Lawmakers have given final approval to a moratorium on data centers larger than 20 megawatts — the first statewide ban of its kind in the country.

“What we’re talking about here is an ability for us to absorb and understand the impact of data centers potentially on the State of Maine,” Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) said Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote. “The states that have had data centers come in have had tremendous impacts.”

The bill, LD 307, bans data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November, 2027. It also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.

The bill was passed in both chambers this week, and is now awaiting funding on the special appropriations table.

“My point here is not that data centers should never happen,” said Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) Wednesday. “The point is we do not have the correct regulatory regime on the books to ensure that a decision like this isn’t neutral, at a minimum, or positive for everyone that would be affected by that decision.”

Discussion in both the Senate and Maine House of Representatives focused on the impact on proposed data center projects, primarily one in Jay and another in Sanford. Lawmakers volleyed back and forth on the potential benefits to a former mill town like Jay, and possible negative impacts to the surrounding areas. They also considered an amendment that would have created an exemption process to the moratorium that was ultimately rejected by both chambers.

“I’m not going to support something that doesn’t support business, the expansion of business in the State of Maine, especially in a community that’s dying for commerce and to get back on its feet,” said Sen. Jeff Timberlake (R-Androscoggin).

Republican lawmakers also raised concerns that Maine would lose out on economic opportunities, but would still feel the negative impacts when the data centers are built in other states.

“These projects are going to happen whether or not we pass this moratorium,” said Sen. Matt Harrington (R-York). “For those who care about the environment, they will be built in states that use 70% coal power, and we will be the tailpipe for that. These data centers will be built in groves in states that don’t have an economic death wish, and we will receive all the negative environmental impacts of that.”

Rep. Steven Foster (R-Dexter) said in March that any data centers are already subject to environmental and local regulations.

“This moratorium is not needed here in the state of Maine,” Foster said. “A lot of fear has been stoked up about an AI data center being built anywhere in Maine, which is contrary to reality. We would not see the facilities here the size of those being built in other states.”

But Democrats countered that Maine residents can’t afford the potential costs from the projects.

“We’re already seeing a tremendous impact from rising gas prices, rising oil prices, and how that feeds into also rising electric energy prices,” Lawrence said. “We don’t need to add an additional risk on energy costs for Mainers when we have time to reflect on this, study this and do this right.”

Grohoski also pointed to the local opposition to data centers, and said if the state doesn’t take the time to build intentional regulations, residents may just continue to stop projects at the local level.

“So I think if we do think that Maine is a place where we would like data centers at some point, if we don’t figure out how to do it right, they’re not going to happen anyhow, because people are concerned that we have not done our jobs to protect them,” Grohoski said.

In March, Rep. Melanie Sachs (D-Freeport) argued that the moratorium is not against innovation.

“Maine has always been a place that embraces new industries and new ideas, but we are also a state that understands the value of stewardship of our land, our water, our communities and our long-term future,” she said.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who is one of seven Democrats vying for the nomination in this year’s primary for governor,  is calling domestic violence a “public health emergency” after learning about the killing of a Kenosha woman, Makayla Plaza, 28, allegedly by her estranged ex-husband. Plaza’s attempts to get a restraining order against her ex-husband were shot down by a Kenosha County judge. 

In February, Plaza told the court she feared for her life and the lives  of her young children. But the judge denied her request for a restraining order. Markus Plaza, her 33-year-old ex-husband, was taken into custody after a 24-hour man-hunt following her death on April 1 TMJ4 reported that law enforcement found the man, Marckus Plaza, hiding in the basement of a salon. 

Makayla Plaza’s boyfriend said that her ex-husband would take her keys from her, lock her inside the house, and listen in on her phone calls. The Kenosha Police Department said that the husband had a history with the department, including an arrest for battery in February which resulted in no charges being filed. 

In a statement released through his campaign, Crowley said that “I have been sitting with this since I heard the news because I am also grieving,” recounting how his own friend Nancy Metayer — vice mayor of Coral Springs, Florida — was allegedly killed by her husband just days ago. Metayer was soon to announce her campaign to run for Congress. “Two women. Two states. The same devastating, preventable outcome. How many more?” Crowley said in his statement.

“I need Wisconsin to understand that this was not a fluke,” Crowley said. “This was not an isolated failure.” Rather, he said, tragedies like Plaza’s death are the result of underfunded shelters, understaffed courts and setting the legal  bar for protection “so impossibly high that a woman has to prove she is already in danger before we will act to prevent it.” He called for treating domestic violence as “the public health emergency it is.” 

Wisconsin has the tools and research it needs to make a difference, Crowley said, as well as the expertise of  social workers, survivors and advocates. “What we have lacked — what Wisconsin has lacked for too long — is the political will to act,” he added.  “I am done waiting.” If he is elected  governor, he said, tackling domestic violence would be a priority, including changing  how restraining orders are processed statewide, ensuring that survivors and their families have legal assistance and investing in mental health and substance use disorder treatment, as well as in domestic violence prevention and crisis support programs in all 72 counties. 

“So to the women of Wisconsin who are living this right now — I see you,” said Crowley. “If you are afraid, if you are trying to find a way out, if you have asked for help and been turned away or doubted or made to feel like what is happening to you isn’t serious enough — I want you to hear this directly from me: You are believed. What is happening to you is real. You deserve a system that fights for your life the way you are fighting for it every single day.” 

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WASHINGTON — First lady Melania Trump said Thursday she was “never involved in any capacity” with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and that “baseless lies” about her are being circulated.

In a rare solo statement livestreamed on the White House website, Melania Trump also called for a congressional hearing featuring the women who have shared stories of abuse by Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting federal trial on sex trafficking charges.

“I call on Congress to provide the women who have been victimized by Epstein with a public hearing specifically centered around the survivors, to give these victims their opportunity to testify under oath in front of Congress,” the first lady said in her nearly six-minute remarks. 

“With the power of sworn testimony, each and every woman should have her day to tell her story in public, if she wishes, and then her testimony should be permanently entered into the Congressional Record,” she added. “Then and only then, we will have the truth.”

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed the government’s files related to Epstein as a “hoax.” However, throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump promised to make the investigatory materials public.

The scandal has followed the president through most of his first term. While Trump shared a well-documented friendship with Epstein, who pleaded guilty to soliciting a minor in Florida in 2008, he denies any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activities.

The first lady also reproached individuals who she said are “devoid of ethical standards” for spreading “completely false” stories that she shared relationships with Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Ghislane Maxwell. 

“I was not a participant, was never on Epstein’s plane, and never visited his private island,” she said. “I have never been legally accused or (convicted) of a crime in connection with Epstein sex trafficking, abuse of minors and other repulsive behavior. The false smears about me from meanspirited and politically motivated individuals and entities looking to cause damage to my good name to gain financially and climb politically must stop.”

Free speech suit

It was unclear what spurred the first lady’s statement. 

She specifically mentioned the Daily Beast, James Carville and HarperCollins UK. The three are mentioned in exhibits attached to a lawsuit in New York against Melania Trump by journalist Michael Wolff, accusing her of seeking to intimidate him into retracting statements he’d made alleging a connection between her and Epstein. 

She also mentioned a 2002 email exchange between her and Maxwell that was revealed among the hundreds of thousands of records from the federal Epstein investigation that the Justice Department released beginning in December, as required by law. The first lady defended the email exchange as “casual correspondence.”

All but one member of Congress supported legislation compelling the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. 

The effort gained steam after the department, then under Attorney General Pam Bondi, said in July it would not release anything further related to the case. Bondi had previously claimed she had Epstein’s client list sitting on her desk.

Trump removed Bondi this month.

Dem endorses call for hearing

Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, lauded the first lady’s call for a hearing.

“We agree with First Lady Melania Trump’s call for a public hearing with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein. We encourage Chairman Comer to respond to the First Lady’s request and schedule a public hearing immediately,” Garcia wrote on X.

The Oversight Committee, led by Kentucky Republican James Comer, is conducting its own investigation into the files and has subpoenaed high-profile figures to testify, including former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as Bondi.

The millions of migrants who were released into the country during the immigration surge that began in 2021 and peaked in 2023 caused a political firestorm when Republican states transported them to Democratic cities. Now, according to a new analysis, many of them are back working in the states that expelled them.

Many of the migrants turned themselves in to immigration officials when they entered the United States illegally, but avoided immediate removal by claiming a “credible fear” of persecution or torture if they returned home, giving them the right to seek asylum. It can take years to receive an asylum hearing. Others seeking asylum arrived with appointments made through a government app or relied on temporary parole programs while pursuing legal status in court.

Now, amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, these migrants are under increasing pressure, threatened with arrest and detention even when they appear for their court dates. Currently, they can begin to work legally after waiting six months, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend the waiting period to one year.

A Stateline analysis of court records shows that the largest numbers of recent asylum-seekers are in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah, all of which have populations that are at least 1% higher than they were in 2020 because of the new migrants. Also in the top 10: Texas, Connecticut, California, Illinois and Colorado. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas led the charge to transport migrants out of state. Stateline’s analysis counts only those migrants who are not being detained.

The country that is the single largest source of recent asylum-seeking migrants is Venezuela, with 363,000 as of February. The next largest is Mexico (251,000), followed by Guatemala (241,000), Honduras (240,000) and Colombia (235,000). But those nationwide numbers are scrambled in individual states: Ecuadorians predominate in five states, Nicaraguans in four, and Brazilians and Cubans in three each.

The influx of migrants that began escalating when President Joe Biden loosened immigration rules in January 2021 generated a political backlash that intensified after DeSantis and Abbott began busing and flying border migrants to Democratic-led cities, putting a significant strain on their finances. New York City, for example, spent a total of $8.13 billion on shelter and services for the more than 223,000 asylum-seekers and other migrants who arrived between the spring of 2022 and the fall of 2024.

Meanwhile, some established immigrant communities resented what they saw as lenient treatment of the newcomers.

