(The Center Square) – Wisconsin schools spent 41% of the $1.49 billion in pandemic recovery federal funding on permanent salaries rather than temporary learning recovery solutions while allocating the funding slowly and without transparency, according to a new report.
(The Center Square) – It is now illegal in Wisconsin to blackmail someone over sexually-related pictures or videos after Gov. Tony Evers signed Bradyn’s Law.
Judge Eva Saltzman sided with Dailin Pacheco-Acosta and Diego Ugarte-Arenas on Tuesday afternoon, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – ICE’s parent agency – reserved the right to appeal.
The ruling does not automatically free the couple from ICE custody.
“It’s not over,” said Ben Crouse, the couple’s Milwaukee-based attorney.
Ugarte-Arenas remains in the Dodge County jail, which contracts with ICE to hold immigrants facing deportation, and Pacheco-Acosta sits in a county jail in northern Kentucky. A recent Trump administration policy has prevented them from posting bond and continuing their asylum case from Madison, where they settled in 2021 after fleeing Venezuela.
The couple crossed the U.S.-Mexico border without a visa, but because of a clerical error by Customs and Border Patrol officers they encountered near Eagle Pass, Texas, they did not initially land before an immigration court and were instead able to file for asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services upon reaching Wisconsin. The couple refiled for asylum with the immigration court in Chicago after their arrests in October. Neither has a past criminal conviction nor a pending criminal charge.
As they await the next step in their legal battle, the Trump administration is defending the policy that has kept the couple in custody for more than a month, even after a federal judge in California challenged its legality. How higher courts rule will determine whether thousands of immigrants in ICE custody can post bond for the first time in months.
A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office at 310 E. Knapp St. in Milwaukee. (Jonathan Aguilar / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service / CatchLight Local)
Trump officials seek ‘mandatory detention’
Reversing decades of precedent, DHS announced in July that most immigrants in ICE custody would be ineligible for bond and are instead subject to “mandatory detention.” The Board of Immigration Appeals, a body within the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that sets rules for immigration courts, sided with DHS in September.
But a Nov. 20 ruling by U.S. Judge Sunshine Sykes of the Central District of California gave the Madison couple and ICE detainees nationwide a moment of optimism.
Sykes partially ruled on the side of four undocumented immigrants ICE picked up during a June immigration raid in Los Angeles. The four immigrants, represented by attorneys from multiple immigrant rights organizations, had filed a class action lawsuit challenging the rule after they were denied bond.
But both DHS and DOJ, which oversees immigration court judges, argue Sykes’ decision doesn’t apply to all immigrants in similar positions nationwide. Many immigration court judges, including in Chicago, the court with jurisdiction over most immigrants detained in Wisconsin, have continued to deny bond hearings for immigrants in custody, citing the administration’s reasoning.
DOJ spokesperson Kathryn Mattingly said department leaders are not instructing immigration judges to specifically reject bond motions.
“Immigration judges are independent adjudicators and decide all matters before them on a case-by-case basis,” Mattingly wrote in a statement to Wisconsin Watch.
Next steps for Madison couple
Crouse, the couple’s attorney, filed motions seeking the Madison couple’s bond before the California ruling. Their motions, even if futile, could help clarify the scope of Sykes’ ruling, he said.
Crouse and other attorneys are separately testing the last remaining pathway to release: filing “habeas petitions” asking judges to rule on the lawfulness of their clients’ detention. A district court judge in Milwaukee denied a petition for Ugarte-Arenas on Monday, and Pacheco-Acosta is still awaiting a decision from a judge in Kentucky. If Pacheco-Acosta’s petition is successful, she will receive a bond hearing.
Back in Chicago, Judge Saltzman is preparing a written order outlining her reasoning for granting the couple asylum. DHS signaled plans to challenge her decision before the Board of Immigration appeals. It has 30 days to do so after Saltzman releases her written order.
