Kilmar Abrego Garcia stands outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt with his wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, left, and Lydia Walther-Rodriguez with CASA, after a federal judge ruled earlier this month he was allowed to remain free. (File photo by William J. Ford/Maryland Matters)

A federal judge in Tennessee is ordering federal prosecutors to turn over some documents to lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia as they try to show his indictment on human smuggling charges was the product of vindictive prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw’s nine-page ruling — issued under seal Dec. 3, but unsealed at noon Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Nashville — said a “subset” of more than 3,000 government documents he reviewed appear to undercut the government’s defense against vindictive prosecution.

“Specifically, the government’s documents may contradict its prior representations that the decision to prosecute was made locally and that there were no outside influences,” Crenshaw wrote.

The order is a partial victory for Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran native who lives in Maryland, where he was stopped by immigration agents in March and deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador. His removal came without due process and despite an earlier court order that prohibited  immigration officials from deporting Abrego Garcia to his home country, for fear of violence.

A series of court battles ended with the U.S. Supreme Court in April ordering Abrego Garcia be returned to the United States. He was finally brought back to the U.S. in June, where he faced new charges of human smuggling, stemming from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee where he was let go without a citation.

Abrego Garcia argues that the smuggling charge was concocted years after the fact to punish him for embarrassing the administration in court, and should be thrown out.

The charges of “conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain” and “unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain” are tied to a 2022 traffic stop in Putnam County, Tennessee, where he was pulled over for speeding. There were nine passengers in the back of his car.

Abrego Garcia was not arrested. No ticket was issued.

But three years later, as he was winning his case to be returned to the U.S., federal prosecutors were revisiting that traffic stop. A Homeland Security agent told a federal judge earlier this year that he was told on April 28 of this year to investigate the traffic stop.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty to the charges, that his attorneys have claimed were filed as retaliation against their client. They claim senior officials in the Justice Department pushed for the indictment, citing television interviews where Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said the investigation began after “a judge in Maryland … questioned” the government and accused it of “doing something wrong,” according to Crenshaw’s order.

The government denies involvement by higher-ups, saying the decision to prosecute Abrego Garcia was made solely by Robert McGuire, the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee.

Crenshaw’s order includes a timeline of events. In it are several communications between McGuire and D.C.-based U.S. Associate Deputy Attorney General Aakash Singh that began on April 27, one day before a federal agent was assigned to investigate the 2022 traffic stop.

In an April 30 exchange, Singh writes that Abrego’s case is “a top priority.” McGuire writes “we want the high command looped in.”

In a May 15 email, McGuire writes about the pending indictment.

“Ultimately, I would hope to have ODAG [Office of the Deputy Attorney General] eyes on it as we move towards a decision about whether this matter is going to ultimately be charged,” he wrote, according to Crenshaw’s order.

McGuire adds: “While ultimately, the office’s decision to charge will land on me. I think it makes sense to get the benefit of all of your brains and talent in this process and as we consider this case. I have not received specific direction from ODAG other than I have heard anecdotally that the DAG and PDAG would like Garcia charged sooner rather than later.”

Singh is updated about the indictment over the next week, according to Crenshaw’s timeline.

“These documents show that McGuire did not act alone and to the extent McGuire had input on the decision to prosecute, he shared it with Singh and others,” Crenshaw wrote.

Abrego’s attorneys successfully made a case before Crenshaw that prosecutors had acted vindictively. They sought the release of documents through discovery. Federal prosecutors balked and withheld those documents, citing privilege.

Crenshaw, in his now-unsealed order, said allowing the privilege assertion to trump due process protections would undermine rulings by other federal courts.

“The Court recognizes the government’s assertion of privileges, but Abrego’s due process right to a non-vindictive prosecution outweighs the blanket evidentiary privileges asserted by the government,” Crenshaw wrote. “If the work product, attorney-client, and deliberative process privileges asserted by the government precluded all discovery in the context of a vindictiveness motion, defendants would never be able to answer the question ‘what motivated the government’s prosecution?'”

Democratic and Republican candidates for governor appeared for a joint forum in early November. Shown are, from left, Matt Smith of WISN-12, Francesca Hong, Sara Rodriguez, Kelda Roys, David Crowley and Missy Hughes, all Democrats, and Josh Schoemann, a Republican. Republican Tom Tiffany did not participate. Since that event two more Democrats have entered the contest, former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and former cabinent member Joel Brennan. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

A popular two-term governor decides to retire, and triggers a flood of prospective replacements. Democrats vow to flip the Republican-majority Legislature. A state Supreme Court race blows the doors off spending records, and another one is waiting in the wings.

Each of those could be considered a big story by itself in Wisconsin, but they’re all part of this year’s single biggest story in government and politics. And that story — that it was a really big year for Wisconsin politics — wasn’t just about 2025: It set the stage for 2026.

The  three-stories-in-one about Wisconsin politics are just the beginning of the news that flooded our pages in 2025. Wisconsin Examiner’s five-person staff published 550 stories in 2025, a total that includes opinion columns by Editor Ruth Conniff, but doesn’t include briefs that also appeared under the bylines of Conniff, Erik Gunn, Isiah Holmes, Henry Redman, Baylor Spears and Criminal Justice Fellows Andrew Kennard and Frank Zufall.

