As Wisconsin sees more extremes, experts highlighted potential approaches that communities may adopt to strengthen resilience to climate impacts.
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A more than half-century-old fundraiser for the UW-Stevens Point student-run radio station, the World’s Largest Trivia Contest is a longstanding family event for student Frank Ross. Now Ross writes the questions for this trivia marathon. Generations of his family play on.
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Ananth Seshadri, director and co-author of a report on health care costs, said increasing costs hurts Wisconsin's economic competitiveness because insurance is often tied to employment.
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As Wisconsin residents are still cleaning up damage from storms that rolled through the state this week, some people are now being told to evacuate their communities due to high water levels.
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Congress is looking to curtail investor-owned rental property in hopes of boosting family home ownership. But the idea could backfire, a Wisconsin housing expert says.
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The Republican senator joined WPR’s "Wisconsin Today" as Congress is back in Washington to tackle big issues.
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The Pabst Brewing Company can be held liable for injuries that an independent contractor suffered on the job, and may pay out damages, after a decision from the Wisconsin Supreme Court Wednesday.
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The Department of Public Instruction is being questioned by legislative Republicans about whether a $368,885 meeting in 2024 violated open meetings law.
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Defense attorneys are calling for sanctions against the Kenosha County district attorney over actions in an ongoing homicide trial. A judge called the DA's actions "extremely unacceptable."
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Milwaukee filmmakers worked to give audiences a sense of what Brewers’ radio broadcaster Bob Ueker was like away from the mic.
The post New documentary ‘Ueck’ found Bob Uecker most at home at the ballpark appeared first on WPR.
Maritza Montejo, a Liberty Tax Service office manager, helps Aurora Hernandez, left, with her taxes at a Liberty Tax Service office on the last day to file taxes on April 15, 2026, in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The 2026 tax filing season closed Wednesday with the Trump administration and Republicans on Capitol Hill hailing success under last year’s massive tax cuts law, while Democrats said any benefits have been wiped out by skyrocketing gas prices, inflation and more.
More than 53 million Americans claimed at least one new benefit, averaging a tax cut of $800, under the tax cuts and spending package passed by congressional Republicans and enacted by President Donald Trump on July 4, according to the Department of the Treasury.
Originally titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but rebranded by Republicans as the Working Families Tax Cuts law, the measure made permanent Trump’s 2017 reduced tax brackets.
It also quadrupled the state and local tax deduction cap and increased the child tax credit by $200.
Democrats marked Tax Day by criticizing the law and pointed to increasing inflation and tariff costs as wiping out the value of tax relief, as both sides try to gain the advantage in messaging ahead of crucial midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.
The new law cut taxes on tips until 2028 and on qualifying car loan interest until 2029.
As for Trump’s campaign promise for no tax on overtime, the law applies the advantage on up to $12,500 in overtime earnings for individuals, and $25,000 for joint filers, through 2028.
Additionally, eligible senior citizens can now deduct up to $6,000 for individuals, $12,000 for couples, until 2029.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a Tax Day statement that Trump’s leadership upholds “the foundational principle that hardworking Americans should be rewarded, not punished with tax hikes, and the results of this tax season prove it.”
According to Internal Revenue Service statistics to date and made public Wednesday:
Bessent, acting IRS commissioner after a turnover of six IRS commissioners in 2025, said the agency has “worked tirelessly to ensure our tax system works for the people it is meant to serve.”
“From the shop floor to the kitchen table, taxpayers are feeling the difference of the largest tax cuts in our nation’s history, and millions of Americans are keeping more of what they earn and seeing their paychecks go further than ever before,” Bessent said.
The White House circulated a collection of statements from taxpayers Tuesday praising the new deductions.
Trump also held a photo opportunity Monday, when he received a McDonald’s delivery from a self-proclaimed “DoorDash Grandma” who lauded tax relief on her tips in a planned event. Trump subsequently pulled cash from his pocket and handed it to the woman, Sharon Simmons of Arkansas, who represented the tech delivery service.
Simmons, no newcomer to such GOP appearances, also testified before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee in late July 2025, following the passage of the tax law, to praise the no tax on tips policy.
Frank Bisignano, IRS chief executive officer, told Senate tax writers on Capitol Hill Wednesday that the 2026 filing season was the “most successful tax filing season in IRS history.”
Trump created the IRS CEO position last year. Bisignano also serves as the commissioner of the U.S. Social Security Administration.
“This landmark legislation forms the cornerstone of the administration’s growth agenda. The latest numbers tell the story,” Bisignano told the Senate Committee on Finance during the panel’s annual oversight hearing examining tax collection.
The agency to date has seen over 134 million income tax returns filed for 2025 earnings, with 98% of them done electronically, according to IRS data. Bisignano hailed the issuance of 80 million refunds that on average totaled $3,400, up by 11% compared to 2024.
Senate Democrats on the panel panned the cost of the new tax regime and questioned whether a shrinking IRS staff will contribute to less enforcement.
Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., said “the lack of cops on the beat at the IRS is going to cost the Treasury in the United States $646 billion in unpaid taxes by the wealthiest people in America.”
According to reports, roughly 26,000 employees left the IRS last year as part of Trump’s civil service reduction incentives and firings.