Though Crouse called the couple’s case strong — not least because of mounting U.S. military actions in Venezuela — he noted that recent board decisions siding with DHS mean nothing is assured.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
State funding of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been reduced by more than $100 million per biennium in the past 30 years.
A key factor: smaller debt payments.
DNR received $334.3 million in state general purpose revenue in the 1995-97 state budget and $226.2 million in 2025-27.
That’s a reduction of $108.1 million, or 32%.
Between the two periods, debt service dropped from $234.7 million to $103.4 million.
A Wisconsin Reddit user posted Nov. 22 about the cuts.
A 2023 report on DNR by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum said those savings have been used to fund Medicaid, K-12 schools, prisons and tax cuts. Republicans have controlled all or part of the state budget process for all but one cycle since 1995.
The DNR is charged with protecting and enhancing air, land, water, forests, wildlife, fish and plants and provides outdoor recreational activities.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Reading Time: 6minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Undergraduate students can major in public policy starting in fall 2026.
Officials say that it’s the first public policy major in Wisconsin and that it may be the only one in the country focused on teaching students how to engage in civil dialogue and find common ground.
More and more students were interested in undergraduate certificates from the La Follette School of Public Affairs, which caused leaders to investigate whether there would be demand for a major.
Students will learn how to use curiosity to connect with people, as well as how to evaluate the effectiveness of policies.
At a time when American politics are increasingly polarized and partisan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison is launching a new undergraduate major focused on working across those divides to create evidence-based public policy.
The public policy major, debuting in fall 2026, is the first undergraduate major from the La Follette School of Public Affairs. The Wisconsin Legislature created the school in 1983 to educate future public servants for state and local government. In 2019, after decades of offering only graduate programs, the school added undergraduate certificates — UW-Madison’s version of a minor — in public policy and later in health policy.
Today, they’re among the most popular certificates on campus, said La Follette School Director Susan Webb Yackee. The animosity and gridlock that plague American politics hasn’t discouraged students. In fact, she thinks it’s only made them more interested.
“This could be a time when our young people are running away from our policy problems, but many of them are running toward them,” Yackee said, noting that she’s seen particular interest in policies about health, environment and climate change.
With the new major, those young people will have the option to make public policy their primary focus. School leaders say that it’s the first public policy major in Wisconsin and that it may be the only one in the country focused on teaching students how to engage in civil dialogue and find common ground.
Those are the skills society needs today, Yackee said.
“In a 50-50 state like Wisconsin, in a 50-50 country like the United States, we won’t be able to solve our big public policy problems by simply taking the point of view that one might agree with,” Yackee said. “We will have to work across the political aisle to make real change.”
Yackee spoke to Wisconsin Watch about how she hopes the new program will transform students, campus and the future of policymaking in the United States.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What exactly is public policy, and how is it different from political science?
Public policy is the study of government institutions as well as decision making that affects everyone’s lives. That differs from political science in the sense that we’re interested in not just the politics of how those decisions get made, but also whether public policies that go into effect work or not. Evaluating what works and what doesn’t in existing public policy, as well as predicting what kinds of policies may work and why, is a terrifically important part of our faculty research, as well as the classes that students take….
I’m a political scientist, but most of our faculty at the La Follette School are economists. They’re oftentimes much more focused on … Does that policy work? How is it different than policies in other states? If there’s a policy change, did that change actually match what legislators or practitioners wanted to see happen?
UW-Madison’s new public policy major will teach students how to evaluate government institutions and the policies that shape life, Susan Webb Yackee told Wisconsin Watch. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Why did the faculty decide to focus the new curriculum on civil dialogue and finding common ground?
Our mission is evidence-based policymaking, and we quickly identified that to get to our mission, people had to be able to sit down in the same room and talk about it. You have to be able to talk before you can talk about evidence … That was a need we felt we could serve particularly well within our major … That’s also a skill that a lot of our undergraduate students on campus, who might not be public policy majors, could also benefit from.
For some people, this feels like a sort of dismal time for politics or public policy. What are you hearing from students about why they’re interested in public policy and what kinds of problems they want to solve?
