WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Monday evening to confirm Markwayne Mullin to lead the Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. 

The 54-45 vote means that Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, will take over the department in the midst of a five-week shutdown. He will replace outgoing Secretary Kristi Noem, whom the president reassigned to another role in the administration.

Mullin voted for himself. Democratic Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico were the only Democrats to back Mullin’s confirmation.

Just before the Senate adjourned, Mullin submitted his resignation letter.

The department has been shut down since mid-February while Democrats have called for restraints on federal immigration agents after officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. On Jan. 7, Renee Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent and on Jan. 24, Alex Pretti was pinned down and killed by Customs and Border Protection officers.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, said on the Senate floor before the vote Monday that Mullin will be entering DHS at a difficult time. 

“It’s a tough assignment, made all the more challenging right now by Democrats having shut DHS down for five weeks,” Thune said. “We all know that Markwayne isn’t afraid of a challenge.”

Speaking to reporters early Monday, Trump said that Mullin is “gonna be fantastic” as DHS secretary. 

As an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin will be the first Indigenous DHS secretary. 

Shutdown effects

Though DHS is shuttered, ICE and CBP are still fully funded because the Republican-led Congress last year passed a separate funding stream of $175 billion for immigration enforcement. 

Trump over the weekend directed his administration to place ICE agents in several airports in an attempt to aid Transportation Security Administration agents, who are working without pay. ICE and TSA are both agencies within DHS.

Mullin does not have any experience on a committee that handles policy for Homeland Security and will be tasked with leading a department of 260,000 employees.

Some senators have raised concerns about Mullin’s temperament, citing a 2023 incident in which he physically challenged a witness before Congress. Mullin also expressed sympathy toward a man who attacked Sen. Rand Paul, breaking six of the Kentucky Republican’s ribs and damaging a lung. 

Paul, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, voted against advancing Mullin’s nomination to the Senate floor. Paul also voted against Mullin’s confirmation Monday night. 

The Senate advanced Mullin’s nomination in a 54-37 procedural vote Sunday. Two Democrats, Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman and New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, joined all Republicans who voted Sunday. Paul did not vote on Sunday. 

Wisconsin and 20 other states filed a lawsuit Monday that seeks to prevent the U.S. Department of Agriculture from imposing “anti-discrimination” conditions on all the money the department disburses to the states. 

USDA provides billions of dollars in funding to the states every year to administer programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — which in Wisconsin helps nearly 700,000 residents afford groceries. 

Under a new policy issued late last year, USDA states it will not provide any financial disbursements unless the states agree to conditions involving “gender ideology,” “fair athletic opportunities” for women and girls and immigration. 

The lawsuit argues the conditions are overly broad and vague, that sub-agencies within USDA are interpreting the rules differently, potentially conflict with existing state laws and amount to unconstitutional roadblocks between the states and the money that Congress has already appropriated to be sent to the states. 

“With billions at stake for life sustaining food and critical funding for their residents, the States may be forced to accept funding conditions that they fundamentally do not understand, that are designed to coerce the States and their instrumentalities to adopt USDA’s policies, and which are ultimately unlawful,” the lawsuit states. 

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, along with the attorneys general of California, Illinois and Massachusetts led the development of the suit which is being joined by Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington. 

Aside from the nutrition assistance programs, USDA also funds programs that aid and support Wisconsin farmers, prevent forest fires and protect local ecosystems. UW-Madison received $68 million from USDA during the 2024-25 fiscal year for agricultural research and other programs. On Monday, USDA announced more than $2 million in spending to support timber operations in Monroe and Shawano counties.  

“USDA funding helps keep kids and families fed and healthy,” Kaul said in a statement. “Attempting to use this critical funding to further unrelated policy goals of the Trump administration is wrong and unlawful.”

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Airport security workers missed work Monday at the highest rate since a partial government shutdown began in mid-February, the Department of Homeland Security said, and the Trump administration sent immigration officials to some airports in an attempt to keep lines moving.

Travelers reported hourslong security lines at major airports in Atlanta and Houston, while waits of 30 minutes or more were reported at several other hubs Monday.

Nearly 3,500 Transportation Security Administration agents, roughly 11.8% of the scheduled nationwide workforce, called out from work Monday. TSA officers have been working without pay since the department that oversees TSA began a funding lapse Feb. 14 due to a dispute in Congress over immigration enforcement.

Call out rates were over 20% at a handful of major airports, according to DHS. They were:

• 42.3% in New Orleans
• 41.5% in Atlanta
• 39.1% in Houston
• 38.1% in Baltimore
• 37.4% at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport
• 24.7% in Pittsburgh
• 24.2% in Philadelphia
• 21.7% at New York’s Laguardia Airport
• 20.3% in Phoenix

ICE to airports

More than 400 TSA workers have quit since the “pointless, reckless shutdown” began, DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in an emailed statement. 

Bis blamed the shutdown and related problems with air security staffing on Democrats in Congress, and confirmed DHS would send officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another DHS agency, to assist TSA at airports.

TSA officers “are not able to afford gas, childcare, food, or rent,” she said. 

“While the Democrats continue to put the safety, dependability, and ease of our air travel at risk, President Trump is taking action to deploy hundreds of ICE officers, that are currently funded by Congress, to airports being adversely impacted. This will help bolster TSA efforts to keep our skies safe and minimize air travel disruptions.”

President Donald Trump praised ICE in comments to reporters Monday morning and suggested he could also call upon National Guard troops to help at airports.

“They stepped in so, so strongly,” he said of ICE officers. “They’ll do great. And if that’s not enough, I’ll bring in the National Guard.”

Tom Homan, the White House border czar who coordinates much of Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda, said in a Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that ICE officers would primarily handle duties that did not require extensive training, such as making sure no one entered secure areas through exits.

“We’re simply there to help TSA do their job in areas that don’t need their specialized expertise,” he said, rather than screening through the X-ray machines, he told CNN’s Dana Bash. “But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant role, such as guarding an exit, so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker.”

DHS declined to provide a list of airports to which ICE would deploy, citing “operational security” concerns.

ICE officers were spotted at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the nation’s busiest, where waits of four hours in security lines were reported on Monday.

Shutdown persists

Federal law requires TSA officers to work, even during a shutdown, though they will not be paid until funding is restored.

Despite being at the center of the shutdown debate, ICE has not been affected by the DHS funding lapse because Republicans provided the agency massive funding in the tax cuts and spending bill they passed along party lines last year.

Democrats have refused to fund a fiscal 2026 appropriations bill for the department without major changes to the administration’s immigration enforcement, which reached a tipping point following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January.

“Because of the Democrat shutdown, President Trump is using every tool available to help American travelers who are facing hours long lines at airports across the country—especially during this spring break and holiday season that is very important for many American families,” Bis said.

In a rare weekend session, the U.S. Senate again failed to advance a funding measure for DHS on Saturday.

Deadly LaGuardia crash

The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada plane died, and more than 40 people were injured, after the jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia airport late Sunday.

The incident was unrelated to problems with TSA, which is not responsible for safety on runways or elsewhere outside of airport terminals, but it further delayed and complicated travel in the New York City area.

Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Monday said his administration is in talks with Iran about resolving the war, a claim that significantly tamped down oil prices and spurred market increases in Europe and the United States — though Iran denied any progress in negotiations.

Writing on his social media platform, Truth Social, the president said the United States and Iran “HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.” 

Trump’s 109-word, all-caps post brought the cost of Brent crude oil briefly below $100 a barrel, after his threat Saturday to bomb Iran’s major energy infrastructure spiked prices.

The historic shock to the global energy market has caused gasoline prices to soar across the U.S. to an average of $3.95 per gallon on Monday, up from $2.93 a month ago, according to AAA.

Trump said he had called off his 48-hour ultimatum for Iran, set to expire Monday evening, to conduct negotiations over “a five-day period,” he told reporters.

“We’ll see how that goes, and if it goes well, we’re going to end up with settling this, otherwise we just keep bombing our little hearts out,” he said during roughly 20 minutes of comments to the press at the steps of Air Force One prior to boarding a flight to Memphis, Tennessee, for an appearance.

Fourth week of hostilities

Trump claimed Iranian negotiators have agreed on a 15-point plan, as the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran enters its fourth week.

“Well, they’re not going to have a nuclear weapon. That’s number one. That’s number one, two and three, they will never have a nuclear weapon. They’ve agreed to that,” he said.

Trump also said the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping passage that Iran has effectively closed to ships flagged under Western and Persian Gulf nations, “will be opened very soon if this works.” 

He suggested “​​maybe me and the ayatollah, whoever the ayatollah is” will share joint control of the strait, which handles a fifth of the world’s petroleum products.

As for Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, Trump said capturing and removing it will be “very easy.”

“If we have a deal with them, we’re going down, and we’ll take it ourselves,” he said.

Iran denial

Iran’s Foreign Ministry has denied such talks were underway, according to a statement cited in media reports.

The speaker of Iran’s parliament Mohammed-Bagher Ghalibaf also denied any negotiations in a post on X just before noon Eastern, saying “Our people demand the complete and humiliating punishment of the aggressors.”

