Milwaukee reacted to a the New York Times investigation published Wednesday that details sexual misconduct allegations against  influential civil rights and labor activist Cesar Chavez. Ald. JoCasta Zamarripa, who represents parts of Milwaukee’s predominantly Latino south side, announced that an annual celebration of Chavez’s life will be canceled this year. 

Milwaukee is also considering renaming a street that honors Chavez, who is accused of assaulting girls as young as 13. Images of Chavez appear on  murals and statues around  Milwaukee. All of these sites are being re-evaluated as the community processes the impact the allegations have on the labor and Latino civil rights movements Chavez led.

In a statement, Zamarippa said that Chavez’s contributions “are a matter of historical record”  but so are the “devastating” accounts of his accusers, including Dolores Huerta, Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas.  Zamarippa said that “both things are true, and our community deserves leaders who will say so clearly rather than ask survivors to wait until we process our own grief.” 

The Times investigation focused on Ana Murguia who, alongside Debra Rojas, say that Chavez — then in his 40s — abused them for years when they were  young girls. Murguia decided to come forward after she  heard that a street near where she lives in California was being renamed after Chavez, who died in 1993 at the age of 66. 

Neither Murguia nor Rojas had publicly shared their stories before. The Times investigation found “extensive evidence to support their accusations and those raised by several other women” against Chavez. Both women were the daughters of longtime organizers who marched and rallied alongside Chavez. According to the Times, Chavez had known Murguia since she was 8 years old, and the repeated abuse she endured in his office traumatized her so much that she  attempted to take her life multiple times at the age of 15. 

The pattern of abuse extended beyond Murguia and Rojas. Dolores Huerta, an icon of the farmworkers movement, said that Chavez also sexually assaulted her. The Times’ findings are based on interviews with over 60 people, including Chavez’s top aides, relatives and former members of the United Farm Workers movement. The Times also reviewed hundreds of pages of union records, confidential emails, photographs and hours of audio recordings from the movement’s board meetings. 

Many of the women who say they were abused by Chavez waited decades to tell their stories due to the shame they felt and fear of going against a man who’d become a cultural icon. 

Zamarripa said in her statement,  “the farmworker movement was never one man. It was built by thousands of workers, organizers, and families who gave their lives to the fight for dignity and justice.” 

Darryl Morin, president of Forward Latino, like Zamarripa, said, “this movement has never been about any one individual; it has always been about the people. It is grounded in the dignity of all, for farmworkers in the fields to students in our schools, and in the ongoing pursuit of justice. Upholding these values requires recognizing that no one is above accountability, whether they lead a movement, major corporation, or a government.”

Mayor Cavalier Johnson called the accusations “extremely troubling” and added that “the victims, those who have come forward and those who are unnamed, deserve our compassion,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. 

Milwaukee County Supv. Juan Miguel Martinez, a labor organizer, said that South Cesar E. Chavez Drive will be renamed “Dolores Huerta Way.” Martinez said in a statement that “too often, men of status abuse their power and use it for heinous acts towards women, and especially toward defenseless children…A union is built by people, not one person.”

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WASHINGTON — U.S. senators debated Wednesday whether the federal government should change how Americans register to vote and cast a ballot, with Republicans maintaining alterations are necessary to safeguard elections and Democrats arguing a new law would add unnecessary obstacles.

Tensions over the issue were on full display when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said GOP lawmakers describing the bill as a simple voter identification requirement is “bullshit,” shortly before Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee contended it would be “a suicidal move” for his party’s leaders not to find a way forward. 

The legislation, dubbed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, is unlikely to become law without bipartisan backing from at least 60 senators, who would be needed to move past a procedural vote. 

Democrats are not expected to help Republicans with that, especially after Schumer called the legislation “Jim Crow 2.0” and “evil” during a morning press conference with voting rights advocates. 

Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock said during that event GOP lawmakers are acting out of concern they will lose control of Congress following the November midterm elections, due to President Donald Trump’s actions during his second term.  

“The American people have had it with him and with his policies,” Warnock said. “He ran as someone who was going to lower costs, who was going to stay out of endless wars in the Middle East and he is failing. But instead of changing his policies, he’s trying to change the shape of the electorate.”

Problems with lack of birth certificate

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján said if the bill becomes law, it would create difficulties for anyone who doesn’t have access to their birth certificate or a passport, to prove U.S. citizenship when they try to register to vote. 

“What about my Native American brothers and sisters?” he said. “All my brothers and sisters from the First Nations that I’m proud to represent across New Mexico, who may have been born in their home generationally with other family members. They didn’t have a birth certificate.”

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said GOP lawmakers trying to change the voting process during an election year creates a pattern when combined with several Republican state legislatures redrawing U.S. House maps to benefit their candidates. 

“We see this being about having politicians choose the voters instead of voters choosing the politicians,” he said. 

Several Democratic state legislatures have responded to GOP redistricting efforts by redrawing their maps as well. 

Schumer, D-N.Y., said it’s unacceptable that Republicans want every state in the country to submit a list of registered voters to the Department of Homeland Security to run through a database, which he believes is flawed. 

“They’re trying to dupe America. They say, ‘Oh, this is just a voter ID law.’ Bullshit. It is not a voter ID law,” Schumer said. “It is a law that will kick millions of Americans off the voting rolls.”

‘Debate this as long as it takes to get it done’

Utah’s Lee said Republican leaders shouldn’t schedule the procedural vote that requires at least 60 senators to end debate on the bill until they have found some way to move past that step.  

“I think it would be a suicidal move for us as Senate Republicans, for Republicans in general, if we don’t put everything we’ve got into this,” he said. “I think we need to debate this as long as it takes to get it done. And if we’re not there yet, we need to continue debating.”

Lee contended that prolonged debate on the bill would give Republicans time to sway holdouts to their side. 

“This is going to become popular enough that a lot of our colleagues who currently oppose it, I believe, will start to get on board,” he said. 

Every Senate Democrat, along with Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voted against formally beginning debate on Tuesday. North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote.

Trump wants national limits on voting by mail

Senate debate on the bill dragging out in the days or possibly weeks ahead won’t be confined to what’s currently in the legislation, which the House passed last month.

Trump has asked senators to make three alterations, which they will attempt to incorporate through amendments. 

Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt said he plans to call for a vote to add nationwide restrictions on mail-in voting instead of leaving the issue to state governments. 

“If you have a hardship because of a disability, or an illness, or because of travel, or you’re a caregiver, or some other hardship the state can identify, you can vote by absentee,” he said. “You have to request it. Then you can vote by absentee.”

Schmitt said the carve-out would also include members of the military. 

Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said she plans to call up an amendment that could create a nationwide prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth. 

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, she said, would push for an amendment to block transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

Gov. Tony Evers signed SB 23, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 102 on Wednesday, officially making Wisconsin the 49th state to provide a year of coverage for postpartum mothers on Medicaid. 

“It’s been a long time coming, but I’m darn proud we got it done,” Evers, who signed the bill at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, said in a statement. 

Evers first proposed Wisconsin submit a waiver to the federal government to extend Medicaid coverage from 60 days to 12 months in his 2019 state budget, but years of legislative gridlock on the issue made Wisconsin the second to last state to make the change. 

According to KFF, the Medicaid program pays for about four in 10 births in the U.S. and federal law had required states to provide Medicaid coverage for postpartum mothers through 60 days. The American Rescue Plan Act gave states the option to extend Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months, and most states took steps towards expansion.

“We knew from the get-go that getting this passed was an uphill battle, but we also weren’t going to let partisanship or politics stop us from continuing our work to build support for this important proposal, because we know just how high the stakes are,” Evers said in a statement. 

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), who is retiring, was the main reason for the hold up. Articulating his opposition to the expansion, which he previously refused to bring to the floor, he said he was opposed to expanding “welfare.” A group of Republican lawmakers, including lead authors Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and Rep. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), lobbied for Vos to let the bill through as Democratic lawmakers applied pressure through procedural moves to try and force votes on the legislation. A breakthrough came the night before Assembly lawmakers’ final regular floor session this year. 

The bill passed in the Assembly 95-1. It passed the Senate 32-1. Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (Delafield) were the sole opposing votes.

The expanded coverage, which will be available starting on July 1, means low-income mothers on Medicaid and their babies, who automatically get a year of coverage, will have Medicaid coverage for the same length of time. The only state in the U.S. left that has not implemented the expansion is Arkansas. 

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, about half of pregnancy-related deaths occur in the postpartum period and 95% of those deaths are preventable. Black mothers are more than twice as likely as their white, non-Hispanic peers to die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

“Research has shown us that expanding postpartum coverage leads to improved maternal and birth outcomes, thanks to more folks being able to access the care they need when they need it — and without breaking the bank,” Evers said. “Now more than ever, we should be working to make healthcare more affordable and more accessible, not making it more expensive and harder for folks — including new moms and families — to get the care they need.”

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A bill barring Wisconsin’s nearly 700,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from buying candy and soda with their benefits, while providing additional funding and positions to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) is on its way to Gov. Tony Evers.

A provision in the federal tax and spending law signed by President Donald Trump last year penalizes states that have a SNAP payment error rate above 6%. The Evers administration has sought additional funding to increase staffing to keep Wisconsin’s error rate low. Evers estimates Wisconsin could lose up to $205 million annually from a penalty.

Evers had been requesting lawmakers to take action since August, just a month after the federal law was signed. After negotiations with Evers, lawmakers attached the money to AB 180, coauthored by Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), that would prohibit recipients from using their benefits to buy candy and soda. 

The money will go towards a FoodShare employment and training program as well as covering administrative costs that have been shifted from the federal government to the state and creating quality control initiatives to help keep FoodShare error rates low. 

Evers did not mention the ban on candy and soda in his statement on the legislation, instead focusing on the new money and positions. 

“Unfortunately, thanks to changes under President Trump and Republicans’ so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ things could get a whole lot worse for folks across Wisconsin — and our state’s bottom line,” Evers said in his statement. “Wisconsin taxpayers are already on the hook for over $284 million in future state budgets because of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ so it was important that we get this bill done to help make sure Wisconsinites don’t have to fork over hundreds of millions of dollars more in penalty fees to the Trump Administration every year.” 

Evers told reporters on Wednesday that he disagrees with the candy and soda ban and thinks “people should have the ability to make those choices when they’re getting their food,” but the other provisions were “really important.”

“It’s one of those things called compromise,” Evers said. “This definitely takes precedence, so it’s all good.”

The Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been encouraging states to institute candy and soda bans for SNAP recipients  with the stated goal of helping improve health and address chronic illness rates.

It is unclear whether the bill will have a demonstrable effect on people’s health.

UW-Madison food insecurity expert Judith Bartfeld told the Examiner in May 2025, as lawmakers were debating the bill, that the SNAP program was “intended to provide extra resources to support buying food at the store — and its effectiveness in reducing food insecurity is well documented,” but that there “have long been concerns that restricting how benefits can be used would make things more complicated for retailers, more stigmatizing for participants, unlikely to translate into meaningful health improvements, and would risk reducing participation and jeopardizing the well documented benefits of SNAP on food security.”

Another change to SNAP under the federal tax and spending law included the elimination of funding in September 2025 for the SNAP education program SNAP-Ed, which provided cooking classes and information on healthy eating to beneficiaries. According to FoodBank News, food banks, including the Hunger Task Force in Wisconsin which lost about $467,000 in federal funds, had to rethink educating their clients on nutrition.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are 22 states that have submitted waivers to the federal government to implement a prohibition on purchasing soda, candy and/or energy drinks using SNAP benefits. Colorado and Hawaii are the only other states with a Democratic governor that have approved a version of a ban.

In addition to the $69 million and 70 positions for the Wisconsin DHS to help ensure quality control of SNAP, the bill included $3 million in 2025-26 for the development of a FoodShare platform for product eligibility as well as $250,000 in each 2025-26 and 2026-27 to help with the administration of the platform.

The bill passed the Senate in a 25-8 vote. Sen. Jodi Habush (D-Whitefish Bay), Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove), Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) and Sen. Bob Wirch (D-Pleasant Prairie) joined Republicans in favor of the legislation. 

Some Democratic lawmakers criticized the provision during floor debate.

“Fundamentally, I have a problem with the idea that we need to be here, the Legislature, telling people who need money on their Quest card to put food on their table, that we need to micromanage what food they buy for themselves and their families,” Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) said. “You know what, kids from families that qualify for FoodShare might deserve a little candy and soda now and then, too. And ultimately, I think we all want to support health… but micromanaging the grocery purchases of low-income folks is not the way to accomplish that.” 

