As the United States of America marks its 250th anniversary this year, the relationship between the states and the federal government is approaching a breaking point.

Led by a bellicose president, the executive branch has moved to dominate states, resulting in more than a year of escalating confrontations between the two levels of government.

President Donald Trump has worked quickly: In the first year of his second term, he surged thousands of immigration enforcement agents into a resistant Minneapolis and other cities, with fatal results. He seized control of the National Guard in some states against the will of governors.

His administration is trying to force states to turn over sensitive data on millions of voters ahead of the midterms. And it is blocking states from receiving, and distributing to their residents, billions of federal dollars for child care, public health, housing and a host of other congressionally approved programs.

Political parties have swung in and out of power in Washington for centuries, and recent administrations have increasingly clashed with states run by the other party. This time is different, dozens of sources in and around government told Stateline.

Trump and a coterie of loyal aides have set out to remake the nation in the president’s image. Along the way, retribution and raw power have become the administration’s primary tools to bend recalcitrant states to its will. Grants are pulled, armed force deployed, disaster aid withheld.

The states have repeatedly gone to court, asking the federal judiciary to rein in the executive branch. They have also started testing the bounds of their own authority, such as moving to restrict the actions of federal immigration enforcement agents.

The past year has led to a period of sustained state and federal conflict without parallel in modern U.S. history. The consequences for Americans over time will prove enormous, shaping the very nature of our government.

“This kind of battle between the federal government and the states, we’ve just never seen that before and it makes no sense,” said former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, who was elected as a Republican but later helped co-found the centrist Forward Party.

Tensions between the states and the central government are as old as the nation itself. Alexander Hamilton famously favored a strong central government, while James Madison offered the Bill of Rights — including what became the 10th Amendment, which reserves for the states and the people those powers not delegated to the federal government.

But current strains are testing the bedrock principles of federalism, the uniquely American system created by the framers of the Constitution of power sharing between Washington, D.C., and the states.

Ahead of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding on July 4, Stateline is exploring how the Trump era is transforming the relationship between the states and the federal government. This article is the first in an occasional series, The 50 vs. The One, that will examine the current fraught moment and what evolving — and often deteriorating — state-federal ties mean for the country, now and in the future.

In interviews and public remarks, current and former elected officials at all levels of government, as well as experts on American government, have described the country as approaching a pivot point. Trump’s second term could mark a defining moment for American federalism, one that will be studied in history books alongside Reconstruction, the New Deal and the Civil Rights Movement.

The United States will either continue to adhere to the principles of federalism, they say, or it will take a significant step toward a more powerful central government that sidelines the states.

“We are in a period of challenged federalism,” said Lisa Parshall, a federalism researcher and political science professor at Daemen University near Buffalo, New York. “The fact that we’re here talking about federalism tells you something about the current state of American politics.”

Dramatic changes in a year

Fears of diminishing state authority have animated state officials over the past year. Republican lawmakers in Utah have invested in federalism education and expanded a group to assess state-federal boundaries, for instance.

In July, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, both Democrats, publicly abandoned the nonpartisan National Governors Association, in part because they said the organization was not doing enough to protect states’ rights.

States are “laboratories of democracy,” Kelly said during an interview in February, using a classic civics textbook description. States have traditionally operated with relative freedom to pursue their own agendas and solutions to the challenges they face. In turn, states learn from one another.

“That’s been the beauty of it,” Kelly said. “If that’s to go away, if the federal government were — and they are, at this point — undermining states’ authority and responsibility, I think you end up slowing down the entire country.”

In the same way the three branches of government — the legislative, the executive and the judicial — provide checks and balances on one another, federalism imposes a state check on federal power. The U.S. Constitution, which went into effect in 1789, ensured states would command broad power over local commerce, policing, elections and other matters within their borders.

But Trump has at times raised doubt about whether he will always follow the Constitution and has claimed that he can ignore some of its requirements.

Last spring, Trump replied “I don’t know” when asked whether he needed to uphold the U.S. Constitution in the context of due process for immigrants. In 2022, he said massive election fraud allows parts of the Constitution to be terminated. And after his 2020 election defeat, he urged then-Vice President Mike Pence not to certify the results, even though the vice president has no constitutional authority to do so.

In February, Trump asserted that “states are just an agent of the federal government” as he called to “nationalize” elections. Under the Constitution, the responsibility of running elections belongs to the states.

Trump’s critics fault the Republican-controlled Congress for failing to challenge his sweeping assertions of executive power. His administration’s efforts to withhold from states billions in dollars appropriated by Congress, for instance, have spurred relatively little outrage among GOP lawmakers.

“What I think we’re seeing now is a whole different system of crushing state and local government,” said U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat who has been in Congress since 2005. “And bowing down to a new system where we are almost living in a one-person government.”

In response to questions from Stateline, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement: “The Trump Administration faithfully upholds our Constitution and the immortalized American principles of federalism, the rule of law, and the separation of powers.”

Trump and his allies have cast the president as a heroic figure capable of smashing through the machinery of government to achieve results on behalf of his voters and at the expense of his enemies. “For those who have been wronged and betrayed … I am your retribution,” he said in 2023.

He has at times taken steps that his supporters argue empower states, including effectively gutting the U.S. Department of Education, which Republicans have long accused of federal overreach. His appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court during his first term helped cement a conservative majority that in 2022 returned the issue of abortion access to the states.

In a statement, the Republican Governors Association told Stateline the current administration trusts governors to run their own states.

“By cutting government bureaucracy and unnecessary red-tape, President Trump is empowering governors to make decisions that best serve their individual states,” wrote Kollin Crompton, an RGA spokesperson.

Scrambled identities

The U.S. Constitution has been gradually amended in ways that have limited state power, most importantly through amendments that abolished slavery, required states to treat their citizens equally under the law, and prohibited states from denying suffrage on the basis of race and sex.

The federal government has also expanded its reach through legislation. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s and President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s imposed new economic regulations and created a federal social welfare apparatus that touches nearly every American.

Over time, Democrats broadly came to be seen as the party more comfortable with an active federal government and Republicans as the party seeking a more restrained Washington.

But the Trump era has scrambled those identities.

Trump has shown less respect for traditional conservative ideology, such as limited government and a general deference to the authority of states. Instead, he has taken a maximalist approach to executive power.

His actions have placed Democratic state officials in a position of advancing limits on the federal government, whether through lawsuits or legislation. And they have put Republican supporters of the president at odds with decades of conservative rhetoric.

“I do think that progressives are seeing that federalism — there’s a reason it’s in our constitutional order and it isn’t just something that’s left for conservatives,” said Sean Beienburg, an associate professor at Arizona State University who researches federalism and constitutional law.

In Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland, Oregon, Trump deployed federalized National Guard troops onto city streets before courts held him back and he withdrew. For a time, active-duty Marines also patrolled Los Angeles, an extraordinary use of the military for domestic purposes.

Oregon Democratic Attorney General Dan Rayfield, who challenged the deployment of the National Guard in his state, said the fight underscores why lawsuits matter in checking Trump’s power.

“People should be shocked that Oregon has filed 55 lawsuits,” Rayfield said in an interview earlier this year. “Their mind should be blown. But their mind should be equally blown at how often we’re winning these cases.”

The Trump administration has won seven court decisions — and lost 58 — so far, according to a New York Times litigation tracker.

Democratic state lawmakers have also searched for ways to restrict federal immigration agents. In California, Democratic Assemblymember Alex Lee has proposed prohibiting state tax breaks for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contractors — a move that could carry national implications because of the size of the state’s economy.

“We also, now, are reasserting what the role of the states and the federal government are,” Lee said.

But among Republicans, Trump has successfully maintained his grip. Many conservative state leaders have supported the president’s most controversial moves, even those criticized as federal overreach.

During President Joe Biden’s term, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was a staunch proponent of state autonomy and repeatedly challenged the federal government on regulatory issues and its deployment of a state’s National Guard. But Abbott has supported Trump’s expansion of federal powers, going so far as to authorize the deployment of the Texas National Guard to aid immigration enforcement in Illinois and Oregon.

Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Justice, the previous governor of West Virginia, said federalism remains “alive and well” under Trump. He said he was worried about the nation’s trajectory before coming to Washington in 2025.

“We’ve had to change things,” he said. “There’s new things that are going on that no question they’re disrupting folks on the other side of the aisle.”

Still, other Republicans have pushed back on the administration’s escalating hostility toward liberal states.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt sharply criticized the deployment of the National Guard, saying “Oklahomans would lose their mind” if a Democratic-controlled state sent troops to his state during Biden’s presidency. He has warned that the expanding power and spending of the federal government is dangerous no matter which party controls Washington.

“When we have this powerful of a federal government, it should be frightening for everyone,” Stitt said during a February event at The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, D.C.

‘States created the Constitution’

As the reach of the federal government ballooned over generations, Democratic and Republican presidents have used federal funding to wield more influence over state and local governments.

Federal dollars account for an increasingly large percentage of state revenues, rising from 22% in 1989 to 36% in 2023, according to Pew, which analyzed census and federal economic data. States received more than $1 trillion in federal grants that year.

Over the years, that largesse has encouraged states to pursue policy agendas favored by the current party in power at the federal level.

But Trump has weaponized federal funds in unprecedented ways, experts say. Bypassing Congress and despite numerous court losses, the White House has held up funding for higher education, transit, housing and infrastructure — particularly for states that displease him.

The administration’s attempts to terminate funding for the $16 billion Gateway rail tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey remain entangled in a lawsuit. New Jersey Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said the White House has caused millions in cost overruns and delays, in what she characterized as the most urgent and consequential infrastructure project in the country.

In February, Politico reported Trump told congressional leaders he would release funding for the project in exchange for renaming Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Penn Station in New York City in his honor.

Parshall, of Daemen University, noted that more state leaders of both parties are pushing to reassert state-federal boundaries — whether in the areas of agriculture or the future of artificial intelligence.

“Federalism scholars are seeing this as a potentially pivotal moment in federal-state relationships,” she said.

Last August, elected leaders gathered at the National Conference of State Legislatures in Boston, where in 1773 colonists hurled chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in protest of Great Britain’s King George III. At the conference, lawmakers grumbled about a federal government increasingly sidelining states. That organization, representing more than 7,000 state and territory legislators, has consistently urged the Trump administration to respect states’ inherent authority.

In December, a bipartisan group of more than 40 lawmakers from 30 states gathered to discuss federalism issues, unanimously approving a declaration on the importance of states’ ability to legislate independently. That document noted that the Constitution did not create the states, “but rather the states created the Constitution, ratifying a framework in which we would both govern collectively and independently.”

New Hampshire state House Speaker Sherman Packard, a Republican, said state-federal tensions have been mounting for decades. He noted that the major tax and spending law the president signed last summer — often called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — both cut federal funding to states and saddled them with new costs and administrative work. But it’s just the latest example of what he views as a federal government overstepping its bounds.

“And it’s getting more and more prolific that they’re taking on and doing things that most of us feel is inappropriate,” Packard said. “If we don’t fix this, we’re going to lose state sovereignty altogether. And that’s just not the way it was set up.”

Reporter David Lightman contributed to this story. Stateline reporters Jonathan Shorman and Kevin Hardy can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org and khardy@stateline.org.

A coalition of 21 state and local governments filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump administration’s repeal of a 2024 rule that established limits for toxic air pollutants.

The regulation, known as the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule, limits emissions from coal- and oil-fired power plants. It covers pollutants including mercury, arsenic, lead and other toxic metals, as well as acid gases.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency updated the rule in 2024, which proponents of the rule said followed significant upgrades in pollution control technologies. But President Donald Trump’s administration repealed that updated standard last month. 