Herewith, then, our list of 10 big stories that the Wisconsin Examiner covered over the course of the last year.

1. Wisconsin politics goes into overdrive

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers put an end to the last Wisconsin governor’s quest for a third term when he defeated Republican Scott Walker in 2018. Midway through his own second term, Evers surprised many by deciding to call it quits when his current  term ends rather than run again.

The decision created the first open race for governor in more than a decade and opened the floodgates, with a bevy of Democrats entering the fray. By contrast, the Republican field was down to two at year’s end, with one early contender dropping out after the entry of Congressman Tom Tiffany.

In the Wisconsin Legislature, Democrats, having narrowed the Republicans’ majority in 2024 thanks to new maps that undid the state’s 15 years of GOP gerrymandering, launched twin efforts to flip both the Assembly and the Senate in 2026. Republicans vowed to maintain their majority in both houses.

The new Senate and Assembly maps were made possible after the 2023 state Supreme Court election flipped the seven-member Court’s ideological majority from conservative to liberal. With the balance of the Court  at stake again after liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley retired in 2025, Democrats went all out, electing Dane County Judge Susan Crawford to the nominally nonpartisan Court and handily overcoming the efforts of billionaire Elon Musk who spent millions  supporting Crawford’s opponent, former state Attorney General Brad Schimel. The contest set both state and national records for campaign spending in a U.S. judicial election, and maintained the one-vote liberal majority. Now supporters of the current Court majority have their eyes on extending that ideological advantage in 2026. 

Chris Taylor, currently a District IV appeals court judge and a former Democratic state representative, is running to succeed sharply conservative Rebecca Bradley. Bradley opted not to seek a new term on the Court, and conservative Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar has announced plans to seek the post.

2. A  bipartisan state budget splits both parties

Evers went into the 2025-27 state budget process with an ambitious list of goals. Lengthy negotiations between the Democratic governor and Republican lawmakers produced a deal. While the final result fell well short of his original vision, Evers claimed victory nevertheless, with gains on paper for child care funding and for public school special education funding.

Both, however, left their strongest advocates disappointed, and by the end of the year, the special education funding did not live up to the promises made when the budget was signed.

3. Public school troubles

The budget’s lack of additional school aid for regular classes was especially upsetting to public school advocates, and was exacerbated by the state’s expanding school choice systems that use tax dollars to pay for private schools and charter schools outside the common public schools. It also underscored the extent to which local communities have been voting to raise their own property taxes to support their school systems.

The defeat of some school referendum requests further accentuated the sense of crisis, while Republican lawmakers called for new restrictions on the referendum process. And in the state’s largest system, Milwaukee Public Schools, an audit called for sweeping changes in response to a range of challenges, from declining enrollments and staff turnover to the continuing pressure of having to fund the parallel voucher and charter systems.

Throughout the year, the state Department of Public Instruction came under intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers over policies ranging from school performance evaluations to the handling of sexual abuse complaints against school employees.

4. Federal fallout from a new administration

With the inauguration of President Donald Trump to a second term in the White House, the fallout from new federal actions reached Wisconsin in a myriad of ways. The giant legislation to cut taxes (mostly for the wealthy) and spending (much of it for health care) that Trump signed in July was one cause, setting the stage for future cuts to Medicaid and to health care under the Affordable Care Act, while also imposing new restrictions on programs aimed at reducing hunger.

But there were other reductions as well, some coming from the actions of the “Department of Government Efficiency” or DOGE that Trump authorized, and others from unilateral — and often legally challenged — actions by the administration itself. Clean energy and climate change projects, scientific research, education assistance, help with removing lead from public schools, community service, child care, economic policies, numerous federal agencies and the federal workforce itself along with countless other federal initiatives were swept up in the administration’s first year.

The record-long federal shutdown — when Congress failed to agree on a temporary spending plan and the GOP majority refused to extend extra tax breaks for Affordable Care Act health plans into 2026 — added to the chaos, with a temporary halt to the federal SNAP food assistance program.

Wisconsinites joined people from across the country in the recurring protests that started just weeks into the Trump presidency, culminating in the Oct. 18 “No Kings” rallies from coast to coast that some analysts identified as the largest mass protest ever in the United States.

5. Immigration arrests spark turmoil

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown reverberated in Wisconsin from Inauguration Day. At the start of this term, Editor Ruth Conniff traveled to Mexico, documenting the longstanding relationships Wisconsin farmers have had with migrants who provide 70% of the labor that the state’s dairy industry has relied on.

Republican lawmakers called for cementing the state’s relationship with the newly unleashed Immigration and Customs Enforcement — ICE — agency , while the Evers administration resisted those calls. Individual counties signed on to assist ICE, sometimes facing opposition, but while Wisconsin was less in the national spotlight than other states, it wasn’t immune to periodic episodes of immigration enforcement.