Spreitzer said many in the Senate Democratic caucus, whether they supported or opposed the legislation, were voting from “a place of frustration” due to the money being tied to the ban. 

“This is ugly, ugly politics in this building, and I wish it had not come to this,” he said. “I wish we could’ve all come together and said, ‘Let’s provide the money to the staff that is needed to run FoodShare, and then let’s debate separately this other bill.’”

During a Joint Finance Committee meeting on March 11 when the bill was discussed, Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) recalled her 10 years working as a child care provider in Milwaukee, serving “some of the state’s poorest kids” who were “also extremely bright, extremely talented and extremely resilient.” She said the bill should have focused on ensuring  that vulnerable people have resources to feed their families instead of monitoring the type of food in their carts. 

“Some of these kids, the vast majority of them don’t get to have these luxuries all the time at home. Their parents, regardless of what this body may believe, aren’t constantly supplying kids with soda and with candy,” Johnson said.

A 2016 USDA study found that “there were no major differences in the expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households, no matter how the data were categorized,” and that SNAP recipients, similar to non-SNAP recipients, spent about 20 cents of every dollar on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar.

Johnson said she had an experience in 2013 that highlighted to her the decisions that some families were making when the daycare ran out of milk during the day. She said she went to the nearby gas station where a gallon of milk cost $5, a stark difference from a local grocery store in Wauwatosa where she would buy two gallons of milk for $5.

“After I bought that gallon of milk and I walked out, I realized why, in some cases, our poorer families were buying two liters of sodas versus a gallon of milk,” Johnson said. “Back then, a two liter of soda was $1.19 all day long. A gallon of milk was $5. It wasn’t about choosing unhealthy food. It was about making those food stamp dollars stretch as long as possible, so those kids could continue to eat.”

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WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, the president’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, on Wednesday in his confirmation hearing was challenged with questions about his “anger issues” by the fellow Republican who heads the Senate committee that oversees the department.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, chair of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, at the outset of the hearing recalled how Mullin called him a “freaking snake” and expressed sympathy for a neighbor who assaulted Paul in a 2017 dispute, breaking six of his ribs and damaging a lung.

“You have never had the courage to look me in the eye and tell me that the assault was justified,” Paul said to Mullin, nominated by President Donald Trump to replace Kristi Noem as secretary of the 260,000-employee agency. “Tell it to my face, if that’s what you believe.”

In a tense back-and-forth, Mullin defended himself and said he never “supported” that Paul was assaulted, but that he “understood” why the neighbor attacked Paul.

“I think everybody in this room knows that I’m very blunt,” Mullin, a former MMA fighter who physically challenged a witness testifying before Congress in 2023, said. 

Paul criticized him and “this machismo that you have” and raised concerns about how Mullin could lead a department and “why (the American public) should trust a man with anger issues to set the proper example for ICE and Border Patrol agents.” 

Noem was ousted from the job after a national uproar over the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January by immigration agents and public disapproval of aggressive enforcement tactics there and in Los Angeles and Chicago.

“I just wonder if someone who applauds violence against their political opponents is the right person to lead an agency that has struggled to accept limits to the proper use of force,” Paul said. 

Mullin did not apologize for his comments regarding Paul’s assault, and said that leading DHS is “bigger than the political differences we have.”

Mullin detailed his plans to senators, pledging to reverse several policies of his predecessor, including making sure “DHS isn’t on the news every day.” 

Mullin also promised to get DHS fully funded and continue to carry out the president’s mass deportation agenda. 

If confirmed, he will have access to a special funding stream of $175 billion for DHS included in 2025’s “one big, beautiful” tax and spending cut package, which Mullin backed as a senator. 

Post-Noem era

Trump shifted Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, into another administration position earlier this month. 

Her tenure drew bipartisan ire over her quick judgment to label the two U.S. citizens killed by immigration agents as domestic terrorists, her stalling of disaster relief grants for states, and the award of a $220 million no-bid contract for an ad campaign to a firm owned by a subordinate’s spouse. 

Paul said the committee plans to vote Thursday on whether to advance Mullin’s nomination to the Senate floor. Trump has said he wants Mullin on the job by the end of the month.

If the Senate confirms Mullin, he would be the first Native American to lead DHS. He is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, told reporters Wednesday that he was confident Mullin could be confirmed as Homeland Security secretary. 

“Rand and Markwayne have some personal history which they’re going to have to work through,” Thune said. “But this is about the job, and it’s about who ought to fill that job. We all believe … that Markwayne is the right guy for the job.”

One Democrat already a yes

The junior senator from Oklahoma, who was elected to the Senate in a 2022 special election, does not need any Democratic support to be confirmed to lead the agency, since Republicans control the chamber with 53 seats.

And even without Paul’s support, one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who sits on the committee, has already pledged his vote. 

Mullin, if confirmed, will take over a department shut down since early February, after Democrats refused to vote for fiscal year 2026 funding unless changes to immigration enforcement are made following the deaths of the two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti. 

The top Democrat on Homeland Security, Gary Peters, pressed Mullin about his previous comments about Good and Pretti. Mullin joined top Trump officials in accusing both of being agitators. 

Mullin admitted his mistake and said he was too quick to judge. 

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Mullin said. “I went out there too fast. I was responding immediately without the facts. That’s my fault. That won’t happen as (Homeland Security) secretary.”

Noem has never admitted she was wrong to label Good, a mother of three and poet, and Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse who specialized in care for veterans, as domestic terrorists. She was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for her comments.

On Wednesday, Republicans on the panel largely praised Mullin, except for Paul, and criticized Democrats for not approving government funding for DHS.

House Democrats are trying to force a legislative procedure to bring a funding bill for DHS that does not include any appropriations for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.

ICE questions

Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin pressed Mullin on reforms he would make to ICE. 

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, asked Mullin about an arrest quota of 3,000 immigrants daily that White House senior advisor Stephen Miller, the main architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy, has set for ICE officers.

“I can’t speak for Stephen Miller,” Mullin said. “No quota has been set for me.”

Blumenthal also pressed Mullin about concerns over violations of the 4th Amendment of the Constitution by federal immigration agents entering homes and businesses without a judicial warrant. 

He asked Mullin if he would “commit that ICE will no longer instruct agents to break into people’s homes without a judicial warrant?”

“Sir, you’re using the word ‘break into’ people’s houses loosely,” Mullin said. “We will not enter a home or place of business without a judicial warrant unless we’re pursuing an individual that runs into a business or resident.”

Blumenthal also addressed Noem’s award of the $220 million no-bid contract, which she was grilled about by unhappy Republicans in a congressional hearing shortly before Trump removed her as secretary of DHS.

Mullin said that he would let the inspector general, an independent agency within DHS, continue with an investigation. 

“I’ll leave that to the (Inspector General),” Mullin said.  

Detention warehouse purchases

Democrats pressed Mullin if he would keep certain policies in place made by Noem, whose last day is March 31, and questioned recent moves by DHS to purchase warehouses across the country for mass detention of immigrants in the country without legal status. 

New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim said a policy from Noem has led to a backlog in Federal Emergency Management Agency relief. Noem instituted a requirement that she had to personally sign off on any FEMA award totaling more than $100,000. 

Kim asked Mullin if he would consider getting rid of that policy.

“Absolutely,” Mullin said. “That is micromanaging.”

Kim also brought up a warehouse recently purchased by DHS in Roxbury, New Jersey, to detain up to 1,500 immigrants that has concerned local community leaders.

“Most municipalities don’t have the capacity and their infrastructure for waste and water” to handle a warehouse that is meant to detain people, Kim said. 

“This town has only 42 foot police officers, a volunteer fire department. Does that sound like the kind of town that has resources to take on a warehouse?” he asked Mullin.

Mullin did not say DHS would stop its warehouse initiative, but said he wanted to make sure that the local communities were on board, and pledged to personally visit that location with Kim to meet with leaders. 

New Hampshire’s Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan also raised the issue of a warehouse location in her state. DHS initially planned to purchase a warehouse in Merrimack to retrofit the facility to detain immigrants, but backed off.

She asked Mullin if he would “ensure that the plan remains off the table?” 

Mullin said he wasn’t caught up on that specific facility, but that he would work to get the local community’s input.  

More FEMA questions

Fellow Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford asked Mullin how he sees the future of FEMA. The president has expressed his desire to dismantle the agency, and a FEMA review council was formed to issue a report on its findings. 

Mullin said that FEMA should not be considered a first response agency, and that when natural disasters strike, it’s the state response that is first. 

“We can be more effective and be more direct and speed it up,” he said. 

Mullin added that he doesn’t believe FEMA should be dismantled, but that it could be restructured. 

Mullin’s overseas ventures

The top Republican and Democrat on the committee, Paul and Peters, grilled Mullin on his past comments on a 2016 international trip taken while he served in the House. During a Fox News interview, Mullin implied he had been on military missions and could “smell war.” Mullin has not served in the military.

Mullin declined to discuss those comments, arguing that the travel was while he was on official duty and classified. He described those trips as for training purposes.

Peters asked why the trip wasn’t included in his disclosure records to the committee, and Mullin argued that because it was considered official travel, he didn’t need to disclose it.

Paul said he would consider postponing the committee’s vote unless Mullin would agree to visit a secure facility where classified matters are discussed, known as a SCIF, to detail his international travel. 

Mullin said he would go to a SCIF with lawmakers ahead of the committee vote Thursday. 

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

 

WASHINGTON — Two top Democrats on a U.S. House panel Tuesday pushed back against “unprecedented” Trump administration guidance that they said essentially encourages states to try to bypass requirements on how they spend federal money intended to help people find job training and support — potentially opening states up to lawsuits.

The Democrats, in a letter provided exclusively to States Newsroom, said the U.S. Department of Labor is urging states to use waivers provided under the main federal workforce development law to disregard statutory requirements on how they spend money for employment activities.

Reps. Bobby Scott of Virginia and Alma Adams of North Carolina — the respective ranking members of the House Committee on Education and Workforce and its Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development — urged Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer to “immediately revoke” the agency’s guidance, issued to state workforce agencies, administrators and other entities back in November. 

One of the main purposes of the workforce law, they observed, is to increase access to jobs for people with disabilities, older people and people who are homeless. The waivers suggested by the department would let states reel back their efforts to serve those groups of people, the Democrats said.

“We are deeply concerned that waiving these requirements under the guise of ‘innovation’ and ‘modernization’ will only incentivize the workforce system to stop doing what it is legally required to do: serve those with barriers to employment,” they wrote.

Five ‘strategic pillars’

The guidance from the department’s Employment and Training Administration calls on states to “request waivers of existing (Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act) statutory or regulatory requirements that can help overcome specific barriers to innovation and align with the five strategic pillars for workforce investment.” 

The 2014 law, known as WIOA, aims to boost the public workforce system and help those seeking jobs — particularly people who face barriers to employment — access training, employment and support services. The Labor secretary has the authority to waive certain statutory requirements under WIOA, though with certain limitations. 

Scott and Adams argued that many of the suggested waivers in the guidance “would allow states to reduce their efforts to serve individuals with barriers to employment, directly contradicting WIOA’s purpose.” 

President Donald Trump’s administration in August 2025 unveiled a workforce development strategy, through the departments of Labor, Commerce and Education, consisting of five “strategic pillars.”

The strategy stemmed from Trump’s April 2025 executive order, part of which sought to “consolidate and streamline fragmented Federal workforce development programs that are too disconnected from propelling workers into secure, well-paying, and high-need American jobs.” 

But the Democrats said the use of WIOA’s general waiver authority as a method for achieving the administration’s policy goals surrounding workforce development is without precedent.

“Upon review of all past approved waivers, it is clear that waivers were only used in response to discrete challenges that states or local areas faced in meeting some of the requirements stipulated under WIOA, either because of extenuating circumstances or for individual state efforts at reforms, not to achieve the Administration’s policy goals,” they wrote. 

Scott and Adams instead called on Chavez-DeRemer to work with Congress to pass a bipartisan bill that seeks to modernize WIOA. 

That measure would need to be reintroduced. The House passed it in April 2024, during the previous session of Congress, but the Senate did not.

The Department of Labor confirmed receipt of the letter Wednesday, but did not respond to a message seeking comment on its contents.

WASHINGTON — Arizona coffee roaster Gabe Hagen is wondering if he’ll ever recoup the tens of thousands of dollars he paid in tariffs to import beans from the world’s major coffee-growing regions in South America, Africa and the Indo-Pacific.

Weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs as illegal, Hagen is among an army of small business owners who are unsure if they’ll be made whole after a year of increasing costs and uncertainty.

