The U.S. House will begin debate in committee this week on a bill that would cut Medicaid spending. (Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republicans plan to debate and approve the three final pieces of their “big, beautiful bill” in committee this week, including the tax measure, major spending cuts to Medicaid that will change how states run the program and an agriculture bill.

At least $880 billion over the next 10 years would be slashed under the piece of the bill that covers energy and health care, including from Medicaid. Republicans would add new Medicaid work requirements for some able-bodied adults; seek to penalize the dozen states that allow immigrants living in the U.S. without legal status in the program; and require states to more frequently check Medicaid enrollees’ eligibility, among other changes.

An estimate was not yet available for exactly how much that would save in Medicaid spending or how many people enrolled might lose coverage. Earlier projections of various other scenarios by the Congressional Budget Office had placed the numbers of displaced enrollees in the millions, and Democrats predicted the same effect from the newest plan.

House panels have already signed off on eight of the 11 bills that will make up the sweeping reconciliation legislation. And if all goes according to plan, that chamber should approve the entire package before the end of the month.

Debate is expected to begin Tuesday in each of the panels and last hours, possibly into Wednesday. Democrats will offer dozens of amendments seeking to change the bills and highlighting their disagreement with GOP policy goals.

Internal Republican disputes between centrists and far-right lawmakers over numerous tax proposals and funding changes to Medicaid will also likely lead to debate on GOP amendments.

With paper-thin majorities in the House and Senate, nearly every Republican needs to support the overall package for it to move through both chambers and to President Donald Trump.

If Republicans fail to reach agreement during the next couple months, it would put nearly every aspect of their agenda in jeopardy. GOP leaders would also need to negotiate a bipartisan debt limit agreement before the August recess, should the reconciliation package fall apart, since they plan to include debt limit language as well.

GOP divided over Medicaid cuts

Kentucky Republican Rep. Brett Guthrie, chairman of the committee that oversees energy and Medicaid, wrote in a statement last week announcing the markup that his panel’s measure would “end wasteful government spending, unleash American energy and innovation, and strengthen Medicaid for mothers, children, individuals with disabilities, and the elderly.”

But the bill released this weekend might not have support from far-right members in the House and seems to be running into opposition from some GOP senators as well. 

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy, of the hard right, wrote on social media that he hoped “House & Senate leadership are coming up with a backup plan…. ….. because I’m not here to rack up an additional $20 trillion in debt over 10 years or to subsidize healthy, able-bodied adults, corrupt blue states, and monopoly hospital ceos…”

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who has voiced concern for months about potential cuts to Medicaid, wrote an op-ed published in The New York Times on Monday highly critical of a “contingent of corporatist Republicans” who support lower federal spending on the program.”

“This wing of the party wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor,” Hawley wrote. “But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.”

The entire House package will be open to amendment if the legislation makes it to the Senate, where several GOP lawmakers are expected to rework or even eliminate entire sections.

Work requirements

The Energy and Commerce Committee’s bill is the one that would cut federal spending by at least $880 billion during the next decade including on Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

The legislation would institute work requirements nationwide for able-bodied adults between the ages of 19 and 65, with several exceptions, including for pregnant people, enrollees with certain disabilities or serious medical conditions, and parents of dependent children.

People not exempted from the requirements would need to work, engage in community service, or enroll in an education program for at least 80 hours a month.

A staffer on the panel told reporters during a background briefing Monday that Republicans tried to learn from challenges certain states had in the past when they implemented work requirements.

After discussions with current and former state Medicaid directors, the staffer said the committee wrote a bill that they are confident “states will be able to implement effectively.”

The work requirements take into account various unexpected circumstances, like if someone were to be hit by a bus and unable to complete the 80-hours-per-month requirement on time because they were hospitalized, the staffer said.

“We did try to be very thoughtful about any kind of circumstance that could happen,” they said.

Immigrant coverage, eligibility checks

The Medicaid legislation also seeks to encourage states who include undocumented immigrants in their program to stop doing so or lose some federal funding.

The federal government currently pays 90% of the cost of covering enrollees who are eligible for Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act expansion. That would decrease to 80% for the expanded population if states choose to keep covering undocumented immigrants.

The committee staffer said this would impact California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Washington states if they don’t change their policies regarding undocumented immigrants.