Local news accounts reported anger over competition for jobs in Latino communities in New York City. But Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, said interviews there showed more resentment over the aid that was offered to the new arrivals.

“For the first time in U.S. history, there were many big programs to temporarily house and feed the newcomers,” Castañeda said. “People (in New York City) talked about the food cards they got, or the free meals, or the hotel rooms, and that took a lot of the media attention locally.”

But many of the new immigrants also have provided much-needed labor, from the streets of New York City and its suburbs to the dairy farms of Idaho.

“All we can do is just work and hope for the best,” said a woman from Ecuador, who asked to be identified only as Rosa. Rosa works in a family food service business in suburban Spring Valley, New York, one of the top five areas in the country for the sheer number of the migrants, with most coming from Ecuador, according to court records.

“It’s hard here but in Ecuador it’s worse — there are gangs blackmailing you,” said another woman who works in a Queens store labeling packets of Ecuadorian herbs. She declined to identify herself.

In suburbs as well as cities, the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has immigrants worried. About 22% of the newcomers around the country, in and out of detention, have orders of removal from immigration courts, meaning they could be arrested and summarily deported at any time.

“There were a lot of arrests right around here. People who did everything right got detained,” Rosa said in Spanish, glancing around nervously as she worked making traditional Ecuadorian dishes like corviches, fish fritters, and a fish and onion soup called encebollado.

Many of the new arrivals have stopped socializing and stay home when they’re not working, afraid to be caught up in raids that have swept thousands of them up into detention, according to interviews conducted in New York and the District of Columbia by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies.

Even when much-hated Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was arrested in January and removed to the United States for trial, many Venezuelan asylum-seekers stayed home rather than risk being arrested at public celebrations.

Ecuadorians got less media attention than Venezuelans because they came to a more established community in New York, Castañeda said.

“(Ecuadorians) already had networks, so they were not staying in shelters. They were not in the streets,” he said. “They could work and they were becoming part of the fabric of New York, but now they’re being deported by Trump because ICE knows who they are, where they live and their status is very easy pickings. They’re low-hanging fruit.”

Many Venezuelans would like to go home but face even more chaos after the fall of Maduro, said Héctor Arguinzones, organizer of a Venezuelan immigrant group in New York City.

“Many of us fled Venezuela because our own neighbors were our persecutors,” said Arguinzones. “We’re not trying to, you know, sneak into the United States. A lot of us want to go back. We are full of hope. But we cannot think that this crisis in Venezuela will be solved in three months. We must be patient. What we really need is humanitarian treatment.”

Texas has ended up with the largest number of Venezuelans, an irony noted in a book written by the American University research team. After initially receiving aid in more sympathetic areas such as Colorado, New York City and Washington, D.C., many of the Venezuelans traveled around the country looking for work, but trickled back to Texas where jobs were available and the cost of living was lower.

Living in the U.S. with an immigration court date is a tenuous existence for people fleeing gangs and political oppression in South America and Central America. Fear of returning to a home country can be a valid legal reason to avoid deportation, but it requires legal help and doesn’t prevent detention and pressure to “self-deport.”

“Unfortunately, having an asylum case is not a legal status,” Arguinzones said. “We tell people to keep up with their court cases and keep the paperwork with them, so at least they have something to show. At least it’s something.”

Robin Nice, a Boston attorney, said six of her clients with pending asylum cases were detained in a January sweep called Operation Catch of the Day, and only one had had a brush with the law in the form of a year-old traffic case.

“They were typically on their way to or from work, sometimes just getting into their car after finishing a shift,” Nice said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in an unattributed statement to Stateline, said: “A pending asylum case does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States. If a person enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or deportation.”

Some of the asylum-seekers pursuing legal status through the courts have already been detained, but they make up a small fraction of the 2.8 million total cases.

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

Millions of women could face new challenges to voting under President Donald Trump’s SAVE America Act, which would require voters to prove their citizenship before casting a ballot.

The federal legislation would mandate that most Americans show a birth certificate or passport to register to vote. But people with names that don’t match their birth certificate in some instances could have to produce additional documents like a marriage certificate or divorce decree linking their past and current identities.

The proposal holds potentially outsized consequences for millions of married and divorced women, transgender individuals and others who have changed their names. 

As many as 69 million American women have birth certificates that don’t match their current name, according to an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress. 

“The fact that the majority of women upon marriage do change their name already means that this is going to be completely unequal in how the law is applied,” said Letitia Harmon, senior director of policy and research at Florida Rising, a racial and economic justice nonprofit.

Harmon, 43, has personal experience with the issue because of state proof-of-citizenship laws, which have become more common in recent years. 

The Florida resident used to live in Kansas, which required individuals to show documents like a birth certificate or passport to register to vote until federal courts struck down the law as unconstitutional. Ahead of the 2014 election, Harmon was unable to locate her birth certificate before the registration deadline and couldn’t vote.

More recently, Florida, Mississippi, South Dakota and Utah have all enacted proof-of-citizenship measures this year, in addition to Wyoming in 2025. Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Florida SAVE Act last week.

A dozen years later, Harmon worries she could again face additional hurdles to voting — this time because of multiple name changes. Harmon, who changed her name when she married but later divorced and changed it back, voiced concern that if election officials ever check her registration, it will be flagged.

“It’s heartbreaking and it’s infuriating. It feels like we’re going backwards,” Harmon said.

Debate in D.C.

In Washington, the U.S. Senate has been debating the SAVE America Act, Trump’s signature elections initiative, after a version of the legislation passed the House. The bill doesn’t appear to have enough support to survive a filibuster, but Trump and his allies have pressured senators to end the filibuster to pass it before the midterm elections.

Supporters of the bill describe it as an election integrity measure and say it’s necessary to prevent noncitizen voting, though studies have shown that’s extremely rare. The measure reflects a long-running effort by Trump to assert more federal control over elections that includes a campaign by the Department of Justice to obtain sensitive state voter data and an executive order signed last week restricting mail-in voting.

Opponents condemn the legislation as unneeded and poorly drafted. If enacted, the bill would take immediate effect, throwing the election process into chaos in a midterm election year as millions of people registering to vote attempt to prove their citizenship. The new requirements would risk disenfranchising American voters struggling to obtain the documents they need in time.

Disproportionate effect on married women

Critics have especially focused on the disproportionate effect the legislation could have on women. Eighty-four percent of women in opposite-sex marriages take either their husband’s last name or hyphenate their name, according to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey. By contrast, less than 6% of men took their wife’s last name or hyphenated their name.

“Given that 85% of American women change their name when they get married, the impact on women is going to be huge and it’s going to be very problematic,” Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, said in a February interview.

The House-passed version of the bill says that when individuals applying to register have names that don’t match the name on their proof-of-citizenship documents, they could provide “additional documentation as necessary to establish that the name on the documentation is a previous name of the applicant” or sign an affidavit affirming that the name on the documents is their previous name.

According to the bill, each state would establish a process to carry out this provision, in line with guidance from the federal Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan independent commission that aids election officials.

Affidavit provision unclear

Some election and legal experts have said the affidavit provision is unclear. It comes immediately before another provision that allows individuals without proof-of-citizenship documentation to register if they sign an attestation that they are a citizen and an election official signs an affidavit saying the person has sufficiently established citizenship. The Election Assistance Commission would create a uniform affidavit for use in that situation.

“Who knows what sort of process they’ll say,” said Alison Gill, director of nominations and democracy at the National Women’s Law Center, a progressive legal advocacy group. “So there is language there, but it’s still very vague and conflictual.”

Because states would be responsible for setting procedures to vet those with different names on their documents, Gill said some states would probably try to make the process easier than others. But election officials would likely err on the side of strict enforcement because they could be prosecuted for registering individuals who don’t provide citizenship documents.

“Ultimately, this puts the burden on election officials, who face criminal and civil liability under the bill, potentially to decide whether to risk registering a person with mismatching documents,” Gill said.

‘Frankly insulting’

White House officials and some congressional Republicans have denied that individuals who change their name would face greater difficulty registering to vote. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in March that there was “zero validity” to claims that the legislation would stop women from voting or make it harder for them to vote.

Married women who have changed their name and are already registered to vote would be unaffected by the legislation, Leavitt said. She added that for the “small fraction” of individuals who go on to change their name or their address, they would have to go through their state’s process to update their documentation.

“I think it’s frankly insulting that the Democrats are saying that there are certain groups of people in this country who aren’t smart enough to update their documentation to allow them to vote,” Leavitt said.

But Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has raised concerns about how the SAVE America Act would affect married women. Murkowski, who opposes the bill, said in a floor speech that an estimated 155,000 female citizens in Alaska age 15 and older have names that don’t match their birth certificates.

“Again, is it impossible? No,” Murkowski said. “Is it going to be really challenging? Absolutely, yes.”

Lawsuits ensured

The SAVE America Act would almost certainly face legal challenges if it became law and the Supreme Court would come under immense pressure to weigh in because of the sweeping, nationwide changes in the legislation.

Some federal courts have ruled against proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirements. In 2020, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Kansas’ law, finding that it violated federal voting laws as well as the Constitution’s equal protection clause. The Supreme Court at the time declined to take the Kansas case.

The provisions on name changes alone could face their own legal challenges. 

Tracy Thomas, a constitutional law professor at the University of Akron School of Law in Ohio, said opponents could argue the bill’s impact on people who change their name amounts to voting discrimination in violation of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

Courts have affirmed some election restrictions, like requirements to show a photo ID at the polls, as acceptable rules that don’t overly burden voters. However, Thomas suggested the SAVE America Act may go too far if it delays people from registering, requires multiple steps and forces them to pay for needed documents.

“That starts to sound like more than minimal inconvenience,” Thomas said.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s threats to destroy power plants and bridges in Iran before saying he was prepared for a “whole civilization” to die have renewed questions about what constitutes an illegal order and what, if any, repercussions officials could face for committing war crimes.  