“I’m in the process right now trying to consolidate all of my invoices … because I need the money back — if they’re going to give it back,” Hagen told States Newsroom in an interview.

“A pallet of coffee would cost us 5 to 6 to $7,000 if we had a bag or two of really high-grade in there. Post tariffs, our cheapest pallet was around $8,000, and it went anywhere from 8 to $10,000 or $11,000 per pallet of coffee,” he said. 

How the government will refund the roughly $166 billion in tariffs Trump triggered under a 1970s emergency economic powers statute is slowly coming to light in court documents. 

Nearly 2,000 companies filed suit for tariff refunds in the U.S. Court of International Trade, with many lining up even before the highly anticipated 6-3 Supreme Court decision.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s four-step refund process for businesses is anywhere from 40% to 80% complete, depending on the step, according to a court-mandated update filed March 12 with the Court of International Trade. 

Justices leave it to the lower courts

The justices, not giving guidance on refunds, left the matter to the lower courts in their Feb. 20 ruling that invalidated the sweeping tariffs Trump unilaterally imposed under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA. 

The president declared various emergencies under the statute during his first year in office. 

From fentanyl smuggling, to trade imbalances, to political disputes, he used each declared crisis to impose steep taxes on imports. 

Shifting sometimes day to day, tariffs reached as high as 50% on Brazilian and Indian goods after Trump declared emergencies over the prosecution of a political ally and over the use of Russian oil, respectively.

U.S. importers saw tariffs spike as high as 145% on Chinese goods during a tit-for-tat trade war sparked by Trump’s declaration of a trade imbalance emergency. The duties largely settled at a roughly 50% effective rate on several products after the trade war and negotiations with the world’s second-largest economy. 

The Trump administration has since sought different pathways to collect tariffs, including almost immediately instituting temporary import taxes under a different 1970s trade statute. 

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has also commenced widespread investigations into dozens of the largest U.S. trading partners that could trigger new tariffs, depending on findings.

‘Survived, but barely’

The rollercoaster ride was enough to almost bring down Busy Baby, a Minnesota-based baby product company that manufactures several patented designs in China.

Busy Baby owner Beth Benike, who shared her experience with States Newsroom in February, is now suing U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to recoup money lost.

Matthew Platkin, former New Jersey attorney general and Benike’s lawyer, said Benike’s business “survived, but barely.” 

“She had to keep merchandise overseas because she couldn’t afford to pay to bring them here. And when she didn’t get product, she wasn’t getting paid, she wasn’t making money,” Platkin said in an interview with States Newsroom.  

“She had opportunities lined up for expansion. She was going to hire new folks. That didn’t happen, and that was because of one thing: the president’s illegal tariffs,” he said.

Benike’s complaint does not specify a dollar amount, but Platkin said, “It’s substantial, especially for a business of her size.”

“We’re still going through and assessing the full impact of the tariffs on her, but rest assured, even for a small business, it’s tens of thousands of dollars at a minimum,” Platkin said.

“The federal government should just refund these folks their money with interest, period. Like, this shouldn’t even require litigation. They were caught taking illegal tariffs from millions of businesses,” he said.

$166 billion collected

Federal Judge Richard Eaton, who sits on the bench for the Court of International Trade, ordered administration customs officials in early March to stop collecting the tariffs deemed illegal under IEEPA, and to recalculate any past duties that included them.

Eaton granted the March 5 order in the tariff refund lawsuit brought by Atmus Filtration, a Nashville, Tennessee-based company. 

The judge, however, outlined that orders in the Court of International Trade are “universal” for all tariff refunds owed — meaning the trade cases are not subject to the Supreme Court’s 2025 finding in a separate immigration case that universal rulings are impermissible.

Businesses the size of Busy Baby to behemoths like Costco and FedEx have paid tariffs to the U.S. government. Many, but not all, have sued.

Customs officials, in a March 6 court filing, declared any refund process would take at least 45 days to be functional. According to the filing, as of early March the agency had collected approximately $166 billion in IEEPA tariffs from 330,000 American importers.

Alfredo Carrillo Obregon, research associate for trade policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, said as the clock ticks on tariff refunds, interest is accruing.

“The refunds are not necessarily coming soon and that has big implications, obviously, for taxpayers, but I think most importantly for the companies that are relying on this money to literally keep their doors open,” Obregon said.

He and colleagues calculated the government’s interest payments on the refunds owed totals about $700 million more with each passing month.

Barton O’Brien, who told States Newsroom last month his dog apparel company ate the tariff costs rather than raise prices, said he’s “certainly not counting on a refund anytime soon” as the administration “seems pretty dead set” on not giving them.

“I expect they will drag out the process in the courts for as long as they can,” he said in a written response to States Newsroom on March 9. “If we get one, great… It’s a bonus. But still won’t cover the hole left by the tariffs.” 

“Also, as a small business we’re not in a position to fight the administration, so I’m happy to sit back and let … other Fortune 500 companies with an army of lawyers fight this one out on our behalf.  If they win, we’ll all get refunds,” said O’Brien, who works with manufacturers in China and India.

‘Do the right thing’

Shawn Phetteplace, national campaigns director for the advocacy group Main Street Alliance, said his organization will continue to apply legal and public pressure to ensure small businesses recoup the money.

“I would just say that the administration should do the right thing and return the money, and they also should stop trying to find cute, creative ways to institute new tariffs that are also going to be illegal and struck down,” he said.

Two dozen Democratic-led states have already sued the administration in the Court of International Trade over the new tariffs Trump announced immediately after his Supreme Court loss. 

The lawsuit, led by Oregon, also includes Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Small businesses and Democratic-led states were instrumental in the Supreme Court’s February decision striking down Trump’s IEEPA tariffs.

States Newsroom reached out to the Trump administration for comment but did not receive a reply.

The potential for Republicans to lose the Senate majority in the next election cycle cast a shadow over the Wisconsin State Senate’s last regular day of work this legislative session. Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) faced criticism from his members for bringing bills to a vote without a majority of support from his caucus and one longtime Republican announced his retirement.

Wisconsin Republicans currently hold an 18-seat majority in the 33-seat state Senate. The 17 odd-numbered seats will be up for election this year for the first time under the new maps adopted in 2024, which puts the majority in play this November. Democrats have not been in the Senate or Assembly majority since the 2009-10 session. 

LeMahieu drew fire from members of his own party for allowing votes on bills supported by Democrats to legalize sports betting in Wisconsin and to provide funding to the University of Wisconsin to help pay student athletes for their name, image and likeness. Some Republicans who opposed the bills said it would lead to LeMahieu losing his leadership position and to Republicans losing their Senate majority in November.

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), who is one of the most conservative lawmakers in the state Senate and is retiring at the end of his term, said voters will hold Republican lawmakers “to account for selling out their interests” in November.

“The passage of these two unpopular bills will help pave the way to minority status for Republicans come November,” Nass, who has served in the Legislature since 1991, said in a statement.

Over the weekend, Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) suggested to WISN 12 that LeMahieu could lose his leadership position if the Senate passed the bills by relying on Democratic votes. He said it was “shameful” that the Senate planned to take up the bills and that he was concerned by the lack of a “coalescence of the Republican votes.”

“Historically, usually a majority leader does not come back if he breaks the rule of 17,” Kapenga said, referring to an unwritten rule that requires obtaining the votes of 17 Republicans or an all-GOP majority to pass any bill through the Senate. “So, I hope the majority leader takes that into account.”

Last month at a WisPolitics lunch, LeMahieu said that the “rule of 17” was just “essentially what members use to try to kill bills that they don’t like.” He previously broke that informal rule to pass the 2025-27 state budget with Democratic votes.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), the longest-serving Assembly speaker  in state history, who is retiring at the end of his term, defended LeMahieu’s work as leader including his decision to bring the NIL and sports-betting bills to the floor. He told reporters at a Tuesday WisPolitics event that those suggesting that LeMahieu would lose his job over it don’t “really know how the world works.”

“Sometimes you have to have things pass because it’s in the best interest of the state, and sometimes if you can’t convince people, you gotta find out how to get there,” Vos said. “I feel like the members in our chamber are sometimes a little bit more open to being persuaded than some of the Senate Republicans are. I have said the hardest job in the Capitol is being the Senate majority leader. It was under [now-U.S. Rep.] Scott Fitzgerald. It was under Devin LeMahieu, so I hope that people will respect the fact that he’s doing what he thinks is right.”

Vos also said during the event that a lack of action on data centers could affect the Senate’s chances to win a majority. 

“I learned long ago, after many years of frustration, no matter how hard the Assembly tries, the Senate is its own body and we have to accept that they’re going to do what they’re going to do and it’s nothing we can do about it,” Vos said. He added that it is sad the Senate wouldn’t be doing anything to regulate data centers because they are a huge area of concern. He described data centers as “valuable” because of the rise of artificial intelligence but that people should be protected from higher energy costs that could result from their rapid growth. 

“The state Senate should vote on the bill, especially if they want to get back in the majority,” Vos said. “The only other thing that I worry about — and our members have already taken a look so you could say we thought as hard as we could at data centers — but for people who don’t have that vote, I think they’re going to regret it come October.”

Recent polling by Marquette Law School on data centers found that 70% of Wisconsinites say the costs of large data centers are greater than the benefits they provide, while 29% say the benefits outweigh the costs. 

The data center bill passed by the Assembly would have implemented some state regulations on data centers built in Wisconsin, though Democrats criticized the bill, saying it wouldn’t effectively hold companies accountable, hold down electric rates for Wisconsinites or protect the environment. The bill did not make it onto the Senate’s final regular session floor calendar.

Vos is hopeful that state leaders will be able to find a compromise on property tax relief and school funding before the upcoming elections. Legislative leaders and Gov. Tony Evers have been discussing finding a way to use the $4.6 billion budget surplus, though Vos said an actual proposal is still up in the air. Discussions prior to the Assembly adjourning for the final time last month included talk of rebates, investments in the school levy tax credit by Republicans and investments in special education aid and school general aid by Evers.

Vos said that “nothing is off the table” but that the bill will not become a “mini budget.”

“It’s a negotiation, so we have to say what does the Senate need to have enough votes to be able to pass it? What does the governor need to be able to sign it? And what do we need in the Assembly?” Vos said, adding that the Legislature would likely try to have an extraordinary session “on something that’s just on tax relief or something that’s just on property taxes.” 

Vos also rejected a proposal from Democratic lawmakers over the weekend to spend about $1.3 billion on special education and general aid to schools. 

“The challenge that the Assembly Democrats have is that it’s been so long since any of them have been involved in governing that they are only about one-sentence press releases, and that’s what their proposal was yesterday,” Vos said. “It wasn’t serious in my mind.”

Asked about the greatest challenge to Republicans’ ability to win in November, Vos named President Donald Trump. He said Trump is motivating for “40 to 45%” of voters who are dedicated Republicans, but state-level Republicans’ chances will rely on the other 10% of voters who will need to be persuaded. He said Republicans need to show them that they can listen to the other side and get things done, adding that lawmakers have been able to pass tax breaks for seniors and utility bills and make some investments in priority areas while remaining conservative.

“We have to be able to tell that story and make sure people understand that what goes on in Washington, where it seems like a whole lot of arguing and not a lot of doing, isn’t where we’re at,” Vos said. “Sometimes because Donald Trump is so all-present in every single news cycle, it makes it very hard for us to get our message through.”

Vos said this will also apply to U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is the only Republican currently in the primary for governor. With Trump’s endorsement and other challengers having dropped out, the 7th CD U.S. representative will likely make it to the November general election. 

Vos also took a shot at the seven Democrats running for governor, saying they are all “minor” and collectively calling them the “seven dwarves.”

“You have Tom Tiffany, who is better known in about half of the state but the other half from basically Green Bay to Madison… and that’s the election schedule you want, so he’s got to figure out how to spend enough time and get well known enough to be able to win,” Vos said.

Another Republican retirement 

The departure of longtime lawmakers will also shape the election chances for Senate Republicans. Wisconsin Democrats need to win two additional seats in November to secure a majority, and incumbency carries significant weight, meaning that seats that have long been represented by Republicans becoming open could help Democrats’ chances. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) announced his retirement on Tuesday, marking the departure of a second incumbent in a district that will be key in determining control of the state Senate. 

Senate District 21 covers parts of Racine County, including the northern part of the city, and parts of Milwaukee County, including Franklin, Hales Corner, Greendale and Greenfield. According to an analysis by Marquette Law School fellow John Johnson, the district voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost the state of Wisconsin, by 1.2 percentage points and for U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin by 2.2 percentage points in 2024.