“All officials stand firmly behind their Leader and people until this goal is achieved. No negotiations with America have taken place. Fake news is intended to manipulate financial and oil markets and to escape the quagmire in which America and Israel are trapped,” Ghalibaf wrote.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video statement Monday afternoon, Eastern time, confirming that he spoke with Trump, who he said “believes there is an opportunity to leverage the tremendous achievements we have reached alongside the U.S. military to realize the goals of the war through an agreement, an agreement that will safeguard our vital interests.”

“At the same time, we are continuing to strike in both Iran and Lebanon. We are smashing the missile program and the nuclear program, and we continue to deal severe blows to Hezbollah. … We will safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances,” Netanyahu said, according to his office’s English translation.

Trump’s schedule Monday included the trip to Memphis to participate in a roundtable regarding public safety.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is again trying to send the wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the west African nation of Liberia and urging a federal judge to dismiss a bar on his removal, according to legal documents filed over the weekend. 

Abrego Garcia, of Maryland, has agreed to be deported to Costa Rica, which will accept him as a refugee, and is fighting his removal to another third country. The Trump administration cannot remove him to his home country of El Salvador, after he was mistakenly deported there in 2025 and kept in a brutal Salvadoran prison. 

His erroneous deportation cast a national spotlight on the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement.

Acting U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons, in a Friday court declaration, said he was disregarding Abrego Garcia’s proposal to accept removal to Costa Rica for two reasons. 

Lyons said Abrego Garcia did not designate Costa Rica as a third country of removal in 2019, when he was granted a withholding from removal to El Salvador. Lyons argues that Abrego Garcia therefore “forfeited his right to designate an additional country of removal when he failed to designate any other country prior to the completion of his removal proceedings.”

Lyons said the second reason is the Trump administration has already invested in “high-stakes political negotiations” with Liberia’s government to accept Abrego Garcia and if the administration were to abandon “agreements negotiated at the highest levels of government (it) could cast doubt on the diplomatic reliability of the United States in relation not only to the Republic of Liberia but also other nations with whom it negotiates on these and other matters.” 

Lyons said for those reasons, federal Judge Paula Xinis of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland should dissolve her injunction that prevents the Trump administration from removing Abrego Garcia. 

Third-country removals were somewhat rare until the second Trump administration, which is relying more on them as the president aims to carry out mass deportations. 

Abrego Garcia’s situation dates back years. In 2019, when Abrego Garcia was granted the withholding of removal because a judge found he would face violence from gangs if removed to El Salvador, he had an agreement with ICE to check in yearly. 

In 2025, ICE agents stopped Abrego Garcia while he was picking his son up from day care and he was informed there was a change in his immigration status. He was placed on a deportation flight with hundreds of other men to the brutal Salvadoran mega-prison known as CECOT. 

Later in 2025, the courts ordered Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.

The Trump administration is asking for Xinis to make her decision by April 17. Xinis was appointed by former President Barack Obama. 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case to determine if a migrant on Mexico’s side of a border crossing with the United States can legally apply for asylum when arriving at a U.S. port of entry.

The case, which stems from a policy during President Donald Trump’s first term that denied migrants the opportunity to present for asylum, is meant to settle if Customs and Border Protection officers are allowed to refuse to process an asylum seeker who walks up to a port of entry.

A 2019 memorandum created what was known as the metering or “turn back” policy that resulted in border officials physically turning away asylum seekers before they could enter the country. The policy was based on an argument that migrants must be in the United States to apply for asylum and that simply arriving at a border crossing did not qualify.

A 2020 investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that up to 680 migrants per day were turned around as a result of the policy. 

The Trump administration last year asked the high court to review a 2024 split decision from a panel of judges on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed a lower court’s order finding the policy violated administrative procedure law. 

The lower court found that the “turn back policy” was illegal because CBP had a duty to inspect and process asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry. 

The Supreme Court said in November it had decided to take the case, Noem v. Al Otro Lado.

Border doesn’t count, government says

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued in briefs that a person has only arrived in the country once they are on U.S. soil.

“In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders,” Sauer wrote. “An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico.”

He also argued that the appeals court decision interferes with the president’s “ability to manage the southern border” and set immigration policy.

“Before this litigation, border officials had repeatedly addressed migrant surges by standing at the border and preventing aliens without valid travel documents from entering,” Sauer said. 

“The decision below declares that practice unlawful, on the theory that aliens stopped on the Mexican side of the border have a statutory right to apply for asylum in the United States and to be inspected by federal immigration officers.” 

“The decision thus deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border,” he continued.

“For people fleeing persecution the stakes are literally life and death,” said Melissa Crow, one of the attorneys representing Al Otro Lado, an organization that provides legal and humanitarian assistance to refugees and migrants, and a class of asylum seekers, who spoke to reporters before oral arguments. 

No current or future implications

Crow, who has represented Al Otro Lado since the initial challenge to the metering policy in 2017, said “there is no reason to do this” because the policy the Trump administration is challenging has been defunct since the Biden administration ended it in 2021.

Because the federal government rescinded the metering policy before the lower court could enter a final judgment, the brief from Al Otro Lado argues that the challenge presented to the justices “thus has almost no present implications, and likely no future implications either.”

“The government nonetheless urges the Court to grant review just in case it decides at some point in the future to reinstate metering,” according to the brief from advocates.

The challengers of the policy also argue it could give the administration another tool in its immigration crackdown.

“While this case focuses on one defunct policy, we have no doubt the administration is seeking a decision that will give them even more leeway to restrict the rights of people fleeing persecution,” Crow said. 

Crow said she opposed the review by the justices, adding that “there are many other restrictions on the books that are preventing migrants from seeking asylum,” that should be addressed. 

The Rev. Liz Theoharis, the executive director at the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, also briefed reporters. She leads a coalition of 31 faith groups that have submitted a brief in support of the groups and asylum seekers challenging the Trump administration’s move to overturn a court decision that blocked the metering policy.  

“Every major faith tradition makes protecting the stranger a core value,” Theoharis said. “Protecting and welcoming the immigrant is one of Jesus’s first and most powerful teachings.”

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative justices on Monday appeared skeptical of the validity of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day, in a case that could potentially affect hundreds of thousands of voters during the upcoming midterm elections.

The high court heard arguments on whether federal law overrides a Mississippi law that requires mail-in ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day to be counted as long as they arrive within five business days of the election. Fourteen states have similar laws, which extend a “grace period” to ballots that arrive through the mail after polls close.

Several conservative justices raised concerns with allowing ballots to arrive after Election Day, including whether voters could recall ballots once they’ve shipped them but before they arrive at election offices. Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned whether late-arriving ballots risk undermining election confidence.

“‘The longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry the election has been stolen,’” Kavanaugh said, quoting from an analysis by a New York University law professor.

The case comes before the Supreme Court at a moment of broader attacks against mail-in voting. Four Republican-led states eliminated their ballot arrival grace periods last year. And Congress is mulling proposals that would restrict voting by mail amid a sprawling debate in the U.S. Senate over legislation demanded by President Donald Trump that would impose sweeping new voter restrictions nationwide. That legislation, known as the SAVE Act, is unlikely to pass because of the filibuster.

The Republican National Committee is challenging Mississippi’s grace period law. The party contends a longstanding federal law that sets the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as Election Day for federal offices preempts state laws that allow ballots cast by Election Day, but received later, to count.

Paul Clement, an attorney for the Republican National Committee, argued the prospect that the outcome of an election could change because of ballots arriving after Election Day would be unacceptable to losing candidates. After the 2020 election, President Donald Trump demanded election officials not count ballots that came in after Election Day. States kept counting ballots.

“If you have an election and the election is going to turn on late-arriving ballots in a way that means what everybody kind of thought was the result on Election Day ends up being the opposite a week later, 21 days later, the losers are not going to accept that result. Full stop,” Clement told the justices.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson, a Republican who is defending the state law, argues that federal law allows ballots cast by Election Day to be received later. In legal filings, attorneys for the secretary argue both legal and historical precedent support his position. States may decide that voters have made their final choices when ballots are submitted to state officials rather than when they’re received, according to Watson.

On Monday, the justices appeared divided along ideological lines, with conservative justices skeptical of the grace periods and liberal justices more sympathetic. Conservatives hold a 6-3 majority on the court.

“It seems to me that we have a very long history of states having a variety of different ballot receipt deadlines, to include after Election Day,” said Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, one of the court’s liberal members.

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart told the court the dispute is over whether Congress in an 1845 law blocked states from counting ballots cast by Election Day but received later. “No one challenged it until now,” Stewart said.

At least 725,000 ballots were postmarked by Election Day 2024 and arrived within a legally accepted post-election window, The New York Times has reported, citing election officials in 14 of 22 states and territories where late-arriving ballots were accepted that year.

About 30% of voters cast a mail ballot in 2024, according to data gathered by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2024 that federal law requires ballots to be received by Election Day. Trump likewise issued an executive order last year that attempted to require that mail ballots be received by the end of Election Day and to impose other election changes, but much of the order has been blocked by federal courts.

