Former President Biden speaks about Social Security at a disability conference in Chicago on April 15, 2025. The remarks were his first in public since leaving office in January. (Image via C-SPAN livestream)

Former President Joe Biden on Tuesday used his first public address since leaving office to criticize the current administration for cutting thousands of employees at the Social Security Administration and to rebut those who have questioned the program’s relevance.

“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage and so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking it could happen that soon,” Biden said. “They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing 7,000 employees — 7,000 — out the door in that time, including the most seasoned career officials.”

The Social Security Administration announced earlier this year it would cut staffing from 57,000 to 50,000 employees and reduce the number of regional offices from 10 to four.

Biden urged Republicans to preserve Social Security for future generations, arguing during his 30-minute speech to the national conference of Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago that people have been able to rely on it throughout wars, recessions and the pandemic.

“Social Security is about more than retirement accounts. It’s about honoring a fundamental trust between government and people,” Biden said. “It’s about peace of mind for those who work their whole lives, so they can rest assured they’ll have a chance to get back some of what they earned and what they deserve.”

Biden, who accepted the organization’s Beacon of Hope award, said protecting Social Security and the federal workers who administer the program is about defending core principles.

“Who are we? What makes us distinct from the rest of the world?” Biden asked. “It comes down to basic, in my view, fundamental American values — nobody’s king, nobody’s the boss. Everybody has a shot.” 

Biden criticized members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet for making harsh comments about the program. He noted Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said his mother-in-law wouldn’t complain if she missed a Social Security payment and that “the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen because whoever screams is the one stealing.”

Biden also called out billionaire and head of U.S. DOGE Service Elon Musk for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

“​​What the hell are they talking about?” Biden said. “People earn these benefits. They paid into that benefit. They rely on that benefit.”

White House pledges to maintain program

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing several hours before Biden’s speech the Trump administration doesn’t plan to cut off Americans’ Social Security benefits.

“Let me make it very clear ahead of former President Biden’s remarks: The president, this president, President Trump is absolutely certain about protecting Social Security benefits for law-abiding, tax-paying American citizens and seniors who have paid into this program,” she said. “He will always protect that program. He campaigned on it. He protected it in his first term.”

Leavitt also took a swipe at Biden’s age, saying she didn’t expect him to give a speech during the evening.

“My first reaction when seeing former President Biden was speaking tonight was, I’m shocked that he was speaking at nighttime. I had thought his bedtime was much earlier than his speech tonight,” she said. 

Biden, 82, last year dropped his reelection bid in a rematch against Trump, 78, amid concerns about his age and mental acuity.

Administrator nominee to target errors

Democrats have raised concerns for months that staffing cuts at the Social Security Administration will impact Americans’ ability to get their questions about the program answered or their issues resolved quickly.

Social Security Commissioner nominee Frank Bisignano testified during his hearing in March that, if confirmed, he would try to “ensure that every beneficiary receives their payments on time, that disability claims are processed in the manner they should be.”

Bisignano said he hoped to ensure Social Security recipients could visit an office, use the website, or speak to a real person after calling the 1-800 number.

“On the phone, I’m committed to reducing wait times and providing beneficiaries with a better experience; waiting 20 minutes-plus to get an answer will be of yesteryear,” Bisignano said. “I also believe we can significantly improve the length of the disability claim process.”

Bisignano promised lawmakers he would reduce the 1% error rate in payments, which he said was “five decimal places too high.” And he said repeatedly that personally identifiable information will be “protected.”

The Senate Finance Committee voted along party lines in early April to send Bisignano’s nomination to the floor, but he hasn’t yet been confirmed. 

A crowd gathered outside U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Tuesday, April 10, 2025, to protest the government's erroneous deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran national, to a mega-prison in the Central American country. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday ordered a defiant Trump administration to provide evidence about how it has tried to secure the release of an immigrant mistakenly deported to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, saying that to date, the record shows “nothing has been done.”

District Judge Paula Xinis laid out a two-week timeline for the government to produce sworn statements on whether and how immigration officials are complying with her previous court order to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

“Discovery will bear out whether you have,” Xinis said, referring to the process through which information is disclosed in court. “And if you haven’t, whether it’s a choice or on justified ground.”

“Cancel vacation, cancel other appointments. I’m usually very good about things like that in my courtroom, but not this time,” she said during a hearing in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, had ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by April 7.

A federal appeals court swiftly upheld Xinis’ order. The Trump administration appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the justices ruled 9-0 Thursday that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return — though they stopped short of requiring it — and provide the El Salvadoran due process through the U.S. immigration courts.

The Supreme Court “could not have been clearer,” Xinis said to Drew Ensign, the deputy assistant attorney general who represented the government Tuesday.

Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador, who lived with his wife Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, and their 5-year-old child, was apprehended by immigration officials in mid-March.

He was among roughly 260 Venezuelan men the U.S. flew on commercial jets, without due process, to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

Garcia has no criminal history in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country, according to court filings in the lawsuit Vasquez Sura brought against the government last month.

An immigration judge issued a protective order in 2019 shielding his return to El Salvador because of near certainty he would face violence and persecution.

White House echoes Bukele

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement admitted in court documents that Abrego Garcia’s removal on March 15 was an “administrative error.”

The White House maintains it has no power to ask El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia from CECOT, and that Xinis overstepped her authority in ordering the administration to conduct foreign affairs.

The White House also asserts Abrego Garcia is a “foreign terrorist” and a member of the El Salvadoran gang MS-13, which the administration designated a foreign terrorist organization in February.

“Deporting him was always going to be the end result,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday at the daily press briefing.

“There is never going to be a world in which this is an individual who’s going to live a peaceful life in Maryland,” she said.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele told journalists Monday during a visit to the Oval Office, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” labeling Abrego Garcia as a “terrorist.”

The government echoed Bukele’s comments in its daily status report.

“DHS does not have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation,” Joseph Mazarra, acting general counsel for DHS, wrote in Monday’s report.

Following a tense hearing Friday, where the government refused to provide the whereabouts of Abrego Garcia, Xinis ordered the administration to provide the daily updates.

On Tuesday, Xinis told Ensign that the government has provided “very little information of any value” in the reports.

“As a factual matter, I do need evidence in this record because to date what the record shows is nothing has been done,” Xinis said.

Ruling requested on contempt

Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Vasquez Sura asked the court to order immigration officials to arrange for her husband’s return by the end of April 14.

She also asked the court to mandate government officials provide documents and depositions related to Abrego Garcia’s release, and to show cause as to why Xinis should not hold the government in contempt of court for not complying with orders to bring Abrego Garcia back.

Xinis said she will not make a decision on contempt until she reviews a record of evidence.

The government maintains the Supreme Court’s decision does not mean they must work with El Salvador to release Abrego Garcia because the president, not federal courts, has jurisdiction over foreign affairs.

The administration also contends that the Supreme Court’s use of the term “facilitate” only means that they need to remove “domestic” barriers to bringing Abrego back to the U.S. — not that they would have to work with El Salvador to secure his release.

“Indeed, no other reading of ‘facilitate’ is tenable — or constitutional — here,” they wrote in a response to Vasquez Sura’s request.

In the Oval Office Monday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the U.S. would provide a plane, but cannot force Bukele to release Abrego Garcia.

Ensign provided a transcript of the Oval Office meeting to the court 15 minutes prior to Tuesday’s hearing, according to Xinis.

“I don’t consider what happened yesterday as evidence before this court yet,” Xinis said.

Ensign pushed back on Xinis’ order for expedited discovery, saying that the issue is a “narrow interpretative dispute” of what the word facilitate means that “does not require discovery.”

After pushing back again, Xinis responded, “I just don’t think it’s that difficult. I think you want to make it that difficult because getting to the facts may not be that favorable.”

Seized while looking for work

Abrego Garcia came to the U.S. without legal authorization in 2011, fleeing violence in his home country of El Salvador, according to court records.

Six years later while he was looking for work at a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, he was taken into custody by Prince George’s County Police Department.

While there, he was questioned about gang affiliation and law enforcement did not believe he was not a member of the MS-13 gang, according to court records.

The evidence officers submitted included Abrego Garcia wearing a Chicago Bulls hat, a hoodie and a statement from a confidential informant that stated he was a member of MS-13, according to court documents.

While he was never charged with, or convicted of being, in a gang, he was kept in ICE detention while his case proceeded before an immigration judge.

Deported migrants queue to receive an essential items bag during the arrival of a group of deported Salvadorans at Gerencia de Atención al Migrante on Feb. 12, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

Immigrant rights groups are cautioning migrants without legal status about the dangers of obeying the Department of Homeland Security’s directive to register with authorities, group leaders told reporters during a virtual press conference Tuesday.

Representatives from immigrant groups across the country said the requirement, which a federal judge upheld last week, is an enforcement tool for President Donald Trump’s administration and that following the directive to register could lead to unlawful detention and deportation.

Participants on the call did not explicitly say they were counseling migrants without legal status against complying with the directive, but said people affected should seek legal counsel first.

“This tool is to identify individuals for detention, deportation and to threaten with imprisonment if they do not comply,” Angelica Salas, the executive director of the advocacy group the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said.

“These actions are abhorrent to the values of this country, and we will not stand silent to see cruelty as the official immigration policy of this administration. To our community, our message is that you’re not alone, you have rights, seek legal guidance, and you’re not obligated to provide information that can hurt you or your family.”

Under Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the administration has sent “innocent people” to detention facilities at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious mega-prison in El Salvador known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, Salas said.

The administration has detained immigrants of all legal statuses without due process, and ignored court orders to reverse those actions. Advocates on the press call Tuesday said that defies the law.

Immigrants, even without legal status in the country, are “entitled to their day in immigration court,” Nicole Melaku, the executive director of National Partnership for New Americans, said.

The directive, which requires immigrants who have registered with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to always carry with them proof of their registration, would also lead to racial profiling of U.S. citizens, advocates have said.

No reported registrants

Salas said her organization, which is based in Southern California, does not know of anyone who has completed the registration.

The people who are required to register are unclear about whether it is in their interest to comply, and distrust of Trump – who campaigned on an anti-immigration platform and has routinely flouted due process for immigrants – is a major obstacle.

“We don’t have anybody who has – that we know – yet registered,” she said. “There’s a lot of confusion in our community as to whether to do this or not. What does it mean? What are the risks? And I also want to say that … everything that has come from this administration has actually been harmful, so people are taking that into account.”

Legal fight continuing

U.S. Judge Trevor Neil McFadden, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in 2017, rejected advocacy groups’ attempt to block the directive, saying in an order last week that the groups hadn’t shown they’d been harmed by it.

But the legal fight against the directive will continue, George Escobar, the chief of programs and services at the immigrant services organization CASA, said.

In addition to a possible appeal of McFadden’s ruling, Escobar said his organizations would watch “very, very closely” how the administration conducts the operation, with special attention to racial profiling, and would not hesitate to bring court challenges.

“We will do everything possible to fight this,” he said. “This may be a show-me-your-papers type of situation where people may be racially profiled, stopped on the street just because they’re speaking in other languages, because they look like an immigrant, and has to be asked to show this registration compliance.”

Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a message seeking comment Tuesday.

Children outside with a child care teacher at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)

A news report that the Trump administration is considering ending the federal government’s Head Start program has alarmed providers and parents who rely on the child care and early education program.

“It would be absolutely devastating,” said Jen Bailey, executive director of Reach Dane, which operates 14 Head Start centers in Dane and Green counties. “The children and families we work with are some of the most vulnerable folks in our communities. The parents in those communities rely on the care we provide to stay employed.”

USA Today reported Friday that the Trump administration “is considering a budget proposal that would zero out funding for Head Start.” The news report quoted an anonymous administration official who said the White House funding blueprint for the 2026 fiscal year doesn’t allocate money for Head Start.

The president’s budget is a wish list, and Congress decides how to appropriate federal funds. An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told USA Today that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

Project 2025, the agenda drafted by Russell Vought prior to his confirmation as OMB director, calls for eliminating Head Start.

Responding to the report Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) tied the proposal to President Donald Trump’s goal of extending the 2017 tax cuts enacted in his first term.

“Shutting down Head Start — taking care away from kids, firing teachers, and making child care even more expensive for parents — all so President Trump can hand out new tax breaks for the wealthy and well-connected is flat out wrong and you can be sure I will fight this proposal at every turn,” Baldwin said.