Wanggaard said in a statement he thought he would win in a reelection campaign and his heart “desperately” wants to run again, but his head is telling him “it’s time to retire.” He noted that he would be 78 at the end of the next term.

“My staff and colleagues worked with me to try to make something workable for the campaign and the next four years, but my health, and the health of my family will not allow me to put my all into this campaign, or serving the 21st District,” Wanggaard said. He said since his last election in 2022 he has lost three siblings, his daughter was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and his brother had a heart attack and has dementia. “That weighs on me more than you can know.”

Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), who represents one of the Democrats’ other top targets this fall, announced his retirement last month, as did Nass.

Will Karcz, communications director for the State Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, which is the fundraising arm of the Democratic Senate caucus, said in a statement about Wanggaard’s departure that it is “clear that members of the Republican caucus would rather retire than risk losing their seats or serving in a Republican minority.”

Ahead of Tuesday’s floor session, Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) criticized Republicans for planning to wrap up their work without taking action to address the rising cost of groceries, medications, rents or health insurance.

“Today is the last gasp of what has been a failed and dysfunctional Republican majority in this state Senate,” Hesselbein said. “We know that Wisconsin Democrats can win a majority of seats, and when we do, we will roll up our sleeves, get to work and focus like a laser on the issues that Wisconsinites and Wisconsin families care about.” 

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Communities are recovering after a major weekend blizzard, dropping record-breaking amounts of snow in some parts of Wisconsin. From the Northwoods to Milwaukee, snowfall shut down roads, caused power outages and challenged plow trucks and public services.

The National Weather Service, calling the snowstorm “historic,” said that in central Wisconsin, snow fell at a rate of 4 inches per hour. “Near-blizzard conditions developed Sunday afternoon, fueled by northeast winds gusting between 35 and 50 mph,” the weather service stated in an update. Windspeeds reached 59 miles per hour  at the Green Bay Airport, and 60 miles per hour in De Pere. “This combination of heavy falling snow and high winds created whiteout conditions and massive drifting,” the National Weather Service stated.

Historic amounts of snow reached approximately 30 inches in communities from Wausau to Marinette and Door County. In Green Bay, where 26.1 inches of snow fell as of Monday, the storm was the area’s largest in 136 years. By Sunday Green Bay had seen 17.1 inches accumulate, making it the city’s third-snowiest day and its heaviest day of snowfall since 1889. Over 11,000 people were reported to have lost power as well.

A “No Travel Advised” notice was posted on the Department of Transportation’s webpage as the storm loomed. “The heavy snow load and high winds caused widespread power outages, most notably in Door and Marinette Counties, and building collapses were reported in Sturgeon Bay and Kewaunee County,” the National Weather Services noted. “Many schools and businesses remained closed through Monday.” The snow was so overwhelming that snow plow operations halted in Marinette County, forcing the sheriff’s office to warn that emergency responses might also slow. That was an acute concern for people stranded in cars along the roadways.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sturgeon Bay in Dane County saw 33 inches of snow blanketing roads and neighborhoods over three days. The city of Madison recorded 5.6 inches on Monday. The state capital’s previous record was set in 2006 when 3.5 inches of snow fell. In western Wisconsin, the town of Montana received 26.5 inches of snow, more than any other area in the region. The city of Mondovi also may have broken a record with 16.5 inches the city’s unofficial record was 16 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Over the three-day snowfall event, Madison was covered in nearly eight inches. Some residents reported they were unable to open their front doors. 

Fallen trees and other damage was also reported as far south as Racine.

Waukesha County also struggled with the storm, after strong winds uprooted trees as early as Friday. The winds heralded an all-day rain storm which then turned into a blizzard. The shifting weather patterns meant that the county had to adapt rapidly. About seven inches of snow fell in Waukesha from Sunday to Monday. Crews with the Waukesha County Department of Public Works pulled 16-hour shifts. 

“In severe weather government services matter most,” Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow said in a statement. “Waukesha County’s teams were out early, stayed out late, and worked around the clock so residents could reach essential services safely. Thank you to our crews and to the public for slowing down and giving plows the space they needed to do their jobs.” 

From 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Waukesha County’s 911 communications center received 47 calls for disabled vehicles, 25 for vehicles in ditches, nine reports of property damage, and three for traffic hazards. In many areas people struggled to dig their cars out, with Wausau residents reporting having literally not seen their cars for days until they were uncovered from the snow. Although temperatures were below freezing on Tuesday, the weather is expected to warm as the week continues. By the weekend, temperatures are expected to reach 70 degrees before tapering off again.

Researchers have long warned that extreme weather events would become more common due to climate change. Some of the communities recovering from the blizzard have yet to fully recover from record-breaking floods that occurred in August. In January 2025, extreme arctic cold enveloped the region, challenging communities with large numbers of people living unhoused on the street. This most recent snowstorm came as other parts of the United States dealt with rashes of tornadoes, heatwaves, and flooding. 

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In two narrow votes, the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday passed bills to legalize online sports betting in the state and create a set of rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for University of Wisconsin athletes. 

Both bills were passed and sent to the desk of Gov. Tony Evers despite opposition within both party caucuses. 

Sports betting

After initially appearing to be on the legislative fast track upon its introduction last fall, the sports betting bill faced strenuous opposition and only  passed on the last day of normal floor of activity in both the Assembly and Senate. 

The bill passed the Senate 21-12 but divided both Democrats and Republicans. Only nine Senate Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Three Democrats joined nine Republicans in voting against the bill. The Republicans who opposed the bill said they were concerned about the consequences of the availability of frictionless sports betting in people’s pockets. 

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said that the bill would be responsible for “family disintegration” across the state. Nass, who is not running for re-election, said in a statement that the passage of the sports betting bill was one of the reasons why he believes Republicans will not have a Senate majority in the next session. 

“Lost productivity, addiction treatment, bankruptcy, increased demand for social services, criminal justice costs and diminishing household savings far exceed any revenue benefit in the state,” Nass said. 

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, gambling is only allowed on the property of the state’s Native American tribes. It’s been legal to place bets on sports in person at tribal casinos in Wisconsin since 2021. 

The sports betting bill models Wisconsin’s program after Florida’s online sports betting law, which allows online gambling if the servers hosting the bets are located on tribal land. 

The state’s tribes have been supportive of the bill, arguing that it allows them to keep pace with the expansion of sports betting in neighboring Illinois and the emergence of quasi-sports betting prediction sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket. 

Several Democrats said Tuesday they were supporting the bill because it would help the tribes. 

“I really think that this moment is about a collective assertion of tribal sovereignty and the preservation of exclusivity that the tribes have fought for decades to protect,” Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said. 

Name, Image and Likeness 

Just days before the start of the 2025 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the Senate passed a bill that would establish rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for collegiate athletes. 

The bill passed with no debate in a 17-16 vote with six Democrats joining 11 Republicans to vote in favor of the bill. 

College athletes have been eligible for NIL payments since a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision. NIL has upended college sports, with major programs such as UW-Madison’s football team being pushed to line up large amounts of money to attract recruits. 

UW-Madison Athletic Director Chris McIntosh said at a public hearing on the bill last week that its passage is necessary to retain the school’s athletics competitiveness. 

The bill would provide $14.6 million annually in state funds to go towards debt service for the maintenance costs of UW-Madison’s athletic facilities. It also includes $200,000 annually in state funds for debt service for maintenance costs of the UW–Milwaukee Klotsche Center as well as $200,000 for the UW-Green Bay soccer complex. The purpose is to free up funds that the UW can use to provide students with opportunities for NIL agreements.

The bill also prohibits NIL contracts that conflict with school policies or provide money in exchange for athletic performance, as well as those that require student athletes to endorse alcoholic beverages, gambling, banned athletic substances or illegal activities or substances. It also includes a requirement that student athletes disclose third-party NIL deals they enter. 

UW schools will also be able to contract with organizations that can help student athletes find NIL opportunities.

A controversial provision of the bill creates a sweeping exemption for UW NIL agreements from the state’s open records law. The provision has raised concerns among open government advocates in the state. 

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The Wisconsin Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that, once signed, will release $125 million set aside nearly three years ago to address PFAS contamination in the state’s water supplies. 

The vote, on the last day the Senate was scheduled to be in session for the year, was the culmination of a multi-year legislative saga involving negotiations between legislative Republicans, Gov. Tony Evers, the state Department of Natural Resources and a number of outside interest groups. 

A similar bill passed the Legislature during the last legislative session but was vetoed by Evers over objections from Democrats and environmental groups that the bill was too lenient to polluters responsible for PFAS contamination. 

The “innocent landowner” exemptions at issue in the first version of the bill were more narrowly constructed this time after a negotiation process with the DNR. Those changes drew the ire of the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and groups representing the state’s paper industry over concerns that industrial manufacturers such as paper mills were being singled out. 

The two-bill package passed unanimously in both legislative chambers despite the opposition from WMC, which is usually one of the largest supporters of Wisconsin Republicans. 

The bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) noted on the floor Tuesday how “meticulously drafted” the final version was to make sure all the parties were on board. 

“The result is a bill that helps people who need to be helped and stops the government from going after people who are genuinely innocent of causing a hazardous discharge,” he said.

Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he was looking forward to signing the bill so the money could get out the door. 

“While I wish it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the Legislature to join me in this important work, I’m thrilled that these bills will soon be on the way to my desk so that we can get these critical and long-overdue investments out the door to the folks and families who need them,” Evers said. “Whether it’s kids in the classroom, families at home, or our farmers and agricultural industries, folks should be able to trust that the water coming from their tap is clean and safe. I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right.”

Under the bill, landowners who spread PFAS contaminated materials on farm fields under a DNR-authorized permit, local governments and airports that used PFAS-containing firefighting foams, solid waste disposal facilities and anyone who had PFAS move onto their property through shifting groundwater will not be held responsible for PFAS pollution under the state’s toxic spills law. 

The spills law allows the DNR to require property owners responsible for pollution to pay for testing and cleanup of that pollution. The risk that the PFAS legislation could undermine the spills law was the largest objection from environmental groups to the first version of the bill introduced in the last session. 

The second bill in the package creates the programs through which the $125 million will be spent. Those programs include grants to municipal water systems and private well owners, as well as expanding the state’s testing capabilities and studying the long-term effects of PFAS.

The $125 million was first set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Throughout that time, communities across the state have continued to be affected by PFAS contamination of their water supplies. Places including Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse have been managing the pollution, which has been tied to birth defects and cancer, for years. 

Save Our Water, an advocacy group made up of residents of PFAS-affected communities, frequently complained throughout the long negotiations that the Legislature wasn’t working to enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS pollution in the state’s groundwater. The state has established standards for PFAS in municipal drinking water and surface water, but not groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for residents across the state with private wells. 

In a statement, the organization celebrated the bill’s passage while noting they’ll continue to push for the creation of a groundwater standard. 

“This legislation will help impacted communities and innocent landowners who are forced to deal with PFAS contamination which they didn’t cause and don’t have the resources to clean up,” the group said. “[We] will continue to push forward to achieve a meaningful groundwater standard for PFAS and look toward using the bipartisan approach taken with this legislation as a model for future PFAS legislation.” 

Erik Kanter, the government affairs director of Clean Wisconsin, said this bill is only the first step as the state continues to manage the effects of widespread PFAS contamination, including the likelihood that even more money will need to be spent on the effort and the need for a groundwater standard. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 32 months ago, and since then, people in Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the Town of Stella, and communities throughout the state have waited and waited for our state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. Now, an end to that waiting is finally in sight,” Kanter said in a statement. “The long, difficult work toward compromise on what should have been a straightforward spending bill is a telling sign that toxic PFAS contamination is evolving into a widespread, costly public health and environmental crisis — one that touches everyone from consumers to farmers and manufacturers. It’s a crisis our state cannot ignore. This must be the first of many actions from Wisconsin lawmakers to take real, meaningful action that protects all of us from these pervasive, harmful chemicals. The state must now establish PFAS groundwater standards to provide clean water protection for rural Wisconsinites on private wells.”

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WASHINGTON — More than two dozen U.S. House Democrats cast a spotlight Tuesday on a newly installed commemorative plaque for those who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. 

The members — led by New York U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the U.S. Committee on House Administration — led reporters on a visit to the honorific plaque, displayed on the Senate side of the Capitol close to a West Front entrance.

The plaque, quietly installed earlier in March in an area of the Capitol not usually visited by tourists, garnered criticism for its lack of public visibility, as well as a three-year delay to get it installed. 

The memorial is also at the center of a lawsuit by two police officers who defended the Capitol that day. 

“This is not in a prominent location — the actual law that we passed dictates where the location is — this is not it,” Morelle told States Newsroom. 