EPA said in a statement last month that it was repealing the rule “to ensure affordable, dependable energy for American families” and that it expected $670 million in regulatory compliance costs savings from lower costs of transportation, heating, utilities, farming and manufacturing, and more reliable energy. 

The coalition of states and local governments argues that the rollback is unlawful, saying the federal agency has failed to provide a reasoned basis for it or consider the new technologies. 

The states taking part in the lawsuit are Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia, New York City, Chicago and Harris County, Texas, also joined.

“Here, we have the Trump Administration once again acting recklessly and without good reason in rolling back important emissions standards that help mitigate the potentially disastrous health effects of toxic air pollutants associated with power plants like mercury and arsenic,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha, a Democrat, said in a statement. 

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

A coalition of 22 states told a federal court that the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order that limited the types of health data that could be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation proceedings.

Back in December, a court allowed ICE to pull some basic information from Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program that primarily covers people with low incomes, to help the agency find people who are in the country illegally.

That ruling was a partial win for the administration in a lawsuit in which the 22 states and the District of Columbia had sued to block information sharing between ICE and Medicaid.

But the court also placed restrictions on ICE, saying it could only pull basic data such as addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and citizenship or immigration status. And the ruling barred ICE from collecting information on lawful permanent residents or citizens.

Advocates warned that even the sharing of that partial information would prompt immigrants, including those in the country legally, to forgo health coverage for fear that enrolling in Medicaid could make them or their family members easier for ICE to find.

Now, in a new filing, the states say the Trump administration appears to have ignored the court’s order limiting what information ICE is allowed to have. They claim the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid, has admitted to sharing with ICE “a large and complex” set of data on Medicaid recipients, even though the court said the data of citizens and lawful permanent residents is off limits.

The states claim the federal government hasn’t clarified how it determines who is “lawfully present,” nor has it confirmed whether it’s filtering out protected individuals from the data it gives to ICE.

The states are asking the court to formally bar the sharing of protected health care information for people lawfully residing in the United States. They’re also asking the court to confirm that “lawfully residing” includes noncitizens who have legal status, such as refugees and asylees. And they want the court to allow the states to examine the data that’s been shared with ICE so far, and how it has been used.

The Trump administration has not yet responded. The plaintiff states are scheduled to appear in a San Francisco federal court on April 30 for a hearing.

The states involved in the suit are those with Democratic attorneys general: Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin.

The court’s orders preventing Medicaid data sharing won’t apply to states not involved in the lawsuit.

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

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order on Tuesday that attempts to restrict mail-in voting, a White House priority certain to face significant legal challenges.

The order directs the U.S. Department of Homeland Security along with the Social Security Administration to compile a list of voting-age American citizens in each state and share it with state election officials. The order also requires the U.S. Postal Service to only send and receive ballots that include tracking barcodes.

Trump’s order represents a major escalation in his effort to assert presidential control over elections, which under the U.S. Constitution are administered by the states. Trump last year attempted to unilaterally impose a proof of citizenship requirement to vote in federal elections in an executive order that was blocked in federal court.

The move also reflects a long-held focus by Trump and his allies on noncitizen voters. Studies have shown noncitizen voting is extremely rare.

“I think this will help a lot with elections,” Trump said.

National database of adult citizens

Homeland Security operates the SAVE system, a powerful computer program that can verify citizenship. 

DHS has previously invited states to run their voter rolls through SAVE, which flags voters as potential noncitizens. Some election officials criticize the system, saying it wrongly identifies U.S. citizens as possibly ineligible.

The U.S. Department of Justice as recently as last week denied any efforts to create a national voter registration list. While the executive order does not explicitly mandate the creation of a voter list, it essentially marks an effort by the White House to create a national database of adult U.S. citizens.

The order requires Homeland Security to enable states to routinely supplement or suggest changes to each state’s citizenship list. Federal officials would also be required to allow individuals to access their own records and update or correct them ahead of elections.

Under the executive order, the postmaster general must propose rules to require all outbound ballot mail to be sent in an envelope that includes a barcode for tracking. The order also requires that states must inform the U.S. Postal Service at least 90 days before federal elections whether they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail.

“Instead of focusing on lowering the cost of energy, groceries, and health care, Donald Trump is desperately attempting to take over and rig our elections and avoid accountability in November,” U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, said in a statement shortly after Trump announced the order. “This executive order is a blatant, unconstitutional abuse of power.”

SAVE America Act

Trump has pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would require individuals to produce documents, such as a passport or birth certificate, proving their citizenship in order to register to vote. The U.S. Senate is debating the bill, but it appears unlikely to have enough support to overcome a filibuster.

Trump has repeatedly asked Republicans to add three provisions to the bill, including restrictions on mail-in voting, with exceptions for members of the military, people who are ill and those on vacation. 

The president has also previously promised to advance voting restrictions, with or without Congress. Earlier this month, Trump voted by mail in Florida.

The executive order directs the Justice Department and other federal agencies to withhold federal funds from non-compliant states and localities “where such withholding is authorized by law.” 

Tuesday’s order is certain to face legal challenges. The Constitution gives Congress — not the president by executive order — the power to override state election regulations.

Marc Elias, a prominent voting rights litigator, promised to fight the executive order.

“If Trump signs an unconstitutional Executive Order to take over voting, we will sue,” Elias wrote on social media. “I don’t bluff and I usually win.”

Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Grunters praised the order, saying Trump was restoring voter confidence. “Protecting America’s ballot box isn’t optional – it’s the foundation of our republic,” Grunters said.

DOJ lawsuits against states

The Justice Department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia for copies of their voter rolls that contain sensitive personal information on voters, such as driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers. About a dozen states have voluntarily provided the data, but most are fighting the demands in court.

Three federal judges have so far ruled against the Justice Department. The administration is appealing and in court documents has argued that swift court decisions are necessary to ensure the security and fairness of the midterms.

The Trump administration has said the data is necessary to verify only citizens are registered to vote. Last week, a Justice Department lawyer confirmed in court that voter data would be shared with Homeland Security.

“Some may freak out about this, but honestly, this is hilarious,” David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former U.S. Department of Justice Voting Section attorney, wrote on social media about the Trump order. 

“It’s clearly unconstitutional, will be blocked immediately, and the only thing it will accomplish is to make liberal lawyers wealthier. He might as well sign an EO banning gravity.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Tuesday that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he signed an executive order last year that blocked funding from going to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. 

U.S. District Judge Randolph Daniel Moss wrote in a 62-page order that while many of the original issues in the case are no longer relevant after Congress rescinded funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the section of the executive order that called on agencies to end “any direct or indirect funding of NPR and PBS” remains applicable. 

“The message is clear: NPR and PBS need not apply for any federal benefit because the President disapproves of their ‘left-wing’ coverage of the news,” Moss wrote. 

“Because the First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type, the Court will issue judgment against the federal agency defendants declaring Section 3(a) of the Executive Order is unconstitutional and will issue an injunction barring those defendants from implementing it.”

Moss was nominated to the district court for the District of Columbia by former President Barack Obama in 2014. 

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson implied in a statement that the administration will appeal the court’s decision. 

“This is a ridiculous ruling by an activist judge attempting to undermine the law. NPR and PBS have no right to receive taxpayer funds, and Congress already voted to defund them,” Jackson wrote. “The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.”

A PBS spokesperson wrote in a statement the organization is “thrilled with today’s decision declaring the executive order unconstitutional.”  

“As we argued, and Judge Moss ruled, the executive order is textbook unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination and retaliation, in violation of longstanding First Amendment principles,” the spokesperson added. “At PBS, we will continue to do what we’ve always done: serve our mission to educate and inspire all Americans as the nation’s most trusted media institution.” 

A spokesperson for NPR did not return a request for comment.

No effect on congressional defunding

Trump issued the executive order titled “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” in May of last year, leading to two separate lawsuits that were later joined together. 

One was filed by NPR along with three Colorado stations: Aspen Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio and KSUT Public Radio. The second lawsuit was filed by PBS and Lakeland PBS in Minnesota. 

The NPR lawsuit alleged Trump’s executive order had an “overt retaliatory purpose” and “is unlawful in multiple ways.”

“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion,” the lawsuit stated. “Lastly, by seeking to deny NPR critical funding with no notice or meaningful process, the Order violates the Constitution’s Due Process Clause.”

The lawsuits were filed before the Trump administration in June asked Congress to eliminate $1.1 billion in previously approved funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provided grants to NPR and PBS. 

The Senate voted 51-48 in July to approve the request and the House approved that version of the rescissions bill on a 216-213 vote shortly afterward.

Viewpoint discrimination

Moss wrote in his ruling that the original parts of the lawsuit addressing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting were no longer relevant since “CPB no longer exists, and no Court order declaring the Executive Order unlawful as applied to the CPB can afford NPR, PBS, or their member stations any meaningful relief.”

“But that does not end the matter because the Executive Order sweeps beyond the CPB,” he added. “It also directs that all federal agencies refrain from funding NPR and PBS—regardless of the nature of the program or the merits of their applications or requests for funding.”

Moss wrote that while Trump can denounce news organizations as much as he wants, he cannot order government officials to engage in viewpoint discrimination. 

“To be sure, the President is entitled to criticize this or any other reporting, and he can express his own views as he sees fit,” he wrote. “He may not, however, use his governmental power to direct federal agencies to exclude Plaintiffs from receiving federal grants or other funding in retaliation for saying things that he does not like.”

The Trump administration’s attempt to block grants from the Department of Education, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Endowment for the Arts and other agencies from going to PBS and NPR would have widespread impacts, Moss wrote. 

“It does so, moreover, without regard to whether the federal funds are used to pay for the nationwide interconnection systems, which serve as the technological backbones of public radio and television; to provide safety and security for journalists working in war zones; to support the emergency broadcast system; or to produce or distribute music, children’s or other educational programming, or documentaries,” he wrote. 

Trump administration lawyers, Moss wrote, were unable to “explain why NPR’s purportedly ‘biased’ political reporting means that its production and distribution of programming like ‘Tiny Desk Concerts,’ … runs afoul of the NEA’s authorizing statute.”

A special committee of the Wisconsin Senate approved the release of a report detailing allegations from Republicans that Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and the Department of Justice skirted the law by using funds from out-of-state groups to hire lawyers. 

The report’s release comes as Kaul is set to face re-election in November against Eric Toney, the Republican district attorney of Fond du Lac County. 

Republicans said the report shows Kaul’s willingness to circumvent the law in a way that amounts to the DOJ being “for sale,” while Democrats accused Republicans of making baseless accusations to create political theater in an election year. 

Faced with a limited budget from the GOP-controlled Legislature and increased scrutiny on the DOJ since the enactment of the Republican lame duck laws in 2018, Kaul hired the out-of-state lawyers to assist with the enforcement of the state’s environmental regulations. 

The lawyers were given fellowships to work as special assistant attorneys general through a New York University program tied to former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The attorneys were paid by the NYU program and officially classified as volunteers under the state employment system yet given the powers of an assistant attorney general. 

Kaul appeared before the committee in February to give testimony. During that hearing, he said the classification as volunteers had been discussed with and approved by the state’s ethics commission. An ethics complaint against the arrangement has been pending for more than a year. 

In the report, which the oversight committee voted 4-2 along party lines to adopt on Tuesday, the Republicans allege that the arrangement was “not authorized” by Wisconsin statutes, that the DOJ violated state law by not immediately administering the attorneys oaths of office, exposes concerns about the state’s system for adjudicating ethics complaints, opens the state up to influence from outside interests and that the DOJ did not fully cooperate with records requests filed by the committee. 

The report recommends that the DOJ immediately terminate the agreements that facilitated the hiring of the attorneys. It also recommends that the Legislature pass a resolution declaring the hirings unlawful, more strictly manage the processes through which the DOJ is funded and pass legislation that only state employees can conduct prosecutions. Additionally the report states that government attorneys should take their oaths of office before conducting any work for the state and that the state Ethics Commission should be subject to faster timelines for adjudicating complaints.

