Canceled flights are displayed on an arrivals board at San Francisco International Airport on Nov. 7, 2025 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The first flights affected by a new Federal Aviation Administration directive led to widespread delays and cancellations Friday.

The FAA will ramp up to a 10% reduction in flights at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports by Nov. 14, starting with a 4% reduction Friday. 

More than 1,000 flights had been canceled by 5 p.m. Eastern  Friday, according to the flight tracker FlightAware.com, compared with just more than 200 on Thursday. 

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford announced the plan Wednesday. The reductions would help ease the strain on air traffic controllers, who have been working without pay during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1. 

Duffy said controllers were taking second jobs to make ends meet and were experiencing fatigue and stress, leading to safety concerns. 

Shutdown delays in D.C., Chicago, Atlanta and more

Seven airports on the list of 40 had ground delays Friday, with staffing shortages at 18 air traffic control towers triggering delays at others, according to an FAA advisory. 

Departures at Washington Reagan National Airport, just outside the nation’s capital in Northern Virginia, were averaging a four-hour delay Friday afternoon, according to FAA data. 

The airport led the nation with 73 cancellations Friday, according to FlightAware. Chicago O’Hare, Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, Denver International and Dallas/Fort Worth airports were also in the top five for cancellations.

Duffy visited Washington Reagan National earlier in the day to check in with travelers and brief reporters. He said he couldn’t give an exact figure on the number of affected flights, but said he hoped the reduction in flights would help controllers miss less work.

“I don’t want to see the disruption,” he said. “I don’t want to see the delays. Now, there could be a benefit if I can get the controllers to come back to work.”

Duffy recommended Friday that travelers continue to book flights now, rather than waiting for the shutdown to end. He said in an ABC News interview that waiting to book a flight could put fliers in the position of paying higher prices.

Regional carriers 

Nate Vallier, a partner at Alaska Travel Desk, a travel agency, said in a Friday press release the cancellations appeared to mostly hit smaller regional carriers. 

“We’re seeing a lot of randomness in the cancellations, as a way to spread the pain per se,”  Vallier said. “But the majority of canceled flights so far are with regional jets, such as those flown by SkyWest, Horizon, and American Eagle’s Envoy Divisions.” 

Alaska Beacon reporter James Brooks contributed to this report.

Furloughed federal workers stand in line for hours ahead of a special food distribution by the Capital Area Food Bank and No Limits Outreach Ministries on Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Senators on Friday said they plan to remain in town for the weekend, a sign negotiations may be picking up to approve a stopgap spending measure and end the government shutdown, now at day 38.

A vote on a package of spending bills could come either Saturday or Sunday that would partially fund the government, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters.

“Our members are going to be advised to be available if there’s a need to vote,” Thune said. “We will see what happens and whether or not, over the course of the next couple of days, the Democrats can find a way to reengage again.”

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer offered a proposal from Democrats to agree to reopen the government if health care tax subsidies are continued for a year. 

As open enrollment begins, people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace are seeing a drastic increase in premium costs.

“We’d like to offer a simple proposal,” the New York Democrat said. “To reopen the government and extend the (Affordable Care Act) tax credits simultaneously.” 

Republicans have maintained that any discussion on extending the health care tax credits set to expire at the end of the year will only happen after government funding resumes. House Speaker Mike Johnson this week said he would not promise a vote on the GOP-controlled House floor regarding the issue. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in September found that if lawmakers permanently extend the enhanced tax credits for certain people who buy their health insurance through the ACA Marketplace, it would cost the government $350 billion over 10 years and increase the number of those with health insurance by 3.8 million.

But it was unclear how much traction Schumer would get. Several Republicans called the proposal a “non-starter,” such as Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota. 

Rounds also questioned if the stopgap spending bill that Democrats agreed to support is the House-passed version that would extend government funding only to Nov. 21 or another that would run longer. 

“It’s good that they’re recognizing that we have to open up the government,” Rounds said of Democrats. 

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin called the proposal from Democrats “absurd,” and said there was no way senators could negotiate a deal on health care quickly.

He added that Trump also wants to be part of the negotiations on health care.

“Whatever we do as Republicans, we’ve got to really work close with the president,” Mullin said. “The President wants to be involved in this negotiation.”

Separately, senators failed Friday in a 53-43 vote to move forward on a bill from Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson to pay federal workers who Friday missed their second paycheck. Georgia’s Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock voted with Republicans. Sixty votes were needed.

President Donald Trump on social media said, “The United States Senate should not leave town until they have a Deal to end the Democrat Shutdown. If they can’t reach a Deal, the Republicans should terminate the Filibuster, IMMEDIATELY, and take care of our Great American Workers!”

Flight cutbacks, food aid disruption

The Senate has failed 14 times to move forward on approving a stopgap spending measure to fund the government until Nov. 21. 

As the government shutdown has dragged on for nearly seven weeks, major airports have been hit as they struggle to maintain flight schedules, with air traffic controllers now more than a month without pay.

Meanwhile, federal courts have forced the Trump administration to release billions in emergency funds to provide critical food assistance to 42 million people. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would issue full November benefits for food assistance in compliance with a court order.

As the debate in Congress goes on, Democrats have refused to back the House-passed version of the GOP stopgap measure over their concerns about the expiration of health care subsidies.

Democrats also want to see federal workers laid off by the Trump administration amid the shutdown rehired. Major wins across the country for Democrats in Tuesday elections in the states bolstered their resolve to reject efforts to end the government shutdown that do not include certain policy wins.  

Historically, lawmakers who have forced shutdowns over policy preferences have not been successful. 

In 2013, the GOP tried to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act, which did not happen, and in the 2018-2019 shutdown, Trump, in his first term, insisted on additional funding for a border wall. But that shutdown — which set a record exceeded only by the ongoing shutdown — concluded 35 days later with the same amount of money included in the original appropriations bill. 

Thune lament

Thune told reporters Friday that he thought progress was being made on striking a deal to resume government funding, but he said after Democrats’ Thursday caucus meeting, their tune changed. 

“Right now, we’ve got to get the Democrats kind of back engaged,” Thune said.

Following Thursday’s meeting, Democrats remained tight-lipped and did not seem any closer to an internal agreement on how to move forward with resolving the government shutdown.

“I thought we were on a track,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican said. “We’d give them everything they wanted or had asked for.”

Senate Republicans have agreed to allow a floor vote on the Affordable Care Act subsidies and have opened the door to rehiring federal workers, but have not gone further.

“At some point … they have to take yes for an answer, and they were trending in that direction,” Thune said. “And then yesterday, everything kind of, the wheels came off, so to speak, but it’s up to them.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told reporters Thursday that voters this week made a strong showing in rebuking the Trump administration and that Democrats need to continue their fight amid the government shutdown.

“On Tuesday, all of us in the caucus heard that loud and clear,” Murphy said. “We want to stay together and unified. I think everybody understands the importance of what happened on Tuesday, and wants us to move forward in a way that honors that.”

Bill to pay federal workers

Federal workers going without salaries for more than a month now remains a concern, and Johnson tried to pass his bill through unanimous consent that would send them paychecks. Employees are paid after the end of a shutdown, under the law.

Michigan’s Gary Peters objected to Johnson’s bill over concerns that the Trump administration would not use the funds to pay federal workers, and the measure would not prevent the firing of federal workers. 

Peters pointed to how the Trump administration initially appealed a federal court order that compelled the U.S. Department of Agriculture to pay $9 billion in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. 

Peters offered his own bill to set “guardrails” on the president’s authority to ensure that the funds are used to pay federal workers and not moved around. The Trump administration has moved around billions in multi-year research funds within the Defense Department to ensure that troops are paid. 

“He walks over Congress all the time,” Peters said of the president while on the Senate floor. 

Johnson objected to Peters’ bill. He argued that his bill does not expand presidential powers.

“We were very careful that it wouldn’t do that,” Johnson told reporters of his bill.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union that represents 800,000 federal workers, urged Democrats Friday to support Johnson’s bill.

AFGE National President Everett Kelley said in a letter to senators Friday that with Thanksgiving in less than three weeks, Congress needs to come to an agreement on funding the government. 

“Every missed paycheck deepens the financial hole in which federal workers and their families find themselves,” Kelley said. “By the time Congress reaches a compromise, the damage will have been done to their bank accounts, their credit ratings, their health, and their dignity.”

A sign in a convenience store in Hyattsville, Maryland, advertises that it accepts SNAP benefits. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

According to Gov. Tony Evers’ administration, over 330,000 Wisconsin households were paid their November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by Friday morning. 

The release of the funds comes as the federal government shutdown entered day 38 on Friday; it’s the longest shutdown in American history.

The lapse in federal funding for SNAP, known as FoodShare in Wisconsin, took effect on Nov. 1 — leaving nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites, including 270,000 kids, without access to food assistance. Two court orders last week directed the Trump administration to pay SNAP benefits by a Wednesday deadline.

This week food banks across the state, including in Milwaukee, have seen a spike in need.

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., a federal judge in Rhode Island, ordered the Trump administration Thursday to pay the full month of food assistance benefits for November. McConnell said the Trump administration missed its chance to make partial payments after it failed to release funds by the deadline.

Shortly after the court decision was released, the Evers administration announced it was taking steps to get the funds out the door as soon as possible.

“My administration worked quickly to ensure these benefits could be released as soon as possible so that our kids, families, and seniors have access to basic food and groceries without one more day of delay,” Evers said in a statement Thursday evening. “But let’s be clear — it never should’ve come to this. Wisconsinites should’ve never been without food assistance, period, and they wouldn’t have been if President Trump and the Trump Administration had listened to me and so many who urged them to use all legal funds and levers to prevent millions of Americans from losing access to food and groceries.” 

The Evers administration said Friday morning that it used the same process it typically uses to process benefits, submitting information to its SNAP payment vendor, which processes payments to QUEST cards, a few hours after the court decision to ensure payments would go out as soon as possible. 

The funds became available to households at midnight. According to the administration, a total of about $104.4 million was issued for 337,137 households. It said the payments went out before the Trump administration requested that a federal appeals court block the order from McConnell on Friday morning. The emergency stay has not been granted as of Friday afternoon. 

The administration received notification from the federal Food and Nutrition Service on Friday morning that it was working to implement November benefits in accordance with the Thursday court order.

The Evers administration said it is still monitoring the situation for any issues that may arise related to processing last night’s payments. 

Evers said the actions of the Trump administration are “contemptible” and called on federal Republicans to work with Democrats to end the government shutdown. Last week, Evers had also declared a state of emergency due to the lapse in funding for food assistance, directing state agencies to do everything they could to support Wisconsinites.

“Wisconsinites simply cannot afford another month of Republican dysfunction in Washington,” Evers said. “It’s time for Republicans to get back to work and do the right thing by working across the aisle to end the federal government shutdown to ensure Wisconsinites continue to have access to basic needs, including affordable healthcare and food assistance, moving forward.”

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Democratic and Republican candidates for governor are working to build their name recognition and campaign throughout the state and had their first opportunity to appear on the same platform at a forum Thursday. Shown are, from left, Matt Smith of WISN-12, Francesca Hong, Sara Rodriguez, Kelda Roys, David Crowley and Missy Hughes, all Democrats, and Josh Schoemann, a Republican. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The primaries for Wisconsin’s open gubernatorial election are about nine months away and the 2026 general election is still a year out, but Democratic and Republican candidates had their first opportunity to speak at a group forum Thursday. 

The forum, moderated by WISN-12 News Political Director Matt Smith, was hosted at the Wisconsin Technology Council’s annual symposium and focused mostly on the economy, especially the technology sector. 

Democratic candidates at the forum included Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong and former Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) CEO Missy Hughes. 