Head Start was founded in 1966, part of the War on Poverty undertaken by President Lyndon Johnson. It provides child care and preschool for families with incomes up to the federal poverty guideline. Children living in foster homes are also eligible for Head Start.

In Wisconsin more than 15,000 children are enrolled in more than 300 Head Start child care centers across the state, according to the Wisconsin Head Start Association. With more than 4,300 employees, Head Start ranks in the top 100 employers in Wisconsin, said Jennie Mauer, the association’s executive director.

“At least 70% of our families have a parent who is either working or in school full time,” Mauer said Monday. The remaining families include grandparents who are retired but full-time caregivers for their grandchildren as well as families unable to work due to disabilities or who “are working through some very, very significant challenges.”

She predicted that the impact from ending the program wouldn’t stop with the families who rely on Head Start.

“If Head Start isn’t there, if this program were to shut down, surely there’ll be tremendous cascading economic impacts in our communities,”  Mauer said. “I think for most of the families, it would create a huge labor disruption. With no safe place to have your kids while you’re at work, it’ll create a disaster.

Child care already a crisis

Fears for the survival of Head Start are escalating as the state’s overall child care sector is increasingly under strain. As many as 25% of child care centers in a survey released April 10 said they could close without continuing support in the next state budget.

April Mullins-Datko is Head Start director for ADVOCAP, a social service agency serving Fond du Lac, Winnebago and Green Lake counties. She said that the agency’s four Head Start centers would likely not survive the loss of federal support.

“We would lose services for the 202 children we serve,” Mullins-Datko said. “It would exacerbate the child care crisis we have in our communities, which then has negative impacts on our available workforce.”

ADVOCAP’s centers include three in Fond du Lac County and one in Green Lake County, with 193 families relying on the program for the care and early education of their children.

“Ninety-three percent of my families are working or going to school full time,” Mullins-Datko said.

The agency’s Head Start federal contract is supposed to be good through Dec. 31, 2028, Mullins-Datko said, but with reports of defunding she fears that won’t be honored: “There just doesn’t seem to be any kind of adherence to law and contracts.”

Western Dairyland Economic Opportunity Council provides social services in Buffalo, Jackson, Trempealeau and Eau Claire counties in West Central Wisconsin. The agency’s programs include nine Head Start centers enrolling 442 children. Of those, 382 children are in preschool and 60 are in Early Head Start, for children from birth to age 3, said Thanh Bui-Duquette, Western Dairyland’s Head Start director.

Three centers are in cities — two in Eau Claire and one in Altoona — but the rest are in rural communities.

“We meet the needs of each individual community,” Bui-Duquette said. “The needs of the urban Eau Claire area look very different from rural Trempealeau County.”

Even with jobs, 96% of the families with children in Western Dairyland’s program have incomes below the federal poverty guideline. For children from those families, she said, Head Start has been demonstrated to improve long-term outcomes — increasing the chances of graduating from high school and going on to higher education, and reducing the chances of ending up in the criminal justice system.

“It’s important to have that solid foundation early on, especially for children from disadvantaged families,” Bui-Duquette said.

Payments delayed, offices closed

The news that Head Start is in the crosshairs of budget-writers in the Trump administration follows other jolts to the program in the last two months.

In late January and early February, Head Start operators reported widespread problems in their efforts to collect standard payments from the federal government. Under Head Start contracts, programs incur an expense then submit documentation through a federal online portal to get reimbursed. Head Start programs reported that payments stalled, for nearly two weeks in some cases, without explanation.

Payments have since resumed, but Mauer said directors are reporting demands for more information holding up payments.

“They’re getting substantial delays for things that are accepted expenses, which is concerning,” she said.

On April 1, Head Start operators learned that the program’s five regional offices across the country were closed without any advance notice, including the Chicago office that serves Wisconsin and five other states in the Upper Midwest.

Those events and the report that the program could be defunded have rattled Head Start employees and the parents who have counted on the program, operators say.

“Families and staff are both really scared and concerned,” said Bailey, the Reach Dane director. “Families are reaching out, worried the program is going to close, asking, ‘Is my child still going to be able to go to school?’”

Reach Dane’s human resources staff has been interviewing applicants for teaching jobs in the coming school year, and applicants are nervous about whether the job will exist, she added.

Bailey said the program is trying to be transparent with employees and families about the uncertainty and fight for the program’s survival, all without sparking panic.

“Trying to figure out how to navigate and inform folks when there’s no communication is a hard place to be,” she said.

This report has been updated.

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Robert "RJay" Fisher shows off a recording studio that is part of the Green Bay Office of Violence Prevention's new location. Fisher is a violence interrupter with the office. (Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner)

Robert “RJay” Fisher has personal experience with the damage gun violence can cause. His work with Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention aims to keep others from experiencing the same harm.

Fisher said that “having a brother who is now incarcerated for a situation that happened in Green Bay, that was pretty tough for me. And I know what type of trauma I experienced from that. I had a brother who was shot here on the west side of Green Bay, about 11 years ago. And so, I remember getting those calls, and having to deal with those emotions, and what that felt like.”

He said other family members have been shot. ”I also have lost a lot of friends due to gun violence,” said Fisher. “And just recently, two years ago, I lost my uncle, one of my only uncles, due to gun violence.” 

Fisher is a violence interrupter at the Office of Violence Prevention, where he builds relationships with community members and tries to prevent violence before it happens. 

The office listens to “rumblings in the community,” Fisher said. When they hear something from social media or word of mouth, it’s their job to put out the fire. 

Fisher said he’s been in the community for a long time and worked for the Green Bay Area Public School District. He said his relationships and people’s respect for him enable him “to intervene in those situations and start conversations.”

“And then if they’re open [to it], I try to either meet with them or bring them into the space,” he said. “That’s why it’s critical to have a home base.”

Green Bay’s Office of Violence Prevention was formed in 2023 after the city was awarded a grant from the Medical College of Wisconsin. On Monday, the office held the grand opening of its new location on the east side of Green Bay. 

Director Andrea Kressin described it as a safe space where relationship building and coaching can happen. This is important for the office’s prevention work to support people who are at the highest risk of engaging in violence or deter them from engaging in further violence, she said.

Police officers operated at the office’s old location, and high-risk individuals might not have a good relationship with police, Fisher said. 

“We kind of take them out of their environment, and bring them in a calm, safe space where we can then use our CBT [cognitive behavioral therapy] strategies to kind of help them rewire the way they think,” Fisher said. 

In its 2023 crime report, the Green Bay Police Department reported six homicides and a 17% decrease in assault offenses, which included gun violence.

In its 2024 crime report, the department reported four fewer homicides, but also reported a rise in crimes against persons of around 18%. Some of the offenses that led to the increase included aggravated assault, simple assault and kidnapping/abduction. 

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform partnered with Green Bay Police and other local community corrections agencies to study shootings and homicides in Green Bay between 2019 and 2021. The analysis found that in Green Bay “most gun violence is tightly concentrated on a small number of very high risk young Black male adults that share a common set of risk factors.” 

These risk factors included involvement in street crews/groups and significant criminal justice history, according to the analysis. The analysis found that shootings were often caused by a “petty conflict over a young woman, a simple argument, or a feud on social media.” People involved in groups or gangs were also involved in a range of other criminal activities, such as selling drugs or robbery, which made them more likely to be involved in violence. 

One of the report’s recommendations was that the city of Green Bay should invest in development and expansion of community-based violence intervention services.

Kressin said the Office of Violence Prevention has played a part in contributing to a short-term reduction in the number of homicides as well as shots-fired incidents in the community. 

When a violent incident happens and has the potential to lead to retaliation in the community, a primary role of the office is to intervene, Kressin said. She also said the office has built partnerships with community organizations, participated in community events, hosted community conversations in Spanish and English and knocked on doors. 

Fisher said the Green Bay Police Department shares information with the Office of Violence Prevention. The department can give information to Kressin, and the office can make a plan to get involved. The goal is to minimize and defuse a situation so they don’t have to contact the police, but the office will contact the police to avoid someone getting hurt, Fisher said. 

The new location includes a recording studio, lending library, video production tools and interactive workshops aimed at building life skills in collaboration with community organizations, the office said in a statement. 

Kressin said participants can learn about music production and build relationships with violence interrupters. One of the interrupters is working with podcasting and videography, and the Office of Violence Prevention is getting started with the rollout, she said. 

Green Bay Police Chief Chris Davis was one of the speakers at the grand opening’s press conference. 

“Our police officers in our organization have been able to make some really great relationships, and a lot of us, myself included, have been able to see tangible results in real people’s lives as a result of that work together,” Davis said. “And so we’re looking forward to what the future holds for this program and for this community.” 

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U.S. President Donald Trump meets with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador in the Oval Office of the White House April 14, 2025 in Washington, D.C.. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — El Salvador President Nayib Bukele won’t return a Maryland man the United States erroneously deported to a mega-prison in his Central American country, he said Monday during a visit to the Oval Office.

Sitting beside President Donald Trump, Bukele told reporters, “Of course I’m not going to do it.”

Administration officials present for the meeting defended the deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador who had a protective order from a U.S. immigration court shielding him from being sent back to his country because of risks to his life.

The administration admitted in court filings that it deported Abrego Garcia, of Beltsville, Maryland, by mistake.

“That’s up to El Salvador if they want to return him, that’s not up to us,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“If they wanted to return him, we would facilitate it, meaning, provide a plane,” she added.

The Supreme Court issued a 9-0 decision Thursday stating the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Abrego Garcia on March 15 among roughly 260 Venezuelan men the U.S. flew on commercial jets without due process to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

ICE agents apprehended Abrego Garcia near Baltimore on March 12 when he was driving his 5-year-old son home. Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, “was called and instructed to appear at their location within ten minutes to get her five-year old son, A.A.V.; otherwise, the ICE officers threatened that the child would be handed over to Child Protective Services,” according to a court filing.

Garcia has no criminal history in the U.S., El Salvador or any other country, according to the filing.

The Trump administration is paying the El Salvador government $6 million to detain the men, sparking questions over whether the payment violates U.S. human rights law.

Lawyers for many of the Venezuelan men maintain their clients weren’t gang members.

Trump triggered the deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, specifically targeting Venezuelans 14 and older who the administration suspected of having ties to the gang Tren de Aragua. 

Trump also told reporters in the Oval Office Monday that he wants to export “homegrown” criminals, as in U.S. citizens, to El Salvador and would be willing to assist Bukele in building more mega prisons.

“I’d like to include them in the group of people to get them out of the country, but you’ll have to be looking at the laws on that,” said Trump.

Rubio, Miller defend deportation

The administration maintains that immigration courts connected Abrego Garcia in 2019 to the violent El Salvadoran gang MS-13 but makes no mention of the protective order granted to Abrego Garcia by an immigration judge that same year.

In addition to Bondi, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller defended Abrego Garcia’s deportation and the administration’s refusal to cooperate with a court order to return him to the U.S.

Miller said Friday’s unanimous Supreme Court decision squarely landed on the side of the administration.

“This was a 9-0 (decision) in our favor against the district court ruling saying that no district court has the power to compel the foreign policy function of the United States,” Miller told reporters in the Oval Office Monday.

“The ruling solely stated that if this individual, at El Salvador’s sole discretion, was sent back to our country, that we could deport him a second time. No version of this legally ends up with him ever living here because he is a citizen of El Salvador,” Miller continued.

Bukele said the idea that El Salvador would return Abrego Garcia is “preposterous.” 

“How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States,” Bukele said.

The Department of State designated MS-13 as a foreign terrorist organization in February.

Rubio said he doesn’t understand “what the confusion is.”

“This individual is a citizen of El Salvador. He was illegally in the United States and was returned to his country,” Rubio said, adding that “foreign policy of the United States is conducted by the President of the United States, not by a court.”

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a statement Monday calling Bukele’s comments “pure nonsense.”

“The law is clear, due process was grossly violated, and the Supreme Court has clearly spoken that the Trump administration must facilitate and effectuate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He should be returned to the U.S. immediately. 

“Due process and the rule of law are cornerstones of American society for citizens and noncitizens alike and not to follow that is dangerous and outrageous. A threat to one is a threat to all,” Schumer said.

