Green Bay Correctional Institution. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

When a prison built in the 1800s is still housing people in 2025 with the same aging infrastructure, we have to be honest, the system is broken. Wisconsin’s prisons have been in crisis for years, and for the first time in a long time, we’re seeing a small but important step toward change. 

Gov. Tony Evers recently received bipartisan approval to overhaul Wisconsin’s aging prison system and close the outdated Green Bay and Waupun prisons. The overhaul strategy includes a $15 million project investment and outlines a four-year process to reduce the number of beds, modernize facilities, and shift the focus toward rehabilitation and safety. That’s progress, but 2029 is too far away, and Evers’ plan lacks the kind of decarceration measures needed to actually reduce the prison population and make Wisconsin safer. 

The reality inside our prisons doesn’t have four years to wait. People are dying. Staff are exhausted. Families are breaking under the weight of a system that punishes more than it prepares people to come home. Every delay costs lives and wastes taxpayer dollars that could be used to help people rebuild instead of being locked away. 

I know this firsthand because I lived it. I spent part of my incarceration inside Green Bay Correctional Facility, one of the oldest and most overcrowded prisons in Wisconsin. The facility was built in 1898 with a design capacity of about 17,000 people statewide, yet Wisconsin’s prison population has hovered above 22,000 for years. That means thousands of people crammed into cells meant for far fewer. Walking those halls, you can feel the age of the place, the air thick with humidity, the bitter cold in winter, and the lack of ventilation that makes it hard to breathe. The walls are cracking, the infrastructure is failing, and the environment itself strips people of their dignity. 

Those conditions don’t make anyone safer. They don’t prepare people for reentry. They create desperation, both for both the incarcerated and the staff working inside. The best way to ensure a safer Wisconsin is to get the people who are ready to reenter society out of our prisons and into reentry. Overcrowded and understaffed prisons overtax our correctional officers and make prisons unsafe for officers and incarcerated people. In addition, understaffing makes it harder to ensure that everyone gets the programming that they need. The Federal First Step Act and CARES Act Home Confinement have both proved that bringing the right people back early can result in lower recidivism, better public safety and safer and more effective prisons. 

I was one of the many people affected by Wisconsin’s Truth in Sentencing law, which eliminated parole and early release. That law has kept countless people behind bars longer than necessary, removing the hope and incentive that parole once provided.

If Wisconsin wants to lead on justice reform, this can’t just be a construction project. Real reform means reducing the number of people behind bars, ending excessive revocations, expanding reentry programs, and investing in housing, treatment, and mental health care. It means giving people a path forward, not just warehousing. 

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Wisconsin imprisons about 663 people per 100,000 residents, far more than Minnesota (173) or Illinois (341). Despite years of promises to reform, the state’s prison population has remained between 21,000 and 23,000 people for nearly two decades. 

Nearly 40% of new admissions each year come from revocations, not new crimes, meaning thousands are sent back to prison for breaking supervision rules like missing curfew, losing housing, or failing a drug test. That’s roughly 4,000 to 5,000 people every year, based on Department of Corrections data. I lead a statewide Smart Justice campaign focused on ending these excessive revocations, because it’s one of the biggest drivers of mass incarceration in Wisconsin. 

Add to that the worst racial disparity in the country. Black residents are imprisoned at 11 times the rate of white residents, according to the Sentencing Project, and it’s clear that our problem isn’t just old buildings. It’s old thinking. Reducing prison beds without changing these policies is like draining a bathtub while leaving the faucet running. Until we reform supervision, expand early release and invest in reentry and community support, the system will keep refilling itself. 

Closing prisons built in the 1800s is a step in the right direction, but it has to come with urgency and intention. We can’t keep reacting; we have to start transforming. The same energy that went into passing this plan must go into implementing it quickly and with input from the people most affected by it, those who have lived behind those walls, their families and the communities most affected by incarceration. 

As we head into a new election season, this issue must be front and center for every candidate running for governor. Wisconsin deserves leaders who will move us forward, not just talk about reform, but act on it. The next administration should be judged on whether it has the courage to close outdated prisons, expand second chances, and build a system rooted in rehabilitation, dignity, and justice. 

Gov. Evers was right when he said, “We’ve got to get this damned thing done.” But getting it done means more than moving money; it means moving with purpose. Justice reform isn’t about buildings; it’s about people. 

Wisconsin’s motto is Forward. It’s time for our justice system and our next governor to finally live up to that.

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Surveillance cameras monitor traffic on a clear day | Getty Images Creative

The Greenfield Police Department has been engulfed in controversy since its chief was charged with felony misconduct in public office earlier this month. Chief Jay Johnson is accused of having a pole camera, owned and operated by the police department, installed at his Racine County home in late 2024. A 15-page criminal complaint states that Johnson put up the camera for personal use while he was in the process of divorcing his wife. 

The complaint also states that Johnson’s alleged personal use of the camera  violated the wishes and advice of Greenfield’s mayor, city attorney and members of the police department. In July, special agents from the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) attended a meeting held at Greenfield City Hall to discuss a months-long investigation with city officials. 

According to the complaint, the special agents “were advised that during an internal investigation of Chief Johnson, which was conducted earlier in 2025, investigators uncovered actions they deemed as possibly criminal in nature. Outside agencies were later contacted to investigate potentially criminal violations committed by Chief Johnson.” 

Interviews with Greenfield’s human resources director, mayor, city attorney and police department staff turned up statements  that Johnson wanted to use a tax-payer funded, police department-owned pole camera at his home in Wind Lake because of  “safety concerns stemming from his divorce,” according to the complaint. Mayor Michael Neitzke said Johnson claimed to have been attempting to get a retraining order against his wife “in part because she was dating a felon,” the complaint states. Johnson claimed to have experienced harassment including a white rose being left in his driveway. The chief’s restraining order was denied, the complaint states, after which he asked the mayor about installing a pole camera. “Mayor Neitzke advised agents that he did not understand the type of camera Chief Johnson was talking about and believed it was equivalent to a trail camera or Verizon-type camera,” the complaint states. 

The mayor gave Johnson the go-ahead to install the camera, but later began to reconsider the decision. Neitzke contacted city attorney Christopher Geary, who said Johnson shouldn’t install the camera “citing legal issues with its use for personal reasons.” Geary then contacted Johnson stating that “his divorce is not related to his job,” the criminal complaint states. Johnson’s reaction was reputedly bombastic, “‘I think it’s f-ing ludicrous,’ was the exact quote,” Geary wrote in an email to the mayor. 

Johnson tried to argue that what he wanted was no different from the security former Gov. Scott Walker received during the Act 10 protests, and that a prior Greenfield police chief also had home security. “I tried to explain the difference is that the threats in those situations stemmed from the person’s public employment and/or public policy positions, whereas this is, as I understand it, an entirely personal situation,” Geary wrote in the same email, which is featured in the criminal complaint. “He didn’t appreciate the distinction.” 

The mayor said he thought that was where the issue ended, and that Johnson hadn’t installed the camera. In December 2024, however, Greenfield Police Department  Captain Chuck Fletcher was asked by Johnson about installing the pole cameras, according to the complaint. Fletcher told the DCI special agents that he had known Johnson his entire career and “considers him a close friend.” Fletcher stated that he also knew Johnson’s wife, and didn’t consider her to be an angry or violent person. Johnson allegedly told Fletcher that he wanted to keep the camera installation “low key” and discrete. Fletcher then assigned Detective Scott Simons to handle the installation, and told investigators that he did not know that the city attorney had advised against it. 

The complaint states that Fletcher communicated the chief’s desire to be “low key” and quick about things to Simons. The detective said he was asked to “change the password for logging onto the camera, as all pole cameras have a general username and password,” according to the complaint. “The camera that was to be installed at the Defendant’s residence would have a unique username and password.” Although Greenfield’s pole cameras are owned and monitored by the police department, they are installed by We Energies technicians. A camera was taken down “from a closed drug investigation,” according to the complaint. Simons told another detective that it was “being installed in another county for another investigation.” The camera was eventually installed across the street from the chief’s home. 

Some time later, Greenfield Police Association president and detective Aaron Busche “found out by accident” about the chief’s personal camera. Busche keeps track of the department’s four pole cameras, which are listed on a whiteboard by number and location. Busche realized that the camera at Johnson’s home had no documented location. “Detective Busche was told by Detective Scott Simons that the camera was loaned to an outside agency for their investigation,” the complaint states. “Detective Busche was not told what agency the camera was loaned to.”

 

Criminal Complaint_1 - Johnson, Jay A_ 2025CF005150_ Johnson, Jay A._28099053_1

 

In the spring of 2025, Busche heard that there was video feed from the mystery camera, but then realized he couldn’t log in because the password had been changed. Busche then used a “backdoor process” to access the camera feed, and realized it was the chief’s home. During a meeting with acting chief Eric Lindstrom, Simons was asked to take the camera down. 

Johnson is accused of violating Greenfield PD’s standards of conduct by using department equipment for personal gain, and omitting or even falsifying information given to staff who carried out the camera’s installation. The criminal complaint also accuses Johnson of threatening behavior towards law enforcement. In late August, it states, a person attempting to disguise their voice called the police department saying, “Hello you f-ing pigs, revenge is sweet!” The dispatcher and Busche both recognized the voice as Johnson’s. 

Acting Chief Lindstrom had also filed a complaint against Johnson with the Oak Creek Police Department, accusing Johnson of threats and harassment over Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. One email copy says: “He’s on board, hold on tight!!!! Idiot and the ice princess will pay dearly. JJ DOJ is the man! Boom. God is good.” Another message says: “KL is on board. Friday meet with us. Ughhh. So unnecessary but he’s all in for me rn. HR and MN GOING DOWN!!!! EL is dirty so stay tuned. TY owe you!!!!” The criminal complaint states that “EL” is a reference to Eric Lindstrom who, like Busche, has also served on the Milwaukee-area team which investigates civilian deaths by police. 

The controversy raises questions about oversight of police surveillance technology, accountability for officers, and how problematic police officers climb the ranks. Community members in Milwaukee County have pushed for Community Control Over Police Surveillance (CCOPS) local ordinances, which would provide more oversight and control of police surveillance tools.

Fox6 reported that a string of disciplinary issues going back to 2013 followed Chief Johnson. The news outlet obtained documents which described Johnson, who was a captain at the time, as having issues with “failing to own decisions and initiatives by administrative staff” or “engaging in inappropriate conversations with officers.” Johnson had been accused of sharing management-level discussions or information related to subordinates, and planning a “booze cruise” and other organized parties. 

A 2015 memo stated that “he can’t be allowed to supervise,” and in 2017 he signed a settlement to become Greenfield’s emergency management coordinator with the fire department, before becoming chief. Asked by Fox6 how Johnson became chief, Mayor Neitske redirected blame to the city’s Police and Fire Commission.

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The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court has extended through Thursday a pause on lower courts’ orders that the Trump administration authorize a full month of benefits for a food assistance program that 1 in 8 Americans use to buy groceries.

A brief, unsigned order published Tuesday evening also said the full court would decide on the administration’s request to block court orders that the U.S. Department of Agriculture release full November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

The case was presented to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who said she would have dismissed the case and denied the request for an administrative stay. Jackson was appointed to the high court by President Joe Biden.

The order adds another wrinkle to a case that was already the object of a weekslong tug-of-war over how the program should operate during the government shutdown.

The shutdown could end before the stay expires. The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday to reopen the government, and the House is expected to pass it Wednesday. President Donald Trump has said he supports the measure and will likely sign it before the end of the day Thursday.

Trump and administration officials have maintained they were not authorized to release November SNAP benefits during the shutdown.

A Rhode Island federal judge ordered the USDA on Thursday to release full benefits for November. The department sent states a memo authorizing those payments Friday morning, then appealed to the Supreme Court on Friday evening to have the district court’s order overturned.

At the same time, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s order.

In the face of often contradicting administrative guidance and court orders, some states began processing full benefits for November, while others have yet to release them.

Workers and volunteers help distribute food boxes to those in need at a large-scale drive-through food distribution, in response to the federal government shutdown and SNAP/CalFresh food benefits delays, on Nov. 5, 2025 in City of Industry, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Payments for November for the nation’s main food assistance program have been delayed during the government shutdown, amid a confusing mess of contradicting guidance from the Trump administration and a flurry of court orders in two cases at every level of the federal judiciary.

The off-and-on freeze of benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, that serves about 42 million people, was among the most consequential effects of the record-setting shutdown. Roughly 1 in 8 Americans use SNAP to help buy groceries.

Lawmakers, advocates and judges all repeatedly called for urgency to restore the program to keep Americans from going hungry. Yet the dizzying back-and-forth continued, often leaving both states and families at a loss.

While the shutdown is likely to end this week, the legal fight continues over the responsibilities of the federal government, which funds SNAP, and the states that administer the program.

Here’s a timeline of events over 42 days since Congress failed to appropriate new funding for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1:

Sept. 30, 2025: On the brink of the current shutdown, the Trump U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a plan for how its various programs will be affected. It says SNAP benefits will continue to flow from a $6 billion contingency fund during a shutdown.

“Congressional intent is evident that SNAP’s operations should continue since the program has been provided with multi-year contingency funds,” the document reads in part.

States Newsroom discloses the document is later removed from USDA’s website.

Oct. 1: Congress fails to appropriate any money for discretionary government programs. The federal government shuts down. USDA pays October SNAP benefits.

Oct. 10: USDA sends a letter to states telling them not to pay SNAP benefits for November, a reversal from its Sept. 30 plan.

Oct. 24: USDA tells states in a memo that it will not pay November SNAP benefits, even though it held billions in a contingency fund.  

Oct. 28: Democratic states sue USDA in Massachusetts federal court, seeking to force the department to pay for November benefits.

Oct. 30: Nonprofits, religious groups and municipal governments bring a similar suit in Rhode Island federal court. 

Oct. 31: In an initial hearing in the Rhode Island case, U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. says he is ordering USDA to continue SNAP benefits in November.