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann was the lone Republican candidate at the forum. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is seen as the frontrunner on the GOP side, was not present.

All are competing to replace Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who won’t seek reelection, in the first open Wisconsin governor’s race in 15 years.

Threats to the economy

Smith asked the candidates what they see as the greatest threat to Wisconsin’s economy.  In her answer, Roys elicited the first — and biggest — round of applause from the audience.

“Wisconsin needs three key things to survive and thrive economically. We need higher wages for our workers — we lag behind our midwestern peers — we need lower costs on everything from housing to health care, and we need more freedom,” Roys said. “The biggest threat to all three of these things is the Trump regime.”

Roys said Trump’s tariffs are driving up prices for many products including appliances, building materials and groceries. She also said cuts to health care are going to have a disproportionate impact on rural parts of the state and that targeting immigrants is hurting the state’s agriculture industry. Entrepreneurship and capitalism, she added, also rely on the rule of law. 

“We need to have a free society that obeys democratic norms, and right now, Trump and his regime are our biggest threat,” Roys said. 

Hong said “authoritarianism” is the biggest threat to the economy, adding that disparities are growing in part because of actions being taken at the federal level, such as cutting food assistance. 

“When you have essentially a federal government that is taking away rights of states and our communities, that is going to threaten the economy,” Hong said. “It is workers that power the economy.”

Schoemann said “affordability” is the greatest threat and expressed concerns about young people and retirees leaving the state to live elsewhere. He said the state should work to deregulate industry and lower utility rates and cut taxes to address the threat. 

“The average price of a home in Wisconsin right now is almost $350,000… A brand new teacher and a brand new cop who are married with a dual income can’t afford to qualify for the mortgage for that one. If they have a child, they’re trying to pay for child care, and they have utility bills that are going through the roof, and Verizon just had another increase in prices, and not to mention Netflix,” Schoemann said to some chuckles from the audience. “I know we laugh, but it’s a problem. It’s a massive problem.”

Rodriguez agreed that affordability is a big concern, saying that she wants her 19-year-old son to be able to build a life in Wisconsin but she is concerned that he won’t be able to afford to live here. 

“He’s not going to be able to do that if he can’t afford a home. He’s not going to be able to do that if, you know, he’s not going to be able to afford child care, so I think affordability is our biggest threat,” Rodriguez said. She added that the state needs to figure out how to ensure that its workforce can grow. 

Crowley said “complacency” is the biggest threat.

“We can’t continue to do the same work that we’ve been doing. We should no longer be defending the status quo because we have to figure out how do we build new institutions … ” Crowley said. “We see that public trust has been destroyed in government.”

Hughes said the state isn’t investing enough in K-12 and higher education. 

“When we start from a place of thinking, ‘No, we don’t want to take a risk. No, we don’t want to have investment in something,’ we end up just staying in the same place and often spiraling downward,” Hughes said. 

Working with the Trump administration

Democratic candidates were asked how they would work with the Trump administration, while Schoemann was asked whether there is anything he would push back on.

Rodriguez said that she would use the “bully pulpit” of the governor’s office to put pressure on the Trump administration to be more consistent. She noted her background as a health care executive, saying that being able to plan is essential. 

“You’re trying to figure out what you’re going to be doing in the next several years. Small businesses do the same thing. With this back and forth on tariffs… it is almost impossible to, so, that’s why it feels like we’re stuck,” Rodriguez said.

Roys called Trump a “bully and an authoritarian” and said Wisconsin needs a governor who will stand up to the administration. She noted governors in other states, including California Gov. Gavin Newsome, Maine Gov. Janet Mills and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, as examples of governors across the country who are pushing back.

Crowley said that he has worked with the federal government under Trump and President Joe Biden to secure grant funding for Milwaukee County. He also noted that he worked with Republicans at the state level to help pass legislation that overhauled local government funding in Wisconsin. 

“When we go into a restaurant, you’re not having a conversation with a waiter about their relationship with the cook. You want to make sure that your food is coming out hot and ready and delicious,” Crowley said. “We need our government to work the exact same way. Doesn’t matter if we agree on anything or not. We need to be delivering for the people that we represent every single day because it’s about moving our state forward.”

Hughes noted that Trump pushed for a plan operated by FoxConn during his first term, which had promised would create 13,000 jobs, and the state of Wisconsin invested $1.5 billion in infrastructure to make that happen. The original plan was mostly abandoned by the company.  

“I had to come in and clean up that mess,” Hughes said. She was involved in brokering a deal with Microsoft, which launched plans in 2024 for a $3.3 billion data center on the land that was once going to be the site of the FoxConn development. 

“You have to work at every level of the economy from a small business on Main Street all the way to our biggest businesses and supporting them and everywhere in between,” Hughes said. “Donald Trump thinks you can do these big things, and it’s all going to be better, and we’re all ending up paying the price for that.” Instead of taking Trump’s “silver bullet” approach, Hughes said, Wisconsin’s governor must understand the complexity of the state economy and ”keep working hard to create the quality of life that keeps people here here.”

Hong said it would be hard to work with the administration. She added that the lack of funding for SNAP is “disrupting an entire ecosystem,” and said public officials need to fight for the most vulnerable. 

“We have to make sure that people have food, and so, I think working with an administration that has no interest in your constituents is going to be incredibly difficult to be able to ensure that there is an economy that works for everyone,” Hong said. 

Schoemann didn’t say whether he would push back on anything the Trump administration is doing. He said tariffs have been difficult, but he also said the issues are global. 

“I hear from manufacturers and agriculture alike it’s the constant give and take, but let’s face it,… the changes that the world is going through right now — it’s a global thing,” he said. 

Data centers and artificial intelligence regulations

The growing presence of data centers in Wisconsin and the concerns they raise about increased electricity costs and water consumption, as well as the use of  artificial intelligence (AI), was a significant focus of the forum.

According to datacentermap.com, there are currently 47 data centers in Wisconsin. Proposals for more centers in the state are popping up as well, including one for a campus operated by OpenAI, Oracle and Vantage Data Centers in Port Washington. 

A recent Marquette Law School poll asked Wisconsinites about data centers and found that 55% say the costs of large data centers are greater than the benefits they provide, while 44% say the benefits outweigh the costs.

Schoemann, noting his close proximity to Port Washington, said that he thinks there is an “abundance of opportunity” created by data centers, but the state needs to be “very, very strategic and smart about where” data centers are placed. He said he also has concerns that there isn’t enough power in Wisconsin, and expressed hope that there will be a nuclear power “renaissance” in the state.

Crowley said he doesn’t think the government should be picking “winners and losers” when it comes to data centers, but instead should “make sure that this is fertile ground for entrepreneurs and businesses to either stay or move right here to the state of Wisconsin.”

“There’s an opportunity for us to really become AI and a data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe and really sets us apart in making sure that we continue to invest in businesses and companies here,” Crowley said. 

Hughes said that Wisconsin has a diverse economy and that she doesn’t see the state  becoming a data center-based economy in the near future, but that data centers do offer an opportunity for communities.

“To have some of these data centers land here in Wisconsin, provide incredible property tax and revenue for the communities that are really determining how to pay their bills, how to build new schools, how to build new fire departments, it’s an opportunity for those communities to access some of that investment and to benefit from it,” she said. 

Hughes also said the state is already involved in conversations with companies seeking to build data centers in Wisconsin and that should continue. She said a project needs to be right for individual communities, noting the example of Microsoft scrapping its plans last month for a data center in Caledonia after major pushback from the local community. The company is now looking for an alternative site.

“We talked to them about their environmental needs, about where they’re building and how to make that happen in a way that has the least impact to the communities and the best benefit for Wisconsin,” Hughes said. “Working directly with the companies and getting to know those companies, acting with them as partners, is critically important for these to be good investments and ultimately beneficial for Wisconsin.”

Hong raised concerns about the environmental impact of data centers and the prospect that they could drive up utility bills. 

“One of the big considerations here is that for the workers and jobs that are created from these AI data centers, let’s make sure that the housing that’s being built, the workers are going to stay in Wisconsin, that we have to make sure that the companies are being held accountable,” Hong said. 

Roys said that “data centers are coming whether people like it or not” and the question for policymakers is whether they can implement “an approach that respects the values that I think all of us share — of democracy and shared decision making that’s transparent, that’s accountable, of fair play… and of protecting all of our resources.” She added that she has been concerned seeing “the biggest and wealthiest” companies seek to force their ways into communities. 

Asked about the role that the state should play in regulating artificial intelligence, most of the candidates appeared open to some regulation of AI but expressed concerns about stifling growth. 

Roys said she wants to see consumer protections and said she has authored legislation to crack down on crypto kiosk scams as well as to regulate on the use of AI to ensure landlords don’t use it to help hike rents.

Hughes compared AI to a hammer, saying it could be used to hurt someone or to build structures.

“Trying to regulate it at this moment could potentially hold back some of the benefits that we might see from it. I think that we need to continue to watch it,” Hughes said. “ … I want to make sure that we preserve the right to use that tool in a way that can really advance our society forward.”

Crowley said he thinks there should be laws in place, but there is no “one-size-fits-all solution for technology.”

“How do you make sure that those who are directly involved in this particular industry are at the table, making sure that there is some predictability when it comes down to starting your company and also making sure they can continue to grow?… But make sure that we’re also protecting our environment, protecting the consumer at the exact same time.” Crowley said. 

Schoemann, meanwhile, said he was concerned about how AI could be a threat to the state’s workforce. He noted that Washington County has studied the potential impacts of AI, finding that many jobs could be automated using AI in the next 15 years or so. 

He said he wanted to see more study of AI’s impact, to answer the question, “How do we prepare the workforce?”

Broadband and marijuana

A question about how to increase broadband access in Wisconsin led the an unexpected answer from Hong: “Legalize weed.”

Wisconsin is one of 11 states that hasn’t legalized recreational or medical marijuana. By some estimates the state is losing out on millions in tax revenue each year due to cannabis prohibition. 

“The revenue that comes in will be able to invest in fiber optic and high-speed internet in many different companies across the state,” Hong said.

The push to legalize marijuana for either recreational and medicinal purposes in Wisconsin has been a fruitless pursuit under split government. Republican lawmakers are working to advance a medical marijuana proposal in the Legislature right now, though it is unclear whether it can garner enough support to become law. 

Rodriguez said she didn’t disagree with Hong, noting that Wisconsin’s midwestern neighbors are able to bring in significant revenue by taxing marijuana.

“Gov. [J.B.] Pritzker thanks us all the time for the amount of tax Wisconsin [consumers pay],” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez also added that she wants to build off the Evers administration’s successes expanding broadband.

“It is a requirement for modern day working, for schools. We saw that during COVID,” Rodriguez said. “Making sure that we are able to get that type of connection to every part of Wisconsin is going to be important.” 

Hughes agreed both with marijuana legalization and with Rodriguez on broadband, saying there have been “incredible strides” in installing broadband in rural areas under the Evers administration. 

“I’m all for legalizing weed, and abortion for that matter,” Roys said. 

Roys noted that the state’s progressive tax structure has flattened over the last 16 years and that reversing that trend — taxing higher income residents — could help pay for investments in broadband.

Schoemann started his answer focused on broadband, rather than staking out his position on marijuana legalization, saying broadband it is a massive issue, especially in the Northwoods. He said Washington County was able to make progress using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding, though he didn’t necessarily support the funding. 

“I took [U.S] Rep. Glenn Grothman’s advice: ‘If they’re dumb enough to give you the money, you should be dumb enough to spend it,’” Schoemann said. “Some of that we did in broadband… I think we have to finish the job on broadband.”

