Despite calls for his firing following a lopsided state Supreme Court loss, Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming is still on the job.

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The racial disparities within Wisconsin's prison system are some of the starkest in the nation, according to a new report by a public policy think tank.

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The Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering whether records relating to people found incompetent to vote should be made available to the public.

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The crowded Republican primary for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District seat got smaller Tuesday, as GOP candidate Paul Wassgren of Ashland announced he's suspending his campaign.

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Overdose deaths are continuing to drop in Milwaukee County. 

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Rural school districts across Wisconsin are struggling to cover costs, even when voters approve property tax increases.

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Hundreds of parents, teachers and community members in the Delavan-Darien School District are asking board members to reconsider a plan to either reduce or eliminate its dual language program. 

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Wisconsin is more than halfway toward its forest conservation and tree planting goals, Gov. Tony Evers announced ahead of Earth Day.

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More than 10,000 Wisconsinites used methadone treatment in 2024 to recover from opioid use disorder. But state regulations make accessing treatment more difficult for those patients, providers and researchers say.

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Some close watchers of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget aren’t thrilled with the Trump administration’s proposal — but they're hopeful some of the suggested cuts won’t make it in the final spending plans passed by Congress.

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Elected leaders and public health officials in Milwaukee gathered at the Marcia P. Coggs Center for Health & Human Services building to announce that opioid overdose deaths in Wisconsin’s most populous county have declined for the fourth straight year in a row. 

According to data provided through the county’s overdose dashboard, there has been a 17.7% decrease in fatal overdoses and a 22.7% decrease in fatal opioid overdoses since 2024. There has been a 42.6% decline since 2022 in all forms of overdose death, with a 54.6% decline in opioid-related overdose deaths specifically.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley praised the use of opioid settlement funds to expand  treatment and harm reduction strategies. The funds originate from lawsuits against the producers and distributors of pain killers that triggered the opioid crisis. The nationwide epidemic of addiction and overdoses is also tied to the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl which began spreading in  the mid-2010s, causing deaths on an unseen scale.

“As we acknowledge the progress we have made, we must also remember those we have lost,” said Crowley. “Their lives matter, and their stories remind us why this work is so critical. I am committed to continuing this work until every person in Milwaukee County has access to the care, support and second chances they deserve.” 

The latest data shows that 387 people in Milwaukee County still lost their lives to an overdose last year. “These are our neighbors, these are our loved ones, these are our family members,” said Crowley, “people who we care about that live in our own communities.” At a press conference Tuesday, Crowley said he has seen family and neighbors struggle with addiction as he grew up. “And I saw firsthand the barriers that they faced when trying to access treatment, but also continue to take those steps towards healing,” said Crowley. “Healing is a lifelong journey. So to me these aren’t just numbers on a dashboard. They’re people, and even one overdose death is one too many.” 

Milwaukee County will receive $111 million over the next 18 years through the opioid settlements. This represents the largest amount recovered by a local government in Wisconsin history, a county press release states. 

“Three years ago, we were losing a life to opioid overdose every 16 hours,” said Chief Health Policy Advisor Dr. Ben Weston, praising the sharp decline in deaths since then.

Weston recalled an April weekend three years ago when there were 16 overdose deaths in Milwaukee County. The scale of the epidemic was “unimaginable” Weston said, and it forced emergency management staff, firefighters, police and community members  to “say enough,” said Weston. 

Over the  last several years Milwaukee County adopted multiple harm reduction strategies. Narcan — the nasal spray used to revive someone from an opioid overdose — has been distributed in vast quantities to emergency responders and average citizens. There are also 27 free-to-use harm reduction vending machines around the county providing narcan, fentanyl testing strips and even gun locks. 

The vending machines were launched through a Department of Health and Human Services program called Harm Reduction MKE. Another program called Pull Up & Pick Up offers residents the opportunity to order free supplies and pick them up at the Coakley Brothers building (400 S. 5th St) on the third Friday every month. Vivent Health Depot has also partnered with Milwaukee County to provide free harm reduction supplies delivered right to people’s homes. 

“We’ve expanded community paramedicine programs and peer support to close the gaps in care and reach people who might never otherwise have entered into the system,” said Weston. “And we’ve partnered with the state using real-time overdose data and predictive learning and modeling to better understand who is at highest risk, and be able to intervene early.” 

Treatment centers have also worked to overcome zoning restrictions and stigma to open in new parts of Milwaukee. Treatment access has also been expanded for people both entering and leaving incarceration, a particularly dangerous time when people are more likely to overdose, Weston said. 

“At the Medical Examiner’s Office, we see firsthand the human toll of this crisis, and while the data shows progress, it also reminds us that this work is far from over,” said Dr. Wieslawa Tlomak, Chief Medical Examiner of Milwaukee County. ”

Tlomak said that it should concern everyone that every third or fourth death in Milwaukee County is due to drug overdose. She noted that usually overdose deaths are caused by multiple drugs. While Narcan can reverse an opioid overdose from fentanyl, there is no equivalent medication to reverse the effects of stimulants like cocaine or meth. “In other words, the landscape of overdose deaths has changed,” said Tlomak. “It is more complex, more unpredictable, and more difficult to treat.”

Tlomak said that of the 387 people who died of fatal drug overdoses last year, 263 involved opioids. 

Jeremey Triblett, Prevention Integration Manager at the Department of Health and Human Services, highlighted the importance of new campaigns in Milwaukee to continue to reduce overdose deaths. One program, dubbed “Better Ways To Cope,” provides residents with strategies to deal with life problems. 