It’s absolutely true that politics and our current public policy atmosphere turns off a lot of people right now. But very interestingly, we’re seeing huge student engagement in public policy on campus …
A lot of UW-Madison students are interested in working in the nonprofit sector. Many nonprofits need to be able to evaluate their programs to see if they work or not … We teach classes in: How would we understand the goals of the program? How would we quantify them? … So the kind of skills-based classes that we teach have a lot of translation into other fields beyond just government service.
Do you hear students expressing frustration with politicians today?
I think there’s a lot of frustration with inaction, and I think that’s normal for traditionally aged college students. Is that any different today than it was in the 1970s or the 1950s? They’re impatient for change, and good for them. I am too, and I love their impatience.
“If we can position students with (these) skills … and they can be trained and ready to go when our country arguably needs them more than ever, then we will have done our job as educators,” Susan Webb Yackee says. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Let me give you a concrete example of a class I taught … It was for students to do applied policy analysis with real-world clients. This class happened to have three real-world clients, and they were all sitting Wisconsin legislators…
The first day of class was me saying, “Some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Republican (client), and some of you are going to get assigned to work with a Democrat … and if that’s a problem for you in this class, then you ought not to take it, because we are going to provide the best nonpartisan analysis that we can possibly provide to these elected members so that they can make the best decisions they can make for our state.”
It was sort of like a pin drop when I said that. Nobody dropped the class. Those students did a fabulous job … A lot of those students were bio majors or chem majors — they weren’t political science majors. They did these reports on these topics, and some of them have now been passed into state law. So they were part of the ecosystem which created real change.
The students … (also) testified in one of the Senate committee rooms in the Wisconsin Legislature… They presented. They were asked questions. Afterwards, one of the students came up to grab me and said, “Dr. Yackee, this is the professional thrill of my lifetime” …
That class is sort of a nutshell of what we’re hoping to accomplish in this undergraduate major.
What do we know about how to promote civil dialogue and find common ground and about how to teach people to do that?
One of the things that we know about teaching classes on talking across the political divide is the importance of establishing ground rules in terms of how those conversations are going to take place. One of our current faculty members, Associate Professor Amber Wichowsky, very much emphasizes curiosity. One of the ground rules for her classes is you need to be curious about how and why people feel differently than yourself …
It’s innate human behavior to put people in different camps of “us” and “them” … If we come into conversations with that framing, we will not be successful. If we come in with a framing of curiosity and an openness to new perspectives and ideas — it is not that we’re looking to change people’s values, but we are looking to humanize the other because that is one step toward being able to listen to other people’s points of view and work across the political divide.
Free speech on campus is a hot topic these days. How do you hope the major and the skills that you’re providing students might create the kind of environment that you’d like to see on campus?
Great question. I think of it like my bicep: I don’t work out as much as I should, but the more I work out that muscle, the stronger it gets. I think we don’t have enough opportunities for students to engage with people that are different than them and think differently than them.
Books are organized in Susan Webb Yackee’s office on Dec. 3, 2025, at UW-Madison. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Let me submit that a university is a place of ideas, so the most important kind of diversity is the diversity of ideas. It should be a fundamental job of ours to encourage those interactions … We’re going to do that in our classes, but we’re also going to do that by hosting politicians and practitioners and journalists that have different points of view. We’ve done that now for years, and we will continue to do that.
So if this major is successful, how do you picture the campus will be different?
We hope that it would provide an outlet for students who are interested in applied politics and policy and careers in that space to have a fuller and richer UW-Madison educational experience …
If we can position students with (these) skills … and they can be trained and ready to go when our country arguably needs them more than ever, then we will have done our job as educators, but we’ll also have done our job in promoting the Wisconsin Idea in a really important way.
Have a question about jobs or job training in Wisconsin? Or want to tell a reporter about your struggle to find the right job or the right workers? Email reporter Natalie Yahr, nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org, or call or text her at 608-616-0752.
Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus.