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Wisconsin voters line up outside of a Milwaukee polling place on Nov. 5, 2024. Wisconsin (Andy Manis | Getty Images)

Democrats are euphoric about Tuesday’s elections, in which voters across the country delivered a resounding rebuke to Republicans and President Donald Trump. “The Democratic Party is back!” Ken Martin, Democratic National Committee chair, declared in a post-election press call with other national party leaders. 

Democratic wins in governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey, the mayoral race in New York City, state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, even a historic victory that broke the Republican supermajority in the Mississippi legislature, along with a bevy of downballot victories in historically Republican districts, showed voters have had enough of the misery inflicted by the MAGA right.

In a scene familiar to Wisconsinites, Pennsylvania voters beat back an effort by a MAGA billionaire to buy their state supreme court. “People don’t want corporate control of the courts,” Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Eugene DePasquale said of the millions wasted on that race by TikTok billionaire Jeff Yass — a repeat of Elon Musk’s failed bid to buy a friendly majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

The results are a concrete sign that there is a political price associated with the chaos Trump and his GOP enablers have unleashed, sending federal agents to terrorize American cities, driving up health care costs and inflicting unnecessary suffering and hunger on Americans during the longest government shutdown in history.

Young men, Black and Latino voters, working-class people — all the demographic groups that abandoned Democrats in 2024 returned in droves on Tuesday. As the Democrats celebrated their wins, they also seemed to concede that they were benefitting from the mess Republicans have made of governing. People are hurting, their outlook is grim, and they are in the mood to throw out the party in power after just six months.

Democrats need to form an aggressive, unified opposition to champion the will of those voters and not just take their support for granted. And Republicans had better re-examine their unwavering loyalty to Trump.

So far, in Wisconsin, Republican members of Congress have not signaled that they care about the catastrophic effects of Trump’s policies on their constituents.

In an interview with “UpFront” on WISN 12 News on Sunday, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden wouldn’t say if he supports extending Affordable Care Act subsidies, even as Wisconsinites are receiving the news that without the subsidies their premiums are set to skyrocket by 45% to 800% depending on where in the state they live.

Van Orden, who supports a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, repeatedly declared on “UpFront” that he “won’t be held hostage” by Democrats who have made preventing a huge spike in health care costs for people who buy insurance on the ACA marketplace — more than 310,000 of them in Wisconsin — a condition of their votes to reopen the government. Nor has he been willing to say whether he supports or opposes the Trump administration’s decision to withhold food assistance from 700,000 Wisconsinites during the shutdown.

U.S. Rep Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, also supports repealing the Affordable Care Act and this month called on Republicans to “hold firm” against extending ACA tax credits, repeating the lie that Democrats are shutting down the government because they want to give health care to “illegal aliens.”

U.S. Rep Bryan Steil told “UpFront” that the Trump administration is in “a very difficult position” as it makes the decision to fire thousands of federal workers during the shutdown. He also claimed he might support extending ACA subsidies, but only after the shutdown ends, and if there are “significant changes to that program to root out waste, fraud and abuse.” 

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, took the opportunity, as health care subsidies lapse and insurance premiums spike, to hold a hearing Thursday on the “harms” caused by extending health care coverage to millions of Americans through the Affordable Care Act.

Is it any wonder that voters are not thrilled with how the party that holds complete control in Washington is governing?

What’s significant about Tuesday’s election is that it puts everyone on notice that voters will push back.

Over and over, during the Democrats’ Wednesday press conference, various national leaders eagerly declared that theirs is the party of “affordability.” But Martin acknowledged that his party had lost touch with working class voters worried about making ends meet. He said Democrats “didn’t focus on that anxiety enough over the years.” and that they have to “give working class people the sense that we’re fighting for them.”

It doesn’t take a political genius to see the vulnerability in the wretched excesses of the Trump administration, which is forcing children to go hungry while throwing a lavish “Great Gatsby” party at Mar-a-Lago and building a massive, gilded ballroom at the White House.

If nothing else, Democrats are the populist alternative by default. But there also seems to be a sincere effort underway to build a democratic resistance that will fight for most Americans against the MAGA oligarchs who are liquidating civil society and sucking up the common wealth of the nation to enrich themselves.

Martin and the other Dems on the Wednesday call trumpeted the importance of state-level politics. “The path back to building Democratic power runs through state legislatures,” declared Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, adding, “the center of gravity has moved to the states.” 

Martin agreed. “I believe this party has ignored building power at the state level for too long,” he said. “We cannot just build federal power.” 

The stars of this new strategy are Democratic governors — the most popular Democratic politicians in America, according to the panel, which made a passing mention of the importance of the 2026 Wisconsin governor’s race. Certainly Virginia Democrats, who won back both the state legislature and the governor’s mansion, gave hope to Wisconsin Dems who are hoping to do the same.

But how much the national party will engage in Wisconsin and who will emerge from a crowded field of Democratic hopefuls in the first open election for governor here in 15 years is very much up in the air. 

On Thursday, at a gubernatorial candidate forum covered by Baylor Spears, candidates were asked to name the greatest threat to Wisconsin’s economy. Few had a simple, appealing answer that connected to most voters’ most immediate concerns — skyrocketing prices, a shredding safety net and the disappearing prospect of shared prosperity. 

Tuesday’s elections showed that we still have a democracy, that voters have a say in how the government is run, and that they won’t put up with an endless cycle of abuse.

That should embolden everyone who is shocked and appalled by what is happening to our country — including those Wisconsin Republicans who have so far been afraid to criticize Trump, as well as the Democrats who need to point the way to a better future.

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A cancer patient’s medical bills are spread on a kitchen table in a home in Salem, Va., in this 2011 file photo. A new Trump administration rule would override more than a dozen state laws that shield consumers’ credit reports from medical debt. (Photo by Don Petersen/Associated Press)

A new Trump administration rule issued late last month would override state laws that prevent consumers’ credit reports from including medical debt, potentially weakening financial protections for millions of Americans.

In recent years, more than a dozen states have taken steps to keep medical debt from hurting residents’ credit scores, passing laws with bipartisan support. But new guidance from the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau repeals a Biden-era rule that allowed states to impose their own bans. The Trump administration has interpreted the 1970 Fair Credit Reporting Act to say that it overrides state laws around reporting debt to credit bureaus.

American consumers had at least $220 billion in unpaid medical bills in 2024, according to an analysis from research nonprofit KFF. About 6% of American adults, or 14 million people, owe more than $1,000 in medical debt.

“Medical debt is a tremendous weight keeping so many families from financial security, and, unlike most other forms of debt, it’s not a choice,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said last month in a statement announcing that a new state program had wiped out more than $6.5 billion in medical debt for more than 25 million North Carolinians.

People rarely plan to take on debt from medical care, as they do when they borrow money to buy a house or car. A one-time or short-term expense such as a single hospital stay causes about two-thirds of all medical debt, according to a 2022 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report.

And even though most Americans have health insurance, many get stuck with unexpected medical bills because their policies have high deductibles or don’t fully cover some treatments, procedures or drugs. People in worse health and those living with a disability are more likely to report medical debt, as are middle-aged adults, Black Americans, and people with low and middle incomes, according to KFF.

In the past two years, a dozen states have passed laws forbidding medical debt from appearing on credit reports, bringing the total number of states with such laws to 14: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.

Another five states — Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Nevada and Utah — limit how and when medical debt can appear on credit reports, according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.

Republican and Democratic legislators in other states, including Michigan, Ohio and South Dakota, have introduced similar bills this year.

Now the new state laws face an uncertain future. In January, while Biden was still in office,  the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a rule prohibiting credit reporting agencies from reporting medical debt in certain circumstances. Credit bureaus and credit unions sued to stop the rule. The incoming Trump administration agreed with the plaintiffs and declined to defend the rule in court, so a federal judge blocked it.

Maine state Sen. Donna Bailey, a Democrat, said in a September statement that Maine’s new law barring medical debt from appearing on consumer reports was even more important in light of the demise of the federal rule.

“Although Americans no longer have the federal protection, Mainers will continue to have protection here in our state,” she said in September. “When we go to the hospital for medical care, especially for emergencies, any debt that we take on should not hold us back from buying a car, renting a home or taking out a loan.”

But the Trump administration’s latest order would render state laws such as Maine’s moot.

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

Deysi Camacho shops at the Feeding South Florida food pantry on Oct. 27, 2025 in Pembroke Park, Florida. Feeding South Florida was preparing for a possible surge in demand as SNAP benefits were delayed and reduced due to the government shutdown. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  Senate Democrats left their Thursday caucus lunch tight-lipped as an agreement to end the government shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history at 37 days, remained elusive.

Republicans have floated a deal that includes the reinstatement of federal workers laid off by President Donald Trump, but no votes were scheduled on a spending bill as of late Thursday afternoon. There was some speculation senators could work through the weekend.

The chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said negotiations are still underway. But she said as part of a deal, she supported the rehiring of the thousands of federal workers the Trump administration fired in its Reductions in Force, or RIFs, during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

“Those who were RIF’d during the shutdown should be recalled,” she said. “We’re still negotiating that language.”

Emboldened by this week’s Election Day victories, where Democrats swept major local and state races, Senate Democrats are seeking to use that momentum as leverage to get Republicans to also agree to a health care deal to end the government shutdown.

While Democrats have pushed to extend tax credits for health care, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters Thursday that the best he can offer is a vote on extending those subsidies, which expire this year. 

The coming expiration has resulted in millions of people who buy their health insurance through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace receiving notices of a drastic spike in premium costs.

“I can’t speak for the House, and obviously I can’t guarantee an outcome here, and they know that,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said. “I think the clear path forward here, with regard to the ACA issue, is they get a vote, and we open up the government, and we head down to the White House and sit down with the president and talk about it.”

Democrats that represent states with a high population of federal employees, such as Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, are also seeking to strike a deal on RIFs. A federal judge blocked those Reductions in Force last month.

Kaine told reporters Wednesday that those negotiations are occurring with the White House.

“It is an item that is being discussed with the president, with the White House,” Kaine said.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has stressed that unless there is a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump to extend health care tax credits, Democrats should not agree to pass a stopgap spending bill to reopen the government. 

In session next week?

Senators are still scheduled to leave Capitol Hill late Thursday and be out next week on recess for the Veterans Day holiday.

But a couple Senate Republicans said late Thursday afternoon that lawmakers might stay in Washington, D.C. into Friday or later.

“I think they’re trying to work towards a vote tomorrow, maybe through the weekend. I’m pro-through the weekend,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in an interview following a GOP lunch meeting.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., likened the situation to a “goat rodeo,” which is a hyperbolic phrase to refer to a disaster.

“We’re probably going to have a vote tomorrow, and then we will get on, and then we will know where we are, and we’ll know whether the Democrats are serious or not,” Kennedy said, adding that he was unsure exactly what they were voting on.

Democrats quiet about any deal

Following their Thursday caucus lunch, Democrats did not seem closer to an internal agreement on how to move forward with resolving the government shutdown as they left their huddle. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats had a “very good, productive meeting.”

One of the top negotiators for Democrats on finding a deal, New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, declined to comment.

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman threw his hands up as he left the room.

“I don’t know how productive it was,” Fetterman, who has voted with Republicans to move legislation to reopen the government, said. 

Some Democrats said they were unified, such as New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Michigan’s Gary Peters and Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, a top appropriator. 

Peters did not specify what issue Democrats were unified on. 

“I don’t want to get into that, but it was an encouraging caucus (meeting) because there’s a great deal of unity as we came out,” he said.

Revised stopgap?

Additionally, a new continuing resolution, or CR, is needed, as the stopgap funding measure would have funded the government until Nov. 21, now just two weeks away. 

The House, which Johnson has kept in recess since September, would also need to be called back to pass a new version of a CR.