In the Massachusetts case, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani rules that withholding November benefits is illegal, but gives the administration until Nov. 3 to respond.

Nov. 1: McConnell issues a written ruling laying out two options for USDA: pay full benefits for November by Nov. 3 or partial benefits by Nov. 5.

Some SNAP recipients begin to miss benefit payments. The program administers benefits on a rolling basis throughout each month, so more people are affected every day the department is not authorizing benefits.

Nov. 3: In a filing in McConnell’s court, USDA says it will pay about half of November benefits. But it says the administrative difficulties of calculating partial benefits could take weeks or even months.

Nov. 4, just after 11 a.m. Eastern: President Donald Trump posts to Truth Social that SNAP benefits will not be paid until Democrats agree to reopen the government. At the White House press briefing in the afternoon, press secretary Karoline Leavitt walks back that post and says Trump was referring to future benefits.

Nov. 5, late: In a memo to states, USDA corrects a table for the amount of partial benefits households should receive based on income, size of household and other factors. USDA says the table fulfills its duty under McConnell’s Nov. 1 order to pay partial benefits by this date. 

Nov. 6: McConnell orders the USDA to pay full November benefits by the next day. His earlier order was clear that partial benefits must be paid by Nov. 5, he said. Because recipients did not receive their benefits, the government missed that deadline, and it must pay for the whole month, he says. He also notes Trump’s Truth Social post appeared to defy the order.

States, including Wisconsin, Michigan and Oregon, begin to authorize full November benefits. 

Nov. 7, 8:53 a.m. Eastern: The department appeals McConnell’s order the day before to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Nov. 7, midday: Despite its morning appeal, the USDA issues guidance to states greenlighting full November benefits. A USDA spokesperson says the department must comply with McConnell’s order.

Consistent with the USDA guidance, more states begin to authorize full November benefits.

Nov. 7, evening: The Trump administration asks the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an emergency stay of the 1st Circuit and district court orders that it provide full November benefits that day.

Nov. 7, just before 10 p.m. Eastern: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson orders an administrative stay while the 1st Circuit appeal is pending. The order temporarily halts the lower courts’ order to provide benefits.

Nov. 8, late: Following the Supreme Court stay, USDA sends states a letter demanding they “immediately undo” any moves to provide full SNAP benefits. The letter threatens to cancel other federal funding for states that don’t comply. 

Nov. 9, late night: A 1st Circuit panel affirms McConnell’s order. The trial judge was within his right to order USDA pay full November benefits, the three-judge panel says.

Nov. 10: The Trump administration continues its Supreme Court appeal, even as the shutdown nears its end and the 1st Circuit has ruled on the appeal.

Talwani issues a restraining order on the Nov. 8 letter asking states to “undo” November benefit payments. At a hearing, she says USDA has created the confusion and that states were acting in line with court orders and the department’s own guidance.

The U.S. Senate approves a bill to reopen the government and fund SNAP, sending the measure to the House. 

Later this week: The U.S. House is expected to clear the Senate bill; Trump is expected to sign it. The Supreme Court could rule on the administration’s request to freeze the lower court orders. 

It is not clear when full November benefits will flow to households.

Text by Jacob Fischler/timeline graphic by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom.

Jeff Garland, right, gives a tour of Papa G’s Organic Hemp Farm in Crawford County, Indiana, on June 23, 2022. Jeff and his son started the farm in 2020.  At left is Lee Schnell of the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.  (NRCS photo by Brandon O’Connor)

WASHINGTON — Kentucky’s two U.S. senators sparred this week over the future of the country’s hemp industry — one arguing that a provision attached to the package that will reopen the government will close a problematic loophole and the other contending the language will regulate the industry “to death.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell ultimately prevailed and was able to keep the section in the Agriculture appropriations bill cracking down on hemp that Sen. Rand Paul tried to remove during floor debate. Both are Republicans.

The appropriations bill is riding along with a stopgap spending bill that will end the government shutdown and is expected to be voted on by the House as soon as Wednesday. The hemp measure has raised alarm in farm states benefiting from a robust hemp growing industry.

Hemp plants have 0.3% or less of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, while cannabis or marijuana plants have higher concentrations of that substance, which is what gives users the “high or stoned” feeling. 

A summary of the bill put together by Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins’ staff says the new language would prevent “the unregulated sale of intoxicating hemp-based or hemp-derived products, including Delta-8, from being sold online, in gas stations, and corner stores, while preserving non-intoxicating CBD and industrial hemp products.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a warning page on its website cautioning “that delta-8 THC products have not been evaluated or approved by the FDA for safe use in any context.”

Farm Bill origins

McConnell explained he is targeting hemp because its uses have expanded beyond what was intended. 

“I led the effort to legalize industrial hemp through the 2014 pilot program and the 2018 Farm Bill,” McConnell said. “Unfortunately, companies have exploited a loophole in the 2018 legislation by taking legal amounts of THC from hemp and turning it into intoxicating substances, and then marketing it to children in candy-like packaging and selling it in easily accessible places, like gas stations and convenience stores all across our country.”

McConnell said the new provision, which won’t take effect until a year after the bill becomes law, would “keep these dangerous products out of the hands of children while preserving the hemp industry for farmers.”

Paul and Oregon Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley urged their colleagues to remove that McConnell provision from the larger spending package, but were unsuccessful. 

“This is the most thoughtless, ignorant proposal to an industry that I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Paul said. 

The new language would change the definition of what makes a hemp plant legal, a move Paul said would mean “every plant in the country will have to be destroyed.” 

“This bill’s per-serving THC content limit would make illegal any hemp product that contains more than point four milligrams,” Paul said. “That would be nearly 100% of the existing market. That amounts to an effective ban, because the limit is so low that the products intended to manage pain or anxiety will lose their effect.”

State laws said to be nullified

The legislation, Paul added, will negatively impact the nearly two dozen states that have set higher limits on hemp production.

“Currently, Maine limits THC to three milligrams per serving. That will be overruled. My home state limits THC to five milligrams in beverages; that will be overruled. Minnesota, Utah, Louisiana also have five milligrams per serving. Alabama and Georgia have 10 milligrams. Tennessee has 15 milligrams,” Paul said. “The bill before us nullifies all these state laws.”

Merkley said the new provision in the larger spending package would eliminate the hemp industry, which Congress took steps to establish more than a decade ago.

“I support my other colleague from Kentucky who doesn’t want intoxicated products produced from hemp,” Merkley said. “But the definition that is in this bill does far more than that, and it has to be fixed. So for now, it needs to be stripped out.”

The Senate voted 76-24 to table, or set aside, Paul’s amendment after McConnell moved to block it from being taken up directly. 

The Agriculture funding bill is one of three full-year government spending bills included in the stopgap spending package that will end the government shutdown once the House approves the measure later this week and President Donald Trump signs the bill. 

Trade group warns of hundreds of thousands of jobs affected

Hemp Industry & Farmers of America Executive Director Brian Swensen wrote in a statement released last week that McConnell’s provision would have a devastating impact on the industry and its workers. 

“Congress legalized hemp, Americans built an industry, and now Washington wants to pull the rug out from under hardworking farmers and small business owners. The industry wants a solid regulatory package that protects kids, but instead, Congress wants to place industry-killing caps on cannabinoids. Congress is not listening to the industry they created — they’re dismantling an industry with over 325,000 jobs and driving consumers to an unregulated, unsafe, and untaxed black market.”

John and Kara Grady, owners of Slappyhappy Hemp Company, said during an interview with the Missouri Independent the new language could hinder their business, possibly forcing them to close down.

“You’re sick to your stomach all day long,” said Kara Grady, “knowing your hard work is for not.”

Zack Kobrin, a Fort Lauderdale attorney with the firm of Saul Ewing who works in the hemp and cannabis industry, told the Florida Phoenix that many in the industry “are surprised it was such a sudden and sweeping measure.”

“I think for those that are cowboys, they will just maximize on making as much as they can until they can’t,” Kobrin said. “I think for those hemp operators that were trying to work with regulators and trying to follow the rules, this will be a real blow.”

Gov. Tony Evers and Veterans Affairs Sec. James Bond spoke an event for veterans in the state Capitol on April 22, 2025. (Photo via Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs Facebook page)

As Wisconsin policymakers honor Veterans Day Tuesday, the state continues to grapple with diminished resources for its most vulnerable veterans, those who are struggling with homelessness.

Debate in the state Capitol continues over the closure of sites in Green Bay and Chippewa Falls for the Veterans Housing and Recovery Program (VHRP), which provided support to veterans on the verge of or experiencing homelessness, including those who have been incarcerated, unemployed or suffered physical and mental health problems. 

Republican lawmakers recently proposed that the state create a new grant match program to help support homeless veterans. But some are expressing doubt that the bill would fill the gaps left by the recent closures, especially since it would rely on nonprofit organizations to start their own programs. 

Coauthored by Rep. Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere) and Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), AB 596 and AB 597 would direct $1.9 million to be used for a state grant match program. 

To receive the funds, a nonprofit group would need to be participating in the federal per diem program, which currently provides about $82 per day per veteran housed to groups that offer wraparound supportive services to homeless veterans. The bill would offer state matching funds of $25 per day per veteran.

Finger pointing over funding continues 

The closures of the Green Bay and Chippewa Falls facilities were announced in July after lawmakers chose not to provide additional funding in the state budget for the programs. Both sites closed their doors in September. By that point, the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs said it was able to find new places for each resident, including some who moved to a Union Grove site and others who were transferred out of state. 

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau had warned in a memo that without funding the sites would be at risk of closing, though the recent reaction of lawmakers who sit on the budget committee gave the appearance that they missed that warning. Gov. Tony Evers and Democratic lawmakers had called for additional funding and the Department of Veterans Affairs said staff had discussed the issue with the chairs of the Joint Finance Committee. Still, one member of the committee, Rep. Karen Hurd (R-Withee), said at a recent public hearing on the new bill that she was “absolutely blindsided” by the announcement of the closures.

While a handful of lawmakers have advocated for giving the department the additional funding to reopen the sites, the new Republican proposal takes a different approach that would limit the department’s direct involvement in the program.

Since the announced closures, some Republican lawmakers have blamed the Evers administration for not using money in the Veterans Trust Fund to keep the sites open and instead sending that money back to the general fund, even as the agency has said it can’t spend funds without the Legislature directing it to.

“There’s money in the account. It’s fully funded in the exact same way that it was funded last year. [Evers] just suddenly declared… he wasn’t going to use the trust account anymore,” Wimberger told the Wisconsin Examiner after he introduced the new proposal.

The Veterans Trust Fund receives general purpose revenue allocations from the state, though it doesn’t function as a big pot of money that can be used for anything. The funds have specific purposes, such as to be used for administrative costs and the Veterans Housing and Recovery Program. 

According to Joseph Hoey, assistant deputy secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the agency did use money from the trust fund to pay for administrative expenses to keep the buildings used for veterans’ housing in “good working order.” He said it was a legitimate use since the buildings are owned by the department and could be considered administrative purposes, but that wouldn’t be the case for other costs related to the program. 

“We cannot use that money to pay [Lutheran Social Services] or to run the VHRP [Veterans Housing Recovery Program] because there is a separate appropriation for VHRP,” Hoey said.

Wimberger and Republican lawmakers have also noted a 15% increase for veterans housing in the recent budget. The Department of Veterans Affairs noted that amount fell short of the $1.95 million that was requested by Evers to keep the sites open.

Unclear whether new proposal would fill gaps

Wimberger told the Examiner that a grant program would be “a lot simpler” and require “less of a direct monitoring” by the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

Hoey said he sees the proposal as “the first step in leaving this up to nonprofits and ultimately spending less state resources on homeless veterans.” He also expressed concern about whether the approach would fill the gaps left by the closures of the two sites in Green Bay and Chippewa Falls.

There are currently four entities that would be eligible to apply for the new grant program: Porchlight Inc. in Madison, Rock Valley Community Programs, Inc. in Janesville, as well as Center For Veterans Issues Ltd. and Guest House Of Milwaukee, Inc., which are both in Milwaukee.

“As you see from the locations of those organizations that are providing these services, they’re not meeting the need in other parts of the state, and WDVA was,” Hoey said. “I think we as a state have a commitment when people sign up to protect our freedom, I think we have an obligation to care for them, especially when they’re struggling.”

Hoey told lawmakers on the Assembly Veterans and Military Affairs committee at a hearing on the bill that the additional $25 per veteran likely wouldn’t be enough to encourage outside groups to open up new programs. He said it is estimated that it costs about $139 per day to house each participating veteran. 

“$83 is barely enough to house a veteran, let alone feed them, provide them with counseling and training that they need to get back on their feet, and it’s not enough to make the programs work,” Hoey said. “That’s why we asked for such a large amount in the last budget because these programs are just slowly getting harder and harder to operate.”

Lutheran Social Services, which was helping to operate the now closed sites in Green Bay and Chippewa Falls, could not do that work with $25 from the state, Hoey added. 

“We provide the facilities for them, so they’re not suddenly going to, in Green Bay, open up their own homeless shelter, because they don’t have the facility,” Hoey told the Examiner. “They have no way to pay for it, and the [grant and per diem payment], even with the bonus, probably wouldn’t cover their costs. It’s wishful thinking.”

Hoey also told lawmakers that it is possible the money would not actually lead to additional funding for participating nonprofit organizations. 

“Based on our preliminary analysis, we believe it is possible that all or part of the $25 state payment would be clawed back or offset by the federal VA,” Hoey said. “It’s the way the program is written at the federal level. It penalizes the programs for getting other state or government money.” 

Rep. Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer) said it is a good bill and pushed back on the idea that only four organizations would be eligible.

“We have one entity in Eau Claire that would be eligible for this, but there’s no money,” Summerfield said. “They’re not going to commit til we actually put this in the statute, get the funding into it, so just to say it’s just going to be four entities — that is incorrect. It, maybe, is correct, but you cannot say that it’s going to be. It could be 10 more. We could have ones in Superior, Lacrosse, Eau Claire, Green Bay, including Milwaukee.”