The issue originally surged to the forefront last year when the Trump administration repeatedly struck boats in the Caribbean officials alleged were carrying illegal drugs. Democratic lawmakers with backgrounds in the military and intelligence community then published a video reminding troops they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

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

The issue of legal versus illegal military orders surfaced again this week when Trump escalated his threats against Iran, leading to bipartisan condemnation from members of Congress before he gave that country’s leaders two more weeks to negotiate.

But what exactly violates international law or rises to the level of a war crime is often murky, as is who would be willing to prosecute U.S. troops, according to experts interviewed by States Newsroom. 

Rachel E. VanLandingham, professor of law at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and a former judge advocate in the U.S. Air Force, said that “at the end of the day, the law of war does allow for a great deal of violence and a great deal of civilian suffering.” 

But several of the threats Trump has made, including to destroy power plants and bridges in Iran, would likely violate the law if the military were to carry them out, she said. 

“Under no stretch of interpretation would that be lawful, right? Because that just fails to distinguish whatsoever the civilian objects versus lawful military objectives, even if we stretch the definition of what’s a lawful military objective,” VanLandingham said. 

The boat strikes in the Caribbean, including the decision to order a second strike on two survivors, could also have been illegal, she said. 

VanLandingham doesn’t expect the Trump administration will hold anyone accountable for actions the military has already taken or may take. But she noted there is no statute of limitations on the charges that would likely apply under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military members or the War Crimes Act for anyone not subject to the military justice system.

“The next administration could come in and investigate our service members for alleged war crimes. And they should, to demonstrate renewed fidelity to U.S. law, to the law of war,” she said. 

Congress doesn’t have the authority to prosecute anyone for violating the law, but could hold oversight hearings with Defense Department officials, a scenario that would become more likely if one or both chambers return to Democratic control following the November midterm elections. 

“They can have public, open hearings and drag in every single military member that was involved in the chain of command of orders for striking Iran, if they wanted to,” VanLandingham. “That’s not a criminal prosecution, but it’s transparency.”

Lawmakers could also provide more funding and require the Pentagon to reinstitute the Civilian Harm Mitigation Program, which she said “the Trump administration has gutted.”

Geneva Conventions

Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at WashU Law School in St. Louis, Missouri, said that in a situation where the president directs the military to violate the laws of war, it’s highly unlikely military commanders or the Department of Justice would then turn around and prosecute those actions. 

Even if a prosecutor were to try, Trump would likely be insulated from any domestic prosecution for “official acts.” And as president he could issue preemptive pardons for any military members he believes could face future prosecution, either in the military or civilian justice system.

Trump has a history of absolving military members accused of violating military law, including in 2019, when he pardoned two officers in the Army for actions in Afghanistan and restored the rank of a Navy SEAL who had been demoted for his conduct in Iraq. Trump later pardoned four contractors for killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in 2007.

But those protections only apply within the United States. 

The Geneva Conventions’ provision on universal jurisdiction would apply internationally and any country could choose to prosecute. 

“Now you still have to catch them, you have to get the evidence, but every state in the world is a party to the Geneva Conventions,” Sadat said. “So committing violations of the Geneva Conventions by attacking civilian objects, by attacking marketplaces, or hospitals, or schools, or electrical infrastructure, those kind of crimes can be prosecuted by every country in the world. So people should think about it before they do it.”

France, Germany and Sweden have all used the principle of universal jurisdiction to prosecute Syrians for crimes they committed during the war in their home country, she said. 

“The one debate is, do you have to have the person on your territory before you can go forward? Or can you do an investigation even if the person is not on your territory?” Sadat said. “And many have argued that you can do the investigation even if the individual is not on your territory. Different countries have different rules on whether they accept trials in absentia.”

Sadat said that gets a bit more complicated when the Status of Forces Agreements that give the U.S. jurisdiction over alleged wrongdoing by U.S. troops in dozens of countries come into play. 

Sadat, who was a special adviser on Crimes Against Humanity to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor from 2012 through 2021, said if the U.S. military were to carry out some or all of the threats Trump posted to social media, that could have led countries to reconsider those agreements. 

“It could create a huge security problem for the United States eventually. And that’s why I hope calmer heads are prevailing. Saying, ‘You know, there’s an entire complex web of treaties and agreements,'” she said. 

Trump would also likely pressure countries not to try U.S. military members for violating international law, but he may not always be successful, she said.  

“Eventually there’s going to be a country in which that’s not going to work,” Sadat said. “And so that’s why you really do have to think of this a little bit differently, because there are external forces and external actors that could decide we’re going to enforce the law, even if the United States is not going to enforce the law.”

Investigating US forces

Susana Sacouto, director of the War Crimes Research Office at American University’s Washington College of Law, said the Geneva Conventions require the U.S. to “investigate and … deal with alleged violations of the law of war by its own forces.”

How well that works in practice has “varied over time,” she said. 

“The problem is, we have an architecture, but those cases, particularly the criminal cases, are really exceptional, and they’re really exceptional, especially regarding senior officials,” Sacouto said. “So there’s been a lot of criticism about whether that architecture that exists is actually functioning to routinely investigate our own military actions for potential war crimes or (international humanitarian law) violations.” 

There is the possibility a future presidential administration may have defense officials or the Department of Justice look into allegations that emerge during the Trump administration. But Sacouto said, “past history with respect to accountability for U.S. officials, especially senior officials, is not very encouraging.”

Congressional investigations into the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is one example Sacouto pointed to of a long-term investigation that did not lead to any high-level prosecutions. 

“Even then, no senior officials were really ultimately held accountable for their role in that program,” she said. “There were lower-level Abu Ghraib prosecutions, but no senior-level folks were found accountable.”

WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Capitol Hill Thursday slammed President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on Iran as “beyond the pale” and urged House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to reconvene Congress and rein in the president’s war powers.

The eight Democrats, who represent districts in California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington state, made a largely symbolic attempt to bring a War Powers Resolution to the House floor during the morning’s pro forma session — a short, routine meeting that occurs when Congress is out of session. The House is not scheduled to return until April 14.

“The pro forma speaker ignored us, which was a tragedy, but we will keep fighting,” Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said.

U.S. House Democrats discuss the Iran war on April 9, 2026. (Video by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

Efforts to limit Trump’s military actions in Iran failed last month in both the House and Senate.

Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., who led a press conference afterward on the steps outside the House of Representatives, said Trump’s war with Iran is on “the wrong track.”

“He’s been terrible at the wheel. The threats of total annihilation were beyond the pale. It’s time for Congress to step in and take control of the wheel,” Ivey said.

Threats and then a ceasefire

Trump threatened Tuesday to wipe out Iran’s “whole civilization” if the regime did not open the Strait of Hormuz, a major maritime passageway for one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas. 

The United States and Iran entered a tenuous two-week ceasefire agreement roughly 90 minutes before Trump hit his self-imposed deadline to begin bombing civilian infrastructure, likely a war crime.

One day into the ceasefire Wednesday, the pause in fighting was punctuated by Iranian drones and missiles striking Gulf nations. Israeli forces reported launching 100 strikes in Lebanon in 10 minutes. The wave of intense bombardment killed roughly 300 and injured just over 1,100, according to health officials cited by the United Nations.

Trump’s post urging violence on his social media platform, Truth Social, followed his Easter Sunday profanity-laced message threatening to bomb Iran’s power plants and bridges unless they lifted their blockade on the strait.

The regime has for weeks only allowed a trickle of tankers and cargo ships from certain friendly countries to pass, routing the traffic through Iranian waters and reportedly charging steep tolls. Islamic Republic officials told the Financial Times Wednesday that they planned to charge tankers $1 per barrel of oil, to be paid in cryptocurrency, going forward. 

Prior to the war, roughly 140 ships a day flowed freely through the strait. The chokepoint has rocked the global oil market.

Ivey called the situation “out of control.”

“In fact, Iran’s in a better place with respect to the strait than they were before this war started,” he said.

Pentagon reports 380 injured troops

The war has claimed thousands of lives across the Middle East, and scores of civilians have been injured. Thirteen U.S. service members were killed in the fighting, and as of Thursday the Pentagon reported 380 injured.

“Look at us now in a war of his choosing, egged on by Mr. (Benjamin) Netanyahu for his purposes, a war that has proved deadly to 13 members of the American military,” said Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa., referring to the Israeli prime minister.

“The speaker must live up to his constitutional responsibilities. Call us back in, consider the War Powers Resolution, let the American people and their representatives in Congress weigh in. The words and actions of this president have proved that he is unhinged and unwell,” Scanlon said.

Johnson’s office did not immediately respond for comment.

In late March, a handful of Black faith leaders gathered on the steps of the Alabama State House to protest a bill that could allow the state to seize control of the police force in the capital of Montgomery.

Supporters of the Republican-sponsored proposal cast it as a response to Montgomery’s police officer shortage and public concern over unchecked crime.

Opponents called it a power grab aimed at a Democratic-led, majority-Black city, pushed by Montgomery’s white Republican state senator over the objections of the city’s mayor, police chief and its other state senator, a Black Democrat who represents a larger swath of the city.

“We’ve seen this before. This is nothing new,” Richard Williams, lead pastor of Metropolitan United Methodist Church in Montgomery, told reporters and others gathered for the news conference. The bill “empowers the state to remove elected Black officials from their operational control of the Montgomery Police Department.”

The following day, the Alabama Senate’s Republican supermajority shut down any debate on the bill and approved it. Kirk Hatcher, Montgomery’s Black state senator, and other Democrats were not allowed to speak on the Senate floor until after it passed. The measure now awaits a vote in the House.

Similar efforts have played out in recent years in other states — including Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee — as Republican lawmakers push for state takeovers of police departments and other municipal agencies in Democratic cities that often have significant Black populations.

Conservative lawmakers frame their proposals as necessary for improving public safety or financial accountability. Critics say the takeover efforts undermine democracy by overriding local control, exceeding the traditional bounds of state power while perpetuating racist stereotypes.

Many of the nation’s big cities with the highest murder rates are located in Republican-led states but are governed by Democrats — a dynamic that fuels tension between state and local leadership.