As the government shutdown continues, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned this week that if funding is not restored, flights will need to be reduced by 10% in some air spaces due to a shortage of air traffic controllers, who have worked without pay for weeks.

The government shutdown has led to millions of federal workers furloughed or required to work without pay and has created uncertainty for vulnerable people who rely on food assistance and  heating services, as well as stoppages in vital child development and nutrition programs. 

In an effort to force Democrats to vote to reopen the government, the Trump administration has tried to withhold Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits for 42 million people, until a court ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to release those benefits. 

Frustrated with the government shutdown, Trump has also tried to pressure Republicans into doing away with the Senate’s filibuster, which requires a 60-vote threshold, but Thune has resisted those calls. 

Progressives: ‘Do not cave’

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, said during a Thursday press conference that he’s “not promising anyone anything” when it comes to a House vote on extending health care tax subsidies.  

Johnson criticized Senate Democrats for wanting a guarantee that the House would also take a vote on extending the ACA taxes.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said. 

House progressives said they have one message for Senate Democrats: “Do not cave,” as Rep. Pramila Jayapal put it during a Thursday morning press conference outside the U.S. House.

“Any deal must secure the extension of the ACA tax credits and ensure health care for the American people with agreement from the House, the Senate and the White House, full stop. We have the momentum,” the Washington state Democrat said.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., who publicly confronted Johnson during a press conference Wednesday, said, “We require a deal that actually addresses the health care crisis, not that promises to think about addressing it down the road in two weeks, with concepts of a plan.”

“Sadly, at this point in time, even I say it’s impossible to trust our Republican colleagues to honor their promises and their obligations,” Houlahan said.

April Verette, president of the labor union SEIU, which represents roughly 2 million members, spoke alongside Jayapal and Houlahan and praised Democrats as “courageous.”

“We are determined to say ‘Stick with this fight’ because righteousness, morality is on our side,” Verette said.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Trump administration in a case over a policy to allow only sex assigned at birth to be used on a passport application. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to continue carrying out, for now, its policy requiring that passports only list a person’s sex assigned at birth.

The nation’s highest court paused a lower court order that temporarily barred the administration from enforcing the policy, codified in an executive order Trump signed in January. 

The executive order made it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and called on the State Department to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” 

Under then-President Joe Biden, the State Department allowed people to “select an ‘X’ as their gender marker on their U.S. passport application.”

In the unsigned court order, the majority noted that “displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth — in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”  

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, indicating a 6-3 decision.

Jackson, who authored the dissent, wrote that the court “fails to spill any ink considering the plaintiffs, opting instead to intervene in the Government’s favor without equitable justification, and in a manner that permits harm to be inflicted on the most vulnerable party.” 

“This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification,” she wrote. “Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.” 

In February, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the administration on behalf of seven transgender and nonbinary people over the suspension of the Biden-era policy.

A federal judge in Massachusetts in June temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the policy. The judge had issued an earlier preliminary injunction in April that applied to six of the case’s plaintiffs. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit kept in place the district court’s order in September, prompting the administration to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.  

Patients have their blood pressure checked and other vitals taken at an intake triage at a Remote Area Medical mobile dental and medical clinic on Oct. 07, 2023 in Grundy, Virginia. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — All 50 states have applied for the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program in Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday.

States had from Sept. 15 through Wednesday to apply for the program, which was authorized under the mega tax and spending cut package passed by Republicans and signed into law by President Donald Trump. The fund is intended to offset the budget impacts on rural areas due to sweeping Medicaid cuts. 

However, the temporary fund could only offset a little more than one-third of the package’s estimated $137 billion cut to federal Medicaid spending in rural areas over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan health research organization KFF.

Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz said the program “moves us from a system that has too often failed rural America to one built on dignity, prevention, and sustainability” in a Thursday statement alongside the announcement. 

Oz said “every state with an approved application will receive funding so it can design what works best for its communities — and CMS will be there providing support every step of the way.”

Each state was asked to “design a plan for transforming its rural health care system” and outline in proposals how they “intend to expand access, enhance quality, and improve outcomes for patients through sustainable, state-driven innovation.” 

The program allocates $25 billion equally to approved states between fiscal years 2026 and 2030. CMS said states meeting the baseline criteria will then “undergo a rigorous, data-driven merit review” for the remaining half of the funds. 

In September, when announcing the application opening, CMS said the remaining half of funds would be administered to approved states based on “individual state metrics and applications that reflect the greatest potential for and scale of impact on the health of rural communities.” 

CMS said approved awardees will be notified by Dec. 31. 

Sen. Adam Schiff of California, left, and Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, both Democrats, talk to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 6, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A vote to stop President Donald Trump’s deadly strikes on alleged drug-running boats off the coast of Venezuela failed Thursday in the U.S. Senate, nearly mirroring the outcome of a similar war powers vote last month. 

Senate Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Rand Paul of Kentucky again joined Democrats in a 49-51 vote, just shy of the simple majority needed to advance legislation aimed at halting Trump’s escalating campaign on what his administration describes as “narco-terrorists.”

The joint resolution, brought to the floor by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., directs the “removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”

Paul and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., initially cosponsored the bill, and a dozen more Democratic senators and one independent signed on. 

Schiff’s similar measure failed 48-51 in early October.

Kaine forced Thursday’s vote under the War Powers Resolution, a Vietnam War-era statute that gives Congress a check on the president’s use of the military abroad. 

The death toll from U.S. military strikes has risen to 67 since September, according to CNN. Notably, the Trump administration is relocating the country’s most advanced aircraft carrier from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean, joining other Navy resources currently amassed there. 

On Oct. 16, Trump publicly confirmed a New York Times report that he had authorized covert CIA operations in Venezuela and told reporters he was “looking at land” for possible further strikes.  

Kaine, Schiff push for war powers vote

“All of this together with the increased pace of strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific suggest that we are on the verge of something that should not happen without a debate and vote in Congress before the American people,” Kaine said on the floor before the vote. 

Kaine and Schiff told reporters Thursday they viewed the White House Office of Legal Counsel opinion authorizing the fatal strike in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean near Venezuela. 

The document, which senators are allowed to read in a classified setting, “makes no effort to claim that there’s a legal rationale for invading a sovereign nation, no effort to claim that it’s about Venezuela, or could be used with respect to Venezuela or any country,” Kaine said.

Schiff characterized the opinion as “broad enough to authorize just about anything.”

Kaine urged Senate Republicans, who received a brief and review of the document earlier this week, to introduce and debate legislation authorizing the administration to continue its military force in the region.

“Anybody in Congress who thinks we ought to be bombing ships in the Caribbean and Pacific, introduce an AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) and have a debate and vote on it,” Kaine said, adding “but don’t just abdicate this power.” 

Hegseth posts video

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth posted a grainy video online Tuesday of a vessel in flames after a strike, and said the United States targeted the boat in the Eastern Pacific that had been operated by “a Designated Terrorist Organization.” 

“Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics. The strike was conducted in international waters in the Eastern Pacific.”

“No U.S. forces were harmed in the strike, and two male narco-terrorists — who were aboard the vessel — were killed,” Hegseth wrote on social media.

It’s unlawful for the U.S. military to intentionally kill civilians who are not actively taking part in hostilities against the U.S. 

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, defended the administration’s “decisive actions to protect thousands of Americans from lethal narcotics.” 

“Some Democrat members and members of the media claim that President Trump does not have authority to conduct these strikes. I’ll tell you right now, that is plain wrong,” said Risch, chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Risch said he and fellow Senate Republicans have sat through “hours of briefings and analysis by government legal departments and attorneys” regarding the strikes.

Schiff and Kaine told reporters their access to information and briefings has been more limited.

Paul criticizes Trump moves

On the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Paul compared the strikes and buildup in the Caribbean to the U.S. military’s “misguided” intervention in the Middle East.

“We owe it to our service members to only send them into harm’s way when vital American interests are at stake. Who is in charge of Venezuela does not constitute such an interest,” Paul said, alleging the strikes are about regime change in the South American nation ruled by dictator Nicolás Maduro.

  “We overthrew Sadam Hussein thinking Iraq would be transformed into this great Jeffersonian democracy. Instead what occurred was an insurgency that led to some of the most brutal sectarian violence in living memory,” Paul said.

Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 after the Nixon administration secretly bombed Vietnam and Cambodia, killing hundreds of thousands of people. 

People sit in front of windows looking out on the tarmac at Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps/Utah News Dispatch)

The 40 airports set to see a 10% reduction in flights during the government shutdown nearly matched the list of the nation’s busiest airports, according to a preliminary list seen by States Newsroom, potentially leading to thousands of flight cancellations across the country.

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would mean 3,300 canceled flights per day, according to Airports Council International-North America, the trade group for airports.

The Federal Aviation Administration had not released an official list of airports by early Thursday afternoon, but three sources familiar with the matter provided tables listing the proposed airports.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday that the FAA would cut air traffic at 40 major airports starting Friday to help alleviate stress for air traffic controllers who have been working without pay since the federal government shut down on Oct 1.

The airports on the preliminary list are: 

• Anchorage, Alaska
• Atlanta
• Baltimore
• Boston
• Charlotte, North Carolina
• Chicago Midway
• Chicago O’Hare
• Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky
• Dallas/Forth Worth International
• Dallas Love Field
• Denver
• Detroit
• Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, Florida
• Honolulu
• Houston George Bush Intercontinental
• Houston W.P. Hobby
• Indianapolis
• Las Vegas
• Louisville, Kentucky
• Los Angeles
• Miami
• Minneapolis/St. Paul
• Memphis, Tennessee
• Newark, New Jersey
• New York LaGuardia International
• New York John F. Kennedy International
• Orlando, Florida
• Oakland, California
• Ontario, California
• Portland, Oregon
• Philadelphia
• Phoenix
• San Diego
• San Francisco
• Salt Lake City
• Seattle/Tacoma
• Teterboro, New Jersey
• Tampa, Florida
• Washington, D.C. Reagan National and Dulles International, both in Northern Virginia

Busy Nashville, Raleigh-Durham not on list

While there is significant overlap of the list with the nation’s busiest airports, there are some exceptions. 

The busiest passenger airport not included was in Nashville, Tennessee, the 28th-busiest airport in the country in 2024, according to Airports Council International-North America.

Austin, Texas; St. Louis; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Sacramento, California; New Orleans; Kansas City; and San Jose, California, were also among the 40 busiest airports that will not see reductions Friday.

Memphis, Anchorage and Louisville rank outside the top 40 for passenger traffic, but are the top three for cargo movement.

Oakland and Indianapolis ranked just outside the top 40 for passenger travel. Teterboro’s airport did not rank in the group’s top 50 busiest.

$327 million in daily economic output lost 

A 10% reduction at the listed airports would decrease economic output at airports by about $327 million daily, according to the council.

Because the reductions are to the nation’s busiest airports that serve as hubs for the major airlines, they will also affect airports that aren’t on the list but depend on flights to and from those hubs.

The group’s president and CEO, Kevin M. Burke, said in a statement that the group and its members had adapted to quickly changing conditions during the shutdown, but that they were “reaching a breaking point.”

“The current trajectory is unsustainable,” Burke said. “With the busy holiday season on the horizon, Congress and the administration must come together now to reopen the federal government with a clean, bipartisan continuing resolution, pay federal employees, and restore operational certainty for the millions of air travelers who take to the skies every day.”

Prioritizing safety

At a press conference Wednesday, Duffy said the decision was made to keep flying safe. He urged overworked air traffic controllers not to work second jobs, but was “not naive” that many would have to in order to pay their bills.

He said the agency’s decision was made to prevent any accidents that could result from overworked controllers, while assuring the flying public that commercial air travel remained extremely safe.

President Donald Trump was less explicit during an Oval Office appearance Thursday. 