Additionally, states would need to check eligibility for all of their Medicaid enrollees every six months, instead of once a year for the expanded population. This likely would lead to some people being kicked out of the program.

Committee staff members were unable to share exactly how each of the Medicaid provisions would affect the federal budget or how many people could lose access to the program if Congress were to implement the legislation as written.

But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office wrote in a letter Monday that it estimates the Energy and Commerce Committee met its target of cutting at least $880 billion in spending “over the 2025-2034 period and would not increase on-budget deficits in any year after 2034.”

Staff on the committee said they don’t expect to have the full CBO score before the markup begins Tuesday and didn’t have an estimate for when that information will be out.

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., wrote in a statement the GOP bill would lead to millions of people losing access to Medicaid.

“This is not trimming fat from around the edges, it’s cutting to the bone,” Pallone wrote. “The overwhelming majority of the savings in this bill will come from taking health care away from millions of Americans. No where in the bill are they cutting ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’—they’re cutting people’s health care and using that money to give tax breaks to billionaires.”

Repealing clean-energy funds

The Republican proposal would repeal more than a dozen sections of Democrats’ 2022 reconciliation law related to energy and environment programs.

The law, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, included hundreds of billions in tax credits for renewable energy and energy-efficiency measures. It was considered the largest investment by the United States in tackling climate change.

The House bill would repeal sections including the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which helps finance clean-energy projects, and a $40 billion Department of Energy loan program meant to stimulate production of clean-energy infrastructure.

Sections targeting carbon emissions, air pollution, offshore wind transmission, and other programs would also rescind any unspent funds for those purposes appropriated in the Biden-era law.

The measure would allow pipeline builders to pay fees to bypass environmental review. Natural gas pipelines could pay $10 million to access an expedited approval process and liquified natural gas exports could pay $1 million for the Energy Department to deem them “in the public interest.”

Rep. Kathy Castor, the ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Energy Subcommittee, said the proposal would sabotage efforts to drive down prices for consumers.

“Cleaner, cheaper energy for consumers gets left behind,” the Florida Democrat wrote in a statement. “Dismantling our landmark Inflation Reduction Act will kill jobs, hurt businesses, and drive-up Americans’ energy costs.”

Tax cuts

The Ways and Means Committee released its 28-page starter bill late last week and the full 389-page version Monday afternoon, but Republicans on the panel could add to it during the Tuesday markup.

House GOP tax writers propose making permanent the underlying 2017 tax law provisions while temporarily expanding several of them, including the child tax credit and standard deduction.

The child tax credit would increase to $2,500, up from $2,000, until 2028. The refundable amount of the tax credit per child — meaning how much taxpayers could get back — would now reach up to $1,400. Taxpayers claiming the credit would now have to provide a Social Security number, as well as the SSN of a spouse.

The standard deduction for single and married joint filers would temporarily increase until 2029 up to $2,000, depending on filing status.

Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on tips, also made it into the proposal, though only until 2028. Those claiming the tax break on tips will also need to provide a Social Security number as well as the SSN of their spouse, if married.

Trump’s promise to eliminate taxes on car loan interest, also set to expire in 2028, would not apply to any vehicle that was not finally assembled in the U.S.

Tax writers increased but ultimately left a cap on the amount of state and local taxes, commonly referred to as SALT, that households can deduct, an incredibly contentious issue for lawmakers with constituents in high tax areas like New York and California. GOP lawmakers increased the SALT cap to $30,000, up from $10,000.

That level, however, might not have the support needed among Republicans’ extremely thin majorities and will likely lead to heated debate during markup, or on the floor.

Republicans from higher-tax states have repeatedly said they will not vote for the entire package unless they feel their constituents will benefit from raising the SALT cap.

The dispute has spilled over several times already, including in a statement last week from four New York Republicans, who wrote, “The Speaker and the House Ways and Means Committee unilaterally proposed a flat $30,000 SALT cap — an amount they already knew would fall short of earning our support.”

“It’s not just insulting—it risks derailing President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill,” they wrote. “New Yorkers already send far more to Washington than we get back—unlike many so-called ‘low-tax’ states that depend heavily on federal largesse.

“A higher SALT cap isn’t a luxury. It’s a matter of fairness.”

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota wrote on social media Monday afternoon: “Still a hell no.”