Trump pardons

The honorary plaque was installed more than five years after the deadly riot, where a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Trump in January 2025 pardoned the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.

The visitors Tuesday included Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was speaker of the House during the Jan. 6 insurrection and a target of the rioters. 

A 2022 law mandated that an honorific plaque be installed within a year of its enactment and be placed “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has received flak for delaying the installation. 

Merkley, Tillis push Senate action

The plaque installation came after the Senate in January unanimously agreed to a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to “prominently display” the plaque in a “publicly accessible location” in the Capitol’s Senate wing, “until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.” 

Morelle praised that effort, led by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, but said “this isn’t a place where visitors will see it,” noting that “tours are not allowed down here” and “this is an emergency exit only.”

The New York Democrat said that if Democrats win back the majority in November, he would do everything he could to “make sure it’s moved to the place it’s supposed to, where Americans will come by and see it and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who defended us that day.” 

Lawsuit

Meanwhile, Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, a current Metropolitan Police Department officer, sued the Architect of the Capitol over the plaque installation delay in June 2025. 

Shortly after the plaque was displayed, the two argued on March 10 that their lawsuit should continue.

They said the Architect of the Capitol’s “decision to install the plaque in a part of the Capitol hidden from the public fails to comply with the text law, which requires the memorial to be displayed on the Capitol’s ‘western front,’ an exterior part of the building.” 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans pressed forward Tuesday with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, despite long odds the legislation will ever become law amid bipartisan opposition. 

The 51-48 vote to formally begin debate on the measure, which GOP lawmakers have named the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, only starts the process. Senators are expected to vote on several amendments in the days, or possibly weeks, ahead. 

But at least 60 lawmakers will be needed to end floor debate, a highly unlikely prospect with Democrats arguing the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters. 

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against starting debate. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote. 

Murkowski wrote in a social media post last month the November midterm elections are “fast approaching” and that implementing “new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources. 

“Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”

Trump threatens retaliation

President Donald Trump has made enacting nationwide changes to voting his top legislative priority ahead of the midterm elections, although Republicans swept unified control of government less than two years ago. 

He wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning that he plans to campaign against anyone who doesn’t support the legislation, which the House passed last month.

“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote. “If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office – A guaranteed loss!”

Dems predict millions kicked off voting rolls

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said during floor remarks the legislation would require Americans “to run through an obstacle course of red tape unlike anything we have ever seen in voter registration.”

The bill becoming law, he said, would lead to millions of Americans being kicked off voter rolls due to a requirement that states run their list of registered voters through a “deeply flawed” Department of Homeland Security database.

“If you’re kicked off the rolls, you may never be told,” he said. “There’s no requirement to let you know.”

Schumer argued the bill is less about ensuring only Americans vote in elections and more about Republican concerns they will lose at least one chamber of Congress later this year. 

“It’s funny. I don’t remember MAGA Republicans screaming about stolen elections and voter fraud after the 2024 election that they won,” he said. “Well, the same rules that governed the 2024 election are going to be the ones that govern the 2026 election. The only difference is that this time MAGA Republicans know they’re in trouble politically. So now they’re suddenly saying the system is compromised and broken and it needs to be changed. It’s all lies.”

77 instances of noncitizen voting 

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and anyone found guilty could face fines and up to a year in prison. There are limited instances of people not eligible to vote actually casting a ballot, according to analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center of data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an especially conservative think tank. 

BPC’s examination “found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023” and that “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated a few hours before the procedural step that “the votes aren’t there” to pass the bill via a talking filibuster, a path several of his members want him to take. 

“So what we are doing is we are having a fulsome debate on the floor of the United States Senate, which is something that I think the Senate has done in the past, and probably should do a lot more of,” he said. “But we’ll have it up. Everybody will have their say. At some point, we’ll have votes.  And we’ll see where the votes are.”

A talking filibuster would require Democratic senators to give a series of floor speeches in order to delay or prevent final passage. That process could tie up the Senate floor for months.

Thune said he wasn’t sure when votes on amendments would begin, but that he expects the process to last “for the foreseeable future.”

“I think at least for right now, there’ll be some flexibility to see where the road leads,” he said. 

Mail-in voting, gender-affirming surgeries, sports

Trump has asked GOP senators to add several provisions to the legislation, including new restrictions on mail-in voting, a federal prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and a new law barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports. 

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Policy Committee chair, said she doesn’t believe the federal government should tell states how to manage mail-in ballots. 

“A lot of states, red states and blue, have more than a majority of the votes that are mail-in ballots,” she said. “So I think we’ve got to be careful there.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that once debate on the SAVE America Act has concluded, he wants GOP leaders to hold a floor vote on whether to keep the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate on bills, known as the legislative filibuster. 

“I think the days of the minority preventing legislation from passing is over. Because Democrat voters, they want their members to end it. Republican voters want us to end it,” he said. “So in the end, it’ll be that public pressure that I think will eventually end the filibuster. And I’d just rather beat them to the punch so we can pass things like SAVE America Act.”

Thune said during an afternoon press conference he believes the 60-vote procedural hurdle should remain in place because “throughout history it’s protected Republicans and conservative priorities and principles a lot more often than it’s protected Democrats.”

Photo ID

The bill would require local election officials to ensure anyone registering to vote proves they are an American, likely by showing a passport or a birth certificate. Then, when people go to cast a ballot by mail, during early voting, or on Election Day, they would need to show a valid photo ID, like a driver’s license or military identification card. 

The legislation would require state governments to submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so its officials can run them through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system to check if anyone already registered isn’t a U.S. citizen. 

The legislation doesn’t provide state or local governments with any extra money or time to implement the changes, if it were to become law. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center writes in a brief about the legislation that the organization “recommends that policymakers avoid making major changes in an election year given the likelihood that they result in administrative errors and create confusion for voters.”

The three BPC experts who analyzed the bill said it “prioritizes expediency over precision.” 

“The act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to adjust processes,” they wrote. “It also requires that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission offer implementation guidance to states within just 10 days of enactment.”

Lawsuits

The legislation would give private citizens the ability to sue election officials who register someone without evidence of U.S. citizenship.

Jeffrey Thorsby, legislative director at the National Association of Counties, wrote in a post about the legislation’s impacts that the “liability provisions could discourage election workers and volunteers from serving at a time when many counties already face recruitment challenges.” 

“Currently, the onus on a non-citizen who registers or votes is on the illegal voter,” he wrote. “SAVE America Act proposes a radical change in how we punish fraudulent voting.”

The voting overhaul measure that the U.S. Senate began debating Tuesday would cause major headaches for underfunded state and local election officials, without meaningfully stopping fraud, according to a collection of voting rights advocates and elections officers.

The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”

No new money

The bill would initially add $35 million in costs for Washington state to administer this year’s midterm elections, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. The measure would cost an estimated additional $12 million annually in presidential election years for the state’s elections administrators, he added.

But it would not provide federal funding for states and localities to meet the new costs.

“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would affect election administration, I did a control-F for the dollar sign, and I did not see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to implement these changes,” Brinson Bell said.

The bill, which Trump and other proponents say is necessary to stop immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to provide a photo ID at polling places.

But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said on Tuesday’s call. Noncitizens voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

Barriers for voting by mail

Overall, the bill would make voting more difficult, especially for people who have changed their names, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, participants on the call said. That counters the goal of elections officials: to make voting easier.

“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people are voting.”

The bill would also create barriers for vote-by-mail, which Washington and other states have used for decades. 

The system has increased voter participation and is widely popular across party lines. 

“The state of Washington’s vote-by-mail system is such a strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving more towards that and not away from it.”

Voting integrity

The bill’s backers, including most Republicans in Congress, say it would erect commonsense safeguards to protect U.S. elections.

In a Tuesday floor speech setting up debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”

“If there’s anything essential to the integrity of elections, it’s ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote – and that those who show up to vote at polling places are … who they say they are,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said.

The way to do that, he added, was to require proof of citizenship and photo identification.

Photo IDs, though, aren’t as universal as commonly thought, League of Women Voters of Maine Executive Director Chrissy Hart said.

Eighteen percent of citizens older than 65 lack a photo ID, as well as 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans, Hart said.

Election denial

Kimsey, who identified as a Republican during his first run for office in 1998 and became an independent after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked if the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.

He answered that what he deemed the “election denial movement” lost momentum after Trump’s 2024 victory, but that it seemed to be reappearing ahead of the midterms.

“In my view, this is nothing more than a very clumsy — and I hope not effective — but a very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Sure, Sen. Thom Tillis has become the most visible, outspoken Republican insider critic of the second Trump administration. But don’t mistake Tillis for a maverick.

The North Carolina senator is being who he’s long been, the sort of GOP stalwart known as an establishment Republican. A Republican who’s conservative on fiscal issues, usually pragmatic on other stuff. A Chamber of Commerce Republican. A Bush-Romney Republican.

“Thom Tillis was, and is, best understood not as a moderate, but as a pragmatist,” said Christopher Cooper, author of “Anatomy of a Purple State,” which analyzes North Carolina politics.

“When he speaks, when he acts, and when he stays quiet is all calculated to achieve the goals he has in mind,” said Cooper, professor of political science at Western Carolina University. “With no chance for reelection, it’s simply that his speech now is less costly.”

Tillis is stepping down after two Senate terms. Over the last nine months, he has shown a more blunt public side.

“The only rational explanation I’ve seen” for his recent outspokenness, said veteran North Carolina Republican strategist Carter Wrenn, “is that he’s free of all the politics right now.”’

Tillis would not consent to an interview for this story.

Tillis vs. Noem

The latest, most public Tillis blowup came March 3, when he torched soon-to-be-former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Tillis had voted last year, along with 51 other Republicans and seven Democrats, to confirm Noem as secretary.

This time, he talked about the “disaster that President Biden left behind,” and a “failed DHS.” But, he said, he was critical of Noem because of how she’s run the agency.

Tillis maintained an angry tone throughout his confrontation with the secretary. “What we see is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem,” he protested. “Time after time I’ve been disappointed.”

He threatened to hold up unrelated U.S. Senate business unless he got satisfaction.

He cited a letter from her department’s Office of Inspector General, which noted several times she had made it tough for the agency to proceed with investigations of her department.

He recalled how Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agents shot and killed two Minnesota protesters in January, both U.S. citizens. “Why can’t we just say we made a mistake?” Tillis asked. Noem would not apologize during the hearing for the shootings.

Tillis brought up Noem’s dog, which she shot because it could not be trained, an incident that became famous after she wrote about it in a 2024 book while South Dakota governor.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training. And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices?” Tillis asked incredulously.

The willingness to distance himself from party orthodoxy was vintage Tillis. The unrelenting exasperation was new.

The establishment Republican

Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, described state Republicans this way: Two-thirds are firm Trump loyalists. The other one-third make up the traditional GOP.

That means their roots are often in “Chamber of Commerce, mainstream, party-oriented Republicanism rather than the personality of Trump,” he said.

These Republicans still tend to run the U.S. Senate Republican Conference, led by senators such as Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and former GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

They have a long history of conservatism that tends toward a practical approach that gets the job done.

They teamed with Democrats in 2001 and 2002 to get President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education reform passed. They wooed enough Democratic support in 2002 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq. They helped the party nominate Arizona Sen. John McCain for president in 2008 and former Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah four years later.

When Tillis first ran for Senate in 2014, he got the backing of Romney, who appeared in a television ad for the candidate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush campaigned for Tillis. They were not Trump fans.

Tillis and Trump

When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in 2016, a few weeks before the presidential election, showing GOP nominee Donald Trump making crude remarks about women, Tillis was critical.

“As a proud husband and father of a daughter, I find Donald Trump’s comments indefensible,” Tillis tweeted at the time.

Tillis, though, had a history of keeping the Republican faithful happy.

He stirred controversy in 2011, when while North Carolina House speaker, he said in a video, “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.”

His examples: “We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice, in her condition, that needs help and that we should help.”

But, Tillis added, “We need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, ‘You’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you.’”

In 2014, he told NBC News he regretted using the words “divide and conquer.”

As a U.S. senator, Tillis has voted with Republicans much of the time. He ranked 35th out of 100 senators in the nonpartisan GovTrack’s “ideology score,” which starts with the most conservative senators. 

Twelve Republicans had lower scores (just below Tillis was Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., nominated by Trump to replace Noem).

Breaking with Trump

The most public, most noticed breaks have come in the last year or so. 

Tillis was sharply critical of Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin was controversial because of his ties to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump wound up pulling the nomination.