“Fair question,” he said when asked by a reporter if flying remained safe. “Sean Duffy announced they’re cutting in certain areas 10%, and they want to make sure it’s 100% safe. That’s why they’re doing it.”

Dems call for shutdown end

Some Democratic lawmakers, who have blocked a bill to temporarily reopen the government at fiscal 2025 levels in an effort to force Republicans to negotiate an extension to tax credits for insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act marketplace, renewed those calls in light of the FAA’s decision.

Sen. Tina Smith, a Minnesota Democrat, said in a statement the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport sees a daily average of 60,000 passengers on 750 flights.

She called on Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to negotiate with her party on the expiring health insurance tax credits to reopen the government “so we don’t see the impacts like the ones at MSP.”

“The only path forward is through negotiating, so air traffic in the skies above Minnesota and the country can keep operating safely and at full capacity and our government can finally open up again,” she said.

House Transportation and Infrastructure ranking Democrat Rick Larsen of Washington state called the Duffy move “drastic and unprecedented” and requested the FAA share data that went into the decision. 

He also called for an end to the shutdown to allow air traffic controllers to be paid.

“Shutting down parts of our National Airspace System is a dramatic and unprecedented step that demands more transparency,” he said. “The FAA must immediately share any safety risk assessment and related data that this decision is predicated on with Congress. If we want to resolve issues in the NAS, let us fix health care, open government and pay transportation and aviation safety workers.”

As power-hungry data centers proliferate, states are searching for ways to protect utility customers from the steep costs of upgrading the electrical grid, trying instead to shift the cost to AI-driven tech companies. (Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)

A new proposal from a pair of legislative Democrats would institute a number of labor, energy and sustainability requirements on tech companies seeking to build data centers in Wisconsin. 

The proposal from Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland) comes as data centers have continued to pop up across the state — largely in southeast Wisconsin — sparking heated local debates about land use, local jobs and the centers’ heavy use of water and electricity. 

There are now 47 data centers in Wisconsin, with more under consideration by local governments. The data centers house computer servers to store information for cloud-based software and, increasingly, to support the expansion of artificial intelligence. 

For local governments, the construction of data centers offers an easy opportunity for property tax revenue from a business that won’t require many local government services. But the servers have high energy and water needs, are often sited on land that has long been used for farming and raise concerns associated with AI. Experts and advocates have been looking for the state government to weigh in more forcefully on how to regulate the centers, the Wisconsin Examiner reported last month. 

So far, the only mentions of data centers in state law are a provision in the 2023-25 state budget which exempts data center construction costs from the sales tax and a law enacted earlier this year to study the growth of nuclear power in the state. 

The proposal from Habush Sinykin and Stroud, announced Thursday, would establish rules beyond current incentives for data center growth. 

“The new legislation being proposed today is about making sure that we have clear, statewide guardrails in place that provide people in communities across Wisconsin with the information and transparency they need to engage in the local decision-making process in an informed, effective manner from the start,” Habush Sinykin, whose district includes a controversial data center project in Port Washington, said in a statement.

Under the proposal, electric companies in the state will be required to submit quarterly reports to the Public Service Commission on the amount of energy being used by data centers in the state. Those reports will be required to include information on the source of the energy and be made public. Water utilities in the state will also be required to publicly report when a single customer will account for more than 25% of the total water usage in the district. 

The data center companies would be required to pay an annual fee to the Department of Administration, which will put that money towards renewable energy programs. Data center buildings would also be required to obtain sustainability certifications. 

The bill would also give data centers an incentive to encourage utility companies to expand clean energy and it would also require the PSC to establish a class of “very large customers” and ensure that normal ratepayers aren’t bearing the increased energy costs caused by the data centers’ growing energy demands. 

“It’s mind-blowing that the only regulations we have on the books are to just incentivize data centers with no expectations for them being good environmental partners with the communities they’re going to be located in,” says Jen Giegerich, the government affairs director at Wisconsin Conservation Voters, which was involved in helping draft the proposal. 

“It’s really important that what this bill does is actually make sure that the data centers are paying their own way,” Giegerich continues. “We’ve just seen energy costs rising, and the fact that we would continue to put costs for energy development for tech giants who are making unheard-of profits, and then expecting Wisconsin ratepayers to pay for that is really a problem. So this bill rectifies that, and I think it’s sorely needed.”

The proposal also includes labor requirements for data center construction. Under the bill, any workers at construction sites for data centers must be paid the local prevailing wage rate or, if the worker is a member of a union, the wage rate in that worker’s collective bargaining agreement. The data center company will have to pay whichever wage is higher. 

To qualify for the sales tax exemptions already available for data centers under current state law, the companies would be required to meet the labor requirements in the bill and source at least 70% of their energy from renewable sources. 

Steve Kwaterski, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council, says data center projects have already been a source of consistent, good paying construction jobs for his members and the bill will go towards ensuring that these jobs support families in the state. 

“We want to make sure that any project that’s as complex as a data center is being done with the most skilled and trained workforce that’s out there,” he says. “That ensures that it’s being done right on time, on budget, and done safely as well.”

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A sign in a convenience store along Barlowe Road in Hyattsville, Maryland, on Oct. 28, 2025, advertises that it accepts SNAP benefits. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

A federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the Trump administration Thursday to pay roughly $9 billion for a full month of nutrition assistance benefits by the next day.

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., who was appointed by Democratic former President Barack Obama, said the administration blew its chance to choose to pay only partial benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, when it failed to release funds by a Wednesday deadline.

He said a social media post by President Donald Trump showed the president sought to use hunger for political leverage during the government shutdown, which stretched into day 37 on Thursday.

Earlier, in a Friday oral order that he expanded in a Saturday written order, McConnell had said the government must either pay full benefits by Monday or partial benefits from a contingency fund by Wednesday. 

The government did neither, he said Thursday.

The administration had argued it was impossible to pay the benefits, which go to 42 million Americans, within a few days, saying that the USDA had never calculated partial benefits and that coordinating new payments for SNAP, a federally funded program administered by the states, was difficult. 

The administration quickly appealed the ruling to the 1st Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

“Today is a major victory for 42 million people in America. The court could not be more clear – the Trump-Vance administration must stop playing politics with people’s lives by delaying SNAP payments they are obligated to issue,” said Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward, co-counsel for the coalition challenging the administration.

‘USDA cannot now cry’

But McConnell said the department created the problem, in part by failing to prepare for it far earlier. USDA was obligated to spend from a contingency fund to ensure SNAP benefits flowed into November uninterrupted, he said. 

“USDA did not do so,” he said. “Even when Nov. 1 came, USDA refused to use the congressionally mandated contingency funds. USDA cannot now cry that it cannot get timely payments to beneficiaries for weeks or months because states are not prepared to make partial payments.

“USDA arbitrarily and capriciously created this problem by ignoring the congressionally mandated contingency funds and failing to timely notify the states.”

McConnell also pointed to Trump’s post on Truth Social on Tuesday that indicated he would not authorize payments consistent with the judge’s order until Democrats agreed to his terms to end the government shutdown.

“The day before the compliance was ordered, the president stated his intent to defy the court order when he said, ‘SNAP payments will be given only when the government opens,’” McConnell said Thursday.

Child nutrition funding suggested

The USDA had said it would pay only partial November benefits from a contingency fund holding about $4.5 billion, rather than tap into other money at its disposal, including a $23 billion fund for child nutrition programs.

The coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the administration to pay SNAP benefits for November has argued the court should force USDA to pay full benefits for November. 

In addition to the missed Wednesday deadline, the move violated a fundamental administrative law requiring federal agencies not to make arbitrary and capricious decisions, Kristin Bateman of the Democracy Forward Foundation, which is representing the groups, said Thursday.

The child nutrition program would not need its billions of dollars until June, she said, meaning that transferring funds for SNAP would only actually hurt the child nutrition program if the shutdown persists until then.

“A decision on such a highly unlikely set of events is not reasoned decision-making,” Bateman said. “It’s particularly unreasonable because the defendants have not explained why they would choose to let 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, go hungry now in order to guard against the extreme outside chance that come June, there won’t be enough money to fund child nutrition programs.”

McConnell agreed that invoking the child nutrition fund was “entirely pretextual,” which was demonstrated in part by Trump’s post and other statements by administration officials.

“The defendants’ stated desire to conserve funding for the child nutrition programs is entirely pretextual, given the numerous statements made in recent weeks by the president and his administration officials who admit to withholding full SNAP benefits for political reasons,” he said.

McConnell also noted that the case should be resolved as soon as possible to help provide food to hungry people or “needless suffering will occur.”

‘A state problem’

Tyler Becker, who argued on behalf of the USDA, said the department had done its part by making available to states a table showing how they should allocate partial November benefits for households of differing circumstances.

SNAP is a complex program, requiring coordination between the federal government and all 50 states, each of which has a different system for distributing benefits.

“The government did make the payments, is making the payments to the states,” he said. “That’s all the government does in the SNAP program.”

He added that the government had shown earlier in the case some of the administrative difficulties of paying partial benefits.

In a separate case in Massachusetts federal court, some states said they could process the benefits immediately, while others cannot.

“This is a state problem,” he said.

But McConnell cut him off shortly after, saying the federal government was responsible for ensuring people got their SNAP benefits.

“The problem that the government identified needed to be resolved one way or the other by Wednesday,” he said. “And if it wasn’t resolved by Wednesday, then you had to make the full payments, because that’s the only way we could get money to people immediately and alleviate the irreparable harm, whether you could or couldn’t do anything about that.”

In a Sept. 30 contingency plan about how to proceed during a government shutdown, the USDA itself said it would pay for continuing benefits through the contingency fund, which at the time held $6 billion. The administration later reversed that plan and said it could not tap the contingency fund.

In the Massachusetts case, which was brought by 25 Democratic states and the District of Columbia, the states argued Thursday that confusion stemming from a miscalculation the USDA made in determining November partial benefits was a reason to force the administration to pay for a full month.

USDA corrects miscalculation

The hearing followed a late Wednesday night filing from the USDA correcting an error it made in calculating the amounts beneficiaries would receive under its plan for partial payments. 

The department said it will reduce the largest monthly food assistance payments by about 35% in November, down from a 50% cut the department initially estimated.

USDA miscalculated how to adjust benefit payments for SNAP to account for a lack of full funding during the government shutdown, a department official said in a filing to the U.S. District Court for Rhode Island. 

The formula the government initially used and sent to states Tuesday would have resulted in about a 50% cut to the maximum monthly benefits, and left some households without benefits. 

SNAP pays benefits on a sliding scale depending on the size of a household, the household’s income and other expenses such as housing. By cutting the maximum benefit by one-half, the department would have spent about $3 billion from a SNAP contingency fund instead of the full $4.65 billion in the fund, which is what the court ordered it to spend.

The mixup created confusion for state administrators, the states in the Massachusetts litigation said.

“The fact they have been asked to suddenly shift on a dime yet again as a result of these entirely new tables, causing further chaos and delay, underscores that USDA’s approach here is untenable and unlawful,” the states wrote in a Thursday brief.

The error was first reported to McConnell by the coalition of cities and nonprofit organizations that sued to force the government to pay SNAP benefits this month. 

Think tank discovers discrepancy 

An analysis submitted by Sharon Parrott, a former White House budget officer who now leads the left-leaning think tank Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, showed that the table the department submitted to the court and sent to states on Tuesday would fall short of the court’s order to spend the entire contingency fund.

The groups said the department’s error was another reason the court should compel the government to transfer funds to pay out full benefits for November.

“Defendants’ approach means that only around $3 billion—out of the $4.65 billion Defendants have said is available—will be spent on SNAP benefits in November, leaving more than $1.5 billion in contingency funds unspent,” they wrote in a Wednesday brief. “Defendants opted for partial (and delayed) SNAP payments, but even then, did not manage to do that correctly.”