Rick Hasen, a professor and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his Election Law Blog that it was clear from Monday’s arguments that the Supreme Court will be closely divided, “and the case could come out either way.” A decision is expected later in the spring or early summer.

Caleb Hays, chief policy counsel at the Center for Election Confidence, a conservative-leaning legal advocacy group that opposes ballot grace periods, said his organization was pleased that the justices appeared to pick up on the need for a clear end to the voting period. He also welcomed the justices raising the issue of recalling ballots when they are delivered through the mail or by a third-party service like FedEx.

“That brings into question some of the arguments we saw from (Mississippi) on a ballot being final when it is cast and cast includes when it is deposited in a mailbox,” Hays said in an interview.

As the legal challenge made its way through the courts over the past two years, some Republican-led states moved to eliminate their grace periods. Kansas, North Dakota, Ohio and Utah last year moved to require all or nearly all ballots to be in the hands of election officials on Election Day to count.

The states that continue to extend grace periods for ballots arriving after Election Day are Alaska, California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.

Some local election officials have urged the Supreme Court to uphold ballot grace periods. A decision that strikes down state laws’ grace periods would increase the administrative burdens on many election officials, said a collection of election officials and local governments in California, Massachusetts and Washington in an amicus brief.

“(Grace periods) enable administrators in large and small jurisdictions to do their essential work in a timely and reasonable manner,” the brief says.

If the Supreme Court requires that ballots must arrive on or before Election Day, Clement suggested election officials would have enough time to prepare ahead of November. He said such a decision wouldn’t violate the Purcell principle, a Supreme Court doctrine holding that major changes to election policy and practice shouldn’t be made just before an election because voters could get confused. 

The federal law at issue pertains to general elections, not primary elections, he noted — meaning the court’s decision would apply only to the November election.

“There’s plenty of time,” Clement said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.

A federal district court judge granted a motion for summary judgment in favor of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and a coalition of 21 states and the District of Columbia blocking a declaration from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that would pressure health care providers to stop providing care to transgender youth. 

In a press release from her office on Monday morning, Nessel said that Judge Mustafa Kasubhai, in federal district court in the District of Oregon, ruled that the administration cannot threaten to cut off hospitals and clinics from Medicare and Medicaid, for providing this type of care.

“Politicians should never drive medical decision-making,” Nessel said in the press release. “I am relieved that the Court has affirmed that the federal government cannot unlawfully interfere with doctors providing essential healthcare, including treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy. My office remains committed to protecting access to necessary care for young transgender individuals.”

The lawsuit, first filed in late December 2025, challenged a “declaration” posted to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. titled “Safety, Effectiveness, and Professional Standards of Care for Sex-Rejecting Procedures on Children and Adolescents,” which says that gender-affirming health care procedures “are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors, and therefore, fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care.”

The declaration continues to say that “the Secretary ‘may’ exclude individuals or entities from participation in any Federal health care program if the Secretary determines the individual or entity has furnished or caused to be furnished items or services to patients of a quality which fails to meet professionally recognized standards of health care.”

The lawsuit argues that the declaration “exceeds the Secretary’s authority and violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the Medicare and Medicaid statutes,” making it illegal.

In the states’ motion for summary judgment in early January, they argue that “Excluding children’s hospitals and providers (including pediatricians and endocrinologists) would devastate States’ provider networks, strain the capacity of the remaining providers, and harm the large number of residents in each State that depend on Medicare and Medicaid,” and because of its impact on states, could be blocked by a motion for summary judgment.

Wisconsin will officially join the 22 U.S. states that have sought permission from the federal government to ban Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients from purchasing candy and/or soda with their benefits.

Gov. Tony Evers signed AB 180, now 2025 Wisconsin Act 116, on Monday. In his remarks, Evers celebrated additional funds included in the bill that are meant to keep the state’s payment error rate low but ignored the candy and soda ban that the law will also implement.

Evers, who is serving out his final term in office, said in a statement that he was glad to sign the bill.

“In spite of the chaos at the federal level and the continued attacks on our FoodShare program, I am proud of the work my administration has done over the past year to ensure our kids, families, veterans and seniors across our state receive the resources they need to access basic food and groceries. As long as I am governor, I will continue to do everything in my power to protect Wisconsin families and taxpayers from the harmful decisions of the Trump Administration,” he said in the statement released by his office. 

The bill, coauthored by Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield), initially sought only to implement the ban, but additional funds were attached through an amendment after negotiations with Evers. 

Evers started seeking additional state funds for FoodShare last year after President Donald Trump signed a federal tax and spending law that made many changes to the SNAP program. Those changes included cutting the federal government’s coverage of administrative costs from 75% to 50%, eliminating funding for nutrition education programs and steepening penalties for states that have payment error rates over 6%. 

Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Republicans across the country, including in Wisconsin, have been pushing to ban soda and candy for SNAP recipients, saying it will help keep people healthy. Democrats have criticized the measure, saying it will stigmatize already disadvantaged children and families. Several Democrats, including Evers, provided support for the measure after lawmakers attached more than $70 million for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) to support administration of the program. 

The Wisconsin DHS had estimated that federal penalties could cost the state over $200 million a year. 

DHS Secretary Kirsten Johnson said in a statement that “ensuring the FoodShare program has the resources we need to meet new federal requirements is critical to maintaining access to essential nutrition benefits for Wisconsin families and saving Wisconsin taxpayer dollars.”

Wisconsin will now submit a waiver to the federal government to implement its candy and soda prohibition. The bill also includes more than $3 million so the state health department  can create and maintain an electronic platform to help with implementation of the prohibition.

Evers told reporters last week that he didn’t agree with barring people from buying certain foods but it was “one of those things called compromise.”

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A Democrat who originally hoped to be the party’s 1st Congressional District candidate in 2024 is making his second run for the party’s nomination this year.

Lorenzo Santos is leaving his job as Racine County’s emergency services director in April after declaring his candidacy at the end of February. While focusing on rising costs that average Wisconsinites are bearing, he also holds himself out as having a depth of experience and knowledge that will make him more effective if he is elected in November.

Santos’ entry this cycle follows announcements from a half-dozen Democratic hopefuls for the 1st CD — more than have run at one time for the seat in the last two decades.

But the ground is shifting under the feet of candidates — and voters — in the  district. Two hopefuls dropped out earlier this year, and a third hasn’t been heard from since the end of January. That leaves three active candidates in addition to Santos.

Santos said he decided to try again as he saw the fallout from Trump administration policies, ranging from tariffs that have sent prices soaring to federal immigration officers being turned loose on immigrant communities. He focuses his campaign message on the Republican 1st CD incumbent, U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, not on his Democratic rivals.

“I think they’re all great people,” Santos said of the rest of the Democratic field. But, he added, he believes his experience makes him best positioned to serve effectively in the House.

“We’re about to have a majority,” Santos said. “And it’s going to be important that that majority bring that knowledge to the forefront so that they can hold this president and this administration accountable and make sure that the worst instincts are not allowed to run amok like they have done.”

The 1st CD runs from Lake Michigan to Rock County. Until 1994 it had been reliably Democratic for about two decades. From 1998 to 2018, Republican Paul Ryan held the seat, rising to Speaker of the House and repeatedly winning by roughly a 2-to-1 margin.

Steil, a corporate lawyer and former Ryan aide, ran and won the seat in 2018 after Ryan retired. His opponent was ironworker Randy Bryce, who came closer to winning that year than previous Democrats had during Ryan’s 20 years in office.

In 2024, Santos was one of two Democrats in the 1st CD Democratic primary contest when Peter Barca entered the race. Santos and the other Democrat withdrew and endorsed Barca — a longtime Assembly leader and then Department of Revenue secretary. Barca also was the last Democrat to represent the 1st CD in Congress — for a single term three decades earlier.

Steil went on to win his fourth term. But Santos said he has no regrets about his decision to step aside for Barca in 2024.

Bryce is also running again this year. The other Democrats are Mitchell Berman, an emergency room nurse, and Miguel Aranda, a university administrator.

Gage Stills, a Racine activist, dropped out of the contest in January, citing family responsibilities. Enrique Casiano, a Janesville nurse, ended his campaign in March. A third declared candidate, Travis Beckius of Kenosha County, has not posted on his campaign’s Facebook page since January, and his campaign website has lapsed.

Santos served in the U.S. Navy, then worked as a manufacturing sales manager. He moved to Wisconsin after accepting a job reassignment to a 12-state region centered on the state. He went on to get a graduate degree in Homeland Security and switched careers to emergency management, working for local and county government.

Santos is focusing his congressional campaign on what has become a nearly universal theme for Democrats in 2026. He said he’s running  because “one of the biggest things we’re seeing right now is we’re having an affordability crisis.”

When the government shutdown in October and early November 2025 cut off food assistance benefits, known as SNAP, President Donald Trump “basically was fighting against people all across the country” who had relied on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Santos said. “That’s a microcosm of how this administration looks at people that are struggling and that need support.”