A Wisconsin Senate committee held a public hearing on a Republican bill that would bar local governments from passing ordinances that grant legal rights to natural resources.
The Monthlies Project mission is to provide free period products to school age students and spread the word about period poverty. Nearly 1 in 4 students struggle to afford period products, according to Period.org.
Most of the package is earmarked for row-crop producers. It aims to help farmers — especially those who grow soybeans — balance out losses from high costs and a trade war with China.
President Donald Trump's former attorney in battleground Wisconsin alleged Monday that a judge presiding over his felony forgery case related to the 2020 election is guilty of misconduct and must step aside.
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany has said his campaign is aiming to raise $40 million for the 2026 gubernatorial race. Tiffany delivers a speech at his launch event in Wausau in September. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the current frontrunner in the GOP gubernatorial primary, criticized the “billionaire loophole” that has led to record spending in statewide races in Wisconsin, even though he voted for the legislation that helped expand spending in 2015.
Tiffany has said his campaign is aiming to raise $40 million for the 2026 gubernatorial race. “We’ll see if we get there,” Tiffany said in an interview with PBS Wisconsin last week. “But, you know, Wisconsin, because of that pass-through loophole, I call it the billionaire loophole, there’s just so much money that comes into Wisconsin. But, you know, you can cry about it or you can compete. We choose to compete… We’re hoping to raise $40 million.”
Spending on Wisconsin statewide elections has grown substantially over the last decade in part because of an overhaul of the state’s campaign finance laws adopted in 2015 under the leadership of former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature.
Republican lawmakers at the time argued that the changes to the campaign finance laws were necessary to align state law with U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Citizens United v. FEC, which in 2010 struck down a nationwide ban on political donations from corporations, and McCutcheon v. FEC, which in 2014 found that annual caps on total political donations from one person are unconstitutional.
Under 2015 Wisconsin Act 117, Wisconsin lawmakers eliminated a state law that capped individual donations to all candidates and political committees in a single year at $10,000. Limits on contributions for each state and local office were increased and limits on contributions to party and legislative campaign committees were eliminated, creating a loophole that allowed unlimited money to flow through parties and committees into individual campaigns. The law eliminated restrictions on coordination between political parties and candidates and allowed for political parties and legislative campaign committees to make unlimited contributions to candidate committees.
The state law has become a topic of conversation again as the U.S. Supreme Court heard a case Tuesday challenging a federal law limiting the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for office.
Tiffany has represented Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District since 2020, but prior to that he served in the state Senate. As a state senator, Tiffany voted for AB 387, which later became Act 117, along with the other Senate Republicans. Only one Republican, former state Sen. Rob Cowles, voted against the measure.
Tiffany’s campaign has not responded to a request for comment about the vote and whether he wants to see changes to state campaign finance law.
At the time, advocacy groups and Democratic lawmakers warned the legislation would lead to obscene spending in Wisconsin elections. The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign warned in written testimony that the legislation would mean “billionaires and multimillionaires will have an outsized influence over who gets elected” and that political contests would “be less between candidates and more between tycoons.”
Spending in governors’ races was already growing following the U.S. Supreme Court decision and before the state law was adopted. In 2010, $37.37 million was spent on the governor’s race; in 2014, spending increased to $81.78 million. The increase in spending ballooned dramatically after the passage of the 2015 law.
A record-breaking $164 million was spent in 2022 on Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the cost represented a 77% increase from the previous $93.06 million record that was set in the 2018 governor’s race.
Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Mandela Barnes, who served in the Assembly in 2015, did not vote on the campaign spending bill, joining the rest of his Democratic Assembly colleagues who said it was a conflict of interest for lawmakers to rewrite the laws that govern their campaigns. He is the only Democratic candidate in the current crowded primary field who was in the Legislature at the time.
Barnes said in a press release in 2015 that he opposed the bill because Republicans rejected an amendment that would have delayed implementation until after the 2016 election cycle. He said Republicans “acted in blatant self-interest for their campaign committees by voting down my effort,” so he “recused myself from voting on ultimate passage of this outrageous proposal.”