The department said in its filing later Wednesday that it independently discovered its miscalculation and worked to fix it before Parrott’s declaration hit the court docket.

“Defendants realized this error and worked to issue new guidance and tables as soon as it was discovered, not in response to Plaintiffs’ notice filed earlier this evening,” USDA’s brief said.

U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi appeared onstage during the 2025 Concordia Annual Summit at Sheraton New York Times Square on Sept. 23, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Annual Summit)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who made history as the first woman to hold the speaker’s gavel, announced Thursday she will retire, ending a 40-year legislative career as one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. 

Her announcement came after Tuesday’s elections. Pelosi had a hand in crafting what was known as Proposition 50  in California to redraw the state’s congressional districts, in response to Republican redistricting efforts in Texas to gain more GOP seats in the House.  

The remap passed, and Democrats swept major state races across the country, including the governorships in Virginia and New Jersey.

In a video posted to social media, Pelosi, 85, thanked her constituents in her San Francisco congressional district. 

“I will not be seeking reelection to Congress,” Pelosi said. “With a grateful heart, I look forward to my final year in service as your proud representative.”

Tributes to Pelosi poured in throughout the day.

“She made history as the first woman speaker of the House of Representatives, yes, but in that moment she also altered the way we conceive political power,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics, a unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. “She made the imaginary real, and for young people who knew no other world, she permanently shifted the boundaries of the possible.”

Documents collected and analyzed by UW-Milwaukee geography Professor Anne Bonds show examples of racial covenants in Milwaukee, one for a residential subdivision and another for a cemetary. (Wisconsin Examiner photo illustration).

“Do you ever wonder why there are Black neighborhoods?” Derek Handley, an associate professor of English, African and African Diaspora and Urban studies at UW-Milwaukee, asks his students. How did Milwaukee County become one of the most segregated counties in the country, and what has that meant for the generations of families who either benefited from that bigotry, or were the targets of it?

On Saturday Handley, alongside fellow UW-Milwaukee professor Anne Bonds, will unveil a new project that deeply examines the historic use of racial housing covenants in Milwaukee. From 1-3 p.m. at the Milwaukee Public Library’s Centennial Hall, the professors will present “Mapping Racism and Resistance,” the culmination of three years of work and reflection by thousands of Milwaukee residents. 

Racial covenants were legal clauses in property records that explicitly prohibited people who were non-white from living within, occupying, owning or even being present on certain properties. The first covenants in Milwaukee popped up  in the city of Wauwatosa in 1911, 10-20 years before neighboring states established similar practices. Covenants in Wauwatosa and the rest of the Milwaukee area pre-date the practice of redlining,  where financial institutions systematically denied mortgages and financial investments to residents from Black and minority neighborhoods, and which began in 1938. 

In fact, the covenants set the stage for later forms of discrimination like redlining. Bonds explained that redlining was “a process that re-enforced and layered upon racial covenants” and that the level of racism in some communities was so strong it motivated entire neighborhoods to send the message to Black, brown and non-Christian people that they were not welcome. 

Covenants became popular during the 1920s and continued into the 1960s, even after multiple Supreme Court rulings rendered them illegal and, in theory, unenforceable. 

Sometimes the covenants were established before houses were even built in an area. Other times neighbors spent time and money in the courts to create covenants in already developed areas. “It cost money,” said Bonds, “it wasn’t cheap to go and then insert these racial covenants into their property records kind of after the fact.” Not only did covenants root themselves in communities which did not yet have Black residents, there were actually more restrictive covenants than there were Black residents of Milwaukee from 1910 to 1960. Milwaukee had a very small population of Black people when covenants arose, Handley said, adding, “there were three times as many covenants as there were Black people.” Bonds stressed that, “None of this is really passive in any way, shape, or form…It’s a very active whites-only kind thing.” 

That history “disrupts the notion that Jim Crow only happened in the South,” Handley told the Wisconsin Examiner. Never before has a map of racial covenants centralized or visualized those records for study. A network of over 6,000 people helped transcribe and analyze 1.9 million images of deeds, wills, court cases, property records and other Milwaukee County documents from 1910-1960. The records needed to be indexed, converted and checked by five different people to verify that they were covenants. Although computer programs helped organize the bulk of the data, human volunteers were needed to sift out false positives and to verify the findings. 

Mapping Racism and Resistance is both a crowdsourcing effort and a reckoning for the community. Not only does it map where the racial covenants were in Milwaukee County, “but more than anything we wanted the project to be about teaching people more, exposing people to more about the mechanisms and the kinds of techniques that were used to segregate cities,” said Bonds. “And it’s really painful to see this language, and jarring…It’s really jarring. It’s one thing to learn about housing discrimination and to say, ‘Yeah, people didn’t want to live by people who were not white.’ It’s another thing to see that language that says, ‘This home can never be occupied by anybody of the colored race.’ And to see that language inserted in a legal document, it’s pretty eye opening.” 

Mary Roberts, one of the project’s volunteer transcribers who helped upload and verify the covenants, was shocked by what she saw. Having grown up in Sheboygan when the community was essentially whites-only before attending UW-Milwaukee, Roberts had a peripheral understanding of Milwaukee’s housing covenants. Now at retirement age, she was drawn to the project out of a desire to get involved in social justice issues in the city. 

“I have to confess, I did not really understand it,” Roberts told the Examiner. “I understood it in the abstract, but it really deepened my understanding in a way that I just don’t know if I can fully explain. You know, reading in black and white these very calculating and cold and indifferent property deeds…It was incredibly eye-opening to me.” Seeing the racial covenants went far beyond any lesson that can be learned in school, Roberts said. “I was born in 1965, so some of the racial covenants I found were like, they were living, breathing documents in my lifetime. So I went into this thinking that it was really more about history, but it is a living history that was really present in my lifetime. And I think that was very surprising to me.” 

A large portion of the covenants reviewed by Roberts were established in Wauwatosa and largely discriminated against Black people. However, she also found covenants from Greenfield, and others which also included Jewish people and other non-Christians including  Armenian people and Asian people. Covenants also existed to the north and east of Wauwatosa, as well as in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park, Sunset Heights and Roosevelt Heights neighborhoods on the South Side near the airport. “A lot of people talk about the way that Milwaukee is surrounded by its predominately white suburbs,” said Bonds. “And certainly when you look at the racial covenants, you can see that pattern playing out, that they surround the city of Milwaukee.” 

Roberts noticed that the covenants seemed to put the racial clauses alongside other restrictions like not being allowed to have livestock, or how close a lot could be to a street or property line. She described the covenants as “this very cold, unemotional, sickening language that really is treating people like farm animals, or like an out-building.” 

“So much of the language really was like, you know, no person of African American descent, no one who’s Armenian, could live at this property ever, unless you were a servant. Some of them even excluded servants from properties…It says that in one spot, and then in the next spot it says you can’t have any farm animals at this property. So it was really equating people to really sub-human status, essentially.” 

The Greenfield covenant Roberts found was created by neighbors who’d formed a homeowners association and signed their names to the record. As she transcribed the records, Roberts found herself thinking of her own life, and how the property she lives on now had been passed down through three generations of her husband’s family. “We could never have built the house that we did if we had not inherited land from his dad,” said Roberts. “So it really hammers home in a way that I think other things don’t, that ability to build generational wealth was really denied to a whole class of people in our community. And that those inequities persist today, because that is how things were back then.” 

The same aspect of the project struck Handley when he and Bonds met the descendants of Zeddie Hyler, the first Black homeowner of Wauwatosa. In 1955 Hyler sought to build a home in Wauwatosa, but had to get a white friend to buy the property before he could begin. Local residents attempted to harass him out of the neighborhood, and even resorted to arson. Hyler’s descendants told the professors that Hyler and his brothers were forced to camp out with shotguns in order to protect the house. Hyler died in 2004, and his home has been designated as a historic place. 

Handley recalled looking online to compare the value of the Hyler family home with the house he’d moved from in Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood. “We’re literally talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, so the racial wealth gap is so significant because of housing discrimination,” said Handley. Resisting racist housing practices took bravery and ingenuity. “Black people in Milwaukee knew about it, NAACP was actively fighting against it,” said Handley.

In the early 1940s, NAACP Attorney George Brawley surveyed plats filed in Milwaukee County and found that about 90 percent of the subdivisions in Milwaukee County since 1910 had some type of restrictive covenant which “pledged the owner not to sell or rent to anyone other than Caucasians.” Wilbur and Ardie Clark Halyard, who founded Columbia Savings & Loan Association in 1924, helped give Black people, poor whites and other disadvantaged groups the opportunity to get a loan to buy a house. While other states focused on winning in court, key players in Milwaukee worked on economic efforts to “break into certain neighborhoods, to provide the economic means for Black people to get the support they need to purchase homes, and then try to find pathways into those neighborhoods,” Handley told the Examiner. 

This history of defiance is also something the professors hope the Nov. 8 unveiling of Mapping Racism and Resistance will reveal to people, especially those who may not believe that the housing covenants really played a role in shaping their community, or who doubt that their legacy continues to endure. Hyler’s story particularly shows how far people would go to maintain whites-only communities. Although the covenants became unenforceable after the 1960s, communities like Wauwatosa maintained racist attitudes. In the late 1980s, a whistleblower exposed that Wauwatosa police officers, firefighters and residents were attending annual Martin Luther King Day parties where attendees wore Black face, distributed fliers suggesting hunting Black people instead of deer, and other racist behaviors. 

In late 2020, Mayor Dennis McBride acknowledged that “the Wauwatosa I grew up in was a racist, almost totally white community,” though he denied that it struggles with racism today. Earlier that year, some Wauwatosa residents received letters which stated: “We Whites must stand together. We must keep Wauwatosa free from Blacks and their lack of morals. We must keep Blacks from destroying our property, raping our wives and daughters, and recruiting our children into street gangs. We MUST keep Wauwatosa great. Together we can keep Wauwatosa White! Together we can keep Wauwatosa safe!” The Wauwatosa Police Department said that it didn’t plan to investigate who distributed the letters, and the department focused on surveilling and disrupting Black Lives Matter protesters that summer. 

Wauwatosa didn’t elect its first Black alderman until 2022. The following year, Wauwatosa’s common council voted to request that the state dissolve its housing covenants, which still exist today as invalid clauses of deeds passed to homeowners upon buying certain properties. Other Milwaukee-area suburban communities, like Brookfield, continue to struggle with accepting affordable housing developments and newcomers. 

Bonds cautions against the impulse to erase uncomfortable histories. Most people don’t want to live in a home with racist ownership clauses, Bonds told the Examiner, and “it’s a relic of the past, and something that is obviously really dark.” Yet, Bonds said, “We are wary of erasing the record,” because “removing them today obscures the work that they’ve already done. We can take them out of here now, but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t have an impact. It doesn’t mean that they didn’t do the work that they were set out to do when they were implemented in the first place.” The covenants conferred legal and economic power regardless of whether people who have benefited from them are “able to see it or understand it,” said Bonds.

A fully interactive website planned as part of the project has been delayed due to grant cuts, and Bonds and Handley are also working on a book. Viewers will be able to look up covenants for properties, and get down even to the parcel-level. “I definitely see this as just part of a longer study of trying to understand housing and the availability of housing to all residents of Milwaukee County,” said Bonds. “We really view this as a community project.”  

Roberts says Mapping Racism and Resistance captures an important history for people to see, especially people whose families have lived in communities built on a foundation of covenants and redlining for generations. “It’s important to not look away from that,” said Roberts. “And unless we’re having these tough conversations, I don’t think anything can get better.” Handley agreed, adding, “this is part of Milwaukee’s history, and what we can learn from it, and what we can do moving forward.”

