The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development has found more than 1,600 violations of state child labor laws by the owner of 100 Burger King outlets in Wisconsin. In this picture from April 2024, Gov. Tony Evers vetoes a bill that would have eliminated Wisconsin's work permit requirements for 14- and 15-year-olds. (Governor's Facebook page photo)

The owner of more than 100 Wisconsin Burger King franchises will be required to pay the state more than $1 million after Wisconsin’s labor department found more than 1,600 violations of state child labor and wage laws, officials said Friday.

The violations took place during a two-year period ending in January 2025, the state Department of Workforce Development reported. The case involves the largest number of child labor and wage payment violations identified by the department “in modern Wisconsin history,” according to the office of Gov. Tony Evers.

“We have a responsibility to make sure kids who are working are protected from exploitation, predatory employer practices, and being subjected to hazardous or illegal working conditions, and that’s a responsibility we must take seriously,” Evers said in a statement released Friday.

The franchise owner, Chicago-based Cave Enterprises, operates Burger King locations in eight states, according to the Cave Enterprises website. Wisconsin has 100 of those restaurants currently — more than any of the other states.

On Thursday, DWD informed Cave that investigators reviewed records from the company from January 2023 to January 2025.

A  letter from DWD to Cave states that the company:

• Employed 593 14- and 15-year-olds who started work without required work permits;
• Failed to provide a required 30-minute meal break for 627 minors who worked at least one shift of six hours or longer without a break;
• Failed to pay required overtime to 67 workers who were 16 or 17 and who worked at least one shift longer than 10 hours — after which state law requires payment at time and a half;
• Violated state requirements on permitted work hours for 369 minors. 

DWD “counted violations of Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws by counting only one violation per child per type of violation found,” the department stated in a cover letter accompanying the notification of violations. By that count, “Employer violated Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws and related regulations at least 1,656 times during the investigative period.”

DWD told Cave the company owes the employees a total of $3,498 in back wages, $1,994 in unpaid overtime wages, and $231,944 in wage penalties.

Cave also must “immediately change its business practices to ensure that it is no longer in violation of Wisconsin’s Employment of Minors laws and related regulations which were found to be violated,” the investigation report states.

The cover letter states Cave also must pay DWD a direct penalty of $828,000 — $500 for each of the 1,656 violations, according to the department.

In 2024, Evers vetoed a bill passed by Republicans in the Legislature that would have eliminated a requirement that 14- and 15-year-olds in Wisconsin have a work permit approved by their parents in order to take a job.

The legislation was supported by Wisconsin Independent Business and the National Federation of Independent Businesses, according to lobbying records posted by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission.

It was also promoted by the Opportunity Solutions Project, the lobbying arm of the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability, which Wisconsin Watch reported had gotten “attention for its successful drive to relax child labor restrictions in Iowa and Arkansas.”

“After years of Republican lawmakers working to get rid of Wisconsin’s basic child labor law protections, I’m proud my administration is working to do the opposite by making sure bad actors are held accountable for taking advantage of kids in the workplace,” Evers said Friday.

The DWD letters to the company state that both the payments for the employees, which must be made with individual checks for each worker, and the penalty that is owed to the state must be sent to DWD’s Equal Rights Division, which investigates child labor and other workplace violations.

According to the investigation report, DWD launched the investigation after receiving several complaints in 2024 and subsequently reviewing department records, which produced 33 previous complaints against the business for wage payment and child labor violations from 2020 through 2023.

On Jan. 23, 2025, DWD requested records from Cave on the company’s employment of minors younger than 18 going back to Jan. 1, 2023. The records started coming in on March 4, 2025, with the last batch received Nov. 11, 2025, according to DWD.

Cave was founded in 1999 by Adam Velarde with a Burger King outlet in Lemont, Illinois, and grew to be the largest group of Burger King franchises with a single owner, according to the company website.

“The majority of Cave’s growth has been through purchasing distressed restaurants and improving the value of the location and brand through hard work, smart decisions and dedication to the guests,” the company states. “We pride ourselves on being leaders in the Burger King Brand in traffic and profit growth.”

While the investigation found minors employed at 104 Wisconsin locations that Cave owned, the company’s current list of 100 locations would appear to suggest that Cave closed or divested at least four restaurants sometime in the last three years.

Cave also operates four locations in Iowa, 28 in Illinois, one in Indiana, eight in  Michigan, 13 in Minnesota, one in Nebraska and 22 in South Dakota. 

This is a developing story and will be updated.

In Port Washington, Wisconsin, many residents oppose a $15 billion data center campus that’s currently under construction for end-users Oracle and OpenAI. (No Data Centers in Ozaukee County Facebook group)

Big Tech is here in Wisconsin, looking to make Wisconsin families and small businesses pay for data centers. The Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) is about to make a decision that will affect all of us: We Energies has proposed a new rate structure on data centers that, as drafted, favors profits and protections for Big Tech companies and We Energies executives themselves, but putting Wisconsinites at risk to subsidize the costs. Here’s what’s going on and how you can do something about it. 

What’s at stake?

We Energies, the largest and most profitable utility in the state, is preparing to spend $19.3 billion on electric generation due to data center proposals from Microsoft, Oracle, Vantage, and OpenAI.4. This is largely to build new gas plants in order to power the massive energy needs of Big Tech’s data centers. Here’s the problem: If sufficient protections aren’t in place now, the costs of these expensive gas plants may be forced onto families and small businesses, driving up people’s bills to keep the lights on and heat their homes in the winter.