“It’s frustrating for the citizens of Montgomery whenever they’re the victims (of crime) and their neighbors are victims,” Alabama Republican state Sen. Will Barfoot, who represents a slice of Montgomery, told fellow legislators on the Senate floor in March. “You know that at the very least that it’s partially because Montgomery doesn’t have the law enforcement officers that they need.”

Barfoot did not respond to Stateline’s request for comment.

The Montgomery Police Department hasn’t publicly released its staffing figures. Barfoot said on the floor that while he hadn’t been able to get those numbers, he estimated the department has around 220-230 officers, which he said falls short of the roughly 400 it would need to be staffed effectively.

In Missouri, Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe put the St. Louis police department under the control of a state-appointed board last year. Kansas City, Missouri, is the only other major city police department under state control. That arrangement dates from 1939, when the state assumed authority to combat corruption.

In 2023, Mississippi’s white Republican supermajority gave the state-run Capitol Police expanded jurisdiction over the state capital of Jackson, which has been called the “Blackest City in America,” and created separate appointed courts for the affluent, whiter parts of the city.

In Tennessee, state lawmakers are trying to create a state-controlled tourism board to oversee millions in surplus cash generated by Nashville. It’s the latest in a line of moves by the Republican-controlled state legislature to exert more influence in Democratic-led Nashville, including over its metro council, airport authority, electrical utility, and even its sports authority.

“Society is collectively tolerating the loss of democracy in these limited pockets,” said Louise Seamster, a sociologist at the University of Iowa whose research has focused on politics and urban development. “They don’t understand it’s going to come for them eventually.”

Echoes of division

The state-local power struggle over the St. Louis police department dates to the eve of the Civil War. White secessionist leaders in Missouri took control of the St. Louis police to keep its officers from fighting against the Confederacy. Kansas City’s arrangement dates back to post-Civil War Reconstruction, when state lawmakers were trying to limit Black political influence and civil rights gains. Kansas City briefly regained control in 1932 before the state reasserted itself seven years later.

At the time of Reconstruction, the growth of Black governance was seen as a major threat to white political power at the local and state levels, Seamster said.

“All kinds of political arrangements, up to legalized and unsanctioned violence, were carried out to reset things to what white people in power thought was the norm, which was them in charge,” she said.

Fast-forward to the Obama era: In a 2012 ballot initiative, Missouri voters overwhelmingly approved returning control of the St. Louis police department to the city.

But Republican state lawmakers tried in 2023 to repeal the measure, claiming St. Louis’ leaders at that time couldn’t decrease crime on their own. The effort failed after a nine-hour Democratic filibuster.

GOP lawmakers got it passed in 2025 with the backing of Kehoe, who’d made the effort a priority of his first year in office. He said state control would give law enforcement the tools it needed to combat high crime rates.

Missouri Democrats, noting that crime rates were decreasing, called the measure racist; Black Democrats held the city’s major offices at the time.

St. Louis has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation, though police officials said their data shows the murder rate dropped to its lowest level in two decades during the first three months of 2025.

In Michigan, researchers found, financial stress alone didn’t explain municipal takeovers. Residents’ race and economic status, as well as a city’s reliance on state funding, were better predictors of state intervention, according to a 2021 study from University of Michigan researchers.

“Black communities show signs of being successful or having access to resources that might increase their autonomy or ability to develop,” said Seamster, who has studied city-state conflicts over resources. “Then it is often a trend where, formally or informally, white communities step in to take it back.”

In 2019, the Republican-led Georgia state legislature tried to take over operation of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, citing concerns over safety and corruption. Atlanta City Hall had been embroiled in a sprawling corruption scandal that eventually resulted in federal charges against multiple city staffers.

Then-Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms denounced the move as an “act of war” against the Democratic city, long a national hub of Black culture and business.

Many of the cities targeted for state intervention struggle with the kind of persistent poverty and structural disadvantages that contribute to higher crime rates.

Cities’ finances and power get siphoned away in myriad ways, Seamster said, from reduced state financial support or required power-sharing with a larger county, to more subtle changes, such as state decisions on how federal block grant funding is distributed that give cities less to work with.

Taking back power

Baltimore regained control of its police department last year after voters twice approved a ballot measure in the wake of a decade-long fight for local control. The police department had been under some form of state control since the Civil War.

Lifelong resident Ray Kelly became interested in the issue when a student in his community was arrested. He soon learned that to lobby for changes in the department, he’d have to leave Baltimore for the state capitol in Annapolis, nearly an hour’s drive south.

“Accountability starts at home, so the first place we naturally think we should go if we have an issue in our community is to our local representative,” he said, “and for 160 years the local representative had no authority, so it was like banging your head against the wall.”

Kelly is now executive director of the Citizens Policing Project, a nonprofit that was part of a coalition of Maryland organizations that worked for years to get the ballot initiative passed.

In the year since Baltimore gained control of its police, the Baltimore City Council has been holding regular public hearings on public safety.

They’re “packed,” Kelly said, adding that one hearing had such a huge turnout that both the hearing room and the overflow room were full, with even more residents standing outside to listen.

Kelly counts that as one visible and positive result of getting local control restored.

“The ultimate goal is to have local people be able to shape how the operations of the police department happen on a day-to-day basis, and not have to travel all the way to Annapolis to do it,” he said.

“People will be more involved as they learn we don’t have to write the state senator anymore, and we can just go to City Hall.”

Missteps and breathing room

Barfoot, the Alabama Republican state senator who represents a portion of Montgomery, told lawmakers he’s gotten more calls and messages about his bill proposing a takeover of the Montgomery police department than any other piece of legislation in his eight years in office.

Most of them have been supportive, he said.

Montgomery citizens, he said on the Senate floor, are “tired of turning on the news and hearing about the violence that we’ve had here in Montgomery. We’re tired of having the thefts that are occurring. We’re tired of having the robberies, the home invasions. And believe me, that is across Montgomery.”

He pointed to other large cities in Alabama that he said had a much higher number of officers per 1,000 residents than Montgomery, and criticized the city for going through five different police chiefs in the past seven years.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed and Hatcher say Barfoot never consulted them before introducing the bill. Barfoot acknowledged those “missteps” on the Senate floor, but said he’d since held a public hearing and said those leaders didn’t reach out to him, either. The current police chief spoke against the bill before lawmakers.

Montgomery leaders say the bill unfairly singles out their city. As written, it applies only to Montgomery and Huntsville, a Republican-led city. It would give law enforcement in those cities five years to have a certain number of police officers per resident before the state steps in.

After Huntsville leadership approached lawmakers with concerns about the bill, sponsors lowered the staffing requirements to 1.9 officers per 1,000 residents to give Huntsville some “breathing room,” Barfoot told local media. Huntsville now meets the requirements.

But Montgomery is about 150 officers short of the bill’s mandate, Barfoot estimated. If it doesn’t hire the required number of officers within five years, the state can take over and charge the city for filling those vacancies.

Williams, the Montgomery pastor, called that restitution clause a “financial weapon.”

After the Senate passed the bill, Hatcher chastised his Republican colleagues for withholding resources from people who need it and voting against public safety measures that law enforcement wants. An Alabama law enacted in 2022 allows gun owners to carry a handgun without a permit, background check or safety training.

“What I’ve come to believe is that when everybody around you has everything they need, that’s the safest we will be,” Hatcher said. “When people have health care, when people have food, SNAP benefits, that’s the safest we’ll be.”

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

Under a bill signed Wednesday by Gov. Tony Evers, Wisconsin will seek health care coverage from the federal government for certain services for incarcerated people. 

A statement from Evers’ office said that AB 604 — now Wisconsin Act 233 — aims to improve health outcomes and reduce disruptions in care and rates of people committing new crimes. 

As people with substance use disorders return to the community from jail or prison, they are especially vulnerable to dying from an overdose. Supporters of the new law hope it will aid them.

A federal “inmate exclusion policy” limits incarcerated people’s ability to use Medicaid, but under the new law the state will apply for a waiver, taking advantage of an exception outlined by the federal government. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services will submit a request for a waiver to conduct a demonstration project to provide incarcerated people with health care coverage for certain services for up to 90 days before release. 

The department will request coverage for case management services, medication-assisted treatment for all types of substance use disorders and a 30-day supply of prescription medications. If the waiver is approved, incarcerated people would have to be otherwise eligible for coverage under the Medical Assistance program in order to qualify. 

As of Nov. 21, 19 states have approved waivers and nine states including Washington D.C. have pending waivers. 

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services must submit the waiver request by Jan. 1, 2027. The department told the Examiner in November that it needed the authority that the bill would provide before it starts work on putting together the details of the waiver. 

‘The care they need to live’

Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison), one of the lawmakers who introduced AB 604, said in a statement Wednesday that the bill gives incarcerated people “a greater chance of maintaining sobriety, preventing overdose, and remaining healthy after they rejoin the community.” 

The criminal justice advocacy organization WISDOM was among groups that expressed support for the bill. Tom Denk, the co-president of one of WISDOM’s affiliates, said in an emailed statement that this law is very personal to him and called it “a step forward.”

Denk, who was released from prison to extended supervision in 2022, said he’s had friends in and out of facilities and had too many die because of a lack of services. 

He said that “my own struggles, the trauma, and the deaths of some of my best friends are what motivated me to get involved in advocating for a better system.”

“Medications, and access to medical care, will literally save lives,” Denk said. “Too many people don’t have either, when they’ve left facilities.” 

Denk also emailed the Examiner a statement signed by Bev Kelley-Miller, who wrote that she lost her 22-year-old daughter, Megan Kelley, to a preventable heroin overdose. Kelley-Miller wrote that her daughter had an ankle bracelet “but that didn’t stop her from using.” 

Kelley-Miller, who expressed support for AB 604, wrote that substance use disorder is a medical condition and that using substances is not a choice once you are addicted. 

“I wish Megan was still here,” Kelley-Miller wrote. “Since she’s not, I advocate for others to receive the care they need to live.”