The loudest schism came in June, when Tillis voiced concern with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4. He went on to vote against the final version.

This was and still is the signature domestic achievement of the president’s second term. It extends the 2017 tax cuts and adds new ones. But it also cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that helps pay costs incurred by lower-income people.

Tillis called Trump’s health care advisers “amateurs,” and described how he did extensive research to assess the impact on his state. He found it potentially devastating.

“So, what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?” he asked his colleagues.

Trump was furious. “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! “ he posted on his Truth Social website.

The day after Tillis made his speech, he said he would not seek reelection.

He was free. His decision made political sense.

“It looked like he was free of constraints,” said Wrenn.

Next up: Federal Reserve

Tillis will soon be in the spotlight again, as he’s vowed to hold up Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chairman.

While he sees Warsh as qualified, Tillis added that the Justice Department “continues to pursue a criminal investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell based on committee testimony that no reasonable person could construe as possessing criminal intent.” 

The investigation is connected to Powell’s comments about spending on the renovation of the Fed buildings.

“My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved,” Tillis said.

A federal judge last week blocked the Justice subpoenas to Powell, saying “the government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”

Tillis is still not relenting.

“This ruling confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence,” the senator said in a statement.

“We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on. Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”

Trump badly wants to replace Powell, thinking that Powell has been too unwilling to take steps to lower interest rates.

Classic Tillis

The Warsh drama is the latest vintage Tillis move, said congressional experts.

Tillis “is a creature of the legislature. He came with a very long legislative resume, knew how to play the game and was adroit at moving around and changing positions when it came to his advantage,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He also wanted people to remember he was pragmatic, willing to be independent. Warsh provides one fresh opportunity. The Noem hearing offered another.

The day after the Noem hearing, Trump fired her, the first person in his second-term Cabinet to be dismissed.

Tillis, Baker said, “wanted to leave a memorial to himself, which may be something like the end of Kristi Noem’s career as secretary of Homeland Security.”

After all, he said, “Tillis is a good government guy.”

WASHINGTON — Electricity rates “increased significantly” in nearly every U.S. state in 2025, with residents in a dozen states seeing at least a 10% jump, according to a congressional report released by Democrats Tuesday.

Minority members of the Joint Economic Committee released state-by-state figures from monthly utility bill data showing, on average, American households paid roughly $110, or 6.4%, more for electricity in 2025, compared to 2024. 

The analysis came amid other gloomy economic headlines, including a steep increase in gasoline prices since the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began, and a lousy jobs report last month.  

States that saw the highest spikes included New Jersey, 16.9%; Indiana, 16.3%; Illinois, 15.9%; Pennsylvania, 12.1%; Kentucky, 11.8%; Maryland, 11.6%; Tennessee, 11.6%; New York, 11.4%; Ohio, 11.1%; Missouri, 11%; Maine, 10.6%; and Washington state, 10.3%. 

The District of Columbia topped the list with an increase of 23.5%, according to the two-page report.

Rates dropped by 18% in Nevada, 3.1% in California, 2.4% in Hawaii and 1.6 % in Arizona.

Campaign pledge

Democrats on the committee pointed to President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash electricity costs, among other prices, by half.

Affordability is a key issue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress. Trump has repeatedly referred to the issue of affordability as a “hoax.”

“American families don’t need a report to tell them that the President has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump’s actions every single day. But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise — and are continuing to hurt American families,” the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said in a statement.

The committee pulled the electricity bill data from the federal Energy Information Administration.

 

 

As of December, the majority, by far, of electricity in the United States is generated by natural gas. Next in generation are nuclear power and coal, followed by wind, conventional hydroelectric and solar, according to the Energy Information Administration. 

Experts and economists challenged Trump’s campaign promise to cut domestic energy costs by expanding U.S. drilling, highlighting petroleum is priced on a global, not local, market, as noted in an October 2024 report by FactCheck.org.

 

 

Trump recently gathered tech CEOs in the Oval Office to sign a symbolic “ratepayer protection pledge” meant to combat rising energy costs due to AI data center demand. 

“It’s a big deal; it’s going to have a tremendous impact on electricity costs… Under this new agreement, Big Tech companies are committing to fully cover the cost of increased electricity production required for AI data centers — and that would mean prices for American communities will not go up, but in many cases, will actually come down,” Trump said.

Gasoline prices, too

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 4.8% increase in electricity costs over the past 12 months, according to the consumer price index for February. The report showed energy services overall rose 6.3% year over year as piped gas utility costs spiked 10.3% since February 2025.

Expenses overall rose 2.4% over the past year, according to the latest figures, continuing to exceed the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

But nowhere has a price increase been more noticeable in recent days than at the gas pump.

Gas prices nationwide averaged just under $3.72 Monday — that’s up from $2.93 one month ago, according to AAA. 

Roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum products have been choked off as Iran continues to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz with threats to shell any oil tankers passing through, except for a few negotiated trips.

The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began Feb. 28.

More than 70 school referendum questions will appear on ballots across the state in April, continuing the trend of school districts going to voters to ask permission to raise property taxes to keep up with costs.

The requests this spring include 60 operational referendum requests, totaling over $1 billion in requests, and 14 for capital expenses. Two school districts, Sauk Prairie and Howard-Suamico, have a capital and an operating request on the ballot.

The requests come as state leaders debate the best way to provide property tax relief to Wisconsinites, as a group of teachers, students and community members have turned to the court system to find relief and as districts grapple with the consequences of referendum outcomes. 

Ahead of Election Day on April 7, the Wisconsin Examiner checked in with three school districts seeking to raise property taxes to help with costs. The stakes are high in local communities as passage or rejection will determine which school programs are offered, whether staff get pay raises and whether school consolidation may be on the table.

Dodgeville tries for operational referendum for a third time

Dodgeville School District is one of four school districts in southeastern Wisconsin that have not passed an operational referendum, though not for lack of trying. 

The district is asking voters in the spring to weigh in on a $7.5 million request that would provide $2.5 million annually for operational expenses over the next three years. 

The district had a failed referendum in November 2024 and another failed request in April 2025. Its new request is a slimmed down version of the last one.

A Wisconsin Policy Forum report from April 2025 found that “retry” efforts have increased as districts have become more willing over time to retry operating referenda that failed. According to the report, from 2000 to 2017, about half of failed operational referendum requests were not retried within two years, but since 2018, more than three-quarters of operating referendum failures were retried. 

District administrator Ryan Bohnsack told the Examiner the district needs additional funds to keep up with costs. He said the district has been making cuts where it can, including by delaying technology upgrades, day-to-day maintenance and curriculum upgrades, but that can only go so far.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we know we don’t have the funds to keep operating,” Bohnsack said, adding that the district’s fund balance is below its operational balance and it will  need to start borrowing money to pay its bills.

Bohnsack said rising costs, including for staff pay, declining enrollment and stagnant state aid have all played a role in the district’s financial situation.

Randell Thompson, the treasurer for the Dodgeville School Board, emphasized that the district’s need for an operational referendum is not unique.

“If you look across the 421 school districts in Wisconsin, the vast majority have needed to go to an operating referendum at some level,” Thompson said. “Part of the state funding formula is to get local taxpayers to have a say in how much of the school budget they want to cover.”

According to 2023 census data, Wisconsin has fallen to 26th in the nation in per pupil K-12 education spending and is spending 10% below the national average. The state was ranked 11th in 2002, and at the time spent 11% above the national average. 

In the most recent state budget, lawmakers invested state funds in special education, though recent estimates find the amount of money set aside will not be enough to reimburse school districts at the promised 42% rate. The Legislature also declined to provide additional state aid to schools — blaming Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year veto that extended  districts’ authority to bring in an additional $325 per pupil, which districts will only be able to take advantage of through raising property taxes.

A lawsuit recently filed in Eau Claire County Circuit Court is challenging the state’s school funding formula, arguing that it is unconstitutional as it does not meet the state’s constitutional obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students. 

State leaders are also discussing ways to provide property tax relief through special education funding, school funding and school levy tax credits, though discussions so far have not yielded any results. While Gov. Tony Evers wants to provide additional funding to school general aids, Republican lawmakers have proposed investing in the school levy tax credit, which provides property tax relief but doesn’t provide direct dollars to school districts. 

The last time Dodgeville had an operational referendum was in 2012, which was just a one-year ask. The district has passed two capital referendum requests since then. 

Bohnstack said this means that an operational referendum is a “new concept” to many residents in the area, but that “given the strategy at the state level now… we’re now kind of at the mercy of the local control being able to support the school through the operational day to day expenses.”

The school district lays out the distribution for the referendum on its website. A little over $1 million annually, or 43% of the referendum, would be used for staff costs, $525,591 or 21% would be for the district’s fund balance and the rest would go towards technology costs, curriculum, facilities, playground safety updates at the elementary school and classroom supplies. 

In addition to inflationary costs, Bohnstack said the district is grappling with declining enrollment, which has not helped its financial situation. 

Data from the Department of Public Instruction reports that Wisconsin public schools lost 14,087 students this year. Wisconsin school funding is a complicated per-pupil formula that is tied to student enrollment, meaning that districts receive less state funding if they have a drop in the number of students.

“The challenge I have is I could lose 100 kids in my school district, but not be able to eliminate a single teaching position, because those kids are spread out over 12, 13 different age groups, and if I was originally of class sizes in the thirties, and I now have class sizes in the twenties, I still need a teacher either way,” Bohnstack said.

The state’s funding system also leaves districts with few options, he said.

“They don’t fund special education in a way that you can budget for it,” Bohstack said. “I also see this stalemate right now all because of this 400-year [veto], $325, and to me, who pays the price right now because they won’t work together, is the educators, the kids caught in the middle and the schools and the communities,” Bohnstack said, adding that lawmakers should make use of the $4.6 billion state budget surplus to fund Wisconsin schools.

Over the weekend, Democratic lawmakers introduced a $1.3 billion proposal that would provide over $445 million towards general school aid for the 2026–27 school year and provide schools with a special education reimbursement at 60% sum sufficient, meaning schools would be guaranteed that rate. It’s unlikely that the package will advance in the Republican-led Legislature. 

Bohnstack isn’t holding his breath for action. 

“Hope is not a strategy. I have no hope that they will do anything… Let’s solve our own problems, and in the end, if they do well, we adjust,” Bohnstack said. 

Without the referendum, Bohnstack said the district is looking at freezing staff salaries. He said the district is already preparing to go to referendum in November if voters reject their spring request, though it would likely mean a larger request. 

“There were certain positions that we cut that we cut deeper than what we needed to, and we need to ensure we have the programming in place to recruit and retain teachers, so there are some staffing positions that we need to rebuild,” Bohnstack said. He added that the technology and curriculum in the district needs to be updated.

Thompson said that a later referendum likely won’t be “any easier for people from a tax standpoint, I suspect,” but the district has to “be realistic about it and plan for what happens if it doesn’t pass.”

And still, the passage of the referendum wouldn’t be the end of Dodgeville’s referendum conversations. Its nonrecurring request would end in 2029 and could put it back at the financial point where it is now.

“Either the Legislature changes the formula, or we’re going to be coming back for a referendum in three years,” Bohnstack said. “We’re not going to be able to cut our way out of this challenge that we’re currently in.”

Lake Country’s referendum to determine consolidation or dissolution conversation

Chad Schraufnagel, the district administrator of the Lake Country School District, said his district has no choice but to go to referendum. The district, which is one of seven public school districts that feed to Arrowhead Union High School District, is going for its third “retry” attempt. 

One operational request in 2024 failed, though a capital referendum passed that same year. A second operational request failed in April 2025

Schraufnagel said that without a referendum to help with operational costs, the district is looking at dissolving. 

The Lake Country request would provide the district with the ability to bring in $800,000 annually for four years through property taxes. Schraufnagel said the funds would be enough to “just give us time to try and figure out a strategic way to consolidate and move forward.”

“If we don’t get the referendum, our district [is] going to dissolve,” Schraufnagel said. “It’s going to be hard for us to keep the doors open beyond ’26-27.”

The last school district in Wisconsin to dissolve was the Ondossagon School District in 1990. It was absorbed into the Ashland, Drummond and Washburn districts.

Schraufnagel said he explains the difference to residents this way: “Consolidation, it’s a three-year, three- to four-year process, heavily involved, and it takes a lot of time to do it correctly and strategically, given all of the tax implications, contract implications, costs and things like that, but with consolidation, you have local control… Dissolution the state of Wisconsin is going to tell you how it’s going to go, and you have no more local control.”