We Energies’ proposals put us at risk for higher utility bills without fully ensuring that Big Tech is paying their fair share. As it currently stands, more expensive data centers likely means higher costs for all of us. Tech companies should be responsible for covering the cost of service needed to power their data centers, including the cost of building out power to service these high energy demands.

In addition to their problematic proposal, We Energies is proposing to add huge volumes of natural gas plants to feed these power-hungry data centers, which are expensive to build and take decades to pay off. These so-called “stranded assets” end up costing us more money for many years down the line, at times even when they are no longer in service. With rapidly changing AI technology, there is a very real risk that Big Tech does not move forward with planned data centers because they’re no longer profitable or needed. In short, data centers create short-term gains for Big Tech and We Energies with long-term consequences for Wisconsinites. 

What’s going on behind Big Tech’s closed doors?

We Energies’ proposal encourages Big Tech to make decisions behind closed doors, without considering Wisconsinites or how their decisions will impact Wisconsin lands, waters and natural resources. We should all be suspicious of this. What’s happening in these meetings that We Energies and Big Tech don’t want us to know about? If Big Tech builds data centers in Wisconsin communities, Wisconsin communities deserve to know what deals are being made with the utilities. 

Transparency and accountability are crucial. Big Tech and utilities like We Energies must make their data center reporting, planning and financials publicly available, so that regulators like the PSC can implement protections and ensure Wisconsinites aren’t being taken advantage of. We deserve to always know how and why our electric and gas bills are being affected.

The time to take action is now.

If We Energies builds new gas plants to power Big Tech’s data centers, all of us will live with greater risks of rising gas and electricity prices as well as environmental impacts to our communities. If Big Tech wants to come into our state and use our state resources, they shouldn’t be putting us in jeopardy, they should be the ones taking on the risks. 

As we prepare for the PSC to make a decision on data centers, we need to make our voices heard to decision makers: Big Tech and We Energies don’t get to decide what’s best for Wisconsin. You have a role to play in shaping the policies that affect you. Attend the virtual public hearing on Feb. 10 or by submitting a comment by Feb. 17.

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Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) is proposing that Wisconsin require crisis pregnancy centers to get express written permission before releasing a person’s private health information. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) is proposing that Wisconsin require crisis pregnancy centers to get express written permission before releasing a person’s private health information. Those who have given permission would also be able to withdraw their permission at any time under the bill. 

“Many people assume that when they seek care for pregnancy or other reproductive health services that that information is protected, just like any other medical records under HIPAA, and while that is true at your doctor’s office or at the hospital, it’s not always true when you visit other providers,” Subeck said at a press conference Thursday.

Concerns about information being gathered about women’s reproductive health, including by crisis pregnancy centers, have surged in the years since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, especially in states where abortion has been criminalized. 

A 2022 TIME Magazine report found that crisis pregnancy centers have been collecting information including sexual and reproductive histories, test results, ultrasound photos, and information shared during consultations, parenting classes, or counseling sessions, from women they interact with through telephone and online chats. They are not required to follow federal health data privacy laws. The report led to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren requesting an examination of the practices by crisis pregnancy centers.

The bill, coauthored by Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), would also require centers to disclose in “plain language” that they are not a HIPAA-covered entity for the purpose of federal privacy regulations as well as disclosing any data breach that exposes individual digital health information.

Subeck said the centers can “look and feel an awful lot like a traditional medical clinic,” noting that they might offer ultrasounds, pregnancy tests and claim to have counselors on staff. However, she said “many of these centers are not licensed medical providers, and therefore they are not covered by HIPAA privacy protections.”

Subeck said that changes in reproductive health laws have raised concerns about the misuse of health related information and data. She said the bill would not close unregulated pregnancy centers, limit the services they can provide or limit speech. Rather, she said, it “simply sets some basic privacy expectations and protections for unsuspecting individuals.”

Subeck noted that lawmakers in other states, including Pennsylvania, have introduced similar measures, though none have become law.

Subeck said the violations of the provisions in the bill would be treated as “unfair and deceptive practices” under existing state law.

Laura Hanks, an OB-GYN and legislative chair for American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said at the press conference that the bill shouldn’t be political.

“It’s about privacy, honesty and safe, medically accurate care. Unregulated pregnancy centers often look like clinics, but they aren’t held to the basic medical privacy rules,” Hanks said. “This means they lack regulation, medical oversight or standard confidentiality rules. Too many people are walking in and assuming their health care information is protected when it isn’t. This bill sets commonsense guardrails.”

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A demonstrator waves a red cloth as hundreds gather after ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good through her car window Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2026 near Portland Avenue and 34th Street. (Photo by Nicole Neri/Minnesota Reformer)

Despite the high-profile U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions in Minnesota, ICE arrests were down slightly in January compared to December, according to new data. 

Immigrant detention nationwide also reached a new high in January, and a growing percentage — nearly three-quarters — of people in detention have no criminal convictions.

ICE arrested 36,579 people in  January compared with December (37,842); the numbers haven’t changed much since October (36,621), according to new estimates from a Syracuse University professor.

The number of people in immigration detention reached 70,766 as of Jan. 24, a new high, according to a different report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also at Syracuse University.  

The number in detention has gone up steadily from about 40,000 at the start of the second Trump administration, and the latest number is the largest since the organization, known as TRAC, began tracking immigrant detention in 2019. 

Of those detainees 74.2%, or 52,504, had no criminal convictions, up from 70.4% in June.  

“Since the summer, nearly all of the growth in ICE detention has come from people without criminal convictions or charges — an area of tremendous sustained growth that contradicts the Trump administration’s narrative that they are focused on the worst of the worst,” Austin Kocher, a research assistant professor at Syracuse University who researches immigration enforcement, wrote in a substack posting. 