“I remember you saying when you and I met before your confirmation that you are deeply concerned about the level of national debt in this country,” Bennet said to Bisignano. “It is $38 trillion and a lot of that is because of the completely unpaid-for tax bill that is the Trump tax bill.”
The cost of the tax bill will be realized in years to come, according to congressional scorekeepers.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the law will cost $3.4 trillion over the next 10 years — more than $4 trillion if accounting for interest that will accumulate on the nation’s debt.
An analysis by the Tax Foundation, which generally advocates for lower taxes, found tax revenue coming into U.S. coffers will drop by nearly $5.2 trillion over the next decade. Individual income taxes have been the government’s largest single source of revenue since 1944, according to data compiled by the Tax Policy Center, a partnership between the Urban Institute and Brookings Foundation.
Lawmakers who wrote the massive tax law accounted for some of the lost revenue by overhauling eligibility and work requirements for government health and food assistance for low-income Americans.
According to a recent report from the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, roughly 2.5 million Americans have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits since the tax law came into effect.
The CBO estimated the law’s changes to work requirements for Medicaid, the government’s low-income health care program, will result in millions of Americans losing health insurance.
Senate Republicans defended the law, saying it helped Americans by avoiding “the largest tax increase in American history.”
“Had the 2017 tax cuts expired, taxpayers earning less than $400,000 would have faced a more than $2.6 trillion tax hike over the next decade,” said Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo, R-Idaho.
The panel’s highest-ranking Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., slammed the new law for terminating a free alternative for tax filing, IRS Direct File, enacted under former President Joe Biden’s own budget reconciliation megabill.
The limited pilot program offered a free filing portal directly through the IRS and was available to 19 million taxpayers in 2024.
“Direct File in America died on Mr. Bisignano’s watch,” Wyden said, adding the program’s termination again puts taxpayers at the mercy of “tax software giants who overcharge for a service that ought to be free.”
Rather, the IRS offers Free File, an option available to taxpayers under a certain income level, now capped at $89,000, via a handful of tax preparation software companies that contract with the federal government.
A 2019 Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report described the program as “fraught with complexity and confusion.” Estimates show roughly 14 million free-file-eligible taxpayers were led to pages where they were prompted to pay for add-ons and extra services.
Taxpayers at any income level have the option to file for free via fillable PDF forms, but that option requires manual entry without guided prompts.
Wyden said the arrangement is a “multi-billion dollar rip-off.”
Bisignano called Direct File an “unnecessary and less popular duplicate of programs.”
The Democratic National Committee pounced on Tax Day to highlight Trump’s policies and use of taxpayer funds. Affordability is front and center in the upcoming midterm elections.
Though Trump campaigned on lowering prices and taxes, DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement the president has so far given Americans “a reckless trade war that has hiked prices, and a deadly and costly taxpayer-funded war with Iran.”
“This Tax Day, Americans are seeing lower-than-promised refunds hit their bank accounts that won’t even cover the higher costs Trump has forced them to shoulder. It couldn’t be clearer: Trump and the Republican Party are on the side of billionaires, big corporations, and wealthy special interests,” Martin said.
The historic Pabst Brewery operated in Milwaukee from 1844 until it closed in 1996. (Photo by Joe Hendrickson/Getty Images Plus)
Wisconsin’s highest court ruled Wednesday that Pabst Brewing Co. owes millions in damages to the survivors of a worker employed by a second company who died from a cancer related to asbestos in the Pabst brewery in Milwaukee.
The deceased employee — a steamfitter hired to remove asbestos insulation from piping in the facility — worked for an independent contractor, not directly for Pabst.
But Pabst was sufficiently aware of the dangers of asbestos on its premises to be held responsible under Wisconsin’s workplace safety law, known as the safe place statute, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet wrote in the 5-2 decision. The ruling upheld the circuit court’s award of nearly $7 million to the estate of steamfitter Gerald Lorbiecki.
“As the owner of the brewery, Pabst owed a non-delegable duty under the safe-place statute to frequenters on the premises, a category that includes employees of independent contractors like Lorbiecki,” wrote Dallet. She was joined by Chief Justice Jill Karofsky and Justices Brian Hagedorn, Janet Protasiewicz and Susan Crawford.
Lawyers for Pabst had argued that the brewery wasn’t responsible for the hazard because Lorbiecki’s employer had directed the work, not Pabst. In a dissent, Justices Annette Ziegler and Rebecca Bradley agreed, writing that the Court majority “fails to correctly analyze the law regarding a building owner’s liability to an independent contractor’s employee.”
The asbestos only became a hazard because of the work that Lorbiecki and his coworkers were doing, Ziegler argued.
The repair work took place during the mid-1970s, according to the ruling. “At the Pabst brewery, steamfitters cut out existing insulated pipes and replaced them,” Dallet wrote — a procedure that involved “thousands of pounds of insulation” that would be torn off “many miles” of asbestos-insulated pipe, according to circuit court testimony. The brewery closed in 1996.
Lorbiecki developed mesothelioma in 2017 and sued Pabst and several other contractors and businesses. After he died his widow and his estate took over as the plaintiffs. His widow later died and their son assumed that role.
By the time the case went to trial, claims against the other companies, including Lorbiecki’s employer, had been dismissed, leaving only Pabst.
Pabst asked the lower court to throw out the case on several grounds, including that Lorbiecki worked for an independent contractor rather than Pabst.