Schraufnagel said the factors that led to the district’s financial difficulties are threefold: state aid not keeping up with inflation, overstaffing and the cost related to an unemployment benefit that could’ve been cut many years ago. 

“Those three things really were the financial nightmare for the district,” Shraufnagel said. “We could have as a district, I think, survived a combination of the two, but you cannot survive all three together.”

Schraufnagel said the district has worked to make over $1.6 million in cuts including by increasing class sizes, cutting post-employment benefits and eliminating programming such as band and Spanish courses.

“Those were very significant costs on the district that really were in control of the district… Now our problem is we’ve done all those things, but now it’s a matter of the state funding not keeping up,” Schraufnagel said. 

Schraufnagel said the previous requests were likely rejected for a number of reasons, including a large operational request for the Arrowhead Union High School District that was on the same ballot and was also rejected. He said that the district has also worked to be direct with residents on the issues at hand and why the district needs the referendum. 

Kelly Hoesly, a mother of three Lake Country School District students, is leading the “ Vote Yes” advocacy group in the district. She said the group is taking a new approach to informing community members about the referendum including watching social media and hosting events at local bars to provide answers to questions. She spoke with the Examiner one day after an event where she handed out about 130 “Vote Yes” signs to residents. 

Hoesly said she made the decision to send her children to the district because “it just felt like home” and reminded her of “my elementary school that I had growing up,” and she said she is hopeful the referendum will help prop up the district so it can make decisions about its future without its “back against a wall.”

“This referendum is about maintaining that quality of education that our students have today and supporting that,” Hoesly said. “I’m encouraged by how our community’s been engaging this time around. People are asking questions, they’re attending the meetings, they’re having conversations even with different viewpoints. It shows people care. I’m hopeful.”

The effort has not been without its challenges. Hoesly said there is a misunderstanding among some about what could happen if the referendum doesn’t pass. 

“There’s this appetite in our area to consolidate, and when talking about consolidation, everyone thinks it’s easy,” Hoesly said. 

This legislative session, Republican lawmakers, who have pointed out declining enrollment as the main reason for the funding issues plaguing schools — rather than state aid lagging inflation — have proposed that school districts look at consolidation as a solution to the funding woes that are pushing them to go to referendum. They’ve said the state’s 421 school districts constitute an “unsustainable” number of districts. 

During a public hearing in November on a package of bills meant to encourage school consolidation, Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said many districts have gone to referendum to “backfill” the loss of state aid due to declining enrollment, but that there “is no referendum that can be passed or law that can be signed to single-handedly reverse decades of birth rate declines to alleviate the stresses of declining enrollment in our schools. It’s clear that a more long-term solution is needed to address these demographic challenges because the status quo is not sustainable.”

The bills were framed as an option for schools, not mandatory. It is unclear whether the bills, which have passed the Assembly, will become law. They still need to pass the Senate before they can go to Evers to be signed or vetoed. 

Hoesly said that she has concerns given the complicated nature of school consolidation and the need for a referendum approving any consolidation. 

“In order for two districts to consolidate with one another, both voting communities have to go to the polls in a referendum vote and vote to approve it, and if one does and one doesn’t, then what?” Hoesly said. “If the communities don’t approve it, you are back at square one.” 

Schraufnagel told the Examiner that he didn’t think consolidation would not solve the school funding issue.

“If 87% of all districts, those that are K-12, are going to operational referendum, what is consolidation going to do? It’s going to delay you needing to go to an operational referendum for maybe two or three years. The funding has not changed,” Schraufnagel said. 

After consolidation, Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District still goes to referendum

School consolidation did not end funding concerns for Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District, though it did help stave off financial crisis for about a decade, according to District Administrator Tracy Donich.

The district was one of five school consolidations in Wisconsin between 2000 and 2022, according to WPR.

Donich said that when the districts consolidated in 2011, the move cut down on costs in some areas including as the district cut administration down to one principal and one superintendent. The state also provided incentives for school districts that opt to consolidate.

But, Donich said, costs remained the same in other areas.

“The things that don’t change are the number of students. You also have the same amount of transportation, so there are a lot of other costs that don’t go away when you consolidate, but they did what they should. That helped for a little while, and eventually that temporary funding ran out,” Donich said. 

Donich said the district “started to see a deficit budget,” which led to it going to referendum in 2022. Since the referendum was approved, Donich said the district has been considering the next one. 

Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District is seeking a $6.8 million nonrecurring referendum. It would provide $1.1 million in year one and $1.9 million in years two, three and four. 

Donich said the district is fortunate that the community has been supportive in the past, and they have worked to provide financial updates at school board meetings as well as set up  displays at athletic events and posts on social media and the school website. 

“We’re really trying to be very transparent with the community and give them all the information they need to make an informed decision,” she said. 

This year’s April requests come as Wisconsin voters appear to be less friendly towards school funding referendum asks. Recent polling from Marquette University Law School found that 57% of voters said they would be inclined to vote against a referendum to increase taxes for schools in their communities. 

Donich said the state’s funding formula “is definitely needing some updates… so the local taxpayers aren’t feeling that pinch quite so much.”

This year, the district’s request has increased from the previous referendum to deal with inflationary costs and a lack of state funding. Donich noted that the district has to transfer over $1 million each year from its general fund to its special education fund to keep up with the mandated costs. 

“If we would not have to do that, it would really help us with having to go to referendum, possibly we wouldn’t even have to go to referendum if they had kept up even with half the amount of inflation,” Donich said. “We wouldn’t be in this situation at all.” 

Without the referendum, Donich said the district will look to cut costs by delaying technology upgrades and having classrooms cleaned less frequently.

“We need to find a way that’s sustainable to help our school system thrive and not being able to rely on the factors at the state level definitely encourages people to go to more referendums,” Donich said. “When we have to do a budget without having any idea what the state will be able to provide, federal funding shifts, the most reliable thing we have is our local community.”

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Andrea Pedro-Francisco was supposed to have surgery more than a month ago.

A cyst on her ovary has swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball and is now at risk of rupturing or cutting off blood supply. The pain is so severe that her doctor prescribed her an opioid.

She’s only received Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain since she was arrested on her way to work on Feb. 5 in Minnesota and shipped to a Texas detention center, where she’s waiting for a judge to decide whether her detention is even legal.

“I want to be able to go back to my family,” Pedro-Francisco, 23, said in Spanish in a video interview, wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and looking ashen. “I feel sad. I feel tired. I feel desperate to get out of here and see my family again.”

Her case has been taken up by a team of pro bono attorneys and even members of Congress, but to little avail.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who represents the Twin Cities suburbs where Pedro-Francisco lives, sent inquiries to Homeland Security officials hoping to pressure them to provide adequate medical treatment.

Craig says she’s been stonewalled with demands for various forms and out-of-office messages citing the partial government shutdown. She said she considered flying to El Paso to conduct an oversight visit but the facility is currently in lockdown because of a measles outbreak.

“We are very worried she could have an infection right now … and the Trump administration won’t do a damn thing about it,” Craig said in an interview. “I don’t want Andrea to die.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Pedro-Francisco is one of 4,000 immigrants the Trump administration says it arrested during Operation Metro Surge — although it has not provided an accounting of all those arrests — with some 3,000 federal agents descending on Minnesota for what the Department of Homeland Security called its largest operation ever.

Many have been ordered released by federal judges who ruled their detentions unlawful. But many others remain languishing in federal facilities across the country even if, like Pedro-Francisco, they have no criminal record and have lived in the United States for years.

While the Trump administration repeatedly claimed to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” the vast majority of those arrested during Trump’s second term have no violent criminal charges or convictions, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News.

Taken on the way to work

Pedro-Francisco left her native Guatemala for the United States with her mother to seek asylum in 2019 when she was 16 years old. They arrived in Minnesota with virtually nothing and debt from the journey.

They quickly built a new life. They found jobs cleaning houses, moved into a house in Burnsville, and joined a church. Pedro-Francisco sings in the choir and plays the bajo, a Mexican bass guitar.

“I came here with my family to do something, to achieve something with my own strength, with my own hands. And after that, they took me away,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Pedro-Francisco was driving to work with her mother and a neighbor one Thursday morning when they were stopped by two unmarked vehicles. One parked in front and the other behind. Half a dozen masked men surrounded them, demanding to see their documents, she said.

She said she doesn’t know why they stopped her. There was no warrant for her arrest.

It could be they ran the license plate and saw a Hispanic name. Or because the federal agents believed three Latina women in a car was reason enough to initiate a stop. A federal judge appointed by President Trump found that Homeland Security has racially profiled Latino and Somali residents and arrested them without probable cause, which while unconstitutional, nevertheless yielded results as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations.

The agents put handcuffs on Pedro-Francisco and her neighbor.

Her mother pleaded with an agent to let her go, telling him there was no one to care for her children. She has two younger children, a 5- and a 1-year old, both U.S. citizens.

“‘Who’s going to take care of my children?’ I asked him,” said Pedro-Francisco’s mother in an interview in Spanish, choking back tears. She was granted anonymity due to her fear of retribution from federal officials.

“Then he said, ‘Okay, we’re going to let you go, but only today … If another group catches you, they’ll take you away.’”

She gave her daughter one last hug, and the agents placed Pedro-Francisco, handcuffed, in the back of the unmarked car.

Within a couple hours she was on a flight to Texas.

‘They treat us like animals’ 

Pedro-Francisco was taken to Camp East Montana, a troubled tent prison on the site of a former World War II detention camp for Japanese Americans at Fort Bliss near El Paso.

It was hurriedly constructed last summer to meet the growing need for detention space after the Trump administration enacted a policy of mandatory detention for many undocumented immigrants, even those who have lived in the country for years with no criminal history.

The detention facility is now ICE’s largest: around 3,000 people packed into long tent structures. Pedro-Francisco says she is kept in a room with around 60 people except for about an hour a day, when they are chained together and taken outside.

“They chain us up as if we had committed a very serious crime,” Pedro-Francisco said. “They treat us like animals.”

The ceiling leaks when it rains. The food is inedible. Pedro-Francisco says she’s lost around 10 lbs.

The crowded conditions have also made it a hotbed of disease, with outbreaks of COVID-19, tuberculosis and the measles.

Three detainees died in the facility in a six-week period, including a man who was suffocated in a struggle with multiple guards. His death was ruled a homicide. Suicide attempts are so common that some guards take bets on which detainee will succeed next, according to a former detainee who spoke to the Associated Press.

With complaints of crowded quarters, medical neglect and poor nutrition mounting, ICE recently terminated the $1.3 billion contract with the company operating the facility, Acquisition Logistics. It had never run an ICE detention facility before — nor did it even have a functioning website.

When Pedro-Francisco arrived in early February, she wasn’t receiving any medication except the occasional Tylenol. The pain in her abdomen became so unbearable that within a couple days she was taken to a hospital, where she says a doctor confirmed the cyst yet declined to operate on her because she’s in immigration custody.

As the weeks have passed, she can feel herself getting sicker.

Instead of medical care, ICE has offered her another solution: self-deport. Every two or three days, she says, ICE officials enter their room to ask people to sign forms agreeing to voluntary removal.

Many have taken it, including a man from Minnesota whose lawyer said he only agreed because he was being denied medication for his diabetes.

“But my purpose, for me, here in the midst of suffering, pain and illness, my purpose is to be able to return to my family,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Caught in red tape and judicial delays

By swiftly transferring Pedro-Francisco to Texas, ICE has made it harder for her and other people arrested in Minnesota to challenge their detention through what’s called a habeas corpus petition. That seems to be by design.

Minnesota U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank wrote that he’s seen a “pattern of obfuscation” with ICE “attempting to hide the location of detainees, and thus, make habeas proceedings more difficult.”

Judges in Minnesota have been in revolt over the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention and repeated violations of their orders to release immigrants, even threatening the U.S. attorney with contempt.

While judges in Texas have also largely ruled against the Trump administration, the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in its favor, making Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi more favorable venues for the administration to defend a policy that contradicts three decades of precedent.

Federal officials have said they simply ran out of space to hold people in Minnesota during an unprecedented surge in arrests.

Approximately 200 people detained in Minnesota have been transferred out-of-state and remain in detention centers across the country — in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nebraska and Mississippi — according to Sarah Brenes, executive director of the Binger Center at the University of Minnesota Law School and one of the directors of the Minnesota Habeas Project.

By the time Pedro-Francisco was connected with a lawyer, she was already in Texas. Her case was taken up by attorney Asra Syed, managing partner at the Austin law firm Botkin Chiarello Calaf. She was referred to Pedro-Francisco’s case through the informal network of volunteer lawyers that sprung up during Operation Metro Surge.