On June 12, recognized as National Harm Reduction Day, the Department of Health and Human Services is inviting residents to participate in the 1,000 Doors Challenge, a neighborhood canvassing project aimed at spreading information and supplies to the people who need it. 

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The U.S. Forest Service’s plan to close scores of research stations could threaten the nation’s wildfire readiness, many foresters fear, and erode decades of work to understand timber production, soil health, pests and diseases, watersheds and wildlife.

Late last month, the Forest Service announced plans to close 57 of its 77 research stations, located across 31 states, merging them into a single organization in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The agency described the move as a way to consolidate, not cut, the agency’s scientific work, and “unify research priorities.”

It’s unclear how many scientists will be affected by the transition, but it comes as part of a larger agency reorganization that is expected to move roughly 5,000 employees to new outposts. Forest Service leaders have framed the closures as a way to reduce the agency’s real estate footprint, citing a facilities budget Congress has shrunk, as opposed to curtailing its scientific work.

But many longtime foresters fear the closures will threaten vital research that has been the backbone of forest management for state agencies, timber companies and tribes. Many of the research stations slated for closure study fire behavior, forecast smoke dispersal and help inform evacuation decisions.

“The research arm of the Forest Service is one of the unsung heroes in forest management around the world,” said Mike Dombeck, who served as chief of the Forest Service under President Bill Clinton and remains a vocal conservation advocate. “It is the premier forest research entity in the world, on everything from invasive species to wildland fire risk, watershed protection, basic silviculture and harvest methods.”

The Forest Service’s revamp also will relocate the agency’s headquarters from Washington, D.C., to Salt Lake City and restructure its regional management system.

The Forest Service did not grant a Stateline interview request. The agency has not said how much money it expects to save by closing the research stations.

Many Western leaders are skeptical that the consolidated operation will be able to replicate the work of the existing research stations. State officials said they’ve been given few details about how the transition will play out and whether existing research will continue.

In Washington state, the Forest Service plans to close research stations in Seattle and Wenatchee, while maintaining a facility in Olympia.

“The station in Seattle does some of the most practical-based research that we use for fire and forest management,” said Washington State Forester George Geissler. “We don’t want to lose that work. They’ve said they’ll keep Olympia open, but we don’t know what that looks like. Are they making sure we don’t lose the ongoing research?”

Forestry veterans say it’s important for the agency to continue its scientific work across a wide variety of forests and climates.

“This is research that’s been going on for decades or even a century or more,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit that advocates for agency workers. “They’re able to see how climate change impacts are playing out in a dry ponderosa forest or a humid hardwood forest. There are research plots and experimental forests that have been diligently studied for decades. This could be a loss of a lot of knowledge.”

The Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, for instance, plays a crucial role in issuing wildfire smoke forecasts that are relied on throughout the Northwest. After a hot, dry winter, that work could be critical as a dangerous wildfire season approaches.

In Vermont, the Burlington research station slated for closure studied maple syrup production and the effects of acid rain on different tree species, according to VTDigger.

And in Mississippi, the Southern Institute of Forest Genetics, also on the chopping block, has guided tree improvement programs that improved growth and pest resistance in Southern timber forests.

Some conservation advocates are concerned that the research station closures are aimed at suppressing studies that might show the environmental harms of logging or mining. President Donald Trump has pledged to increase timber production on federal lands. He has moved to limit environmental reviews and protections for endangered species to speed up logging projects.

In an interview with the Deseret News, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said that the move was designed to ensure that the Forest Service’s research “will better align with the priorities of the administration” — minerals, recreation, fire management and “active management” of forests, which can include timber harvests and thinning projects. He said the research would support not just forests but also private landowners.

“It’s not streamlining, it’s dismantling,” said Chandra Rosenthal, Western lands and Rocky Mountain advocate with Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a group that defends whistleblowers in the federal service. “It’s going to really impact how the Forest Service makes decisions on the ground. The way the Trump administration is trying to make a lot of decisions is gut feelings.”

In a webpage set up to respond to news coverage of the move, the Forest Service said it is a “myth” that the station closures will eliminate scientific positions or cancel research programs. But many forestry veterans said that attrition is inevitable, as researchers are asked to move their families across the country to work under a new model with few details.

“There’s concern that we’re going to see a lot of really good individuals who cannot uproot their families that we’ll lose,” said Geissler, the Washington state forester. “It’s taken a long time to develop that kind of expertise. It’s scary.”

Foresters in both conservative and liberal states said they rely heavily on the research the Forest Service provides. Most were unwilling to comment extensively about the closures without seeing more details.

“That work is absolutely important, and I sure hope it continues,” said Wyoming State Forester Kelly Norris. “I don’t think research should stop. It may need to look a little different.”

Some leaders said there may be opportunities for states, through forestry agencies and universities, to pick up the slack and ensure research continues, even if the Forest Service is no longer playing a lead role.

“This is still a little bit of an unknown area, but we’ll have to make sure that if there’s a gap there, that we’re working with our universities and (state) research centers to make sure that is still being provided,” said Utah State Forester Jamie Barnes.

Nick Smith, public affairs director with the American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, expressed support for the agency’s effort to consolidate its work, saying he’d had “limited interaction” with the research stations.

While some of the Forest Service’s work is controversial, agency veterans say its research program is valued by loggers and tree-huggers alike.

“Nobody was asking for this,” said Robert Bonnie, who served as undersecretary of agriculture for natural resources and environment during the Obama administration. “There was no call to do anything like this.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

An ordinance that prohibits local or federal law enforcement officers from wearing face masks, except in dangerously cold weather, passed the Milwaukee Common Council Tuesday. The measure is part of a package the council considered under the heading “ICE Out Milwaukee”. 

