $60 billion that is not even in the process of being returned. 

“That means tens of billions of dollars unlawfully collected from American businesses remain in government hands months after the courts ordered their return,” Markey and Wyden wrote.

Markey is the ranking Democrat on the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, and Wyden holds the same position on the Finance Committee, which sets tax policy. 

An ongoing price to pay

Many small business owners struggled under the weight of Trump’s tariffs while they were in effect, forced to raise prices, lay off employees and give up hopes of expansion to offset the costs.

Now, they are still dealing with financial pressures as they wait for repayment from an administration that has, in Markey and Wyden’s words, “slow-rolled implementation of the refund process from the outset.”

Following the Supreme Court’s decision, the administration took weeks to announce a refund procedure, the senators wrote. 

CBP eventually settled on a new claims tool called the Consolidated Administration and Processing of Entries, or CAPE, for the roughly 330,000 importers who paid tariffs to submit refund requests. The system went live in April. 

The lawmakers also pointed to Trump administration claims that some businesses may need to pursue individualized claims through litigation in order to receive tariff refunds, a process that could take up to years to settle. 

“This entire episode raises serious questions about whether the Administration is intentionally slowing the refund process in order to retain access to unlawfully collected funds for as long as possible,” they wrote in their letter. 

The senators included a list of refund-related questions for CBP in their letter and requested that the agency send written responses by June 24. 

A spokesperson for CBP acknowledged a request for comment Thursday, but said they could not guarantee a response in time for publication.

California often takes days or even weeks to tally votes after its elections, a product of measures to protect voters and a deluge of mail ballots dropped off on Election Day. Incomplete vote totals reported in the hours after polls close don’t always reflect final results.

None of this is evidence of fraud. But President Donald Trump has spent more than a week baselessly alleging malfeasance in California’s June 2 primary election, in which votes were still being counted as of June 11, offering a window into how he may approach the November midterm elections.

Trump has claimed repeatedly, without evidence, that Democrats are stealing the election, even though the state is a party stronghold. California’s long count is a well-known feature of its elections, with election officials given about a month to process and tally all ballots.

Democrats and experts on elections aren’t surprised by Trump’s statements, saying he is turning to familiar tactics in an effort to discredit unfavorable results.

“Whenever they don’t like the outcome of an election, they spread lies about the election,” said David Becker, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice Voting Rights Section. 

‘The Dumocrats’

After the 2020 election, Trump allies mounted a legal campaign to overturn the president’s losses in key battleground states, citing nonexistent fraud. When that failed, GOP lawmakers raised objections certifying President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. Finally, Trump rallied a crowd of supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, that went on to storm the Capitol.

Trump continually cast the election as stolen during that period — a theme he’s returned to in hammering on California.

“The Dumocrats are at it again!” Trump wrote in a social media post on June 3. “They are trying to STEAL THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA PRIMARY, AND THE MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, PRIMARY, AWAY FROM TWO GREAT REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of MAIL IN BALLOTS.”

The U.S. Department of Justice is following the president’s lead. The top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles has linked suspicions about California’s elections to the state’s refusal to turn over its unredacted voter roll, which includes sensitive personal data on residents.

The Justice Department has sued California and 29 other states to gain access to the data, which it plans to feed into a Department of Homeland Security computer program that can identify possible noncitizen voters. So far, no federal judge has agreed the DOJ is entitled to the information.

Eye on the midterms

The voter roll lawsuits are part of a proactive campaign by the Trump administration to exert influence and control over the midterms before voting begins. 

The president has signed an executive order restricting mail ballots that currently faces multiple lawsuits. And Trump wants Congress to require voters to show documents proving their citizenship, but the legislation has stalled in the Senate.

The stakes of the midterm elections are high for Trump and Republicans. Democrats retaking the House or the Senate or even both would mean the end of his legislative agenda and more aggressive oversight of the administration.

At the same time, Americans’ confidence in elections is declining. Two-thirds of U.S. adults say they are confident or very confident that their state or local government will conduct a fair and accurate election, down from 76% in October 2024, according to a March poll conducted by Marist University.

The 2026 House landscape — and Trump’s past comments — suggest he may direct his ire at additional states in November. 

For instance, of the 18 House races that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report with Amy Walter categorizes as a “toss up”, three are in Pennsylvania, a swing state that Trump alleged was the site of election fraud in 2020 (he won the state in 2024).

California has its own “toss up” House race and an additional three only lean Democratic, meaning they remain competitive. After California, Texas and other states gerrymandered their congressional maps in recent months, control of the House could again run through California.

“It’s been pretty clear to all of us that Republicans are laying the groundwork to do anything, and they will say anything, to hold power,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, a California Democrat, said at a news conference on June 9.

Evidence of fraud?

States Newsroom asked the White House to provide evidence substantiating Trump’s fraud claims in California. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson responded with a statement that didn’t directly answer the question.

“Countless Americans share the same concerns as President Trump watching the way California conducts its elections, including taking weeks to deliver results,” the statement says in part.

California’s slow vote count dates back years and is driven by multiple factors. California, along with seven other states, sends mail ballots to all voters. In a statewide special election last year, nearly 89% of voters cast their ballot that way.