Trump’s tariffs on imports are further hurting the public, he said.

“He believes that it’s going to help us take in more money,” Santos said of Trump. “But the punchline there is that that’s coming from the end consumer. That’s coming from everyday consumers that are already struggling, and we’re taking more money out of their pockets.”

His message to 1st CD voters is that the Republican majority in Congress — including Steil — is failing to represent their interests, Santos said. That goes back to the tax- and spending-cut bill that Republicans passed and Trump signed in 2025 under the name of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” he said.

“We watched this big beautiful bill — which is really just a huge ugly lie. That is one of the biggest tax cuts in the nation’s history for the wealthy and corporations while we raise the cost of health care or eliminate it all together for everyday Americans,” Santos said.

“Bryan Steil voted for that. The president signed it into law,” Santos said, and congressional Republicans are “rubber-stamping” Trump.

 “They’re enabling someone who frankly does not actually understand government,” Santos said. “And we need a Congress that is going to be able to hold the line and fight for working families, especially when they’re struggling.”

He also criticized the war on Iran that the U.S. and Israel launched at the beginning of March, and criticized Republican congressional leaders for not asserting their authority over warfare.

“We need to ensure that we have a Congress that is clear-eyed about what this administration is doing,” Santos said. “They are sending us head-first into another protracted conflict with no meaningful objectives and no clear exit strategy.”

Steil, he added, “has not said anything to that effect because, frankly, he’s just there to rubber stamp anything the president wants to do.”

The Cook Political Report has rated the 1st CD as “Likely Republican” in its most recent summary, dated March 12, and Steil reported having nearly $5 million on hand as of late January.

Santos said he intends to overcome that advantage by persuading voters “that we’re here for them.”

“We will definitely be putting forward an operation that can compete with his fundraising,” Santos said. But, he added, “it’s not all about the fundraising. It’s also about having a candidate that actually stands up for their constituents.”

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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Treasury Department will take over the Department of Education’s responsibility for collecting on defaulted federal student loan debt, President Donald Trump’s administration announced Thursday.

It’s the first step in a multi-phase process that will end with Treasury taking on the entire federal student loan portfolio. It’s also the latest interagency agreement announced by the Education Department. 

A senior Department of Education official cited the agency’s “longstanding partnership” with Treasury in administering federal student aid programs and expressed confidence that the department was in a good position to increase its role. 

The administration continues to take sweeping steps to do away with the 46-year-old Education Department, as Trump seeks to return education “back to the states.” That effort comes despite much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurring at the state and local levels. 

In the first phase, Treasury will also “provide operational support” to the Education Department’s efforts to return borrowers to repayment, per the announcement. 

The Education Department’s student loan portfolio stands at roughly $1.7 trillion. The agency says fewer than 40% of borrowers are in repayment and nearly a quarter are in default. 

In later phases, Treasury is set to “work to provide operational support over non-defaulted Federal student loan debt, to the extent practicable and permitted by law, while also seeking opportunities to provide operational support to FSA’s other functions.” 

The senior Education Department official said that borrowers currently making payments “should see no change” and can expect to see “better customer service.” 

Department forges multiple agreements

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said that “by leveraging Treasury’s world-renowned expertise in finance and economic policy, we are confident that American students, borrowers, and taxpayers will finally have functioning programs after decades of mismanagement,” in a statement Thursday. 

The Education Department has announced nine other agreements with the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State that transfer several of its responsibilities to those agencies. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court in July 2025 temporarily greenlit mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Education Department ordered earlier that year. Those layoffs inflicted a heavy hit on Federal Student Aid, among other units at the agency.  

That plan was outlined in a March 2025 executive order that called on McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure” of her own department.

‘Irresponsible, reckless’ 

Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that “instead of helping student borrowers get the support they need, Secretary McMahon is focused on illegally hollowing out the department she leads and creating new, harmful bureaucracy while she’s at it,” in a statement Thursday.

“Despite all this administration’s talk about creating efficiency, the fact is these agreements simply create pointless new red tape — while threatening basic services and support that students depend on every day,” Murray added.

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, lambasted the announcement Thursday.

Gittleman described it as “an insult to the nearly 43 million Americans with federal student loan debt and to the taxpayers who depend on federal oversight to prevent waste, fraud and abuse.”

Gittleman noted that since McMahon took over, “the agency has fired or pushed out nearly half of Federal Student Aid’s workforce, leading to the Government Accountability Office warning that the majority of federal student loan servicers running the government’s $1.7 trillion student loan portfolio have been repeatedly breaking the law without staff oversight.”

The GAO report found that the staffing reductions affected the government’s ability to determine how well student loan servicers are doing their jobs.

Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director for the advocacy group Protect Borrowers, blasted the administration’s move as “irresponsible, reckless, and bad news for our most vulnerable student loan borrowers.”

She added that “in the midst of a growing affordability crisis where American families are already struggling to make ends meet, this risks driving millions of borrowers further into financial hardship.” 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate voted Sunday to advance Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to lead the Department of Homeland Security.

The 54-37 procedural vote sets up a final vote on Mullin’s confirmation as early as Monday. Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania voted to advance Mullin, after backing him in committee as well. Also voting with Republicans was Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.

If confirmed, Mullin will take over a department that has been shut down since Feb. 14 amid a stalemate over changes to immigration enforcement policy. 

Senate Democrats have declined to approve a funding bill for the department following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis during a months-long immigrant enforcement operation. 

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted, 8-7, to move Mullin’s nomination forward Thursday. Mullin did not gain the support of the fellow Republican who chairs the committee, Rand Paul of Kentucky, but still received a favorable vote from the committee because Fetterman joined all other Republicans in voting in Mullin’s favor.

Paul did not vote on Sunday.

During Mullin’s confirmation hearing, Paul questioned whether Mullin could lead the DHS given his “anger issues.” He also confronted Mullin about his comments calling Paul a “freaking snake” and expressing sympathy for a neighbor who assaulted Paul in a 2017 attack that broke six of his ribs and damaged a lung.

Outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem leaves the department, which has the primary responsibility of enforcing President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, with myriad problems, including a bottleneck in approving Federal Emergency Management Agency grants.

Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, also came under bipartisan criticism for describing the victims of the fatal Minneapolis shootings, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as domestic terrorists without any evidence. 

Mullin made a similar comment the day of Pretti’s shooting, but said during his confirmation hearing that he regretted the statement, though he stopped short of apologizing to Pretti’s family.

Since their peak less than three years ago, opioid overdose deaths dropped nearly by half as of October, according to a Stateline analysis. The drop comes as a shrinking fentanyl supply has made the drug weaker and less deadly and volunteer efforts get more people into treatment.

The weaker fentanyl tracks to a crackdown on materials used to make fentanyl in China around the time U.S. deaths started dropping in 2023. Some experts see it as a welcome, but possibly temporary, break for states in a scourge that boosted crime as people who are using the drugs sometimes fall into homelessness and steal to support fentanyl habits.

The numbers and rates of opioid overdose deaths fell for all races between 2023 and 2026, according to more detailed data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed by Stateline. That’s in contrast to an earlier trend from 2019 to 2023, when rates dropped only among white people and rose sharply among Black and Indigenous Americans.

Ohio had the nation’s largest decrease since mid-2023, when the nation’s opioid overdose deaths peaked. Ohio has seen fewer deaths but more risky behavior lately as fentanyl supplies dry up and people turn to substitutes tainted by animal tranquilizers.

Ohio is seeing a difference in the bottom line, said Erin Reed, director of RecoveryOhio, the state agency charged with reducing overdose deaths.

“We’re seeing things you would expect — like reductions in emergency department visits and reductions in Medicaid costs,” Reed said. “But we’re also seeing a positive impact on violent crime and recidivism, and I think this is really, really encouraging. At the end of the day, people want to be safe.”

Sarah Beckman, 36, stopped using illicit drugs 11 years ago when she learned she was pregnant with her first child. Now she works through Hamilton County’s Quick Response Team to help Ohio residents who use fentanyl.

When overdoses peaked a few years ago, the team started spending more time talking to people after overdoses.

“We saw overdoses were going up and up, and going out two days a week was not enough. We expanded it to full time,” Beckman said. “That window is so small. It has to be kind of a perfect storm for an individual to be, like, ‘OK, I’m ready.’”

Even if people aren’t ready for treatment, kindness can help build trust and prevent some of the thefts and arrests that lead to police involvement, as it did for her when she stole to get money for drugs and was charged with resisting arrest, she said.

“When you’re in the midst of addiction you need help with everything. For us it’s just meeting people where they are and saying, ‘Hey, are you hungry? Do you have enough clothes?’” Beckman said. “You’re showing consistency and empathy, and by doing that you can slowly move someone closer toward accepting overdose prevention materials or hopefully, eventually, treatment.”

Nationally there were 46,066 opioid overdose deaths in the year ending with October, barely more than half the peak of 86,075 in June 2023 and the lowest since April 2017. The numbers, often delayed because of the process of determining overdose deaths, were released this month based on information available March 1 by the federal National Vital Statistics System.