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillet) said he’s concerned that allowing arrangements like the one DOJ established with the NYU program means an attorney general from any party can outsource DOJ functions to outside interest groups. 

“If attorney generals, not just Josh Kaul, but if attorney generals are permitted to do this, then the DOJ is for hire. It’s for sale,” Wimberger said. 

At a news conference following the committee meeting, Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) said that the attorneys were “focused solely … on bread and butter environmental issues, keeping out air, our water and our Wisconsin lands safe, and that’s what people want” from the DOJ. 

Habush Sinykin and the other Democrat on the committee, Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), argued that the Republicans were focused on creating political drama out of standard DOJ functions when instead they should have been working to solve problems Wisconsinites care about. 

“What we just heard in there was that definition of political theater, the opposite of what the people of Wisconsin are seeking from our legislators,” Habush Sinykin said. “Which is very much what they want us focusing on, housing affordability, Knowles-Nelson, child care, all those matters which this Legislature and under this Republican majority, we have not gotten to.” 

The Democrats pointed out that last February, Republicans introduced a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the DOJ from using legal services of anyone who is not a state employee. The bill, authored by Wimberger and Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), who is also on the committee, did not even receive a public hearing. 

Instead, the Democrats said, the issue was ignored until the report was released after the Legislature had adjourned for the year. 

“You should have moved it through committee. We should have voted on it on the Senate floor,” Habush Sinykin said during the meeting. “And I wish I could have had that chance, rather than to let it just sit there and go nowhere, and to then call us back for this purpose and to use it as a weapon.”

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Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Chris Taylor has raised four times as much money as her opponent Maria Lazar since February, according to campaign finance reports filed this week. 

In the final reports filed before next week’s election, which cover a period from early-February to mid-March, Taylor raised $2,079,406 while Lazar raised $472,295. 

Taylor has far out-spent her opponent during that period, spending $3.8 million — largely on TV ads. Lazar spent $565,000 with all but $875 spent on digital advertising. 

The money raised still pales in comparison to the massive amounts of money involved in the previous two Wisconsin Supreme Court races when the ideological balance of the Court was at stake. Last year’s election between Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel broke national spending records for a judicial race, largely because of the arms race that was kicked off once Elon Musk — the world’s richest man, who was at the time serving a role in the administration of President Donald Trump — got involved. 

Taylor’s fundraising advantage has persisted throughout the campaign. Since she entered the race last May, she’s raised $5.6 million. Lazar, who entered the race five months later than Taylor in October, has raised about $976,000. 

While both candidates have sought during the campaign to assert that as a Supreme Court justice they won’t be beholden to partisan interests, both Taylor and Lazar’s largest contributors are the Democratic and Republican parties of Wisconsin. 

State law puts a $20,000 limit on campaign contributions from individuals to Supreme Court campaigns, yet political parties are allowed to transfer unlimited amounts to the campaigns. 

In the reporting period, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin contributed $724,000 to Taylor’s campaign while the Republican Party of Wisconsin contributed $96,000 to Lazar’s campaign.

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A three-judge panel on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit brought by Democratic voters seeking to redraw Wisconsin’s existing congressional maps. 

The lawsuit, Bothfield v. Wisconsin Elections Commission, was filed last summer arguing that the state’s congressional maps were an illegal partisan gerrymander. All but two of the state’s eight congressional districts are held by Republicans. 

The dismissal marks another failure from Democrats and their allies to redraw the state’s congressional maps, which since 2011 have favored Republican candidates. Since the maps were redrawn in 2011, they have frequently been at the center of the state’s political debate. 

In 2024, the state’s legislative maps, which had locked in GOP control of the state Legislature for nearly 15 years, were tossed out. Since then, attention has been focused on the congressional maps. 

The current congressional maps were instituted in 2022 by the state Supreme Court after the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers were unable to reach an agreement on passing new maps themselves. The Court selected congressional maps that had been proposed by Evers. However, Democrats and anti-gerrymandering advocates have complained that those maps were proposed under the Court’s “least change” mandate, which required that any proposed maps hew as closely as possible to the 2011 maps. 

The Bothfield lawsuit was filed around the same time as a separate lawsuit challenging the congressional maps on the basis that they illegally dampen the competitiveness of the state’s congressional elections. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that both lawsuits should first be considered by panels of three circuit court judges. 

The other pending lawsuit is expected to go to trial in 2027. 

While the lawsuits against the maps have worked through the legal system, open government advocates and some Democrats have continued to call for changes to Wisconsin law that would take the power of map drawing out of the hands of lawmakers and ban partisan gerrymandering. 

Earlier this month, Evers signed an executive order calling the Legislature into a special session to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban gerrymandering.

After the panel’s decision, Republicans and their allies celebrated the ruling as a win for GOP chances in the state’s elections this fall. Republicans in several other states across the country have redrawn their congressional maps over the last year in an effort to protect the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Retaliatory gerrymandering in Democratic states including California has attempted to tilt the playing field back in Democrats’ favor.

“This is a significant win for Republicans and a yet another blow to desperate Democrats who wanted to reshape the electoral landscape,” Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in a statement. “By keeping Wisconsin’s current district lines in place for 2026, Republicans are in a strong position to build on our momentum to retain and grow our House majority.”

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Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican bills Tuesday that would have placed new prohibitions in state statute related to transgender children, including banning them from sports teams that align with their gender identity, barring them from choosing the name and pronouns used for them in school and from accessing gender affirming medical care. 

Evers said in a statement that the legislation “stirs harmful rhetoric, negatively affects Wisconsinites’ and kids’ mental health, emboldens anti-LGBTQ harassment, bullying, and violence, and threatens the safety and dignity of LGBTQ Wisconsinites, especially our trans and nonbinary kids.”

A 2024 survey by The Trevor Project found that 91% of LGBTQ+ young people in Wisconsin said that recent politics negatively impacted their well-being. 

AB 100  and AB 102 would have barred transgender girls in K-12 schools and transgender women at Wisconsin’s higher education institutions from participating on sports teams and using locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

AB 103 would have required that school districts adopt policies requiring consent from  students’ parents or guardians before using  names or pronouns that differ from their birth certificates.

AB 104 would have prohibited health care professionals from providing medical gender affirming care for those under 18.

SB 405 would have created a civil cause of action against health care providers who perform gender transition procedures on someone under the age of 18 if they claim to be injured.

Republican lawmakers had pushed the bills to Evers’ desk, arguing they would protect Wisconsin students and ensure parents are informed of what’s happening in schools. They did so despite hourslong public hearings where many parents, students and advocates spoke in opposition to the bills and previous promises by Evers to block “any bill making Wisconsin less safe, less inclusive, and less welcoming for LGBTQ people and kids.” 

Evers vetoed the bills on International Transgender Day of Visibility while surrounded by advocates for LGBTQ kids and their families as well as other community members.

“Especially in the wake of continued attacks against LGBTQ communities, particularly targeting the trans community, our work to fight this hatred and bigotry is more important than ever,” Evers said in his statement. “I’m proud to stand with LGBTQ kids and Wisconsinites today and every day.”

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, there have been about 500 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced throughout the country so far in 2026. 

The federal government has continued to target transgender Americans in the start of President Donald Trump’s second year of his second term and as Wisconsin Republicans running for office are seeking to bring the issue to the forefront of their campaigns. Earlier this month, the administration launched an investigation into the New Richmond School District for its policies that allow students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. Moms for Liberty, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and Michael Alfonso, a Republican candidate for the open 8th Congressional District seat and son-in-law of Transportation Sec. Sean Duffy, have been criticizing the school district online for weeks.

In his veto messages, Evers said the bills did not comport with “our Wisconsin values.” 

“We teach our kids to treat each other with kindness, respect, empathy and compassion — and we expect adults to lead by example. LGBTQ Wisconsinites and Americans should be able to be safe, be treated with dignity and respect, and be welcomed and accepted for who they are without fear of violence, harassment or persecution,” Evers said. “While the federal government and other states across this country may give way to anti-LGBTQ hate, here in Wisconsin, we will continue to decline to do the same.” 

Abigail Swetz, executive director of Fair Wisconsin, thanked Evers in a statement for rejecting the bills and supporting transgender kids. 

“These bills were always about more than health care or the makeup of a sports team or the use of pronouns in a classroom  — they were about excluding trans people from public life, and we cannot allow that, especially when our trans community is being attacked by so many levels of government,” Swetz said.

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WASHINGTON — The White House defended skyrocketing gas prices Tuesday as a “short-term disruption” during the ongoing war in Iran, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said the administration will not “foreclose any option” in the conflict, including boots on the ground.

Briefing publicly for the first time since March 19, Hegseth said it will be “the president’s determination alone” when the war objectives are complete and the “upcoming days will be decisive.” Hegseth also said the administration’s negotiations with Iran are “ongoing, they’re active, and, I think, gaining strength.”

Five weeks in, the war continues to rock economies across the globe and at home, where the national average for gasoline hit $4 a gallon for the first time in four years, according to data from AAA.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a statement saying that “When Operation Epic Fury is complete, gas prices will plummet back to the multi-year lows American drivers enjoyed before these short-term disruptions.” 

President Donald Trump, she said, “remains committed to fully unleashing American energy dominance, lowering costs, and putting more money back in the pockets of hardworking American families.”

Shortly after the White House issued its statement, Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, posted a link on X to a CNN article about soaring U.S. gas prices, writing “Sad, but this is what happens when your leaders put others ahead of hard-working and ordinary Americans.”

Blockade drives up global prices

Iran’s blockade on U.S. and allied ships at the Strait of Hormuz, a major passage for petroleum and liquid natural gas, has wreaked havoc on global energy markets. As of Tuesday at 12:45 p.m. Eastern, Brent crude oil, the international standard, was trading just over $119 a barrel.

Between 2,000 and 3,000 cargo vessels and oil tankers, along with roughly 20,000 crew, remain stuck in the Persian Gulf, according to the United Nations and open source data, including MarineTraffic. 

Trump claimed during a Cabinet meeting Thursday that Iran has agreed to allow eight to 10 Pakistani oil tankers through. On Sunday, the president said 20. 

According to the Joint Maritime Information Center, only four large tankers transmitting location data had crossed the Hormuz Strait on Friday and Saturday. 

US troops

Hegseth said the White House will not rule out any options, including ground operations, but declined to provide detail at the Pentagon briefing.

“You can’t fight and win a war if you tell your adversary what you are willing to do, or what you are not willing to do — to include boots on the ground. Our adversary right now thinks there are 15 different ways we could come at them with boots on the ground. And guess what? There are. So if we needed to, we could execute those options on behalf of the president of the United States and this department, or maybe we don’t have to use them at all. Maybe negotiations work,” Hegseth said. 

Trump told reporters Sunday on Air Force One that negotiations with Iran are happening “directly and indirectly” and are “very good.”

“We’re doing extremely well,” the president said. “But you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them, and then we always have to blow ‘em up.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to bomb Iran’s energy infrastructure, and has set a self-imposed deadline of April 6 to do so if Iran doesn’t meet his demands.

On Monday night, the president posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, a video of a U.S. strike on an ammunition depot in Iran’s central province of Isfahan. 

Spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry Esmaeil Baqaei denied any talks with the United States, according to Iranian state media Tasmin New Agency.

Up to 3,500 U.S. Marines and sailors arrived in the region Saturday, according to U.S. Central Command. The U.S. now reportedly has roughly 50,000 troops in the region — that’s 10,000 up from the usually 40,000 or so peacetime members of the armed forces stationed there. 