Kocher is a former researcher for TRAC but is no longer associated with the organization and created estimates of monthly arrests based on detention check-ins. 

Detention facilities in Texas had the largest number of detainees, 18,684, followed by Louisiana (8,207), California (6,422), Florida (5,187) and Georgia (4,178) as of Jan. 24. 

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

Students at a public charter science academy sit at their desks during English class in Warr Acres, Okla., in August 2025. More states are considering joining Oklahoma in legislating strict bell-to-bell cellphone bans. (Photo by Nuria Martinez-Keel/Oklahoma Voice)

The momentum behind cellphone bans in schools has reached more than half the states, as teachers, superintendents and education experts praise these policies as a way to boost student achievement and mental health, and to rebuild a sense of community that many believe has been diminished by students’ addiction to screens.

Now, the question for many states and school districts isn’t whether to remove distracting devices from students each day, but for how long.

States that have passed laws requiring some kind of cellphone policy now are considering going further and mandating daylong bans, even for high schoolers. The idea has gotten some pushback from students, but also from teachers and parents who say strict bell-to-bell bans aren’t necessary. Some say they worry about safety in the event of a school shooting or other emergency.

Education experts say the modern push for school phone bans accelerated after the pandemic reshaped how students use technology and interrupted crucial in-person experiences in a classroom. Kara Stern, director of education and engagement for SchoolStatus, a data-collecting firm that assists K-12 districts with attendance and other school issues, said smartphones shifted from being tools of connection during remote learning to sources of isolation once students returned to classrooms.

“During remote learning, phones became a primary way kids entertained themselves and stayed connected,” Stern said. “But once schools reopened, phones stopped being a connection tool and started creating disconnection.”

Currently, 38 states and Washington, D.C., have enacted some form of statewide restriction or requirement for districts to limit student phone use. Of those, roughly 18 states and the district have full-day bans or comprehensive statewide restrictions (including during classroom and noninstructional time).

Despite widespread adoption of school cellphone restrictions and support for them, compliance remains uneven, according to a 2025 University of Southern California study. Most students continue to use phones during the school day regardless of restrictions, the researchers found.

Still, more than half of teens surveyed said enforcement this school year is stricter than it was the previous year.

“Teaching a class where students are on their phones is like trying to teach at Disney World over a loudspeaker,” Stern said. “The environment just isn’t designed for learning.”

Pushing for broader bans

Georgia is among the states considering a bell-to-bell policy for all public high schools. This comes a year after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a ban for K-8 grades.

Students are paying attention. At East Paulding High School in Dallas, Georgia, students and teachers offered mixed views on cellphone bans. On a student-run news broadcast aired last fall, some students expressed concern over their safety, while some teachers were bullish on the idea that a ban would be effective at the high school level.

Republican state Rep. Scott Hilton, who proposed the new law, told the Georgia Recorder that the ban for younger students helped families get used to a bell-to-bell ban.

“I’ve just been blown away at the positive reaction across the board from all different constituencies, teachers, administrators, parents and even in a lot of cases, students who have experienced a difference and said, ‘Oh, wow, I kind of like this,’” Hilton said.

Several states focus their bans on prohibiting cellphone use “during instructional time,” which wouldn’t necessarily include free time such as lunch. Kansas lawmakers are pushing ahead on a ban on use during instructional time; it would supersede previous action that allowed local district discretion on cellphone use in schools. Michigan legislators passed a similar bill last month; it was sent to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Monday.

Similar instruction time bills passed in Iowa, North Carolina and Wisconsin last year. In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek issued an executive order in July requiring every district to adopt bell-to-bell cellphone bans by Jan. 1. Several districts have said the mandate has gone better than expected, with some superintendents saying they’ve seen more interaction among students.

Bell-to-bell cellphone restrictions are being considered or advanced in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, and were recently enacted in New York. The Massachusetts bill goes further than most, adding smartphones, tablets and Bluetooth devices to its list of banned electronic devices.

Most legislation reviewed by Stateline includes exceptions to the bans for students with special needs and in cases of emergency.

School shootings in 2025 fell to the lowest number since 2020, according to a review by Education Week. Still, there were 18 shootings that left seven people dead last year, the review found.

In Georgia, state Superintendent Richard Woods, a Republican, told reporters he’s heard firsthand from survivors of a shooting there about the importance of having cellphones on hand for safety reasons.

“Do I support this? Absolutely,” Woods said, referring to the cellphone ban. “But I think we have to find a sweet spot and not move to the extremes.”

What works best?

According to a Pew Research Center poll released last summer, 74% of U.S. adults support banning cellphones during class for middle and high school students, up from 68% in fall 2024. Far fewer adults (19%) oppose classroom bans, and 7% are unsure, the poll found.

For advocates of a phone-free education, the gold standard of cellphone policies is a bell-to-bell restriction with inaccessible storage for the device.

A 2025 article in JAMA Pediatrics reported that teens ages 13-18 spend an average of 90 minutes on their phones during school, but that little has been written about what students are doing during that time.

“Although 99.7% of US public school principals report their school has a smartphone policy, few studies have objectively examined smartphone app usage during school,” an abstract of the study reads.

Stern said she saw the effects of a “consistent bell-to-bell” policy firsthand with her own son. When his phone broke in eighth grade, he dreaded going to school without it. But after his first day, he came home and told Stern that he played soccer at recess, met new classmates and had “a really good day” — one he said was better than usual.

Kim Whitman, a co-head of Smartphone Free Childhood US, and other education experts believe cellphone bans will mirror past public health reversals — like banning smoking in schools — and possibly redefine what it means to be in a classroom post-pandemic.