Daily updates

Abrego Garcia’s case is winding through the federal courts.

The administration was ordered Friday, after a standoff in court, to provide daily updates on Abrego Garcia’s physical location and status, and what steps the administration has taken or plans to take to facilitate his return.

Abrego Garcia’s wife sued Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and immigration officials in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland last month, alleging her husband received no due process and his removal was unlawful.

District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the Trump administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. by April 7.

A federal appeals court unanimously upheld the lower court’s order on April 7. The Trump administration missed the deadline and immediately appealed to the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.

The high court unanimously ruled Thursday that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return but stopped short of requiring his return and did not give a deadline. The court also ordered Xinis to clarify language in the lower court’s ruling to test whether the court overreached into foreign affairs.

OMB Director Russ Vought testifies before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Jan. 15, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — A nonprofit organization filed suit against the Trump administration on Monday, alleging its decision to stop posting budget documents in late March violates federal law.

Protect Democracy Project’s case is the second lawsuit challenging the Office of Management and Budget’s choice to pull down a webpage with apportionment information that detailed when and how the administration was spending money appropriated by Congress.

The case, as well as the one brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington last week, asks a federal judge to require OMB to restore the website that publicly shared the data for years.

OMB Director Russ Vought told Congress late last month that the budget office would no longer publicly post apportionment information, writing in a letter that to do so would disclose “sensitive, predecisional, and deliberative information.”

“Such disclosures have a chilling effect on the deliberations within the Executive Branch,” Vought wrote. “Indeed, these disclosure provisions have already adversely impacted the candor contained in OMB’s communications with agencies and have undermined OMB’s effectiveness in supervising agency spending.

“Moreover, apportionments may contain sensitive information, the automatic public disclosure of which may pose a danger to national security and foreign policy.”

A ‘brazen move’

Democrats in Congress sharply criticized the decision, with a few calling on the Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, to investigate. 

House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., issued a joint statement in late March urging Vought to reverse course.

“Congress enacted these requirements over a Democratic President’s objections on a bipartisan basis because our constituents, and all American taxpayers, deserve transparency and accountability for how their money is being spent,” DeLauro and Murray wrote. “Taking down this website is not just illegal it is a brazen move to hide this administration’s spending from the American people and from Congress.”

Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrats on the Budget committees, urged the Government Accountability Office to look into the matter.

GAO General Counsel Edda Emmanuelli Perez did and wrote in a letter released earlier this month that OMB’s decision to withhold publicly sharing the apportionment information was “very concerning.”

“We understand that OMB took down the website taking the position that it requires the disclosure of predecisional, and deliberative information,” he wrote. “We disagree.”

Perez rejected OMB’s argument that all of the information had to be removed since “apportionments may contain sensitive information which, if disclosed publicly automatically, may pose a danger to national security and foreign policy.”

“While there may be some information that is sensitive if disclosed publicly, it is certainly not the case that all apportionment data meets that standard,” he wrote. “Where there is such sensitive data that should be protected from public disclosure, those would be the exception and should not serve to take down the entire database.”

Lawsuits want public info restored

The two lawsuits — Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington v. Office of Management and Budget and Protect Democracy Project v. U.S. Office of Management and Budget — ask federal judges to require OMB to post the information online once again.

CREW wrote in its filing that OMB posted a public version of the database in July 2022, after Congress required it to do so in a government funding bill.

The Trump administration removed that webpage on March 24, though OMB “provided no notice or explanation prior to its removal,” according to the lawsuit.

The CREW lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and assigned to Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.

Protect Democracy Project wrote in its lawsuit that the “laws requiring transparency for apportionments make it more difficult for the executive branch to impound funds unlawfully outside the view of Congress and the public.”

The Trump administration faces numerous lawsuits stemming from its efforts to block several departments and agencies from spending money appropriated by Congress, also known as impoundment.

The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 bars the executive branch from holding onto money instead of spending it as directed by Congress. But Vought has said several times he believes the law is unconstitutional.

Protect Democracy Project’s lawsuit was also filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, though it hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Monday afternoon.  

Milwaukee Health Commissioner Dr. Mike Totoraitis. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Federal layoffs have hampered the city of Milwaukee’s ability to respond to growing concerns about lead contamination in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) denied the city’s requests for assistance after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cut the agency’s response team, which would have helped Milwaukee tackle lead contamination in its K-12 schools. 

“This is a pretty unprecedented scenario to not have somebody to turn to at the CDC,” said Mike Totoraitis, commissioner of the Milwaukee Health Department (MHD), during a Monday press conference. Totoraitis learned of the development, which he said left him “quite shocked,” in an email as the Health Department was planning further responses to lead contamination in MPS. “To see that all of our partners at the CDC had been let go was pretty…pretty difficult,” he said.

Although a local network of partners will continue supporting MHD’s efforts, Totoraitis said that the department now has no CDC contacts to consult with on  childhood lead poisoning. The commissioner called it “a pretty stark moment for us at the department to not have someone to reach out to federally.” 

In February the Health Department began reaching out to the CDC as staff members realized the scale of the lead problem e in MPS buildings. Totoraitis said the department might have to assess the school district’s 68,000 students and over 100 school buildings. 

The CDC initially connected the city to specialists at the National Center for Environmental Health’s childhood lead prevention program. City health officials had hoped national teams would help investigate potential lead exposure cases and help with evaluating which schools were likely to have the worst problems.

Totoraitis explained that while there are acute exposures to lead — such as ingesting paint chips — chronic exposure from dust was paint degrades over time is also a hazard. 

With closer analysis, the health department would be able to learn more about how children in Milwaukee are getting exposed to lead, including whether they’re exposed at school or at home. 

CDC was expected to send three to four people to Milwaukee for up to five weeks, he said, as well as provide technical assistance from individuals advising the department remotely from Atlanta. 

“That’s why we engaged them right away,” said Totoraitis. He described the team as “the top experts in the field for lead exposure,” with experience dealing with lead hazards at a much wider scale than local experts in Milwaukee.

There was “no indication” that the CDC teams would be let go, said Totoraitis. “So that was pretty startling,” he added. Preparation to deploy the teams was underway when the CDC abruptly canceled “overnight” on April 1. 

So far, nearly 250 MPS students have been tested for lead poisoning and several schools have been shut down as work crews undertake remediation efforts. 

In early April, MPS announced that it was separating with its facilities director Sean Kane, who’d been with the district for 25 years. Officials said Kane had not allowed health department staff into Golda Meir School to do a full risk assessment and did not disclose that remediation work had been attempted after a student tested positive for lead contamination. 

Childhood lead contamination has been linked to cognitive disorders including degraded impulse control, learning disabilities and violent behavior. About 85 MPS schools were built before 1970 and are therefore at high risks of lead contamination. 

Totoraitis said that so far, there isn’t a timeline on when MPS schools that have been closed due to lead will reopen. Fernwood Montessori School, Starms Early Childhood Center and LaFollette School were closed, while four others that had been closed were re-opened. 

Totoraitis said that remediation work is farthest along at Fernwood, which is beginning its fifth week of closure. Fernwood was “significantly worse off” than investigators anticipated and required extensive repair work, he said. 

As the city works to respond to the lead issue, federal staff and the unpredictability of federal assistance will remain a challenge. Just a couple of weeks ago, the city lost $11 million in COVID-19 grants that were geared towards “recovery” rather than “response,” officials said.

“The part that’s really concerning for us is there hasn’t been any communication warning us of these changes and shifts in personnel,” said Totoraitis. “April 1 is a really stark moment for public health here across the country, and specifically here in Milwaukee, where now we don’t know who to call. We don’t know how to respond to some of the challenges that we’re dealing with right now because we don’t know if I’m reaching out to someone today, if they’re going to be there tomorrow.”

Totoraitis said the Health Department and its local partners stand ready to respond, but he questioned what could happen if the department encounters a complex challenge, such as a particularly complicated blood screening data.  

“The CDC brings that expertise, that bigger picture, that we just don’t have eyes to because we’re here focused on an issue in Milwaukee,” said Totoraitis.

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Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT  on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department is paying El Salvador $6 million to house hundreds of immigrants deported from the United States in an immense and brutal prison there, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

But a U.S. law bars State’s financial support of “units of foreign security forces” — which can include military and law enforcement staff in prisons —  facing credible allegations of gross human rights violations. That has led those who wrote what’s known as the Leahy Law and enforced it for years to question the legality of the $6 million payment made as President Donald Trump carries out his campaign of mass deportation.

The Trump administration on March 15 sent 261 men to CECOT, after invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to apply to Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua.

On March 30, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said another 17 nationals from El Salvador were sent to CECOT, again alleging gang ties. On Sunday, Rubio said 10 more men were sent to the prison in El Salvador, and noted how “the alliance between” the U.S. and El Salvador “has become an example for security and prosperity in our hemisphere.”

Tim Rieser, the main author of the Leahy Law while a longtime foreign policy aide to former U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the $6 million payment for those migrants’ incarceration for up to a year is likely a violation of the law.

“Sending migrants who have not been charged or convicted of any crime to the maximum-security terrorism prison in El Salvador, where they have no access to lawyers or their families, where they have no rights of due process, and with no idea if they will ever be released, held in cruel and shockingly degrading conditions, would certainly appear to violate the Leahy Law,” Rieser told States Newsroom.

“I don’t think the Trump administration is upholding the Leahy Law or other laws that protect human rights,” he said.

Also deeply concerned is Charles Blaha, a former State Department official for 32 years who led the office responsible for vetting the Leahy Law worldwide, the Office of Security and Human Rights, from 2016 to 2023.

“CECOT is a facility that exposes prisoners to torture, and cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment and punishment,” Blaha said in an interview. “Under the Leahy Law, this should disqualify CECOT from receiving U.S. assistance.”

Trump has also expressed that he is open to sending U.S. citizens to CECOT.

“I love that,” he said. “I don’t know what the law says on that.”

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele is scheduled to visit with Trump at the White House on Monday.

Trump administration says law followed

The Trump administration plans to keep using the mega-prison as deportations continue under the Alien Enemies Act, top officials such as U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have pledged. Noem visited the prison in March.

“This facility is one of the tools in our toolkits that we will use,” Noem said during her tour of CECOT.

The State Department has denied any potential violations.

“The Department is following all applicable laws related to foreign assistance, including the State Leahy Law,” a State Department spokesperson wrote in a statement to States Newsroom.

The spokesperson said the U.S. is engaged with El Salvador through foreign assistance to address unauthorized migration and human trafficking.

“As these countries continue to work with us in securing our borders and addressing illegal immigration, we will provide assistance as necessary in support of these collaborative efforts,” the spokesperson said. “Our goal is to ensure that our partners are well-equipped to handle the challenges they face, ultimately contributing to a more stable and secure region.”

The 1997 Leahy Law refers to two statutes – one applying to the State Department and one covering the Department of Defense – that prevent U.S. funds from being used for assistance to foreign security forces that have credible allegations of gross violations of human rights such as torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance or rape. 

Payment origin

The exact agency within the State Department that is paying out the $6 million in funding to CECOT is unclear and is a source of interest among Democrats in Congress.

It is likely coming out of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight at the Washington Office of Latin America, a research and advocacy group that aims to advance human rights in North and South America.

INL, among other things, gives financial assistance to security forces and is subject to the Leahy Law, Isacson said.

The State Department did not answer detailed questions from States Newsroom as to whether the funds were coming from INL. 

“And even if Leahy doesn’t apply, the State Department has a duty to make sure that we’re not turning over people, even if they’re not our citizens, to places where they’ll be mistreated or tortured,” Blaha said.

The State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor oversees an office that vets recipients of proposed foreign aid for potential gross human rights violations.

Fewer than 1% of requests are blocked after going through vetting through the Leahy Law compliance database. Those units that are blocked from funding are publicly posted on a case-by-case basis.

The most recent listing of publicly rejected units is from 2022, so there is no publicly available record of CECOT or the security units in charge of El Salvador’s prisons being vetted because the prison was built in 2023. However, experts say the country’s record of prison management and publicly available details about the mega-prison mean it should be on the latest version of the list.  

Beatings, use of electric shocks

The State Department’s 2023 Human Rights Report on El Salvador noted there were credible reports from human rights organizations “of abuse and mistreatment of detainees by prison guards.”