Ghalibaf said Sunday an American ground offensive would result in “severe punishment,” according to state media.  

More than 300,000 American troops were in the region during the U.S. ground invasion of Iraq, according to historical data archived by the Council on Foreign Relations.

On Monday morning with a couple of strokes of his pen, Gov. Tony Evers signed an increase in Wisconsin’s workers compensation into law and repurposed $250,000 per year in state funds that have been going unused for years.

The second action would not have been possible, however, if there hadn’t been another measure — one that had actually died before reaching him.

Three bills in all were involved in the complex maneuver.

The first is AB 651 — a bill that updates Wisconsin’s workers compensation system. With that legislation, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 145, workers comp will cover post-traumatic stress syndrome in emergency medical responders, EMS providers and volunteer and part-time firefighters.

The measure had long been sought on behalf of those first responders.

“Community heroes who have given so much of themselves and need healing because of their service deserve our support, and I am excited to see this critical care extended to those to whom we owe a huge debt of gratitude,” said Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), who championed the legislation.

The same bill has a number of other provisions, including an increase in weekly compensation rates for injured workers and an expansion in access to supplemental benefits for workers whose on-the-job injuries have left them permanently and totally disabled.

Previously those supplemental benefits were only available to workers disabled before Jan. 1, 2003. The new measure covers workers disabled between that date and Jan. 1, 2020.

The new law is the product of a longstanding joint labor-management council that advises lawmakers on the state’s workers compensation system

“Today, we’re proving that we’re more committed to that legacy than ever, and I want to thank all the bipartisan partners for their support and advocacy to come to good faith agreements and get this done,” Evers said in a statement.

Partial veto and a bill that died

On the second bill Evers signed, he used his partial veto power to free up $250,000 per year in money that goes to the Department of Workforce Development. 

That was made possible because of the third bill — AB 652, a revision of Wisconsin unemployment insurance law — which his office threatened to veto, and which didn’t even make it out of the Legislature.

Like the workers comp bill, the unemployment insurance bill  was the product of a joint labor-management advisory council.

The bill would have raised the top weekly jobless pay benefit by $25 a week, to $390, the first increase in a decade. 

But that was coupled with a number of provisions that Evers and Democrats opposed, including  a penalty for unemployed workers who receive federal Social Security Disability Income. The penalty would have cut their jobless pay by 50% of the value of their federal disability income.

The bipartisan unity in favor of the workers comp bill contrasted with deep division on the unemployment insurance bill. 

“The workers comp bill came out very clean, we had no issues with it,” state Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee) said Monday.

But drafts of the unemployment insurance (UI) bill raised alarm among Democrats “weeks before we got the UI bill,” Sinicki said. “We could not support actually reducing payments to those living with disabilities.” 

Rebellion over the jobless pay bill

Since 2013, Wisconsin SSDI recipients have been disqualified from getting unemployment compensation entirely. A federal judge ruled in 2024 that the restriction violated federal laws, and in 2025 ordered DWD to stop enforcing the provision.

Under a court order, DWD has now started paying back SSDI recipients who were denied jobless pay under the 2013 law.

AB 652 not only reduced those benefits, it also contained a number of provisions erecting new barriers to jobless pay, some of which Evers had previously vetoed in bills passed with only Republican support in the state Legislature.

One of those was a requirement for DWD to undertake specific “identity-proofing” measures for jobless pay applicants to prevent fraud.

Unemployment insurance lawyer Victor Forberger wrote in a blog post July 14 that the identity-proofing provision “does nothing” that DWD wasn’t already doing.

Evers’ communications director confirmed the governor’s intention to veto the measure after it passed an Assembly committee on a party-line vote in January.

The unemployment insurance bill passed the full Assembly on a party-line vote Jan. 20. It subsequently failed to make it to the Senate floor and died as a result.

Redirecting funds

That’s where the third bill comes in — AB 650. 

The bill includes funding for the workers comp program administration. Republicans added  funding for the identity-proofing measures that were in the unemployment bill. 

Separating funding for new policies from the bills that lay out those policies has become a regular GOP practice, in order to try to prevent Evers from using his partial veto to change policy. (In Wisconsin the governor can only use his partial veto on spending legislation.) 

But this time, the action gave Evers an opening. 

Because the unemployment bill had failed — but funding for one of its provisions remained in the separate bill — Evers was able to scratch out language allocating funding for the failed policy and repurpose the additional $250,000 per year the Republicans had intended for identify proofing.

To fund the identity-proofing provision, legislators had  proposed a revision in an existing budget appropriation that authorizes $250,000 a year for DWD to pay for substance abuse treatment.

Under a law enacted in 2015, under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, employers can report to DWD if a prospective new hire fails a drug test. The law disqualifies the person who flunks from receiving unemployment compensation — but also states that the individual can remain eligible by entering substance abuse treatment.

DWD is to pay for the treatment using the $250,000 that the Legislature appropriates each year.

Haley McCoy, the DWD communications director, said Monday that the provision is rarely used, and employers haven’t submitted any reports on job applicants who flunked drug tests since 2021.

In AB 650, GOP lawmakers expanded the use of DWD’s annual drug treatment appropriation, allowing the money also to be used for “costs related to identity proofing under s. 108.14 (10m) for which federal funding is unavailable.”

A funding provision with nothing to fund

The funding bill passed both houses of the Legislature unanimously. But by the time it got to Evers, the unemployment insurance bill and its identity proofing provision were dead.

On Monday, Evers pulled out his veto pen and scratched out references to “identity proofing” in the funding bill. He also crossed out additional words, turning the phrase about how the drug treatment money is to be used into “costs for which federal funding is unavailable.”

The rewritten bill became 2025 Act 144.

In Evers’ veto message, he noted that the language applying to “identity proofing” was “a reference to a statute which does not exist” and added that DWD already has tools to verify identity and prevent fraud. The department “conducts a variety of anti-fraud activities,” he wrote.

The partial veto, he wrote, gives DWD “new flexibility to access state funding in an appropriation that purports to improve the unemployment insurance system by drug testing claimants; in fact, this funding has gone unspent for several years, and drug testing only serves to create barriers for claimants to access necessary benefits in times of economic hardship.”

Evers’ veto message said the department will be able to use the “modest amount” of additional money “when the federal government fails to support state unemployment administration sufficiently.”

The veto message didn’t specify how the funds would be deployed, but the press release from the governor’s office announcing his action on the workers comp and the funding bills discussed at length the Evers administration’s project to upgrade Wisconsin’s unemployment insurance system — for which the Trump administration has terminated $29 million in previously awarded federal grants.

“He could have just cut that funding out completely,” Sinicki said Monday. “But the way he did it, I thought, was really creative by giving the department some flexibility with it.”

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In December, Gabriel Lugo gave testimony to a state Assembly committee about his time in prison before he was exonerated of the crime for which he served more than a decade. He’d been serving his sentence in the Waupun Correctional Institution when his conviction was finally overturned. 

In a statement read by an attorney, Lugo said some correctional officers treated him as less than human and that prison lockdowns severely restricted his movement and made it hard for his family members to visit him. 

Living conditions at Waupun generated headlines in 2023 and 2024 about unsanitary facilities and lack of medical care. Lugo finally got out of prison in 2023, when he was exonerated of the crime he’d been convicted of in 2009. 

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek) wrote in a column in December that Lugo is her constituent and his case prompted her to co-author a reform bill with Wanggaard and Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee). Under the amended Assembly bill, wrongly convicted people who were released after Jan. 1, 2015 — like Lugo — and had already received compensation would have been able to petition for more money. But the bill did not pass the Legislature before its session ended this month.

On Friday, Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), chair of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, who announced his retirement earlier this month, expressed frustration in a newsletter about the bill not passing the Legislature despite multiple attempts. He said that “people move the goalposts and come up with new (and baseless) reasons for not supporting it.”

While lawmakers in committees in both chambers voted to advance wrongful conviction compensation bills, neither chamber brought the issue up for a vote. 

It was not the first time the effort had failed. Bills that aimed to boost compensation for wrongly convicted people did not pass in 2016, 2017 or 2020.

“The failure to get this common-sense bill done has been frustrating,” Wanggaard said.

In testimony, Wanggaard called the Senate’s measure a “long-overdue bill” that would update an outdated law.

The proposed reform measure aimed to provide an eligible wrongly convicted person with $50,000 per year of imprisonment, up to a maximum of $1 million. The bill would also allow a person released on the basis of a claim of innocence to petition the court for an order directing the Department of Corrections to create a transition-to-release plan.

Currently, the Wisconsin Claims Board decides whether a person meets the standards for compensation for wrongful imprisonment. The evidence of the person’s innocence must be “clear and convincing,” and the person must not have contributed to bring about their conviction and imprisonment. The board’s five members come from the Department of Justice, the Department of Administration, the Office of the Governor, the Wisconsin Senate and the Wisconsin Assembly. 

The claims board can award $5,000 per year of imprisonment but with a total cap of $25,000, and it has also awarded attorney fees. The board can recommend a higher award to the Legislature. According to Rodriguez, since 1990, seven people have received recommendations for compensation above the $25,000 cap.

Wanggaard’s chief of staff, Scott Kelly, said in an emailed statement to the Examiner, “I don’t know what the price of someone’s freedom is, taking away their family, their support system, their job. But Senator Wanggaard knows it’s not $5,000 a year, with a maximum of $25,000.”

The board awarded Lugo the full $25,000 allowed under the law, as well as about $77,000 in attorney fees. The board recommended that the Legislature award Lugo an additional $750,000. The vote was 3-2, with Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Gillett) and Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan) dissenting.

The Wisconsin Innocence Project, the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Board of Governors and the Wisconsin Catholic Conference have given testimony supportive of increasing compensation for wrongly convicted people. Christopher Lau of the Wisconsin Innocence Project testified that the project has helped exonerate more than 30 people, and that many clients struggle to re-enter society. Last year, the Examiner reported on the struggles that exonerated brothers Robert and David Bintz have experienced after leaving prison in 2024.

“After years of wrongful imprisonment, our clients leave prison without savings, without employment, and often, without a place to call home,” Lau said. They also leave with medical ailments and emotional trauma, he said. 

Rodriguez’s office said that an amendment to the Assembly bill followed discussions with Assembly lawmakers to address concerns she had heard from them and from the Department of Administration. But Rodriguez said it became clear that more discussions were needed as the legislative session wound down.

Rodriguez is optimistic that the bill can pass in the next session, she told the Wisconsin Examiner. She thinks “we can get to the finish line with enough time to work out any issues” when the Legislature reconvenes, and “finally update this process.” 

Correction: This piece has been updated to reflect that Lugo gave his testimony in December, not January

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Wednesday in a case that could reshape the understanding of who is American by birth.

The case, Trump v. Barbara, challenges President Donald Trump’s executive order that redefines citizenship to exclude children born to parents who either do not have legal status, or hold temporary legal visas. 

It has the potential to upend the guarantee of birthright citizenship in effect since a Supreme Court decision in 1898 that extended citizenship to virtually anyone born in the United States. There is a small carveout for children born to foreign diplomats. 

The Trump administration petitioned the high court in December after multiple lower courts struck down the executive order, finding it violated the Constitution.

Birthright citizenship has been a longstanding core principle in the United States, where nearly any child — regardless of their parents’ immigration status — born on U.S. soil is automatically granted citizenship. Experts have warned that if birthright citizenship were struck down, it would effectively create a class of millions of stateless people.

But what was once a fringe legal theory has been pushed into the mainstream by the president and his far-right allies, who have sought to redefine who is American. 

They argue the citizenship clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which is the basis for birthright citizenship, was meant to apply to newly freed African American slaves after the Civil War, not to children of immigrants. Most legal scholars and historians disagree with that interpretation. 