Deaths fell the most in Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia and Florida since June 2023, but increased in Alaska, Arizona and Nevada.

In Ohio, annual deaths fell 63% from about 4,300 in June 2023 to about 1,600 as of October 2025.

As in many other states, deaths in Ohio started falling before 2023, but then dropped more sharply — 34% in that year alone, said Reed.

Arizona and Nevada, however, saw deaths increase since the national peak in 2023. Arizona’s border crossings with Mexico are among the largest fentanyl smuggling points in the country, with fentanyl traffic dominated by the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. One Arizona crossing, the Port of Lukeville, was the site of the largest fentanyl seizure in U.S. Customs and Border Protection history: 4 million fentanyl pills hidden in a trailer brought to the border by a 20-year-old U.S. citizen in July 2024.

The state’s notorious summer heat exacerbates overdose deaths, according to recent research.

Plentiful supply from the border may help explain continued increases in Arizona, said Will Humble, executive director of the Arizona Public Health Association, a public health workers organization.

Political infighting over how to spend the state government’s share of $1.2 billion in opioid settlement money hasn’t helped, he said. The state attorney general, governor and legislature have gone to court over plans to use some of the money to balance the state budget.

“Many other states are way ahead of Arizona when it comes to distributing the state portion of the opioid settlement dollars,” Humble said. “It could be there are fewer interventions because the state dollars are locked up. There’s this dispute in Arizona over who gets to decide. Many other states are not having this jurisdictional issue.”

On the national stage, opioid overdose deaths fell across demographic groups. Even older Americans, whose overdose death numbers had surged earlier even as they fell for other groups, saw a 25% decline from 2023 to 2025, about half the national decrease, according to the Stateline analysis.

In a sign of a weaker fentanyl supply, the Drug Enforcement Administration said in December that 29% of the pills it seized in fiscal 2025 contained a lethal dose of fentanyl, down from 76% in fiscal 2023.

“These reductions in potency and purity correlate with a decline in synthetic opioid deaths,” the DEA said.

Keith Humphreys, a health policy professor at Stanford University who testified to the U.S. Senate in 2023 about increases in accidental overdose deaths among older adults, told Stateline that a “fentanyl supply shock” originating in China made fentanyl supplies weaker. That would include fentanyl-tainted cocaine, which had caused many deaths among older Black men, Humphreys said.

“This likely includes some long-term cocaine users who had the bad luck to get cocaine that had fentanyl in it,” Humphreys said in an interview. White women are more likely to overdose on prescription drugs in order to commit suicide, a trend that would be less likely to be affected by fentanyl supply, he added.

Humphreys and a team of other researchers, in a Science magazine report published in January, found a “drought” of fentanyl that could be traced on the social media platform Reddit.

Elevated mentions of a “drought” started in May 2023, nearly the same time as overdoses began to drop, their research found. Also, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported decreasing potency in seized fentanyl and fewer seizures, both indicating a shortage of supply.

“Drug dealers often adapt to supply shortages by lowering purity more than raising prices,” the report stated. The likely reason: China cracked down on source chemicals for making illicit fentanyl. Such “precursor” chemicals typically arrive from China and are processed in Mexico before being smuggled into the U.S. as illicit fentanyl.

“Actions by the government of China that resulted in greater scrutiny of production and export of precursor chemicals, including the removal of online advertisements and several marketplaces,” may have been what caused the drought in fentanyl and thus saved lives, the report concluded.

The DEA concluded that Mexican fentanyl producers were cutting potency because they were having a hard time finding source chemicals from China, the report noted. That makes it likely supply is the biggest reason for the drop in deaths, not enhanced U.S. border searches or other actions such as the Trump administration’s attacks on drug boats off the South American coast. Those boats are typically used to transport cocaine rather than fentanyl.

Data shows a similar drop in overdose deaths in Canada, where fentanyl supplies are usually produced from Chinese chemicals inside the country rather than smuggled in. That’s another reason to suspect that China’s crackdown affected both countries, despite differing policies and law enforcement strategies.

In their Science article, Humphreys and the other researchers noted that the recent decline in deaths offers the chance to prepare for future opioid-related problems.

“The incentive to restore the fentanyl trade will persist as long as there is demand for the drug,” the authors wrote. “It may be wise to use the current drought as an opportunity to ramp up the prevention and treatment programs that have evidence of decreasing demand.”

There have been some more recent upticks in death numbers.

Colorado saw an increase in synthetic opioid overdose deaths starting in late 2024, according to a Common Sense Institute report released this month. The institute is nonpartisan but has ties to the Republican Party, and concluded the state needs stiffer penalties for fentanyl possession and distribution, similar to Texas law. Opioid overdose deaths in Colorado are down 9% since the national peak in 2023, according to the Stateline analysis.

In Ohio, the recent trend among people who use fentanyl is to find pills spiked with an animal tranquilizer that causes severe addiction, said Beckman, of the Hamilton County Quick Response Team. Three recent clients survived overdoses but required emergency treatment, she said.

“We can educate people in the community: ‘Hey, your drugs are not what you thought they were, that’s why you’re experiencing all these weird side effects,’” Beckman said. “These substances are so severe that a traditional detox hasn’t been able to handle them.”

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Republican lawmakers in several states so far this year introduced bills that would legally treat abortion as homicide. 

The proposed laws could have implications not just for pregnancy termination but for certain fertility treatments or even some forms of contraception. Despite broad unpopularity, even within the mainstream anti-abortion movement, the measures continue to be introduced and debated in statehouses, concerning abortion-rights advocates. They fear the U.S. Supreme Court might someday consider the constitutionality of such a law, premised on giving legal personhood status to developing embryos. 

“Whether or not one of the laws, should it be enacted, makes it in front of the court, what it does is create an environment in which the court can seem as if it’s not being so extreme or stepping so far out of the mainstream,” said Madeline Gomez, managing senior policy counsel at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “The court often likes to look to how many states have laws like this.”

While abortion-rights advocates are sounding the alarm on these abortion-homicide bills they say would exacerbate the consequences of state bans, supporters have grown more frustrated with anti-abortion groups and Republicans for not being fully committed to abolishing abortion. They belong to the movement’s steadily growing pro-prosecution wing and continue to develop policy and messaging strategies to promote abortion-homicide legislation.

“We obviously disagree with the pro-life movement in large part — some of their organizations have stopped bills of abolishing abortion in places,” said Virginia pastor Jason Garwood protesting outside this year’s March for Life, holding a poster calling for a ban on in vitro fertilization. “We’re obviously opposed to Democrats, but we’re also opposed to Republicans who are compromised on the issue, who say one thing and do another, Donald Trump being one of the foremost. … I mean, Republicans have Congress, and we don’t have a bill to abolish abortion yet.”

Like Garwood, anti-abortion leader Abby Johnson believes a cultural change in the U.S. on abortion will not happen without the fear of murder charges. She is planning to launch a “Make Abortion Murder Again” college tour at major state schools this spring to help convince the next generation of adults to accept a reality where embryos and fetuses will have the same legal rights as the women and girls carrying them.

“Do I want to see women in jail? No, I don’t,” Johnson said. “Because I don’t want women to have abortions. It’s like, do I want to see people in jail for drinking and driving? I don’t, but I don’t want people to drink and drive.”

Most people don’t want to see women jailed for abortion. A recent Pew Research Center poll shows 60% public support for abortion in most or all cases, with surveyed conservatives and Republicans much more likely to support making abortion illegal in most or all cases. 

But University of Maryland School of Public Policy researcher Steven Kull found that when voters are confronted with the reality of criminalizing abortions in all cases, the political divide can shrink. Kull led a study of swing state voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Large bipartisan majorities in these states said they did not want abortion to be criminalized before fetal viability, including Republicans (between 57% and 70%, depending on the state). 

Nationally, among those who favored making abortion a crime, 5% said the doctor should be punished, 5% said the woman, and 10% said both.

A 2025 survey published by reproductive rights legal nonprofits Pregnancy Justice and the National Women’s Law Center found that 59% of likely voters said they opposed granting legal rights to embryos and fetuses after learning about the criminal implications of these policies. 

Prosecuted for pregnancy outcomes 

So far this year, Republican lawmakers in Illinois, Kentucky, South Dakota and Tennessee have introduced legislation that would treat abortion as homicide in law. Most efforts have already fizzled, including a controversial amendment to a Tennessee bill that would have penalized women who have abortions, including those who leave the state to end a dangerous pregnancy. 

Several legislatures saw abortion-homicide bills last year, including South Carolina, where support and the list of bill sponsors grew in 2026.

Some states already have some kind of personhood language on the books, while others, such as Arizona and Missouri, continue to consider it. And women have already been arrested and charged for crimes related to miscarriages and stillbirths, and for taking abortion pills.

In January a woman from Campton, Kentucky, where abortion is banned throughout pregnancy, was arrested and charged with fetal homicide after taking abortion pills and burying the remains near her home. Prosecutors dropped the homicide charges after a state attorney submitted a court filing saying the state’s fetal homicide laws cannot apply to pregnant women. She is still being charged with a misdemeanor related to concealing a birth.