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Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for governor talk about many of the same goals when it comes to Wisconsin’s health care system: expanding access, reducing costs and ensuring quality.

Some of their proposals to those ends are almost identical. But key details vary. 

“If there’s one thing that’s a certainty, the context will change between now and when one of us takes office and has a Legislature that hopefully is going to work with us,” said Joel Brennan, former secretary of the Department of Administration, at a forum Wednesday conducted by Wisconsin Health News. “That context will change in the next nine to 10 months and we better be ready to change with it too.”

Brennan said his campaign’s health care policy will rest on four principles: broadening access to health care, particularly in rural areas; reducing costs; fostering a pathway to increase the health care workforce; and ensuring that mental health is “a basic part of health care.”

Other candidates have issued more detailed plans.

Former Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes announced a list of 10 proposals Wednesday.

“I’m really wanting to make sure that we’re addressing a very, very complicated problem in every different way,” Hughes said at the Wednesday forum.

Expanding Medicaid

Almost all of the seven major Democratic hopefuls have endorsed expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act — opening up the health insurance plan for low-income Americans to people with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty guideline.  When the ACA was enacted the federal government paid states that accepted expansion 90% of the additional cost.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers made repeated attempts to enact expansion after he took office in 2019, but couldn’t do it without the support of the Republican majority in the state Legislature because of a law passed the month before Evers was sworn in.

Former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes has made Medicaid expansion the central focus of his health care policy pitch. He has promised to veto the state budget if it doesn’t include Medicaid expansion.

“The fact that so many folks aren’t covered right now is a problem for everybody,” Barnes said at a forum Monday, because health care providers pass the cost of uncompensated care on to other patients or their insurance companies. The Monday forum was conducted by ABC for Health, a nonprofit law firm that assists low-income Wisconsinites trying to navigate health care coverage and medical debt.

Hughes also lists expanding Medicaid — referred to as BadgerCare in Wisconsin — among her 10 proposals. She would connect BadgerCare expansion to the creation of a public option health insurance plan that Wisconsinites could purchase through the ACA marketplace, HealthCare.gov.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley also favors combining expanded Medicaid with a public option for people to buy into the plan. “We already have the BadgerCare infrastructure that is already in place,” Crowley said at the Wednesday forum. “So I think it’s our responsibility to expand the people’s ability to actually pay into a BadgerCare public option.”

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez favors BadgerCare expansion as well as a public option health plan. Rather than combining them, however, she lists them as two of three health care initiatives she would pursue as governor. The third initiative is to institute a stabilization fund program to support struggling rural providers.  

The public option plan, to be sold on the ACA marketplace, “would be able to put downward pressure on costs across Wisconsin and have some price transparency within that,” Rodriguez said at the Monday forum. She pointed to examples in other states, including Colorado, where a public option health plan is also required to reduce its premium costs by 5% each year.

“Secondly, I do think that we should expand Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said, noting Wisconsin is one of just 10 states that have not done so.

Rodriguez also observed that the 2025 “big, beautiful” tax and spending bill enacted by the Republican majority in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, “makes it a little harder” for the state to expand Medicaid.

State Rep. Francesca Hong also included BadgerCare expansion and “a robust public option” health plan in a longer list of priorities during the Monday forum. Along with those, she called for lowering prescription drug costs, acting to “crack down on private insurers,” among other goals.

A Medicaid expansion dissent

An exception on Medicaid expansion is Sen. Kelda Roys. Although she has advocated Medicaid expansion going back to her years in the Assembly a decade ago, she argues now that it’s no longer practical.

An August 28 memo from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services declares that the 2025 tax and spending law includes “several traps making it cost and policy prohibitive for Wisconsin to expand Medicaid.”

The law requires Medicaid participants to prove they’re eligible every six months instead of annually as now — which advocates argue will lead more qualified recipients to be kicked out of the program. In addition, a $1.3 billion boost that Wisconsin would get for expanding Medicaid will end Dec. 31.

Expansion “is not feasible given the changes that the Trump administration has made right now,” Roys said Wednesday.

Instead, she has proposed allowing the general public to buy into the state health insurance plan that covers state employees. Wisconsin employers could buy into the plan to cover their workers, or individual Wisconsin residents could buy into it as an alternative to other private health insurance plans.

“We can lower costs, reduce uncompensated care, expand access to coverage, especially for small businesses,” Roys said.

Brennan has also proposed opening the state plan to the public, because it has broad participation as well as higher reimbursement rates for health providers, he said Wednesday. 

But he added that he thinks details on the public option should wait until the next governor takes office, so that experts in the state as well as from other states that have instituted a public option “can be part of that conversation.”

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There were over 70 school referendum questions on ballots across Wisconsin Tuesday, and according to preliminary results, about 62% passed and 38% failed.

The results determine whether school districts can keep up with costs, will need to make difficult decisions about cuts or even put themselves on a path to consolidation or dissolution. April ballot measures are just the latest round of school funding requests as school districts continue to struggle under the state’s current funding system.

Department of Public Instruction (DPI) Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement that the slate of referendum requests this spring is a “clear signal” that the state is falling short of providing every child in Wisconsin with a quality education. 

“Years of chronic underfunding from the state, combined with rising costs, have pushed too many districts into an unsustainable cycle, forcing communities to repeatedly turn to voters just to meet simple, basic needs like keeping schools staffed and the lights on,” Underly said. “This is unfair to students, educators, and taxpayers alike, and it is placing an increasing strain on communities across our state.”

Underly called on the state to reinvest in students and the state’s public schools to ensure districts can “deliver the high-quality education students deserve, without being forced to rely on repeated referendums to survive.”

School districts in Wisconsin go to referendum in order to exceed state-imposed revenue caps by getting approval from voters. The practice became a part of Wisconsin’s school funding equation in the 1990s when lawmakers put caps on school revenue as part of an effort to control local property taxes. School districts’ revenue limits used to be tied to inflation, but that ended in the 2009-11 state budget, instead leaving increases up to state lawmakers and the governor, who have not provided predictable increases budget to budget. 

As a result, school districts have increasingly gone to referendum to secure funding through local property tax increases.

There were 56 nonrecurring operational requests on the ballot in April, which are revenue limit increases with an end date. In addition, there were six recurring operational requests, which do not have an end date — totaling over $1 billion in requests.

Of the nonrecurring requests, 32 passed and 24 were rejected. Of the recurring requests, five were successful and only Sauk Prairie School District’s request was rejected. 

There were 12 capital funding requests this April. Nine passed, including Howard Suamico’s $147 million funding request, and three failed, including Whitefish Bay School District’s $135 million request. 

The passage rate is a slight increase from the last election year and comes as Wisconsinites have become more concerned about property taxes, according to recent polling. In the spring of 2024, there was a passage rate of 60.2% with 103 requests on ballots. A Wisconsin Policy Forum report notes that passage rates tend to be higher amid the higher voter turnout of presidential and midterm election years. 

Some districts’ results were decided by thin margins. Butternut School District’s $2 million nonrecurring referendum request passed by one vote. Lena School District’s $6 million nonrecurring request failed by 17 votes. The Hustisford School District sought a two-year nonrecurring referendum for $1.875 million each year. It failed by about 200 votes and now the district is looking at possibly dissolving. 

A third attempt for an operational referendum by Dodgeville School District, one of three districts the Examiner profiled before the election, was rejected in a 1,680 to 1,619 vote. 

District Administrator Ryan Bohnsack said in a Facebook post that the failed referendum is not the “end of the conversation.” He told the Examiner ahead of Election Day that the district was already looking at going to referendum in November if the April request was rejected, and the request then will likely be higher. 

“It is a continuation of our next steps together,” Bohnsack wrote. “The financial challenges we face remain, and we will need to continue working through them thoughtfully and responsibly. Our focus will be on developing a plan that prioritizes our students and our staff.” 

Bohnsack also encouraged community members to advocate at a statewide level as Dodgeville’s challenges aren’t unique. 

“I encourage you to stay in contact with our state legislators and continue to ask for clear communication, transparency and long-term solutions to how schools are funded in Wisconsin,” Bohnsack wrote.

In February, a group of Wisconsin teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders represented by progressive firm Law Forward and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, sued the state Legislature over the school funding formula in Eau Claire County Circuit. The lawsuit argues that the current system is unconstitutional because it does not meet the state’s constitutional obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students.

Voters rejected the $5.8 million four-year nonrecurring request by Necedah Area School District, one of the parties to the lawsuit, that was aimed at replacing the district’s last nonrecurring referendum which was first approved in April 2022 and was expiring. The request would have allowed the district to access $1.2 million in the first year, $1.4 million in the second year and $1.6 million in the third and fourth year.

Tanya Kotlowski, who has served as superintendent of the district for nine years, told the Examiner that the district has been “blessed” to pass two referendums in the past, but the recent result is “disheartening.” 

“To have this one fail after that kind of devotion we’ve tried to create, it’s hard, it’s heartbreaking, but I also am very aware of the burden that we’re placing on our taxpayers because of how schools are funded,” Kotlowski said. 

Kotlowski said the school board has not had a conversation about whether they will try again, but that cuts are likely.

“We do not have enough fund balance or enough savings to offset the costs that we’re going to have the next two years, so if, you know, if our board doesn’t have that, and we can’t run a deficit budget because we don’t have enough money in our savings account to run a deficit budget, it forces them to have to make decisions, so they will be in that position, for sure,” Kotlowski said. “Certainly we will have that conversation in April and beyond when we’re talking reductions and what the next game plan will be.”

Kotlowski said her district’s previous referendum was helping cover the full costs of special education, which are federally mandated services. The state currently picks up a little over a third of special education costs for public schools, despite promises during the state budget cycle to cover 42% this school year.

Even with the referendum, Kotlowski said her district will need to pull some money from savings to balance the budget. Now that the referendum has failed, the district will be looking at cuts, including to staff and programming. 