How much the tax proposal will cost has not yet been released, but government deficit watchdogs estimated a wholesale extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, without the enhancements, would cost north of $4 trillion over the next decade.

Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, said the proposal provides some certainty to individual taxpayers but it also adds complexity in many areas.

“You can clearly see the thinking here was probably just a straight-up extension (of the 2017 law), people wouldn’t feel like they got a tax cut because it’s just continuing. So they had to do something to make it feel like there’s a larger tax cut,” York said.

Ag cuts remain a mystery

The House Agriculture Committee, led by Pennsylvania Republican Glenn ‘GT’ Thompson, hadn’t released its bill as of Monday afternoon but was scheduled to begin the markup on Tuesday evening.

That panel is supposed to cut at least $230 billion in federal spending during the next decade, some of which will likely come from reworking elements of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Committee leaders are also planning to include elements of the much overdue farm bill, though those provisions could run into issues in the Senate if they don’t have a significant impact on federal revenue or spending.

Republicans are using the complex reconciliation process to move the package through Congress with simple majority votes in each chamber, avoiding the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster, which would otherwise require bipartisanship. 

Reconciliation measures must address federal revenue, spending, or the debt limit in a way not deemed “merely incidental” by the Senate parliamentarian. That means the GOP proposals must carry some sort of price tag and cannot focus simply on changing federal policy.

Jacob Fischler and Ashley Murray contributed to this report.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past reporters after doing a TV interview with Fox News outside of the White House on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem Monday announced about 9,000 Afghans living in the United States who had been protected from deportation will no longer be shielded as of mid-July.

After the United States withdrew from Afghanistan in 2022, the Biden administration designated Temporary Protected Status, along with other legal temporary status pathways, for thousands of Afghans who aided the U.S. against the Taliban terrorist group and fled their home country. Thirteen U.S. military members were killed in the chaotic withdrawal at the Kabul airport.

About 80,000 Afghans came to the U.S. and settled in various programs that offered legal protections and work authorization. Of that group, 9,000 were designated TPS.

TPS is granted to nationals whose home country is deemed too dangerous to return due to violence or disasters.

The TPS designation for Afghanistan will expire on May 20 and deportation protections will lift on July 12. The order is likely to face legal challenges, since Noem’s moves to curtail TPS for other nationals have faced lawsuits.

“This administration is returning TPS to its original temporary intent,” Noem said in a statement. “We’ve reviewed the conditions in Afghanistan with our interagency partners, and they do not meet the requirements for a TPS designation. Afghanistan has had an improved security situation, and its stabilizing economy no longer prevent(s) them from returning to their home country.”

The termination of the status comes as the Trump administration fast-tracked the classification of refugees for white South Africans who landed in the U.S. Monday at Dulles International Airport in Virginia.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February that noted Afrikaners — an ethnic group in South Africa made up of European descendants, predominantly Dutch — are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” after South Africa’s government passed a land ownership law in an effort to address land dispossession that occurred under apartheid.

The Trump administration suspended all refugee services in late January and has resisted a district court’s order to reinstate the program, along with contracts to organizations that facilitate refugee resettlement services.

Noem said that determination to end TPS for Afghanistan was based on a review from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Afghanistan’s conditions along with input from the State Department.

The Taliban currently control the government and the State Department’s travel advisory for the country is the highest level, a 4, which means it advises against traveling.

DHS added in a statement that Noem “further determined that permitting Afghan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the national interest of the United States.”

Noem has also ended TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians.

The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court in early May to lift a lower court’s order that reversed Noem’s decision to end TPS for one group of Venezuelans. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to testify before the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Jan. 16, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The United States and China agreed Monday to lower steep tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days, temporarily cooling a trade war but still leaving a cloud of uncertainty over businesses in the world’s two largest economies.

American and Chinese officials announced the pause will go into effect Wednesday, following talks in Geneva, Switzerland, as negotiations on a final deal continue. U.S. markets rallied following the announcement.

U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods will drop to a universal 10% baseline, down from the 145% President Donald Trump imposed last month. Trump’s previous 20% emergency tariffs announced in February on all products because of illicit fentanyl chemicals from China will remain in place, as will protective tariffs on goods still in place from the president’s first term. New duties on small packages sent to the U.S. from China, valued at less than $800, will also remain.