Earlier this month in Georgia, where abortion is banned at around six weeks gestation, police charged a woman with attempted murder after she delivered a severely premature baby who died shortly after birth. As the Current has reported, one friend told a police officer the woman had taken the abortion-inducing drug misoprostol and a pain medication, but another friend contradicted that account to the news outlet and said she had only taken the pain medicine. 

The woman, a mother of two young boys, also faces a drug possession charge because the Georgia Legislature, like Louisiana’s and Texas’, has placed misoprostol on a list of “dangerous” medications, along with another abortion medication, mifepristone. Unlike other states, Georgia’s abortion ban does not explicitly exempt pregnant people from criminal charges.

As States Newsroom has reported, the most serious charges are often dropped in these types of cases, but the harms related to reputational damage and incarceration can be long-lasting.

“Postpartum people are being investigated and jailed while their mugshots are plastered across the news as they endure a deeply private and personal experience,” said Pregnancy Justice Senior Policy Counsel Kulsoom Ijaz in a statement. 

Ijaz co-authored a report earlier this year finding that between 2006 and 2024, states prosecuted at least 58 women after they lost pregnancies, including the handling of remains resulting from a miscarriage or stillbirth.

“Although many of these cases are eventually dropped, the damage can’t be undone,” Ijaz said.

Reproductive rights advocates say abortion-homicide bills would likely exacerbate issues created by existing state abortion bans, even for wanted pregnancies: When patients and providers fear legal prosecution, they might avoid necessary health care, including prenatal care and emergency procedures.

“By making abortion equivalent to murder or homicide, these bills are also trying to make it impossible for people to ask for help, impossible for people to offer that help,” Gomez said. “They’re meant to be isolating and stigmatizing and really saying this is the worst crime that we imagine in our code, and you should be scared to even talk about it or think about it or offer that help.”

The promise of penalty

The mainstream anti-abortion movement spent the last half-century helping to pass incremental, strategic federal and state laws that made abortion harder to access and more expensive, eventually ending federal abortion rights. But groups like Abolitionists Rising, End Abortion Now and the Foundation to Abolish Abortion are pushing for near-total bans, with only exceptions for spontaneous miscarriages and life-saving medical procedures. 

More mainstream leaders like Students for Life of America’s Kristan Hawkins say abortion-homicide laws would set the movement back in terms of cultural acceptance and are not the silver bullet their supporters believe they are. 

“Abortion won’t end overnight,” Hawkins wrote in a recent Substack article. “Abortions will tragically continue … just like murder and theft continue. But, at some point, there will be an investigation, arrest, and prosecution. … The story won’t be: ‘The Pro-Life Movement Wants Justice for the Preborn Baby.’ It will be: “The Pro-Life Movement Wants to Jail & Execute Women.’”

Advocates more in the middle of this growing divide include Abby Johnson, who once worked as a Planned Parenthood clinic director but has spent the past two decades encouraging abortion-clinic staff members around the country to quit their jobs with the help of her organization And Then There Were None. Her profile grew in 2019 with the release of the movie “Unplanned,” based on her autobiography about her experience working for Planned Parenthood. 

Its veracity was challenged by an investigative reporter, and Planned Parenthood says Johnson has a track record of spreading false information about the organization’s mission, and sexual and reproductive health care.  

Johnson has advocated in legislatures and courts, trying to eliminate abortion rights in her home state of Texas and throughout the U.S. Last month, she testified in an amicus brief arguing medication abortion is gruesome in the abortion pill case Louisiana v. FDA. 

She is the rare female leader among the male-dominated groups that advocate for harsh penalties for women who have abortions. Johnson said she values her friendship with Hawkins, especially after having lost other friends and partnerships in the movement as her anti-abortion stance has become more radical. But while she criticizes the so-called abortion abolitionists for lacking grace, she criticizes the mainstream movement for focusing on regulation and treating women like victims instead of trying to deter them with harsh penalties. 

“I don’t think we’re going to hug and kiss our way out of this baby murder,” Johnson told the audience of about 2,000 predominantly university and high school students at Students for Life of America’s annual National Pro-Life Summit in late January.

She said the March for Life declined to partner with her on her next movie after having sponsored “Unplanned.” She said they told her the new one was too graphic.

A spokesperson for March for Life did not confirm but shared a written statement: “March for Life deeply values our fellow movement leaders and the dedication they bring towards building a future where every life is welcomed and protected.”

Johnson said she hopes the movie and the college tour, which is still being planned, could make harsher abortion penalties more palatable across the country. Harsher penalties would have saved her from choices she regrets, she said. 

“If there would have been some sort of consequence for my action at the time, I wouldn’t have had an abortion,” Johnson said. “That would have changed the trajectory of my life.”

The earnings gap between men and women slightly widened last year, according to a new analysis published Thursday. 

The left-leaning Economic Policy Institute calculated women last year earned 18.6% less than men per hour on average. That’s up slightly from 2024, when the wage gap narrowed slightly to 18%. 

The wage analysis, which examines several federal data sets and independent research papers, controls for race, ethnicity, education, age, marital status and geography.

The findings were published ahead of Equal Pay Day on March 26, a symbolic date marking how far into 2026 women would have to work on top of their 2025 hours to match what men earned in 2025.

The new analysis found the wage gap is smallest among lower-wage workers, in part because minimum wages create a uniform wage floor. But women are paid less than men across all education levels — women with a graduate degree on average earn less than men with only a college degree, it said.

The analysis found the widest wage gap among Black and Hispanic women: Black women are paid only 68.3% of white men’s median wages. That’s a gap of $9.87 per hour — translating to roughly $20,500 lower annual earnings for a full-time worker. 

The institute says women earn less because of occupational differences, societal norms and the devaluation of women’s work. 

The organization suggests states enact pay transparency laws, mandate employers provide paid family and medical leave, raise the minimum wage, fund universal child care and remove laws that make it harder to join labor unions. But conservative lawmakers and private employers argue that many of those policies would lead to reduced workforces or higher prices.

“Closing pay gaps by gender and by race and ethnicity will require policy solutions on multiple fronts,” the report said. “Although attacks on gender and racial equity continue at the federal level, state lawmakers can and must take steps to address the gender wage gap.”

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

Gov. Tony Evers vetoed Republican bills Friday that would have limited state agencies’ rulemaking abilities, prohibited “rights of nature ordinances,” eliminated “race-based” programs within the University of Wisconsin system and allowed for telehealth care providers with licenses from out of state to practice in Wisconsin. 

Bills to limit rulemaking rejected

A set of bills that sought to limit agencies’ rulemaking abilities were also vetoed. Republican lawmakers introduced the legislation, called the “Red Tape Reset,” alongside the Wisconsin  Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative legal advocacy group. 

SB 275 would have required agency scope statements, which are necessary to start the rulemaking process, from being used for one proposed rule and would have set a six-month expiration period for the use of a scope statement for an emergency rule. 

SB 276 would have allowed those who have challenged the validity of an administrative rule to receive attorney fees and costs if a court declares a rule invalid. 

SB 277 would have implemented a seven years expiration date on all administrative rules unless a rule is adopted again through an agency process. 

SB 289 would have required agencies to make cuts to offset the cost associated with new regulations.

The bills were introduced in light of recent decisions by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that have limited lawmakers’ ability to oversee the rulemaking process, including by blocking rules indefinitely.

“The Legislature asks me, in effect, to undo this decision, enabling the Legislature to go right back to indefinitely obstructing the People’s Work and returning state government to inaction, delays and gridlock,” Evers said in his veto message for SB276. “I decline to do so.”

Rights of Nature prohibition

Evers also vetoed SB 420, which would have prohibited local governments from passing ordinances protecting the rights of nature. GOP lawmakers introduced the measure after Green Bay and Milwaukee pursued symbolic ordinances meant to protect the rights of bodies of water to be kept clean. It is a concept that originates from provisions in constitutions of some South American countries and Native American tribes such as Wisconsin’s Ho-Chunk Nation.

Evers said that he objected to lawmakers “continued efforts to restrict and preempt local control across our state” and GOP lawmakers’ failure to acknowledge that “climate change is affecting our Wisconsin way of life…” and efforts to “make it even harder for Wisconsin to respond to and mitigate the effects of our changing climate.”

“I have always believed the state should be a partner in — and not an obstacle to — the important work our local partners do every day,” Evers said. “ I trust our local governments and the Tribal Nations of Wisconsin to know best how to address environmental concerns within their communities and how to protect the natural resources that are vital to local health, economies and quality of life.”

UW free speech penalties

SB 498 would have barred UW campuses from being able to prohibit speakers from campus and prohibited the establishment of “free speech zones” among other actions. Republican lawmakers supportive of the bill said the goal was to protect free speech and academic expression.

Violations of the provisions in the bill could have resulted in financial penalties including a two-year tuition freeze for more than one penalty on a campus within a five-year period. 