Visa cancellations caught up students from overseas, and migrant arrests rose across the state. Immigration enforcement officers focused on the Milwaukee County Courthouse in their search for immigrants to take into custody, prompting criticism from advocates who warned the result would drive migrants underground rather than encouraging them to show up for court dates as witnesses, plaintiffs or defendants.

After a four-day trial in December, Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan was convicted on a felony charge of obstruction but acquitted of a misdemeanor charge of concealing a man who had appeared in her courtroom in April and was targeted by immigration officials. The case had national repercussions as the Trump administration targets judges it sees as opponents to its policies.

6. Environment: Data centers, stewardship and PFAS conflicts

In Wisconsin a statewide — indeed, nationwide — the rush to embrace massive data centers to serve emerging artificial intelligence-based technology sparked widespread debate over water use, electricity demands and power generation.

Meanwhile, a longstanding and widely popular land preservation program — the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship fund — hovered on the verge of collapse as Republican lawmakers demanded the power to veto stewardship decisions after a state Supreme Court ruling in 2024 removed the Legislature from the process.

After a running battle against rerouting an Enbridge oil pipeline, the Army Corps of Engineers approved permits for the project over the strenuous objections of opponents, only to be sued by the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.

A standoff between the Evers administration and the Legislature’s Republican leaders over how to address PFAS “forever chemicals” was eased by a state Supreme Court ruling allowing the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to apply Wisconsin’s spills law to PFAS contamination, along with a bipartisan bill that would require the DNR to notify local and tribal officials about groundwater PFAS contamination.

7.  Law enforcement: Investigating themselves, surveillance of the public

A lengthy investigation by Isiah Holmes of the Wisconsin Examiner in partnership with Type Investigations documented how the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team, assigned to probe death investigations for people killed by metro Milwaukee police officers, use protocols that grant officers privileges not afforded to the general public.

Among many other issues involving policing and law enforcement in Wisconsin, police surveillance was a recurring matter, with debates arising over facial recognition technology, department interest in expanding phone-tracking resources and increasing attention to how police agencies make use of widespread surveillance cameras.

8. Prison reform struggles

Evers’ budget proposal included a sweeping plan for prison reform, but the  result was more limited, leaving advocates dissatisfied. One concrete element is the start of a project to close the Green Bay Correctional Institution, a longtime objective, but divisions remain between the governor and GOP lawmakers about the details.

9. Voting rights debates revive 2020 election denial

With the return of President Donald Trump to the White House, the conspiracy theories that were amplified after his reelection loss in November 2020 got a new burst of energy. The Wisconsin Elections Commission twice rejected an administration demand for the personal identifying information of Wisconsin voters.

Trump issued a largely symbolic pardon of the Republicans who signed certificates falsely stating he won the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, while a Dane County judge kept alive a criminal case against three men charged with orchestrating the fake elector scheme.

Although bipartisan lawmakers in the Assembly sought common ground over absentee ballot drop boxes and a measure to allow election clerks to begin counting absentee ballots on the Monday before Election Day, their efforts stalled.

10. Flooding and disasters

August flooding in Southeast Wisconsin that followed torrential storms and was centered on the metro Milwaukee area left behind devastation, damaging nearly 2,000 homes and some $34 million worth of public infrastructure.

The Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency approved $30 million in initial relief to support the victims of flood damage, but the administration denied a subsequent request for aid to mitigate future disasters.

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The Social Development Commission spent 2025 trying to restore services and funding in the face of legal challenges, board friction and government audits and reviews.

Commonly known as the SDC, the organization has a long history of providing services for low-income residents in Milwaukee County, including tax help, job training and rental assistance.   

Since it stopped running its programs in April 2024, SDC has been trying to create a path to resume its anti-poverty work. 

Here are some of this year’s major stories on the SDC. 

March/April

State holds public hearing   

In March, the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families scheduled a public hearing on SDC’s status as a community action agency. 

The community action agency designation allows SDC to receive a federal block grant to support its anti-poverty work. 

Jorge Franco, interim CEO and chair of the SDC board, said at the board’s next meeting he felt the department had not been transparent with SDC about its concerns on SDC’s ability to restart services and meet other requirements while they had been meeting and providing documents over past months. 

In early April, the Department of Children and Families held a hearing in Milwaukee on SDC’s community action status to get public comments from members of the community, who spoke in favor of SDC. 

May/June

State files wage claims lawsuit 

The Wisconsin Department of Justice, on behalf of the Department of Workforce Development, filed a lawsuit in May that alleges the SDC failed to pay $360,000 in wages and benefits owed to former employees, according to court records. 

William Sulton, SDC’s attorney at the time, acknowledged SDC owes workers wages, but said the lawsuit would not be the most effective way to get them paid. 

Franco has said SDC is committed to repaying employees for wages and benefits. 

State’s community action decision held for review

After reviewing materials from the public hearing, Secretary Jeff Pertl of the Department of Children and Families decided in May that it would remove SDC’s community action status in July.

However, SDC leaders said they had concerns that the state did not follow the proper decision process, so they requested a review from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in June. 

The department agreed to take up the review, which suspended the state’s decision. 