Hoey told the Examiner that the proposal is at best an incentive for private organizations to apply for the federal grant and start a program from scratch. 

“It would be years before this could result in homeless transition services being provided for veterans anywhere other than in the Milwaukee and Madison areas,” Hoey said. 

The agency had previously said it could get the VHRP sites restarted within a year if the state provided the funding for the programs. 

Asked in an interview whether he is concerned about the prospect of nonprofit groups not opting into the program and being able to fill the present gaps, Wimberger said, “Oh sure, of course.”

“I wish DVA would have used the money we gave them, but this is, this is in response to the executive — Gov. Evers and his administration — just simply refusing to spend the money,” he said. 

Other proposals in limbo

Two proposals that would provide the Department of Veterans Affairs with funds to restart the closed sites remain in limbo.

A Democratic bill, coauthored by Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) , Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) and Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick), would provide $2.6 million for veterans’ housing.

Another bill authored by Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) would provide $1.9 million.

Jacque’s bill passed committee on Oct. 8 and is available to be scheduled for a floor vote in the Senate. It has not received a public hearing in the Assembly. 

Democratic lawmakers have also expressed concerns about whether the new bill will be effective in filling the existing gaps. 

“If your objective is to fix the problem that we’re now lacking services for homeless veterans in northern Wisconsin” either a bill drafted by Republican Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken) or a Democratic bill, both of which provide funds to the now-closed facilities, “does the trick,” Sen. Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) said in an interview. “[Wimberger’s] bill does not.” 

Rep. Jodi Emerson (D-Eau Claire) said at a press conference that Republican lawmakers had “walked away” from the solutions that would actually fix the problem and were trying to “rewrite history.” 

“Our veterans deserve better than political games. They gave everything for our country, and the least we can do is make sure that they have a safe place to live, recover and rebuild their lives,” Emerson said. “It’s time to stop pointing fingers and actually fix this problem.” 

Wimberger said he didn’t sign on to Jacque’s bill at the time because it was “premature” when it was introduced. 

“It’s not like I’m opposed to it… It’s not like a bad thing, but I don’t, I don’t feel like I want to be extorted to pay for a program twice this. This method just solves the problem without playing this politics with homeless veterans,” Wimberger said of his own proposal. 

As for Wimberger’s proposal, Jacque said in October that he was still “gathering information on what the likeliest real world effect would be” if it were adopted. He also said he was waiting to hear back from the Department of Veterans Affairs on their plans to submit a emergency supplemental funding request to the Joint Finance Committee to address the situation. He said that “could be the quickest option for a positive resolution.”

Hoey said the agency is thankful for Jacque’s work on the issue. 

“We greatly appreciate [Jacque’s] willingness to keep going — to keep trying to get the funding for this program,” Hoey said. “This is something that he believes in and it’s not lip service.”

However, Hoey told the Examiner that the agency is not sure the funding request would meet statutory requirements and be an appropriate avenue for providing the funding given that the Legislature purposefully didn’t include the funding in the budget. 

He said the agency is unsure the current situation would constitute an emergency as it would be used to restart a program, not keep one going, and the agency is also currently grappling with a deficit. The agency’s last such request related to the veterans’ housing and recovery program, submitted to the Joint Finance Committee in March, was never taken up by lawmakers.

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Lawmakers and community organizers gather outside the Milwaukee County Courthouse to announce a package of bills related to conditions inside prisons and jails. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

On Monday, a group of state and local lawmakers expected to see firsthand the conditions within the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF), a state-run facility imprisoning people for things like probation and parole violations. Lawmakers said the Department of Corrections (DOC) approved the tour, only to back out. It wasn’t the first time that elected officials have reported being denied tours of prisons and jails around the state, many of which continue to produce troubling accounts of the conditions inside their walls. 

“Let me be clear, the conditions in Wisconsin’s correctional facilities are not simply unfortunate,” said Rep. Darrin Madison (D-Milwaukee), standing with other elected officials and community organizers on the steps of the Milwaukee County Courthouse on Monday. “They are unacceptable…We are not going to normalize inhumanity.” 

Madison said that in some incarceration facilities, people may be locked in their cells for 20-23 hours a day for months. “They are denied sunlight,” said Madison. “They’re denied movement. They’re denied programming. They’re denied medical care. They’re denied basic human contact. There are facilities where people can’t even get consistent access to quality hygiene products. Where food is so poor, it does not meet the nutritional needs of grown adults…Where communication with family, the very thing that reduces recidivism, is treated like a privilege instead of a right.” 

Inhumane conditions in Wisconsin’s  jails and prisons, Madison said, is “state-sanctioned violence, and it’s being done in our name and disguised as justice.” Rather than creating spaces where rehabilitation can occur, Madison said, the Legislature has favored “choices related to punishment over rehabilitation, control over care, silence over accountability.” He stressed that “when you run a system on punishment and silence, abuse becomes the operating procedure.” 

That’s why Madison, alongside other elected officials and organizers from Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) and the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, gathered outside the courthouse in Milwaukee to announce a package of bills aimed at improving conditions in prisons and jails. The bills would accomplish a number of things including:

• Guaranteeing 180 free minutes of telephone access, 60 minutes of free video calling, and 100 free messages per week to incarcerated people. In-person visits would also not be replaced with video or phone calls, 
• Increase wages to incarcerated people to at least $2.33 per hour. In  Wisconsin most incarcerated people are paid anywhere from nothing to 40 cents per hour, 
• Guaranteeing at least four bathing periods for people incarcerated in  state and county facilities, 
• Providing culturally sensitive products and a $25 a month stipend to help pay for them, female hygiene supplies, and other grooming and hygiene products, 
• Guaranteeing up to two in-person visits a week, and allowing incarcerated people to have up to 25 registered visitors who may embrace them for up to 20 seconds before and after visits, 
• Requiring that all state and county correctional facilities provide recreational activities, as well as organized and structured programming,
• Ensuring that people placed in solitary confinement are given a book, pen or pencil, paper, envelopes, hygiene products, a personal address book, and other supplies within two hours of being placed in restrictive housing, requiring structured programming while in solitary confinement, guaranteeing access to case managers, and providing three 25-minute video visitation periods per week, 
• Ensuring that housing units are kept at 68-76 degrees Fahrenheit, 
• Granting incarcerated people the ability to see the outdoors at least three hours daily, and the ability to be outside and up to three hours a week, 
• Creating a public dashboard with status on solitary confinement, prison lockdowns, and complaints, 
• Ensuring that lawmakers are able to access prisons and jails for oversight purposes, 
• Allowing counties to oversee control of a jail if lawmakers vote to do so, 
• And requiring jails and prisons to provide written documents to incarcerated people detailing their rights, and ensuring the document can be viewed and accessed throughout any correctional facility. 

Justin Bielinski, a Milwaukee County supervisor and chair of the Judiciary, Law Enforcement, and General Services Committee, quoted the adage that with great power comes great responsibility and added, “our carceral system is the ultimate power, depriving people of their freedom.” Bielinski said she  fears that “we’re not holding up our end of the bargain and our responsibility to keep people safe and free from harm.” 

Meanwhile, Milwaukee County is running out of space in the jail and Community Reintegration Center (CRC). “So it’s more important than ever that the conditions inside these facilities are the best that we can make them so that when people come out, they are not worse, that they are at least the same, if not better.” Bielinksi said. She added, “The Sheriff’s Office has been resistant to every attempt that we’ve made to offer change, offer oversight within the jail.” Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who was also in attendance on Monday, said he has also battled the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office to visit the jail and improve conditions there.

Although the county board can pass resolutions, they are not binding and do not usurp the authority the sheriff has over the jail. “We cannot force change inside of that facility,” said Bielinski. “And so we do need state legislation to help us out with that…We know these things are going to cost money, but we cannot let money be the excuse for treating people in a way that is less than human. And if we can’t find the money, then we shouldn’t be locking this many people up.” 

Bielinksi recalled the string of deaths inside the Milwaukee County Jail from 2021 to 2022, which led to a third-party audit of the jail. Yet in that audit, Bielinksi said, the county didn’t address the specific circumstances that led to the deaths. Among the people who died were 21-year-old Brieon Green and 20-year-old Cilivea Thyrion, whose deaths were both ruled suicides despite  their families’ insistence that jail staff were at the very least negligent in their care. Green and Thyrion’s loved ones joined local activists in calling for reform to the jail and sheriff’s office. 

December will mark three years since Thyrion died. Kayla Patterson, a member of the Milwaukee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, highlighted the deaths and riots at the jail in recent years. “And we will continue to see that until the sheriff and her office are held accountable,” said Patterson. “This legislative pack should represent one of the first steps in standing with the people of Milwaukee for jail oversight that works with them, and not against them. For real transparency input into how our loved ones are kept while in custody. In the Alliance there’s a slogan we use: ‘In your custody, in your care.’ These are not just inmates, but community members that deserve dignity 24-7 during their time in the jail.” 

Conditions within state prisons have also been under the microscope. Last year, the warden of Waupun Correctional and eight other staff members were charged with crimes related to the treatment and neglect of people within the prison, which may have contributed to a string of four deaths from 2023 to 2024. 

The deaths included Dean Hoffmann, ruled suicide by hanging, Tyshun Lemons who overdosed on a substance containing fentanyl, Cameron Williams who complained of breathing issues and was found unresponsive in his bed, and Donald Maier, who died while in solitary confinement of dehydration and malnutrition. Water to his cell had been shut off, and correctional officers allegedly knew that Maier’s mental condition was worsening, that he had not eaten for days, and had begun drinking sewage water. In 2025, Waupun warden Randall Hepp was convicted of a misdemeanor in Maier’s death, and fined $500. Hepp pleaded no contest. 

The DOC didn’t respond to a request for comment, and the story will be updated with any reply from them. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at the press conference, “We invest, as a state, millions of dollars in folks who are in our care. And they should be coming out on a trajectory of success to make sure that they are finding a job, finding a community, and the only time they think about their time incarcerated is in the rear view mirror, in the past tense. Unfortunately, the way that we have this set up is a broken ‘tough on crime’ idea that once you touch the criminal justice system it is cruel to you, it diminishes you, and it never lets you go.” 

Androne Lane has experienced the struggles Larson described. He came home in 2018 after spending time in several prisons including Waupun, Green Bay, Red Granite and  Fox Lake. “I think it was important for me to come out and speak today because being a returning citizen, this bill or this movement that these guys are pushing to me is like a basic, like our own constitution for returning citizens,” Lane told the Wisconsin Examiner. “We’re not asking for a lot, we’re asking for dignity. We’re asking for humanity.” 

The priorities outlined in the bill package cover things that would help incarcerated people heal and become whole, Lane said. When people return home from prison, Lane continued, “How do you get a community to accept them coming back in there? And what does that look like for encouraging the community or an individual coming back to recover something that wasn’t replaced?” 

Lane and other advocates say there needs to be a “community care plan” for people returning home from incarceration. When Lane returned home, he told the  Examiner, it took a while for him to accept that he needed mental health therapy. “I think one of the hardest things for individuals is to ask for help, not knowing what help you need,” he said. “When I came home there was a lot of things that was on the surface that I had to deal with. But there was a lot of things inside that I didn’t know I was dealing with.” On the surface, Lane was unemployed and deeply stressed, but on the inside he was struggling with the trauma of being molested as a child, and he didn’t know how he’d be accepted in the community. “What does mental health look like for us? What does wellness look like …and what is this ‘whole’ that everybody is working for?” 

Rep. Margaret Arney (D-Wauwatosa), said the bills embody important work for Wisconsin to take on. “I hate living in a state where we lock up so many people and have so little regard for how those people live their lives,” Arney told the Examiner. “It’s a heartbreaking, enraging type of situation…When I look around and say, ‘What’s as bad as slavery was?’ And I think of the conditions of incarceration in the state of Wisconsin. That us as the United States, we’re addicted to locking people up, and in Wisconsin we do it even more so and even worse than in other states. And even though it costs a tremendous amount of resources, there’s so little willingness to engage in what those resources are here for, what we’re doing. Why does it cost so much to treat people so badly? Why do we, everyday, just put up with the fact that we’re somewhere on the order of 5,000 people over capacity?” 

Although “conditions of confinement” sounds like a “sterile” term to Arney, she said,  it’s not. “It’s human beings that are being treated at torture-level conditions, and I just can’t stand that.” 

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A bipartisan bill in the Wisconsin legislature would impose mandatory minimum sentences on people convicted of human trafficking. Advocates worry the penalty could be applied to victims.Close up shot of fingerprint paper | Getty Images

A bill that would require judges to sentence people convicted of human trafficking to at least 10 years in prison, or at least 15 years for trafficking a child, is advancing through the Wisconsin Legislature.  

Human trafficking involves the use of force, fraud or coercion for labor, services or commercial sex acts. Trafficking of a child includes knowingly attempting to recruit a child for commercial sex acts. The bill would also increase the maximum prison time a person can receive for trafficking. 

Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) wrote that the bill “will continue to put a dent in human trafficking in Wisconsin.” Rep. Jerry O’Connor (R-Fond Du Lac) listed five cases in which, he wrote, a person convicted of sex trafficking received between six and eight years in prison. It appeared that the cases took place in states other than Wisconsin. 

“AB 265 ensures that these soft-on-trafficking policies never happen in Wisconsin,” O’Connor wrote. He argued that the bill’s mandatory minimums ensure adequate punishment and prevent offenders from doing further harm. 

The criminal justice advocacy group Ex-Incarcerated People Organizing (EXPO) and the president of the Wisconsin Justice Initiative oppose the mandatory minimums, arguing that there is a lack of evidence they will be effective at reducing trafficking. EXPO argues in an email to the Wisconsin Examiner that mandatory minimums risk unintended harmful consequences and resources are better spent on areas such as prevention and victim services.  

The LOTUS Legal Clinic in Milwaukee, which works with survivors of human trafficking, expressed concern in a written comment submitted on the Senate version of the bill in September. Executive Director Erika Petty wrote that many of LOTUS’s clients might support the mandatory minimum in principle, but expressed concern about unintended consequences for trafficking victims. 