Barnes also said then that with the legislation Republicans had “fully embraced the darkness of corruption by voting to rig the rules to line their own campaign pockets with shady special interest money and allow for more corruption to go undetected and unprosecuted.”
Barnes, a former lieutenant governor and U.S. Senate candidate, recently said he is aiming to raise $50 million over the course of the race, but at the same time criticized the escalation in campaign spending.
“It’s not a good sign for things. I wish that were not the case,” Barnes told reporters Monday. “The goal is to get big money out of politics. The goal is for campaign and ethics reform… We should be taking more steps to reduce the impact of money in politics.”
Other Democratic candidates include Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee Co. Exec. David Crowley, state Sen. Kelda Roys, state Rep. Francesca Hong, Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. CEO Missy Hughes and former state Rep. Brett Hulsey.
Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann is the only other Republican candidate currently in the race.
Barnes and Tiffany have not had to file campaign finance reports yet as they entered after the last deadline. Candidates’ next campaign finance filing deadline is Jan. 15, 2026. Those reports will cover July 1, 2025 through Dec. 31, 2025.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday that he has signed 34 bills into law, including a bill requiring judges to sentence offenders to at least 10 years in prison if convicted of a human trafficking crime and 15 years for a child trafficking crime. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced Tuesday that he has signed 34 bills into law, including a bill requiring judges to sentence offenders to at least 10 years in prison if convicted of a human trafficking crime and 15 years for a child trafficking crime.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
“Crimes of this nature — most especially when it comes to our kids — should be punishable by the full extent of the law,” Evers said in a statement. “With this bill, we are helping ensure that we’re protecting some of our most vulnerable youth and holding predators accountable, most especially when they prey on our kids.”
The bill includes increases to the maximum amounts of prison time a person can receive for human and child trafficking crimes, and it allows more time for prosecution of human trafficking crimes.
Human trafficking involves using force, fraud or coercion for labor, services or a commercial sex act. Trafficking of a child can involve a knowing attempt to recruit a child for commercial sex acts. Wisconsin trafficking law also bans benefiting from trafficking or knowingly receiving compensation from the earnings of debt bondage, a prostitute or a commercial sex act.
Last month, the Wisconsin Examiner reported on lawmakers’ reasons for supporting the bill, such as preventing human traffickers from doing further harm. Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac) cited cases that appeared to have taken place in other states in which people convicted of sex trafficking received between six and eight years in prison.
The Examiner reported on criminal justice advocacy groups and attorneys’ criticisms of the mandatory minimums, including a concern from attorneys that judges would sentence people who are trafficking victims themselves to the mandatory minimum punishment without being able to consider whether the person deserved a lighter sentence because their trafficking crime was influenced by their trafficker. The bill didn’t contain an exception to the mandatory minimum for that type of situation. While Wisconsin law allows a defense in court for people who committed a crime as a “direct result” of trafficking, that didn’t allay critics’ concerns.
The anti-sex trafficking organization Shared Hope International gave Wisconsin law failing grades on multiple categories relevant to survivors of child sex trafficking: “protection from unjust criminalization,” “legal relief” and “survivor-centered supports.” The analysis was based on laws enacted as of July 1.
Th Democratic bill would fund special education reimbursement on a sum sufficient model instead of a sum certain model. An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)
Democratic lawmakers are proposing a bill to ensure that school districts get reimbursed for their special education costs at the rates projected when the current state budget was signed.
The 2025-27 state budget, passed by the state Legislature and signed by Gov. Tony Evers in July, provided funding that was estimated to bring the reimbursement rate to a historic 42% in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. However, recent estimates show the funding set aside will not be enough to meet that rate.
Wisconsin currently uses a “sum certain” funding model for its special education reimbursement rate, meaning payments to schools come from a fixed pot of money set aside in the budget. If schools spend more than estimated, there is no increase in reimbursement and the rate falls.