CBS 58 reported that there was support for the policy change even from the police union. This comes in response to the recent federal immigration crackdown in Democratic-led cities including Minneapolis and Chicago, where agents dressed in military-style tactical gear and wearing masks made arrests or used force against immigrants, protesters and bystanders. In Minneapolis, two U.S. citizens were killed by federal immigration agents during confrontations. Agents who shot another man in the leg were later found to have lied about the events leading up to the non-fatal shooting. 

The ICE Out Milwaukee package was pushed by a group of Milwaukee alders after these events raised anxieties among area residents. Ald. Alex Brower told the Wisconsin Examiner that after a huge crowd attended a town hall on immigration, he realized Milwaukeeans wanted to see local government do something, anything, to protect residents from immigration enforcement. 

WISN 12 News reported that the vote on the mask ordinance was delayed last month because of City Attorney Evan Goyke’s concerns that it might not be enforceable. But last week, Goyke sent a letter to the council saying it was legal.

“I do want to thank City Attorney Evan Goyke, who he and his team, worked very hard, very diligently. They were committed to getting to yes, in my opinion,” alder JoCasta Zamarripa told WISN-12.

Alds. Brower, Marina Dimitrijevic, Zamarripa and José Perez, who is the common council president, all supported the measure.  

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Fallout from a weekend attempt by animal rights activists to breach the Ridglan Farms Biomedical Research Facility and rescue beagles bred inside continues. On Tuesday, four of the activists were charged in Dane County with felony burglary. Meanwhile, Ridglan Farms has been cited for filling a trench around its facility with manure — an environmental hazard for which it lacked a permit — in an effort to prevent the activists from entering over the weekend.  Calls for an investigation into the farm and  police use of force  against them continue. 

Wayne Hsiung, Aditya Aswani, Michelle Lunsky, and Dean Wyrzykowski were all charged with felony burglary. Hsiung was noted as among the first people arrested within minutes after arriving at the farm. Although the activists had publicly advertised the rescue — which included hundreds of participants — as  planned for Sunday, the activists hit the farm a day early. Images captured on Saturday showed the air thick with tear gas, and witnesses  reported that rubber bullets and pepper balls had been used. Injuries were also reported, including one man who reportedly lost multiple teeth after being beaten by officers. 

The action Saturday was the second one since March, when activists successfully breached fences and doors at Ridglan and carried over 20 dogs away. Some of the dogs were adopted, while others were intercepted by police and returned to Ridglan. Although the activists were  arrested during the April 18 action, the charges against them stem from the first raid in March. 

Thousands of dogs are kept and bred at Ridglan Farms. The facility has been accused of subjecting beagles to cruel and inhumane conditions by enclosing them in gated cages, not allowing them outside or play time, and removing parts of their bodies or subjecting them to experiments without anesthesia. Ridglan has denied some of the allegations.

Last year, a special prosecutor made a deal with the farm to discontinue its beagle breeding operations by July or face penalties. Animal rights activists, elected officials, and others have called for the dogs to be adopted  before that deadline. 

The plight of the Ridglan beagles has gained national attention. During hearings in Washington D.C. last week, Democratic Congressman Mark Pocan asked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. why the National Institutes for Health continue to provide grants to groups that use Ridglan beagles for experiments, Democracy Now reported. 

Pocan highlighted that Ridglan has had 311 code violations, stating that the institute has policies about beagle testing prohibiting animals from being tortured. “And that’s part of what’s happening with this facility,” said Pocan. “So grants are still, in the last month, going to groups that are getting beagles from Ridglan Farms.” Pocan asked Kennedy to look into grants provided to the facility, adding that if Ridglan doesn’t get rid of the beagles then they’ll likely be euthanized. Kennedy said “I believe you but I have a hard time believing that. I need to look into this…Because we’re trying to end…We’ve done more than any administration in history to end animal testing.”

Following the attempted rescue on Saturday, animal rights activists and community members held vigils near the Ridglan property as well as a rally at the Capitol. Activists and supporters also visited the office of Gov. Tony Evers, calling on him and Attorney General Josh Kaul to shut down the facility. 

Meanwhile, Ridglan was cited for constructing or altering a manure storage facility without a permit, Channel3000 reported. Ahead of the weekend, Ridglan erected barriers around its facility to prevent the activists from entering as they had in March. Reports have also circulated describing masked armed men believed to be security guards discouraging people from being nearby, but Ridglan denied those claims. In a statement to Channel3000, Ridglan denied constructing a manure facility, but said  it took “reasonable measures” to protect the facility “from the announced unlawful invasion.” The facility acknowledged that it dug a trench around Ridglan Farms. The trench was filled with manure. 

Two elected members of the Dane County Board of Supervisors have also said they’re initiating the steps needed to begin an independent investigation into the force used by the Dane County Sheriff on activists and protesters Saturday. Sheriff Kalvin Barrett has said that the actions of his deputies was proportionate and appropriate to the situation they faced Saturday.

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Virginia voters on Tuesday approved a constitutional amendment allowing mid-decade congressional redistricting, a move expected to dramatically reshape the state’s political map and potentially shift its congressional delegation from a closely divided 6-5 split to a heavily Democratic-leaning 10-1 advantage.

By 8:50 p.m., the measure passed by a vote of 50.7-49.3% out of 2.5 million ballots cast, according to unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections, clearing the way for lawmakers to redraw district lines outside the traditional once-a-decade census cycle. The winning margin continued to increase throughout the night as more votes were tallied. 