Groups cited in the report interviewed people who were released from prisons in El Salvador and “reported systemic abuse in the prison system, including beatings by guards and the use of electric shocks.”

“The coalition alleged the treatment of prisoners constituted torture,” according to the report.

The State Department in its report raised concerns about abusive physical conditions in El Salvador’s prisons, such as overcrowding.

While CECOT is not mentioned in the report by name, the report noted that El Salvador’s government opened a new facility in January 2023 to hold up to 40,000 detainees, which apparently is now CECOT.

No access to CECOT

No human rights group has had access to investigate the conditions of the CECOT prison, said Juanita Goebertus Estrada, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch.

Goebertus Estrada has studied El Salvador’s prison system since the country’s Congress allowed President Bukele to issue a state of emergency in 2022 that suspended due process. It’s led to 1.4% of the population, about 84,000 people, being incarcerated.

“We have no reason to believe that the (CECOT) conditions are not similar to those in the rest of the El Salvadorian prison system,” she said. “It’s administered by the same institution and the training of the guards is the same.”

She added that Human Rights Watch and other organizations have not documented anyone who is imprisoned at CECOT ever leaving. Additionally, attorneys and families are not allowed to visit.

“The government has explicitly said that this is a prison for the most reprehensible members of gangs, and that they’re going to rot there,” Goebertus Estrada said.

More than 300 people have died in prisons across El Salvador in the last three years, Goebertus Estrada said. 

That kind of record, WOLA’s Isacson said, is something that should trigger the Leahy Law.

“The Salvadoran units in charge of the prison system… you think would come up because of extraordinarily credible allegations of about 300 people dying in the prison system in the last three years,” Isacson said.

Enforcement up to Congress

Isacson said if the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor is not enforcing the Leahy Law, then “it would be up to members of Congress to raise this” concern and potentially pull funding for the bureau in a future appropriations bill.

The most recent warnings about violations of the Leahy Law have been tied to the start of the 2023 war in Gaza and the role of U.S. security assistance to Israel units. Thousands of Palestinians have died in the Israel-Hamas war.

“You had Israeli units, who would not have qualified, getting aid, and Democrats not really making any noise about it,” Isacson said. “The (Leahy) Law is mortally wounded.”

Democratic senators pressed DHS on April 8 to provide a copy of the contract between the U.S. and El Salvador. And House Democratic members, such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, are pushing for a congressional delegation to visit CECOT.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, visited the prison in July 2024, calling CECOT “the solution” and adding “the good ideas in El Salvador actually have legs and can go to other places and help other people be safe and secure and hopeful and prosperous.”  

U.S. citizens at CECOT?

El Salvador’s Bukele has become a key ally in Trump’s plans for mass deportations.

One of Rubio’s first visits to Latin America as secretary of State was to El Salvador. During that February trip, Rubio and Bukele talked about the possibility of detaining immigrants removed from the U.S. in El Salvador. Bukele also offered to imprison U.S. citizens.

“And in an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country, President Bukele offered to house in his jails dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents,” according to the State Department’s readout of the trip.

Noem said during an April 9 border security conference that the Trump administration will continue to carry out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and maintain a strong partnership with El Salvador.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled April 7 that, for now, the Trump administration can continue use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those subject to the proclamation must have due process, including court hearings.

The high court did not rule on the merits of using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, when the U.S. is not at war with Venezuela. Until now, the Alien Enemies Act has only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

The Venezuelan men who were sent to CECOT on March 15 under the wartime act, were not notified and or given due process, federal trial and appellate judges have noted. Lawyers for many of the Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador said their clients were not involved in gangs and instead either had no criminal record or were in the middle of asylum hearings before an immigration judge.

‘Cruelty is the point’

During the April 9 conference, Noem touted her meeting with Bukele and said the kind of partnership exemplified by the use of the prison would continue.

However, the Trump administration has taken the position that those at the CECOT prison are no longer in U.S. custody. In a high-profile case, the Supreme Court April 10 ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of a wrongly deported Maryland man to the prison back to the U.S., but stopped short of requiring it.

“The idea of paying someone else to be your (Guantanamo Bay), is brand new,” Isacson said, referring to the U.S. Navy base in Cuba that houses foreign nationals accused of terrorism.

Noem visited CECOT after the Trump administration invoked the wartime law to send deportation flights to El Salvador. On camera Noem pointed behind her and warned the same would happen to immigrants who “commit crimes against the American people.”

Behind her were dozens of men who were stripped from the waist up, their tattoos visible behind bars.

Blaha was highly critical of Noem’s visit, where she took videos and pictures of the incarcerated men.

“Noem’s stunt epitomizes cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment, which is why the administration loves it so much,” he said. “Sadly, the cruelty is the point with these guys.” 

Jennifer Kang-Mieler, right, and PhD student Chaimae Gouya review images they’re using to train an AI model to detect an eye disorder in premature infants. (Photo by Ashley Muliawan/Stevens Institute of Technology)

With the Trump administration making sweeping cuts to staff and research grants at science-related agencies, artificial intelligence could offer a tempting way to keep labs going, but scientists say there are limits to the technology’s uses.

The Trump-appointed leaders of The National Institutes of Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services have moved to cut thousands of jobs and billions in federal grants that fund university research and laboratory needs in the last few months.

The federal government may be eyeing artificial intelligence to bridge a gap created by these cuts. In February, the U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs partnered with AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic for an “AI Jam Session,” a day for 1,000 scientists across various disciplines to test the companies’ AI models and share feedback. Some figures in Trump’s cabinet have suggested that artificial intelligence models may be a good substitute for human physicians.

But scientists and builders of AI say it’s not that simple.

AI is playing a major role in scientific discovery — last year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for discoveries that used AI to predict the shape of proteins and to invent new ones.

But we aren’t looking at a future where we can substitute researchers and doctors with algorithms, said Jennifer Kang-Mieler, department chair and professor of biomedical engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey.

“It’s a tool they may use to enhance clinical decision-making,” she said. “But I think that clinical expertise is not going to be something that we can completely match with AI.”

Kang-Mieler and other researchers say AI has its limitations, but is playing an increasingly important role in analyzing data, speeding up lab work, assisting in diagnostics, making personalized treatment plans and in cutting some costs related to research.

AI uses in scientific labs and healthcare

Artificial intelligence technologies have been a part of some healthcare and laboratory settings, like image recognition in radiology, for at least a decade, said Bradley Bostic, chairman and CEO of healthcare software company hc1, based in Indiana. But Bostic said the industry is still early in exploring its uses.

“It feels to me similar to 1999, with the World Wide Web,” Bostic said. “We didn’t realize how early days it was. I think that’s where we are right now with AI and specifically in healthcare.”

While AI’s potential is nearly endless, AI’s best uses in scientific and healthcare settings are for tasks that are repetitive and operational, Bostic said. Ideally, AI makes processes more efficient, and frees up humans’ time to focus on more important tasks.

Stephen Wong, the John S. Dunn Presidential Distinguished Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Houston Methodist uses machine learning, deep learning, and large language models every day in his lab, which researches cost-effective strategies for disease management.

He said he uses AI models for image analysis, medical imaging, processing massive datasets in genomics, the study of proteins, known as proteomics, and drug screening, as well as sifting through existing research and lab data. His goal is to cut down on tedious tasks, and make sense of large-scale data.

“Even tasks like locating crucial information buried in lab notebooks, scientific publications and patents become far more efficient,” he said.

Efficiency is also the goal of Kang-Mieler’s research, which was funded last fall by an NIH grant. Kang-Mieler and colleague Yu Gan are developing an AI-powered diagnostic tool for retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) — an eye disorder and loss of vision — in premature infants.

There was a lack of quality images for AI models to train on, Kang-Mieler said, so they are  using images of animal eyes that feature ROP, to create “synthetic” images of what the condition would look like in humans. The neural networks in the AI model will learn how to categorize those synthetic images, and eventually assist eye doctors in spotting ROP. Before AI tools, this process would have been done by the human eye, and take much longer, Kang-Mieler said.

“The way I saw it was also that if we can be really successful in developing and doing this, we can actually take this into other types of diseases, rare diseases, that are hard to diagnose,” she said.

Automation and human capital

Many scientific labs require a lot of physical tasks, like handling liquids, following steps at specific times and sometimes handling hazardous materials. With AI algorithms and hardware, much of that work can be done without humans physically present, researchers at the University of North Carolina are finding.

Ron Alterovitz, the Lawrence Grossberg Distinguished Professor in the Department of Computer Science, has worked with Jim Cahoon, chair of the Department of Chemistry, on an approach to make lab work more autonomous. The pair have studied how an AI model could instruct an autonomous robot to execute lab processes, and then how AI models could analyze experiment results into findings. Alterovitz called it a “make and test” model.

“So once people can set it in motion, the AI comes up with a design, the robotic automation will make and test it, and the AI will analyze the results and come up with a new design,” he said. “And this whole loop can essentially run autonomously.”

The pair published their findings last fall, saying there are several levels of automation a lab could deploy, from assistive automation, where tasks like liquid handling are automated and humans do everything else, all the way up to the fully automated loop Alterovitz described.

Alterovitz sees many benefits to automated labs. Robots offer a safer method of handling hazardous materials, and allow researchers to conduct experiments 24 hours a day, instead of just when lab techs are clocked in. The robots also provide high accuracy and precision, and can replicate experiments easily, he said.

“If you ask two different people to do the same synthesis process, there’ll be subtle differences in how they do some of the details that can lead to some variance in the results sometimes,” Alterovitz  said. “With robots, it’s just done the same way every time, very repeatedly.”

While there are fears that AI and automation will cut jobs in science, Alterovitz said it allows humans to do higher-level tasks. Many labs are already facing a shortage of trained technicians who do a majority of the physical tasks involved. 

AI-assisted labs will likely heighten the need for other types of jobs, like data scientists, AI specialists and interdisciplinary experts who can bridge technology with real-world scientific applications, Wong said.

In order to continue innovating and learning new things, labs will still need the “chemical intuition” and problem-solving skills that trained scientists have, Alterovitz said.

AI’s limitations

Kang-Mieler says that AI’s current limitations are a factor that keeps the industry from rushing to apply the technology to everything. AI models are only as good as the data sets they’re trained on, and can contain data bias, or incomplete information that won’t paint a full picture.

And AI models can’t do an essential function of researchers, Kang-Mieler said — discover new information.

“I suppose that AI models can help formulate new hypotheses, but I don’t think that capability is the same as discovery,” Kang-Mieler said. “Current AI models are not developed to make independent discoveries or have original thoughts.”

Bostic has built other technology companies in his career, but said the stakes in scientific research and healthcare are much higher. Inaccurate data in an AI model could lead to a missed diagnosis or another huge problem for a patient. He said the best approach is what he calls “reinforcement learning through human feedback.”

“This is where you don’t have models that are just running independent of people,” Bostic said. “You have the models that are complementing the people and actually being informed by the people.”

Bostic said as the tech industry evolves, AI will play a role in shortening drug trials, providing patients more specialized care and helping research teams make due with fewer skilled workers, he said. But it’s not a fix-all, set-it-and-forget-it solution.

“I don’t see a scenario where clinical decisions are being independently made by machines and there aren’t the experts — who are trained and seeing the total picture of what’s going on with the patient — involved with those decisions anytime soon,” he said. 

Richard Schaefer took part in a clinical trial of psilocybin as a treatment for addiction. (Photo courtesy of Richard Schaefer)

It was a day like any other when Richard Schaefer entered a Madison health care clinic to receive harm reduction supplies. Over 10 years, Schaefer had tried recovering from what began with dependence on a prescription for the pain killer Percocet and later spiraled into an all-consuming heroin addiction. As Schaefer waited for his supplies, he noticed an advertisement seeking volunteers for a study into whether therapy assisted by psilocybin – the active compound in psychedelic mushrooms – could unshackle people from addiction. 

“I’ve tried all types of rehabs,” said Schaefer when he spoke recently with the Wisconsin Examiner. Schaefer is 42, off heroin and training to be a peer support specialist. But from rehab clinics in Oshkosh and Wauwatosa to a 30-day program in the Racine County Jail, old-school complete abstinence and medication-assisted treatment using suboxone, Schaefer had tried it all. “I don’t know if it was more of the timing of being ready to quit or just finding something that actually works for me,” he said. “Something different, an alternative route…This study really changed my life, to tell you the truth.” 