The judge denied the company’s summary judgment petition. The jury awarded $6.5 million for Lorbiecki’s injuries and illness. Jurors also awarded $20 million in punitive damages.
Under state law, a portion of the compensatory damages were capped. State law also caps punitive damages at twice the amount of compensatory damages.
After calculating that Pabst was responsible for 42% of the compensatory damages, the judge calculated the total award at $6,986,906, including $4,657,937 in punitive damages.
The Wisconsin 2nd District Appeals Court in Milwaukee held in a May 2024 decision that the punitive damages should be calculated based on the total amount of compensatory damages — $5.5 million — not just the portion applied to Pabst. That would result in punitive damages of more than $11 million.
The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday reversed that portion of the appeals court ruling, however. Punitive damages in the case should reflect only Pabst’s portion of the compensatory damages — $2.3 million — Dallet wrote, yielding the punitive damages as the lower court originally calculated them.
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U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin has introduced a bill to prevent local markets from being blacked out from viewing local sports teams on TV. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin introduced a new bill Tuesday aimed at making it simpler and cheaper for people to watch professional sports.
Currently, for a fan in Wisconsin to watch every Packers, Brewers and Bucks game in a year it costs more than $1,500 annually to purchase the necessary streaming services and subscriptions — a cost that Baldwin said Wednesday benefits league and streaming service executives, as well as the billionaire owners of sports teams, at the expense of fans.
“This isn’t just a Packers or a Wisconsin issue. This has become an American issue,” Baldwin said during a Wednesday news conference. “What used to be grabbing the remote and hitting a button or two has turned into a maze of streaming subscriptions, unexpected blackouts or a sky high payment. To top it all off, there is no consistency, and it is flat out confusing for fans.”
She said at the news conference she was introducing the bill without any co-sponsors specifically to start conversations in Congress about the issues in the bill.
Baldwin’s For the Fans Act includes two major provisions meant to make it cheaper for people to watch their favorite teams. The first would prohibit league-owned streaming services, such as MLB.Tv or NBA League Pass, from blacking out games that are played locally or on a third-party streamer. The second would require the leagues to provide a way for local fans to watch all games for teams based in the state in which they live.
The proposal comes after the Green Bay Packers v. Chicago Bears playoff game in January was only available on local TV in Wisconsin in the Milwaukee and Green Bay markets — meaning that in five of the state’s markets, fans were forced to subscribe to Amazon to watch the game.
The bill would apply to professional sports teams playing baseball, basketball, football, basketball, hockey and soccer. Minor league teams and leagues with fewer than eight teams are exempted.
Baldwin has also previously introduced the Go Pack Go Act, which aims to make sure the Wisconsin households assigned to Michigan or Minnesota television markets are able to watch Packers games.
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An Iranian flag is planted in the rubble of a police station, damaged in airstrikes on March 3, 2026, in Tehran, Iran. The United States and Israel have continued the joint attack on Iran that began Feb. 28. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — An effort to force President Donald Trump to seek congressional approval for further war actions in Iran failed in the U.S. Senate for the fourth time Wednesday, with all but one Republican continuing to support the president’s Middle East conflict.
Senators voted down the measure, 47-52, with a similar partisan breakdown as earlier votes that saw one Republican and one Democrat break with their parties.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who previously sponsored one of the Iran War Powers Resolutions, again split with his party to oppose Trump’s military actions in Iran, which the president launched without approval from Congress.
As he has previously, Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., was the only Democrat to support Trump continuing the war in Iran.
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., did not vote.
Senate Democrats have vowed more votes ahead to rein in Trump’s joint operations with Israel in Iran.
Wednesday’s War Powers Resolution was sponsored by Sens. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Tim Kaine, D-Va., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
Prior votes to cut off Trump’s unchecked military operations in Iran were held March 18, March 4 and June 27, when the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last year.
The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran has claimed the lives of 13 American troops, and as of Wednesday injured 395, according to the Pentagon. Thousands of civilians in Iran and across the Middle East have been killed and injured in the shelling on both sides.
Meanwhile, the war has set off an oil crisis across the globe as Iran and the U.S. vie for control of the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow passage connecting the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea that moves one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquid natural gas.
A gallon of regular gas peaked at $4.16 on average across the U.S. last week, while diesel reached nearly $5.97, according to AAA. As of Wednesday, a gallon of regular gas sat at $4.10 on average, and diesel at $5.63.
A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed voters held Trump responsible for the spike in gas prices by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought testifies before the U.S. House Budget Committee on April 15, 2026. (Screenshot from committee webcast)
WASHINGTON — The White House budget director on Wednesday defended the administration’s latest request for Congress, testifying before the House Budget Committee that a 43% increase in defense spending and a 10% cut to domestic programs is the best path forward.
Democrats on the panel were highly critical of that proposal, which lawmakers will debate in the months ahead and is unlikely to be approved in full.
Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member on the committee, said the administration’s request to increase defense spending so significantly while not bolstering health care programs like Medicare and Medicaid or helping people pay for child care “is a reflection of priorities that are out of whack,” with what Americans truly need.
Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said during the three-hour hearing that the administration believes a significant boost to defense spending “is meant for significant paradigm-shifting investments.”