The text of the clause is: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

After oral arguments are heard on Wednesday, a decision from the Supreme Court is expected before the court’s summer recess begins at the end of the term in late June or early July. 

19th-century case

This is not the first time the Trump administration has brought a birthright citizenship case before the Supreme Court. 

Last year, after federal judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Washington state struck down the president’s executive order, the Trump administration appealed to the Supreme Court, but asked the justices to consider the lower courts’ use of universal injunctions, rather than the merits of birthright citizenship.

The justices took up the case, and in a 6-3 vote divided along ideological lines, the use of universal injunctions was curtailed by the conservative wing of the high court. 

After the ruling, immigration advocates and the American Civil Liberties Union filed class action suits, which were successful in blocking the birthright citizenship executive order. The suits argued that future children born in the United States without gaining citizenship constituted a nationwide class.

Cody Wofsy, of the ACLU, is a co-lead attorney in the case and told reporters last week that the Supreme Court already decided the issue of birthright citizenship in 1898.

“The constitutional text is clear, the precedent is clear and the history is clear,” Wofsy said.

The 1898 case, United States vs. Wong Kim Ark, settled the idea that automatic citizenship was granted to children born on U.S. soil, Wofsy said.

Ark, born in San Francisco, was denied entry back into the country after visiting China. Officials at the time argued that because his parents were Chinese citizens in the United States on temporary visas at the time of his birth, and therefore were not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., he was not a citizen. He took the issue to the high court and in 1898 the Supreme Court affirmed that children born in the United States were guaranteed citizenship.

Arguing on behalf of the Trump administration, Solicitor General D. John Sauer has said that the 1898 case is being misinterpreted, and that it meant to only include children born to parents who were granted authorization to be in the U.S.

“Illegal aliens are not ‘permitted by the United States to reside here,’ and thus their children are excluded from citizenship,” Sauer argued in briefs. 

However, Trump’s executive order would also deny citizenship to children born to parents on temporary visas, such as for work or school. 

Sauer also relies on an 1884 Supreme Court decision that denied citizenship to John Elk, a Native American man born in Nebraska, who was no longer a member of his tribe and tried to become a naturalized U.S. citizen in order to vote. 

Elk was denied citizenship, because he was not “subject to the jurisdiction of” the U.S. because of his “political allegiance” to his tribe, even though he had renounced his tribal citizenship. Congress extended citizenship to all Native Americans in 1924.

Sauer cites the Elk case in his argument that the citizenship clause does not apply to children born to immigrants on temporary visas or undocumented people and “only to those born of parents with primary allegiance to the United States.” The administration is not arguing that Indigenous people should be denied birthright citizenship.

Torey Dolan, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, said Sauer’s argument wrongly conflates Indigenous people with migrants, despite a long U.S. legal tradition of treating them distinctly. 

“American law has always found a way to distinguish Indigenous people from non-Indigenous people in a way that has never been applied to immigrants,” Dolan, an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, said. 

She noted that in the Declaration of Independence, which includes the grievances of the colonists, one complaint was how British King George III refused to allow for migration into the colonies in order to occupy land stolen from Indigenous tribes. 

“This conflation of immigrants and Indigenous people, for the sake of this argument, I think, is pretty egregious, and I think it really obfuscates American history and its colonial history in particular,” she said. 

‘Pure chaos’

Legal advocates challenging the executive order are confident they will win at the Supreme Court. 

“President Trump’s executive order is plainly unconstitutional and unlawful, and we’re confident that the Supreme Court will reaffirm existing legal precedent and strike down this executive order once and for all,” Hannah Steinberg, a staff attorney for the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told reporters. 

In briefs, the ACLU has also argued that if Trump’s executive order were to go into effect, it would create a stateless class of people. The Migration Policy Institute, a think tank that studies migration, found that the end of birthright citizenship would increase the unauthorized population by an additional 2.7 million by 2045. 

Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship is part of the administration’s broader goal to curtail migration to the U.S., arguing that birthright citizenship is an incentive for unauthorized immigration.

But the idea that people migrate to the U.S. so their children can be born as citizens is not supported by research, Julia Gelatt, the associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, said.

“People move mainly for opportunity for themselves and their children and also for safety,” she said. “There are many unauthorized immigrants who have come to the United States with their own children, who were born in another country, who won’t be U.S. citizens, and they still come.” 

“I don’t think there’s any evidence that birthright citizenship specifically is an independent pull factor. It’s more the safety, the rule of law and the earnings potential that people see in the United States, and the opportunity to reunite with other families is another major factor,” she continued. 

Ama S. Frimpong, the legal director for the immigrant rights group We Are CASA, told reporters that there are practical questions to how Trump’s executive order would even work. 

“What happens in a household in which there are older children who are born here and now, suddenly they have a new baby who’s born tomorrow, and that baby is not going to have the same rights that their siblings have?” she asked. “Is a baby going to be subject to detention and deportation by their very own government that is meant to protect them because they were born here?” 

That reality of birthright citizenship being stripped, Frimpong said, would be “just pure chaos.”

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican lawmakers’ bill that would have opted Wisconsin into a federal program rewarding taxpayers for contributions to private voucher schools and other educational organizations, saying he objected to the national expansion of private school choice and that public funds should go to public schools.

A provision in the federal tax and spending law signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025 will provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 to people who donate to qualifying “scholarship granting organizations.” Donations to organizations are used for educational expenses including tuition and board at private schools, tutoring and books. The provision created the first major federal program to allocate public money towards private school tuition in the form of tax incentives. 

Republican lawmakers, who hold the majority in Wisconsin’s state Legislature, as well as conservative and school choice advocacy groups have advocated for Wisconsin’s participation in the program — highlighting that the funds could be used for costs for public school students, including tutoring, as well as for private school students. However, governors are responsible for opting their states into the program by 2027, meaning they needed to convince Evers, a former state superintendent and public school teacher who had previously expressed skepticism about the program, to opt in. Without Evers’ approval, Wisconsin taxpayers can still reap the benefits of the federal tax credit, but the money they donate will support private school programs in other states.

AB 602 directed Evers to join the program on behalf of Wisconsin. In his veto message, Evers laid out a number of his concerns. 

“This nationwide voucher program has no student achievement metrics, no school accountability measures, no minimum or maximum scholarship size, no certain end date, and no cap on how much the federal government can spend,” Evers said. “Republicans in Washington have given private voucher expansion carte blanche to run roughshod over public education in this country — and a blank check to do so at taxpayer expense, clearly without any regard for whether it actually does what is best for kids.”

Evers also noted that the rulemaking process for the program has not been completed. 

According to an estimate by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the cost of the program could range to as high as $51 billion annually.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, 23 states had opted into the program as of January. Those states, mostly led by Republican governors, include Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, Louisiana and Texas. In February, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis became the first Democratic governor to opt into the program. Other Democratic governors have remained skeptical. 

Evers said in his veto message that Wisconsin is uniquely positioned to understand the effects of voucher expansion and disputed claims that the federal program would provide sufficient support to public school students.  

“As a former science teacher, principal, superintendent, state superintendent and a son of the state that created the nation’s first-ever private school voucher program, I have spent decades of my life watching the impacts that draining public funds from public schools to fund private voucher school programs instead has had on kids, schools and public education in Wisconsin,” Evers said. 

Wisconsin’s school voucher program — from the number of students and schools that participate to the amount of state money invested — has grown exponentially since its inception in Milwaukee in 1990. Growth is likely to accelerate dramatically in the next few years.  Participation caps, which limit the number of students in each district who can participate, have been lifted by 1% each year since 2017. Next year they will be phased out completely. 

“With each passing school year, public school districts continue to endure capped and prorated state funding, strict revenue limits and the need to go to referenda in many cases just to keep up with inflationary pressures to provide a quality education for their kids,” Evers said. “Even now, the Legislature has simultaneously failed to act on my calls to increase funding for special education to ensure the state meets the targets promised in our bipartisan budget.” 

In the most recent state budget, Wisconsin lawmakers provided increases to payments for the school voucher program, but did not provide any additional funding for general aid for public schools. The state’s investment in the special education reimbursement for public schools was not enough to cover the estimated  42% of costs in the first year of the budget and 45% in the second year. 

With funding from the state not keeping pace with inflation, public school districts have turned increasingly to property taxpayers for additional funding that must be approved by voters.

Next week, there will be 74 referendum requests on April ballots across the state — and the results will shape whether school districts can pay their bills, how much staff get paid and whether schools can open their doors next year. A lawsuit filed in February argues that the state isn’t fulfilling its constitutional duties and the current funding formula needs to be overhauled.

Rep. Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), who coauthored the school donation tax credit bill with Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), wrote in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner that she was “disappointed, but not surprised” Evers vetoed the bill, saying he misunderstands the purpose of the bill. 

“AB 602 would have allowed Wisconsin students to be eligible for more scholarships to use towards the education style that works best for them, whether that be private school tuition or hiring a tutor outside of school time,” Rodriguez said. “This would have benefited K-12 students in all educational settings. For example, a scholarship could have been created to help low-income families send their 8th grade students on their class field trip to Washington, D.C.” 

“It’s just unfortunate, because opting in would have cost the state nothing, and by not opting in Wisconsin will sit idly by while our residents donate to scholarship granting organizations in other states and receive a federal tax benefit for doing so,” she said. “Sadly, we can’t just wait for a new governor in January.” 

Evers is not running for a third term in office this year, meaning the new governor could be a Republican or a Democrat, but will not take office until Jan. 4, 2027. The deadline for states to opt in to the federal program is Jan. 1, 2027. 

Felzkowski said in a statement that Evers was “putting politics over helping Wisconsin students.”

“Apparently, expanded educational opportunities for students in all schools, whether public, private, homeschool or charter, (at NO cost to the state and without the need for a single new bureaucrat!) makes too much sense for the governor. Wisconsin students and families deserve better,” Felzkowski said.

Evers addressed proponents’ argument that “the program will benefit public school students, families, and schools, too” in his veto message.

“Perhaps I am wrong and maybe it will. Nevertheless, right now, I have no such comfort, and my decades of experience in public education in the state with the first and oldest modern voucher program tell me the opposite will be true,” Evers said. “Therefore, I must veto this bill in its entirety. What’s best for our kids is what’s best for our state, and it remains unclear how this bill will do what’s best for the more than 800,000 Wisconsin public school kids for whom the state has a constitutional obligation to adequately provide and invest in public education.”

Peggy Wirtz-Olsen, president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, celebrated the veto in a statement. 

“More than 70 school districts in Wisconsin are going to referendum next week just to have enough money to continue operating because they have been abandoned by the state and federal government,” Wirtz-Olsen said. “Yet the Trump Administration and the Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature think this is a good time to pour tens of billions of dollars into a voucher program that has no standards and no accountability. A veto is the least of what this program deserves.”

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Most Transportation Security Administration officers received a paycheck Monday covering four weeks of back wages that were held up by the funding lapse at the Department of Homeland Security, a TSA spokesperson said.

The lack of pay had produced long wait lines for security checks at some of the nation’s busiest airports after TSA officers quit or called out sick.

The 45-day partial government shutdown of DHS remains ongoing — with each chamber of Congress, both led by Republicans, unable to reach a consensus on a solution. It is now the longest government shutdown in history, exceeding last year’s 43-day record.

But President Donald Trump on Friday ordered the department and the White House Office of Management and Budget to reprogram funds with a “logical nexus” to TSA in order to compensate the airport screeners who had remained on the job without pay.

That month of back pay went out Monday, DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis wrote in an email.

“Most TSA employees received a retroactive paycheck today that included at least two full paychecks … today,” Bis wrote.

Some TSA workers “might see a slight delay,” which could be attributed to a variety of factors, such as processing by their banks, Bis added. She said the department was working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Finance Center to process the half-paycheck employees missed in February.