This creates a flood of ballots arriving at election offices in the days leading up to and on Election Day, along with large numbers of voters who drop off their ballots in person. Voter signatures must be checked on ballot envelopes, adding more behind-the-scenes work that slows down election workers.

Voters with an issue related to their ballot, such as a missing signature or signature mismatch, also have an opportunity to correct the problem. The process, called ballot curing, adds more time.

Additionally, California has a week-long grace period for ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but arrive late, creating a trickle of votes that come into election offices days after polls have closed. 

The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to deliver an opinion soon that could strike down these grace periods nationwide, though such a decision could compound the ballot pileup on Election Day as voters move to get their ballots in sooner.

Need for faster count acknowledged

Evoking an image of a snake digesting a large meal, Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, likened the arrival of ballots on Election Day to “the thing in the python.” Her nonprofit group has long advocated for improvements to the state’s election process, including a faster count. 

“While I am dismayed by the unfair criticism being placed on California, I’m more concerned about voter confidence being undermined, not just by those fraudulent claims but also by the long count itself,” Alexander said.

The demand to know the winners of races on election night has been fueled by modern media, as news services and TV networks declare race winners. But these calls are almost always based on incomplete vote totals, and often rely on mathematical analyses of whether enough votes remain uncounted for other candidates to have a realistic chance of winning.

Candidates are officially declared winners by canvassing boards and other election officials in the days and weeks following the election, depending on each state’s procedures. Often election night vote totals match the actual outcome of a race, but not always — a gap Trump is now exploiting to claim fraud.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in May sent a letter to election officials that almost appeared to anticipate the reaction to the June primary and called for quick and accurate vote tabulation.

“Time is of the essence in preventing election lies from taking hold,” Newsom wrote.

House GOP leaders join criticism

While California’s slow process is normal for the state, Trump allies have latched onto it — conflating the pace of the count with evidence of wrongdoing, even if they aren’t always as explicit as the president in accusing Democrats of trying to steal the election.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during an exchange with a CNN reporter on Monday that while he wasn’t saying the election was rigged, it “stinks to high heaven.”

“Whether you can prove fraud or not, it does undermine voter integrity in the vote,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, said of the slow count at a news conference.

But Rep. Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, analogized the vote counting to a football game. The vote totals available on election night represent the score at half time — but the final score at the end of the game will be different.

“It doesn’t mean there’s fraud, it just means the game was completed,” Lieu told reporters. “That’s what we’re seeing right now, we’re completing the vote count. And then we’re going to see who wins and who loses.”

Scientists discovered that rice behaves in a highly unusual way: it weakens under rapid compression but stays stronger when pressure is applied slowly. Using this effect, they engineered a new material that reacts differently to gentle movements and sudden impacts. The material can adapt its stiffness automatically, opening the door to safer soft robots and protective equipment that responds instantly to collisions.

A potentially dangerous tapeworm linked to severe, cancer-like disease has now been found in the Pacific Northwest, marking its first detection in wild animals along the U.S. West Coast. Researchers discovered the parasite, Echinococcus multilocularis, in 37% of coyotes tested around Puget Sound—a surprisingly high rate for a region where it had never been reported until recently.

Just 90–120 minutes of strength training a week may deliver some of the biggest long-term health rewards, according to a study tracking more than 147,000 people for 30 years. That amount was linked to lower risks of death overall, particularly from cardiovascular and neurological diseases. Combining strength workouts with aerobic exercise produced even stronger benefits.

NASA has selected the Artemis III crew for a high-stakes 2027 mission designed to test the future of lunar exploration. Astronauts will launch aboard Orion and perform unprecedented docking operations with lunar landers being developed by both Blue Origin and SpaceX. The mission will require a remarkable sequence of heavy-lift rocket launches and complex in-space maneuvers, helping pave the way for future Moon landings and eventually crewed missions to Mars.

Scientists have developed an artificial photosynthesis system that essentially regulates itself, eliminating the need for batteries used in many current designs. The key innovation is an electrolyzer that automatically adapts to changing sunlight by altering its electrical properties as it heats up. This keeps solar fuel production more stable while reducing cost and complexity.

JWST has revealed dramatic differences between the dawn and dusk regions of the scorching exoplanet WASP-121 b. Fierce winds appear to carry heat from the planet’s permanent dayside, making the evening side hotter and more expanded. Scientists also found signs that water is being broken apart by extreme temperatures and that mysterious mineral clouds may be shaping the cooler side’s atmosphere.

Scientists found that transfer learning can make the search for new physics in the universe much faster, slashing the need for expensive simulations. Yet the approach can backfire when AI relies too heavily on familiar patterns, potentially missing evidence of something truly new.

Scientists have developed biodegradable protein beads made from dairy and tofu waste that can capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere more efficiently than many current technologies. Unlike conventional systems that require large amounts of energy, the new method releases captured CO2 using a simple room-temperature process.

For nearly 700 years, Indigenous hunters repeatedly used a bison kill site in central Montana—then suddenly stopped, even though bison were still abundant. Researchers uncovered evidence that recurring, decades-long droughts likely made the site less practical by reducing access to the water needed to process large numbers of animals. At the same time, hunting groups were shifting toward larger, more coordinated operations that required dependable resources and specialized locations.