“For instance, the president and his Department of War are exhibiting tremendous leadership to build ships, planes, drones, munitions and satellites faster without the backlog of status quo,” he said. “For the industrial base to double or triple and build more facilities, not just add shifts, it requires multi-year agreements to purchase into the future. That cost has to be booked in this first year.”
Vought said the administration’s preference is that Republicans place about $1.15 trillion in the annual Defense spending bill, which will require bipartisan support to move through the Senate, and put another $350 billion in a budget reconciliation bill, which Republicans can advance on their own.
He believes that will avoid Democrats demanding that each $1 increase in defense spending be matched by a $1 increase in domestic spending.
“This Congress has changed the way we can spend money through the reconciliation process to avoid the pitfalls that really caused two decades of not being able to accomplish anything,” he said. “And I think you should be commended for that.”
Republicans used the complex budget reconciliation process last year to enact their “big, beautiful” law and are looking to advance another reconciliation bill in the coming months that would further bolster spending on immigration enforcement activities.
Vought testified before the committee that he isn’t yet able to provide a ballpark estimate for how much in additional defense spending the administration plans to ask Congress to provide for the war in Iran.
“We’re not ready to come to you with a request. We’re still working on it,” he said. “We’re working through to figure out what’s needed in this fiscal year versus next fiscal year.”
The current fiscal year will end on Sept. 30.
Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee raised concerns about what such a steep increase in defense funding would mean for a department that has consistently struggled to account for all of its spending during several audits.
Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal questioned whether the Trump administration was serious about addressing fraud in every department, given its proposal to bolster funding for the Defense Department by more than half a trillion dollars.
Vought responded that the “department is making progress towards the audit.”
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman was even more frustrated with leadership in the Defense Department, saying that there “is so much arrogance in that agency.”
“I keep holding my nose because defense is the most important thing. And they just say, ‘We don’t have to do an audit. We’re so damn important. We don’t care what Congress thinks,’” Grothman said. “I hope that they dial up this audit and have the guys work around the clock, complete an audit by July 31 or before we eventually have to pass this stuff.”
Vought sought to reassure Grothman and other lawmakers on the panel that the Trump administration does want to address how DOD spends money.
“The notion that we’re not trying to find any kinds of inefficiencies at the Department of Defense is not true,” Vought said. “Our view is that we would want to plow those into being able to invest in procurement and research.”
The House Budget Committee won’t actually draft the dozen annual government funding bills.
That is up to the Appropriations Committee, which will hold hearings with Cabinet secretaries and agency leaders in the coming weeks to hear more about the president’s budget request for the fiscal year set to begin Oct. 1.
The Appropriations subcommittees will then draft and debate the spending bills that account for a fraction of the $7 trillion federal budget. A much larger chunk of annual funding, about $4.2 trillion, goes to mandatory programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Another $970 billion goes to interest payments on the debt.
While defense spending predominantly goes to the Pentagon, with a bit going to the Energy Department for nuclear security programs, domestic spending that the administration wants to cut overall is allocated among dozens of agencies.
The departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, Transportation, State, Veterans Affairs and numerous smaller agencies all share the total spending level for domestic programs.
During fiscal year 2025, which ended last September, defense spending totaled $893 billion, while non-defense programs received $980 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
Hail on the roof of a Madison apartment building after an April 14, 2026 storm. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has warned that the severe storms that brought tornadoes, high winds, flooding and hail to Wisconsin Tuesday evening could inspire “storm chasers” to come to the state to scam homeowners seeking repairs.
DATCP said in a news release Wednesday that door-to-door repair crews travel to communities hit by severe weather, offering quick fixes only to do poor quality work or take money up front and perform no work at all.
The agency said the best way to avoid these scams is to hire local workers, ask for recommendations from trusted sources and make sure there is a written contract and documentation of all transactions.
The Wisconsin Builders Association made a similar warning Wednesday, saying in a news release that scammers often skirt state laws regulating contractors. Those include laws that prohibit contractors from offering to pay portions of a homeowner’s insurance deductible or from negotiating with insurance companies, and a law that forbids contractors from refusing to cancel parts of contracts if insurance claims are denied.
“Severe weather can create urgency for homeowners, but that urgency can also make them targets for bad actors,” said Wisconsin Builders Association President Andy Selner. “Taking a few extra steps to verify a contractor can prevent costly mistakes and protect the investment made in your home.”
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U.S. Rep. Tony Wied (R-De Pere) represents the 8th District covering Northeast Wisconsin. (Official U.S. House photo)
Most Americans support banning members of Congress and their families from trading stocks in individual companies.
So says a 2023 University of Maryland study that surveyed about 3,000 registered voters.
Lawmakers in Washington are privy to information the general public may not be and can use it to make advantageous stock trades.
And “the problem is getting worse,” said Kedric Payne, director of the ethics program for the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog in Washington. His team focuses on enforcing existing ethics laws and advocating for tougher ones.
Payne believes the public should know “their elected officials are protecting the public interest and not their own personal interest.”
The STOCK Act, a federal law passed in 2012, requires members of Congress to disclose their trades within about 30 days of the purchase or sale. But the penalty for filing a disclosure report late is a meager $200.
Payne said his organization used to file ethics complaints for congressional stock trading. It’s rare that they file those complaints now since the most common violation is a late report, and the legal penalty for filing late is so insignificant.