“We’re going to come up with as much as we can,” Kotlowski said. “If we came up with $1.4 million in one year of reductions, it would be pretty devastating, so we will come up with what we can. We’ve had conversations already today… I can say with certainty, everybody’s going to be impacted in our community.”

Kotlowski said the referendum result and the school district’s circumstances are one example of why the state’s funding formula is unsustainable and why the lawsuit is needed. 

“We’re really trying to figure out a path to financial stability, where we can anticipate and plan and predict adequate funding for the needs that we have of children within our school district,” Kotlowski said.

Wisconsin has fallen to 26th in the nation in per pupil K-12 education spending and is spending 10% below the national average, according to 2023 census data. In 2002, the state was ranked 11th and spent 11% above the national average.

“For our Necedah School District, when you look at our revenue limit, which is the authorized revenue we can bring in annually based on state law, when you look at the percentage our local taxpayers pick up and what percentage the state picks up, we have a significant gap. Our taxpayers are picking up almost 80% and the state’s picking up 20[%],” Kotlowski said. “Is it a state responsibility or local taxpayer responsibility?”

Kotlowski said that since the announcement of the lawsuit, a group of about 40 residents in the county have formed a taxpayer advocacy group. She said she thinks that the residents, who will show up to vote in November, will have a louder voice when it comes to advocating for a change in the way the state funds schools. In November, Wisconsin voters will decide who should fill the governor’s office as well as who should control the state Assembly and Senate.

“I had a taxpayer who said to me, ‘My first question for anybody who’s running for office is, How are you going to change the formula for how you fund public schools?’ That’s their first question, and depending on your answer, will decide if I vote for you,’” Kotlowski said. “We are at a breaking point, and if our community doesn’t represent that … I don’t think there’s any story that can express the lack of tolerance we have right now to fund schools the way that we have done it now for decades.”

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The hotel ballroom in downtown Madison was packed with cheering supporters as Chris Taylor gave her victory speech Tuesday night after her huge, 20-point win over her conservative opponent Maria Lazar, cementing a 5-2 liberal majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The four other liberal women on the Court high-fived Taylor as she took the stage. The deliriously joyful crowd repeatedly interrupted Taylor’s remarks with shouting and applause, including to chant the name of her dog when she mentioned it during a lengthy list of thank-yous: “Ollie! Ollie!” 

Democrats are so hungry for success they are ready to throw their arms around any champion, including canines — yellow, blue, whatever. 

Eager to catch that wave of enthusiasm, many of the seven gubernatorial hopefuls in the Democratic primary field hovered around the ballroom. After the results were tabulated, party operatives began circulating statistics showing Taylor’s big margins of victory in Republican-leaning counties, using those results to forecast a crushing blue wave in November. Democratic Party Chair Devin Remiker called Taylor’s win “an indictment of Trump and Tom Tiffany,” the GOP candidate for governor.

Without question, Taylor’s 60-40 percentage point drubbing of Lazar is good news for Democrats, who poured money and organizing energy into the nominally nonpartisan race. And it’s a serious loss for Republicans, who backed Lazar, an anti-abortion election skeptic. But Taylor’s lopsided victory does not mean that Wisconsin has turned, overnight, from a 50-50 purple state that narrowly elected both Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump into a liberal stronghold where Democrats can expect to run the table in November. 

The reality is that Republicans gave up. After repeated, double-digit losses in the last three Supreme Court elections in a row, including the 2025 record-breaking $100 million race — when Elon Musk proved that all the money in the world and even outright bribery couldn’t convince Wisconsin voters to embrace the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel — they threw in the towel. This year, the state Republican party gave $64,000 to Lazar, compared to the $775,000 the Democratic party gave to Taylor. Republican donors also held onto their wallets. Final fundraising reports ahead of the election showed Taylor had raised more than $2 million while Lazar reported about $472,000. 

The Wisconsin GOP has concluded that spring judicial elections are a lousy bet, especially in the Trump era. Democratic voters are energized for these races, while Republican voters, especially the MAGA base, turn out in low numbers. The voters who care about April judicial races are disproportionately college educated liberals, as political analyst Craig Gilbert explains. 

All of these are reasons to take Democratic optimism pegged to Tuesday’s results with a grain of salt. After all, liberal Justices Jill Karofsky and Janet Protasiewicz posted big wins in the Wisconsin Supreme Court elections of 2020 and 2023, followed by Trump’s 2024 Wisconsin victory. 

Still, Taylor’s 20-point triumph matters. For one thing, the failure of the Republicans to put up much of a fight for Lazar comes at the same time that the GOP leaders of both chambers of the Legislature have announced they are calling it quits, along with several key members of those bodies who would face tough reelection battles now that the state’s voting maps are no longer rigged in their favor. The whole Wisconsin Republican Party seems to be in retreat. 

The only thing that got legislative Republicans off the couch recently was the UW Regents’ decision to fire their ally, University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman. They are so outraged they’re planning to hold long-delayed confirmation hearings this week just to fire the regents. Nothing motivates Wisconsin Republicans like spite, and the defense of their own diminishing power. 

After steadfastly refusing to confirm most of Gov. Tony Evers’ appointees during his entire two terms in office, they are coming back into special session, not to strike a deal to fund schools or lower property taxes or address any of the other issues that matter to voters they didn’t get around to by the end of the session, but to take revenge on the regents and showcase their own pettiness. It’s their last power grab before they lose their gerrymandered power altogether. The regents were apparently willing to take the risk to get rid of Rothman, who is no longer needed to make nice with a soon-to-depart Republican majority.

Taylor’s huge win on Tuesday bolsters the growing sense among Wisconsinites that the Republicans are about to lose more than one judicial race. By not fighting harder, the Republicans showed their own lack of confidence. And who can blame them? As Taylor’s victory party kicked off, the news was all about whether Trump would make good on his pledge to annihilate an entire civilization in Iran — a threat so unhinged even Sen. Ron Johnson felt compelled to renounce it. 

Trump’s approval numbers are in the toilet. He is, as investigative reporter Ken Kippenstein points out on Substack, the first president in U.S. history to get no public approval bump at all for going to war. Members of Congress and even some former Trump supporters are openly discussing the need to invoke the 25th Amendment to put the Republican Party’s national leader in a straitjacket.

Add to that the cost of gas, groceries, and the deliberate destruction of affordable health care and you have a recipe for a massive midterm rebellion. The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is part of that picture, even if it’s a lopsided measure of Democratic energy and Republican depression.

Plus, the new, now locked-in majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court will be a bulwark against GOP efforts to limit voting rights and interfere with fair elections.

All in all, it’s pretty terrible news for Republicans. That barking dog that’s chasing them might have a nasty bite.

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At least 2.5 million low-income people quickly lost help affording groceries under a Republican-passed law that added new requirements for the nation’s largest nutrition program and shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in costs from the federal government to states, according to a study the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published Wednesday.

Some 6% of the 41 million Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, when President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 4, 2025, were no longer receiving benefits by the end of the year. 

The left-leaning think tank’s report was based on U.S. Department of Agriculture and state agency data from July to December 2025. 

Arizona was the largest outlier in the data, with a whopping 47% of people in the program — about 424,000 Arizonans — losing benefits in 2025, according to the think tank, which cited more recent state agency data in addition to last year’s USDA numbers.

Full-year 2025 data from the USDA, which operates the federal side of SNAP, shows an even bigger drop of 3.4 million people, or roughly 8% of the program’s total, CBPP said. SNAP is federally funded and administered by states, though that cost-share will change under the law.

In a late Wednesday email, a USDA spokesperson applauded the drop in SNAP participation, noting the program’s rolls had fallen below 40 million for the first time since the pandemic. The spokesperson said the program would continue “to serve those with the greatest need while also strengthening program integrity.”

“This change reflects several factors, including the most comprehensive work requirement reform since 1996, the One Big Beautiful Bill of 2025, as well as USDA initiatives that expand access to employment services, career and technical education, and case‑management support through USDA’s More Than a Job campaign,” the spokesperson wrote.

Incentives for states

The study did not intend to find a cause for the decline, co-author Joseph Llobrera, CBPP’s senior director of research for food assistance, said in an interview. But he noted the law created incentives for states to limit participation in the program. 

Under a provision of the law that is not yet in force, the share of the program’s cost that states must shoulder is tied to the state’s “error rate” — payments a state makes that were either more or less than the beneficiary should have received.

That motivates states to restrict access to the program, without providing a corresponding reward for expanding access, Llobrera said.

“So the incentive structure that’s in place, it really pushes states to make it harder to get onto the program for people who need that assistance,” he said.

The drop in participation happened without improving economic conditions, such as a decline in the unemployment rate, the researchers said. 

That indicates people are moving off the rolls due to changes in the program, not because their circumstances have improved to the point they no longer need food assistance, the study said.

Many provisions of the law have not yet gone into effect. The error rate penalties, for example, start in fiscal year 2028.

Design, not a bug

In part, though, that restriction is by design, as the law’s supporters intended to cut SNAP benefits for recipients who met certain criteria and to control what they portrayed as fraud and waste at the state level. 

The cuts in the federal share of SNAP funding helped pay for massive tax cuts and a boost to military spending in other parts of the megabill, which Republicans passed without any Democratic support through a process known as budget reconciliation.

The proponents of the agriculture section of the megabill championed provisions to make beneficiaries report their eligibility more often, boost work requirements, disqualify certain categories of legal immigrants, raise the age of children at which parenting would cease to qualify as work and otherwise tighten the availability of the program.

The provisions would help ensure only those who truly needed the federal assistance would get it, advocates said. 

It would also create an incentive for states to control erroneous payments, which was not the case when the federal government took on the entire cost of the program before the bill’s enactment.

“It is a disservice to the truly needy to rely on SNAP,” House Agriculture Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, a Pennsylvania Republican, said as the committee marked up the bill last year. “Clearly, SNAP is not working as Congress intended. We must ensure the proper incentives are in place for states to administer the program more effectively for those it serves.”