The Department of Public Instruction notified school districts in November that the initial special education reimbursement payments this year will be about 35% of their costs. This will not be the final reimbursement rate.
The Democratic bill would change state education funding to a sum sufficient model, meaning the amount of money provided by the state would meet shifting costs to maintain a set reimbursement rate.
Rep. Angelina Cruz (D-Racine) said in a statement that the bill gives Republican lawmakers the opportunity to “prove” that they were serious about providing a special education reimbursement at the rate that they proposed in the budget.
“Imagine your employer choosing to pay you for less than half of the work you’ve done,” Cruz said. “That’s the position we’re putting our public schools in. This level of reimbursement is not what our schools want or need, and it’s not what our children with disabilities deserve. At the very least, we must keep our promise.”
Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire) said school districts deserve a higher reimbursement rate, noting that many advocates including state Superintendent Jill Underly called for a 90% reimbursement rate in the state budget, and Democratic lawmakers, who are seeking to win control of the Legislature in 2026, would pursue making that a reality in the future.
“When Democrats control the Legislature, we will fight for full, fair funding in the budget. But right now, this bill ends the broken promises,” Phelps said. “It prevents another year of shortfalls and tells kids, families and districts that they can count on the state to keep its word.”
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., answers questions from reporters after chairing a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Sept. 17, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans announced Tuesday they will hold a vote on their own health care proposal later this week to counter a Democratic bill that would extend enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans for three more years.
The 32-page GOP bill would not address the expiring ACA marketplace tax credits but would send payments to certain Americans through Health Savings Accounts to cover some of the cost of health care.
Neither measure has the 60 votes needed to advance under that chamber’s rules. That would leave the ACA marketplace subsidies to expire at the end of the year and dramatically spike the cost of health insurance for the millions of people enrolled in those plans.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats’ bill to simply extend the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits to offset the costs Americans pay for that insurance was unacceptable.
“The way that the program is structured, the money goes straight to the insurance companies,” Thune said. “And the way that we think this ought to work is you ought to come up with a way in which you can deliver the benefit to the patients and not to the insurance companies.”
Thune said the Democratic bill lacks an income cap for ACA marketplace tax credits and allows $0 premiums for health insurance plans — guaranteeing the measure will fail.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, called the GOP proposal a “nonstarter” that would lead to “junk insurance.” He said the only way to avoid a dramatic increase in health insurance costs next year is to extend the enhanced ACA tax credits.
“Their phony proposal is dead on arrival,” Schumer said. “The bill not only fails to extend the tax credits, it increases costs, adds tons of new abortion restrictions for women, expands junk fees and permanently funds cost-sharing reductions.”
Multiple plans
Senate Republicans have debated for weeks whether to hold a vote on a GOP plan to show the party has something to offer toward reducing health care costs. Thune promised Democrats a vote on a health care bill of their choosing in exchange for votes to end the government shutdown.
Schumer announced last week that Democrats would hold the vote on a three-year extension of the enhanced ACA tax credits as they exist now.
Several GOP senators, including Maine’s Susan Collins and Ohio’s Bernie Moreno, have released plans that would include an extension of the expiring tax credits while beginning to transition away from those subsidies.
But Republican leaders ultimately decided to hold a vote on a proposal released earlier this week by Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
The Cassidy-Crapo legislation would have the Department of Health and Human Services deposit money into Health Savings Accounts for people enrolled in bronze or catastrophic health insurance plans purchased on the ACA marketplace in 2026 or 2027, according to a summary of the bill.
Health Savings Accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts that consumers can use to pay for medical expenses that are not otherwise reimbursed. They are not health insurance products.
ACA marketplace enrollees who select a bronze or catastrophic plan and make up to 700% of the federal poverty level would receive $1,000 annually if they are between the ages of 18 and 49 and $1,500 per year if they are between the ages of 50 and 64.
That would set a threshold of $109,550 in annual income for one person, or $225,050 for a family of four, according to the 2025 federal poverty guidelines. The numbers are somewhat higher for residents of Alaska and Hawaii.