“Today we can’t imagine allowing smoking in schools,” Whitman said. “I think in five to 10 years we’ll say the same thing about cellphones — wondering how we ever allowed them into classrooms.”

Whitman, who has examined and graded states according to the efficacy of their cellphone bans, said that North Dakota and Rhode Island are the only states warranting high marks for their adoption and enforcement of bell-to-bell policies.

Despite claims from adults who love the phone-free policies, students aren’t as convinced. Only 41% of teens support cellphone bans in middle and high school classrooms, according to polling by Pew Research Center released in January.

The largest share of teens who like certain phone-free policies are in schools where the policy allows phones during noninstructional time throughout the day, according to the USC study.

Editor’s note: This story has been edited to correct that it was Kara Stern of SchoolStatus who told Stateline about her son’s experience with a phone-free day. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

A sign at a University of Utah health clinic warns visitors about the spread of measles. Under the Trump administration, federal health officials have cut back the number of recommended vaccines, and more states are offering exemptions for parents who don't want to vaccinate children entering public schools. (Photo by McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)

States that were leaders in childhood vaccination before the pandemic are among those losing ground as exemptions and unfounded skepticism take hold, encouraged by the Trump administration’s stance under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Expanded exemptions for parents are likely to drop both Mississippi and West Virginia from the top national rankings they held before the pandemic, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data. Other states like Florida, Idaho, Louisiana and Montana also are pushing the envelope on vaccine choice.

At least 33 states were below herd immunity in the 2024-25 school year, compared with 28 states before the pandemic in 2018-2019, the analysis found. Herd immunity refers to the percentage of people who must be vaccinated or otherwise immune from an infectious disease to limit its spread.

Research shows that in the case of measles — a highly contagious disease — states need to maintain at least 95% vaccination rates to protect people who can’t get vaccinated. Other diseases have similar herd immunity rates. People who can’t be vaccinated might include infants too young to receive certain vaccines and those with underlying health conditions.

Misinformation and expressions of distrust from influential leaders have an effect on parents, doctors say, as do new state exemptions making it easier for families to avoid the vaccines.

Some people who never questioned vaccines before notice a national debate and get confused, said Dr. Patricia Tibbs, a pediatrician in rural Mississippi and president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. New religious exemptions may already be fueling an increase in pertussis, also known as whooping cough, in Mississippi, she said.

“If they hear something about it in the news, then it must be right, they think,” Tibbs said. “We’re just following the guidelines and informing patients that this is a scientific discussion. Nothing has changed about the science. But people who don’t know science are making decisions.”

Under Kennedy’s leadership, federal support for vaccination has continued to slide, and many states have joined a movement to set their own course by following more science-based recommendations from doctors. On Jan. 26 the Governors Public Health Alliance, a group of 15 Democratic governors, endorsed child and adolescent vaccination standards from the American Academy of Pediatrics rather than the federal government.

Federal health officials in Trump’s administration have cut back the number of recommended vaccines. The chair of a vaccine advisory committee, pediatric cardiologist Kirk Milhoan, suggested in a Jan. 22 podcast that individual freedom was more important than protecting community health with vaccines, even for measles and polio.

New leading states

Before the pandemic, Mississippi and West Virginia had the highest kindergarten vaccination rates in the nation, according to the Stateline analysis. About 99% of kindergartners in each state had their required vaccinations before entering public schools in the 2018-2019 school year.

In the latest statistics for the 2024-25 year, Connecticut gained the No. 1 spot, followed by New York and Maine. Those states have reined in exemptions to school vaccine requirements, while Mississippi and West Virginia have begun to allow more exemptions.

West Virginia didn’t report vaccinations to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the 2024-25 school year. The state department of health told Stateline the data wouldn’t be available until later this year.

But the state is likely to be pushed out of the top 10. Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order a year ago giving parents the right to ask for religious exemptions. To date, the state has approved 693 such requests for the current school year, spokesperson Gailyn Markham wrote in an email. That alone is enough to shift the state’s ranking significantly.

Stateline computed an average of required kindergarten vaccination rates to compare states. The analysis uses 2018-19 as a pre-pandemic baseline because a large number of states did not report the information in 2019-20 in the chaos that followed the early COVID-19 spikes and school closings.

A January study published by JAMA Pediatrics found increased vaccination rates among kindergartners in states that had repealed nonmedical exemptions, suggesting the repeals “played a role in maintaining vaccination coverage in repeal states during a period of heightened vaccine hesitancy.”

Requirements and exemptions

All 50 states and the District of Columbia require students to have certain vaccines before attending public school. They also all allow exemptions for children who cannot receive vaccinations for medical reasons, and most states allow nonmedical exemptions, often for religious or sometimes personal reasons. But Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration has proposed dropping all requirements, and Idaho enacted a 2025 law allowing vaccination exemptions for any reason. Idaho had the lowest rate of kindergarten vaccination, about 80% in the 2024-25 school year before the law took effect in July last year.

Louisiana in 2024 enacted a law dropping COVID-19 vaccine requirements for public schools, and the state has opted to halt publicity about flu vaccination and end public vaccine clinics.

A Florida bill that progressed out of committee in January would maintain school vaccine requirements but expand exemptions to include “conscience” as well as medical and religious reasons.

Dr. Jennifer Takagishi, a Tampa pediatrician and vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the organization opposes both the DeSantis administration proposal to revoke vaccine requirements and the bill that would expand exemptions. Florida’s kindergarten vaccination rate fell from 94% before the pandemic to about 90% in 2024-25, according to the Stateline analysis.