While disclosure requirements can help reveal actual or perceived conflicts of interest, Payne said, disclosing conflicts of interest also lessens the public’s trust in government. In effect, the increased transparency doesn’t alleviate whether the trade looks corrupt or is corrupt.
U.S. Rep. Tony Wied, a freshman congressman elected to the Wisconsin 8th in 2024, is no stranger to stock trading. The Republican represents the northeastern portion of the state, and his investment activity consistently outpaces Wisconsin’s other congressional representatives.
A businessman from De Pere who was elected to his seat by a wide margin in 2024, Wied formerly owned a gas station chain in the Green Bay area. His district encompasses parts of Door County, Green Bay and Appleton. Like every other member of Congress, his seat will be up for grabs this year in the midterm elections. Wied has said publicly he plans to seek reelection.
Wied recently reported buying between $760,000 and $1.6 million in stock between Feb. 3 and Feb. 19, according to The Badger Project’s analysis of Wied’s periodic transaction report. The disclosure laws only require that members report ranges and not exact values. In the same time period, Wied also wholly or partially sold stock valued between about $600,000 and $1.5 million.
Members of Congress are required to file periodic reports with the Clerk of the House about 45 days after they, their spouse or their dependent children buy or sell a financial asset worth more than $1,000. Wied’s most recent report, filed in March, is five pages long and lists 25 separate transactions. His largest single transaction was a purchase of between $500,000 and $1 million in U.S. treasury bills, a low-risk, low-reward investment.
In comparison, no other representative among Wisconsin’s U.S. House members — Reps Mark Pocan, Gwen Moore, Scott Fitzgerald, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Brian Steil and Tom Tiffany — have filed periodic transaction reports in the last year.
Members must also submit yearly financial disclosures, which list their assets and liabilities.
The sum of Wied’s assets disclosed in his latest annual disclosure ranges from about $6 million to $13 million, according to a review by The Badger Project. U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, who has millions in commercial real estate and stocks, is the only member of Wisconsin’s delegation in Washington to top that. Johnson reported assets ranging from about $17 million to $81 million in 2025.
Wied’s staff wrote in an email to The Badger Project in January that the congressman’s trades are solely managed by an independent financial advisor and that Wied complies with all ethics laws and guidelines.
Wied’s office did not respond to The Badger Project’s request for comment for this story.
Payne told The Badger Project that Wied isn’t on his group’s radar.
“We haven’t seen anything that would draw this congressman to our attention,” Payne said.
But a congressman’s trades can be aboveboard and still raise suspicion because lawmakers who trade at a high volume will eventually make a transaction that either overlaps with their professional duties or appears to, Payne said.
“It’s only a matter of time for him to have trades over his career that are gonna raise questions whether or not he did anything wrong,” Payne said about Wied. “And when people question if their elected official is prioritizing their interest or prioritizing the official’s personal interest, you have a problem.”
That’s why Payne and his organization have endorsed the bipartisan Restore Trust in Congress Act. The bill was introduced last September and has been stuck in committee since. Among the bill’s 131 co-sponsors are Van Orden and Pocan. If it passes, the proposed legislation would bar members of Congress as well as their spouses and dependent children from both owning and trading individual stocks. Further, members would be required to either divest their current holdings or place them into a blind trust.
“It is a real legislative solution to the problem,” Payne said.
The bill is facing competition as Democrats and Republicans have since introduced their own, “watered down” versions, Payne said. The Stop Insider Trading in Congress Act, introduced by Steil, a Republican, and mentioned by President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address, would prohibit members of Congress from buying individual stocks. But members could continue to own their stocks and sell them. The Restore Trust in Government Act, the Democratic version, would include the president and vice president in the members included in a stock trading ban.
Payne said he has faith that the original bill will pass eventually, but that it will take another scandal to get the public to pay attention and demand Congress to take action.
Tony Wied’s trades in February 2026
| SALES | |||
| MIN | MAX | STOCK | TRADE DATE |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Paycom Software Inc | 2/12/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Block Inc Class A | 2/12/26 |
| PARTIAL SALES | |||
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Fortinet Inc | 2/19/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Broadcom Inc | 2/19/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Western Alliance Bancorp | 2/19/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Salesforce Inc | 2/17/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Lam Resh Corp | 2/12/26 |
| $100,001 | $250,000 | Artista Networks Inc | 2/12/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Take-Two Interactive | 2/11/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Block Inc A Class | 2/11/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Western Alliance Bancorp | 2/9/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Lam Resh Corp | 2/9/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Take-Two Interactive | 2/3/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Artista Networks Inc | 2/3/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Lam Resh Corp | 2/3/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Ulta Beauty Inc | 2/3/26 |
| PURCHASES | |||
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Visa Inc Class A | 2/19/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Labcorp Holdings Inc | 2/19/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Charles Schwab Corp | 2/19/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Micron Technology Inc | 2/19/26 |
| $500,001 | $1,000,000 | U.S. Treasury Bills | 2/13/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | ServiceNow Inc | 2/4/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | Him & Hers Health Inc | 2/3/26 |
| $15,001 | $50,000 | Hubspot Inc | 2/3/26 |
| $50,001 | $100,000 | The Trade Desk Inc Class A | 2/3/26 |
This article first appeared on The Badger Project, an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin. It is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Participants in a welding program for minimum-security inmates are pictured at Southeast Technical College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on Oct. 7, 2024. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)
WASHINGTON — Tucked into President Donald Trump’s new budget request is a plan that could dramatically change — and, critics say, slash — how much money and help states provide to people needing jobs and training.