“Traffickers commonly shield themselves from criminal accountability by forcing their victims — often at a very young age — to post ads, recruit new trafficking victims, and facilitate encounters,” Petty wrote in her comment, which was brought up in the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. “Thus, the victims themselves become vulnerable to criminal prosecution for human trafficking.”

The bill’s mandatory minimums would apply if a person is convicted of human or child trafficking in adult court, Amber Otis, senior staff attorney with the Wisconsin Legislative Council, wrote in a message to lawmakers on the committee.

Petty argued that under the bill, a victim forced to participate in trafficking of others would fall under the mandatory minimum, just like their trafficker. She provided language for lawmakers to consider; if added to the bill, it would create exceptions to the mandatory minimums that would give judges the ability to hand down lighter sentences or probation to people who offer evidence that their offense is the direct result of a violation of the trafficking statutes.

A 2017 Northwestern University Law Review article made a suggestion in the same vein as Petty’s, proposing that Congress create a “safety valve” for “lead prostitutes,” or “bottoms,” who are both victims and perpetrators of trafficking, to allow them to receive a sentence lighter than a mandatory minimum if certain criteria were met. An article in Anti-Trafficking Review describes a case where a woman named Keosha Jones was both perpetrator and victim of sex trafficking.

Petty wrote that LOTUS attorneys currently had multiple cases involving convicted survivors. The clinic doesn’t handle criminal defense, but LOTUS can work with survivors on their rights as crime victims and see if they can alleviate a survivor’s criminal record, Petty told the Examiner in an interview. A survivor may have a criminal record as a result of trafficking that creates barriers to gainful employment and safe housing. 

While the bill was introduced by Republicans, the Assembly Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety approved it unanimously, and Minority Caucus Chair Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) and Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) have been added as coauthors. It has since passed the Assembly. 

The Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety approved the Senate bill along party lines, with the committee’s three Democrats voting against. 

People convicted of benefiting from human trafficking or receiving compensation from the earnings of debt bondage, the prostitution of others or a commercial sex act would also receive a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years, or 15 years for benefiting from child trafficking. 

The bill would also increase the amount of prison time a judge could hand down for trafficking and give prosecutors a longer window to charge someone with human trafficking. 

Victims have a defense in court, but concerns remain

The Examiner reached out to Sen. Wanggaard in September about LOTUS’s comment and suggested amendment. Wanggaard aide Scott Kelly said that “we do not believe an amendment is necessary.” 

If a trafficking victim commits a crime as a “direct result” of a violation of human trafficking law, the victim can use an affirmative defense in court. Kelly referenced the affirmative defense and the 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in State v. Kizer, which involved a woman who killed a man prosecutors admitted had sexually abused her. 

The court held that an offense is committed as a direct result of a violation of the human trafficking statutes if there is “a logical, causal connection” between the offense and the trafficking. Other events or considerations must not have played a significant role in causing the offense. 

If a victim is charged and convicted of trafficking, that would mean the victim did not successfully assert the defense, Otis wrote. This could occur if the prosecutor proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not meet the elements of the defense. 

Even with the affirmative defense, Assistant State Public Defender Katie York of the Wisconsin State Public Defenders Office told the Examiner that she thinks the bill puts trafficking survivors at risk. 

York opposes the human trafficking mandatory minimum in general, and said it takes away the opportunity for prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges to evaluate each case based on individual circumstances. York said she thinks judges are well equipped to make decisions and she doesn’t believe that this area of the law needs more specific parameters. 

York said how well the defense can be used to protect a trafficking victim is “largely untested at this point.” 

Also, if there is a situation where a jury doesn’t think the defendant meets the “direct result” standard for the affirmative defense, the trafficking still might have been a contributing factor to the defendant’s involvement in the offense, York said. A judge could take that into account. 

“So they could be found guilty of trafficking, even if they tried the affirmative defense,” York said. “But, if the judge is looking at the full picture when they’re sentencing someone, which is what judges do, they would want to take into consideration how that person got involved in the trafficking.”

If a person got involved in trafficking because they were originally trafficked themselves, that would be an important factor for the sentencing judge, York said. 

A person might have some culpability, without having as much culpability as whoever drew them in or forced them into human trafficking, said Sarah Schmeiser, president of the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. 

Schmeiser said prosecutors use mandatory minimums to force plea deals, as someone charged with a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence has an incentive to plead guilty to a lower charge with a lower penalty instead of risking the mandatory minimum sentence at trial. 

York thinks traffickers could use the mandatory minimum as a tool to further coerce their victims.

“So if… they say, ‘Hey, I need you to post this on Backpage,’ or ‘I need you to talk to this girl for me,’ or whatever it is to bring them into the trafficking, they’re putting that person at risk of criminal liability,” York said. “And then the trafficker can say, ‘And, now you better be careful and listen to what I have to say, because otherwise, you’re going to get in trouble with law enforcement and you’re going to go to prison for 10 years,’ or whatever the mandatory minimum is.”

Increased penalties 

Under the bill, someone convicted of committing or benefitting from human trafficking would be guilty of a Class C felony, which carries up to 25 years in prison. Receiving compensation from the earnings of debt bondage, a prostitute or a commercial sex act would become a Class E felony, which carries up to 10 years in prison. The mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison would apply to all human trafficking offenses.

Committing or benefitting from child trafficking would become a Class B felony, which carries up to 40 years in prison. Child trafficking offenses would carry the 15-year mandatory minimum. 

More time to prosecute

The bill would also increase the statute of limitations for human trafficking from six years to 10 years, allowing more time for prosecution. During an Assembly hearing, Investigator Luke Johnson of the Racine County Sheriff’s Office said many human trafficking victims struggle to leave their traffickers. 

“It is very easy for victims to be trapped in a life for many years before having a chance to get out or feeling comfortable enough to disclose to law enforcement or anyone else,” Johnson said. 

Of the human trafficking charges filed under the state law between 2018 and 2023, so far 14 charges have led to convictions, according to Wisconsin Court System data. For trafficking of a child, so far, 32 charges have led to convictions. This does not represent the number of people convicted, as a person can be charged more than once in a case. Charges of benefiting from human or child trafficking were less frequent. 

The National Human Trafficking Hotline reports it has identified 1,117 cases of human trafficking in Wisconsin since 2007, with 2,212 victims identified in those cases. There were 445 allegations of child sex trafficking across Wisconsin in 2021.

“It is imperative to note that in this underworld of crime, there are far more cases that are not reported to law enforcement,” Rep. Jerry O’Connor wrote in a comment on the bill. 

Burden of proof 

Senators discussed LOTUS’s comment during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety in September, with Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) raising concern about charging and criminalizing victims. 

Committee chair and Sen. Van Wanggaard said he thinks investigators understand that a person might be coerced to participate in human trafficking. 

Otis’s email to the Senate committee noted that the district attorney has discretion over whether and how to charge someone with trafficking depending on the situation. 

It’s difficult to prove whether someone is a victim of human trafficking, York said. She added that the victim may not identify as a victim of trafficking, and may view their trafficker as a boyfriend or someone they relied on. 

“It’s a challenge to kind of go back and unpack years worth of trauma and history to say, ‘OK, this is what originally happened, and this is how we got to where we are,” York said. 

At times, a plea deal may work out better for the individual than using the affirmative defense, York said, due to the mental toll the defendant would experience from going in front of a jury and speaking about what happened to them. A mandatory minimum limits the ability to negotiate for the client, she said. 

Erika Petty of LOTUS suggested there could be a situation where someone is not ready to identify as a victim of trafficking at the trial stage, but the situation changes by the time of sentencing. 

Petty referenced a law that allows a person convicted of prostitution to submit a motion for a court to overturn their conviction if certain criteria are met, including that the person was a victim of trafficking for the purposes of a commercial sex act. Human trafficking convictions aren’t covered. 

Potentially, a survivor could appeal a decision, Petty said, but “those are all very specific, and have to align with timing and whatever underlying issue wanted to be appealed.”

Whose expertise informed the bill? 

Shortly before the Assembly voted on the bill, Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) said the bill came to lawmakers from Investigator Luke Johnson. Johnson’s comments state that from 2023 to earlier this year, he had an opportunity to serve on a task force specifically targeting human trafficking and internet crimes against children. 

“I urge any of you that have any trepidation with this bill to sit down with those in the front line that actually do this work and actually see this firsthand,” Wittke said. 

During the hearing in the Senate in September, Drake asked Wanggaard and Wittke if they had reached out to any groups or partners that work with victims of human trafficking outside of law enforcement for input. 

Wanggaard said he didn’t know of any group recently that they talked with specifically about this draft, but said that “we have [done so] for most of the content in this draft.” He said he thinks law enforcement was probably the most vocal “because they’re seeing the same people out there, continuing to reoffend.”

Wittke said he didn’t go to any other groups and that “this came specifically from sitting down with Inspector Johnson.” 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) expressed concern about “only talking to one entity, and that is law enforcement, and we know that not all of our law enforcement officers have the tools necessary to decipher who those victims are.” 

The bill received support from the Wisconsin Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs Association and other law enforcement groups, as well as the nonprofit United Migrant Opportunity Services (UMOS). UMOS’s Latina Resource Center operates the Wisconsin Regional Anti-Human Trafficking Program, which helps victims of labor and sex trafficking. UMOS did not respond to requests for comment. 

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A 'We Accept (Food Stamps)' sign hangs in the window of a grocery store on Oct. 31, 2025 in Miami, Florida.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

The Trump administration continued Monday to press the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn lower court decisions requiring the federal government pay for full benefits for a major food program, even as Congress appeared to approach an end to the record-breaking government shutdown.

Late Sunday, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a Rhode Island federal judge’s order that the U.S. Department of Agriculture pay full November benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

On Monday morning, the top federal litigator told the Supreme Court the administration was continuing its appeal.

Later Monday, a Massachusetts federal judge kept in place an order canceling a USDA memo to states over the weekend asking them to “undo” full November benefits, while chastising the administration for sowing confusion. The memo had left states unsure how to proceed, and some refused to obey it.

President Donald Trump and top administration officials have resisted calls to fund November SNAP benefits during the shutdown that began Oct. 1. They argue that because Congress had not appropriated any money for the program for the fiscal year that began that date, USDA lacked the legal authority to make payments. 

That position was a reversal from the first Trump administration’s 2019 guidance and a shutdown plan the department published Sept. 30, then deleted, and has sparked several court challenges.

About 42 million people, about 1 in 8 Americans, use SNAP. Monday was the 41st day of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history.

Trump attorney seeks high court pause

In an afternoon brief following his morning notice to the high court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer largely repeated the argument he made in an initial appeal to the high court Nov. 7. 

Sauer said courts could not command the USDA to “raid” a fund for child nutrition programs that holds about $23 billion, so as to fund a roughly $4 billion shortfall for SNAP in the short term.

He added Monday that the lower courts’ orders threaten to derail a deal in the Senate to reopen the government, expected to be completed this week.

“Literally at the eleventh hour, those orders inject the federal courts into the political branches’ closing efforts to end this shutdown,” Sauer wrote. “But the answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority. The only way to end this crisis—which the Executive is adamant to end—is for Congress to reopen the government.”

Sauer’s brief came after Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson ordered the government to say how it would proceed in light of the 1st Circuit order late Sunday and gave the coalition of nonprofit groups and municipal government that brought the original suit until 8 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday to respond.

Massachusetts federal judge slams USDA

At an afternoon hearing in Massachusetts, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denounced USDA’s Saturday night demand that states return authorized funding and maintained a temporary restraining order blocking it from going into effect.

The Saturday night memo called on states to “immediately undo” actions to send benefits to people who use SNAP.

But the states had been complying with a midday Nov. 7 memo from the same department official that instructed them to process full benefits in accordance with the Rhode Island order, Talwani said. 

“What you have right now is confusion of the agency’s own making,” Talwani said.

Keith Becker, who represented the administration in the hearing, said that guidance was meant to keep states from distributing benefits while the Supreme Court stay, issued late Nov. 7, was in place. 

Minnesota authorized benefits after the Supreme Court order, he said.

Talwani said he had provided no evidence of that.

Becker also said Wisconsin, Oregon and Michigan sent out benefits between the time of the Rhode Island order and the Nov. 7 guidance telling states to issue benefits, but Talwani said they were complying with the Rhode Island court order.

The Saturday letter to states was inappropriate, she added.

“It seems to me that the states acted fairly reasonably to follow your Nov. 7 guideline,” she said. “Even if there is a mistake here, the notion that the next move, on Saturday night, is a blustering order, that they’re all going to be sued, and this thing and that thing — we’re trying to get … benefits to people who need food.”

She also said the administration appeared to be using Americans who use SNAP as political leverage, noting that even as the shutdown appears near its end, the administration was refusing to transfer reserve money from a fund that had enough to stay solvent into the spring.

“You’ve chosen not to pay your benefits at this point, and it’s hard to see how it’s not just being used as a leverage point,” she said. “I understand that there’s nice language about saying it’s for child nutrition, but it doesn’t really ring true right now.”

Appeals court ruling

Federal courts have issued a flurry of rulings on the matter since groups, cities and Democratic states sued to force Trump to release November benefits late last month. 

The late Sunday ruling came from a three-judge panel of the 1st Circuit, which upheld a Thursday order from U.S. District Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr. that the government forfeited its option to issue partial November benefits when it missed a Nov. 5 deadline McConnell had set.

USDA had argued that making partial SNAP payments, which it had never done before, would be difficult. But it made no plans to prepare those partial benefits nearly a month into the shutdown, Judge Julie Rikelman wrote in the panel’s opinion.

“The record here shows that the government sat on its hands for nearly a month, unprepared to make partial payments, while people who rely on SNAP received no benefits a week into November and counting,” Rikelman wrote. “In light of these unique facts, we cannot conclude that the district court abused its discretion in requiring full payment of November SNAP benefits.”