“They’re ignoring the 90% of their constituents who want vaccines and want to stay safe,” said Takagishi. “The legislators are listening to the louder voice of those who want to oppose vaccines instead of the majority. We also know that there are teachers in the school system and school nurses who are fighting this because it puts them at risk.”

All states except Montana report kindergarten vaccine statistics to the federal government. Montana enacted a 2021 law making vaccine status private and unavailable for statistical reports, over the objections of medical experts. The law also made medical exemptions easier for families who think their children have been injured by vaccines.

Dr. Lauren Wilson, a pediatrician and then-vice president of the Montana chapter of the American Association of Pediatrics, said in a hearing that the law would make “vaccination information unavailable for responding to and mitigating public health emergencies.”

“Vaccines have saved millions of lives. I personally have seen cases of tetanus, pertussis, measles and meningitis and the tragedies that these mean for families,” Wilson said in her testimony.

A 2023 court order forced Mississippi to accept religious exemptions. West Virginia allows religious exemptions following the governor’s order last year.

Tibbs, who practices pediatrics in rural Jones County, Mississippi, said she has been seeing more pertussis than usual, and thinks vaccine exemptions could be a factor.

In Mississippi, which reported 394 religious exemptions for the 2024-25 school year, overall rates remained high enough that year, at about 97.8%, to ensure “herd immunity” in most cases.

Mississippi has granted 617 religious vaccination exemptions for kindergartners this school year, about 1.8% of the class, according to Amanda Netadj, immunizations director for the state health department. About 96.3% of kindergartners have all required vaccinations this year.

But the state’s whooping cough cases last year were the highest they’d been in at least decade, and in September health officials announced an infant had died of the disease — the state’s first whooping cough death in 13 years.

“We do have a lot of people getting the religious exemption,” Tibbs said. ”But still, on any given day, the majority of my patients will still get their vaccines. We are keeping our fingers crossed that the numbers stay high enough.”

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

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on June 17, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic proposal Thursday to sue the Trump administration over allegations that it did not fully release the Epstein files, as mandated under a law unanimously approved by senators and signed by the president nearly three months ago.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., asked for unanimous consent on a resolution compelling the Republican-led Senate to challenge President Donald Trump in court to release more records from the government’s investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.

Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal defense attorney, said Jan. 30 that the department had finished complying with the new law after a final release of 3 million pages, containing 2,000 videos and 180,000 images. In total, the department released about 3.5 million records since the law’s passage.

The latest tranche revealed a global network of numerous men in powerful positions in communication with Epstein.

Late and redacted

The legal deadline to release the files was Dec. 19.

“Fifty days past the deadline, at best, according to the Department of Justice’s own admissions, maybe half of all the available Epstein files have been released,” Schumer said on the floor Thursday morning.

Schumer said that among the records released, many have been “redacted to an absurd degree.”

“This is not what the law requires. This is a mockery of the truth and an insult to the survivors. What makes this all the more sickening is that in over 1,000 instances, the Justice Department failed to follow the law and leaked the identities of over 100 victims. But do you know who the Justice Department did seem to protect? Epstein’s co-conspirators,” Schumer continued.

The minority leader entered into the congressional record a letter he brought along from roughly 20 Epstein victims decrying the “reckless and dangerous” release of victims’ identities.

Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., blocked the resolution, chalking it up as “another reckless political stunt designed to distract Americans from Democrats’ dangerous plan to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.”

Barrasso was referring to negotiations underway to fund DHS. Democrats have demanded changes to immigration enforcement tactics after two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis, and numerous other U.S. citizens were injured by federal agents during Trump’s surge into blue states.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., criticized Barrasso’s objection on the floor, calling it “morally wrong.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

A DOJ official told States Newsroom in an email that the resolution presented “a tired narrative.”

“Just because you wish something to be true, doesn’t mean it is. This Department produced more than 3.5 million pages in compliance with the law and, in full transparency, has disclosed to the public and to Congress what items were not responsive. I assume all members of Congress read the actual language before voting on it, but if not, our press release and letter to Congress clearly spells this out,” the official wrote, including a link to the department’s Jan. 30 press release.

‘Hunger or thirst for information’

Blanche told reporters on Jan. 30, “There’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. There’s nothing I can do about that.” 

He said no information uncovered in the files warranted new prosecutions.

The new law, dubbed by lawmakers as the Epstein Files Transparency Act, required the DOJ to make publicly available “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in DOJ’s possession that relate to the investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein,” including materials related to Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. 

Epstein avoided federal charges in 2008 when he pleaded guilty to Florida state prostitution charges, including for the solicitation of a minor. 

A 2007 draft of a federal indictment that laid out more robust charges was among the files released by the DOJ on Jan. 30.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The funding package President Donald Trump signed Feb. 3, 2026, includes $79 billion for the U.S. Education Department, representing a rejection by Congress of the president's plan to close the department. (Photo by kali9/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s attempts to dramatically slash funding for the U.S. Department of Education amid a broader push to dismantle the agency hit a major roadblock this week in the form of bipartisan approval of a spending law that gives the department a small raise. 

The president signed a measure that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal year 2025 funding levels and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump wanted. 

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, wrote in a social media post after the signing that the law was a direct rebuke of several Trump priorities, including eliminating the department.

“Our funding bills send a message to Trump,” she wrote. “Congress will NOT abolish the Department of Education.”

The measure also rejects efforts to dramatically reduce or fully slash funding for a host of programs administered by the department for low-income and disadvantaged students. 