Trump’s latest budget proposes a federal “Make America Skilled Again’’ grant that would combine a dozen current programs and provide $3.4 billion in spending for certain employment and training programs, down from $4.65 billion anticipated this fiscal year.
The president’s plan would fund block, or general, grants to states, which could then tailor the spending to employment and training needs.
There’s no formula in the budget proposal detailing how or where the money would be distributed, other than a requirement that at least 10% be spent on an apprenticeship program and 3% on innovations. The secretary of the Department of Labor could also reserve up to 0.75% on “program accountability” and technical support.
Congressional Republicans are moving ahead with other ways to fund, and in some cases revamp, federal job programs, though they showed little interest in Trump’s MASA proposal that was also in his budget request last year.
The MASA effort is another in a series of administration initiatives aimed at streamlining job training programs’ administrative costs and making them more responsive to changes in the workplace.
The Labor Department referred questions about the plan to the Office of Management and Budget, which did not respond to questions.
At the National Skills Coalition, an advocacy organization for skills-based training, Megan Evans saw the MASA effort as a way of making deep cuts that ultimately hurt workers and employers, she said in an interview.
“The administration says it’s trying to streamline,” said Evans, the coalition’s senior government affairs manager. “But in reality it’s combining deep cuts with risky consolidations and rollbacks.”
The White House last year issued a detailed report and a video on its strategy, outlining how “workforce programs are fragmented across agencies, stifled by red tape, and too often misaligned with the skills employers need.”
These issues, it said, “pose particular risks as the United States advances toward a bold reindustrialization agenda and navigates the transformational impact of AI (artificial intelligence) on the workforce.”
In the budget released this month, the administration called the program “a key part of the administration’s strategy to fill the growing demand for skilled trades and other occupations,” along with some other programs, including the tax cuts enacted last year.
While MASA aims to reduce administrative costs, a long-sought goal of administrators across the country, popular programs would be consolidated under the block grant, including several with strong constituencies.
Among them are programs for adult training and employment, youth training and employment, the Labor Department’s Re-integration of Ex-Offenders program, Native American programs and others.
The National Skills Coalition saw trouble in folding these programs into a single grant.
“These programs weren’t created in a vacuum,” it said in a blog post last year. “They each serve distinct populations.”
Merging them would be “making it harder for people to access training that fits their lives and needs,” the group said.
It also had doubts about whether block grants would in fact be more efficient.
“By combining multiple workforce programs into a single grant, it becomes significantly harder to track program outcomes, monitor equity and assess whether specific populations–such as veterans, youth, people with disabilities, or former incarcerated people–are being effectively served,” the coalition said.
Some state and local officials share the concern.
“Washington state is already facing significant budget shortfalls, and this proposal would further widen that gap,” said Marisol Tapia Hopper, director of strategic partnerships & funding at the Workforce Development Council of Seattle-King County.
She said combining the programs into a block grant “functions as a reduction in workforce investment, applying a one-size-fits-all approach to a system that is already chronically underfunded.”
The National Governors Association, a bipartisan group comprising all the nation’s governors, has taken no position on the proposal.
“Workforce training is a huge bipartisan priority for governors,” said Jack Porter, NGA program director for workforce development & economic policy.
“Federal support is critical to standing up effective workforce programs, but the federally funded workforce system as it stands now comes with a lot of red tape that shifts time and focus away from the goal, which is (to) provide workers with training,” he said.
Congress has shown little enthusiasm for the administration’s consolidation.
Earlier this month, the Republican-led U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee proposed a comprehensive job training blueprint.
Among its ideas: providing funding for on-the-job learning and strengthening the system that holds state and local workforce boards responsible “for delivering positive outcomes for workers and job seekers.”
The bill would have adult education programs governed by the Labor Department. The aim would be to “connect adult education to apprenticeships, sector partnerships, and employer-led training especially as artificial intelligence reshapes skill demands.”
Included in the legislation, which a committee spokeswoman says is clearly “in line with the broad goals proposed in the president’s budget,” is a Make America Skilled Again pilot program.
It would permit states to apply to combine different workforce funding streams and then spend them on programs that best suit their needs.
The bill, said committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., in a statement, “modernizes a struggling and underutilized workforce development system, delivering reforms that strengthen participant outcomes and ensure greater accountability for taxpayer dollars.”
In the U.S. Senate, Republicans began pushing changes that will help people get access to current programs.
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Republicans’ aim is to “increase Americans’ access to job opportunities by eliminating red tape, increasing flexibility, and modernizing the workforce system.”
The goal is to create one-stop centers where people can get information about jobs and training. The measure would “help Nebraskans find great jobs more efficiently,” said Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Nebraska Republican who co-sponsored the bill.
At the moment, Democrats and Republicans appear deadlocked on how to proceed. The House Appropriations Committee plans to write labor spending legislation in June. The Senate has not announced a schedule.
The partisan lines are forming.