Because TSA workers are considered essential, they are required by law to stay on the job even when the government cannot fund their positions. Though they receive back pay once funding is available, long shutdowns cause major problems for workers.

More than 500 TSA workers have quit since the shutdown began and thousands more have missed shifts, Bis wrote.

Breakdown in Congress

The House and Senate passed competing measures Friday to end the shutdown. Because the chambers diverged in how to fund the department, it remains shuttered.

The shutdown began Feb. 14 after Democrats in Congress said they would only support a funding bill for the department if it contained changes in how the Trump administration carried out immigration enforcement following the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis.

Senators last week reached a deal to fund the department except for its immigration enforcement agencies, which received a massive influx from Republicans’ spending and tax cuts law last year. 

The House bill would have extended 2025 funding levels for the entire department for two months. Lawmakers from both chambers left for a two-week recess after passing their respective bills.

White House wants full funding

At a Monday briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt urged Congress to pass full funding for the department.

“The president just can’t keep signing presidential memorandums and proclamations every time Congress fails to do its job and every time Democrats hold our country hostage, picking and choosing the programs and agencies they want to fund just because they don’t like this administration’s policies,” she said. “That’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Chair Ann Jacobs is warning voters that it’s against state law to wager on an election if you are casting a ballot in that race. 

Jacobs’ comments, made last week on X, come as prediction market sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket have continued to grow in popularity. 

“I know it’s all the rage to bet on everything, but you cannot bet on an election in Wisconsin,” Jacobs wrote. “If you do, your ballot can be challenged & thrown out … So go vote and save your $ for playing Euchre with your uncle!” 

Wisconsin’s election laws include a provision that states nobody “shall be allowed to vote in any election in which the person has made or become interested, directly or indirectly, in any bet or wager depending upon the result of the election.” 

Currently on Kalshi, tens of thousands of dollars in bets have been placed on the result, turnout and margin of victory of next week’s state Supreme Court election. Even more money has been wagered on the state’s upcoming race for governor — including $85,000 on the Democratic primary race. 

The ethics of participating in prediction markets have come under scrutiny as their popularity has grown, particularly the opportunity for placing bets that are akin to insider trading. More than $500 million in bets were placed on the prospect of the U.S. going to war with Iran shortly before major announcements about U.S. military actions in the country, NBC News reported. 

The law against betting on elections has been on the books in some form since 1849. Other states, including Arizona and Texas, also have laws against wagering on elections. 

Jacobs told Wisconsin Public Radio that the state isn’t going to go looking for offenders of the election betting law, however if someone brags online about a big win, that could open them up to scrutiny and the potential cancellation of their vote. 

“No, the state is not going out and issuing search warrants to betting platforms to cross reference against voters,” Jacobs told WPR. “I think the most likely way this would come up would be exactly how you think, which is somebody posted on social media saying, ‘Hey, I made this big bet,’ and then someone who doesn’t like them reports it to the authorities.”

Jacobs told the Wisconsin Examiner a voter’s ballot could be voided because of betting through the state’s existing ballot challenge processes, which allow anyone to object to the counting of an absentee ballot. She compared it to challenges that are received for people who post selfies with their ballots.

“Who would do such a thing? people who hate you,” Jacobs said. “It’s almost always the opposing candidate. Is that a lot of work? Yes. Is it sort of silly? Yes. If you think you’re going to get a big amount of money, then don’t vote.”

The emergence of the prediction markets was also an impetus for the state Legislature quickly passing a bill to legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin. That bill is currently awaiting the signature of Gov. Tony Evers.

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Connection, compassion and hope — those are the three key elements members of the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative (MORI) say helped lower overdose deaths to levels unseen in Milwaukee County since 2016. “It’s MORI in conjunction with this whole community,” Jonathan Belott, a lieutenant with the Milwaukee Fire Department, told the Wisconsin Examiner. 

“We don’t live in a silo,” said Belott, who’s led the overdose response initiative since its inception in 2019. “We have so many of our different partners that we have come to rely on to get people the help that they need throughout this community.” 

Last year there were 383 fatal overdoses in Milwaukee, the lowest number in a decade, according to the county’s overdose dashboard. That marked a significant reversal of the recent overdose epidemic that peaked in 2022, with 674 fatal overdoses in Milwaukee, fueled by widespread contamination of cocaine, heroin, prescription pills, and other substances with the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl.

As the crisis accelerated in 2019, Belott was assigned to head a new strategy. “I didn’t even know what I was getting into in that moment,” he told the Examiner, sitting beside fellow firefighter and team supervisor Robert Rehberger and peer support specialist Amy Molinski — both members of the overdose response initiative — at the team’s homebase fire station on Fiebrantz Avenue. 

“I didn’t understand even the full impact of what it was,” said Belott. “I was kind of just told, ‘Hey, you’re going to be this guy.’ But the more you get into it, the more you see how it has been impacting people’s lives over these years…We watched those numbers go up and up…Just a crazy amount of people.”  

Between 2017 and 2025, 4,582 people died across Milwaukee County. Nationwide, overdose deaths became more common than those caused by homicide, car accidents or suicide. The people who died were brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. Some were children younger than 5, others were elders in their 70s. Most were people between 20 and 60 years old. They were unhoused, working class and wealthy people from numerous ethnic and racial backgrounds. Even in Milwaukee — one of America’s most segregated cities — addiction and death have never discriminated.

Every year seemed worse than the last as record-breaking numbers of Milwaukeeans died. “And then we saw just a little decline,” said Belott. Overdose deaths fell by more than 30% in 2024, followed by a sharp drop in 2025. “You’re talking 50% less people dying over the course of the three years,” Rehberger said of the most recent numbers.  

“I’ll say it’s bittersweet,” said Molinski. “And I’ll say that because the number of deaths that we have are still too many. It’s unfortunate that it had to get as high as it did before people were willing to do anything about it.”

Milwaukee’s sharp decrease in overdose deaths mirrors a nationwide trend, tied to stepped-up treatment and harm reduction efforts as well as a shrinking fentanyl supply.

Building a program from scratch

Belott credited Michael Murphy, who served on the common council, with helping steer the first $100,000 to the fire department to start an overdose reduction program. “To his credit, he recognized that we had to do something different than what we were doing,” Belott told the Examiner. 

Although it was just enough money to get a program off the ground, there were questions about what such a program would actually look like. “We had to make the program from absolutely nothing,” said Belott. “Like this didn’t exist anywhere that we knew. …We didn’t base it off anything.” The team itself started off very small. “It was like three hours a day for Monday through Friday,” said Rehberger. “And now we got four teams going out every day doing this work. And it’s just proud to see like,  something come from it.”

The Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative started by using the fire department’s access to 911 call data to identify people who had survived an overdose within the last 24-48 hours. From there, team members would go out to find those people, and see whether there was any help they could provide. “Help” doesn’t have to mean pressuring someone to go into rehab — although the Milwaukee overdose team also regularly works to get people into treatment programs. With time, the team realized that “help” can also mean getting someone clothes, food, providing them with narcan and other harm reduction supplies, and offering compassionate and non-judgmental support.

Molinski recalled one girl who called the overdose response team because she needed a ride to her psych appointment. “It’s cold, she didn’t want to walk,” Molinski recalled. “So we picked her up and we took her there. We stopped at the food pantry along the way so that she could get some food.”

“Help” can also mean checking in on family members who recently lost a loved one to the overdose crisis, and ensuring they have access to the resources they’ll need to process their loss. Belott said that acts like these are about providing “basic humanity for the people that we work with.” Molinski echoed the sentiment. “It’s helping to eliminate some of the struggle,” she told the Examiner. “We all want to quit when it’s hard.”

The Milwaukee overdose team also had to focus on how it would grow to meet those needs. Like Belott, Rehberger didn’t know what to expect when he joined the team. “I volunteered but I didn’t really know exactly what I was volunteering for at the time,” he told the Examiner. When the team decided to add addiction peer support specialists, Molinski, who is employed by Community Medical Services, a medication-assisted treatment clinic, was brought on. The team’s vehicles, modestly marked with the fire department’s logo and “community paramedics” on the trunk, usually carry two firefighters and one peer supporter.

Working on the overdose response team, Molinski grew to understand just how much people respected the Milwaukee Fire Department. “These guys [firefighters] got rolled into it, and I don’t think that there’s any way that you can’t say that that helped impact the success that we see today,” Molinski, who got into the peer support field after enduring her own battles with addiction, said. When overdose survivors “get greeted by someone in a uniform that doesn’t judge them, tries to take the shame out of what they’re doing and say ‘your life is worth saving, like not just on the street last night but moving forward,’ that means a lot,” she said.

As the overdose response effort evolved, so did team members’ understanding of the epidemic, themselves, and each other. “There was a lot of humility in the beginning,” said Molinski. “There was a lot of us having to look at one another and sometimes kindly, sometimes very directly, [saying] like, ‘Hey, what you just did wasn’t right.’” 

Molinski admitted that “I’m a little rough around the edges” and “I’ve kind of always done things my own way.” She grew to appreciate what representing the fire department meant. “So you can be you, just tone down just a little bit,” she said. “And I needed to hear that. …We learned from one another.” The firefighters learned how to loosen up and Molinski learned how to tighten up, she said, “and we were kind of able to share that with everybody as they came.” 

A conversation, not an interrogation

Firefighters who joined the team also often had to rethink how they approach people struggling with addiction. As emergency responders, Belott and Rehberger were trained to stabilize people, patch them up, and transport them to a hospital in the middle of a crisis. In order to succeed, however, the overdose response effort demanded a completely different modus operandi.

“For us, we’re not there in the crisis moment,” Belott explained. “We’re there following the crisis moment. So we have time…we sit down and we have a conversation, not an interrogation, which is what I used to do at the beginning.” 

“If you have a conversation with somebody, you learn about them…Because a conversation flows,” Molinski said. Rehberger called it “asking a question in a different way, and listening.”

This allowed team members, especially those with no personal experience with addiction, to see a whole new side of the epidemic and what it meant for people fighting to stay alive. The conversations they had affected them deeply, allowing them to experience the gratitude the people they tried to help felt  for anyone willing to treat them with dignity. “Before I came here, one of the things that I wasn’t expecting was how much relationship you grow with the people that we’re meeting,” said Rehberger. “I feel like I was just thinking that it was going to be mostly like a 911 call, you know? Like you’re helping the person in that moment.” Rehberger wasn’t used to people being so grateful on calls that they gave him giant hugs. “Never did I think that I was going to be hugging someone while on the fire department. Ever.” 

Molinski recalled her first month with the overdose response team. “It was in the middle of the summer, it was hot, they didn’t have air conditioning,” Molinski recounted. “He was wearing no shirt, he was smoking cigarettes in his apartment, and it was a lot. And as we left, I hugged him goodbye.” Belott was taken aback, quipping that Molinski was “all in.” The peer support specialist explained that it may have been a very long time since that man had felt “a caring human touch.” 

What winning looks like

Even for Molinski, who’d experienced her own addiction to heroin and other drugs, the conditions people survived day-to-day were startling. “Our stories of addiction while we were in active addiction are insane,” Molinski told the Examiner. People living with an active addiction may or may not have stable housing, regular access to food, hygiene products, transportation, work, or even trustworthy people. Sometimes, the overdose response team would find people only to lose track of them again for over a year.

“They probably lost three phones in those 18 months,” said Molinski. Yet, out of the blue, the same person who couldn’t hold onto a phone might call the overdose response team for help because they had managed to keep a team member’s business card. “I mean, think about that for a second,” said Molinski, “how hard it is to keep track of your property when you’re in active addiction, but somehow a business card was still there to call.” 