The funding could not go toward abortion access or gender transitions, according to the Republican bill summary.
Proposal modeled on Trump comments
Cassidy and Crapo outlined how their proposal would work during afternoon floor speeches, where they also aired their grievances with how the Affordable Care Act has affected Americans’ health care costs.
Crapo rebuked Democrats for establishing the enhanced ACA marketplace tax credits during the coronavirus pandemic and scheduling them to sunset at the end of this year.
“The pattern has become clear: Democrats respond to rising premiums by throwing taxpayer dollars at the problem,” Crapo said. “Their supposedly short-term fixes only drive premiums higher and make the problem harder to solve. Leaving us with apparently no choice other than to do the same thing again and again and again.”
The GOP plan, he said, was modeled off President Donald Trump’s request to send funding directly to Americans to spend on their health care.
“Families can use that money to cover costs not handled by their insurance policy without having to wait for insurance companies to approve their treatment decisions,” Crapo said. “Because families want the best value for their money, they will seek out the most appropriate treatment. Over time this will result in lower health care costs as providers compete for patients.”
Cassidy said the bill would not subsidize health insurance premiums but would help some Americans pay for doctor exams, dentist visits, glasses and prescriptions.
Once eligible ACA marketplace enrollees receive that funding in their Health Savings Accounts, he said, they will shop around for better prices, including on x-rays, which are often used to determine if someone has broken a bone.
“She’s going to say, ‘Wait a second, the x-ray is $150 here and $500 there. I’m going to where it’s cheaper, not more expensive,’” Cassidy said, giving an example. “And I can tell you when that begins to happen, the people who are more expensive begin to lower their price.”
The U.S. Education Department announced a proposed agreement with Republican-led states to permanently eliminate the Biden-era SAVE plan. (Catherine Lane/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education announced a proposed agreement Tuesday that would permanently axe an income-driven student loan repayment plan in which more than 7 million student loan borrowers are enrolled.
Under a joint proposal with seven Republican-led states that challenged the program, the department would not enroll any new borrowers in the Saving on a Valuable Education, or SAVE, plan, deny any pending applications and place borrowers currently in the plan into legally compliant repayment plans.
The program, introduced in 2023 under then-President Joe Biden’s administration, was hit with legal challenges from several GOP-led states, including Missouri, and has been blocked by the courts. The initiative sought to provide lower monthly loan payments for borrowers and forgive remaining debt after a certain period of time.
If a Missouri federal court approves the agreement, the department said borrowers currently enrolled in the SAVE plan “will have a limited time to select a new, legal repayment plan and begin repaying their student loans.”
The agreement stems from a legal challenge to the plan brought by Missouri, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Dakota, Ohio and Oklahoma in 2024.
A ‘deceptive scheme’
In a statement alongside the announcement, Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said President Donald Trump’s administration “is righting this wrong and bringing an end to this deceptive scheme.”
“The law is clear: if you take out a loan, you must pay it back,” Kent added. “Thanks to the State of Missouri and other states fighting against this egregious federal overreach, American taxpayers can now rest assured they will no longer be forced to serve as collateral for illegal and irresponsible student loan policies.”
Republicans argued the permissive repayment plan let borrowers off the hook at the expense of federal taxpayers.
Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway said in a statement Tuesday her office “fought for hardworking Americans who were being preyed upon by Biden Administration bureaucrats, and we won in court every time.”
“We appreciate President Trump’s real, long-term solutions instead of illegal student loan schemes,” Hanaway added.
Student advocates, though, said the agreement would place an additional burden on student borrowers already struggling with a rising cost of living.
Persis Yu, deputy executive director and managing counsel at the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, blasted the settlement agreement as “pure capitulation” in a Tuesday statement.
“While millions of student loan borrowers struggle amidst the worsening affordability crisis … billionaire Education Secretary, Linda McMahon chose to strike a back-room deal with a right-wing state Attorney General and strip borrowers of the most affordable repayment plan that would help millions to stay on track with their loans while keeping a roof over their head,” Yu said.