Although overdose deaths are down in every state and the District of Columbia for the first time since the fentanyl crisis began, millions of people continue to struggle with opioid use disorder nationwide. With demand for treatment still high, the University of Wisconsin Transdisciplinary Center for Research in Psychoactive Substances (TCRPS) is working on finding solutions. Using psilocybin, the team at UW-Madison is developing groundbreaking new therapies tailor-made for people like Schaefer. Advertisements for the study, which focuses on opioid and methamphetamine addiction, can be found in Madison health care clinics like the one Schaefer visited and even on signs on city buses.  

“We already have seen evidence that psilocybin can do some remarkable things to improve the patients’ ability to gain and process important insights about their lives and experiences,” Paul Hutson, a professor and founding director of TCRPS, told UW News in 2023. “We’re excited to see what it can do along those same lines for patients struggling with substance abuse, many of whom have overlapping mental health conditions.” 

A bipartisan bill that began circulating last session in the Wisconsin Legislature aimed to make psychedelic drug treatment available to veterans suffering from PTSD. Commenting on a psilocybin study at UW-Madison that aims to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in combat veterans, UW researcher and professor Dr. Cody Wenthur told Wisconsin Examiner that conducting trials with an inclusive cross-section of subjects is important. 

Although funding cuts by the Trump Administration have undermined research efforts across the country, UW’s psilocybin study is not at risk, university officials say. A university spokesperson said that the study’s funding does not come from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and thus is “insulated” from cuts to NIH funding. 

Research has shown that psilocybin has the potential to rewire the human brain, for people with depression. The creation of new neuro-pathways aided by psilocybin, combined with therapy, could help treat substance use disorder, which also changes the brain over time to reinforce addictive behavior.

Nationwide millions of people struggle with an opioid use disorder of some kind. Wisconsin alone annually loses thousands of lives to drug overdoses, with a large portion of those deaths linked with variants of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. By 2038, Wisconsin is expected to receive over $780 million in settlement funding from lawsuits against the companies that seeded the overdose crisis by funneling large volumes of addictive medications into communities. That funding could be used to repair the lives of people and the health of their communities. 

Before he started taking Percoset, Schaefer was a college-educated operations manager at a furniture company, who’d grown up in Racine County. A husband, father and homeowner, he was climbing the ladder in his company when he was prescribed the pain killers. “Everything just kind of quickly fell apart,” said Schaefer, “within about six months to a year I lost all that.” 

During those six months his use of the medication became a recreational habit, then developed into a heroin addiction. Once needles came into the picture, “then it’s just no going back,” Schaefer said. “I ended up going down the drain. I lost my marriage, I lost custody of my kids on an overdose, and then I lost my job — my career I was at for 10 years. And then I lost my house to a foreclosure.” The degradation of his life was swift. He recalled  being kicked out of two sober houses. Eventually, he said, “I ended up on the streets.”

The doors of perception 

Schaefer was immediately intrigued when he saw an advertisement for the psilocybin study. He was already on a suboxone regimen in December 2023, which he said helped him get “on the other side of the wall” from his addiction. He entered the study the following month after contacting the research team. Numerous physical health assessments, phone calls, interviews and meetings followed. 

Schaefer was connected with “two really great therapists,” Travis Fox, a doctor in psychology and Nikki Zellner, a licensed clinical social worker. Their compassion and patience formed the bedrock for his recovery. He had to meet them once a week for a month, in addition to meeting other requirements. 

“They really got to know me and really bring out, or work on, issues that I had suppressed in my life, going back to childhood.” Schaefer said. Fox and Zellner “helped me to learn to love myself again,” he added. It was an alternative approach to therapy that Schaefer hadn’t seen in other recovery programs. “They accepted me for who I am, and helped me to learn that it’s OK to be myself,” he said. “To find the freedom of making a choice, it wasn’t all about abstinence, which a lot of programs are.” Schaefer said that “somehow, with making it my choice, I’ve become a new person and really found a new freedom with that, and really blossomed and come a long ways.” 

By April, Schaefer was ready to step into the experience of psilocybin-based therapy. Early in the morning he caught a cab to the UW nursing school. After one final physical check-up and conversation with doctors, Schaefer was led to a space which he called “the sacred room there.” In that comfortable room surrounded by artwork and with a couch and spaces for Schaefer and the therapists to sit, Schaefer took “the medicine” and his journey began. 

“They didn’t tell me what to call it,” said Schaefer, speaking of the psilocybin he took. “When you look at it as medicine rather than a drug, then we can have a different view on it.”

Taking his shoes off as he entered the room, Schaefer lay back on the couch, took a tablet, donned a blindfold and waited as about 20 minutes passed. 

“I remember the first session for me was kind of like a movie,” he said. “Like different scenes kept coming to me, you know? Different waves kept coming to me. And some of it was different scenes from life, some of it made sense, or some of it I’m still trying to make sense of what they were. But I realized a lot of things in that first session alone.”

“I think I was learning to find myself,” he said of the experience. A persistent sense of comfort, peace and acceptance stayed with Schaefer after that first session. His ego had been muted, “and I just had this new sense that things were OK,” he said. “I began to have a new outlook on life then.”

Sometimes participants in the psilocybin trials need a bathroom break or to pull out and communicate about what is happening. Zellner and Fox were never far away, and were open to talking to him while he was undergoing the journey. “It’s hard to put words on things while you’re having the medicine in you,” said Schaefer. “I go into it and would like to tell them all these things going on, and to be recorded, and jot down and stuff, but it’s like you can’t find the words to say it.”

“You’re kind of in another world,” he added, saying there may not actually be human language to describe some of the experience. The second dose was even more profound. The “scenes” returned with astonishing vividness. Schaefer recalled going through stages of what felt like collective “human sadness” as well as happiness and joy. 

“There was like a buildup from down and dark to the absolute most bright light and loving energy that I’d ever experienced,” he said. It was in that peak moment “when I felt that I was in the presence of a higher power,” which manifested as a sort of “god” or “energy that was in front of me.” He said he felt a distinctly separate, intelligent presence throughout his sessions, “like things were being taught to me and shown to me.” 

Whatever it was, the presence gave him “the most awesome comforting feeling I’ve ever felt in my life,” Schaefer recalled. The feeling melted away as Schaefer descended from that blissful state. 

Integration 

In many ways, the hard work begins after the psychedelic experience ends. With the help of their therapists, study participants must attempt to integrate and process what they learned during the sessions. “The integration was powerful because of the therapists being there, to immediately process things coming to your mind,” said Schaefer. 

After each session, Schaefer was walked back to the hospital where he was given some alone time for the night. He never interacted with any other study participants. The next morning, Schaefer met with Fox and Zellner again for a clearer, deeper dive into the prior day’s session. Another follow up came about a week later. “And again, man, that has been such a life-changing experience having a psychedelic medicine with therapists,” Schaefer said, emphasizing that without proper integration and therapy after psychedelic experiences, “you’re lost.” 

Today, Schaefer is clean from heroin and opioids and living a healthier life. Undergoing the psilocybin study at UW-Madison has inspired him to pursue a career as a certified peer support specialist, for which he’s currently finishing training. He aims to become an advocate for harm reduction medications and alternative psychedelic therapies for addiction recovery.

“I would say it’s not for everybody, but for some people who’ve tried different approaches and it hasn’t worked, and they’re serious about changing their life and having an open mind, then this could really be a profound experience to help them go in a new direction,” said Schaefer. 

He hopes that both treatment providers and people struggling with addiction remember that recovery takes patience, compassion, and that it doesn’t have to rely on an abstinence-only philosophy. “It might take 20 times … trying different approaches,” he said. 

Yet in Wisconsin, alternative options are not widely available. States like Colorado are already working to expand psychedelic-based treatment centers, as well as to legalize and decriminalize psilocybin. Meanwhile, the Wisconsin Legislature remains reluctant to explore bills to even legalize medicinal cannabis. Schaefer hopes that more people struggling with opioid addiction get the chance that he did. “I’d say it’s already changed my life in so many ways.” 

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A complex of data centers in Ashburn, Va. (Photo by Gerville/Getty Images)

This is the first of two States Newsroom stories examining the implications of the growing need for electricity largely from artificial intelligence and data centers. Read the second here.

The next time you’re on a Zoom meeting or asking ChatGPT a question, picture this: The information zips instantaneously through a room of hot, humming servers, traveling hundreds, possibly thousands of miles, before it makes its way back to you in just a second or two.

It can be hard to wrap your mind around, said Vijay Gadepally, a senior scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, but large data centers are where nearly all artificial intelligence systems and computing happens today. 

“Each one of these AI models has to sit on a server somewhere, and they tend to be very, very big,” he said. “So if your millions or billions of users are talking to the system simultaneously, the computing systems have to really grow and grow and grow.”

As the United States works to be a global AI superpower, it’s become a home to hundreds of data centers — buildings that store and maintain the physical equipment needed to compute information.

For users of the new and increasingly popular AI tools, it might seem like the changes have been all online, without a physical footprint. But the rise of AI has tangible effects — data centers and the physical infrastructure needed to run them use large amounts of energy, water and other resources, experts say.

“We definitely try to think about the climate side of it with a critical eye,” said Jennifer Brandon, a science and sustainability consultant. “All of a sudden, it’s adding so much strain on the grid to some of these places.”

The rise of data centers

As society traded large, desktop computers for sleek laptops, and internet infrastructure began supporting AI models and other software tools, the U.S. has built the physical infrastructure to support growing computing power.

Large language models (LLMs) and machine learning (ML) technologies — the foundation of most modern AI tools — have been used by technologists for decades, but only in the last five to seven years have they become commercialized and used by the general public, said David Acosta, cofounder and chief artificial intelligence officer of ARBOai.

To train and process information, these fast-learning AI models require graphic processing units (GPUs), servers, storage, cabling and other networking equipment, all housed in data centers across the country. Computers have been storing and processing data off-site in dedicated centers for decades, but the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s and the move to cloud storage demanded much more storage capacity over the last decade.

As more things moved online, and computing hardware and chip technology supported faster processing, AI models became attainable to the general public, Acosta said. Current AI models use thousands of GPUs to operate, and training a single chatbot like ChatGPT uses about the same amount of energy as 100 homes over the course of a year.

“And then you multiply that times the thousands of models that are being trained,” Acosta said. “It’s pretty intense.”

The United States is currently home to more than 3,600 data centers, but about 80% of them are concentrated in 15 states, Data Center Map shows. The market has doubled since 2020, Forbes reported, with 21% year over year growth. For many years, nearly all of the country’s data centers were housed in Virginia, and the state is considered a global hub with nearly 70% of the world’s internet traffic flowing through its nearly 600 centers. Texas and California follow Virginia, with 336 and 307 centers, respectively.

Tech companies that require large amounts of computing power, the private equity firms and banks that invest in them and other real estate or specialized firms are the primary funders of data centers. In September, BlackRock, Global Infrastructure Partners, Microsoft and AI investment fund MGX invested $30 billion into new and expanded data centers primarily in the U.S, and said they will seek $100 billion in total investment, including debt financing.

Investment in American data center infrastructure is encouraging considering the global “AI arms race,” we’re in, Acosta said.

“If you own the data, you have the power,” Acosta said. “I just think we just make sure we do it ethically and as preemptive as possible.”

Energy and environmental impact

Current estimates say data centers are responsible for about 2% of the U.S.’ energy demand, but Anthony DeOrsey, a research manager at sustainable energy research firm Cleantech group, projects data centers will be about 10% of demand by 2027.

As data centers are developed in new communities across the country, residents and their state legislators see a mix of financial benefits with energy and environmental challenges.

The development of data centers brings some infrastructure jobs to an area, and in busy data center communities, like Virginia’s Loudoun and Prince William counties, centers can generate millions in tax revenue, the Virginia Mercury reported.

Local governments can be eager to strike deals with the tech companies or private equity firms seeking to build, but the availability and cost of power is a primary concern. New large data centers require the electricity equivalent of about 750,000 homes, a February report from sustainability consultancy firm BSI and real estate services firm CBRE.