September 

Weatherization vendors win lawsuit 

Three vendors filed a money judgment lawsuit against SDC in an effort to collect reimbursements for weatherization work completed for the agency. In September, a judge granted a total judgment of $186,500 plus statutory costs and accrued interest. 

October 

Credit facility proposed

The SDC board received a letter of intent from Wings Credit Union indicating it is interested in providing the SDC with a credit facility, or a type of loan, of up to $15 million. In SDC’s case, the credit facility would be used to cover upfront expenses for government-funded programs that are paid through reimbursements. 

Foreclosure decision 

In March, Forward Community Investments Inc. filed a foreclosure lawsuit against SD Properties Inc., which owns SDC’s buildings, alleging it defaulted on mortgage payments for the main office and warehouse buildings on North Avenue. 

At an October hearing, a judge ordered a judgment of foreclosure against the North Avenue buildings and ruled that Forward Community Investments was entitled to a money judgment of approximately $3.1 million. 

SDC moved out of the buildings and started a three-month redemption period.

Sulton resigns

Sulton, SDC’s attorney and legal counsel since late 2022, resigned from his volunteer position in mid-October. 

Sulton represented SDC in lawsuits, served as a spokesperson and advised the board.

November 

Board members make failed attempt to remove Franco  

Some members of the board attempted to call an emergency meeting to vote on removing Franco as the board chair and interim CEO, but they ultimately did not vote on anything because of a disagreement on meeting procedure. Franco opposed the meeting and called it “out of order.” 

State releases community action decision

The Department of Children and Families notified SDC on Nov. 21 that it believes the federal review period ended as of Nov. 18 and would be moving forward with removing SDC’s community action status. It selected UMOS to be an interim provider of block grant-funded services. 

SDC commissioners raised questions about the timeline of the federal review at a board planning session in November. 

December 

Federal office releases letter

The director of a division in the federal Office of Community Services found that the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families’ process of removing SDC’s community action status was compliant with federal law, according to a letter it sent to the department on Dec. 5. 

SDC is seeking further clarity from senior leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services, Franco said in a statement.  

What happens next  

Building sale or foreclosure auction  

The three-month redemption period for the North Avenue buildings expires on Jan. 6, according to SDC, although they technically can be redeemed up until there is a hearing to confirm the sale of the properties at auction. 

Ongoing legal cases

Lawsuits filed against SDC from TriShulla, an information technology company, and the Department of Workforce Development are still ongoing. 

Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.

Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

A year of challenges for Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The James H. Shannon Building (Building One), on the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, Maryland. (Photo by Lydia Polimeni,/National Institutes of Health)

The Trump administration will review frozen grants to universities without using its controversial standards that discouraged gender, race and sexual orientation initiatives and vaccine research.

In a settlement agreement filed in Massachusetts federal court Monday, the National Institutes of Health and a group of Democratic attorneys general who’d challenged the new criteria for grant funding said the NIH would consider grant applications made up to Sept. 29, 2025, without judging the efforts related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, or vaccines.

The settlement provides an uncontested path for the agency while courts decide whether the administration can use its controversial analysis. The administration did not agree to permanently ditch its campaign to evaluate health research funding decisions based on schools’ DEI programs.

NIH officials “will complete their consideration of the Applications in the ordinary course of NIH’s scientific review process, without applying the Challenged Directives,” the settlement said, adding that the agency would “evaluate each application individually and in good faith.”

The settlement was signed by U.S. Department of Justice lawyers and the attorneys general of Massachusetts, California, Maryland, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.

In a Tuesday statement, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell said the agreement commits the Department of Health and Human Services to resume “the usual process for considering NIH grant applications on a prompt, agreed-upon timeline.” 

The 17 attorneys general sued in April over $783 million in frozen grants. 

A trial court and appeals court in Massachusetts sided with the states, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in August that the trial judge lacked the authority to compel the grants to be paid, especially in light of a similar decision involving the Education Department.

A U.S. Postal Service employee sorts packages inside the Los Angeles Mail Processing & Distribution Center in December. A new USPS rule on postmarks took effect on Dec. 24 that says mail might not be postmarked on the day it’s dropped off. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The U.S. Postal Service has adopted a new rule that could create doubt about whether some ballots mailed by voters by Election Day will receive postmarks in time to be counted.

A USPS rule that took effect on Dec. 24 says mail might not receive a postmark on the same day the agency takes possession of it. The postal service says it isn’t changing its existing postmark practices and is merely clarifying its policy, but some election officials have looked to postmarks as a guarantee that mail ballots were cast before polls closed.

The new rule holds implications for 14 states and Washington, D.C., that count ballots arriving after Election Day if they are postmarked on or before that day — commonly called a “ballot grace period.” In these states, ballots placed in the mail by voters before the deadline may not be counted if the postal service applies a postmark after Election Day.

The USPS rule says that “the postmark date does not necessarily indicate the first day that the Postal Service had possession of the mailpiece.”

The USPS rule comes as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to consider a case that could eliminate ballot grace periods nationwide. The court’s decision, expected late this spring or next summer, could render the issues raised by the postmark rule moot.