Supporters argued the amendment gives Virginia flexibility to respond to aggressive redistricting efforts in several Republican-led states at the urging of President Donald Trump, while critics warned it opens the door to partisan gerrymandering and undermines long-standing constitutional guardrails.

Gov. Abigail Spanberger said in a statement Tuesday evening that voters “approved a temporary measure to push back against a president who claims he is ‘entitled’ to more Republican seats in Congress,” adding that Virginians “responded the right way: at the ballot box.” 

She said she plans to campaign with candidates across the commonwealth ahead of the midterms and emphasized her commitment to restoring the state’s bipartisan redistricting commission after the 2030 census.

Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, said the results reflect what he described as a reaffirmation of democratic principles, arguing that voters “answered a question about the nature of our democracy … in favor of the people.” 

He said Virginians acted in response to what he called “unprecedented gerrymandering in other states,” adding that “fairness won” and “accountability won,” and that the outcome shows “the people will decide.”

Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, said the outcome sends a national signal, arguing that voters rejected efforts to “rig our democracy” and instead affirmed that “power belongs to the people.” He said the vote could shape the 2026 midterms, adding that Virginians “stepped up and leveled the playing field for the entire country” and that “when the stakes are highest, we lead.”

Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said the vote delivers “a massive blow to the GOP plot to rig control of Congress,” praising Virginia voters for what she described as answering a national call to protect democracy. 

At the same time, she cautioned that “the fight is far from over,” arguing that redistricting battles will continue to play out in state legislatures and that upcoming elections will be critical in determining who draws maps and holds power in the years ahead.

Virginia House GOP Leader Terry Kilgore, R-Scott, said Tuesday’s outcome was “not unexpected,” arguing the process was “tilted” by what he described as “misleading ballot language and a massive spending advantage.” 

He said legal challenges will continue, adding that “the ballot box was never the final word here” and that Republicans will keep pushing for “fair maps, transparent process, and equal representation for every Virginian.”

Special session sparks fast-moving redistricting push 

The effort to change Virginia’s redistricting rules began abruptly in late October, during a special legislative session that had been called to address budget matters but quickly veered into a broader political fight.

On Oct. 27 — days before the Nov. 4 statewide elections — Democratic lawmakers unveiled plans to pursue a constitutional amendment allowing congressional maps to be redrawn outside the traditional post-census cycle. 

Within hours, the proposal ignited a sharp debate over timing, process and political intent.

House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, framed the move as a response to national redistricting battles, saying at the time, “I think we have an opportunity now to send a message to the rest of the country that we’re not going to stand by while you rig this election. We will do everything in our power to level the playing field we were talking about.”

Republicans, meanwhile, questioned both the substance and the setting. Del. Michael Webert, R-Fauquier, said the special session had been called for budget work, not constitutional changes.

“We went into a special session to solve a very specific problem. It was not meant to be used as a tool to continuously identify issues and keep what they’re doing,” Webert said. “We shouldn’t (have been) in two sessions at the same time (and) because of that confusion, I believe … it delegitimizes specific legislative processes.”

The session’s temperature rose further when Senate Democrats blocked the reading of a communication from then-Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who had sharply criticized the effort.

“I am disappointed to see the General Assembly reconvening this week to ram through a constitutional amendment on redistricting only seven days before the close of our 2025 statewide and House of Delegates election and with over one million voters already casting their ballot,” Youngkin wrote.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin, appealed to what he described as Virginia’s past bipartisan approach to redistricting reform.

“Sometimes we must overcome our partisan desires and do what is right for the commonwealth as a whole,” Stanley said. “We looked Virginia voters in the eye, and promised them something fundamental, that Virginia would pick their representatives, and not the other way around. What message do we send to them if we walk away now?”

Despite the divisions, lawmakers moved quickly. On the same day, Democrats released the amendment’s language, outlining a framework for mid-cycle redistricting subject to voter approval. 

The House advanced the measure the following day, and the Senate approved it on Oct. 31 in a party-line vote, sending it forward in the multi-step constitutional process. That process required the amendment to pass again in a subsequent legislative session. 

When lawmakers reconvened in January, the proposal moved forward — but soon became entangled in a series of legal challenges.

Legal battles complicate road to the ballot 

In late January, a Virginia court struck down the amendment that had been slated for the April ballot, casting uncertainty over whether voters would ultimately weigh in.

In a 22-page ruling, Tazewell County Circuit Court Judge Jack C. Hurley found that the legislature acted unlawfully in approving the redistricting amendment during a special session just days before the Nov. 4 election. Hurley concluded that lawmakers exceeded the scope of that session, violated their own procedural rules and failed to comply with constitutional and statutory requirements governing amendments to the Virginia Constitution.

The state’s highest court soon reversed that trajectory. In February, the Supreme Court of Virginia allowed the referendum to proceed, clearing the way for the issue to appear on the ballot.

“Certainly the General Assembly was clear with the amendment process they put forward, and now it’s up to voters,” Spanberger said at the time, mere weeks after taking her oath of office.  

At the same time, Democrats began outlining what new congressional lines could look like.

A proposed map released in early February would significantly reshape district boundaries and was widely seen as favoring Democrats across most of the state’s 11 congressional districts.

Republicans escalated their opposition later that month, filing an emergency lawsuit seeking to block the vote and challenging the amendment process itself — a move that the same Tazewell County judge granted but that only applied to his jurisdiction. 

Once again, the Supreme Court of Virginia stepped in, granting a petition for review of the case and staying the temporary restraining order, which allowed the election to move forward statewide. 

However, the justices emphasized their decision does not resolve the underlying legal claims about whether the General Assembly followed proper procedures in advancing the amendment.