Fentanyl discussion

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that he and Chinese counterparts “had a very robust and highly detailed discussion” on preventing fentanyl and the chemicals to make the synthetic opioid from entering the U.S.

“The upside surprise for me from this weekend was the level of Chinese engagement on the fentanyl crisis in the United States. They brought the deputy minister for public safety,” Bessent said.

Bessent told reporters that overall negotiations were “always respectful.”

“We had the two largest economies in the world. We were firm — and we moved forward … We came with a list of problems that we were trying to solve and I think we did a good job on that,” Bessent said.

The White House touted the 90-day pause as a “landmark deal” in a Monday press release.

China has agreed to lower its tariffs on U.S. goods to 10%, down from 125%, according to a joint statement.

Tariffs are taxes on goods coming across the border. Companies and small businesses that import items from China must pay them to the U.S. government to receive their purchases.

Business reaction unclear

“I see the president’s approach to this as him putting a knife in your back and then pulling it out an inch and calling it a win,” said Alex Duarte, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, a think tank that advocates for lower taxation.

“Depending on the good, the rate could be close to 55%, so the tariffs on China are still pretty high. It’s hard to say how businesses are supposed to react to this because there’s so much uncertainty and the president behaves very erratically,” Duarte told States Newsroom Monday.

States Newsroom spoke to several business owners who were extremely nervous ahead of Trump’s April 2 “liberation day” tariffs. That announcement sent markets plummeting.

Marcus Noland, executive vice president and director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said in an interview Monday the situation has “gone from OK to apocalyptic to bad.”

“It’s clearly preferable to a tariff that would have essentially ended trade between the two countries, but it’s still significantly more restrictive than where we started the year,” Noland said.

The White House released a statement Monday saying the administration will continue “working toward a rebalancing” of a trade deficit with China. In 2024, the U.S. purchased $295.4 billion more in goods from China than China purchased from the U.S.

“Today’s agreement works toward addressing these imbalances to deliver real, lasting benefits to American workers, farmers, and businesses,” according to the White House press release.

A pharmacy manager retrieves a bottle of antibiotics. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at lowering drug prices by pressuring pharmaceutical companies to align their U.S. pricing models with those in similarly wealthy countries.

“We’ll slash the cost of prescription drugs and will bring fairness to America,” Trump said at a morning White House event. “We’re all gonna pay the same.”

The executive order, which the White House dubbed the “most-favored-nation” policy, gives pharmaceutical companies 30 days to negotiate lower drug prices with the government.

If no deal is reached in that time, Trump said a new rule will be set so that the United States will have a price model similar to the lower rates patients abroad pay. According to the executive order, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would be responsible for the rulemaking  “to impose most-favored-nation pricing.”

“We are going to pay the lowest price there is in the world,” Trump said.

Prescription pricing for brand-name drugs in the U.S. is more than four times higher than in similar countries, according to a 2024 study by the nonpartisan research nonprofit RAND.

Clear price targets

A White House official previewing the policy in a background call with reporters Monday said the president will direct the Department of Commerce to “take all appropriate action” on countries that “suppress drug pricing abroad.”

The Food and Drug Administration will also consider expanding imports of pharmaceutical drugs from nations beyond Canada, the White House official said.

Former President Joe Biden issued an executive order to direct the FDA to work with states to import prescription drugs from Canada.

The White House official said Kennedy “will set clear targets for price reductions across all markets in the United States.”

Kennedy appeared at the White House alongside the president Monday morning.

“The United States will no longer subsidize the health care of foreign countries, which is what we were doing,” Kennedy said. “If the Europeans raise their price of their drugs by just 20%, that is tens of trillions that can be spent on innovation and the health of all people all across the globe.”

Trump said Monday the drug pricing policy would be included in the “one, big, beautiful,” reconciliation bill that is the top priority of congressional Republicans. The measure is also expected to provide tax cuts and a significant funding increase to border security.

Staff on the House Energy and Commerce Committee told reporters twice during a background briefing around the same time that most favored nation prescription drug pricing would not be in that reconciliation package.

First term

The order is similar to an effort the president made in his first term, which was struck down in federal court.

The White House official said Monday’s order is an expansion of those first-term efforts, which tried to apply the pricing model for those with Medicare – the health insurance program for those who are 65 or older and certain people under 65 who have disabilities – to 50 drugs.