Trump and his administration have sought over the past year to take an axe to the 46-year-old agency as part of a quest to send education “back to the states.” Much of the funding and oversight of schools already occurs at the state and local levels. 

Those dismantling efforts included six interagency agreements with four other departments in November that would shift several Education responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies. 

The department also saw mass layoffs initiated in March 2025 and a plan to dramatically downsize the agency ordered that same month — efforts that the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily greenlit in July. 

The spending package also holds full-year funding for the departments of Defense, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, State and Treasury. The measure includes a two-week stopgap measure for the Department of Homeland Security. 

‘Inefficiencies’ 

The measure does not offer ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the Education Department’s responsibilities to other agencies — despite efforts from Senate Democrats to block such transfers. 

However, in a joint explanatory statement alongside the measure, lawmakers expressed alarm over the “assignment of such programmatic responsibilities to agencies that do not have experience, expertise, or capacity to carry out these programs and activities and lack developed relationships and communications with relevant stakeholders, including States.”

Lawmakers added they were “concerned that fragmenting responsibilities for education programs across multiple agencies will create inefficiencies, result in additional costs to the American taxpayer, and cause delays and administrative challenges in Federal funding reaching States, school districts, and schools.”

Due to those concerns, the funding measure directs the Education Department and the agencies that are part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.

The briefings are supposed to include information on “staffing transfers, implementation costs, metrics on the delivery of services” and the “availability of technical support for programs to grantees,” among other matters. 

The Education Department clarified when announcing the interagency agreements in November with the departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services and State that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities and will continue its oversight of these programs.” 

‘Necessary’ staffing levels 

The funding agreement also mandates that the department “support staffing levels necessary to fulfill its statutory responsibilities including carrying out programs, projects, and activities funded in (the law) in a timely manner.” 

The department took heat last summer when it froze $6.8 billion in funds for K-12 schools and informed states just a day before the money is typically sent out. 

The funds were eventually unfrozen, following bipartisan pushback in Congress.  

Pell Grant spared 

The measure also maintains the total maximum annual award for the Pell Grant from the prior fiscal year at $7,395, according to a summary from Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The government subsidy helps low-income students pay for college. 

Trump’s budget request called for cutting nearly $1,700 from the maximum award for the 2026-2027 award year, a proposal that stoked alarm last year from leading House and Senate appropriators in both parties overseeing Education Department funding. 

Funding levels maintained for TRIO, GEAR UP 

The administration also called for defunding the Federal TRIO programs and the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, in fiscal 2026 — a move rejected in the measure.

The Federal TRIO Programs include federal outreach and student services programs to help support students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, and GEAR UP aims to prepare low-income students for college.

Appropriators maintained funding for the programs at fiscal 2025 levels — with $1.191 billion for TRIO and $388 million for GEAR UP, per the Senate Democrats’ summary.

The administration also sought to axe funding for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program, which, according to the Education Department, “supports the participation of low-income parents in postsecondary education through the provision of campus-based child care services.” 

Instead, the measure allocates $75 million for the program. 

The Education Department did not respond to a request for comment on the funding package.

The administration expressed its support for the entire, multi-bill package, in a Jan. 29 statement of administration policy that barely mentioned the education provisions.

An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee has delayed the release of $2 million for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) operating budget following a report on the cost of a meeting held at a water park resort in 2024. The agency says continued delays in the release of the funds could lead to layoffs and other cuts.

The powerful budget committee’s agenda for Tuesday, Feb. 2 included a DPI request, originally submitted in September, for the release of $2 million over the biennium. However, at the start of the meeting, committee co-chair Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the vote on the money would be delayed. 

Born cited a report from the Dairyland Sentinel, a nonprofit publication published by Brian Fraley who is a longtime GOP strategist, that found through open records requests that the agency spent over $368,000 on its standard setting meeting in 2024. 

“We are not going to take up the DPI agenda item today. Within the last couple of hours a media report came out, Dairyland Sentinel report, regarding taxpayer use of funds at a resort for a conference,” Born said during the meeting. “Since it’s so new, we just want the opportunity to at least review what’s going on there with this questionable use of funds at least according to that report that’s very new, so just want to hit pause on that.”

The records request had been submitted about a year ago and was released after the Institute for Reforming Government (IRG), a conservative think tank, issued a demand letter on Jan. 21 on behalf of Dairyland Sentinel. The records were subsequently released. 

The report noted that the four-day event that included 88 educators and DPI staff was held in June 2024 at Chula Vista, a water park resort in the Wisconsin Dells. 

The Dairyland Sentinel report noted that Chula Vista is “a premier destination known for luxury amenities, including massive indoor and outdoor water parks, spa services, and multiple bars” and that “the agency did not provide receipts for staff time, food, travel, or lodging,” leaving taxpayers to “wonder how much of that $368,885 was spent on resort amenities, alcohol, or water park access for the 88 educators and various staff in attendance.” 

Chris Bucher, director of communications for DPI, told the Examiner in an email that the number cited by Dairyland Sentinel included all costs related to the standards setting meeting. Bucher said the agency works with its vendor for the Forward Exam, Data Recognition Corporation, each year to update the assessment and the work includes review of test questions at offsite, secure locations. 

“The department uses federal and state money directed to support the exam to pay for these events. The funding cited in the blog post includes salaries, hotel costs and vendor costs to perform the work – it is not all directed to Chula Vista,” Bucher said. “We conduct these meetings in Wisconsin to support our local tourism community and to cut down on associated travel costs for all involved. This is a common approach used by at least 24 other states who also contract with the DRC.”

Dairyland Sentinel emphasized that the fulfillment of the open records request did not include an itemized list associated with the overall cost.