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Monday night on a bill to end the shutdown. The measure is likely to pass after advancing in a key procedural vote Sunday, but the House would still need to clear it and Trump would have to sign it before the government will reopen. House members have been told to begin returning to Washington.

Sauer noted in his Monday letter that if the bill were to become law, the case would become moot.

Dems blast court fight

Congressional Democrats have been unsparing in their criticism of Trump’s efforts to keep from paying November benefits.

U.S. House ranking Democrat Angie Craig of Minnesota said administration officials “simply do not care about America’s hungry children, veterans, seniors or people with disabilities.”

“Instead of helping hungry seniors and children, President Trump and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins spent weeks illegally withholding food assistance from hungry Americans,” Craig said. “Now, they are again asking the Supreme Court to stop states from feeding hungry residents. The Trump administration would rather preserve its own sense of power than preserve the lives and wellbeing of hungry Americans.” 

Republicans have blamed Democrats for the lack of benefits payments, which they say could have been avoided if enough Senate Democrats voted with Republicans for a bill that would have temporarily reopened the government at current spending levels. 

California Democrat Adam Schiff “voted against funding SNAP 15 times,” the Senate GOP X account wrote in response to a tweet from Schiff. “If he wants to fund SNAP, he should join the eight other Democrats who have voted to reopen the government instead.”

All but three Senate Democrats voted against the measure in 14 consecutive votes. Most continued to oppose the 15th vote Sunday, but seven Democrats and independent Sen. Angus King of Maine voted with Republicans on the bill to reopen the government that also included three full-year spending bills and reinstated fired federal workers. 

Those votes gave Republicans the margin needed to bypass the Senate’s filibuster rule.

Gov. Tony Evers speaks to reporters at a food pantry in La Crosse on Monday. (Screenshot/CSPAN)

Gov. Tony Evers reiterated Monday that Wisconsin won’t pull back the money that the state distributed to its FoodShare program late last week.

“They [the federal government] want that money back — they’re not getting it back,” Evers said in a short news conference at a La Crosse food bank. “It’s for the people that are part of this program.”

The Evers administration moved swiftly Thursday evening to funnel $104.4 million to Wisconsin’s FoodShare program after a federal court ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to fully fund November Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payments.

Wisconsin FoodShare participants spent $9.9 million of the benefits on groceries Friday, according to the Evers administration.

By Monday, however, the administration said that it was lacking sufficient SNAP funds to reimburse retailers after the U.S. Treasury blocked the federal benefits payment to Wisconsin on Friday.

USDA said it would fully fund November’s SNAP payments in response to Thursday’s court order. Instead, however, the Trump administration petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the order and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it on hold for 48 hours.

On Saturday the Trump administration directed states to return a portion of their SNAP funds to the federal government.

“No,” Evers declared in response.

On Monday, Wisconsin joined more than two dozen states in a motion filed in federal court in Massachusetts to block the Trump administration’s Saturday directive.

The directive “underscores the arbitrary and capricious nature of their conduct in this matter and demonstrates the need for immediate relief,” the motion states. “USDA must make full benefits available to SNAP beneficiaries without delay, and the November 8 guidance should be enjoined.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the directive Monday.

On Monday afternoon, Evers toured WAFER Food Pantry in La Crosse, where he spoke with reporters about USDA’s order to states to pull back funds pushed out to electronic benefit cards used by SNAP recipients, including FoodShare users in Wisconsin.

“That’s embarrassing. That’s embarrassing for any president of the United States,” said Evers in a news conference that was televised on CSPAN.

“He [Trump] can claw all he wants,” Evers said. “It’s not going to happen. They have no authority to do that.”

Evers said that grocery stores should not have to wait for FoodShare funds that they are due when customers make purchases on their electronic benefits cards. “They should be getting reimbursed like they always have,” he said.

The state Department of Health Services and the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection both issued statements Monday warning retailers and grocery stores that are part of the FoodShare program that they cannot reject customers with funds legally loaded onto their QUEST benefit cards, and businesses cannot turn away people using the cards.

“While there haven’t been reports of people being turned away or of price gouging thus far, we want to make sure everyone is clear on the expectations. No one in Wisconsin should have to worry about their next meal,” said DATCP Secretary Randy Romanski.

Evers signed an anti-price-gouging order on Oct. 31.

In a letter Sunday to Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, Evers called the administration’s clawback attempt “a shocking and disturbing request—and one that should be condemned by every person, regardless of their political beliefs or party.”

Evers noted that the state’s three Democratic federal lawmakers have spoken up in opposition to the administration’s actions.

“I find it deeply troubling the rest of you have failed to do so,” he wrote, referring to Wisconsin’s seven Republican Congress members, “and I implore you to change that today.”

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Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., speaks to reporters while walking to his office on Nov. 10, 2025 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved a stopgap spending bill Monday that will end the longest government shutdown in American history once the measure becomes law later this week.

The 60-40 vote sends the updated funding package back to the House, where lawmakers in that chamber are expected sometime during the next few days to clear the legislation for President Donald Trump’s signature. 

Shortly before the vote, Trump said he plans to follow the agreements included in the revised measure, including the reinstatement of thousands of federal workers who received layoff notices during the shutdown. 

“I’ll abide by the deal,” Trump said. “The deal is very good.”  

Republicans, he added, will soon begin work on legislation to provide direct payments to Americans to help them afford the rising cost of health insurance, one of the core disagreements between the political parties that led to the shutdown. 

“We want a health care system where we pay the money to the people instead of the insurance companies,” Trump said from the Oval Office. “And I tell you, we are going to be working on that very hard over the next short period of time.”

House members told to head to D.C.

Earlier in the day, House Speaker Mike Johnson urged representatives to begin traveling back to Capitol Hill as soon as possible to ensure they arrive in time to vote on the bill to reopen the government, after the measure arrives from the Senate. 

The Louisiana Republican’s request came as airlines were forced to delay or cancel thousands of flights on the 41st day of the shutdown, a situation that could potentially impact a House vote on the stopgap spending bill if members don’t follow his advice. 

“The problem we have with air travel is that our air traffic controllers are overworked and unpaid. And many of them have called in sick,” Johnson said. “That’s a very stressful job and even more stressful, exponentially, when they’re having trouble providing for their families. And so air travel has been grinding to a halt in many places.”

Johnson then told his colleagues in the House, which hasn’t been in session since mid-September, that lawmakers from both political parties “need to begin right now returning to the Hill.”

Trump threatens air traffic controllers

Trump took a markedly different tone over the challenges air traffic controllers have faced during the shutdown in a social media post that he published several hours before he spoke to reporters about the deal to reopen government. 

“All Air Traffic Controllers must get back to work, NOW!!! Anyone who doesn’t will be substantially ‘docked,’” Trump wrote, without explaining what that would mean for workers who had to take time off since the shutdown began Oct. 1. 

Trump added that he would like to find a way to provide $10,000 bonuses to air traffic controllers who didn’t require any time off during the past six weeks.

“For those that did nothing but complain, and took time off, even though everyone knew they would be paid, IN FULL, shortly into the future, I am NOT HAPPY WITH YOU. You didn’t step up to help the U.S.A. against the FAKE DEMOCRAT ATTACK that was only meant to hurt our Country,” Trump wrote. “You will have a negative mark, at least in my mind, against your record. If you want to leave service in the near future, please do not hesitate to do so, with NO payment or severance of any kind!” 

An end in sight

The Senate-passed package will provide stopgap funding for much of the federal government through January 30, giving lawmakers a couple more months to work out agreement on nine of the dozen full-year spending bills.  

The package holds several other provisions, including the full-year appropriations bills for the Agriculture Department, the Legislative Branch, military construction projects and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. 

Seven Democrats and one independent broke ranks Sunday on a procedural vote that advanced the package, drawing condemnation from some House members and outside advocacy groups unhappy that no solution was arrived at to counter skyrocketing health insurance premium increases for people in the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, where bipartisanship is required for major bills to move forward under the 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a floor speech Monday he was “grateful that the end” of the stalemate was in sight. 

“We’re on the 41st day of this shutdown — nutrition benefits are in jeopardy; air travel is in an extremely precarious situation; our staffs and many, many other government workers have been working for nearly six weeks without pay,” Thune said. “I could spend an hour talking about all of the problems we’ve seen, which have snowballed the longer the shutdown has gone on. But all of us, Democrat and Republican, who voted for last night’s bill are well aware of the facts.”

Schumer bid for deal on health care costs fails

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was far less celebratory after his bid to get Republicans to negotiate a deal on health care costs by forcing a shutdown failed. 

“The past few weeks have exposed with shocking clarity how warped Republican priorities truly are. While people’s health care costs have gone up, Republicans have come across as a party preoccupied with ballrooms, Argentina bailouts and private jets,” Schumer said. “Republicans’ breach of trust with the American people is deep and perhaps irreversible.” 

“And now that they have failed to do anything to prevent premiums from going up, the anger that Americans feel against Donald Trump and the Republicans is going to get worse,” Schumer added. “Republicans had their chance to fix this and they blew it. Americans will remember Republican intransigence every time they make a sky-high payment on health insurance.” 

Schumer was insistent throughout the shutdown that Democrats would only vote to advance a funding bill after lawmakers brokered a bipartisan deal to extend tax credits that are set to expire at the end of December for people who purchase their health insurance from the Affordable Care Act marketplace. 

That all changed on Sunday when Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted to move the bill toward a final passage vote.

Maine independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats, also voted to advance the legislation.  

Jeffries still supports Schumer

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said during a press conference Monday afternoon that he still believes Schumer is effective and should keep his role in leadership, despite the outcome. 

“Leader Schumer and Senate Democrats over the last seven weeks have waged a valiant fight on behalf of the American people. And I’m not going to explain what a handful of Senate Democrats have decided to do. That’s their explanation to offer to the American people,” Jeffries said. 

“What we’re going to continue to do as House Democrats, partnered with our allies throughout America, is to wage the fight, to stay in the coliseum, to win victories in the arena on behalf of the American people notwithstanding whatever disappointments may arise,” he said. “That’s the reality of life, that’s certainly the reality of this place. But we’re in this fight for all the right reasons.” 

Speaker Johnson said earlier in the day that the “people’s government cannot be held hostage to further anyone’s political agenda. That was never right. And shutting down the government never produces anything.”

Johnson reiterated that GOP lawmakers are “open to finding solutions to reduce the oppressive costs of health care,” though he didn’t outline any plans to do that in the weeks and months ahead. 

The U.S. Supreme Court denied a challenge to a landmark ruling protecting same-sex marriage equality. The rainbow flag of the gay pride movement and the flag of the United States | Getty Images

The United States Supreme Court has declined to revisit the 2015 landmark ruling that gave same-sex couples marriage equality, a failure for former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis.

Davis made national headlines in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to several same-sex couples based on her religious beliefs. With the help of conservative legal firm Liberty Counsel, Davis has tried to avoid paying $100,000 as ordered by a federal jury to one of the couples she refused, David Ermold and David Moore. She ultimately tried to use that appeal to challenge Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that required states to license same-sex marriages.

The nation’s highest court on Monday said it will not hear the challenge.

Mat Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder and chairman who represents Davis, said he “will continue to work to overturn Obergefell.”

“Davis was jailed, hauled before a jury, and now faces crippling monetary damages based on nothing more than purported hurt feelings,” Staver said. “By denying this petition, the High Court has let stand a decision to strip a government defendant of their immunity and any personal First Amendment defense for their religious expression.”

Kevin Jennings, the CEO of Lambda Legal, a pro-LGBTQ+ advocacy law firm, called the case “frivolous” in celebrating its defeat.

“This is a victory not only for the LGBTQ+ community, but for everyone who believes in our Constitution and the rule of law. The court’s decision reaffirms a simple fact: equal protection of the law applies to all, not just some,” Jennings said in a statement. “This frivolous case now belongs in the trash bin of history.”

Jenny Pizer, Lambda Legal’s senior director of strategic initiatives said the decision to not hear the case by the Supreme Court “rightly leaves marriage equality crystal clear and undisturbed.”

Pizer said LGBTQ+ people and their families “still need vigilance and protection,” though.

“We secured the freedom to marry for same-sex couples over a decade ago in our landmark 2015 Supreme Court victory, Obergefell v. Hodges, thanks to the powerful stories of thousands of couples and their families throughout the country, including in our many court cases,” Pizer said. “The fundamental rights of liberty and equal protection that the court affirmed back then remain essential for all American families today.”

Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to take up a challenge to a mail-in voting law in Mississippi. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took up a Republican-backed challenge to counting mail-in ballots received after Election Day.

Depending how the justices rule, the case could be consequential for Washington and other states that vote by mail.

It stems from a lawsuit against a Mississippi state law allowing mail-in ballots received within five business days after Election Day to still be counted. Roughly 30 states have similar laws, with varying grace periods. 

The decision could also have ramifications for next year’s high-stakes midterms, which will decide whether Republicans maintain control of both the U.S. House and Senate. The court will likely hear arguments and rule by mid-2026.

Washington is one of a handful of states that conduct elections by mail and ballot drop boxes. The state accepts mail-in ballots up until the day before certification, which is 21 days after the election, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. 

Ballots for this month’s elections in Washington are still being counted, and the results of some close races have flipped and narrowed during the past week.

A federal judge in Mississippi upheld the state’s law, ruling the state’s statute isn’t preempted by federal law, which says Election Day is the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. 

But a federal appeals panel sided with the law’s challengers, the Republican National Committee and the state’s Republican and Libertarian parties. The appeals judges cited the U.S. Constitution’s clause that gives states the power to regulate elections, but also noted that clause says “Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations.” 

President Donald Trump, in his first term, appointed the three judges who issued that decision.

The legal question now is whether “election day” is when voters cast their ballots, or also when they must be received. The appeals court decided that ballots aren’t cast until election officials get them.

While the ruling doesn’t apply in Washington, if the Supreme Court upheld it, the ballot-counting system here would also be thrown into question.