The Trump labor budget “attacks workers and small businesses by undermining workforce development programs at the Department of Labor,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., top Democrat on the House workforce panel, in a statement.
Without the specific programs, he said, “many workers will struggle to provide for their families.”
Walberg sees a need for big change.
“The workforce is evolving rapidly, and legislation designed over a decade ago is no longer meeting today’s demands,” he said.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain an observer after making arrests in January in Minneapolis. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Republicans in Congress are once again looking toward the complex budget reconciliation process as a way to achieve some of their policy goals without Democratic votes.
GOP leaders were able to use the special pathway last year to approve the “big, beautiful” law that extended tax cuts, overhauled and cut Medicaid, provided hundreds of billions in extra funding for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security, and raised the country’s debt limit by $5 trillion, among other provisions.
Now, Republicans will try to use the process at least one more time to provide years of funding to the Department of Homeland Security amid a two-month shutdown, with none of the constraints on immigration enforcement that Democrats have sought.
Democrats’ push to rein in enforcement after federal immigration officers shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis led to a record-breaking stalemate over the annual DHS appropriations bill.
The funding lapse hasn’t yet affected Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, DHS agencies which Republicans bolstered in the last reconciliation bill. But it has had an impact on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration.
Reconciliation will require Republicans in the House and Senate to be almost completely unified on their goals, especially if the party tries to include elements of a hot-button voter identification bill called the SAVE America Act or other policies that don’t have a significant impact on federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit.
What goes in and what is kept out of another reconciliation package will become increasingly important to GOP leaders’ reelection message as the country moves closer to November’s midterm elections.
Regular bills need a simple majority vote to pass the House, but at least 60 senators need to vote to end debate in that chamber. This step, sometimes called the legislative filibuster, or cloture, forces bipartisanship on most legislation, unless it moves through the reconciliation process.
Budget reconciliation bills are exempt from that Senate rule.
So why haven’t Republicans used reconciliation to enact all of their policy goals and campaign promises since taking over unified control last year?
Budget reconciliation bills must follow a specific process and meet strict requirements in the Senate, known as the Byrd rule, named for former West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd.
Very simply, this requires reconciliation bills to address federal spending, revenue, or debt in a way that is not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian.
Very.
First, the House and Senate must adopt a budget resolution with identical sets of reconciliation instructions for committees. Those guidelines will give committee leaders either a minimum amount to spend during the next decade or a maximum amount they can add to the deficit during that window.
The Senate cannot approve the budget resolution without going through a marathon amendment voting session referred to as a vote-a-rama, which typically lasts well into the night.
A budget resolution is a tax and spending blueprint, sort of like a blueprint for building a house before you’ve actually gotten a mortgage or purchased any land. It’s a proposal, but it doesn’t actually change tax law or spend any money.
Once the budget is adopted, the House committees that receive reconciliation instructions must draft, debate and vote to send their bill to the Budget Committee.
Then, the Budget Committee bundles all of the reconciliation bills together in one package and sends it to the House floor, where lawmakers must vote to send it to the Senate, where things get even more complex.
Before a reconciliation bill goes to the Senate floor, it moves through something referred to as the “Byrd bath,” where the Senate parliamentarian determines if each provision fits the strict rules.
Senate leaders can take up the House-passed version of the bill or work through the committee process on their side of the Capitol. Typically, the upper chamber goes directly to the floor and amends the House-passed bill.
The Senate then goes through another vote-a-rama session, giving the minority party, currently Democrats, the chance to put all 100 lawmakers in that chamber on the record about various proposals in the bill.
That process will be especially challenging this year, with Democrats looking to institute guardrails on immigration enforcement activities and get Republicans up for reelection on the record over some of the most pressing issues facing the country.
If the Senate makes any changes to the House-passed bill, it must go back to that chamber for final approval before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature.
If the Senate approves a bill identical to the one passed by the House, it would go to Trump without needing another House vote.
Elements in the bill would violate that rule if they:
They have two more chances during this Congress but are limited by how many budget resolutions they can adopt.
GOP leaders used the fiscal 2025 budget resolution to set up passage of the “big, beautiful” law. They can write a fiscal 2026 budget resolution for one more round and then use the fiscal 2027 budget resolution to run through a third reconciliation process, if they want to.
Fiscal years for the federal government begin on Oct. 1.
As the Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate gaveled in and adjourned the sessions, Democratic members remained on the floor of each chamber to voice their opposition to Republicans’ lack of action. Rep. Kevin Petersen gaveling into the session in the Assembly. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
Republican lawmakers left open Gov. Tony Evers’ special session on gerrymandering on Tuesday, saying they want to have further conversations with Evers about the issue. Evers and Democratic lawmakers criticized the lack of action. In a statement, Evers said “there’s nothing to negotiate.”
The open-ended special session began even as lawmakers and Evers continue to discuss a possible deal on property taxes and school funding.
Evers announced his intention to call the special session in February, urging lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering. He officially ordered the session in March. The constitutional amendment would include language to expressly prohibit drawing districts that give a disproportionate advantage or disadvantage to any political party. It would not lay out a new process for drawing maps.
Wisconsin adopted new legislative maps in 2024 following a state Supreme Court decision that found the previous maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. The maps will be in place until 2030 when redistricting happens again. Unless there is a change to the current process, lawmakers will again be in charge of drawing new maps in 2031.