Mail-in voting surged in 2020’s general election amid the COVID-19 pandemic, when 43% of voters cast their votes by mail. The percentage of voters mailing their ballots has fallen from that peak but remains above pre-pandemic levels. About 30% of voters cast mail ballots in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

While the vast majority of mail ballots were successfully cast last year, hundreds of thousands weren’t counted. During the 2024 election, 584,463 mail ballots returned by voters were rejected by election officials — 1.2% of returned mail ballots. About 18% of those ballots were rejected because they didn’t arrive on time.

The USPS defended the change in a lengthy response to criticisms published in the Federal Register. The agency emphasized that it does not administer elections and doesn’t advocate for or against voting by mail.

The postal service repeated its advice that voters mail their completed ballots at least a week before Election Day. And it noted that voters may request a manual postmark at their local post office free of charge.

“If customers are aware that the postmark date may not align with the date on which the Postal Service first accepted possession of a mailpiece, they will be better equipped to adjust their plans accordingly,” the response reads.

“And if policymakers or other entities that create rules utilizing the postmark date are aware of what the postmark date signifies, they are better equipped to determine whether their rules adequately serve their purposes.”

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

Medical bills are spread out on the kitchen table of a cancer patient in Salem, Va. (Photo by Don Petersen/The Associated Press)

This article first appeared on KFF Health News.

As Congress debates whether to extend the temporary federal subsidies that have helped millions of Americans buy health coverage, a crucial underlying reality is sometimes overlooked: Those subsidies are merely a band-aid covering the often unaffordable cost of health care.

California, Massachusetts, Connecticut and five other states have set caps on health care spending in a bid to rein in the intense financial pressure felt by many families, individuals and employers who every year face increases in premiums, deductibles and other health-related expenses.

Hospitals and other health care providers are citing Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Donald Trump in July, as one more reason to challenge those limits.

The law is expected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by more than $900 billion over a decade, which mathematically should help the overall health care system meet the caps. But the law is also expected to increase the number of uninsured Americans, mostly Medicaid beneficiaries, by an estimated 10 million people. Health care analysts predict hospitals and other providers will raise prices to cover the double whammy of lost Medicaid revenue and the cost of caring for an influx of newly uninsured patients.

Whether regulators in some states will allow providers to justify higher prices and exceed the spending caps is unclear. Only California and Oregon can penalize providers financially if they fail to meet targets.

“Are we going to say, ‘That’s OK’? Or are we going to say, ‘Well, you exceeded the target. We’re still going to penalize you for that’?” said Richard Pan, a former state lawmaker and a member of the California Office of Health Care Affordability’s board. “That has not yet been decided.”

The California Hospital Association, the industry’s main state lobbying group, filed a lawsuit in October asking a state court to strike down the spending caps, which it argued fail to account for all the cost pressures hospitals face. Those pressures, it said, include an aging, sicker population; the rising cost of labor; expensive advances in medical technology; large capital outlays on required seismic retrofitting; and changes in federal policy, including the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The hospital group’s lawsuit also asserted that the state affordability office, by hastily imposing ill-considered cost-cutting targets, was undermining its other key mission of improving health care access, quality and equity.

California’s affordability office last year set a five-year target to cap statewide spending growth, starting at 3.5% in 2025 and declining to 3% by 2029. The annual caps apply to a wide range of health care entities, including hospitals, medical groups, insurers and other payers.

Earlier this year, it imposed much lower spending growth caps — starting at 1.8% in 2026 and declining to 1.6% by 2029 — for seven “high-cost” hospitals.

“The spending caps set by politically appointed bureaucrats could force cuts that result in many Californians traveling farther for care, facing longer emergency room wait times, experiencing more overcrowding and losing access to critical services,” Carmela Coyle, the hospital association’s president and CEO, said in an October press release.

The California attorney general’s office, which will represent the affordability agency, has not yet filed a response to the hospital group’s complaint and did not respond to a request for comment.

Hospitals’ pushback

California is not the only state taking a close look at hospital prices, which are widely considered a primary driver of health care costs.

“States, armed with information that points to payments to hospitals as a driver of what is way beyond affordable commercial premiums, have begun to take increasingly targeted actions focused on commercial hospital prices,” said Michael Bailit, founder of the Needham, Massachusetts-based consultancy Bailit Health, which has advised multiple states, including California, on ways to tame health care spending. “It is not surprising that the hospital industry is going to oppose such state actions.”

In its lawsuit, the California Hospital Association said the affordability office’s own report showed that pharmaceutical and insurance companies are largely responsible for high costs.

Hospitals in some states with cost growth limits, including Connecticut and Massachusetts, have expressed objections similar to the ones raised in the California lawsuit. They could follow their counterparts in California if their lawsuit succeeds, said Peter Lee, who led California’s Affordable Care Act marketplace, Covered California, for over a decade and is now a senior scholar at Stanford Medicine’s Clinical Excellence Research Center.

Lee said the work of California’s affordability office and similar agencies in other states is just about the only systemwide effort being made to cut health care costs. They are basically saying, “‘Look, health care is taking money away from education, it is taking money away from the environment, it is taking money away from everything in the public sector, and in the private sector it is taking money away from wages,’” he said. “‘We don’t know how you, the health system, are going to do it, but it is your job not just to provide quality but to lower costs. Here’s the target.’”