Bucher said the Data Recognition Corporation provides the facilitation of the Forward Exam for more than 400,000 public and private school students as well as the standard setting workshop. Bucher said in response to why a breakdown of the costs wasn’t available that as the facilitator, Data Recognition Corporation plans and maintains the information related to costs and the agency is “working with them as we speak.”

Born said JFC expects to meet several times in the next four to six weeks as the end of the legislative session approaches and there “should be an opportunity to look at this again down the road, but we just wanted to make sure we had all the information necessary as we’re considering this request.” 

The $2 million, which makes up 10% of the DPI operating budget, was placed in a supplemental fund as a part of a deal negotiated between lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers. Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee initially wanted to cut those funds from the agency’s budget. Since it is in a supplemental fund, it must be released by lawmakers on the JFC. 

Bucher said the agency is “deeply disappointed” by the delay. He said the agency had been in contact with committee members and staff leading up to yesterday’s meeting and lawmakers indicated that the committee was going to approve the request.

“The department was singled out for a set aside of 10% of its operating budget and without that money, will need to consider layoffs which will impact our ability to investigate educator wrongdoing, license teachers, pay choice schools and operate the agency,” Bucher said.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, also weighed in — calling for an audit of the agency. 

“Their priorities are completely misplaced if they can waste nearly $400,000 on a water park junket to lower standards while claiming they need more funding. It took them over a year to respond to an open records request, and taxpayers should never have to wait that long for basic transparency,” Tiffany said in a statement.

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President Trump's statements that Republicans should take over and run elections in many states, the domestic deployment of armed agents who are shooting people in nearby cities, along with Wisconsin's long struggle over fair voting rules, makes for a tense election season. But voters still have the power to defend their rights. | Photo of an anti-gerrymandering sign in the Wisconsin State Capitol by the Wisconsin Examiner

Wisconsin was almost certainly on President Donald Trump’s mind when he said this week, “We should take over the voting, the voting in at least many — 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting.”

Our swing state was Ground Zero for the fake electors plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election after Trump narrowly lost here. Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office was involved in the effort to pass off fraudulent Electoral College ballots cast by state Republicans for Trump. Our state Legislature hosted countless hearings spotlighting election deniers and wasted $2.5 million in taxpayer dollars on a fruitless “investigation” of the 2020 presidential results, led by disgraced former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who threatened to arrest the mayors of Madison and Green Bay.

So how worried should we be about Trump’s election takeover threats?

“I wouldn’t be overly concerned that the president could get anything done that’s directly contrary to the Constitution,” says John Vaudreuil, a former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin and a member of the nonpartisan group Keep Our Republic, which works to promote trust in elections.

Not only does Article I of the U.S. Constitution expressly delegate elections administration to the states, Wisconsin has one of the most decentralized elections systems in the country, with about 1,800 local clerks running elections in counties, municipalities and townships throughout the state. “And they are Republicans, they are Democrats, they are independent,” Vaudreuil says. “Most fundamentally, they’re our neighbors, they’re our friends.” 

Trump’s threats of a federal takeover would be both legally and practically hard to pull off in Wisconsin.

But there is still reason to worry. Sowing distrust in elections takes a toll on clerks and poll workers, who have become less willing to put up with the threats and hostility generated by Trump’s attacks. Vaudreuil urges people to support their local elections officials and poll workers and spread the word that the work they do is important and that elections are secure.

Then there’s the danger that Trump could use his own false claims about election fraud to send federal immigration agents to the polls on the pretext that it’s necessary to address the nonexistent problem of noncitizen voting.

Doug Poland, director of litigation at the voting rights focused firm Law Forward, has been involved in election-related litigation in Wisconsin for years, including a lawsuit to block the Trump administration from forcing the state to turn over sensitive voter information. 

Poland sees Trump’s threats to “nationalize” elections as part of a pivot from Republican efforts to make in-person voting harder — on the dubious theory that there’s a huge problem with voter impersonation at the polls — to a new focus on stopping absentee voting after many people began using mail-in ballots during the pandemic. But really, it’s all about trying to make sure fewer people vote.

Under former Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin passed a strict voter ID law, which one Republican former staffer testified made Republican legislators “giddy” as they discussed how it would make it more difficult for students and people of color to vote. 

Like Vaudreuil, Poland sees the current threat from the Trump administration not as an actual takeover of election administration by the federal government, but as an escalation of intimidation tactics.

“Noncitizens generally don’t vote. So it’s a lie,” Poland says. “But it’s, of course, the lie that they’re going to use as a premise to send, whether it’s ICE or whomever it may be, to polling places, probably in locations with Black and brown populations, and that is purely for the purpose of intimidation. And at the same time, they’re pushing back very hard on absentee voting by mail.”

If the Trump administration is preparing to send armed federal agents to the polls to intimidate voters, absentee voting will be more important than ever in the upcoming elections.

Yet, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson recently told constituents that while he doesn’t think the federal government should take over elections administration, “I think we need to tighten up the requirements for absentee voting. I’m opposed to mail in register or mail in balloting.”

And as Erik Gunn reports, Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil’s Make Elections Great Again Act would restrict absentee voting, along with adding new layers of citizen verification steps while threatening to defund elections administrators who fail to comply with the bill’s onerous requirements.

“They’re going to do everything they can to try to make it harder to vote absentee by mail, to make it harder to vote absentee in person,” Poland says, adding, “They’re going to try to do it so they can put ICE agents around polling places and just try to intimidate people, to keep them away.”

So what can be done?