Mississippi officials appealed to the Supreme Court to protect their five-day grace period. The state’s attorney general, a Republican, wrote in a brief to the high court that the appeals decision “would require scrapping election laws in most States.”

“The stakes are high: ballots cast by — but received after — election day can swing close races and change the course of the country,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch wrote.

The law’s opponents say these measures “deprive the electorate of a clear nationwide deadline that ‘puts all voters on the same footing.’”

In the 2024 general election, Washington election officials received nearly 120,000 valid ballots after Election Day that were postmarked on time. 

Washington Attorney General Nick Brown, a Democrat, along with colleagues in other states, filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the Supreme Court to side with Mississippi. They note the appeals court decision “jeopardizes the ability of military service members and their families stationed abroad to have their timely cast ballots counted.”

Asked for comment on the case Monday, Brown’s office referred to the earlier brief.

A spokesperson for Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, also a Democrat, said in a statement that Hobbs’ office supports the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case.

“We view this as an important opportunity for the Court to provide clarity on the authority of states to accept ballots received after Election Day, provided they are mailed by Election Day and meet all other requirements established in state law,” Charlie Boisner added.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked mail-in voting. 

In a March executive order, for example, he urged U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to stop states from counting absentee or mail-in ballots received after Election Day in federal elections. 

Brown and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield sued the Trump administration over the order. That case is pending in federal court in Seattle.

Washington state’s Republican Party also wants to see a return to in-person voting, with same-day vote counts.

The Supreme Court is already grappling with other litigation focused on mail-in ballots. 

Last month, they heard arguments in the case of an Illinois congressman who sued over a law in his state counting ballots received up to 14 days after Election Day. That case deals with the more procedural issue of the standard plaintiffs must meet to be allowed to sue over an election law.

This article was updated with comment from the Washington secretary of state’s office.

U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., speaks at a campaign event in Norfolk earlier this month. Kaine was one of seven Senate Democrats to join Republicans in advancing a bipartisan deal to reopen the federal government, a move he said was aimed at protecting federal workers and ensuring a future Senate vote on Affordable Care Act tax credits. (Photo by Charlotte Rene Woods/ Virginia Mercury)

This story has been updated.

In a rare public split from his party, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., broke ranks with most Senate Democrats on Sunday to help advance a bipartisan deal to reopen the federal government — a package that restores pay and protections for federal workers but doesn’t deliver on the extension of the health care tax credits Democrats had been holding out for. The latter immediately prompted criticism from some within his party’s progressive wing.

Kaine, one of seven Democrats and one independent to join Republicans in moving the measure forward, framed his decision as a pragmatic step to end the record-long shutdown and secure key concessions for federal employees. 

“After the elections in Virginia last Tuesday, I kind of assessed on Wednesday, ‘Where are we?’ (on the shutdown). And so I decided to then join the discussions to try to find the path out, and brought to the table an issue that wasn’t subject to the negotiation really before I got there … which was how to treat federal workers,” Kaine said Monday in a Zoom call with reporters.

“And I asked my progressive colleagues in the caucus, do you think another week of punishing SNAP recipients is going to make the Republicans cave, and will another month make them cave? I don’t need to court anybody’s approval and I don’t need to fear anybody’s judgment,” Kaine said.

The Democrat isn’t up for reelection until 2030.

Vote signals a pivot — and a compromise

The procedural vote moving the stop-gap funding measure forward cleared the Senate late Sunday by a 60-40 vote. The legislation aims to reopen the federal government and fund key programs through the next several months, while laying out commitments to debate health-care subsidies and other policy priorities.

For Kaine, the deal included specific safeguards he said he insisted upon. 

The legislation would rehire federal employees who were terminated during the shutdown, provide back pay for all federal employees regardless of status, and include a pledge to prevent future reductions in force for the federal workforce. Those terms, Kaine said, constituted the threshold enabling his support.

He said that after weekend negotiations he locked in the agreement at “4:45 p.m. yesterday afternoon, and I feel very, very good about it.”

Kaine also said his action received support from Virginia Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger, who said on the CBS program Face the Nation Sunday that “Virginians need to and Virginians want to see the government reopen.”

“Controversial, tough call, some of my colleagues don’t like it,” Kaine said. “But my governor-elect is very happy with it, and I’m hearing from Virginians this morning. … ‘Thank God you did this.’”

Following up in an email Monday afternoon, a spokesperson for Spanberger emphasized that she supports Kaine’s effort.

“Governor-elect Spanberger has been consistent: Democrats and Republicans in Congress must bring an end to this government shutdown,” the spokesperson said. “Hundreds of thousands of Virginians are feeling the devastating impacts — lost paychecks, work disruptions, and lost SNAP benefits. Governor-elect Spanberger appreciates Senator Kaine fighting for protections for Virginia’s workforce and securing them as part of the negotiations.”

Virginia is disproportionately affected by the ongoing federal work stoppage. With more than 850,000 residents relying on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and one of the nation’s largest federal workforces, the ripple effects of the funding freeze have already hit home. 

The shutdown — triggered by a stalemate over annual appropriations bills and a tied debate over extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act — began in early October and has since grown into the longest in modern U.S. history. 

In Virginia, the freeze of SNAP payments spurred state action. In late October, Gov. Glenn Youngkin declared a state of emergency and launched the Virginia Emergency Nutrition Assistance program to bridge benefit gaps. The crunch on federal workers and beneficiaries of food assistance added urgency to the political and policy equation.

Implications and dissent

Kaine presented the vote as a tactical win that would help reopen the government, secure worker protections, and then debate the more contentious health-care issues openly rather than under a shadow of shutdown chaos. 

“We don’t have a guarantee, but we have a guarantee of a very high-stakes debate and vote on the Senate floor in the full view of the American public, without the background noise of shutdown consequences drowning out the critical nature of the healthcare debate,” he said.

Still, not everyone agrees with his decision. Some progressive Democrats decried the move as ceding too much to Republicans and weakening leverage in negotiations. 

Political commentator Keith Olbermann, on X, demanded Kaine resign: “Don’t vote and then resign — RESIGN NOW. You are no longer a Democrat.” 

Others, such as retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the brother of U.S. Rep. Eugene Vindman, D-Woodbridge, criticized the broader Senate Democratic caucus for collapsing before the public’s appetite for a fight.

“It’s striking and inexplicable that Senate Dems crumbled following decisive signals from the American electorate,” Vindman said on X. “Americans expect the Democrats to fight Trump and Republicans.”

In Virginia’s congressional delegation, responses further reflected the divide. 

Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Loudoun, said he would vote “no” on the Senate proposal once it reached the House, faulting it for failing to fully address health-care costs or federal worker firings. 

“A promise not to fire federal workers in the future is no comfort … to federal workers already fired or contractors who lost their job or aren’t receiving back pay,” he said.

In contrast, Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Fairfax, applauded Kaine’s move as protecting federal workers and ending “attack after attack” under the Trump administration.

On the Republican side, Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt, said, “After 40 days of unnecessary hardship, Democrats have finally recognized that their government shutdown strategy was a failure. … Sadly, it came at the expense of our troops, SNAP recipients, and federal employees who bore the brunt of their political brinkmanship.” 

A calculated risk

Political scientist Stephen J. Farnsworth of the University of Mary Washington said Kaine’s calculation reflects the kind of decision lawmakers make when they’re freed from the immediate pressures of reelection.

“The farther an elected official is from their next election, the more likely they are to make the decision about how to proceed based on sound public policy evaluation,” he said, noting that Kaine’s next reelection campaign is five years off.

“The fact that the Democratic senators who are part of this negotiation are some distance from their next election, or have announced their retirement, suggests that this is more about their evaluation of how the government should proceed rather than reelection considerations,” he said.

On the intra-party split between Kaine and fellow Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, Farnsworth added: 

“It seems to me that reasonable people could disagree on what the party’s best step forward would be. And it’s certainly unusual when there is a difference of opinion between the two Democratic senators, but even people who agree most of the time don’t agree all the time.”

Warner, who voted against the compromise, said in a statement that while he appreciated that the Senate proposal includes “important language preventing further mass layoffs of federal employees,” he could not support an agreement that “still leaves millions of Americans wondering how they are going to pay for their health care or whether they will be able to afford to get sick.”

Whether Kaine’s move proves bold or miscalculated remains to be seen. 

“Only time will tell,” Farnsworth cautioned. “The reality is that an awful lot of people are suffering from the economic consequences of the shutdown. It’s better for the government to be open than not.”

 

President Donald Trump attends inauguration ceremonies in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced on Monday he pardoned his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani and other people allegedly involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, but the president’s federal pardon does not shield members of the group from state charges.

Posting to social media early Monday, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin released the names of 77 people for whom Trump signed federal pardons in a proclamation dated Nov. 7. Martin is an attorney who represented several people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. 

After losing the 2020 presidential election, Trump goaded his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and stop Congress from certifying the election results. He was later impeached by the House for a second time, in connection with the insurrection, but the Senate acquitted him.

It’s the latest move from the president, following his return to the White House, to absolve anyone involved in the efforts to overturn or challenge former President Joe Biden’s victory. The proclamation notes that pardons were granted to address “a grave national injustice.”

Those on the list include former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Sidney Powell, a lawyer who was indicted along with Trump in a Georgia election case to overturn the state’s results in the 2020 presidential election. 

The proclamation, which is only for federal charges, is symbolic and does not prevent state-level prosecutions. Many of the people named on the list were alleged to have been part of the fake electors’ plot to submit fraudulent certificates claiming that Trump won the battleground states of  Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, instead of Biden.

The White House did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment. 

‘Pardoning a conspiracy’

A coalition of more than 100 pro-democracy groups, Not Above the Law, condemned the move by the president to pardon people involved in trying to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

“Trump isn’t just pardoning people – he’s pardoning a conspiracy and trying to rewrite history,” according to the coalition. “He’s creating a two-tier justice system where he and his allies operate above the law. In Trump’s America, loyalty overrides accountability to the Constitution and our federal laws.”

Those on the list include:

• Mark Amick, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Kathy Berden, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Christina Bobb, a former personal lawyer for Trump.
• Tyler Bowyer, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Joseph Brannan, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Carol Brunner, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Mary Buestrin, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Darryl Carlson, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• James “Ken” Carroll, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Brad Carver, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Robert Cheeley, a lawyer who pushed false claims about Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
• Kenneth Chesebro, an architect of the fake electors plot.
• Hank Choate, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Jeffrey Clark, a Trump attorney who allegedly assisted the president in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
• Vikki Townsend Consiglio, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Nancy Cottle, a fake elector from Arizona.
• James DeGraffenreid, a fake elector from Nevada.
• John Downey, a fake elector from Georgia.
• John Eastman, an alleged architect of the fake electors plot.
• Jenna Ellis, a Trump attorney who allegedly assisted the president in his failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
• Boris Epshteyn, a Trump advisor who was indicted in Arizona for trying to overturn the state’s 2020 presidential election results.
• Amy Facchinello, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Bill Feehan, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Carolyn Hall Fisher, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Harrison Floyd, a lawyer who allegedly tried to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
• Clifford Frost, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Gloria Kay Godwin, who tried to obtain signatures for a recall election petition in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election.
• Edward Scott Grabins, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Stanley Grot, a fake elector from Michigan.
• John Haggard, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Scott Hall, the first to plead guilty in the 2020 election subversion case in Georgia.
• Misty Hampton, who was indicted in Georgia’s Fulton County election interference case.
• David G. Hanna, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Mark W. Hennessy, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Mari-Ann Henry, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Durward James Hindle III, a fake elector from Nevada.
• Andrew Hitt, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Jake Hoffman, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Burt Jones, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Anthony T. Kern, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Kathy Kiernan, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Timothy King, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Trevian Kutti, former publicist of Kayne West, now Ye, who was accused of intimidating Fulton County election workers into falsely admitting to fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election.
• James Lamon, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Cathleen Alston Latham, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Jesse Law, a fake elector from Nevada.
• Stephen Cliffgard Lee, a Chicago pastor accused of intimidating Fulton County election workers into falsely admitting to fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election.
• Michele Lundgren, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Meshawn Maddock, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Michael J. McDonald, a fake elector from Nevada.
• Shawn Meehan, a fake elector from Nevada.
• Robert Montgomery, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Daryl Moody, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Samuel I. Moorhead, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Loraine B. Pellegrino, a fake elector from Arizona.
• James Renner, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Eileen Rice, a fake elector from Nevada.
• Mayra Rodriguez, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Mike Roman, a Trump attorney from Wisconsin who allegedly took part in the efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
• Rose Rook, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Kelly Ruh, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Greg Safsten, a fake elector from Arizona.
• David Shafer, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Marian Sheridan, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Ray Stallings Smith III, an attorney for Trump who allegedly tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia.
• Robert F. Spindell Jr., a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• Shawn Still, a fake elector from Georgia.
• Ken Thompson, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Pam Travis, a fake elector from Wisconsin.
• James Troupis, an alleged architect of the fake electors plot.
• Kent Vanderwood, a fake elector from Michigan.
• Kelli Ward, a fake elector from Arizona.
• Michael Ward, a fake elector from Arizona.
• C.B. Yadav, a fake elector from Georgia.

Blister packs of hormone replacement therapy medication. (Getty photos)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Monday it plans to remove warnings from hormone replacement therapy drugs that can be used to address symptoms of menopause, saying the statements are no longer needed. 

The black box warning, the strongest caution possible from the FDA, was added in the early 2000s after a study from the Women’s Health Initiative showed an uptick in rates of blood clots, breast cancer, heart attacks and strokes for women who used certain types of hormone replacement therapy. 

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said during a press conference the change for estrogen-related products “is based on a robust review of the latest scientific evidence.”

Makary rebuked the medical establishment for not putting enough effort into researching women’s health conditions, including menopause. 

“A male-dominated medical profession, let’s be honest, has minimized the symptoms of menopause, and as a result, women’s health issues have not received the attention that they deserve. More than 80% of women have notable severe symptoms lasting up to eight years. How could the medical establishment get it so wrong for so long?” Makary said. “Women deserve the same rigorous sciences as is used for men.”