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A hallway in La Follette High School in Madison. (Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Superintendent Jill Underly faced more criticism from lawmakers on Wednesday as the Joint Legislative Audit Committee reviewed the findings of a financial reporting audit and launched an audit of the agency’s licensing procedures.

During the first three hours of the committee hearing, Underly’s absence was a major discussion point for lawmakers on the committee as they reviewed the financial audit. She has also faced criticism for being absent about two weeks ago at the Assembly Government Oversight Accountability and Transparency committee meeting when she was in Indiana to accept an award. 

“This body is extremely disappointed that right now, when we’re going over an audit that probably impacts over $12 billion in what’s spent by our educational legal entities, that Dr. Underly is not joining us,” Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) said, adding that the committee provided details on the meeting weeks in advance.

Wittke said Underly is the only agency head who has not come before the committee when it is discussing an audit. 

“You don’t get the governor out of every hearing, do you?” Superintendent Deputy State Superintendent Tom McCarthy said. “Dr. Underly is an elected official and has dispatched us to manage parts of these duties, and that is why you have me at these, because she does take it very seriously and is staying deeply briefed.” 

“It’s interesting, you say that she’s an elected official, but when I had an audit before us that included the Department of Justice, it appeared that Attorney General [Josh] Kaul could be in front of us and comment on that,” Wittke said. “Constitutionally, she supervises the educational system here, whether elected or not, and… so, I would think that it would be something that she would want to address.”

Wittke quipped that maybe McCarthy should be signing off on the audits instead of Underly. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) said he found it “very concerning” that Underly was not at the hearing to discuss the first audit and her absence is a sign of “cowardice in a leader.” 

“To send the people who work for you in to take heat and not take it yourself would make me have a lack of confidence in my leader. I wouldn’t expect Superintendent Underly to have all the answers. Oftentimes an executive leader does not. They’re managerial… to defer to you to answer is quite different than not being available to be held accountable,” Wimberger said. 

The committee launched the audit into the financial reporting and the agency’s process for reviewing audited financial statements following a financial reporting scandal at the Milwaukee Public Schools last year. 

MPS faced significant criticism from lawmakers especially as the information came to light shortly after the district passed a $252 million operational referendum.

“The problem was recurring and compounding to a point where DPI was having difficulty appropriating funding accurately. That information was hidden from the public until after MPS convinced voters locally to approve a $200 million referendum,” Wimberger said during the hearing. “I’m sure voters would have had a different opinion of whether MPS needed money if they knew the district was so unaware of their internal finances.” 

In accordance with state statute, DPI monitors financial school districts’ financial statements  with a requirement that schools submit annually. Schools must contract with a certified public accounting firm, which submits the audited financial statements to DPI. 

Financial information from public schools and independent charter schools is required to be submitted by Dec. 15, under DPI policies. Voucher schools are required to submit financial information by Oct. 15 each year.

MPS was a recurrent discussion point during the hearing, though the audit found that MPS is not the only district with difficulties submitting documents on time.

Among schools’ 2022-23 audited financial statements, the Legislative Audit Bureau found that 77% were submitted on time and 22% were submitted late. For school districts that submitted on time, the agency took on average 87 days to complete its review of those audited financial statements.

Of those submitted late, 70% were submitted at least 29 days late. 

The audit looked at a sample of 18 school districts that submitted their statements late, finding that the agency contacted those districts 47 days after the Dec. 15, 2023 deadline. 

Milwaukee Public Schools’ audits for that year were submitted on Dec. 20, 2024, about a year after the due date —  the latest among all 421 school districts.

McCarthy said Milwaukee Public Schools had been historically late in turning in the district’s  annual audit, but it typically came with communication about why they were late and a commitment that the district would have the audit submitted in the following weeks. 

“That was not a normal year of being late for them,” McCarthy said of December 2023. 

When the lateness of the school district’s reports came to public attention, DPI said it had been meeting with MPS quarterly since April 2023, monthly since February 2024, weekly starting in March 15 2024 and then daily in May 2024 to get the district to submit its reports. The agency has since placed the district under two corrective action plans and withheld over $50 million from Milwaukee schools. Gov. Tony Evers has also launched separate audits of the district.

Wimberger expressed concern that MPS was given a “two-year grace period.” 

McCarthy said he believed the agency was “pretty strict” with the district. 

“If you consider withholding $51 million to be grace, I’ll call you next time we have a problem,” McCarthy said. 

“We used the tools and authority that we had at our disposal to compel the district through two separate corrective action plans, stood shoulder to shoulder in trying to clean up some of the local aspects of what’s going on, and I think the current superintendent has been deeply engaged in committing resources and staffing to making sure that this does not happen again,” McCarthy said. 

McCarthy said the situation with MPS has been a “long, painful journey that we don’t ever want to repeat with any other district.” 

The legislative audit found that DPI does not have a requirement that agency staff contact schools that haven’t submitted financial statements and audits on time. 

The Legislative Audit Bureau made 22 recommendations to DPI to improve its processes. 

Those recommendations included establishing written policies to require that it contact school districts within one month if their documents aren’t submitted by the deadline and regularly contacting schools until those audits are submitted. It also recommended that the agency establish a written policy that implements a deadline for starting its review of audited financial statements and completing those reviews. 

The audit bureau  made similar recommendations for DPI in overseeing private voucher schools and for the Department of Administration in overseeing the financial information for independent charter schools. 

McCarthy said that the agency is taking the audit bureau’s recommendations into consideration. That includes putting in writing all communication with district administrators and school boards as late reporting occurs.

McCarthy also noted that the agency has launched a school financial transparency dashboard that allows people to “dive in and look at any district” including reviewing records of compliance for reporting. 

“I’m glad you’re moving forward to try and crack the systemic problem, in my opinion, that deceived the public in the passing referendums without understanding the true financial situation of their respective district,” Wimberger said. 

Licensing and sexual misconduct audit

Underly was present during the latter half of Wednesday’s hearing, testifying on the agency’s licensing policies and changes it plans to make, especially  to investigations into educators accused of sexual misconduct and grooming. 

“Where were you this morning?” Wimberger asked.

“I was at the DPI,” Underly replied. Wimberger did not push the point. 

Underly repeated much of her testimony from the Tuesday Senate Education Committee including laying out some of the steps the agency is taking, launching a new webpage with the list of educators who have surrendered their licenses or had them revoked, as well as the changes she wants to see lawmakers work on, including providing additional resources for the agency’s licensing responsibilities and closing the loophole that allows unlicensed teachers to work in private schools.

The Joint Legislative Audit Committee voted unanimously to launch an audit into DPI’s policies and processes for educational licensure revocation, suspension, restriction and investigation. The audit will look at trends in the DPI’s investigations, its policies and how Wisconsin compares to its midwestern neighbors.

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Advocates who urged the Oregon legislature to increase child care funding in January 2024 hung onesies and other children’s clothes on a tent outside the Capitol in Salem. Officials in Oregon and other states are relying on their own funds to keep Head Start programs afloat during the federal government shutdown. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

With some early childhood education centers already closing their doors because of the federal government shutdown, local leaders are scrambling to find money to keep Head Start programs available to some of the country’s most vulnerable children.

Head Start programs, which serve more than 700,000 low-income children across the country, are almost entirely federally funded. In addition to free preschool, centers provide health screenings, parent resources and meals for children up to 5 years old. But the record-long government shutdown has forced child care centers across the country to close as funding is exhausted.

The closures are creating stark choices for some of the most vulnerable families in society. Migrant farmworkers, for example, who are more likely to be without health insurance and tend not to have any vacation time, are faced with the prospect of missing work, and a paycheck, to care for their children. A network of Head Start programs for migrant farmworkers’ children that operates in states across the South closed its sites on Friday.

To keep Head Start programs operating in her state, Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey announced plans to advance $20 million in additional funding for the program. Those grant funds were previously approved to improve and expand the Massachusetts program, which gets about 80% of its funding from the federal government.

In a statement last week, Healey said the state was doing everything it could to support those programs, “but we don’t have the resources to make up for what the federal government owes.”

In Atlanta, private funders made an $8 million loan to keep Georgia’s largest Head Start providers afloat for the coming weeks.

Frank Fernandez, the president and CEO of Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, told CBS News that the measure was only a temporary solution: “Our elected officials must take action to end this shutdown and ensure the long-term sustainability of this critical program,” Fernandez said.

In Washington state, some school systems that operate Head Start programs are using their own funds to keep kids in classrooms, the Seattle Times reported. Still, other operations are cutting back staff and services to make do.

In neighboring Oregon, state officials are working out details of a 60-day deal to use existing funds to keep Head Start going, the Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. State officials said Head Start providers must have experienced a delay in federal funds and the state assistance will not exceed the total amount of money awarded to a program by Oregon annually.

“It’s important to note that this is not a loan to Head Start programs and is not ‘backfilling,’” Kate Gonsalves, a spokesperson for the state’s early learning department said in a statement. “These are dual-funded programs so the state dollars are not replacing federal funds but can be drawn down earlier in the cycle.”

Some sites already shuttered

Head Start sites in 18 states have already closed their doors, according to the First Five Years Fund, a nonprofit advocating for quality child care and early childhood education.

The National Head Start Association, a nonprofit representing Head Start programs, said full or partial closures have affected 8,000 children. Nationwide, programs serving 65,000 children hadn’t received their federal funds as of Saturday, according to the group.

In Ohio, seven Head Start programs have exhausted their federal funds. Two have already closed, affecting 600 children and 150 employees. In the coming weeks, the Ohio Head Start Association says the other five will be forced to close their doors, affecting nearly 3,700 Ohio kids.

“Every day the shutdown continues, Ohio children and families are paying the price,” Julie Stone, Executive Director of the association said in a statement. “Head Start isn’t a political issue — it’s a lifeline for working families.”

Farmworkers’ children

Agricultural farmworkers, many of whom travel for seasonal work, have been hit particularly hard.

East Coast Migrant Head Start Project, which runs 43 Head Start centers in multiple states, suspended services on Friday. Around 1,200 children of agricultural farmworkers are without services now, but the number of children served fluctuates by season. The network is funded to serve 3,000 children of farmworkers across Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia, and partners with other groups in a few other states.

In Florida, that means more than 800 children of agricultural workers are going without care due to the lapse in federal funding, said John Menditto, chief legal officer of East Coast Migrant Head Start Project. The group has also had to furlough its staff.

About 60% of farmworkers are American citizens or are in the country legally. Head Start is open to all children, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

In rural North Florida, roughly 80 children have been without early education, language and disability therapies, said Leannys Mendoza Gutierrez, the campus director for the migrant Head Start program in rural Jennings, Florida, which cares for babies 6 weeks old to kids up to 5 years old.

“[Farmworkers] are putting food on our tables, for all of us,” she said. “However, they are not so far receiving services due to this situation that we don’t know when it’s going to end.”

Migrant farmworker families in Gutierrez’s program work in North Florida and South Georgia on watermelon, cucumber, cabbage, pepper, tomato, strawberry and pine straw farms.

Many parents have been forced to skip work and lose pay because they have been unable to find child care alternatives, Gutierrez said. She added that her program steps in to cover pediatrician bills for families that don’t have health insurance. The shutdown has prevented her program from offering such assistance, too, she said.

Many farmworkers don’t have health insurance and already struggle with poverty, making staying home from work difficult. Many also receive food aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which has also been affected by the shutdown.

“The shutdown just accentuates everything,” said Amy Liebman of the Migrant Clinicians Network, which works with clinics across the nation that serve migrant workers and their families. “Everyone’s concerned, they’re worried about the families they serve.”