Llobrera said he understood members of both parties would engage in rhetoric about restrictions on SNAP, but that the center at the time was “raising the alarm that the bill was going to hurt people.”

A spokesperson for Thompson did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Arizona

The CBPP report included a breakout section on Arizona, where the SNAP enrollment dropped much further than any other state.

As in other states, economic gains did not explain the changes in Arizona, the case study said.

“This dramatic drop cannot be explained by a rapid improvement in people’s economic well-being or reduced need for help affording food,” the report said, noting that Arizona’s unemployment rate rose over the period of the study, while the cost of groceries rose about 4% in 2025.

The state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, and state agency spokespeople have blamed the GOP law for the drastic reduction in benefits, the study said, but the decline goes beyond what would be expected based on the law’s provisions. 

That suggests that state administrators — even under Democratic leaders — are going beyond the minimum requirements of the law to restrict access, the authors said.

“Thus, it appears that a combination of factors, including the megabill and the state’s response to it, are contributing to the sharp decline in the number of Arizona families getting SNAP,” they wrote.

Because the law also raises the costs to states of administering the program, in addition to requiring states pay for some portion of benefits, some, including Arizona, cut staff ahead of the law’s enactment, Llobrera said. 

“With the cuts to the administrative funding for states due to that megabill, those are only just going to accelerate,” he said.

Shutdown

Such changes to SNAP rules added to an already tumultuous period for the program’s recipients. Over the course of a then-record-long partial government shutdown last year, benefits were constantly turned off and on as the Trump administration said it could not spend SNAP funds during a shutdown and federal courts held that benefits must be paid.

Spokespeople for the White House did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill Thursday that will legalize online sports wagering in the state.

(The Center Square) – The Wisconsin mayor who moved his community’s ballot drop box will not face any criminal charges.

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Doula services aren’t covered by Wisconsin Medicaid – known as BadgerCare – as of April 2026.

Doulas provide emotional support and education around childbirth. Unlike midwives (which are covered), they don’t perform medical tasks.

A Wisconsin Department of Health Services spokesperson confirmed doulas aren’t covered as a stand-alone benefit for Medicaid recipients. 

State law requires the health department to get legislative approval before making changes to Medicaid. Doula coverage has been proposed by Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic lawmakers but has not come to pass.

According to the National Health Law Program, 26 states and Washington, D.C., are actively reimbursing for Medicaid coverage of doula care. Seven more are in the process of doing so.

A 2024 study from the American Journal of Public Health found Medicaid recipients with doulas had a 47% lower risk of cesarean delivery and a 29% lower risk of preterm birth than those without.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• DONA International: What is a doula?
• Harvard Medical School: What does a doula do?
• Wisconsin Department of Health Services: Email with Elizabeth Goodsitt, communications specialist
• Wisconsin Legislature: 2017 Wisconsin Act 370
• Department of Administration: State of Wisconsin Executive Budget, February 2025
• Wisconsin Legislature: 2025 Assembly Bill 1085
• National Health Law Program: Doula Medicaid Project
• American Journal of Public Health: Role of Doulas in Improving Maternal Health and Health Equity Among Medicaid Enrollees, 2014‒2023

Are doula services covered under Wisconsin Medicaid? 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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Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a bill bringing Wisconsin in line with a federal law seeking to prevent the kind of post-election chaos that President Donald Trump and his allies sowed after the 2020 election.

The Democrat also vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would have required the state election commission to hear administrative complaints against itself alleging violations of the federal Help America Vote Act, in line with a U.S. Justice Department demand for the state. That vetoed bill also would have required the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau to conduct audits for potential noncitizen voters.

The bill Evers signed updates Wisconsin’s deadlines for certifying presidential election results and casting electoral votes to match federal timelines set by Congress in 2022, after President Donald Trump claimed to have won the 2020 election and hundreds of individuals stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

The mismatch led to a lawsuit in the 2024 presidential election, when the state’s Republican electors were uncertain which day to cast their Electoral College votes because state and federal law set the dates one day apart. The new law resolves that discrepancy.

The measure passed the Senate last session but stalled in the Assembly. With its passage, Wisconsin is among more than 20 states to update their laws to align with the Electoral Count Reform Act.

Vetoed bill would have imposed U.S. DOJ demand

The HAVA bill that Evers vetoed followed a U.S. Justice Department letter sent to the Wisconsin Elections Commission last year. It claimed the WEC was violating the law by declining to hear complaints filed against it.

Under HAVA, a 2002 law that overhauled voter registration and election administration, any state receiving federal election funding must also establish an administrative process for complaints about alleged violations of the law. If a violation is found, the state must provide a remedy; if not, it can dismiss the complaint.

In recent years, however, the WEC has dismissed HAVA complaints related to its own actions, citing a Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion saying it would be “nonsensical” for the agency to adjudicate a complaint against itself.

For example, the commission dismissed a complaint against the agency filed by a Democratic voter seeking to bar Trump from the ballot and has repeatedly dismissed complaints filed by election conspiracy theorist Peter Bernegger that allege various kinds of election mismanagement.

“If a person has a complaint about the legality of the conduct of the commission, that person should file suit in court,” Evers said in his veto message Wednesday.

The vetoed bill also would have required the state to undertake audits of its voter registration list to identify potential noncitizen voters.

Evers said he objected to the “additional burden that could be placed on citizens to provide documentary proof of citizenship after they have already been lawfully registered to vote.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat’s free national newsletter here.

New Wisconsin law seeks to prevent certification disaster 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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A homeowner in Wauwatosa can do exactly what public messaging asks: take shorter showers, time irrigation thoughtfully, fix leaks and otherwise reduce water use. Then the quarterly bill arrives, and the cost barely moves. The homeowner might jump to a dangerous conclusion: that conservation is symbolic, not economic.

It’s an understandable reaction to misaligned incentives.

Utilities need stable revenue to maintain infrastructure that does not shrink with short-term changes in household use. At the same time, households need bills that make conservation visibly and promptly worthwhile. If both are true, the issue is not whether residents are wrong to feel frustrated, but whether rate design effectively translates public goals into household-level incentives.

This tension — between conservation messaging and what bills actually show — points to a broader public accountability issue for utilities across Wisconsin.

Wauwatosa is a useful case study because the city publishes its bill components clearly enough to reveal this trade-off.

What the Wauwatosa bill structure shows

As published by Wauwatosa’s water utility, a residential bill combines multiple components across water, sewer and storm water. For common 5/8-inch and 3/4-inch meters, the city page currently lists:

• A fixed quarterly water service charge: $20.00.
• A fixed public fire protection charge: $15.99.
• A fixed quarterly Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (regional sewer) connection charge: $16.41.
• A fixed quarterly storm water charge (per equivalent residential unit): $35.63.

Taken together, that amounts to $88.03 per quarter in fixed charges before any usage-based costs, local sanitary flows or temporary surcharges are added. For many households, that fixed baseline stands out because it does not change with daily behavior.

The Wauwatosa webpage notes another key detail: Residential sewer charges are based on average water use from the previous winter quarter. That approach can make engineering sense for irrigation-heavy months, but it also means residents who cut back now may not immediately see those savings reflected in their sewer charges.

When customers see both that delay and a large fixed baseline, the takeaway is simple: “My effort doesn’t matter.”

That is the policy risk.

Why this perception matters beyond one city

This pattern extends beyond Wauwatosa to utility systems statewide.

The Wisconsin Public Service Commission describes rate setting as a balancing problem among cost recovery, financial stability, affordability and system sustainability. EPA guidance similarly explains why many utilities use fixed-plus variable charges: Fixed charges support pipes, treatment assets and financing obligations that exist regardless of short-term household demand.

So yes, a large fixed component is not automatically evidence of bad intent. Often it reflects the cost profile of infrastructure.

But even well-designed systems can produce a weak conservation signal.

EPA water finance resources note that some pricing structures are better than others at encouraging conservation. If a city publicly asks for conservation while bill design makes savings hard to notice, policy and pricing are misaligned where customers experience them: on the bill.

The accountability test 

Can a typical resident estimate cost savings before taking action to reduce use?

If the answer is no, then the price signal is too opaque.

If customers must decode fixed charges, lagged sewer formulas and unclear unit rates to understand marginal savings, the bill functions more as a revenue tool than a behavior signal — preserving cash flow but weakening conservation and public trust.

Residents do not need a lecture about civic virtue. They need rate transparency and faster feedback.

What Wauwatosa could pilot 

This does not require a simplistic “slash fixed fees” response. It requires clearer design and better signal delivery.

• Publish a one-page “marginal savings” table for typical homes.The table should answer: “If I reduce use by 1, 3 or 5 CCF this quarter, what is the expected bill impact now and next quarter?” Include timing notes for winter-quarter sewer logic.
• Add bill lines for “behavior-sensitive charges” and “system-fixed charges.” Split the bill into two subtotals so the customer can see immediately which share was behavior-driven and which paid for infrastructure. 
• Introduce a conservation dividend. If systemwide demand drops below peak projections and defers capacity costs, return part of those savings as a visible credit in the next cycle. Make conservation legible.
• Run a transparent pilot on stronger conservation pricing bands. EPA and national guidance point to increasing-block rates as one way to strengthen conservation signals. Pilot carefully, publish distributional impacts and protect affordability with targeted credits.
• Publish a trust metric: “conservation-to-bill responsiveness.” Track how often conservation leads to measurable bill changes within one cycle. If responsiveness is weak, publish a redesign plan.

The larger policy point

When homeowners conclude, “the city designed this to extract money no matter what,” leaders should not dismiss it but treat it as a warning sign in the system.

Most residents are not accusing utilities of villainy. They are describing an incentive mismatch.

If Wisconsin cities want durable conservation, they need bill designs that preserve financial integrity and reward action quickly enough for residents to feel the loop. Otherwise, we train households to stop caring, then blame them for not conserving.

Water policy fails when the math is defensible on paper but illegible at the kitchen table.