To be sure, achieving the cost savings that California and those other states are seeking is no easy lift. It will ultimately require persuading large, financially powerful players that compete fiercely for health care dollars to adopt a different mindset and begin cooperating to reduce costs instead. And that, in many cases, will mean lower revenue.

But the status quo, as many people know all too well, means continued financial pain for millions.

In early 2020, Estevan Rodriguez, a bartender at California’s Monterey Beach Hotel, had surgery for a staph infection in his leg. The bill came to nearly $168,000. His insurance paid most of it, but he still owed $5,665, which took him two years to pay, more than $200 every month. “It may not be a lot to some people, but it was a lot to me,” Rodriguez said.

He said he dropped his Hulu subscription, switched to a lower-cost cellphone, and got cheaper car insurance. He started going to food banks rather than the grocery store, he said, and had a lot less time with his kids, because he was constantly working to pay off the hospital bill.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, where Rodriguez had his surgery, is one of the seven hospitals identified by California’s affordability office as high-cost. A study by the office attributed high hospital prices in Monterey County to a lack of market competition “rather than higher operating costs or superior quality of care.”

The Monterey hospital referred a request for comment about its “high-cost” designation to the California Hospital Association. CHA spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea declined to comment beyond the language of the lawsuit and Coyle’s press release statement.

Reduced competition

Health care analysts worry the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce market competition even further by stressing already weak hospitals, leading some to shut services, merge with larger health systems, or close. One study estimates 338 rural hospitals are at risk of closing nationwide.

Less competition, in addition to fewer Medicaid dollars and an increase in uninsured patients, will only strengthen the incentive of health systems with the requisite market clout to raise their commercial prices, increasing premiums for employers and individuals.

“We think commercial prices will continue to increase as health care providers, and hospitals in particular, will seek to preserve or increase their revenue,” said Rachel Block, a program officer at the Milbank Memorial Fund, a foundation that focuses on health equity.

That in turn could pose a challenge to state affordability regulators tasked with overseeing compliance with growth targets for health care spending.

California’s affordability office is required to consider mitigating factors, including changes in federal and state laws. But some of its board members have expressed skepticism about letting hospitals offset Medicaid losses with higher commercial prices.

“There’s a lot of talk about using HR 1 and other federal policies as an excuse to raise prices on commercial payers,” Ian Lewis, an affordability office board member and policy director for UNITE HERE Local 2, a hospitality workers union in the Bay Area, said at the agency’s July board meeting, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill. “There’s no more blood to be squeezed from this stone.”

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

(The Center Square) – One of Milwaukee’s most prominent education reformers says it is good to hear Milwaukee Public Schools’ new superintendent talk about closing school buildings, but he says she needs to do more than talk.

(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Jill Underly continued her attacks of an investigation of her department’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations related to teachers this week, saying “that headline was completely false” regarding a series…

(The Center Square) – A new Wisconsin law requires both parties in a child support or maintenance agreement to notify the other parent within 10 days of a significant change in gross income or a change of job.

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• ATECH opened over a decade ago to create a pipeline of students interested in advanced manufacturing careers. 

• Many students at the charter school like the hands-on classes, take advantage of paid apprenticeships and earn free college credits. 

• But school leaders say they struggle to attract students, fight a stigma that surrounds technical education and afford equipment and tools.

A cacophony of humming, drilling, banging and buzzing fills Appleton Technical Academy’s cavernous lab. 

In one corner, a student drills ventilation holes in a piece of metal that will eventually be a firepit ring. Another cuts through a thin piece of metal with clippers. Shrouded by red vinyl curtains, several students weld metal, sending blue sparks flying through the air.

As more schools embrace career and technical education, scenes like these are increasingly common in high schools nationwide: fewer students gripping pencils at desks; more wielding expensive tools and receiving hands-on training for their future career. 

Part of that trend, Appleton Technical Academy (ATECH) opened a decade ago to ease the region’s shortage of advanced manufacturing workers. Today, many of the students love their hands-on classes, enroll in paid apprenticeships and collect free college credit before continuing on to trade school. 

But it hasn’t been without difficulties. The school has struggled to attract students, combat a persistent stigma around technical education and afford the pricey equipment and tools it requires. Plus, it’s hard to determine if the school has met the original goal of producing local manufacturing employees. 

What’s happening at ATECH shows how preparing Wisconsin teenagers to eventually fill workforce holes, especially amid the state’s dearth of skilled trade workers, can be a tall task.

ATECH lead teacher Paul Endter spends his lunch breaks and free time trying to grow local support for the school and get more students interested. 

“I continue to tell people we’re the best-kept secret in the Fox Valley, and that’s not by design,” Endter said. “I wish I had more people who wanted to get involved.”

Born from industry needs

In the early 2010s, Jared Bailin, CEO of Appleton-based Eagle Performance Plastics, was struggling to find enough advanced manufacturing workers. The plastic manufacturing leader thought introducing high schoolers to the jobs would help. 