Meanwhile, the referendum drew national attention, with prominent Democrats — including former President Barack Obama — voicing support while Virginia Republicans intensified their warnings as the campaign entered its final stretch.

On Tuesday evening, Obama praised the outcome on X, writing, “Congratulations, Virginia! Republicans are trying to tilt the midterm elections in their favor, but they haven’t done it yet,” and thanking voters for “showing us what it looks like to stand up for our democracy and fight back.”

Campaign messaging grew increasingly contentious in March, particularly after mailers opposing the amendment invoked civil rights era imagery, prompting backlash and public criticism. 

Some Republicans defended the mailers, adding to the broader political dispute surrounding the vote.

Early voting data added another layer of uncertainty, with turnout showing strength in Republican-leaning areas even as both parties ramped up efforts to mobilize voters statewide.

In the final weeks, Spanberger balanced her governing responsibilities with public support for the amendment, while Youngkin returned to the campaign trail urging voters to reject it and continued to press for court intervention.

In her statement Tuesday, Spanberger said that she remained “committed to ensuring Virginia’s bipartisan redistricting commission gets back to work after the 2030 census, and to protecting the process Virginians voted to create.”

FULL COVERAGE: Virginia redistricting referendum

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, vowed Tuesday the central bank would remain “strictly independent” if he’s confirmed to the top spot, even as the president has broadcast his demand for the new Fed chair to lower interest rates.

Warsh, a former Fed board governor, faced questions during his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, as the clock winds down on the term of current Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who is in Trump’s crosshairs.

Trump’s criminal probe into Powell, over a $2.5 billion renovation project at the Fed’s offices, stands in the way of Warsh’s confirmation on the closely divided committee. 

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., maintains he will vote against Warsh’s nomination until Trump directs federal prosecutors to halt their “bogus” investigation into one of his most high-profile political foes.

The Senate Banking Committee is made up of 13 Republicans in the majority, and 11 Democrats in the minority. All Democrats plan to oppose the nomination, and with Tillis, a tied vote means Warsh’s nomination would not advance to the full Senate.

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, alleged Trump wants to install a “sock puppet” and “use monetary policies to artificially juice the economy in the short term, and this is his last chance to do that before the November elections.”

Instead of questioning Warsh, Tillis displayed a series of images and figures illustrating the “unfortunate, but legitimate” cost overruns at the Federal Reserve’s Washington, D.C., headquarters. 

“If we put everybody in prison in federal government that had had a budget go over, we’d have to reserve an area roughly the size of Texas for a penal colony,” Tillis said. “… Let’s get rid of this investigation so that I can support your nomination.”

Court action

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, for the District of Columbia, last month blocked the administration’s subpoenas to probe the central bank and Powell, pointing to “a mountain of evidence” that Trump is using the investigation to force Powell to lower interest rates, or resign.

Still, the president has not backed down. One week before Tuesday’s hearing, two investigators from the office of Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, showed up unannounced at the Fed’s construction site, according to details reported by the New York Times.

On more than 100 occasions, according to Boasberg’s order, Trump and his allies have made public statements ridiculing Powell and threatening to fire him if interest rates were not lowered.

Powell’s term expires May 15. During a recent press conference, Powell said he plans to stay on, as permitted by Fed regulations, as chair pro tempore until his successor is confirmed.

If Powell stays on, “well then, I’ll have to fire him,” Trump told Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo on April 15. 

A ‘battle-tested’ pick

While Trump’s clash with Powell overshadowed Warsh’s nomination hearing, Republicans largely praised the former board governor, who served from 2006 to 2011.

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., said Warsh is “battle-tested” after helping to steer the central bank during the 2008 financial crisis.

“During his first term as governor, he helped our economy through the crisis and restored faith in the economy,”Scott said.

But Democrats questioned Warsh’s ability to remain independent of Trump’s demands, particularly as the president must justify higher costs from tariffs and the Iran war ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, when voters are expected to focus heavily on affordability issues.

Sen. Andy Kim, D-N.J., asked Warsh, “Do you agree that the American families are struggling right now with affordability?”

Largely laying the blame on post-COVID-19 monetary policy decisions under President Joe Biden, Warsh said the Fed bears “some responsibility for the things that you’ve described, and that the legacy of inflation, what I think is the biggest economic policy error in 40 or 50 years, happened just a few years ago, and we’re still living with the with the remnants of it. I think inflation is less problematic than it was a couple of years ago.”

When Kim pressed whether the Fed should be concerned about spiking fuel and fertilizer costs amid Trump’s continuing war in Iran, Warsh said, “Senator, if my reform agenda, if confirmed, stands for anything, it’s for the central bank, especially the Fed chairman, to stay in its lane.”

Lisa Cook firing

Warren and Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md., also invoked Trump’s contested August 2025 firing of Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, currently under review in the U.S. Supreme Court. 

The high court’s oral arguments in January drew a high-profile appearance from Powell. Trump alleged Cook committed financial fraud, but even conservative Supreme Court justices questioned his argument for her firing.

“Will you commit to defending Governor Cook’s tenure as Chairman Powell has done?” Alsobrooks asked.

“Senator, it was a pleasure to meet you in your office, and spend time with you. As I said to you then, I’ll repeat here to the broader committee: If I stand for anything, it’s the Fed should stay in its lane. As I understand that matter, it’s pending before the United States Supreme Court,” Warsh said.

In his opening statement, Warsh defended a president’s right to share opinions on interest rates but told Democratic lawmakers multiple times Tuesday that Trump has not asked him for a commitment.