Ahead of the noon start time for the session, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) announced their intentions to leave the session open in a statement. They said they did so in “an effort to continue meaningful dialogue.”
“We view the Governor’s proposal as a first step on which to build a more comprehensive, workable solution for Wisconsin,” the leaders said, adding that they want a face-to-face meeting with Evers to discuss ideas. “We’re committed to a transparent and balanced solution that reflects the interest of all Wisconsinites.”
Evers, who is serving his last year in office, has called special sessions many times over his two terms including on abortion, gun violence and the state budget. Republicans typically have gaveled in and out of them without taking action or have completely rewritten his proposals.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu said in a statement that “any changes to the current process have to be made intentionally and specifically using normal legislative procedure” and that “leaving the special session open allows the legislature to gain public input in order to make an informed decision on how to proceed.”
“In nearly every instance in which Republicans did not immediately gavel out of the governor’s special sessions, Republicans simply quietly gaveled out months later, largely to avoid press interest, bad headlines, and public scrutiny and accountability,” Evers’ spokesperson Britt Cudaback wrote in a social media post.
The Senate and Assembly adjourned until Thursday morning.
Evers said in a statement after that there is “nothing to negotiate” and urged lawmakers to take action on the constitutional amendment.
“Rigging maps so that one political party stays in power is wrong, it’s anti-democratic, and it’s un-American — there’s nothing to negotiate because there’s no room for compromise when it comes to making sure Wisconsinites’ voices matter and their votes count,” Evers said. “This is a first step — if we don’t get a ban on partisan gerrymandering put in Wisconsin’s constitution, lawmakers will never be forced to create the independent and nonpartisan redistricting process Wisconsinites deserve. Lawmakers either want to ban partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin or they don’t.”
As the Republican leaders in the Assembly and Senate gaveled in and adjourned the sessions, Democratic members remained on the floor of each chamber to voice their opposition to Republicans’ lack of action.
Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) and Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) held a press conference to criticize Republican lawmakers for not showing up to debate the measure.
“It is a shame that Senate Republicans are refusing to do their jobs when the Senate Democrats are in the Senate chamber, ready to discuss, debate and pass the constitutional amendment banning partisan gerrymandering,” Hesselbein said.
Hesselbein said every Senate Democrat would have voted in favor of the proposal. She also said that none of her Republican Senate colleagues had contacted her and she didn’t know whether they actually planned to come back.
Spreitzer said that gerrymandering has led to elected officials ignoring issues that matter to voters.
“We’re seeing the last vestiges of that right now, as lame duck Republicans who are afraid to run on fair maps aren’t even coming in to take up this issue ahead of this coming election,” he said. “We only have fair legislative maps now because of court action, but our work is not done. There will be another redistricting cycle after the next census after 2030, and we need to lock in constitutional protections to make sure that our maps are never gerrymandered again.”
Spreitzer noted that the constitutional amendment would also provide legal grounds for a court challenge if there are gerrymander attempts in the future.
As a constitutional amendment, Evers’ proposal would need to pass in two consecutive sessions of the state Legislature before it would go to voters for the final say.
Bianca Shaw, the Wisconsin state director for Common Cause, told the Wisconsin Examiner that the lawmakers subverted expectations for the session, but that she hopes it isn’t just about “optics” and that policymakers will take the time to listen to Wisconsinites about the issue.
“I think that what the constituents want, what voters want, is most important,” Shaw said. “I think that it is constructive that it wasn’t outright dismissed but words alone won’t help reform, and so what I’m looking for is for legislative leaders to go into their communities and see what their constituents want.”
Shaw said she thinks there are some shifts happening in lawmakers’ openness in part due to upcoming elections and as many are facing competitive races.
“I think that what is happening right now in the state of Wisconsin is our legislators, on both sides, on all sides, are understanding that they have to earn their votes.”
Shaw said the constitutional amendment would be a valuable signal, but not the full solution. Common Cause, which is a part of the Fair Maps Coalition, supports an independent redistricting commission proposal, which would take the job of drawing maps out of lawmakers’ hands.
Gerrymandering is not the only issue lawmakers and Evers are considering as they continue to seek a deal on tax relief and school funding.
Wisconsin has a surplus of more than $2 billion and policymakers are seeking to tap it to provide property tax relief to citizens, who have seen large increases in their bills, as well as to provide additional funding to school districts, which have seen a steady decline in state aid.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Evers told reporters on Monday that he and lawmakers were still talking about a potential deal.
“Before they disappear completely from Madison we need to get that done,” Evers said. “So we’re still talking.”
According to WisPolitics, Vos said in a social media post that he had been in discussions with Evers for nearly a month and “our proposal encompasses property tax relief, rebate checks, tax exemption on tips and overtime, and enhanced special education funding for schools.”
Other members of the Assembly Republican caucus, including Rep. Calvin Callahan (R-Tomahawk) also posted about the framework for the deal.
However, it is unclear whether Senate Republicans are part of those negotiations or whether they are close to agreeing. LeMahieu declared that he was excluded from previous negotiations and the Senate did not go along with what Vos and Evers agreed.
“Let’s hope we can convene the Legislature (we need the GOP State Senate to agree) soon so we can get this package enacted,” Vos said.
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