Voter intimidation is a crime, and specific instances can be addressed through lawsuits, Poland says. Still, he acknowledges (and Law Forward has argued in court) that once someone is deprived of the right to cast a ballot, there’s no remedy that can adequately compensate for that loss. That’s why it was so appalling when the city of Madison asserted that absentee voting is a “privilege” in response to a lawsuit brought by Poland’s organization over 200 lost ballots in the 2024 election.

Of course, in addition to worries about possible violations of individuals’ right to vote, there’s the fear that Trump could manage to subvert elections through heavy-handed tactics like the recent FBI raid to seize 2020 ballots from Fulton County. Both Vaudreuil and Poland think judges would step in to prevent such a seizure in the middle of an election, before the ballots were counted.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, absentee voting remains legal and many municipalities are using secure ballot drop boxes. We need to keep on making use of our right (not our privilege) to vote, using all the tools we have in place.

As for the intimidating effect of armed ICE agents at polling places, local officials and perhaps local law enforcement could have a role in protecting the polls and reassuring voters it’s safe to cast their ballots. Neighbors who have been organizing to warn people of ICE raids, bring food to immigrants who are afraid to leave their homes, and form a protective shield around schools could become self-appointed polling place protectors.

If we are going to defend the core tenets of our democracy against an administration that has demonstrated over and over again its contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law, it’s going to take massive public resistance and a flat refusal to give up our rights.

“What is it that will make them stand down from what they’re doing to break the law?” asks Poland. “I think the people of Minnesota have answered that for us better than anybody else can, which is that you have to stand up, you have to exercise your rights, First Amendment rights, the right to vote.”

Exercising our rights is the only way to make sure they are not taken away. Courage and collective action are the best protection we’ve got.

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(The Center Square) – Six Wisconsin voting groups are now joining the Democracy Defense Project and Gov. Tony Evers in objecting to Madison and former Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl’s legal argument that absentee voting is not a constitutional right.

(The Center Square) – The Republican running for governor in Wisconsin wants a full audit of the state’s public school managers after a report on a nearly $400,000 four-day workshop.

(The Center Square) – After concerns were raised about spending on DEI, the University of Wisconsin-Madison shuttered a department but kept most of the staff and their titles working on equity issues, an investigation by The Center Square found.

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For Char Brandis, a hobbyist photographer in Appleton, the darkroom is her happy place. 

But being outside of the professional photography industry, Brandis often found herself working on projects alone, without the support of an artistic community.

“I was doing a lot of art just on my own, in my basement,” Brandis told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”

Then, she started volunteering with Photo Opp, a nonprofit organization founded in 2021 that opened up a visual workspace in downtown Appleton two years later. 

“Coming into Photo Opp and meeting all of these new friends and people that share that passion has been a game changer,” said Brandis, who now serves on the organization’s board and helps to run events.

Photo Opp is the brainchild of Graham Washatka, John Adams and Mark Ferrell, three local multimedia professionals who wanted to create a place for visual artists in the Fox Cities to come together.

After years spent renovating a century-old former synagogue, Photo Opp opened its brick-and-mortar home base to the public in late 2024. There is a gallery and event space on the upper floor, with small studios and a community darkroom on the lower level. 

“It was really important for me to be able to create a space that was beautiful and interesting and unique and inspiring,” co-founder Adams told WPR. “That way people — no matter if they like photography or not — would come in and feel welcome and be like, ‘I want to hang out here.’”

That community ethos runs through Photo Opp’s programming, which welcomes professionals, amateurs and total newcomers to hone their craft side by side. Monthly film development nights, which launched last year, have been especially popular. 

“Experience levels range anywhere from having never touched a camera before and interested in learning, all the way to professionals that have been in the industry for decades,” Brandis said. “It’s really about putting those people next to each other to learn and develop techniques and experiment — and fail — with their art form.”

Developing community and connection, one film roll at a time

For the founders of Photo Opp, it was important to build the organization from the ground up in response to what the community was asking for.

One of those needs was for a local place to develop rolls of film. In late 2023, Appleton’s last local photo shop, Murray Photo and Video, permanently closed its doors after more than 30 years in business. Now, the leaders of Photo Opp hope the nonprofit model can help fill this gap.

“We were like, ‘OK, we see a need. We want to keep this art form inside of our community. We should do something,’” Adams said. “We decided to open up our film lab to be able to respond to that community need.”

At Photo Opp’s lab, community members can drop off rolls of film and get them developed, with prices starting at $12 for development only and $20 to include high-resolution digital files.

The service has already proven popular, with Photo Opp fulfilling dozens of orders each week. Adams believes that’s in part because people are returning to analog formats like film photography as a break from the digital world. 

“I think we all want to disconnect right now a little bit from our phones, from our computers, and slow down and think about what we’re doing,” Adams said.

This trend is especially pronounced in the younger generation. Photo Opp has been visiting schools in surrounding cities like Green Bay and Neenah to host workshops with first graders through college-aged students.

The organization also welcomes classes to take field trips to the Photo Opp workspace. The idea is to get young people involved in learning about photography and videography beyond what they can shoot on their smartphone.

“We’re taking more pictures than we have ever before because of smartphones, but we spend so much less time with them,” Brandis said. “But when you put a camera, whether it’s digital or film, in your hands, you’re really working with a photograph that you intentionally slowed down and took. And now you’re projecting it and then creating something tangible and genuine.”

“There’s just something about that first time in the darkroom when you slide your print into the developer and you watch your image come up,” she added. “That’s just magical.”

Photo Opp’s next film development night is on Feb. 8. See the full calendar of events on its website.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Community darkroom in Appleton brings the art of film photography to a new generation is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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