Following up on an answer Warsh provided earlier during the hearing, Alsobrooks asked, “You said he never — ‘specifically’ is the word you used — demanded that you decrease interest rates. Well, did the president generally suggest this to you as well?”

“I wasn’t trying to be clever. The president never generally or specifically instructed me, or suggested I should commit to any interest rate path whatsoever,” Warsh said.

Congress’ move to allow mining in a national forest near a wilderness area may have broad ramifications across the country.

The U.S. Senate voted Thursday to overturn a mining ban in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest, the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

By using an obscure tool known as the Congressional Review Act to open the national forest for mining, lawmakers have called into question the validity of every management plan issued by the U.S. Forest Service over the past several decades. That could result in legal chaos for thousands of permits covering logging, grazing, mining and outdoor recreation. 

Over the past year, Congress for the first time has used the Congressional Review Act to revoke management plans for regions managed by the Bureau of Land Management, seeking to allow more mining and drilling. Such plans had not previously been considered “rules” subject to lawmakers’ review. 

Under the act, federal agencies must submit new regulations to Congress before they can take effect. Because management plans, which function as high-level guidance documents, were never considered rules, federal agencies did not submit them to Congress for review. 

Using a new legal theory, Republicans in Congress have opened reviews and revoked several specific plans that limited resource extraction in Alaska, Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming. But those actions call into question whether more than 100 other such plans are legally in effect, since they are now considered rules that were not sent to Congress as the law requires.

Public lands experts say the new interpretation could create legal jeopardy across hundreds of millions of acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management, threatening any permit issued under a management plan drafted after the passage of the Congressional Review Act in 1996.

Now, for the first time, Congress has used the review tool to overturn a management decision on Forest Service land. 

“There’s a huge playing field of actions that would be forbidden if none of these management plans are lawfully in place,” Robert Anderson, who served as solicitor for the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration, told Stateline earlier this year. “This could bring things to a screeching halt.”

Longtime outdoors writer Wes Siler, who has written extensively about the Boundary Waters review battle, said in a post Thursday that the vote will “destroy the Forest Service’s ability to conduct regular business for the foreseeable future.” If the agency’s management plans suddenly become invalid, he wrote, “not only could this grind industrial operations on (Forest Service) land to a halt as all of this winds its way through federal court, but it could also set (the Forest Service) the task of re-doing 30 years of work.”

On Thursday, the Senate voted 50-49 to revoke a Biden-era plan that banned mining on land in the Superior National Forest. The resolution will now go to President Donald Trump for his signature.

A Chilean mining company has proposed to mine for copper, nickel and cobalt along Birch Lake in Minnesota. The planned mine would sit at the headwaters of the wilderness area’s watershed. The Boundary Waters is the most popular wilderness in the country, and advocates say the water is so pristine that many visitors fill their bottles straight from the surface of its lakes.

Wilderness proponents say such mines have a long track record of pollution, and leaks from the proposed site would flow downstream and irreversibly contaminate the treasured Boundary Waters.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, the Minnesota Republican who sponsored the review action, has said the mine would bring jobs to the region. Opponents have argued that the tourism economy centered on the Boundary Waters is a larger economic driver, and noted that the mine will be run by a foreign company that will likely export the copper to China. 

U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, led the effort to uphold the mining ban on the Senate floor. Following the vote, she said that supporters of the Boundary Waters would likely mount a legal challenge, questioning the use of the Congressional Review Act to revoke a public land order from the Forest Service. 

“I question the legality of what Congress did,” Smith said, according to the Minnesota Reformer.  

Two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, also voted against the measure. Tillus also questioned the use of the Congressional Review Act.

“It’s a precedent that I think our Republican colleagues are going to regret,” he told The Minnesota Star Tribune. 

The Forest Service oversees nearly 200 million acres of land, managed for multiple uses, including timber harvests, grazing, outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. Some legal experts fear the management plans governing those activities are now in legal jeopardy. 

“That right there is chaos,” Peter Van Tuyn, a longtime environmental lawyer and managing partner at Bessenyey & Van Tuyn LLC, told Stateline earlier this year. 

“Those (plans) go across the full spectrum of what land managers do: conservation and preservation, mining approvals, oil and gas drilling, resource exploitation, public access and recreation,” he added. “There’s a very real chance that a court could say that a resource management plan was never in effect and all the implementation actions under the umbrella of that plan are invalid.”

Stateline reporter Alex Brown can be reached at abrown@stateline.org. 

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress appeared to be on the same page Tuesday about how to fund immigration activities for the next three years as they released a party-line measure that will pave the way for a special process known as budget reconciliation.

But they weren’t unified about another problem — when to clear a bipartisan funding bill for the vast majority of the Department of Homeland Security that would end a shutdown that’s been underway since mid-February.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a morning press conference he wanted to make sure funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol isn’t left behind and that’s why he’s held back a Senate-passed bill that would fund  most of the shuttered DHS programs. 

“There’s some concern on our side that if you do the bulk of the department first before that, then they could be left out. We can’t allow for that,” Johnson said. “So we’re working through that. The sequencing is important.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he “had heard” the House may approve the regular DHS funding bill once the Senate approved the new GOP budget resolution, which it could do as soon as this week. That appeared to be a contrast to the plans Johnson laid out. 

Both chambers of Congress must adopt a budget resolution in order to unlock the complex budget reconciliation process they hope to use to fund ICE and the Border Patrol for the next three years. 

“I don’t think that DHS has the money to fund all those agencies for that long,” Thune said, referring to the Trump administration’s move to pay employees from the GOP’s “big, beautiful” law during the shutdown. “But that’s, I guess, a question, you know, they’ll have to answer.”