“The expectation should not be that we will just be pursuing that same rulemaking,” a White House official said. “We have moved on from that for broader action.”

The pharmaceutical industry has long opposed such a move and is already bracing for the president’s planned tariffs on prescription drugs. 

More details on specific actions in Medicare will be announced later, according to a White House official.

“We will be taking action in the Medicare program if the pharmaceutical companies do not come to the table and lower their prices across markets,” the White House official said.

Effort unserious, leading Democrat says

U.S. Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, slammed Monday’s executive order.

“If Trump was serious about lowering drug prices, he would work with Congress to strengthen Medicare drug price negotiations, not just sign a piece of paper,” Wyden said.

The Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats passed along party lines in 2022 when they held unified control of Washington allowed for drug negotiating pricing that aims to lower drug costs for those with Medicare.

“Democrats took on Big Pharma and won by finally giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices on behalf of seniors and capping their out-of-pocket costs for expensive prescriptions,” Wyden said, referring to the law.

Jennifer Shutt contributed to this report.

Apprentice Josh Ermeling of Laborers Union Local 330 strips forms used to pour concrete for a box culvert. A report from the Midwest Economic Policy Institute says Wisconsin's apprenticeship programs could grow faster with some changes in state laws. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Laborers' District Council)

Wisconsin saw the number of construction apprentices grow in the last decade, but a new report suggests that growth might have been stronger with some changes in Wisconsin law.

One change would be to restore the state’s prevailing wage law on government construction projects. The other would be to repeal Wisconsin’s “right-to-work” law — a measure that prevents unions from requiring all workers that they represent to pay union dues.

The report was produced by the Midwest Economic Policy Institute, based in  La Grange, Illinois, and conducted jointly with the Project for Middle Class Renewal at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“While increased public investment in the construction sector is having a positive impact on the apprenticeship system, it is clear that state policy interventions that erode workforce institutions that prioritize training have had the opposite effect,” U of I professor Robert Bruno, director of the Project for Middle Class Renewal, said in a statement.

Bruno said that in addition to reinstituting Wisconsin’ prevailing wage law and repealing the right-to-work law, states can increase their investment in pre-apprenticeship programs to boost the foundational skills for skilled trades workers. He also has suggested tax credits to give more employers an incentive “to invest in our long-term domestic labor supply.”

Looking at data from 2022, the study’s authors found that unionized construction companies account for 22% of the construction market in Wisconsin. Despite that, apprenticeship programs operated jointly by employers and unions enroll 77% of construction apprentices and account for 96% of the money spent in Wisconsin on apprenticeship programs.  

When it comes to training, “the unionized segment of the construction industry punches above its weight by a great deal,” MEPI economist Frank Manzo IV told the Wisconsin Examiner.

Funding advantage

Wisconsin also has certified construction apprenticeship programs operated by employers alone, but MEPI found that they enrolled only 23% of apprentices.

The investment in apprenticeship programs was similarly lopsided, the report finds. The spending on joint union-management programs totaled $64.3 million in 2022, compared with $2.9 million spent on the employer-only programs.

One reason for that gap is funding, Manzo said. Construction union labor agreements include a provision to cover the cost of apprenticeship programs as part of each worker’s total hourly wage and benefits.

“They’re funded by cents-per-hour contributions from employers that are used to train the next generation of skilled trades people,” Manzo said. “So, there’s always money for registered apprenticeship programs.”

By contrast, employer-only programs “rely entirely on voluntary contributions from those employers,” he said.

The study comes as the administration of Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers is proposing an administrative rule requiring that contractors employ apprentices as 10% of their workforce on state projects.

“These are all areas right now when we’re looking at how we can provide quality, middle class jobs,” said Kent Miller, president of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council. The union represents a broad cross-section of construction workers.

“I’ve heard many times from members how an apprenticeship helped them get their first home,” Miller said. “As much as we can invest in Wisconsin workers it pays dividends down the road. That’s why the private sector union construction industry is making these investments in worker apprenticeship programs.”

Demands for skilled labor

MEPI’s study grew out of the nonprofit institute’s review of how states are responding to an increasing need for skilled labor.

“The construction industry is facing high demand for qualified tradespeople to modernize infrastructure, energy systems, domestic manufacturing facilities, and that’s really happening across the Midwest — across the Rust Belt,” Manzo said.