Study criticized

Department of Health and Human Services Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health Director Alicia Jackson said the black box warning on estrogen was based on “the flawed, overgeneralized and misinterpreted WHI study.” 

Jackson said menopause leads to a series of complicated and often painful experiences for women, including “sleepless nights, derailed careers, painful sex, broken bones and a loss of wellbeing.”

Jackson explained that when the level of estrogen drops throughout and after menopause, “a cascade of disease and aging begins.”

“A preponderance of data now shows that estrogen, when started early, acts as a protective shield for the brain, lowering risks of memory loss, mental health decline and neurodegenerative disease, even Alzheimer’s,” Jackson said.  

Makary said women should talk with their doctors and can request their estrogen levels be monitored as they approach the age where menopause typically begins and throughout that years-long process. 

He said that sometimes doctors can prescribe microdosing for hormone replacement therapy, followed by a half-dose and eventually a full dose as a woman’s estrogen levels decrease over time. 

Makary didn’t say how many of the companies that produce hormone replacement therapies plan to remove the black box warning but said he expects nearly all will do so. 

“Companies are, generally speaking, very excited when the FDA tells them they can remove a scary warning on your product,” he said. 

Review by panel

The FDA’s process for removing the black box warning requirement, Makary said, began with an expert panel earlier this year. The FDA’s subject-matter experts then conducted a “comprehensive review of the literature” and recommended the agency remove the requirement, which Makary accepted. 

The scientists who were part of the expert panel, he said, have written an article that will be published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

President of the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists Steven J. Fleischman wrote in a statement that he “commends the HHS leadership for improving the lives of perimenopausal women by making the estrogen products they need more accessible to them.”

“The modifications to certain warning labels for estrogen products are years in the making, reflecting the dedicated advocacy of physicians and patients across the country,” Fleischman wrote. “The updated labels will better allow patients and clinicians to engage in a shared decision-making process, without an unnecessary barrier, when it comes to treatment of menopausal symptoms. ACOG has long advised clinicians to counsel patients based on an individual’s unique risk factors and treatment goals; this announcement does not change ACOG’s guidance on estrogen therapy.”

Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)

President Donald Trump has pardoned a group of Wisconsin Republicans who participated in his scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election by casting false Electoral College votes. 

The pardons were issued to a large group of people instrumental to Trump’s 2020 effort, including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. Included on the list, posted to X Sunday night by Trump’s pardon attorney Ed Martin, are some of the Wisconsin Republicans who cast the fake votes as well as two attorneys and a former aide who were instrumental in planning the effort. 

The pardons are largely symbolic because the president’s authority only extends to federal, not state, crimes. 

Wisconsinites Carol Brunner, Mary Buestrin, Darryl Carlson, Andrew Hitt, Kelly Ruh, Bob Spindell and Pam Travis received pardons. Attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, and former Trump aide Mike Roman were also on the list. 

The 10 people who served as false Trump electors had previously settled a lawsuit against them, which included a formal statement that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and an agreement that they would not serve as electors in any election in which Trump was on the ballot. 

Cheseboro, Troupis and Roman are all facing felony charges in Wisconsin for their role in planning the false elector plot. 

Sen. Ron Johnson, whose office played a part in the scheme by trying to pass the fake Electoral College ballots to then-Vice President Mike Pence, celebrated the pardons. 

“Thank you [Trump] and [Martin] for issuing these well-deserved pardons. It’s well past time for [Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul] to end his corrupt lawfare against a good and honorable man, Judge James Troupis,” Johnson wrote on X. 

While the pardons won’t have any effect on the state prosecutions, critics said the real effect is Trump creating a permission structure for his allies to undermine U.S. election results. Jeff Mandell, general counsel of Law Forward, the progressive voting rights focused firm that filed the lawsuit against Wisconsin’s 10 false electors, called the pardons “offensive” and said they invite attacks on democracy.

“Many are dismissing these pardons as merely symbolic. That misses the point,” Mandell said in a statement. “While the pardon has little immediate effect, its purpose is emblematic: it sends an unmistakable message that this White House disdains democracy and will assist, in word and in deed, any effort, no matter how extreme and outrageous, to cling to power regardless of election results.”

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The Wisconsin Legislature is considering a bill to legalize online sports gambling. (Getty Images)

A bipartisan bill to legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin is speeding through the state Legislature.

After being introduced in late October, the Assembly and Senate versions of the legislation received public hearings this week, and on Thursday the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Revenue voted 5-3 in favor of advancing the bill to the Senate floor. 

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, any gambling must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Sports betting was first allowed in the state in 2021, but all of those bets had to be made in person at tribal casinos. The proposed new legislation would allow online sports betting using a “hub and spoke” model in which the servers running the betting websites and apps are housed on tribal land. 

The structure is similar to the state of Florida’s agreement with the Seminole tribe, which owns and operates the Hard Rock Casino brand. 

Proponents of the bill, including a bipartisan mix of legislators, representatives of the tribes and the state’s professional sports teams, say that hundreds of millions of dollars in unregulated online sports bets are already being made in Wisconsin, so legalizing the practice will kill the black market while providing tax revenue and consumer protections. 

But critics say the Legislature is rushing through a bill that could face legal hurdles and ignoring the ways in which online sports betting can be especially harmful for people with gambling addictions. 

Wisconsin’s legalization move comes seven years after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018. So far, 39 states have legalized sports betting and 32 of them have allowed online or mobile sports bets. 

Wisconsin would be the first state to legalize online sports gambling since North Carolina and Vermont did so in June 2023. Only now, Wisconsin’s legislators are doing so amid a national reassessment of the country’s relationship with sports gambling. Ads for apps such as FanDuel and DraftKings are ubiquitous. Both the National Basketball Association  and Major League Baseball are dealing with the fallout of player gambling scandals. Questions have arisen about the healthiness of frictionless sports gambling for the predominately young, male users of these apps. 

“American culture, and American sporting culture is trying to adjust to this new widely legalized moment,” Dr. Jason Lopez, a professor at UW-Madison who studies sports media and gambling, told the Wisconsin Examiner. 

If the bill is passed and signed into law, sports betting wouldn’t be immediately legalized. The state and tribes would need to renegotiate their existing gaming compacts and then those new agreements would need approval from the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

But, Rep. Tyler August (R-Walworth), said at Tuesday’s Senate hearing, the state should get moving before the illegal betting market grows too large. 

“I don’t gamble, but I think  it’s the right thing to do, based on some of the data that we’ve seen,” said August, whose district is right on the Illinois border, which residents can easily cross to place online bets. “This is an activity that’s not declining, it’s increasing. And I think that it’s appropriate for us to deal with this now before it gets even bigger.”

Jim Crawford, attorney general of the Potawatomi tribe, said an estimated $1 billion in illegal online sports bets were made by Wisconsinites last year. At the hearing, tribal representatives highlighted the services tribal governments could improve with the increased sports betting revenue. 

“While online gaming is currently the wild west in Wisconsin with no regulations or protections for consumers,” Crawford said. “It does not have to be. This bill is a first step in ensuring that consumers will be able to have a legal, regulated and protected way of participating in this extremely popular technology.”

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green), one of the bill’s co-authors, said he doesn’t believe the bill will put gambling addicts at further risk. But Sens. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), Rachael Cabral-Guevara (R-Appleton) and Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi) voted against moving the bill out of committee. Jacque said at the hearing he was worried about the recent gambling scandals in professional sports and the risk of gambling addiction. 

“This would allow them to place bets by their device anywhere in the state, as opposed to going on site at a casino, at a reservation,” Jacque said. “I would say, from an opportunity standpoint, that potentially could feed more into addictive behavior.” 

Noah Henderson, the director of the sport management program at Loyola University Chicago, said the frictionless nature of online sports betting is one of its challenges. 

“Brick and mortar sports books provide a cooling-off period, when people are trying to chase losses, if they have to get in their car again and go to the sports book, they might realize halfway there that they’re acting impulsively,” Henderson said. “It’s easier for families to see the signs of gambling disorder or problem gambling when individuals have to leave the home, right? It’s a lot easier to hide problem gambling or a gambling disorder when it’s only on a mobile device, where there’s no absences, they’re not leaving the house more than they normally do.” 

Henderson said there’s not much Wisconsin’s Legislature can do about the societal acceptance of legalized sports betting and a culture that has fully absorbed the promotion of gambling. 

“It is incredibly common to see on the pre-game show, the halftime show, the best bets, the best live bets, the best parlay combinations. So I think that there’s only so much Wisconsin can do to stop that, to stop sports gambling from being the culture of young men — predominantly young men — watching sports,” he told the Examiner. 

So, according to Henderson, the state is faced with a choice between legalizing and facing the broader cultural changes head-on while getting the tax revenue or hoping that prohibition disincentivizes sports betting. 

“I think that there might be a bit of harm reduction in this public policy where, if we keep mobile sports wagering outlawed in this state, it’s not going to curtail the sweeping normalization of sports gambling that we’ve seen,” Henderson said. “That’s at a national level. So Wisconsin has two options, which is to not allow it, and hope that the lack of resources for legal sports gambling incentivizes young men and women not to partake in this. But at the end of the day, there’s still a market and a need … they would rather regulate and tax it for consumer protection and to grow a tax base off of it and not have sports gambling happening without being able to derive some tax benefit from it that can go towards gambling education, public schools, or whatever else Wisconsin’s government deems important.” 

One organization that is against the bill is the Sports Betting Alliance, which represents the major online sportsbooks. 

The bill uses the federal Indian Gaming Regulation Act as a mechanism to allow online bets in Wisconsin. That law allows tribes to license their gaming operations out to third parties so long as the tribe gets 60% of the net revenue. 

Damon Stewart, an attorney for the alliance, said at the hearing that the revenue sharing requirement would make it too expensive for the most popular apps to partner with the tribes and provide their already existing apps and infrastructure. He also said he believes the law as currently written runs afoul of federal law. 

“We support the goal of legal online sports betting in Wisconsin. We want to work with the tribes. We want to partner with them,” Stewart said. “But this bill will only result in limited choices for customers. There’s no national brands, no chance for all the tribes to actually participate in the market, no ability to make an effective dent in the illegal market that already exists and years of litigation that will hold up the implementation of the law.” 

Stewart argued in his testimony that without the name recognition of the most popular apps, the legalization effort may not effectively kill the black market. Henderson said it’s possible for the tribes to develop their own infrastructure, but it’s easier to let the bigger companies manage the administration if the revenue sharing deal can be worked out. 

“This is probably a losing endeavor for those big sports books to enter a mid-sized sports gambling market with already pretty challenging margins,” Henderson said. “Especially when sports books enter a new market for sports gambling, there’s a lot of upfront costs that come with advertising that usually these businesses and markets take several years to even become profitable with more favorable regulations in place.” 

“Legislation can be amended. It doesn’t seem like this is the only formulation of it, but I think revenue sharing can definitely happen,” he continued. “I just don’t know if the 60-40 model makes sense for retailers to want to come in. Otherwise it would just be much like Florida, where tribal governments would have to build the infrastructure on their own or purchase white light label sports gambling software and pass it off as their own.”

In his testimony, Stewart called for the Legislature to slow down the process and get it right the first time. 

“I want to be respectful. It’s just my perception that with a bill dropped last week, two hearings this week, it does seem to be, compared to a lot of legislation, a bit of a rush,” Stewart said. “And on the topic of this complexity, a topic of this importance that affects a lot of citizens of the state, I would hope it would be seen as reasonable as asking to let us have the chance to work with the tribes.” 

The tribal representatives testifying said they were prepared to move forward without the big name apps. 

“We certainly appreciate the Sports Betting Alliance’s support of the goal of this legislation,” Crawford said. “But it’s also something that is a little bit concerning to us, that they are sort of implying that we don’t have the capability of operating statewide mobile sports, which, if you’ve ever been to our facility and to our retail sports betting, you know that we do a pretty good job, and the customers are happy. And so we look forward to doing that on a statewide basis, on a regulated basis, where the consumers are protected and they are generating revenues for the state of Wisconsin that stay in the state of Wisconsin.”

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Fred Clark (standing) Democrat from Bayfield County, talking to John Kotar, retired UW-Madision Forestry, Ecology and Management Proffesor in Cable, Wisconsin, Oct. 22. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

In 2021, Fred Clark, who represented Baraboo as a Democratic representative in the state Assembly from 2009 to 2014, moved north to Bayfield County to retire, but over the last year, he said, he has become concerned about what he sees as an assault on the U.S. Constitution and the future of America, so he decided to re-enter politics.

Clark recently announced he’s running for Congress to represent Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District.

Incumbent Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) is running for governor and two of the highest profile Republican state senators in the district — Romaine Quinn of Rice Lake and Mary Felzkowski of Tomahawk — both recently announced they will seek reelection to  the state Senate. The other candidates who have announced they are running for Tiffany’s seat,  three Republicans and one Democrat, have little districtwide name recognition. 

Clark sees an opportunity to mount a strong campaign as he tries to flip the large, Republican-leaning district, which covers much of the top half of Wisconsin, from red to blue.

“I think this is the first time in 15 years to have a truly competitive election in the 7th Congressional District,” he said. 

Clark, who is also not widely known in the 7th CD, has his work cut out for him. His background in logging, as the owner of Clark Forestry, Inc., could appeal to voters in the northwestern district, where forestry products are a critical part of the economy. He has also worked as a forestry consultant with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and as a forest ecologist for The Nature Conservancy, and was the executive director and a founding board member of Wisconsin’s Green Fire, a conservation group. 

He also has a history of building relationships with Republicans and independents, which is critical in a  district that has voted by wide margins for Republicans since 2010, starting with former U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Hayward), now Secretary of Transportation. Duffy who won the district before it was redrawn following the last Census, and then increased his winning margins in the redistricted boundaries for four more elections. Tiffany also won by wide margins.