White House officials, he added, have been pressing for the House to clear the Senate-passed DHS funding bill that would officially end the shutdown and ensure consistent paychecks for employees at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Secret Service and Transportation Security Administration. 

Thune said it will take the Senate a while to move the actual reconciliation bill across the floor, which can only happen after both chambers agree to a budget resolution. 

“I think there’s a certain time, as you all know, that it takes to get reconciliation across the floor here,” he said. “And I think there is a limited amount of time in which they can continue to fund the various agencies that aren’t currently funded.”

$70 billion 

Senate Republicans released a budget resolution later in the morning that would give the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee the ability to write a bill that spends up to $70 billion on immigration enforcement and provides the same limit to the Judiciary Committee. 

Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wrote in a statement the budget resolution instructs those two committees “to create a reconciliation bill that fully funds Border Patrol and ICE for 3.5 years, which will carry us through the Trump presidency.”

Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement of his own that “Republicans are hellbent on passing another bill to provide even more funds to ICE and (Customs and Border Protection) — agencies that were already funded at multiple times their former budget last year!”

“In addition, Republicans rejected any commonsense reforms for these agencies such as wearing identification or getting a warrant before breaking into homes,” Merkley added. “Instead, the Republican plan is more money for more secret police tactics that are terrorizing communities across America.”

Democrats began pressing for guardrails on immigration officers after federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January. 

Vote-a-rama to press GOP 

The Senate voted 52-46 in the afternoon to proceed with the budget resolution, setting up a final passage vote later this week.

That Senate process requires a marathon amendment voting session, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during a floor speech the party will use to question Republicans’ legislative priorities. 

“Americans want to know why Republicans aren’t fighting to lower their gas, health care, grocery and housing costs,” he said. “During reconciliation, Democrats are going to make sure this majority answers to the American people.”

The amendment votes won’t be just about policy, especially with Democrats looking to regain control of the Senate during this November’s midterm elections. 

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter categorizes Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’ and Ohio Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s reelection bids as “toss-up” races, making them the most at-risk members of their party. 

Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan’s race is rated as “lean Republican,” making him more vulnerable than many of his colleagues seeking reelection. 

Democrats running to unseat those three GOP senators could use their votes on certain amendments in campaign advertisements or debates later this year. 

Voting rights groups launched a legal challenge Tuesday against the Trump administration’s effort to sweep up sensitive data on millions of Americans with the aim of identifying noncitizen voters, arguing that the U.S. Department of Justice is building a dangerous centralized national voter list ahead of the midterm elections in November.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia by the voting rights and civic group Common Cause with help from other organizations, seeks to block the Justice Department from obtaining and analyzing unredacted state voter lists that include driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers. 

The DOJ plans to share the data with the Department of Homeland Security, which operates a powerful computer program that can verify U.S. citizenship. Democratic election officials say the program has wrongly flagged Americans as possible noncitizen voters and could erode faith in election results.

“This is a blatant, partisan power grab designed to cast doubt on the validity of our elections and whose vote should be counted,” Virginia Kase Solomón, Common Cause president and CEO, said in a statement.

The Justice Department has sued 30 states and the District of Columbia for the data. But at least a dozen other states have provided the data, handing the Trump administration information on millions of registered voters. 

The latest lawsuit by Common Cause, with legal representation by the American Civil Liberties Union, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and other voting rights groups, opens a new front in the legal fight against the Trump administration’s campaign for the data. It represents an attempt to halt the administration from using the voter information it’s already obtained — and stop it from collecting more.

The suit asks a court to order the Justice Department to halt any actions to compile, use or disclose sensitive voter data. The groups also wants the DOJ to delete the data already in its possession.

Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming have voluntarily provided, or will turn over, their sensitive voter data, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which has been tracking the Justice Department’s efforts.

Federalization of elections

Since taking office last year, President Donald Trump has moved to assert presidential power over federal elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are run by the states. The president and his allies have framed his moves as necessary to ensure the security of elections by purging noncitizen voters.

Trump issued an executive order a year ago that attempted to impose a nationwide requirement that voters must produce documents proving their citizenship. Federal courts blocked the order. He is also pressuring Congress to pass legislation, the SAVE America Act, containing a similar requirement.

Late last month, Trump signed another executive order clamping down on mail ballots. It directs the U.S. Postal Service to restrict the delivery of ballots and instructs Homeland Security to compile lists of voting-age U.S. citizens in each state, effectively building a national database of voters and would-be voters. Several active lawsuits are challenging the order.

“By attempting to interrogate and exploit voter data for political purposes, President Trump’s DOJ isn’t just threatening the privacy of every American—they are building a system designed to imprison the ballot box and silence millions of eligible voters,” Kase Solomón said. “We won’t stand by while Americans’ rights to privacy and voting are under attack.” 

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In other lawsuits, Justice Department lawyers have argued the agency is entitled to voter data under the 1960 Civil Rights Act, a federal law to combat voting discrimination. DOJ lawyers have also denied that the agency is building a nationwide voter list — but they have acknowledged voter data will be sent to Homeland Security for analysis by SAVE, an online tool short for Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements.

SAVE was previously used for one-off searches of individual immigrants to check whether they were eligible for government benefits. The Trump administration last year refashioned it into a program capable of checking the citizenship of voters. Some GOP states have begun voluntarily using SAVE to scan their state voter rolls for potential noncitizens.

“That’s how we are going to ensure that they have the proper identification as to each and every voter,” Justice Department Voting Section acting Chief Eric Neff said in federal court in Rhode Island in March, according to a transcript.