Under many state’s utilities structures, local residents can be  subjected to electric price increases to meet big electric needs of data centers. Some legislators, like Georgia State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, have sought to protect residential and commercial customers from getting hit with higher utility bills.

Granville Martin, an Eastern Shore, Connecticut-based lawyer with expertise in finance and environmental regulation, said the same problem has come up in his own community.

“The argument was, the locals didn’t want this data center coming in there and sucking up a bunch of the available power because their view — rightly or wrongly, and I think rightly — was well, that’s just going to raise our rates,” Martin said.

Some states are exploring alternative energy sources. In Pennsylvania, Constellation Energy made a deal to restart its nuclear power plant at Three Mile Island to provide carbon-free electricity to offset Microsoft’s power usage at its nearby data centers.

But climate experts have concerns about data centers outside of their power demand.

“The general public is largely unaware that cooling industrial facilities, whatever they might be, is actually a really, really important aspect of their function,” Martin said.

The equipment in data centers, many of which run 24/7, generate a lot of heat. To regulate temperature, most pump water through tubing surrounding the IT equipment, and use air conditioning systems to keep those structures cool. About 40% of data center’s energy consumption is used for cooling, the Cleantech group found.

Some have a closed-loop system, recycling grey water through the same system, but many use fresh drinking water. The amount of water and energy used in cooling is enormous, Brandon, the sustainability consultant. said.

“The current amount of AI data centers we have takes six times the amount of water as the country of Denmark,” she said. “And then we are using the same amount of energy as Japan, which is the fifth largest energy user in the world, for data centers right now.”

Is there a sustainable future for data centers?

Energy is now a material issue to running an AI company, DeOrsey said, and unrestrained, quickly evolving AI models are very expensive to train and operate. DeOrsey pointed to Chinese AI company DeepSeek, which released its attempt at a cost-conscious, energy efficient large language model, R1, in January.

The company claims it trained the model on 2,000 chips, much fewer than competitors like Open AI, ChatGPT’s parent company, and Google, which use about 16,000 chips. It’s not yet clear if the model lives up to its claims of energy efficiency in use, but it’s a sign that companies are feeling the pressure to be more efficient, DeOrsey said.

“I think companies like DeepSeek are an example of companies doing constrained optimization,” he said. “They’re assuming they won’t just get all the power they need, they won’t be able to get all of the chips they need, and just make do with what they have.”

For Gadepally, who is also chief tech officer of AI company Radium Cloud, this selective optimization is a tool he hopes more companies begin using. His recent work at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center focused on the lab’s own data center consumption. When they realized how hot their equipment was getting, they did an audit.

Gadepally said simple switches like using cheaper, less-robust AI models cut down on their energy use. Using AI models at off-peak times saved money, as did “power capping” or limiting the amount of power feeding their computer processors. The difference was nominal — you may wait a second or two more to get an answer back from a chatbot, for example.

With Northeastern University, MIT built software called Clover that watches carbon intensity for peak periods and makes adjustments, like automatically using a lower-quality AI model with less computing power when energy demand is high.

“We’ve been kind of pushing back on people for a long time saying, is it really worth it?” Gadepally said. “You might get a better, you know, knock-knock joke from this chatbot. But that’s now using 10 times the power than it was doing before. Is that worth it?”

Gadepally and Acosta both spoke about localizing AI tools as another energy and cost saving strategy for companies and data centers. In practice, that means building tools to do exactly what you need them to do, and nothing more, and hosting them on local servers that don’t need to send their computing out potentially hundreds of miles away to the nearest data center.

Health care and agricultural settings are a great example, Acosta said, where tools can be built to serve these specialized settings rather than processing their data at “bloated, over-fluffed”  large data centers.

Neither AI developer sees any slowdown in the demand for AI and processing capabilities of data centers. But Gadepally said environmental and energy concerns will come to a head for tech companies when they realize they could save money by saving energy, too. Whether DeepSeek finds the same success as some of its American competitors is yet to be seen, Gadepally said, but it will probably make them question their practices.

“It will at least make people question before someone says, ‘I need a billion dollars to buy new infrastructure,’ or ‘I need to spend a billion dollars on computing next month,” Gadepally said. “Now they may say, ‘did you try to optimize it?’”

Correction: This story has been corrected to reflect that 70% of the world’s internet flows through data centers in Virginia, not that 70% of data centers in the world are housed in Virginia as previously reported.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest maternal mortality report found that in 2023, Black women nationally were more than three times more likely than white women to die during or after childbirth. (FatCamera/Getty Images)

Brandie Bishop-Stacker was absent from school the day her little sister was born 24 years ago. Instead, the then-10-year-old went to a Georgia hospital with her mom, rubbing her feet, getting her water, and comforting her during labor pains. She recalled her mother screaming when she initially couldn’t feel her legs after receiving an epidural. And she remembered the nurses and medical staff not offering much in the way of support.

“Nobody gave any extra support seeing that my mom was a single mom, that I was there out of school helping her that day,” said Bishop-Stacker, now a professional doula in Atlanta. “…If she needed something … that was kind of a me thing, even though, of course, there’s nursing staff and I was 10 years old.”

In the two decades since, Bishop-Stacker said she has attended the birth of hundreds of Black babies and has often seen mothers’ needs and concerns be dismissed or ignored, sometimes to the detriment of their maternal care. She was unsurprised by the latest statistics showing rising maternal deaths among U.S. Black women while rates of maternal deaths of other populations have fallen. Research shows these disparities cannot only be explained by education and income levels. And Bishop-Stacker’s experience has taught her that economic advantage does not cancel out racist attitudes in the medical care setting. 

“Here in Atlanta, I have a unique vantage point of being where there are probably the most successful Black women in the United States,” said Bishop-Stacker, who is the CEO of the National Black Doulas Association. But she said Georgia is often among the top states with the worst maternal health outcomes. “Oftentimes, when we’re looking at the money part to it, we’re not taking into consideration the fact that racism is the true issue.”

Doulas are non-medical professionals trained to support people through significant health-related experiences, such as childbirth, miscarriage, abortion and death. Bishop-Stacker said her organization has around 4,000 members and trains doulas around the country on how best to advocate for parents of color.

Increased access to community-based doulas and midwives is one of several potentially effective strategies identified by medical groups and health advocates in recent years to improve Black maternal outcomes and potentially stem a persistently high and rising national Black maternal mortality rate. But in the first three months of President Donald Trump’s administration, some state lawmakers and reproductive health advocates say they’re already seeing a rollback to emerging state and federal measures designed to better understand and improve Black maternal health outcomes.

In conjunction with the annual Black Maternal Health Week campaign founded by the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, which began Friday and ends April 18, lawmakers in dozens of states are calling on their colleagues to address what they say are alarming levels of pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths and adverse outcomes among Black women.

“When we talk about maternal health, it’s imperative that we center Black women in that conversation, and that we also respond to this maternal health crisis in a way that brings some equity in our policymaking process,” said Democratic Mississippi Rep. Zakiya Summers, who is participating in this year’s campaign coordinated by the State Innovation Exchange (SiX), Black Mamas Matter Alliance, and the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women. According to SiX — a progressive nonprofit that provides policy support to state legislators — participating state lawmakers are releasing resolutions or proclamations in Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Summers, whose District 68 includes West Jackson, Pearl and Richland, said the Trump administration’s categorical opposition to discussions of race and identity in policy is also reflected in the Mississippi legislature, which recently banned diversity, equity and inclusion policies from public schools.

During the past legislative session, which ended this month, Summers sponsored bills to mandate cultural competency training for certain physicians, including OB-GYNs; to establish a legal framework for licensing and regulating professional midwifery and requiring insurance companies to cover midwifery services at the same rate as physician services; and to address postpartum depression that would have required screening birth mothers for depression at the time of birth. Those bills died in committees, as did her resolution for the legislature to recognize Black Maternal Health Week and to commit to policies focused on reducing Black maternal mortality and morbidity.

“Our committee was very reluctant to bring anything that had to do with African Americans, and I think that’s due to this national conversation around DEI and Republicans being unwilling to do anything that appears to have something to do with diversity, equity or inclusion,” said Summers, adding she will issue a proclamation instead.

Bishop-Stacker said the National Black Doulas Association has had to walk away from certain partnerships “due to the companies’ change in stance on DEI and the lack of funding available for states to continue with efforts to expand Medicaid to cover doula care.”

Efforts to remove race from federal and state policy are consequential to maternal health, says Jennifer Driver, senior director of reproductive rights at SiX. She said Trump’s policies broadly — mass federal job cuts, restrictions to a national family planning program, and significant cuts to reproductive health research teams within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — will disproportionately affect people of color who have already been disproportionately impacted by abortion bans.

But just as disconcerting for her is how the Trump administration has begun erasing Black people from history, such as the National Park Service’s recently removed reference to Black abolitionist Harriet Tubman and her efforts to resist slavery. 

“If you don’t record our contributions, if you deny our inherent rights … you also absolve yourself and the responsibility from addressing the significant health disparities that exist for Blacks in this country,” Driver said, noting that this year’s initiative will spotlight Black-led community efforts to improve maternal outcomes in the face of what she describes as an “erasure.”

“Black communities have done what we have always done; we have turned to one another,” she said. “We’ve turned to community practices. That’s why you see this emphasis on doulas and midwives, because we know the historical practices and how we have taken care of each other when this country continues or has failed us in the past.”

Driver herself might not be here were it not for the midwife whom she said helped deliver her mother in Alabama in the 1950s. She said her grandmother was barred from giving birth in the white hospital in Birmingham because of segregation and had all 14 of her kids with a midwife.

Vast Black maternal health disparities 

The U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates of any developed nation, but that is partly due to high rates among Black women and people who are nonbinary. Earlier this year the CDC released its latest maternal mortality report showing that between 2022 and 2023, maternal mortality rates went down for white women (from 19 to 14.5 deaths per 100,000 live births), Hispanic women (from 16.9 to 12.4) and Asian women (from 13.2 to 10.7) but rose for Black women (from 49.5 to 50.3), who were nationally more than three times more likely than white women to die during or after childbirth. A brand-new study from the Journal of the American Medical Association analyzing pregnancy-related deaths in the U.S. between 2018 and 2022 found the pregnancy-related death rate was 3.8 times higher among American Indian and Alaska Native women and 2.8 times higher among non-Hispanic Black women, compared with the rate among non-Hispanic white women. Other recent research has found that Black women are disproportionately impacted by rising maternal cardiac deaths and that 30% of Black women report mistreatment by medical staff during maternity care.

But in the backdrop of worsening outcomes for Black women and rising deaths attributed to abortion bans, some state governments, like in Georgia and Texas, have opted to halt or change how maternal mortality data is collected and studied. And as part of sweeping layoffs, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently placed on administrative leave the entire staff overseeing the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, designed to better understand infant and maternal health.

Georgia disbanded its maternal mortality committee last year after ProPublica reported on deaths attributed to the state’s abortion ban. The committee has since been reconstructed, but a bill that would have directed the committee to focus specifically on why certain communities are disproportionately impacted failed to pass. Democratic state Rep. Jasmine Clark, who is sponsoring a resolution for Black Maternal Health Week, said she hears a lot from Black women in her district who say their pain concerns are dismissed by providers due to racist beliefs that Black people have a higher pain tolerance or are simply seeking out drugs.

Clark, who’s in her 40s and has two teenagers, said she has considered growing her family but is scared by the stories she regularly hears of Black women having detrimental reproductive health experiences or even being criminalized for their choices.

“It’s scary to hear these stories and not wonder in the back of your mind, ‘What if that were me?’” Clark said. “I worry that the policies that we have in place in the state where I live mean that not only do I have to worry about what happens if I were to go to term and to deliver a baby and what happens in the postpartum, but I also have to worry about what happens if things don’t go according to plan, and what happens in the process of miscarriage care and whether or not I will receive the care.”

Dr. Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN in Washington, D.C., who specializes in complex family planning and is the CEO of the advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health, said more research is needed to combat the Black maternal mortality crisis.

“It’s actually dangerous for the federal government or state government or anyone to suggest that these review committees are not useful,” she said. “If we do not investigate, if we do not evaluate what is happening for folks while they’re dying … then how can we suggest that we care about pregnant people and their families?”