Two other programs, one serving kids in the capital area of Tallahassee and another, Redlands Christian Migrant Association, which serves about 1,700 kids of agricultural workers in Florida, have also suspended services, according to the National Head Start Association.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org

A plane prepares to land at Newark Liberty International Airport. (Photo by Dana DiFilippo/New Jersey Monitor)

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Wednesday the Federal Aviation Administration would restrict air travel in 40 “high-traffic” areas of the country to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who have been working without a paycheck since Oct. 1. 

The cutbacks will start Friday, Duffy said at an afternoon press conference. 

He and FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said they would share more details, including which airports would be affected, Thursday. 

The officials emphasized the measure was proactive to prevent a safety failure, and they said air travel remained extremely safe.

“We’re noticing that there’s additional pressure that’s building in the system,” Duffy said. “Our priority is to make sure that you’re safe.”

Duffy did not specify the locations that will see a reduction in air traffic, but said the decisions were based on data of the locations where such pressure is increasing.

While the administration has so far avoided large-scale travel problems during the government shutdown that began Oct. 1, Duffy and Bedford said they were seeing strain on the air traffic controllers. 

Air traffic controllers are considered exempt federal employees, meaning they must work, but are not paid, during the shutdown. Some are taking second jobs to make ends meet, leading to fatigue, Duffy said. 

Duffy said the restrictions would likely lead to more cancellations, which he said he was “concerned about,” but decided to prioritize safety.

“We had a gut check of, what is our job?” he said. “Is it to make sure there’s minimal delays or minimal cancellations, or is our job to make sure we make the hard decisions to continue to keep the airspace safe? That is our job, is safety.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks as his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom looks on during an election night gathering at the California Democrats' headquarters on Nov. 4, 2025 in Sacramento. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democrats’ sweep of the biggest races in Tuesday’s off-year elections, including a California ballot measure to redraw that state’s congressional lines to give the party up to five more seats in the U.S. House, gave the party new confidence heading into the midterm elections next year.

Democrats proclaimed the performances of Govs.-elect Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani showed voters’ rejection of President Donald Trump. 

“The election results were not vague,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters Wednesday. “They were not unclear. They were a lightning bolt: Trump, America doesn’t like what you’re doing. Change course.”

Republicans won control of the White House and both chambers of Congress one year ago, leaving Democrats without a clear leader or agenda at the national level. 

Tuesday’s results helped clarify for the party that a focus on economic issues was a winning message that Democrats could carry into the midterms.

Those messengers included Sherrill and Spanberger on the one end of the party’s ideological spectrum, and the Democratic Socialist Mamdani on the other. All three shared a campaign message centered on addressing the cost of living.

More remaps 

Effective campaigning may not be the only path Democrats are expected to take as they seek to regain power at the federal level. A wing of the party led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing other Democratic governors to redraw congressional lines to be more favorable to them.

The new California map is likely to be tied up in courts, at least in the short term. California Republicans sued in federal court Wednesday morning to block it. 

Republicans, meanwhile, sought to downplay the importance of elections in largely Democratic areas while attempting to make Mamdani the new face of Democrats nationally.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Wednesday there were “no surprises” in the previous day’s elections. 

“What happened last night was blue states and blue cities voted blue,” the Louisiana Republican said. “We all saw that coming, and no one should read too much into last night’s election results — off-year elections are not indicative of what’s to come.” 

The wins in Tuesday’s elections galvanized congressional Democrats to restart negotiations to end the government shutdown on their terms, with Democratic leaders of the House and Senate sending Trump a three-sentence letter “to demand” a meeting to negotiate an end to the longest government shutdown in history.

Control of Congress

Democrats said Wednesday the results showed they were within striking distance of regaining majorities in both chambers of Congress.

Democrats would have to net four seats in the House and the Senate to win control of a respective chamber.

Schumer said Tuesday’s results showed that was possible in the Senate.

“The election showed that Democrats’ control of the Senate is much closer than the people and the prognosticators realize,” Schumer said. “The more Republicans double down on raising costs and bowing down to Trump, the more their Senate majority is at risk.”

Vice President JD Vance was dismissive of Democratic gains Wednesday, saying on social media it was “idiotic to overreact to a couple elections in blue states” and praising Republican organizing efforts.

But Democratic campaign officials said Wednesday that analysis belied wins lower on the ballot, including flipping 13 Virginia House of Delegates seats, half of which Republicans held for decades, and statewide wins for low-profile offices in the key swing states of Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin responded to Vance’s claim during a press call.

“That’s bullsh—,” he said. “We won all over the country in red counties and purple counties and in blue counties. The reality is, is this was a huge rejection of the Trump extremism and an embrace of the hopeful, positive message that Democrats are offering up.”

Martin and other Democrats praised Tuesday’s winners for relentlessly focusing on economic issues, and said Democratic candidates in 2026 would keep that focus.

Redistricting arms race

Newsom, the chief backer of the referendum to temporarily revoke power from the state’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, told other Democratic governors to take similar measures to enhance the party’s chances of winning a U.S. House majority.

“We need Virginia … we need Maryland … we need our friends in New York and Illinois and Colorado — we need to see other states meet this moment head-on as well,” Newsom said in a fundraising email Wednesday.

Martin characterized the passage of the California referendum, known as Proposition 50, as a reaction to Republican states’ moves to redraw their lines. 

“What happened in Prop 50 was the counterpunch to level the playing field,” Martin said. 

He indicated Democratic states would be happy to leave congressional districts as they are, but said the party would not hesitate to respond to GOP gerrymanders.

“Now, they want to keep doing it? Guess what: This is not your grandfather’s Democratic Party,” Martin said. “We will meet you in every single state that you decide to try to steal more seats. We’re going to meet you in other states. We are not going to play with one hand behind our back. We’re not going to roll over. We are going to meet you, fire with fire.” 

Rep. Richard Hudson, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the U.S. House Republican campaign organization, predicted in a statement that efforts to redraw congressional districts would not allow Democrats to win a majority in that chamber. 

“No matter how Democrats redraw the lines to satisfy Gavin Newsom’s power grab, they can’t redraw their record of failure, and that’s why they will fail to take the House majority,” Hudson said. “Even under this new map, Republicans have clear opportunities to flip seats because Californians are fed up with Democrat chaos. We will continue to compete and win because our candidates are stronger, our message is resonating, and Californians are tired of being ignored.”

Trump zeroes in on filibuster 

At a Wednesday breakfast with GOP senators, Trump had another idea for solidifying GOP power, saying the Senate needs to abolish the filibuster in order to end the shutdown and enact GOP policy while the party is still in the majority. 

Senate rules require at least 60 senators to advance a bill past the filibuster. Republicans’ narrow 53-seat majority has created obstacles in moving forward their agenda — including the House-passed stopgap spending bill to keep the government open that’s now failed more than a dozen times. 

“It’s time for Republicans to do what they have to do and that’s terminate the filibuster,” Trump said at the breakfast. “It’s the only way you can do it, and if you don’t terminate the filibuster, you’ll be in bad shape — we won’t pass any legislation.” 

He added: “We will pass legislation at levels you’ve never seen before, and it’ll be impossible to beat us.” 

In a social media post Tuesday night, Trump said pollsters attributed Republicans’ election losses to his name not being on the ballot along with the ongoing shutdown.

Trump wrote in a separate post earlier Tuesday that “the Democrats are far more likely to win the Midterms, and the next Presidential Election, if we don’t do the Termination of the Filibuster (The Nuclear Option!).” 

GOP senators tepid

However, Trump’s push to do away with the filibuster has garnered little enthusiasm from GOP senators, including Majority Leader John Thune. 

The South Dakota Republican reiterated on Wednesday that “there are not the votes there,” telling reporters that “the main thing we need to be focused on right now, in my view, is get the government opened up again.” 

But some GOP senators appear to be on board with the idea, including Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who said he expressed his support for eliminating the filibuster during the breakfast.

“President Trump made a very convincing case,” Johnson told reporters. “We know the minute Democrats get (a) majority in the Senate, they’re going to get rid of the filibuster.” 

“We better beat them to the punch and act while we can pass legislation for the benefit of the American public,” he added.  

Sen. Jim Justice said that though he’s not in favor of getting rid of the filibuster, he wants to support Trump and would like the shutdown to end. 

“I mean, because you got a lot of people that are really hurting, that’s all there is to it, and if it’s the only option to stop this nonsense, then I would support,” the West Virginia Republican said. 

Sen. John Kennedy remained firm in his position, telling reporters that “the role of the senator is not just to advance good ideas, the role of the senator is to kill bad ideas, and when you’re in the minority — we’re not now, but we could be someday — it’s important to have a filibuster.” 

The Louisiana Republican noted that “we killed a lot of (former) President Biden’s goofy ideas through a filibuster, and someday the shoe will be on the other foot, and that’s why I’ve always supported the filibuster.” 

Republicans lash Democrats to Mamdani

Speaker Johnson and fellow House Republican leaders also sought to tie Mamdani to the Democratic Party. 

Johnson said Mamdani “is truly a committed Marxist, and the results of that race tell you everything you need to know about where the Democrats in their party are headed,” adding that “from the backbench to their leadership, Democrats have fallen in line behind the socialist candidates.” 

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana echoed that “when the city of New York elected Zohran Mamdani, he became the new leader of the Democrat(ic) Party.” 

Scalise said that while the Democratic Party “had no problem making the shift to socialism — which they embraced wholeheartedly, led by Hakeem Jeffries and others here — America, mainstream Americans, Blue Dog Democrats across America, have not embraced socialism.” 

House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain of Michigan said “over the past year, Democrats have wandered around with no plan, no vision and no leader, but today, they finally found their leader — the radical communist mayor(-elect) of New York City, a self-proclaimed communist who wants Americans to pay for global health care.” 

She added: “Well, you wanted it. You got it: A communist who wants the government to own grocery stores and a communist who wants the government to tell you what to do with your hard-earned money.” 

Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report 

Afternoon light shines on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center in El Centro, California, on May 27, 2022. (Getty photos)

An immigrant advocacy organization and the ACLU of Wisconsin are criticizing the Marathon County Sheriff’s decision to partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in an agreement that gives county jail staff some immigration enforcement authority. 

ICE records show the county signed an agreement on Tuesday to participate in the ICE 287(g) jail enforcement program. Under the jail enforcement model, county jail staff can question people in the jail about their immigration status and the county can hold non-citizens in jail for up to 48 hours to be picked up by federal agents. 

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, ICE has been working to significantly expand the program across the country. Marathon is the fifth sheriff’s department in Wisconsin to sign an agreement with ICE this year, increasing the total from nine to 14. The Palmyra police department has also signed an agreement with the agency. 

“By applying to participate in the 287(g) program, the Marathon County Sheriff is offering to have his department be turned into an arm of ICE’s deportation machine,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a statement. “The 287(g) program is notorious for leading to racial profiling, unconstitutional policing, and wrongful detention of US citizens — and it makes communities less safe. People are less likely to seek help and report crime when their local law enforcement is seen as a partner with ICE, and going to the authorities could mean that they, a family member or a friend could be deported.”

Aside from 287(g), the Dodge County sheriff’s office has a contract with the federal government to hold federal detainees at the county jail. That agreement includes holding migrants on behalf of ICE and sometimes transporting them to and from out-of-state facilities such as the controversial ICE processing center in Broadview, Ill. 

Voces de la Frontera, an immigrant advocacy group, said the sheriff, Chad Billeb, should have engaged with the community before deciding to sign the agreement. 

“Sheriff Chad Billeb, as an elected official, should not have signed this agreement without engaging the community and local leaders in a transparent, democratic process that ensures accountability and information sharing. There is still time to do so and reverse course,” said Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the organization’s executive director.

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