Other times, team members learned firsthand just how hard it is for people to stop using drugs. “People are trying,” said Molinski. “… not everybody is just choosing to stay in their addiction. Some of them don’t see a way out. They’ve tried and they can’t get out. And when you see that, it’s easier to treat people with a little bit more compassion. Give somebody a little bit of grace as to why they’re still in that situation.”

Rehberger remembered checking on a woman, who contacted the team saying that she didn’t have any clothes. “I didn’t know what that meant, honestly,” said Rehberger. When team members met the woman they realized that she literally didn’t have clothes to wear. So they got her clothes, then food, and then they returned to see if she’d go into treatment. When they did, the woman told them, “Honestly, I would never have gone in for treatment the next day had you not gotten me the food first,” Rehberger recounted. 

Belott said that simply getting through the door to have a conversation was a success. “If they’re willing to sit down and talk with some strangers in uniform, that’s an amazing thing,” he said. “And we show up and they know, OK, somebody’s following up, somebody gives a crap about me.” 

Team members have dropped off birthday cupcakes to people living in homeless encampments, and celebrated “clean days,” marking milestones for people who’ve quit drugs. Molinski recalled one unhoused man the team had been trying to locate for a long time. After connecting with his grandparents, the team was able to arrange for him to get into detox before going off to a residential facility. It turned out the man was living near an alley. He conveyed to the team that he didn’t want members to park too close to the site.  So they stood near a pizza sign, yelled his name, and he came out accompanied by a friend. “My buddy needs help, too,” he said. 

The overdose response team’s efforts were the subject of intense debate in the community. Team members often found themselves fighting the stigma and shame attached to addiction. Some people were confused about why the team tried so hard, even questioning whether the city would be better off just letting people die. With patience and much labor, however, some people’s minds changed. Belott wondered, “How many 10-minute conversations have we had over the years? And how many minds [were] changed by doing that?” 

Success can be measured in concrete results like the lower number of fatal overdoses. But not every achievement can be recorded on a spreadsheet, and not every good deed results in a life saved.

About eight months into the program, team members were working with a young woman they had come to know well.  “We actually got told that we weren’t allowed to see her anymore,” said Molinski. “We were too invested…She saw us a lot. She was not in good shape. This girl was struggling. And we just kept going to see her. And we didn’t know how we were going to help her, if we could help her. We had no idea what to do.” First they tried reaching her parents, who were exhausted by their daughter’s  addiction. The mother hadn’t seen her in over 200 days, and the father didn’t want her back home because she was prone to stealing. 

Team members eventually found out that she was sustaining herself as a sex worker on Milwaukee’s North Side. Besides her addiction, she also suffered from the condition endocarditis which causes inflammation of the heart. Team members accompanied her to the hospital so that she could get a Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter (PICC) line, a procedure which frightened her.

Then one day the team got a call from a man she was staying with, saying that she was lying in the bathroom and couldn’t get up. She was rushed to the emergency room. She asked team members to bring some of her favorite treats, a Sprite and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, when they visited. 

It was her thirtieth birthday when the team visited the hospital and brought her a blanket and a book to read. “She was completely unconscious, unable to speak in any way,” said Molinski. “And then the day after that, her family called [Belott] and I and said, ‘We’ve made the decision to take her off of life support. And we would like to invite you guys to come and say goodbye if you would like.’” 

Molinski said that she and Belott “were too invested…We were all f-ing in…And we went, and we cried over her bed, and we said goodbye to her, and her family took her off life support, and that sucked.” Yet, Molinski also had texts that the young lady sent her saying that she loved them, and that knowing them was the first time in years that she felt that anyone cared about her. “And she died,” Molinski said, shedding tears, “but she died feeling loved.” Her parents saw that love, too. “I don’t care what anybody says…The numbers say that was a fail,” said Molinski. “They weren’t there. It wasn’t a fail. …We made that girl feel like she was worth something before she left the world. We met her too late, we couldn’t help her. But she felt loved when she left.”

Despite the loss, the team knew that they’d done something good that day. “I think about her all the time,” said Molinski. Belott, the team leader who was sitting near her and Rehberger, wiped tears from his eyes. 

“I still have a list of the books that she wanted me to bring her when she was in the hospital. I can’t delete it off my phone,” said Molinski. “She made an impact on me. And we were told to stop. And we didn’t stop.” 

What Milwaukee needs to keep overdose deaths down

Since the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative began its work in 2019, Milwaukee County has made great strides against the overdose and addiction epidemics. Narcan — the crucial spray-medication used to revive an overdose victim — can be found in bars, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, and free-to-use vending machines. Not only is Narcan carried by firefighters and other emergency responders, but ordinary people can be trained to use it. “Keep that Narcan flowing out there,” Belott stressed. 

Several Milwaukee County communities have adopted their own kinds of overdose response teams. The West Allis fire department, which recently integrated with Wauwatosa’s, has launched one such effort. The state of Wisconsin also legalized testing strips both for fentanyl and xylazine — a potent tranquilizer — allowing people to check drugs for dangerous substances before using them. New treatment centers have opened in parts of the county. Even within local jails, people are able to access medication-assisted treatment and take the first steps towards recovery.

Many of those resources are also distributed by the Milwaukee Overdose Response Initiative  for free in the form of “Hope Kits.” Similar to a small plastic purse, with the word “Hope” printed on it in bright red lettering, the kits are stocked with Narcan, testing strips and contact information for treatment centers, therapy, and groups like Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. All frontline firefighters are deployed with Hope Kits.

The Milwaukee overdose response team’s work is funded by opioid settlement funds, paid out by the pharmaceutical companies that helped spark the opioid epidemic. With those funds, and additional grants, the team is able to keep the lights on and grow its coterie of firefighters, peer support specialists, vehicles, and harm reduction resources. “We’re proud of MORI,” Belott told the Examiner. 

Treatment is still in short supply. Often, the team is forced to look for residential treatment beds outside of Milwaukee County. Sometimes that’s a good idea for people who need to sever their old connections. But for those facing transportation challenges, it can be difficult. Molinski, Belott and Rehberger also said no residential treatment centers in Milwaukee have proper accommodations for people with disabilities.

“There is none. Zero,” said Molinski. “Not a single place where someone can get help in a wheelchair. Or somebody that simply hurt themselves while using and is on crutches, they also can’t go.” 

Ultimately, the greatest resource the overdose response team can provide is hope. Regardless of what they’ve done, or experienced, people’s lives are worth saving, team members said. In Molinski’s case, it was disconnection and feeling empty that led her into drug use, and it was connection and hope that pulled her out of it.  

“My life was worth saving,” said Molinski. “It would’ve been really hard to convince someone of that back in 2006, 2007…That would’ve been a tough sell. My parents were starting to wonder if it was worth it for them to keep fighting. But it was worth it!” Today, she is raising a teenage daughter, and works in a field where she can help people who struggle like she did. But to get there, Molinski had to keep trying. “I never dreamt that this was waiting for me,” she said.

This article has been edited to reflect that Ald. Michael Murphy helped steer funds to get the overdose team started, not Ashanti Hamilton.

All 41 states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act will see fewer people covered due to new federal work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks. But the percentage of recipients who lose coverage will vary greatly from state to state, depending on how state officials implement the new rules, according to a new report.

The report, released this week by the Urban Institute with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, projects that in 2028, between 4.9 million and 10.1 million people will lose coverage as a result of the federal policy changes included in the broad tax and spending measure President Donald Trump signed last summer. That prediction is roughly in line with estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, which projected last fall that the changes would increase the number of people without health insurance by 7.5 million in 2034.

Whether the actual number ends up at the low end or the high end of that estimate will depend on state policy, according to the researchers. States that automatically check eligibility using data-matching, impose the minimum work requirements allowed under federal law and broadly define certain exemptions, such as those for “medical frailty,” will minimize the number of people who lose coverage.

On the other end of the spectrum, states that require stricter documentation of work hours and implement narrower exemptions will see more people dropped from the rolls.

With stricter state policies, the report projected that eight states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin — would see a decline in enrollment of 60% or more. (Wisconsin hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the ACA, but it was included in the study because it received a federal waiver that makes some of its Medicaid enrollees subject to work requirements.)

Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Oregon would have the smallest declines under strict policies, but would still see losses ranging from 37% to 46%.

With the least stringent policies, North Dakota and South Dakota would have the smallest declines — 18% and 19%, respectively. Even under lax rules, six states — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, New York, Virginia, Vermont —- would see declines of 30% or more.

Nationwide, between 19% and 37% of people who already work will lose Medicaid coverage, according to the analysis, due to challenges such as fulfilling the documentation requirements to prove that they work.

States have to enforce work requirements by next January. They may enforce them earlier via a waiver or state plan amendment, but so far only one state, Nebraska, has announced a plan to implement the requirements earlier, in May.

Some groups are exempt from the work requirements, including American Indian and Alaska Natives, people deemed “medically frail,” households receiving benefits through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, caretakers for children under age 13 or for those with disabilities, foster care youth and former foster care youth under age 26, among others.

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

When an Alabama clinic’s only OB-GYN left the state to provide abortion care in Colorado, the head of operations thought the facility would have to close. 

But Robin Marty, executive director at WAWC Healthcare in Tuscaloosa, hired a doctor in August who she called a “unicorn” — someone who’s from Alabama and, after training outside of the state, returned home to practice medicine. 

Marty said Alabama’s near-total abortion ban could cause physicians to practice elsewhere after they finish their residencies. 

“Doctors don’t want to worry about surveillance, potential arrests and other legal issues,” she said. 

A study published this month found that applications to medical residency programs in states with abortion restrictions have declined compared to states where abortion remained mostly legal. The findings are an “early signal” that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision nearly four years ago overturning federal abortion rights protections may exacerbate health care shortages, said lead author Dr. Anisha Ganguly.

A majority of doctors end up practicing medicine in states where they trained. Obstetrician and gynecology training programs typically take four years to complete, so the full scope of how abortion restrictions affect where physicians work after they complete their residencies remains to be seen. 

Still, experts said the findings could spell trouble for the future of the reproductive health care workforce in states with abortion restrictions, some of which are already plagued with maternity care deserts. 

Doctors say bans limit training, standards of care

OB-GYNs affiliated with Physicians for Reproductive Health who either trained or work in states with abortion bans told States Newsroom that restrictions after the Supreme Court decision hamstrung their ability to offer reproductive care and affected the education of medical residents. 

Dr. Neha Ali grew up in Texas and trained there, too. But by the end of her OB-GYN residency’s second year, the state enacted SB 8, a six-week abortion ban that allowed residents in the state to sue providers or anyone who helped someone terminate a pregnancy. After the Dobbs decision in June 2022, a near-total abortion ban took effect in Texas.

“I knew I wanted to be an abortion provider before I started OB-GYN residency, and I chose to be in Texas for my residency training because I wanted to experience what that’s like in a state with barriers. But ultimately, the barriers became too large,” Ali said. 

After she finished residency in 2024, Ali moved to Colorado, a state with strong abortion-rights protections, where she practices complex family planning.

Ali said she talks to medical students about her experience training in Texas, where she was not able to perform any dilation and evacuations — a second-trimester abortion procedure — during residency. 

“I do think it’s very valuable to see what it’s like to be in a restrictive state and understand what that is like to be a provider there, but that doesn’t sell people on a residency for four years,” she said.

OB-GYN Dr. Louis Monnig trained in Kentucky before the state banned abortion. 

“Making it difficult or putting up barriers to that training just limits the abilities of any doctor who provides reproductive care to have opportunities to get exposure and experience, and just get better at what they’re doing,” he said. 

Monnig completed his residency in June 2023 and moved back to his home state of Louisiana because of his connections to the region and its health care disparities. “It felt like it was worth it to come back,” he said. 