Perritt also advocates for more access to midwifery and doula services in Black communities led by culturally competent providers, which research has shown helps reduce rates of high-risk procedures, like cesarean sections and inductions.

That is clear for Jamarah Amani, who is a midwife and the executive director of the Southern Birth Justice Network based in Miami, whose mission is to increase the number of midwives and doulas throughout the U.S. and to integrate them in hospital systems.

She said that while she was in labor with her second child in a Georgia hospital, she was told by medical staff that “I was going to kill my baby,” if she got out of the bed to labor upright.

“I had a doula that actually physically blocked the door so that I could labor on the toilet, and then as the baby was crowning, I was like, ‘OK, call them in,’” Amani said. “I knew what my body needed, and I knew that that nurse was lying. She was a white nurse. I was a Black woman. When I tried to challenge her, ask questions, she got very defensive and even threatening. And I think, as a Black person, what we often experience is a fear of, you know, DCF [Department of Children and Families] being called … because we’re asserting our rights and that’s looked at as some form of neglect.”

Doula Brandie Bishop-Stacker said her work specializing in Black births has taught her how effective this kind of advocacy can be in improving health outcomes and especially coming from Black and brown doulas. Though she has never given birth herself, she said that when she was 18, she adopted her little sister “due to health concerns that limited my mom’s abilities and the incarceration of our fathers.”

“When you are able to have somebody who has a shared lived experience of not being seen, of not being heard of, not being valued, and they understand what those things feel like, that can help them to care for you in a way that goes a bit further, because they actually walked in your shoes,” she said.

A section of the U.S.-Mexico border wall near El Paso, Texas, on June 6, 2024. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump late Friday signed a memorandum directing several agencies to start militarizing a stretch of the southern border, an escalation of the administration’s use of the U.S. military amid its immigration crackdown.

The move, which The Washington Post first reported last month, could potentially put U.S. military members in direct contact with migrants, a possible violation of federal law.

The memo directs the Interior Department to allow the Defense Department to have jurisdiction over portions of federal land known as the Roosevelt Reservation, excluding any Native American reservations.

By creating a military buffer zone that stretches across the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico, it means any migrant crossing into the United States would be trespassing on a military base, therefore allowing active-duty troops to hold them until U.S. Border Patrol agents arrive.

National and military experts have raised concerns that giving control over the land to the military could violate the Posse Comitatus Act, an 1878 law that generally prohibits the military from being used in domestic law enforcement.

The Friday memo instructs its “phased” implementation within 45 days, and says it could be expanded over time.

The memo is directed at the secretaries of the departments of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security.

“The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past,” according to the memo.

Friday’s announcement comes ahead of a report that is due to Trump by April 20 from the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security with recommendations on whether or not to use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to aid in mass deportations.

The memo states: “At any time, the Secretary of Defense may extend activities under this memorandum to additional Federal lands along the southern border in coordination with the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Assistant to the President and Homeland Security Advisor, and other executive departments and agencies as appropriate.”

The memo also says that it’s part of an executive order Trump earlier this year signed, “Clarifying the Military’s Role in Protecting the Territorial Integrity of the United States.”

That executive order is one of five that lay out the use of military forces within the U.S. borders and extend other executive powers to speed up the president’s immigration crackdown. 

Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro, right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center, during a tour of the Terrorist Confinement Center, or CECOT on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

GREENBELT, MARYLAND — A federal judge Friday demanded daily reports from the Trump administration on how it is working to return an erroneously deported Maryland man from an El Salvador prison, despite objections from a Department of Justice lawyer who insisted the Trump administration could not immediately obey a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

The Maryland judge’s order came after the high court Thursday night ruled the Trump administration must try to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, of Beltsville, but stopped short of requiring he be brought back from the notorious mega-prison.

The unsigned order from the Supreme Court said the district court also needs to clarify what it meant by saying the administration must “effectuate” the return of Abrego Garcia and the scope of that term is “unclear” and may exceed the district court’s authority.

Immigration officials admitted to an “administrative error” in the March 15 deportation of Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, despite protections from removal to his home country placed in 2019 by an immigration judge.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland grilled DOJ attorney Drew Ensign on where Abrego Garcia was currently and what steps President Donald Trump’s administration had taken to return him to the United States.

Ensign said he could not answer those questions and instead requested more time because the administration is currently “vetting what we can say” in court. 

He also objected to the requirement to submit daily updates.

Xinis, who earlier set a deadline, now expired, for the government to bring back Abrego Garcia, was critical of that response.

“The record as it stands is, despite this court’s directive … your clients have done nothing to facilitate the return of Mr. Abrego Garcia,” she said.

Xinis said she would schedule a hearing for early next week.

“We’re not going to slow walk this,” she said.

She continued to ask Ensign where Abrego Garcia was located.

Ensign said he had no information.

“It’s quite basic,” she said. “I’m not asking for state secrets.”

CECOT prison

Administration officials have said Abrego Garcia is in the custody of El Salvador’s government at the notorious prison known as Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.  The Beltsville man was apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while driving his 5-year-old son home.

El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, is visiting the White House Monday to meet with President Donald Trump.

The attorney representing Abrego Garcia’s family, Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg, said he would welcome daily updates on what the Trump administration is doing to facilitate his client’s return.

“It’s quite clear that the government is playing a game with their own lawyers,” he said, noting that this is the second time he has faced a DOJ attorney who claimed he had little information for Xinis.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said the attorney that originally argued on behalf of the government, Erez Reuveni, was placed on administrative leave for not “vigorously” defending the Trump administration.

Reuveni was candid with Xinis about how the Trump administration gave him no information as to why Abrego Garcia could not be returned, despite admitting to his deportation as a mistake.

Administration official rejects district court authority

Meanwhile, Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy and homeland security adviser, rejected the judge’s authority to require the return of Abrego Garcio in a social media post after the high court decision.

“SCOTUS rejected the lower court and made clear that a district court judge cannot exercise Article II foreign affairs powers. The illegal alien terrorist is in the custody and control of a sovereign foreign nation,” Miller wrote.

While the Trump administration has labeled Abrego Garcia as a member of the MS-13 gang, he has no criminal record in the U.S. or any country.

Before Friday’s hearing, the Department of Justice had sought a delay until Wednesday, which Xinis rejected in a searing order.

“First, the Defendants’ act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened, and Defendants have been on notice of the same,” she wrote. “Second, the Defendants’ suggestion that they need time to meaningfully review a four-page (Supreme Court) Order that reaffirms this basic principle blinks at reality.”

She said the Department of Justice should have been making efforts to return Abrego Garcia after her decision last week ordering them to do so.

During the hearing she asked Ensign what progress the Trump administration made before the Supreme Court stayed the deadline she had set — so from April 4 until April 7.

Ensign said that the Trump administration was “not yet prepared to share that information.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview outside of the White House on March 10, 2025. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) 

WASHINGTON — Millions of immigrants in the country without legal authorization are required as of Friday to register with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security after a federal judge rejected advocacy groups’ request to pause the requirement.

They’ll also have to carry documents proving their registration.

The Thursday decision from U.S. District Court Judge Trevor Neil McFadden of the District of Columbia allows the Trump administration to issue hefty fines and potential prison sentences if those subject to the registration requirement do not comply.

McFadden, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, said in his ruling that the advocacy groups lacked legal standing – meaning they had not shown how they would be harmed by the requirement – to bring the suit.

“As organizations, many of their harms are too speculative, and they have failed to show that the Rule will erode their core missions,” McFadden wrote in his order.

In a statement, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem cheered the order.

“President Trump and I have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now. If you leave now, you may have the opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream,” Noem said.

The Migration Policy Institute, an immigration think tank, estimates that between 2.2 million and 3.2 million immigrants will have to register. The registration requirement could be a powerful tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to carry out mass deportations.

Registration requirements

DHS announced the new requirement in February. Under the rule, immigrants aged 14 and older who are required to register will need to carry registration documents at all times or risk potential prison terms or fines of up to $5,000.

Immigrants covered by the requirement must submit fingerprints and other biometric and personal information through an online application handled by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Once an application is approved, the agency will provide documentation that immigrants must carry at all times.

The suit, brought by immigration advocacy groups, argued the Trump administration violated proper rulemaking procedures in creating the application. The groups also warned in court documents that use of the application “will lead to racial profiling and the mistaken targeting of U.S. citizens.”

The registration requirement is authorized under a wartime act known as the Alien Registration Act of 1940 that was first used in World War II.

The requirement was rarely used until the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. During that time, any noncitizen males older than 16 who hailed from 25 Muslim-majority countries had to register with the U.S. government.

The program, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, led to no terrorism convictions and was dissolved in 2016.

Under the requirement in place Friday, those who are required to register include immigrants who entered the U.S. without legal authority and Canadian visitors in the U.S. for more than 30 days.

Those who do not have to register include lawful permanent residents, immigrants with work visas or certain other visas and those in removal proceedings.  

In a new survey of Wisconsin child care providers, 25% said they could close without renewed state support. Corrine Hendrickson, shown here at a 2023 event to support the child care sector, said her New Glarus family care will likely have to raise fees. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

One in four Wisconsin child care providers could close their doors if the state’s ongoing support isn’t replaced after it ends in June, according to a state-commissioned report released Thursday.

More than one in three providers expect to reduce their capacity for children or the hours they operate, or both, according to the report, based on a survey of most of the state’s licensed child care providers.

The report was commissioned by the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) and produced by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It was released by the office of Gov. Tony Evers to support $480 million for child care providers in his 2025-27 proposed budget — a successor to the state’s Child Care Counts program that was funded with federal pandemic relief money. 

“It underscores what those of us in the field have known for a long time — that is, the need for public investment in order to stave off closures and rate increases,” said Ruth Schmidt, executive director of the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association.

The association supports Evers’ $480 million budget proposal and is holding an advocacy day at the state Capitol on April 16, with plans to meet lawmakers.

In a statement announcing the survey findings, Evers underscored his proposal.

“The cost of child care is too darn high, wait lists are too long, and providers are already struggling to keep the lights on, their doors open, and meet demand for child care across our state,” Evers said.

“The results of this survey are crystal clear: if we don’t make needed investments to support our child care providers and industry, programs will close, wait lists will get even longer, providers will be forced to raise prices, and parents and loved ones who can’t afford for [their] costs to get any higher may have to leave our workforce.”

Child Care Counts has provided monthly payments to state child care providers since 2021. From November 2021 to January 2024, it was funded from Wisconsin’s share of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the federal pandemic relief legislation enacted in 2021. The program paid out more than $479 million to providers. After that money ran out, Evers directed another $170 million additional pandemic relief funds to carry the program through June 2025.

Child Care Counts paid out $20 million a month until mid-2023, when it was cut to $10 million a month, with providers getting half of what they had previously received.

The Republican majority in the state Legislature rejected Evers’ proposal to put up to $360 million in the 2023-25 budget to continue the subsidy program at its earlier monthly amount.

Providers have credited the Child Care Counts program with making it possible for them to increase pay for child care workers in the face of competition from other employers without being forced to raise the fees they charge parents.  

About 80% of the state’s more than 4,500 child care providers received and took part in the survey, which was included in providers’ November application for Child Care Counts payments.

The survey included questions about providers’ experiences before and after the Child Care Counts reduction. It also asked about their expectations after the program ends in June, as well as the potential impact of a continued program.

Two-thirds of providers surveyed reported that after the payments were reduced, they raised fees.

Responding to questions about the impact of state support ending in June, 25% or more of providers in the survey said they would be somewhat or more likely to close. Fully 10% of providers said closing their program “was very or extremely likely,” the report found.

“That’s an incredibly concerning statistic,” said Schmidt. “That’s a lot of child care programs that could be pulling up stakes. It’s going to hit rural communities super hard, but across the state we’re going to see significant closures.”

More than one-third of providers — 37% — said they were “at least somewhat likely” to close some of their classrooms or reduce the number of children they serve. Almost that many, 36%, said they were likely to reduce the number of hours they provide care.

By 59%, providers also expect their waiting lists to grow without continued state support.

Providers also expect to have a harder time hiring and keeping employees, with 66% saying that it was “at least somewhat likely” they will have to cut compensation, including their own. Fully half of providers “said this was very or extremely likely,” the report states.