At a meeting of Democrats in Cable on Oct. 22 at The River Eatery, a venue heavily supported by the silent sports community that tends to vote blue, Clark was asked if he would reach out to independents and Republicans in the district. He answered in the affirmative, saying his goal is to convince 40,000 voters who either did not vote or voted Republican in the last congressional election to “reevaluate” their decision.

“I’m asking a lot of people who may have voted Republican in the past to think about who’s going to represent their interest the best and who’s got the ability to work for you and will show up and listen,” he said. “People want to shake your hand and look you in the eye and believe that they share enough with you that they could trust you to represent them, even if you didn’t agree with them on everything.”

At that Oct 22 meeting, Clark criticized policy decisions in Washington he said were “hurtful and damaging and are being felt across rural America right now.”

Clark is critical of the Big Beautiful Bill passed this summer by Republicans, and of their refusal to extend Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies. More than 270,000 Wisconsinites are projected to lose health insurance because of either dropping their coverage when premiums rise or losing Medicaid under the new rules. .

Clark is also concerned there will be fewer federal dollars to support rural hospitals.

“The health care outcomes are going to be worse and the rural health care system that we all rely on is going to continue to get worse because we’re going to lose doctors and we’re going to lose specialists and we’re going to lose clinics,” he said.

Support for wood pulp sustainable fuel initiative

Hayward is in the running, along with two other sites in Michigan and Minnesota, for a large $1.5 billion sustainable aviation fuel plant using pulp wood. The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation is offering $60 million in incentives on top of a  $150 million grant funded through the Department of Natural Resources forestry account. It could be a boon to the wood pulp industry, but there have also been environmental concerns that the operation involving chipping trees in the field would leave less timber debris that adds nutrients to the soil, helping to protect the long-term health of the forest.

As a forester, Clark  believes the project would be good for the economy. The state’s  pulp and paper industries have been in a long  decline.  Clark says chipping  can be done in a manner that doesn’t risk the forest, but he is also critical of the  state’s plan to offer  the $150 million grant.

“We need to find new uses for wood from Wisconsin forests, and it’s really important that we have those markets for wood so that people managing forest land can continue to do that and we have a strong forest-based economy,” he said. “The sustainable aviation fuel truly is an opportunity to add a new product, or forest products mix, that could be good for forest conservation and forest ownership.”

“What I’m concerned about,” he added “and I don’t think it’s a good idea, is to hand out a $150 million cash subsidy to try to get into a bidding war with other states to land this plan.” He says he prefers the idea of offering tax credits as incentives to “writing a big blank check to this company.”

Worries about privatizing forestry

Clark also supports the Good Neighbor Authority program with the U.S. Forest Service, which involves county forestry departments helping to manage federal forest harvests. U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) was instrumental in establishing the program.  

“What the Good Neighbor Authority has done is just provide some extra flexibility for the Forest Service to get important work done and to meet their timber goals,” he said. “Working through states, it can work well when it’s well managed, but the risk here is that this administration throws open the door to basically privatize most of forest management, and if you let that happen, you’re going to have people and organizations setting up these timber sales that aren’t respecting the wildlife habitat and the soil conservation and the water protection that all needs to be part of any forest management. So the training and the standards and maintaining consistency are some of the most important things that we need to do with Good Neighbor Authority, and it’s got to be well managed or it won’t be successful.”

Help for Wisconsin farmers and small business

The number of small dairy farms in Wisconsin continues to decline as giant operations grow. Clark says the solution to the scourge of farm bankruptcies is to work on returning to supply management, keeping the milk supply at a level that offers attractive prices instead of emphasizing higher production, which suppresses prices and favors larger dairy operations.

“Honestly, as long as the incentives are all toward maximizing production that’s going to continue to keep prices at a place where only the biggest producers are going to survive and we’ll continue to see the erosion of the small farms who simply can’t produce enough milk at a cost above production,” he said. “Other countries that have effective supply management programs are actually able to maintain pricing that allows everybody to stay in business, and I think that’s the conversation among milk producers and folks in Congress that needs to be had.”

Clark is also critical of Trump’s tariffs for undermining efforts in the farming community to establish overseas markets.

“We’re seeing right now the impacts of the tariff war on everything from soybean producers who [lost]  markets in China … to hardwood lumber producers here in Wisconsin, who also have depended on Canadian and other international markets that are losing those markets, to ginseng producers in Marathon County, who have now lost their single biggest customer, China, which purchases the vast majority of American ginseng,” he said.  “All those markets that took years to develop are being essentially kneecapped by this president in this crazy tariff war.”

On his platform for “rebuilding our rural economy” Clark notes the need for “long-overdue tax reform that claws back 40 years of tax giveaways to the wealthiest Americans and our most profitable corporations.”

“We need a much fairer system,” he said. “There are simply way too many gigantic tax benefits that the largest corporations are able to use in order to effectively pay almost no taxes, and in many cases, these are some of the most profitable industries in our nation. You know, the net result of that is that we’ve got a giant amount of national debt. I believe it’s over $37 trillion of national debt. That is not good for America, and we can’t balance that debt on the backs of the people who need the services of the government the most.”

Clark is advocating for targeted subsidies for small- and medium-sized businesses, which he said generate jobs in rural communities. Asked about one notable failure in the district — the millions in federal grant dollars allocated to the Park Falls mill, which failed to keep the plant operational, he said, “When you’re providing incentives to private businesses, there’s always a risk.” 

“So because the business used a subsidy and ended up failing, that doesn’t mean we failed, but it does mean to me, we’ve got to make those investments smartly,” he added. Giving a large grant to a business that might come from outside the state to build a sustainable aviation fuel plant is one plan he says needs more scrutiny.  

“If you’re trying to start a small farm or small forest products business or manufacturing business, and you go to the Small Business Development Corporation, the Small Business Administration for a loan, you’re going to be wading through paperwork tall as your arm on your desk by the time you’re done, hours and hours,” he said.  “I think we can make that easier, and I think we can make those funds more available. And what we know is that even though big employers get a lot of the attention, if you add up the scope of small businesses, that’s actually where most of the jobs are, and those owners are the people who are committed and rooted in those communities.”

One of the things Clark doesn’t directly cover in his platform is the affordable  housing crisis. 

Clark said housing may be more important in tourist areas, like the 7th District, where so many seasonal homes are used as short-term rentals (STRs) instead of long-term family housing.

“We need communities that have the ability to zone and regulate that (STRs) more effectively, and then we need to go back and figure out how to make housing affordable, which is the availability of financing,” he said.

Immigration reform

Clark acknowledges that many voters in the 7th CD supported Trump’s promise to beef up border security and deport immigrants who commit crimes, but he is critical of how the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) law enforcement agents are operating in communities.

“We need to have a secure border and immigrants who are here illegally, and most especially immigrants associated with criminal activity — we absolutely need enforcement on that,” he said. “And those people should be deported. What we have going on right now, however, is it’s essentially a war of fear in American cities. And ICE is an agency that is really one of the only federal agencies that’s seen its budget dramatically increased. They’re hiring new ICE agents as fast as they can, with a minimal amount of training, and it’s already clear that many of these people simply don’t have the experience and the training to be doing what they’re doing. And I don’t care what party you belong to, seeing people in masks who aren’t even identifying themselves, calling citizens and legal residents out of their homes without judicial warrants, many of whom will never see a court or a judge — it’s wrong and it’s unconstitutional, and it’s not making American communities safer.”

Clark also wants Congress to fully flex its constitutional authority to “curb the abuse of emergency powers” exercised by Trump. Democrats would be able to provide that check if they win the majority of the House in 2026. He also said Democrats should hold town hall meetings, “taking the case to voters.”

“Republicans in Congress have been completely afraid to do that,” he said of in-person town hall meetings. “Congressman Tiffany hasn’t done it. And that’s talking to the people that you represent. You know that’s No. 1.”

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People wait in line at a security checkpoint at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport  on Nov. 9, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The FAA has targeted 40 "high-volume" airports, including Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, for flight cuts amid the government shutdown. (Photo by Grant Baldwin/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — Seven U.S. Senate Democrats and one independent joined Republicans on Sunday night in advancing legislation to reopen the government and temporarily keep it afloat until the end of January, after a record-breaking shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada voted with most of the GOP to advance the stopgap measure through a 60-40 procedural vote. 

Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted in support.  

Fetterman, King and Cortez Masto had already voted with Republicans on the previous 14 votes to reopen the government. Until Sunday, Republicans who control the chamber did not have the 60 votes needed to clear the filibuster threshold.

GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has consistently voted against the temporary funding measure, again cast a “no” vote.

The deal would also unlock full-year funding for a vital food aid program that serves 42 million Americans and bring back federal workers fired by President Donald Trump when the government was closed.

It does not include language addressing skyrocketing premiums for those enrolled in individual health insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act marketplace, a major sticking point for Democrats. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said late Sunday on the Senate floor that he commits to holding a separate vote on health insurance subsidies no later than the second week of December.

In a press conference following the vote, Rosen said Democrats have “an opportunity also to put Republicans on the record on the ACA.”

“Are they committed to doing this? Are they committed leaders who said, ‘You can come to the table on health care once the government was open’? And now he must follow through. If Republicans want to join us in lowering costs for working families, they have the perfect opportunity to show the American public,” Rosen said.

New text of a temporary stopgap funding deal released Sunday night proposes to keep the government open until Jan. 30. The bill would also reinstate all federal employees who were fired after the shutdown began, restoring their jobs with back pay, and prohibit any further layoffs until the temporary funding expires.

As part of the agreement, three fiscal year 2026 funding bills will ride along with the package, including the appropriations bills for agriculture programs, veterans benefits, military construction and Congress.

Divided Democrats

Several Senate Democrats left a lengthy closed-door meeting earlier Sunday night upset that the deal does not include anything to address rising health care premiums, on which the party has staked the 40-day shutdown. 

Subsidies for those who buy insurance on the Affordable Care Act insurance marketplace expire at the end of this year.

“So far as I’m concerned, health care isn’t included, so I’ll be a no,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin also issued statements following the caucus meeting declaring they would vote no. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer also told reporters on his way out of the meeting that he’s opposed to the deal.

Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said on social media he would oppose it. ”I’ve been clear that we need real action to stop the devastating health care cost increases that are hurting millions of families,” he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., issued a statement expressing support for the agreement, highlighting that Senate Republicans have promised a vote on extending the health care subsidies.

“This deal guarantees a vote to extend Affordable Care Act premium tax credits, which Republicans weren’t willing to do. Lawmakers know their constituents expect them to vote for it, and if they don’t, they could very well be replaced at the ballot box by someone who will,” Kaine said.

Government reopening will take time

The Sunday night vote does not mean the government will reopen right away.

The legislation must make its way through Senate procedural steps and then gain approval from the U.S. House, which hasn’t been in session since Sept. 19. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, attended the Washington Commanders football game with Trump Sunday night in Landover, Maryland.

Trump briefly spoke to reporters upon news of the deal after leaving the NFL game, telling them, “It looks like we’re getting very close to the shutdown ending.”

Nearly a million federal workers have missed paychecks during the shutdown, and food benefits for the poorest Americans stopped flowing at the beginning of November. 

Air travel has also become snarled as the shutdown has dragged on, and air traffic controllers are under pressure without pay. The Federal Aviation Administration began cutting flights Friday at 40 major airports across the U.S. The cuts are set to ramp up to a 10% decrease in air traffic.

SNAP funding

The deal includes provisions that Democrats say the Trump administration sought to shrink or cut altogether, including fresh fruit and vegetable subsidies for mothers with children and monthly food boxes for low-income seniors.

The legislation would direct $8.2 billion to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, otherwise known as WIC, a roughly $600 million increase over last year’s program amount.

During the shutdown, the administration used $150 million from a U.S. Department of Agriculture rainy day fund to keep the program going. The bill would replenish the contingency money.

The bill also fully funds the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, and children’s nutrition programs, including subsidized school breakfast and lunch, and the availability of food during summer school breaks.

Democrats on the Senate Committee on Appropriations say it included “key funding for SNAP and other critical nutrition programs as President Trump fights in court during the government shutdown to cut off benefits for 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP to feed their families,” according to a bill summary. 

The USDA directed states to begin releasing the November SNAP benefits onto recipients’ benefits debit cards after a Rhode Island federal district judge and circuit court ordered the Trump administration to do so last week. 

Trump appealed the order to the Supreme Court, which stayed the decision. A department memo Saturday told states that released the full benefits to take back a portion of them.

The bill would also direct money to the SNAP emergency contingency fund.

Hemp ban

Hemp farmers are sounding the alarm about a provision in the bill that they say would “effectively eliminate the legal hemp industry built under the 2018 farm bill,” according to a Sunday statement from the Hemp Industry and Farmers of America.

Lawmakers are “slamming the door on 325,000 American jobs and forcing consumers back to dangerous black markets,” the industry group’s executive director Brian Swensen said. 

Swensen also added: “The hemp industry has been ready and willing to work on responsible regulations – age restrictions, testing requirements, proper labeling — but instead of collaboration, the industry is getting a misguided prohibition through backdoor appropriations deals.” 

House trepidation

Several House Democrats, including a top appropriator, criticized the deal.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries blamed Republicans for the proposal Sunday night in a statement, saying House and Senate Democrats have “waged a valiant fight” for the last seven weeks.

“It now appears that Senate Republicans will send the House of Representatives a spending bill that fails to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits. As a result of the Republicans refusal to address the healthcare crisis that they have created, tens of millions of everyday Americans are going to see their costs skyrocket,” Jeffries said.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the top House Democratic appropriator, said she did not agree to the release of the veterans and military construction bill as an attachment to the deal.

“Congress must invest in veterans, address the health care crisis that is raising costs on more than 20 million Americans, and prevent President Trump from not spending appropriated dollars in our communities,” DeLauro, D-Conn., said in a statement.

Rep. Angie Craig joined other House Democrats in slamming the Senate negotiations on social media.

“If people believe this is a ‘deal,’ I have a bridge to sell you. I’m not going to put 24 million Americans at risk of losing their health care. I’m a no,” said Craig, of Minnesota.