The UW system already implements a policy that establishes its commitment to freedom of speech and expression along with some accountability measures including conduct and due process mechanisms to address violations.

This was the second iteration of the bill. The idea was first developed by Republicans after a controversial survey of UW campuses, which had an average response rate of 12.5%, found that a majority of students who responded said they were afraid to express views on certain issues in class.

Lawmakers introduced the proposal this legislative session just six days after the assassination of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, saying it was just one example of conservatives having their voices silenced on college campuses. 

Evers said in his veto message that he disagrees with lawmakers’ attempts to interfere in the day-to-day operation of the state’s higher education system. 

“Students, faculty and staff across university and technical college campuses in Wisconsin continue to discuss diverse ideas and perspectives, engage in thoughtful and difficult discussions with each other, grapple with complex issues and challenges, navigate conversations with people who have different experiences and backgrounds, and hear from other students, as well as faculty and staff, who have viewpoints from across the political spectrum,” Evers said. “I have no doubt this will continue to be the case on our campuses — as it should — so long as Republican lawmakers remain unable to inflict their radical and purely ideological agenda on higher education institutions across Wisconsin through legislative efforts like this.”

Evers also vetoed SB 652, which sought to eliminate “race-based” programs offered through the state’s higher education system, including the minority teacher loan program and minority undergraduate grants, by refocusing the programs to focus on “disadvantaged” students. The bill defined the term “disadvantaged” as applying to people who have “experienced any unfavorable economic, familial, geographic, physical or other personal hardship.”

Evers said he objected to lawmakers trying to create “new censorship rules that are designed to police language on our higher education campuses and ultimately prevent our state’s higher education institutions from acknowledging students come to our college campuses with unique and diverse backgrounds, experiences, and needs.”

The bill is part of GOP lawmakers’ attempts to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion efforts throughout the state.

Another bill related to the UW system, SB 532, was also vetoed. It would have prohibited UW institutions from charging students additional fees for exclusively online courses.

“If lawmakers sincerely cared about the soaring costs of higher education for students on Wisconsin campuses, they would have approved any number of the countless measures and investments I have proposed over my tenure to ensure the University of Wisconsin System can survive and thrive without having to frequently rely on raising tuition or increasing various fees for students and families,” Evers said.

GOP health care bill vetoed 

SB 214 would have allowed out-of-state health care providers to provide telehealth care services in Wisconsin if they possess a credential as a health care provider issued by another state. 

Lawmakers who supported the bill said it would help Wisconsin by increasing the number of health care providers able to help Wisconsinites. Evers said in his veto message, however, that he was concerned about allowing providers to practice in Wisconsin if they are licensed in another state that has lower standards.

“[The bill] fails to address the fundamental concern I have that out-of-state licensing requirements may not be as rigorous and thorough as the standards we have in Wisconsin,” Evers said. “I object to having out-of-state health care providers potentially bypass the high standards we have for instate licensed health care providers to protect patients and families.”

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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday announced an investigation into 13 states that require health insurance plans to cover abortion care. 

In a news release, the agency said the investigation is based on allegations that the states are coercing health care entities to provide coverage of abortion “contrary to conscience” and in violation of a federal law known as the Weldon Amendment. 

“OCR launches these investigations to address certain states’ alleged disregard of, or confusion about, compliance with the Weldon Amendment,” said Paula Stannard, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights in a statement. “Under the Weldon Amendment, health care entities, such as health insurance issuers and health plans, are protected from state discrimination for not paying for, or providing coverage of, abortion contrary to conscience. Period.”

But reproductive rights advocates say it is a tactic to make abortion harder to access in states that have fortified protections. 

“At a time when abortion care is getting harder and harder to access, we are deeply concerned that the few states that have taken steps to protect access are now under attack,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center, in a written statement. “These investigations also follow a familiar pattern from the administration: attacking states that the president views as political threats.”

Earlier this year, HHS’ Office for Civil Rights clarified the Trump administration would interpret the Weldon Amendment to allow employers and insurance plan sponsors to opt out of covering or paying for abortions because of their personal beliefs, contradicting the Biden administration’s interpretation. The agency sent a letter to top officials in Illinois in January, alleging violations of the Weldon Amendment and the Coats-Snowe Amendment. The latter prohibits governments from discriminating against health care entities as it relates to abortion training or participation.  

The agency did not specify the states being investigated, but the Washington Post reports that states with abortion-related coverage requirements are: California, Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, which all have Democratic governors except for Vermont. 

States defended their laws and criticized the probe as political, following the announcement.

“Donald Trump’s latest ‘investigation’ is nothing but a fishing expedition wasting taxpayers’ money,” said New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, the New Jersey Monitor reported. 

The Vermont Department of Financial Regulation said it is reviewing the federal government’s notice and working with other state agencies to prepare a response. 

“DFR does not believe that it has unlawfully coerced or discriminated against any insurer related to the coverage of abortions as outlined in the (federal government’s) request,” Commissioner Kaj Samsom told the VT Digger. “We stand firmly behind the law in question and the protections and choice it provides Vermonters.”

The Heritage Foundation floated the proposal to withhold Medicaid funding for states in violation of the Weldon Amendment in its controversial presidential administration blueprint Project 2025, which President Donald Trump disavowed during his campaign. 

Visits for contraception and cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood clinics have dropped by double-digits after Congress passed a bill cutting off Medicaid funding to certain reproductive health care providers last year, according to a new Democratic congressional report.

Between July 1 and the end of December, the report said emergency contraception distribution fell 10%, oral contraception distribution fell 27%, and IUD insertions fell 10%.

Republican members of the House and Senate passed a sweeping budget reconciliation bill in July that included a one-year provision barring clinics from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement if they offered abortion services and billed Medicaid more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023. The rule largely affected Planned Parenthood because of the high dollar amount, but some large independent clinics were also affected, such as Maine Family Planning and Health Imperatives in Massachusetts.

Since July, Planned Parenthood reported 20 clinics were forced to close because of the cuts. That was in addition to numerous clinics that had to close after the loss of Title X funds and other factors, bringing the total to 51 last year. The report said nearly 75% of those closures were in rural, medically underserved areas. About half were in the Midwest, including Indiana, Michigan and Ohio, affecting about 25,000 patients.

“Almost all, 48 of 51, that closed between January and December offered primary care, and nearly half were in primary care shortage areas,” the report said.

In recent months, the decline in services grew. The report also notes there were 20% fewer visits for birth control pills in November, and a drop of 36% for intrauterine devices in December, the steepest decline out of all services measured. Some clinics have reported dropping their IUD offerings because it is a costly birth control device to obtain that was normally covered by Medicaid, but it is also the most popular and preferred form of birth control.

The number of visits for breast cancer screening exams fell by 25% in December, according to the report, and testing for sexually transmitted infections fell 11% in November, both of which could result in delayed treatment that increases overall health care costs.

Twelve states have committed their own funding to help address the gap from federal Medicaid cuts, amounting to about $300 million, according to the report. That includes California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, and Washington. But advocates for Planned Parenthood say it still leaves a significant shortfall, because health centers nationwide provided an estimated $700 million in care annually to Medicaid patients before the law went into effect.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat who represents Oregon and a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said at Thursday’s press conference that he will vigorously oppose any reconciliation efforts to make the cuts permanent.

“We’re here to tell people who are opposing access to health care for women, no way. It’s not going to happen on my watch at the Finance Committee, period. Not going to happen,” Wyden said.

Federal law already prohibits providers from using federal dollars to pay for abortion care, with limited exceptions. Medicaid dollars paid for all of the other types of care that clinics provide, including contraception, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and screenings for breast and cervical cancer. Maine Family Planning also provided primary care services to about 1,000 patients statewide, but had to halt that program in October because of the cuts.

“The report makes clear that it actually costs money to see all these Planned Parenthood offices or providers close, and once they’re closed, it’s not as though you can just bring them back up,” said U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Democrat who represents Hawaii, at a news conference Thursday morning. “But once they’re closed, people still need this kind of care, and so they’re going to go to other providers, or they will go without — which results in undiagnosed illnesses and health care needs.”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and two of its affiliates sued to block the law, but the effort was unsuccessful. Republicans in Congress have signaled a goal of extending the cuts and making them permanent, as outlined in the Republican Study Committee’s framework for the next budget reconciliation bill, released in January.

A coalition of major anti-abortion advocacy organizations, including Live Action, Heritage Action, National Right to Life and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, signed a letter sent to House Republican leadership urging them to immediately begin the reconciliation process and make the cuts permanent.

“Since the enactment of the 2025 reconciliation law, multiple abortion businesses have already closed facilities or scaled back operations, demonstrating the measurable impact of the defunding provision,” the letter said.

In an unprecedented use of federal authority, President Donald Trump’s administration has invoked emergency powers to force a series of retiring coal plants to stay open.

Utilities, states and grid operators have said the aging plants are expensive, in bad repair and no longer needed to meet regional energy needs. But Trump’s efforts to save the dwindling coal industry have forced plant operators to continue investing in the facilities — a move that some consumer advocates fear could mean billions of dollars in added costs for customers in dozens of states.