Michael V. Haley is a Wisconsin freelance writer focused on accountability commentary about how public systems affect household outcomes. His work translates municipal policy, utility design and implementation choices into practical impacts for residents.

Opinion: How to fix water bills so conservation pays off 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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What is freedom of the press? 

For Brown County Circuit Court Judge Marc Hammer, it’s freedom of information, and it was the topic of discussion at a Philosopher’s Cafe event co-hosted by the Mauthe Center and the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay a few weeks ago. 

Hammer, who also teaches constitutional law at UWGB, led the conversation. I was one of about 25 people total and one of three working journalists in attendance (shoutout to Jesse Lin of the Green Bay Press Gazette and Andrew Kennard of the Wisconsin Examiner). 

We covered a lot of ground: 

• Historical attempts to limit information.
• Who is “the press”?
• Retractions vs. corrections.
• Fact-checking.
• Bias in media.
• Public broadcasting funding.
• Defamation.
• Local news.
• Social media sites like Facebook and TikTok.
• The hyperpolarized times we’re living in.

I jumped in when retractions came up. Throughout the rest of the conversation, Lin, Kennard and I answered questions from community members about our jobs and explained how we do our work. 

One thing I appreciate about events at the Mauthe Center is how respectful and civil the discussion is. People hold different opinions. They listen to each other. They ask thoughtful follow-up questions. They attend these events, from what I saw, to learn something new. 

I did, too. And it was clear to me that community members want to learn more about newsgathering and reporting.

What do you want to know about journalism? 

• Should I write about our rigorous fact-checking process? 
• Do you want to know how Wisconsin Watch reporters and editors decide to pursue stories? 
• Can we shed light on how to file open records requests? 

Email me at jzvandenhouten@wisconsinwatch.org. 

And if you’re interested in the Philosopher’s Cafe, there’s another event coming up in a few weeks on freedom of assembly. 

P.S. It’s Local News Day! Subscribe to your local news outlet or contribute to Wisconsin Watch here. 

All my best,

— Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten

Green Bay event highlights thirst for media knowledge 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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• High schoolers account for nearly half the student population at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh – the largest number of dual enrollment students in the state. 

• As the traditional college-age population shrinks, dual enrollment courses have surged in popularity, transforming UW-Oshkosh’s identity. 

• Few high schoolers who take college courses at UW-Oshkosh decide to attend the university for their undergraduate studies, a trend officials are making efforts to change.

When University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh lecturer Paul Sager logs onto Zoom every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to teach his composition course, he asks his students to paste in the chat what emoji they feel like that day. 

If it’s cold outside, they might send a snowflake, or if they’re feeling motivated, a rocket ship. 

“They find that really fun and ice-breaking,” Sager said. “Feeling connected to your professor, I believe, is an extremely important part of being invested in a course, especially when it’s at the college level.”

That’s especially important for Sager, who has never met most of his students in the flesh, and likely never will.

At UW-Oshkosh, high schoolers make up nearly half of the student body. Many of them live hours away and never actually step foot on campus, instead taking the college courses from their high schools. 

It’s an increasingly popular dynamic as dual enrollment classes — where high schoolers simultaneously earn high school and college credit — soar in popularity and the typical college-aged population shrinks. But UW-Oshkosh enrolls more high schoolers than any university in the state, an endeavor that’s transforming the college’s identity.

The approach has helped UW-Oshkosh combat the big enrollment declines Wisconsin universities have seen in recent years. 

But as more colleges tap into the dual enrollment trend, the state’s fourth-largest UW campus is facing stiffer competition for these students. On top of that, few of them currently continue their education at UW-Oshkosh after high school. College leaders want that to change.

“As the competitive landscape that we operate in gets more competitive, and as the number of total high school students in Wisconsin continues to go down, it’s going to be more important that we get more and more of these students to choose UW-O as their four-year solution, as well,” said Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Edwin Martini. 

A service and a strategy

Dual enrollment is now rapidly taking root across the country, but UW-Oshkosh was ahead of the curve when it launched its program 50 years ago. 

Today, over 6,500 high schoolers get a jump start on college through the university’s Cooperative Academic Partnership Program, dubbed “CAPP.” In most cases, UW-Oshkosh authorizes qualified high school teachers — typically those with graduate degrees in their subject areas — to teach CAPP courses at their own schools. 

Just five UW-Oshkosh professors, Sager included, teach courses to high schoolers virtually. This allows them to reach more rural schools that otherwise lack access to dual enrollment courses, often because they don’t have qualified instructors or enough resources. 

“Given the opportunity to teach these courses, I jumped on it … It’s definitely a calling,” Sager said.

The university charges high schools about half the typical tuition costs for the classes. Students considered economically disadvantaged by the state get added discounts. Each school district decides how it passes the cost of books and tuition onto students. 

If students choose not to attend UW-Oshkosh after graduation, their credits can transfer to 200 other colleges.

Over the past decade, the number of students doing dual enrollment through UW-Oshkosh has nearly doubled. While that mirrors nationwide growth, UW-Oshkosh has leaned fully into the trend, hoping to attract as many students as possible across Wisconsin — and, in some cases, beyond.

“The simple truth is, if Oshkosh didn’t do it, somebody else would,” Sager said. “It’s something that I believe at Oshkosh they’ve really understood as not only a moneymaker, but just an opportunity.”

To attract students, program leaders call schools to tell them about the program and advertise at teacher conferences around the state. But largely, word of mouth and its status as the state’s oldest help win school leaders’ trust. CAPP is the only Wisconsin program accredited by the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, an organization holding universities accountable to offering dual enrollment courses as rigorous as normal college courses.

“We’ve had, more than ever, people reaching out to us to get involved,” said CAPP Outreach Specialist Sarah Adelson. 

Today, 45% of UW-Oshkosh students are high schoolers, a phenomenon more common at community colleges than universities. Statewide, high schoolers are just 10% of university enrollment, compared to 1 in 3 community college students.

The dual enrollment growth has been, in many ways, a saving grace for the college. 

Like other Wisconsin universities, UW-Oshkosh has lost thousands of traditional college students — those enrolling after high school graduation — over the past decade. Dual enrollment has helped offset that loss. Overall enrollment is down 9%, but without the high school students, enrollment would be down closer to 36%.

“For us, in part, it is a service. It is something that we’re proud of doing and providing these opportunities to students,” Martini said. “But we do consider our dual enrollment portfolio very much part of our strategic enrollment management portfolio.”

A shifting college experience

Walking across the UW-Oshkosh campus, it’s not immediately obvious how much the student body has changed in recent years.

Classrooms are still filled with what many would consider “typical” college students. Sidewalks bustle with students walking to class. Finding parking can still be competitive.

But in recent years, as more students take classes without setting foot on campus, the university has undergone some noticeable changes: The campus-run bookstore closed. Satellite locations in Appleton and Fond du Lac shut down because of enrollment declines. During a budget crunch, leaders offered voluntary retirement to roughly 50 faculty. And three dorm buildings are slated for demolition, as they no longer need as much space to house students living on campus.  

Teagan Massey-Plamann, a senior at Menasha High School, takes UW-Oshkosh’s dual enrollment courses from about 20 minutes away but has visited campus only once.

“It may not be the experience of being on campus and everything, but I still kind of get to see what the curriculums will look like, and how much studying I’ll need to do,” Massey-Plamann said.

As dual enrollment continues to expand, it raises broader questions about what will define the college experience. While the typical experience most think of is by no means dead, Sager said, it seems pretty rare nowadays.

“All of them, I think, also seek that personal connection with faculty and wanting to have an on-campus experience in one way, shape or form … I don’t know if there is a ‘definition’ for what a college experience even is anymore,” Sager said.

For some, the experience of being a professor has shifted, too — teaching high schoolers is a different task than teaching students a few years older, Sager said. 

“It really is about trying to meet them at their level and understand that, and also apply a little bit of pedagogical changes, so that the assignments mean more to them, and they feel more invested in it,” Sager said.

Great colleges think alike?

When Massey-Plamann graduates from high school this spring, she’ll already have a head start on college, thanks to her UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment courses in statistics, calculus and biology.

“It’s just getting me in the mindset that I’m going to be doing more classes like this next year,” the aspiring art therapist said. “They’re not going to be just classes where I can just sit and do nothing because I get all my work done really quickly. It’s getting me prepared for that time management.” 

That head start will save her both money and stress as she heads to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota to play softball.

Like Massey-Plamann, most UW-Oshkosh dual enrollment students don’t continue their education there after high school. Only about 10% do. 

University leaders want to change that. 

While Adelson said students historically “just come to us,” that’s changing as other Wisconsin colleges try to ride the dual enrollment wave. At the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, high schoolers now make up about a third of enrollment. Just 20 miles away from UW-Oshkosh, half of the 8,000 students at Moraine Park Technical College are still in high school.

In response, UW-Oshkosh leaders are stepping up recruitment efforts — they’re offering classes other universities don’t, awarding at least $1,000 scholarships to those who enroll the following fall and funding more campus visits for high schoolers.

But UW-Oshkosh leaders acknowledge there don’t seem to be many students left to go after — the pool of college-bound students may already be tapped. CAPP Director Margaret Hostetler said their next push is for students who aren’t planning to attend college at all. They wonder if dual enrollment could change their mind. 

The university is also ramping up advising services, pointing students toward courses that will actually benefit them in the future.

“We don’t want students just taking every single dual enrollment credit they can because that’s not necessarily saving them time or money,” Hostetler said. “To save time and money, you have to have a class that is going to transfer as a course that you will need in your field of study.”

They’ve ramped up marketing efforts to remind dual enrollment students that “they are Titans,” Martini said, mailing them branded T-shirts, banners and posters for teachers to hang in their high school classrooms. 

“What we want is them to have a great experience, and then that builds their affinity with UW-O,” Martini said. “And then they say … ‘Now I want to go to Oshkosh. Now I want to be a Titan.’”

Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at mdunlap@wisconsinwatch.org.

At one Wisconsin university, nearly half the students are still in high school 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.