Syed filed a habeas corpus petition to challenge Pedro-Francisco’s detention on Feb. 13 and mentioned her urgent need for medical attention. While the federal government usually has three days to justify its detention of a person, U.S. Judge Leon Schydlower gave the government more than three weeks from when the petition was filed to respond.

“She doesn’t have a way to get the health care that she needs unless she’s out of detention. And how is she supposed to get out of detention unless the judge rules on the habeas petition quickly?” Syed said.

In the interim, Syed filed two more motions asking the court to speed up Pedro-Francisco’s case and order the federal government to administer her prescribed medications and have her examined by an independent hospital physician. They went unanswered.

Syed also reached out to her representative, Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who connected her with Craig. Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents the El Paso area that’s home to the detention center, also got involved.

Syed became hopeful, but she and the congresswomen were quickly moored in ICE’s kafkaesque bureaucracy.

In order to conduct oversight, the congresswomen needed Pedro-Francisco to fill out a form authorizing the visit and for Homeland Security to share information about her. But there is no way for Pedro-Francisco to fill out or mail the form in detention. There’s no commissary to buy envelopes and stamps, Syed said. Pedro-Francisco also can’t sign releases giving her attorneys access to her medical records.

An attorney planned to visit the detention center to get Pedro-Francisco’s signatures in person. Then came the measles outbreak, which has stopped anyone from visiting detainees in person, be they attorneys or members of Congress.

Craig said she reached out to a senior DHS official but received a bounceback citing the partial government shutdown. Congressional Democrats are refusing to support renewing funding for the agency without reforms to what they say are ICE’s unconstitutional tactics.

“It’s just stunning, but not surprising at all, that … even as a congressional office, we haven’t been able to get her the help that she needs and deserves,” Craig said.

Her office has received some information from DHS about Pedro-Francisco’s condition — that they’re giving her an antidepressant and birth control pills.

But that’s at odds with what Pedro-Francisco says she’s receiving. She said she went days without even Tylenol to dull the unbearable pain, and then about a week ago also started receiving a prescription, though she’s unsure what it’s called.

Pedro-Francisco said she was also recently examined by a man in the detention center who conducted an ultrasound. He told her she didn’t have anything and gave her two pills to go to the bathroom, but she doesn’t trust anybody in the facility. She’s requested the man’s name and records of her treatment in detention to show her lawyers but has not received either.

Inadequate medical care and poor record-keeping have been documented repeatedly at Camp East Montana, even by ICE’s own inspectors, who found 60 violations in 50 days.

Pedro-Francisco’s case remains at a standstill. The federal government filed an answer to her habeas corpus petition justifying her detention as an undocumented immigrant “seeking admission,” as if she were just apprehended at the border, and cited the recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

Now it’s up to a judge to decide, though when that will happen is unclear.

“I want to get out of here because I know that at home, where my family is, they can take care of me, and I can go to a doctor,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Madison McVan contributed translation. 

As federal immigration officers made more “at-large” arrests in communities across the country in the first year of the current Trump administration — including at homes, places of worship and workplaces — more than 1,100 Nebraska families developed family safety plans in the event a parent or breadwinner faced detention or deportation.

These plans help families decide who will take care of the children, handle school and medical decisions, and manage finances if a parent suddenly cannot be there.

Families are encouraged to choose a trusted adult — such as a relative or family friend — who could temporarily care for the children. They’re making sure children have passports, updating school emergency contacts, and letting family members know how to locate a parent if they are detained.

“This is not unique to immigrant families, but it’s of course more nuanced for immigrant families in the sense that their family can be separated at any time,” said Lina Traslaviña Stover, a sociologist who also is executive director of the Heartland Workers Center, a Nebraska nonprofit that advocates on behalf of workers in the meatpacking, restaurant, construction and cleaning industries.

“There are a lot of ripple effects when families prepare for the possibility of separation. In some cases, older siblings are being asked to step into the role of head of household if a parent is detained or deported. Imagine a high school senior suddenly carrying the responsibility for the family’s finances and stability. Even if it’s just a ‘what if’ scenario, that kind of pressure can change a young person’s plans for the future.”

The effort in Nebraska, and similar ones around the country, points to the social and economic fallout from the immigration crackdown. The deportation of a breadwinner, the potential exposure of tenants’ personal data and stricter federal housing policies can all stress families, advocates say, even as some policymakers are trying to help.

Demand for rental housing is driven primarily by U.S. citizens, but immigrants have long been a key subset of renters: They headed 9.6 million renter households (21%) in 2024, according to the recently published America’s Rental Housing report by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. Researchers also note that immigrants contribute to the economy and pay taxes, supporting the communities they live and work in.

“For households living paycheck to paycheck, losing just a few days of wages can mean losing housing,” said Meesha Moulton, a Las Vegas-based immigration attorney. “Housing insecurity in these communities doesn’t start with an eviction notice, it starts with the empty chair at a job site.”

Fear can also affect how or whether immigrant families — with or without legal status — apply for food, housing or health programs they qualify for because they worry it could put them on the government’s radar. Both Americans and immigrants with legal status have been arrested during the past year’s enforcement crackdown. And nearly three-fourths of the people in immigration detention in late January had no criminal record.

Jacob Rugh, a sociologist and associate professor at Brigham Young University who studies immigration enforcement and housing, said high-profile incidents of aggressive and fatal encounters between federal agents and U.S. citizens and noncitizens have shifted public opinion in ways that could help affected immigrants.

In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted shortly after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, roughly 80% of respondents said they had seen video of the shooting.

“People are seeing videos everywhere and there’s more visibility in the non-immigrant community,” Rugh said. “It makes the issue much more salient in ways that didn’t exist before. People donate, help on the ground and become part of the solution.”

‘We cannot GoFundMe our way out of a crisis’

Policymakers in many affected places are looking for ways to help.

In Los Angeles County, officials declared a state of emergency in 2025 after federal immigration raids, allowing the county to provide rent relief, legal aid and other services to residents affected by immigration enforcement in Southern California last year.

In Clark County, Washington, a $50,000 rental assistance program was launched to help families who have a family or household member — and are missing a primary wage-earner — detained or deported by immigration officers. Officials say the demand for assistance is already exceeding available funds.

In Santa Ana, California, a $100,000 emergency assistance program is aimed at helping renters affected by federal immigration raids. It offers up to one month of rent or utility assistance for a household that lost income as a result of a member’s detention or deportation.

Few places better illustrate the direct relationship between immigration enforcement and housing insecurity than Minnesota, where the Trump administration in December sent thousands of federal agents. Operation Metro Surge closed streets and businesses amid protests and shelter-in-place orders, and agents detained more than 4,000 people, according to the White House.

The Minneapolis City Council approved extending the time frame for eviction notices, but Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the measure and instead proposed $1 million in city funding in rental assistance.

Landlords across Minneapolis and St. Paul have filed 2,585 eviction notices so far this year, 25% above the same time period in 2023 and 2024, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Many residents have reported losing jobs, said Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenant Union Federation, a national union of tenant unions involved in a new tenant campaign in the Twin Cities. Some fell behind on rent, and with income-earners detained, some families have attempted to fill the void by raising money on GoFundMe.

“We cannot GoFundMe our way out of a crisis of this scale,” Raghuveer said in an interview. “Many people have not been able to work, and as a result many people have not been able to pay rent, and the economic pain created by this invasion will still be with everyday people long after ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are gone.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul have each allocated about $1 million in emergency rental assistance.

Last week, Minnesota’s Democratic-led Senate approved $40 million in rental assistance, but the legislation isn’t expected to pass the evenly split House. Republicans argued that residents living in the country illegally shouldn’t receive aid, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

Trust between landlords and immigrant tenants

Immigration enforcement has also caused a ripple in the relationship between landlords and their tenants who lack legal status. In Tennessee, a law enacted in 2025 criminalizes harboring such immigrants for financial gain, which some critics argue could pressure landlords to evict tenants or refuse rentals out of fear of legal consequences.

In Oregon, lawmakers passed legislation that would restrict landlords from disclosing a tenant’s immigration status and sensitive personal information without clear legal requirements. The measure would protect information such as immigration status, Social Security numbers and financial records. It’s awaiting action by the governor.

A New Jersey bill that would bar landlords from using a tenant’s immigration status is advancing in the legislature.

California, Colorado and Illinois have enacted so-called immigrant tenant protection acts, with provisions to prevent landlords from harassing, intimidating or evicting tenants based on their citizenship or immigration status.

Democratic Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, who sponsored the Oregon legislation, told Stateline that the idea emerged after reviewing tenant records from her own experience as a small landlord.

“I realized I had file drawers full of very sensitive data,” she said. “It made me start asking what the law actually requires about confidentiality.”

The measure ultimately passed with bipartisan support after negotiations with landlord groups.

Immigration authorities have taken a new legal position that civil administrative warrants may allow agents to enter residences without a judge-signed warrant, according to guidance compiled by the National Apartment Association’s legal team. Many legal experts dispute the directive, and at least one court has found it unconstitutional.

A proposed U.S. Housing and Urban Development rule would prohibit “mixed-status” families — households with both U.S. citizens and people without legal immigration status — from living in public or other subsidized housing.

HUD estimates that about 25,000 mixed-status households currently receive agency-assisted housing, less than 1% of all federally aided renters. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates about 80,000 people could lose housing assistance, including roughly 37,000 children, nearly all U.S. citizens.

Some landlords are concerned their tenants may end a lease early or not renew based on rumors or threats of immigration agent sightings, according to Alexandra Alvarado, director of marketing and education for the trade group American Apartment Owners Association.

María Monclova, a Mexican-born immigration lawyer, says that landlord compliance with requests from federal agents is in part due to ignorance of obligations to cooperate with federal matters.

“There have been credible reports of immigration authorities requesting leases, rental applications and identification documents from landlords or property managers,” she said.

“Many landlords don’t fully understand the difference between an administrative request and a court-issued subpoena or warrant,” she said. “When that distinction isn’t clear, some property owners may overcomply out of fear of liability.”

Given the current administration’s attempt to determine immigration status through public housing data, Moulton, the immigration attorney, thinks some immigrant and mixed-status families may be avoiding formal leases altogether.

“They’d rather live in a crowded basement with no paperwork than sign a legal contract that has their name on it. This is all bad for everyone,” Moulton said. “It leads to ‘shadow housing’ where buildings aren’t inspected, safety rules are ignored and slumlords can take advantage of people. When we push people into the shadows, we lose the data we need to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Some neighborhoods — and the groups of people who live and call them home — have been reshaped by immigration preceding the current Trump administration and dating through the George W. Bush, Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

A 2025 study from Rugh and other researchers in the journal Demography found that when local police helped enforce immigration laws, Latino and white residents were less likely to live in the same neighborhoods over time. Researchers say tougher enforcement can make immigrant families feel less secure financially and more likely to move.

“When large numbers of men are detained or deported — and most deportees are men — they’re suddenly no longer contributing to household income,” Rugh said in an interview.

“When you detain and deport large numbers of people, it affects entire communities,” he said. “Landlords lose renters, property values can fall, local businesses suffer, and people who aren’t immigrants feel the economic effects.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has halted enforcement of several key vaccine policies imposed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ruling that the Trump administration illegally overhauled a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee dedicated to issuing immunization recommendations.

The decision, which comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics last July, temporarily blocks the enforcement of all recommendations voted on by the panel. That includes the overhaul of a decades-old recommendation that all newborn babies receive a vaccine against hepatitis B, a push to emphasize the risks of COVID-19 vaccines and a ban on vaccine preservatives like thimerosal. 

The ruling also temporarily halts participation from 13 of the panel’s 15 members, complicating a meeting that was scheduled to begin later this week.

The CDC’s committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is charged with setting national guidelines around which people should be vaccinated against a wide range of preventable diseases and when those vaccines should be administered. The recommendations play a key role in determining which vaccines insurance companies are willing to cover and how accessible those immunizations are to the public.

Last June, Kennedy abruptly dismissed all 17 members of the committee and replaced them with a slate of hand-picked appointees, many of whom are seen as vaccine skeptics. In his Monday decision, District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled that the Trump administration likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to appoint qualified, nonpartisan experts, as the panel’s charter requires.

By ignoring those requirements, “the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” Murphy’s ruling reads.

Dr. Andrew Racine, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, celebrated the ruling, calling it “a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere.”

“For decades, the AAP partnered closely with the federal government to advance our mission of attaining the optimal health and well-being of children and youth,” Racine added. “We would much prefer to return to that partnership and collaborate with federal healthcare agencies instead of litigating against them.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately reply to a request for comment.