He took the idea to Greg Hartjes, who was principal of Appleton West High School at the time. Hartjes is now the school district’s superintendent and has always worried about students who don’t mesh with traditional high school education structure — students who, he says, “perhaps didn’t want to sit in English class and read Shakespeare,” but rather wanted “their hands in the work that they were doing.” 

Together, they built ATECH, a tuition-free charter school inside Appleton West that aims to prepare students for manufacturing jobs. They secured state grants to fund the launch, and Appleton voters approved a district referendum that put $2.4 million toward renovating labs and classroom spaces.

The school opened in the 2014-15 school year. Here’s how it works: Students can apply to the school at any point, but most enroll their freshman year. They choose to specialize in one of four growing industries: electronics and automated manufacturing, machining, mechanical design or welding. 

At first, students take a small number of classes that introduce them to the basics of manufacturing alongside the traditional courses required of all high schoolers, such as language arts and math. Students gradually take on more courses aligned to their specialization, such as programming for electronics students or blueprint reading for machining students.

Beginning their junior year, students take free college classes that earn both high school and Fox Valley Technical College credit. The classes chip away at a certificate in their focus area, which can shave thousands off tuition for students who enroll in technical college after graduation. Some juniors and seniors can work for local employers as paid youth apprentices during part of the school day, earning money and gaining work experience. 

“ATECH kids are kids that wanted to use their hands along with their brain in learning,” Hartjes said. 

That’s the reason senior Izzy Chappell enrolled. On an early December morning, she dipped into one of the lab’s eight welding booths wearing a helmet to protect from the harsh UV rays and flying sparks. She put the finishing touches on a welded metal skull sculpture she entered in a regional SkillsUSA competition that night. 

“Other classes are hard,” Chappell said. “This comes easy to me.” 

Getting students excited a struggle 

ATECH leaders hoped the school would be a magnet for students, but getting them interested has been a challenge.

The school debuted with 56 students. Enrollment has fluctuated a bit over the decade, never reaching the district’s goal of 120. In the 2024-25 school year — the most recent year with available state data — 68 students enrolled.  

Leaders chalk the lower-than-desired enrollment up to several difficulties: The district doesn’t provide transportation to charter schools, meaning these students typically have to find their own way to school. A jump start toward a career simply doesn’t resonate with many teenagers as young as 14, who Endter said are more motivated by sports or where their friends go to school. 

And most of all, ATECH leaders find many families still see college degrees as the gold standard. Despite growing investment in career and technical education programs nationwide and the critical need for skilled workers in Wisconsin, they say a stigma still plagues technical education, leading many to believe it’s for students who don’t perform well in school. 

“I think a misconception often is that it’s not rigorous, and it’s not for students that have an aptitude or are intelligent,” Hartjes said. “That’s not the case. We’ve given kids an opportunity to really learn using both their hands and their head.”

When ATECH was brand new, a state grant helped the school afford TV commercials and mailers. That money is long gone. Nowadays, Endter visits nearby middle schools to talk to students about career education. They organize tours and career fairs, where ATECH leaders try to entice students with the spacious labs and high-tech equipment.

“It’s not for lack of trying, you know?” Endter said. “But again, as an incoming eighth grader, charter schools represent something different. For some kids, different is good. And for some kids, different is not. So many kids don’t know what could or should be the best pathway for them.”

Meeting workforce needs?

Sophomore Noah Siong enrolled in ATECH because his brother graduated from the school and went on to open his own car repair shop. 

“That kind of opened the gateway to me,” Siong said. “It was like, ‘Oh, this stuff is pretty cool.’”

Siong wants to pursue a career in metal fabrication after graduation. Hartjes estimates hundreds of students like Siong have learned “skills that have prepared them for careers” over the last decade. But it’s difficult to know exactly how many students have gotten jobs that use the skills they learned at ATECH.

Wisconsin, like many states, doesn’t have a system connecting education and employment data, according to a 2024 Education Commission of the States analysis. The evidence ATECH leaders collect is largely anecdotal, but Endter said it indicates the vast majority either continue to technical college to finish their programs or turn their youth apprenticeships into full-time jobs after graduation. Endter estimates about 10% pursue a four-year degree. 

Bailin, the Eagle Performance Plastics CEO, said ATECH hasn’t produced as many local manufacturing employees as he hoped when he helped create the school.

“It didn’t really come out the way I would have hoped,” Bailin said. Eagle has hired between one and three apprentices from ATECH each year. He estimates roughly half have moved into full-time jobs, but it hasn’t been enough to produce the pipeline of machining employees he wanted. The company is no longer closely tied to the school, Bailin said. 

In a measure of its academic performance, ATECH’s state rating has averaged a score of 58, which the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) defines as “meets few expectations.” Hartjes said the hands-on skills students learn are not reflected in the state’s rating system. For example, the college classes students take, however advanced, don’t factor into the school’s rating.

“If they were … tested on their aptitude for mechanics, I guarantee you that they would outscore many other students across our state,” Hartjes said. “If they were being tested on those different things that we focused on, I guarantee you that their knowledge, their experience and their aptitude is going to shine through. But, you know, they don’t.”