The research team expected to see Wisconsin among faster-growing states in apprenticeship enrollment. But while apprenticeship numbers have increased by nearly 50% from 2016 to 2024 in the state, “we found that this growth has actually lagged neighboring states that maintained policies that promote workforce training investments and policies that promote workers’ rights,” Manzo said.

The clearest correlation the researchers found was whether states required contractors to pay prevailing local wages on state-funded construction projects.

Just as a federal law known as the Davis-Bacon Act requires construction projects on federal facilities to pay prevailing wages, a number of states have similar laws for state and local government projects.

Contractors are hired for government projects typically based on the lowest bid. Prevailing wage laws require bidders to meet local wage standards, keeping them from cutting wages in order to win the contract.

The requirements “level the playing field,” said Miller, the Laborers union president. “It prevents out-of-state contractors from coming into Wisconsin, low-bidding taxpayer-funded projects, doing shoddy work and taking taxpayer dollars that we’d like to see stay here in Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin repealed its state prevailing wage law in 2017, however.

Encouraging training investments

The MEPI researchers found that in four nearby states — Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Ohio — the number of construction apprentices increased by just over 63% from 2016 to 2024. All four states have maintained their state prevailing wage laws in that period, according to the report.

Prevailing wage laws “ensure that all firms — regardless of union status, by the way — would commit to these cents-per-hour contributions into registered apprenticeship programs while performing work on public works projects,” Manzo said.

Wisconsin’s “right-to-work” law, enacted in 2015, might also be holding down apprenticeship growth, the study’s authors suggest. Such laws forbid employers and unions from negotiating contracts that require all union-represented employees to either pay union dues or pay a fee towards the costs of the union’s work representing employees.

The law “is a government regulation that forces unions to represent nonmembers for free and erodes worker bargaining power by reducing the resources that unions would otherwise have to organize and provide resources and advocate for investments in training, job site safety and job quality,” Manzo said.

As he has in every budget he proposed, Evers included in his 2025-27 budget plan provisions to restore the state prevailing wage and end the right-to-work law. Both were among more than 600 items that the Republican majority of the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee removed on their first day of budget deliberations Thursday.

Restoring Wisconsin prevailing wage law and repealing the right-to-work law would create an economic environment in which skilled trades workers know they will be supported, said Jacob Heger, an MEPI research analyst and coauthor of the report.

“They can go into these apprenticeship programs, they can get the quality training that they need and then they know that in public policy they’re backed up by what’s on the books [in state law], and that the people in their state capitols have their backs,” Heger said.

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Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the DLCC board. Neubauer takes questions from reporters alongside Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein in Jan. 2025. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer is joining the Board of Directors for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) — the national organization dedicated to electing Democrats to state legislatures.

The Racine Democrat, who has been in the Legislature since 2018 and has led Assembly Democrats since 2021, joins the board as Wisconsin Democrats seek majorities in both chambers for the first time in many years in 2026.

Neubauer said DLCC President Heather Williams asked her to join the board and it’s a sign of the organization’s “deep commitment” to Wisconsin and understanding that a trifecta could be possible in 2026. 

“They want to be a part of helping us flip this state blue,” Neubauer said. “DLCC of course is focused on the national strategy of supporting democratic legislatures to win majorities in legislative chambers. They have had great success in the last few years… so I’m excited to be part of that national strategy work.” 

Williams said in a statement that “all eyes should be on the states in 2025” and Neubauer is a leader to watch. 

“As state Democrats continue to overperform in special elections and counter the chaos in Washington, we are laying the foundation for Democratic success up and down the ticket,” Williams said. “Our board members represent some of the sharpest minds in politics, and I’m excited to partner with them to build our plan for victory for cycles to come.” 

In the past, the DLCC has invested in helping Wisconsin Democrats win and outlined strategies for winning targeted seats.

Neubauer said it has been helpful getting to know leaders in other states where Democrats have successfully flipped control of their legislative chambers including Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. She said she has learned a lot from those leaders and is trying to bring those lessons back to Democrats in Wisconsin, especially when it comes to preparing to be in the majority. 