Trump has long positioned himself as a champion of coal, making it a centerpiece of his “energy dominance” agenda. The emergency orders issued by his administration claim that the grid is at risk of energy shortfalls, and the coal plants are needed to ensure a reliable power supply.

But state officials in many places affected by the orders say that’s not true.

“Rather than allowing the realities on the ground, the regulators and the utilities to make rational decisions about how to meet energy needs, we have the Trump administration trying to do Soviet-style central planning to push an ideological agenda that will drive costs to customers,” said Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office.

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Energy has issued emergency orders to block the retirements of coal plants in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan and Washington state. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright has claimed that the power demands in various regions require the plants to stay operational.

Observers expect similar orders to be issued for most, if not all, of the dozens of coal-fired units slated for retirement during the remainder of Trump’s term. Utilities subject to the orders have said they will increase costs for ratepayers, and argue those costs should be borne by the multistate region to which they provide power, rather than just their local customers.

Despite their costs, three of the five plants being blocked from retirement haven’t produced electricity since the emergency orders went into effect, either because they need extensive repairs or because power demands have been met without them.

Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act gives the secretary broad authority to take temporary control of the U.S. electricity system during emergency situations. Until now, that authority had only been invoked during wartime or natural disasters. All of the Trump administration’s orders were issued before the war with Iran. Consumer advocates say Trump’s use of the act to overturn long-planned facility retirements is unprecedented, and likely illegal.

State officials, utilities and environmental groups have challenged all of the orders.

While such emergency orders can be issued only for 90-day periods, Wright has repeatedly renewed the orders before they expire.

The Department of Energy did not respond to a Stateline interview request.

Keeping coal online

Last May, Wright issued the first emergency order to prevent the shutdown of the J.H. Campbell Generating Plant in Michigan, just days before it was scheduled to retire. The plant has remained open since then, accruing $135 million in net costs through December. Consumers Energy, the utility operating the plant, is seeking to charge ratepayers in 11 states to recoup those costs.

Michigan Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel has appealed the order, while a coalition of environmental groups has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn it, arguing that the feds have failed to demonstrate a true emergency. That case is currently in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals awaiting oral arguments, which may take place in May.

State leaders in Colorado have appealed an order to keep a plant there open, while Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, has sued the federal agency. Environmental groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the order in Indiana. Energy analysts say the Michigan case will likely be resolved first, and is expected to have major implications for the emergency orders elsewhere.

Douglas Jester, a former state energy official in Michigan, noted that Consumers Energy has had to pay extra to bring back staff, establish new delivery contracts for coal and catch up on maintenance. Jester now serves as managing partner at 5 Lakes Energy, a clean energy consulting group.

In his emergency order, Wright said the plant was needed to ensure energy reliability and reduce the risk of blackouts. His agency, in a statement issued last month, said the coal plants kept open by the emergency orders helped keep the power system online during Winter Storm Fern.

Coal industry leaders have made a similar argument, saying that growing energy demands require more baseload power, as opposed to intermittent renewables such as wind and solar.

The emergency orders are “very much needed,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group, “so that we can continue to have the energy just for our day-to-day lives,” said Emily Arthun, CEO of the American Coal Council, an industry trade group. “Coal plants, baseload plants, are critical to the well-being of our grid. Coal is needed at critical moments for energy.”

Some labor unions have also praised the orders as beneficial to their workforce.

But state leaders and consumer advocates argue that utilities and regulators have already completed detailed plans to replace the power the aging coal plants provided, through a mix of renewables, natural gas plants and battery storage.

“If you were to believe the Department of Energy, you would believe that more than half the country is experiencing an emergency around the clock,” said Michael Lenoff, senior attorney at Earthjustice, an environmental group that is suing the Trump administration to overturn the orders. “It costs a lot of money to make sure that an old, decrepit coal plant is available to operate.”

Lenoff and other environmental advocates have said the coal plants ran during the winter storm because the government forced them to, not because the grid needed them to meet power demands.

Even as his administration has declared an energy shortage emergency, Trump has tried to block new renewable projects from being built, including several offshore wind farms that East Coast states are relying on to meet their power demands.

Meanwhile, the administration has also authorized power generators to export electricity to Mexico and Canada, which may happen only when regulators have determined the U.S. has sufficient energy supply to meet its own needs.

“How can you authorize the export of energy to Canada from a Western market that you just declared is in an emergency status with shortages?” said Tyson Slocum, energy program director at Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy nonprofit. “It’s complete incoherence.”

Aging plants

Three of the five plants being blocked from retirement have yet to even produce electricity since the emergency orders went into effect.

The plant in Colorado suffered a failure in a steam valve that was not repaired because it was on the verge of retiring. The federal order has forced the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association to invest in repairing the plant, and the costs to keep the plant operational could reach $80 million a year even if it never produces power, said Toor, with the Colorado Energy Office.

“It’s very unlikely to actually operate even with this order,” he said.

Tri-State and the other utilities that own the plant have requested a rehearing of the emergency order, saying that keeping the plant open will be costly for their ratepayers.

In Indiana, one of the two plants targeted by the feds has suffered mechanical failures that would require extensive repairs.

“(The order) doesn’t even make sense because it’s not even really open,” said Ben Inskeep, program director at the Citizens Action Coalition, an Indiana-based consumer advocacy group. “You don’t want to throw good money after a plant you’re about to retire.”

Unlike the Democratic-led states subject to the other orders, Indiana’s leaders have welcomed the federal intervention. Republican Gov. Mike Braun issued his own executive order soon after the Department of Energy announcement directing state officials to evaluate ways to extend the life of the state’s remaining coal plants.

Meanwhile, the TransAlta Centralia coal plant in Washington state, while remaining in operational mode, has not supplied power to the grid since January, as the state’s energy needs have been met by more affordable sources elsewhere.

Democratic state Sen. Marko Liias sponsored a bill, signed into law earlier this month, that rolls back tax and regulatory exemptions that were granted to TransAlta under a 2011 agreement to gradually phase out the plant. The compliance burden will make it economically infeasible for the plant to operate again, he said.

“It’s crystal clear to the market that we’re not going backwards, we’re slamming the door and nailing it shut,” Liias said.

Consumer costs

While some states have pushed to close coal plants due to climate goals and pollution concerns, market forces have largely driven the coal industry’s decline. According to a 2025 analysis by the financial advisory firm Lazard, electricity from coal-fired power plants costs an average of $122 per megawatt-hour. That same amount of power can be produced for $78 from natural gas plants, $61 from onshore wind and $58 from utility-scale solar.

Some energy analysts say Trump’s efforts to keep fossil fuel-powered plants open could become very costly to ratepayers. A report published by Grid Strategies LLC, a consulting firm, found that as many as 90 aging plants could be subject to similar emergency orders during the remainder of Trump’s term. The analysis found that keeping those plants open could cost ratepayers anywhere from $3 billion to $6 billion a year.

“What the Department of Energy is doing is picking losers, the uneconomical plants that the utilities, the regulators, everybody involved agreed need to retire and be replaced with something cheaper and more efficient,” said Michael Goggin, who authored the report, which was commissioned on behalf of Earthjustice and other environmental groups.

Meanwhile, some consumer advocates say the orders have created chaos for utilities and energy planners. The operators of plants scheduled for retirement in the coming years no longer know if it’s safe to cancel their coal contracts, transition their workforce or defer maintenance on their facilities. And financiers may be wary of investing in new, cheaper energy projects that could be sidelined by orders to keep coal online.

“The administration has made clear that they’re not going to allow a coal-fired power plant to retire, regardless of whether or not it’s absurdly expensive to operate, whether it’s contaminating soil, air and water in that community, they literally don’t care,” said Slocum, of Public Citizen.

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

ICE raids have been taking place at an unprecedented scale in big cities all over, including in the South. Texas and Louisiana house more ICE detainees than any other state. 

Mississippi also plays a special part in immigration enforcement. 

Over the next few months, States Newsroom will partner with Mississippi Today and The New York Times to report on and publish stories about one of the largest ICE detention centers in the nation – the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Miss.

Although Mississippi has one of the smallest immigrant populations, Adams Correctional Center is the second largest ICE detention facility in the country, housing more than 2,000 detainees. 

Little is known about the facility, which is located in a remote county of about 30,000 people in southwestern Mississippi.

The federal government limits access to ICE detention centers. They aren’t inspected as often as state prisons. Only immediate family members and attorneys are allowed to visit detainees. And because the Adams County facilityis owned and run by a private, for-profit company, CoreCivic, it isn’t covered by public records laws, and taxpayers don’t get to see what happens inside.

Reporting from Mississippi Today and The New York Times will inform you about the facility – from what it’s like inside, to how it impacts the local economy. 

If you know something about the detention center, if you know someone who works there or is detained there, or want us to find out something about it for readers, please contact Mukta Joshi, who is reporting on the facility for Mississippi Today and The New York Times.

Your name or any part of your submission will not be used without contacting you first. Contact Mukta through this form, or at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com, or anonymously through Signal @mmj.2178.