DOJ losing streak

Federal judges have so far uniformly ruled against the Justice Department’s efforts to force states to turn over voter data. Federal judges in five states — California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island — have dismissed the DOJ’s lawsuits.

The Justice Department has appealed some of the rulings. Oral arguments in those cases are set for mid-May.

The DOJ’s most recent court loss came last week in Rhode Island from Judge Mary McElroy, a Trump appointee. In a 14-page order, she ruled that federal voting laws — including the National Voter Registration Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Civil Rights Act — don’t empower the Justice Department to demand state voter data.

“Neither the NVRA nor HAVA authorize DOJ to conduct the kind of fishing expedition it seeks here,” McElroy wrote.

Wisconsin spends less on law enforcement and on its judicial and legal systems than the majority of states, but it’s in the top 12 for spending on its prison and corrections system, according to a new report published Tuesday. 

The report, from the Wisconsin Policy Forum, investigates how the state is faring on issues like crime, racial disparities and its prison system. The 104-page report, titled “Cross Examination: A comprehensive review of Wisconsin’s criminal justice system,” tracks topics including state spending on criminal justice, crime rates over decades and a changing prison population.

State incarceration rate draws closer to national

As of Dec. 31, 2022, for every 100,000 Wisconsin residents, 311 of them were imprisoned in state or federal correctional facilities, the report says. 

Although this was below the national rate of 355 people per 100,000, the difference between the state and the nation was “considerably wider” a decade earlier, the report says. 

Wisconsin ranked 23rd among other states. Indiana and Michigan had higher incarceration rates, while Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota had “considerably lower” rates. 

The rate of violent crime has risen in Wisconsin over time despite a decline nationwide, the report finds. Wisconsin’s rate of violent crime remains lower than the national rate. The state has followed a national trend of steadily declining property crime. 

Criminal justice spending 

In 2022, Wisconsin spent less than the national average on state and local law enforcement, ranking 32nd in the country, the report finds. Judicial and legal spending was also below average, at 35th. 

The report says that over the last 15 years, the population of county jails in Wisconsin has declined considerably. The jail population was roughly 20% lower in the average month in 2023 compared to 2003.

However, Wisconsin’s corrections spending, which includes the prison system and monitoring people on community supervision,was above the national average and ranked 12th in the country, greater than all other Midwest states except Nebraska. 

Per capita, Wisconsin spends about the same as the national average on its criminal justice system, the report finds. 

Costs related to corrections are likely to go up from wage bumps for prison staff that the Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers approved to counteract persistent understaffing, and from growing medical costs of an aging prison population, the report says. 

The aging prison population “likely means” increasing health care needs among prisoners, and may lead to changes in the Department of Corrections budget, the report suggests. 

While people 60 or older are a minority of people arrested or incarcerated in Wisconsin, the number in that age group who have been arrested and have faced court cases “have grown considerably,” the report says. The incarceration rate for adults over 60 in Wisconsin has doubled since 2010.

The report says that the prison population is getting older both because incarcerated people are aging while in the system and because more older adults are being admitted into the system. 

Growth in violent crime, operating a vehicle while intoxicated and other public order offenses are among the factors that have driven these trends, the report says. The long-term impact of the truth-in-sentencing law and people serving extremely long sentences may also be a factor. 

Racial disparities 

The Wisconsin Policy Forum called racial disparities a “clear and persistent trend across Wisconsin’s

justice system,” with a disproportionate number of Black Wisconsinites among crime victims, among people arrested and among people who are incarcerated or on supervision in the community. 

Wisconsin has the second-largest disparity of any state between Black and white incarceration rates, the report finds. High rates of poverty in the city of Milwaukee worsen these trends. 

The number of Black people incarcerated in Wisconsin has decreased to 8,965 in 2023 from 9,489 in 2000, according to the report, while the number of incarcerated white adults increased to 11,627 from 9,983 in the same period, according to the report. Despite that shift, “Black residents were highly overrepresented in Wisconsin’s prisons in 2023,” the report states.  

Overcrowded, understaffed prisons 

The state adult prison population fell in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it has since risen closer to pre-pandemic levels, the report states. Many criminal cases delayed during the height of the pandemic have finally been processed, leading to an increase in people being sentenced for crimes —  a major factor behind recent increases in incarceration in Wisconsin, according to the report. 

The average number of youth in state prisons has plummeted to 77 in 2024. County governments run 12 centers in Wisconsin for youth sentenced to secure detention for lower-level offenses. Generally, the reported number of youth housed at these facilities has remained lower since 2010 than in the preceding decade, “when their numbers often exceeded 300,” the report says. 

In its conclusion, the report says that Wisconsin’s correctional system comes with “significant financial and human costs.” For example, “overcrowding, understaffing and aging infrastructure of prisons such as Green Bay and Waupun Correctional Institutions has also led to several deaths and prolonged lockdowns in recent years.” 

The report says the Department of Corrections has made progress on the issues of staff turnover and vacancies. 

The department’s adult facilities have an overall vacancy rate of 14.8% for correctional officers and sergeants, according to the latest data on the department’s website. However, the percentage of vacancies varies by facility; for example, at Green Bay Correctional Institution, this vacancy rate is much higher, at 42.1%.  

The report says that the question of whether and when to close prisons at Green Bay and Waupun has not been settled, and that Evers’ proposed plan to make changes to the prison system was almost entirely removed from the 2025-2027 state budget. 

But even if the governor’s entire proposal had been approved, “the problems of a large, increasingly expensive and increasingly elderly prison population would remain,” the report says. 

The Public Welfare Foundation, which commissioned the Wisconsin Policy Forum study, provides funding for the Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project.