‘Just can’t fund all of this’

“I’m going to teach you about different kinds of metal!” technology education teacher Carrie Giauque shouts so students hear her in the noisy lab. She pulls scraps out of a large trash barrel filled to the brim, identifying them to the students crowded around her: “Carbon! Steel! Aluminum! Galvanized steel! Copper!”

Behind them, sheets of metal are stacked floor to ceiling. The school goes through countless sheets teaching students the basics of welding and metal fabrication. It’s ATECH’s largest expense.

“It’s a lot less costly to have 30 students sit in math class,” Hartjes said. 

Despite needing costly materials, ATECH’s state funding is determined by the same formula as all other schools in the district, so it relies on grants and donations to make up the difference. To date, the school has received $266,000 in donations toward equipment and curriculum. 

“A lot of the learning exhausts materials, exhausts some of our resources,” Hartjes said. “(We’re) having to get support from our local manufacturing community, from a financial aspect, because as a school district, we just can’t fund all of this.”

Endter said ATECH also badly needs mentoring from industry employees, who can teach students and teachers how to use the complicated technology they receive as donations. In one classroom, a large robot sits untouched in a locked box after a college donated it. ATECH employees don’t have enough experience with the programming language to teach students how to use it.  

For their part, employers are often stretched too thin to offer up staff to mentor teachers and students. Eagle Performance Plastics used to send someone to ATECH to teach students about a pricey machine it helped buy, but there weren’t enough interested students to make the trip worth it, Bailin said.

Inside ATECH, a “sponsor wall” is decorated with the logos of organizations and employers that have invested in the school. Two-thirds of the spaces are empty — a visual reminder of the school’s need for added support. 

Endter jokes he wears “27 hats” trying to find it. 

“Every hour that I am not teaching, including working through my lunch hour, is dedicated to phone calls, emails, site visits, networking, cold calls,” he said. “You name it. I am doing it.”

The work could soon pay off. Beginning in 2024, Appleton students between kindergarten and fifth grade began taking weekly STEM classes. Endter hopes that will spark interest in career and technical education. 

“I’m on the precipice,” Endter said. “And I’m hoping that there’s going to be this giant surge of students who are looking for opportunities.”

The dilemma isn’t unique to ATECH. Many schools are eager to provide this kind of technical education, Karin Smith, a DPI education consultant, said. However, the equipment and tools are costly, and many schools are struggling to fund basic offerings. (Appleton expects a $13 million deficit this school year.) 

Wisconsin is one of five states that don’t designate state funding for career and technical education programs, relying solely on federal funding. Many states allocate more funding to school districts specifically for these programs because the federal dollars alone cannot meet the costs, according to Advance CTE, a nonprofit representing state career and technical education leaders.

“In Wisconsin, we have used (the federal funds) to, generally speaking, keep the lights on,” said Sara Baird, DPI’s career and technical education director. 

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly requested the 2025-27 state budget include about $45 million in career and technical education grants to districts. Gov. Tony Evers suggested a pared-down version of $10 million, which was scrubbed by the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee and not included in the final bill. 

“We’re seeing tremendous growth and tremendous interest in expanding CTE,” Smith said. Still, school district leaders are frustrated by the lack of funding for it. “They are feeling like their hands are tied behind their back,” she said. 

“We can’t do this alone … Every school has a tech ed teacher who is desperately trying to get kids excited about career pathways,” Endter said. “They need business support. They need donations. They need mentors in the classroom.”

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

‘Can’t do this alone’: An Appleton school prepares students for skilled trades. It’s not easy. 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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ATECH students like hands-on classes, enroll in paid apprenticeships and collect free college credit before continuing on to trade school. But the school has struggled to attract students, combat a persistent stigma around technical education and afford equipment and tools.

The post ‘Can’t do this alone’: An Appleton school prepares students for skilled trades. It’s not easy. appeared first on WPR.

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration unveiled Monday hundreds of millions of dollars each state will receive this fiscal year as part of a massive $50 billion rural health fund baked into Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law. 

The five-year Rural Health Transformation Program — authorized under GOP lawmakers’ mega tax and spending cut package Trump signed into law in July — is designed to offset the budget impacts on rural areas due to sweeping Medicaid cuts.  

Half of the $50 billion will be distributed equally among each state between fiscal years 2026 and 2030, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the remaining $25 billion, doled out over the same time period, is being allocated to states based on several factors, such as steps states are taking to improve access to care in rural communities. 

Texas will get the highest first-year award at $281.3 million, followed by Alaska at $272.2 million, California at $233.6 million, Montana at $233.5 million and Oklahoma, at $223.5 million. 

New Jersey is receiving the lowest first-year award, at $147.2 million. 

“Thanks to Congress establishing this investment and President Trump for his leadership, states are stepping forward with bold, creative plans to expand rural access, strengthen their workforces, modernize care, and support the communities that keep our nation running,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement alongside the announcement. 

Oz added that “CMS is proud to partner with every state to turn their ideas into lasting improvements for rural families.” 

Meanwhile, the nonpartisan health research organization KFF found that the program would only offset a little more than one-third of the package’s estimated $137 billion cut to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas over the next decade.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report. 

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