In October 2024, a Louisiana law classifying mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances took effect. 

“It made me lose faith that lawmakers were doing any of these things to actually protect patients or patient safety,” he said. 

The medications are used not only for abortions, but miscarriages and other conditions, too. The law has sowed confusion among health care providers and led some to practice emergency drills to access the drugs during obstetric emergencies, Louisiana Illuminator reported. Monnig said the law has “changed some of the day-to-day operational workflow for patient care,” especially for situations where misoprostol is used, such as labor induction and postpartum hemorrhaging. 

Patients have faced issues when trying to get prescriptions filled: Pharmacists have called Monnig’s office to make sure a patient wasn’t having an abortion after he prescribed misoprostol for conditions such as cervical stenosis — when it’s difficult to insert a medical instrument in the cervical canal.

Drop in applications to ban states’ residency programs

Out of more than 22 million applications to 4,315 residency programs across the U.S., 67% were submitted to programs in states without abortion restrictions between 2018 and 2023, the new research showed. Thirty-three percent went to programs in states with restrictions. 

Fewer women than men applied to train in states with abortion restrictions before the Supreme Court’s landmark abortion ruling, according to the study, and that disparity widened after more than a dozen states enacted abortion bans. The number of men applying to residency programs in states with abortion restrictions — mostly in the South and the Midwest — also decreased significantly. 

“When there’s a decreased level of interest in these states, it suggests to us that there’s an evolving health care workforce shortage in these states,” said Ganguly, an internal medicine physician and an assistant professor at University of North Carolina’s Division of General Medicine and Epidemiology. 

Many states with abortion bans — Idaho, Iowa, Georgia and Missouri, for example — are also facing labor and delivery unit closures, particularly in rural areas where hospitals struggle with provider recruitment. Health officials in these states listed improvements to maternal health as a priority in their applications to the federal Rural Health Care Transformation Program, but solutions will take years to implement. 

Shortages affect more than one specialty. Ganguly said OB-GYNs have historically offered the bulk of abortion-related care in the U.S., but it’s increasingly important in emergency medicine, family medicine and internal medicine. Primary care providers and emergency medicine doctors often diagnose pregnancy complications such as miscarriages, and internists help women who have chronic disease manage and plan for pregnancy. 

Dr. Hector Chapa, an OB-GYN who teaches obstetrics and gynecology at Texas A&M University and is a member of the American Association of Pro–Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, took issue with the study’s approach. 

“It’s essential to understand that this study is not specific to OB‑GYN residency programs, and by grouping OB‑GYN with family medicine, internal medicine and emergency medicine, the study assumes that all specialties are affected equally, despite their very different levels of involvement in abortion. This broad grouping risks introducing bias into the results,” he said in a statement. 

Ganguly said her team did examine applications to OB-GYN residency programs in isolation to affirm findings of a decline among applicants in abortion-restricted states. Looking at other specialties, too, was meant to provide clarity about how bans affect the health care workforce more broadly.

OB-GYN education and the maternal health care workforce 

The latest study adds to a body of research examining how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in 2022 affected training after medical school, particularly for those specializing in reproductive health care. 

In the 2023-2024 application cycle, the number of applicants to training programs in states with abortion bans decreased by 4.2% compared to the previous cycle, while there was less than a 1% decrease in applications to residency programs in states where abortion is legal, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges. 

In some states, abortion bans have definitively led to an exodus of OB-GYNs and maternal fetal medicine specialists. Idaho lost 35% of its doctors who provide obstetrics between August 2022 and December 2024, according to a study published in July. 

Having reproductive health providers flee states with abortion bans is “devastating,” according to Pamela Merritt, the executive director of Medical Students for Choice. 

“It’s a public health disaster that we’re going to see the consequences of decades to come,” she said. 

Merritt’s organization has chapters at several medical schools in states with abortion bans. She said students are not getting adequate training, and some are even discouraged from discussing abortion. 

In February, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center canceled a Medical Students for Choice chapter’s talk with an OB-GYN who wrote a book about providing abortion care later in pregnancy. School officials told The Texas Tribune hosting the event on campus was not in the university’s best interests.   

“Everybody who graduates from medical school in Texas should know that there’s this thing called third-trimester abortion, that when the life of the mother is at risk, you legally can provide this care,” Merritt said. 

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation last year clarifying that doctors can offer pregnant women abortions during medical emergencies. The Texas Medical Board released guidelines for the abortion law this year, nearly half a decade after the state banned most abortions and at least four Texans died after being denied prompt abortion care, ProPublica reported. 

Program helps residents in restrictive states get abortion care training 

“Every single physician, nurse and health care provider needs to be educated about abortion care,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, an OB-GYN and the director of the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California in San Francisco. “This is a huge crisis in OB-GYN specifically: All OB-GYNs must have the competence and the skill to safely empty the uterus. Even if the individual is personally uncomfortable providing abortion care, they have to be able to empty the uterus to save someone’s life in an emergency.”

Steinauer leads the Ryan Residency Training Program, which works with OB-GYN residencies across the country to ensure comprehensive abortion and family planning rotations. Nearly a dozen states lack Ryan programs, and most of them have near-total abortion bans. 

She said residencies in states with abortion bans are struggling to make sure their students have the skills to provide abortion: “We’re at risk of having a whole generation of OB-GYN graduates who are not skilled to provide the care they need to provide.” 

To remedy this issue, the Ryan Program has helped to establish 20 partnerships with schools in abortion-restrictive states to train OB-GYN medical residents in states with reproductive rights protections. 

Steinauer said the rotations are between two to four weeks and complicated to plan, but they help doctors learn procedural skills, how to manage medication abortions and counseling. 

The rotations also help OB-GYNs navigate pain management during obstetric procedures, communicate effectively with abortion patients and familiarize themselves with ultrasounds, she said. These skills are important for providing the full spectrum of reproductive health care, from inserting IUDs to treating miscarriages, the doctor said. 

“It’s such a refreshing experience for them to be working in a state without a ban, and they get to see abortion as normal health care,” she said. 

Update: This story has been updated to correct that the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health is located at the University of California in San Francisco. 

Mukta Joshi, an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today, is a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining the ICE detention facility at Adams County Correctional Center. States Newsroom is partnering with Mississippi Today and The New York Times on this project. Mukta can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com. You can read the entire series here.

The Adams County Correctional Center, one of more than 200 ICE detention facilities in the U.S., is located near the city of Natchez on a sprawling 14-acre site in southwestern Mississippi.

The facility, which holds more than 2,000 people, is a significant economic driver in a county of fewer than 30,000 residents. CoreCivic employs approximately 400 people there, making it one of the largest employers in Adams County. Natchez Mayor Dan Gibson said CoreCivic is the county’s single largest taxpayer.

The federal government sets strict limits on who can visit Immigration and Custom Enforcement detention centers. And nearly all of them are run by for-profit companies, making the details of their operation private and difficult to monitor. 

So far, this is what we know.

Who owns it?

The Adams facility is privately owned and operated by CoreCivic Inc., a publicly traded company based in Tennessee. 

One of the largest private prison companies in the country, it disclosed in its most recent financial filings that it owns or controls about 57% of all privately owned prison beds in the U.S. 

The company, which reported $2.2 billion in revenue last year, has benefited financially from the Trump administration’s push to arrest immigrants. From 2024 to 2025, revenue increased by nearly $200 million thanks largely to an increase in ICE detentions, according to the company’s latest annual report.

Over the past few years, CoreCivic, its employees and PACs have poured millions of dollars into political donations and lobbying. In the 2024 election cycle, 84% of these donations went to Republican candidates. In the same cycle, CoreCivic spent more than $1.7 million lobbying, according to OpenSecrets. The previous year, it spent more than $1.6 million.

The Adams County facility is one of two ICE facilities operated by CoreCivic in the state. A second CoreCivic facility in Tutwiler, in northern Mississippi, was authorized last year to start housing ICE detainees.

What kinds of people are detained there? 

The Adams facility is a men’s facility. Most of its detainees are not from Mississippi. They were picked up by ICE agents somewhere else and are being held here until they decide to leave the country, or until an immigration judge deports them or sets them free.

Being in the U.S. without proper documentation is a civil infraction, like a speeding ticket – not a criminal violation. This fact has contributed to controversy about prison-like conditions that people detained by ICE are experiencing.

Only 9% of people in the Adams center have any sort of criminal conviction. But even those with criminal records are being held for civil immigration infractions, not as punishment. 

In addition to men, the facility currently houses a small number of transgender women. Following President Trump’s 2025 executive order, transgender people are required to be incarcerated in facilities that align with their gender assigned at birth, regardless of their legal status.

How long are detainees held?

In early 2025, then-warden Jason Streeval was quoted by the Natchez Democrat as saying that the average stay in the facility was about 60 days but had been getting longer. He told the newspaper that some detainees had been there for as long as seven months. 

Has the facility ever been the subject of controversy? 

The Adams facility made headlines in 2012, when an inmate protest against poor conditions snowballed into a riot that resulted in the killing of a guard. The FBI opened an investigation, leading to a number of inmates being charged and ultimately sentenced for participating in the riot. In the wake of the riot, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson called for an investigation into CoreCivic, then operating as Corrections Corporation of America.

One section of the facility, known as the “Zulu” unit, contains solitary confinement cells, where detainees are housed as punishment. In 2020, two nonprofit groups submitted a written complaint to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security alleging that immigrants from Cameroon had been tortured by ICE officers in that ward and forced to sign deportation documents. A year later, the complaint was still unresolved, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights. A representative for ICE did not respond to an inquiry about the current status of the complaint.

In 2021, an inspection by DHS found that Adams generally had provided sufficient medical care but identified one case in which the medical unit examined a sick detainee but did not send the person to the hospital. The detainee died. 

DHS also found that Adams didn’t meet other federal standards. Among the cited failures: It did not respond to grievances in a timely manner, it inadequately implemented COVID-19 safety protocols and it failed to assist vulnerable detainees. The ACLU called for the facility to be shut down.

What’s life like inside? 

The facility is divided into units, each holding about 140 people who share eight toilets and 15 showers, according to detainees interviewed by Mississippi Today. While inside, detainees can work if they choose, helping to clean, run the kitchen or do laundry. Several people held at the center said they were paid about $3.50 per day for their work.

Detainees are generally restricted to their own unit, where they can move about freely. One detainee said he was allowed to visit a secure outdoor area once every four or five days.

Several detainees described harsh conditions, but said that they had spent time in other facilities that were far dirtier and more restrictive. 

We don’t know much beyond that, especially about what the detention center looks like inside. A detainee who can afford the fees can send messages and make video calls from inside. They can’t send photos or attachments. And the communication app blurs their background and obscures the video completely if the camera is aimed away from the detainee’s face during a call.

How much does it cost to run? 

The contract to run this facility, like most other ICE detention centers, is an “Intragovernmental Service Agreement” between ICE, CoreCivic and Adams County. The 2019 agreement shows that ICE had agreed to pay a $3.9 million monthly flat rate for the facility, an amount set to increase every year. There have since been changes to this contract, but they were not immediately accessible. 

When we requested an interview with the warden and assistant warden, a spokesperson for CoreCivic redirected us to the company’s public affairs office and requested us to send our questions in writing. 

Over the next few months, we plan to publish weekly dispatches about the facility and about ICE detention in Mississippi and do our best to address these unanswered questions. You’ll be able to find my reporting on the Mississippi Today website, on our social media channels and in our Friday newsletter. And you can follow me on X @mukta_jo.

In the meantime, please fill out our survey. If you know something about the detention center, if you know someone who works there or is detained there, or want me to find out something about it for readers, please get in touch.

Clarification 3/27/26: This story has been updated to clarify the types of detainees held in the Adams County Correctional Center.