More than half of providers — 56% — said it was at least somewhat likely that more employees would quit, and 46% said staff cuts were somewhat or more likely.

Of providers in the survey, 69% said “that it was at least somewhat likely” they would have a harder time hiring qualified employees.

About half of providers surveyed — 51% — said they thought it would be “at least somewhat likely” that they would find it harder to provide high quality care.

Between one-fourth and nearly half of providers said they expected to have more trouble being able to meet some parents’ specific needs. Those include providing care earlier or later in the day, serving families in the state’s Wisconsin Shares subsidy child care program for low-income families, caring for infants and toddlers or caring for children with special needs.

“With families already struggling to afford child care, respondents repeatedly described how continued funding — whether at the original or at current levels—would help prevent further tuition rate increases,” the survey report notes. Some providers said it would allow them to hold rates at their current level or reduce them, while others said it would keep the rate of tuition increases down.

Corrine Hendrickson, a New Glarus child care provider and organizer of an advocacy group for providers and families, Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed (WECAN), said the survey points out “the disastrous results for children and families after the initial [Child Care Counts] funding wasn’t replaced in the state budget.”

Rural areas, where families are younger and have lower incomes, may be hit the most dramatically if the child care sector contracts, Hendrickson said.

Hendrickson said she is likely to have to raise the rates she charges for her family child care center, which has a capacity of eight children. A $30 increase “will put me out of reach for too many families,” Hendrickson said. “If I lose two children and can’t replace them within a month or two, I will have to close.”

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Chad Sobieck testifies in opposition to a bill introduced in the Wisconsin Assembly that would place new limitations on the process to establish if a person is eligible for Medicaid. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

State legislation that would require the Wisconsin health department to verify that all Medicaid recipients are eligible twice a year was met with resounding opposition at a public hearing Thursday.

The bill, AB 163, also would add restrictions on the verification process. With a few differences, the legislation echoed a bill that failed to pass two years ago.

Only one witness testified in favor of the measure: its Assembly author, state Rep. William Penterman (R-Columbus).  

“It will create a balance, an important balance, in preserving a strong safety net for our most vulnerable residents while curbing inappropriate long-term reliance on public assistance,” Penterman said.

The legislation would prohibit the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) from renewing Medicaid recipients automatically and require DHS to reconsider a person’s eligibility every six months instead of annually, the federal standard.

It would cut off eligibility for six months for Medicaid recipients who don’t report a change, such as higher income, that would make them ineligible for the program. It also prescribes additional requirements for checking databases of other agencies to confirm information about a Medicaid recipient’s qualifications.

Over the course of a 2-1/2-hour hearing, witnesses said the bill would impose significant administrative burdens on Medicaid recipients and likely lead some to be kicked off the rolls, not because they were not eligible but because of mistakes, whether made by the recipient in the process of trying to requalify or by state officials processing their paperwork.

“Its reason seems to be purposely causing difficulty for people whose lives are already a monumental struggle in an attempt to make it too difficult for them to access the services they are entitled to,” said Karel Oliveras, who has two grandchildren with Angelman syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes developmental delays and other problems.

Referring to Oliveras’ comments about the process of establishing eligibility for the program, Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) asked, “Would you characterize it as too easy?”

“It’s my daughter and her husband who do that,” Oliveras said. “But the stress of that [on them] was very, very obvious.”

Both Clancy and Rep. Christian Phelps (D-Eau Claire), the committee’s two Democrats, were skeptical about the idea that there were people in Wisconsin who were on Medicaid but didn’t qualify.

In response to lawmakers who had implied that Wisconsin’s Medicaid enrollment — about 20% of the state population — was excessive, Tamara Jackson, the legislative policy representative for the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, said the percentage is similar in most states.   

According to Jackson, Wisconsin’s Medicaid staff already monitors people’s eligibility rigorously. “They are really checking every application and every renewal to make sure that people meet the income, asset, and other eligibility requirements,” she said.  

Chad Sobieck, who uses a wheelchair, said he has been on Medicaid for his entire life and it has enabled him to live in the community with the help of caregivers covered by the program. When completing paperwork, he has to enlist the help of others because he cannot write due to his physical disability, he said. 

A provision in the bill banning DHS from prepopulating forms for the renewal applicant would make that even more difficult.

If he has to qualify every six months and there’s an error that kicks him off  Medicaid for six months, “that would mean that I don’t have caregivers,” Sobiek said. “If there is a gap in those services, I will not be able to remain independent and it will become a safety and health issue for me.”

Almost all the opposition testimony focused on people with disabilities. Several Wisconsin Medicaid programs enable people with disabilities to live at home or in the community, rather than in an institution, with the program covering their needs for health care and home and personal care that they cannot manage on their own.

Wisconsin patients, families are wary as Congress prepares for Medicaid surgery

Penterman said that after “conversation and collaborating with the stakeholders” he was planning to offer an amendment that would exempt people with developmental disabilities from the legislation.

Critics of the bill, however — including those speaking on behalf of people with developmental disabilities — were largely skeptical about that announcement.

“I am a little offended about the fact that the amendment offered only covers the developmentally disabled,” said Jason Glozier, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition of Independent Living Centers, arguing that the proposal’s limits would be onerous for people with physical disabilities, too.

“To say that doubling the administrative burden would decrease waste or decrease fraud doesn’t seem to make sense when we have a system that is overburdened and unable to meet its need effectively,” Glozier said.

“Why should somebody who’s been disabled from birth, who’s been paralyzed or acquired a disability, have to consistently re-insist that they have a disability?” he added. “It’s not going to get better.”

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Sen. Jeff Smith holding up a printout of President Donald Trump's post telling people to buy, which went out just hours before he paused most tariffs. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Democrats are resurrecting a resolution that would allow voters to weigh in on whether the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling should stand — an effort that comes just a week after historic spending in Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court election.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission found that corporations and unions have a First Amendment right to speech and laws preventing them from spending were unconstitutional. The decision has enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend virtually unlimited amounts of money on elections. 

Lawmakers said the decision is the core of why spending has gotten so out of hand in the last decade and a half. According to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, preliminary data shows that nearly $100 million was spent during the April race between Justice-elect Susan Crawford and Brad Schimel.

At a press conference, Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) called billionaire Elon Musk — who has directed efforts in the Trump administration to slash federal programs and fire federal employees and spent millions trying to influence the outcome of the Wisconsin  Supreme Court — a “carpetbagger.” He criticized Musk for giving money to voters, saying Wisconsinites shouldn’t get accustomed to being paid to vote, but should be voting to make their voices heard.

Smith said money in elections is making voters feel like billionaires are outweighing their voices. He then called specific attention to President Donald Trump telling investors to ‘buy’ on social media — as the stock market was wavering — just hours before he announced that for 90 days he would be lowering U.S. tariffs to 10% on most countries and raising them on China to 125%. The move caused the stock market to rise and, then led to accusations of market manipulation and insider trading. 

“The man in the White House sent this message — ‘A great time to buy! A great time to buy.’ He sent his message to his rich donors and friends,” Smith said. 

“It pays off to put millions of dollars in campaigns because they’re going to make money in the end if they win,” Smith continued. “We need Congress to reevaluate this role of corporations and billionaires and their role in money and politics.”

The advisory referendum would seek an answer from voters on whether Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation should support a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision. Specifically it would ask voters the question whether “only human beings are endowed with constitutional rights — not corporations, unions, nonprofit organizations, or other artificial entities” and whether “money is not speech, and therefore limiting political contributions and spending is not equivalent to limiting political speech.”

Smith said voters sent a message that they won’t be bought last week by rejecting Musk’s preferred candidate.

“We don’t want that money coming in here in Wisconsin to buy our elections and our freedom,” Smith said. “Let’s put this referendum on the ballots, so voters can make their voices heard directly to Congress.

Wisconsin Democracy Campaign Operations and Policy Director Beverly Speer emphasized at the press conference that the issue goes beyond Musk, saying that spending by independent expenditures —  totaling about $51.5 million in April — are often backed by billionaires and operated in shady ways.

“Don’t be mistaken, Musk is just one of a handful of billionaires who contributed to this bipartisan arms race,” Speer said. “Things will continue to escalate… Unless we want to see a $150 million race, and then maybe a $200 million race, we need to cut off this free-for-all.”  

Speer said that voters are mostly opposed to the vast spending in campaigns. 

The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign conducted a survey in February that found about 88% of Wisconsin voters statewide are “extremely concerned” or “very concerned” about the influence of money in politics. The survey also found that 86% of respondents said people and groups shouldn’t be able to spend “unlimited amounts of money” to support political campaigns and 83% of respondents said there should be limits on how much campaigns can spend.

“While working Wisconsinites stretch to pay rent, feed their families, and make ends meet, billionaires treat our elections like a game — pouring millions into a state that they don’t even normally live in, hoping to tip the scales in favor of their special interests,” Speer said. 

A statewide referendum would need to pass the Republican-led Legislature, and Rep. Lisa Subeck (D-Madison) acknowledged that previous attempts have been unsuccessful. She said she welcomes more conversation about the issue and proposal.

“Not once has it even gotten a hearing, and you know, why? Because politicians who are beholden to big money in politics don’t want to hear what the people have to say about it, but we are calling on… our colleagues to join us in this resolution,” Subeck said. 

Subeck said lawmakers were starting with the referendum because any changes in state law are “neutered” by the Citizens United decision. She said Democrats would be introducing more bills to address the issue in the near future, including on disclosure of money in campaigns and on public financing. However, she said pushing Congress for a constitutional amendment will be key to changing the state of money in elections. 

“We cannot fundamentally make wholesale change in this through any state law as long as Citizens United is still law of the land,” Subeck said. “We need to amend our federal Constitution and we need to send that message clear and simple.”

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Prisoners sit at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, a mega-prison in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador, on April 4, 2025. The Trump administration has acknowledged mistakenly deporting a Maryland resident from El Salvador with protected status to the prison but is arguing against returning him to the U.S. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

A disgraced former Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) officer was found to be linked to a high-profile deportation by the Trump Administration. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Charles Cross Jr. 62, signed a report that claimed Andry José Hernandez, 30, a gay Venezuelan citizen who worked as a make-up artist, was linked to the Tren de Aragua gang and cited his tattoos. Cross, now employed by the private prison company CoreCivic, left MPD under a cloud of conduct and credibility problems, which also landed him on the Brady list of untrustworthy officers maintained by the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office.

In 2012 when he held the rank of sergeant at MPD, Cross was fired after driving his car into a family’s home while he was intoxicated. Cross was allowed to resign after appealing the decision to the Fire and Police Commission (FPC). The Journal Sentinel also reports that Cross was being investigated for claiming overtime he allegedly hadn’t earned when he was fired from the department.

Prior to the crash, Cross had been placed on the Brady list after kicking in the door of an apartment shared with his girlfriend and threatening to kill himself with his service revolver. The incident, in 2007,  cost him his job, but Cross was reinstated after appealing to the FPC. Four months after he separated from MPD in 2012, Cross was hired by CoreCivic, the Journal Sentinel reported. 

According to court filings, Cross identified himself as an “investigator” in a form claiming Hernandez was part of Tren de Aragua, one of the gangs that the Trump administration says it is targeting through mass deportations and detentions of non-citizens. Hernandez had tattoos depicting crowns with the words “dad” and “mom.” Hernandez’s attorneys say the crowns are a reference to the “Three Kings” festival in his hometown of Capacho, Venezuela, and are not connected to Tren de Aragua, as Cross reportedly assumed.  

Hernandez was one of more than 200 mostly Venezuelan migrants sent to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. Authorities at the prison have been accused of human rights violations and torture. 

Hernandez fled Venezuela fearing persecution for being a gay man, as well as for his political views. The Journal Sentinel reports that after entering the U.S. illegally, he was apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol agents and sent to Mexico, where he made an appointment and presented himself at a port of entry in San Diego. Hernandez was asked about his tattoos by federal agents, who named him as a “suspect,” but didn’t check any of the other categories on the questionnaire such as “intelligence information received from other agencies” or “group photos.” Since he was deported to El Salvador, Hernandez has not been able to reach his lawyers. 

The developments have raised questions about the involvement of private contractors in immigration and deportation actions, as well as the ability of police officers with problematic histories to be hired by private companies like CoreCivic.

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