Interest accumulating
In February, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court injunction that blocked the SAVE plan from going into effect. Borrowers under the plan were placed in an interest-free forbearance last year amid legal limbo.
But borrowers’ loans in the SAVE forbearance began to accrue interest Aug. 1 — a move the department announced in July to comply with court orders.
The SAVE plan was already set to be phased out by July 2028 under congressional Republicans’ tax and spending cut bill that Trump signed into law this year.
The front entrance of the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington, D.C., which houses the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. (Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Tuesday defended the merits of its fast-track deportation policy before a panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, saying immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years without legal authorization are not guaranteed due process.
The suit, brought by immigration rights advocacy groups, challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s expanded expedited removal rule’s application to immigrants in the interior of the United States who cannot prove they have remained in the country for more than two years.
The expanded policy, which allows the removal of immigrants without an appearance before an immigration judge, is a pillar of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Drew Ensign from the U.S. Department of Justice said that immigrants cannot rely on due process rights granted in the Constitution because those rights are reserved for U.S. citizens. Congress and Supreme Court precedents restrict immigrants’ rights to due process, he said.
Additionally, Ensign argued that because Congress authorized the DHS secretary to use expedited removal, the courts have no jurisdiction on the matter.
Anand Balakrishnan, legal counsel for Make the Road New York, the immigrant rights advocacy group that brought the challenge, said the policy skirts a fair legal process for immigrants.
Democratic state attorneys general also submitted a brief in support of the immigrant rights groups, arguing that the expanded use of expedited removal is unconstitutional. Those states include California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state.
Policy expanded to interior
For decades, expedited removal has been used to apply to migrants apprehended at the U.S. border and quickly deported without appearing before an immigration judge. In January, the Trump administration expanded its scope to the interior of the country and applied it to any immigrant apprehended who cannot prove they have remained in the country for more than two years.
An appeals court in late November declined the Trump administration’s request to pause a district court’s block of the policy while the appeal was pending.
Tuesday’s hearing was part of the Trump administration’s appeal on the merits of its policy before a different appeals panel, Judges Justin R. Walker, Neomi Rao and Robert L. Wilkins. President Donald Trump nominated Walker and Rao and former President Barack Obama nominated Wilkins.
The panel appeared skeptical of the administration’s argument that due process rights do not apply to immigrants who entered the U.S. without legal authorization.
Duty to notify
The judges seemed split, though, about if the government should be expected to explain the expedited removal statute to a person it is attempting to remove and what that person’s rights are to challenge their removal, or if the person should have to ask for their own due process rights.
“Even if we accept your portrayal of how the due process works, … under that framing, there still has to be adequate notice (of removal),” Wilkins said to Ensign.
Ensign argued that immigrants subject to expedited removal have sufficient notice they are being removed and can’t rely on the due process clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment to challenge it. The executive branch has the authority to decide how to apply the clause to immigrants, he said.
Wilkins pushed back on that argument, saying notices must meet minimum standards.
“The notice (of removal) has to be sufficient,” he said to Ensign. “(It) has to inform you of at least what the procedures are or what you’re facing.”
Balakrishnan said a mere notice of removal is “inadequate.” An immigrant subject to expedited removal can be deported within hours and without having time to challenge their removal or even speak to an attorney, he said.
Walker seemed skeptical that the burden of notifying an immigrant that they were subject to the policy fell to the government.
“For someone who has chosen to be here illegally, in violation of our laws….from a due process perspective it’s not too much to ask that if someone here illegally wants the special non-expedited removal procedures that Congress has graciously afforded them, it’s not too much to ask that they ask for them,” he said.
Balakrishnan argued that wouldn’t be sufficient due process.
“I think it’s common sense that having even that bare amount of information, ‘if you’ve been here for over two years you’re not subject to expedited removal’ would certainly decrease the risk of error,” Balakrishnan said. “I’m not sure how it would be overly burdensome for the government to do that.”
Login