“When we do win, we want to take advantage of the opportunity and pass policy that is going to materially improve people’s lives very quickly, so that’s been really helpful to me to speak with them about how they prepared to govern, how they worked with their caucuses,” Neubauer said, adding that Democrats have 10 new Assembly members this year and hope to grow that number now that the Legislature has passed new maps that no longer overwhelmingly favor Republicans. “The level of program that we run during the campaign cycle, the amount of money we need to raise and candidates we’re supporting has grown significantly since we got the fair maps. I’m getting all sorts of advice from those leaders both about governing and about effectively campaigning, winning majorities.” 

When it comes to its targets for 2025-26, Wisconsin is one of five of the DLCC’s “battleground” states where legislative majorities are determined by the slimmest of margins. 

New legislative maps were put in place last year by the state Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers after the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the old maps were an unconstitutional gerrymander. Democrats in Wisconsin haven’t held a legislative majority in the Senate or Assembly since 2010, and under the old maps, Senate Republicans were able to win two-thirds of the seats, while Republicans held a 64-35 majority.

Under the new maps, Democrats in 2024 were able to pick up 10 Assembly seats and now hold 45 of 99 seats. They also added four Senate seats and now hold 15 seats out of 33 in that chamber.

Wisconsin’s 2026 elections will be the first time that control of the Senate will be in play as only half of the body was up in the last election and Assembly Democrats will again be working to try to win a majority.

“It is absolutely doable, but it is going to take quite a bit of work,” Neubauer said. 

Democratic lawmakers, she said, are taking a few approaches to getting things done for voters ahead of the next elections. This includes working across the aisle in the budget process to get investment into programs that Wisconsinites rely on, including child care and public schools and ensuring “Republican attacks on our rights and freedoms are not successful” by upholding the governor’s veto. 

Neubauer said her party is also “focused on that long-term vision and communicating what we will do when we have a Democratic trifecta — how we will change the state, how we will make Wisconsin a place where everyone has the ability to thrive, wants to live, raise a family, retire.” She noted that Democrats introduced a package of bills in January to address prescription drug access, ensure students have access to food in school and help improve housing, but Republicans haven’t shown interest in them. 

“We have a big and deep policy agenda that we’ve been working on for over a decade that we are ready to implement, and so we just have to get out and communicate about it,” Neubauer said. “And that of course looks like fanning out across the state, both in districts we represent and other communities, and talking about the work that we need to get done.” 

Neubauer said they are going to continue to work to lower costs, especially as “Trump engages in reckless, irresponsible trade wars and weakens the economy for no good reason.” She said state legislatures are essential in pushing back on his agenda.

The first part of Trump’s term in office could have an effect on Wisconsin Democrats’ chances as well, Neubauer said. 

“We have a number of Republican legislators who have really tried to position themselves as being moderate. They go home to their districts and they emphasize the bipartisan proposals that they’ve signed on to or tried to get passed, but what they don’t talk about is their voting record being in line with Republican leadership almost 100% of the time,” Neubauer said. 

Neubauer said that Wisconsin Republicans haven’t distanced themselves from Trump’s  agenda. 

“The first several months of the legislative session here in Wisconsin, we saw Republicans focused on culture wars rather than lowering costs for working families, making their lives easier, investing in our schools — the things that we all hear about when we run into our constituents at the grocery store,” Neubauer said. “Republicans are going to have to answer for Donald Trump and his attacks on Wisconsin families next year, and that is going to be difficult for them to do in extremely purple districts.”

Wisconsin’s gubernatorial election is also coming up in November 2026. Evers hasn’t said whether he’ll run for a third term, saying he’ll likely decide after the next budget is done. Republican Josh Schoemann, who serves as the county executive of Washington, is the first candidate to announce his campaign.

“We’re all eagerly awaiting that decision,” Neubauer said of Evers’ choice whether to make a re-election bid. “[I] always look forward to working with the governor.”

Neubauer is one of seven legislative leaders joining the DLCC board alongside California Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas, Colorado Senate President James Coleman, Illinois Speaker Pro Tempore Kam Buckner, Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks, Oregon Speaker of the House Julie Fahey and Virginia Speaker of the House Don Scott. 

New York Senate President Pro Tempore and Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, who also serves as the DLCC chair, said in a statement that she is thrilled Neubauer is joining. 

“There has never been a more important time to ensure we have battle-tested, experienced leaders at the helm of Democratic strategy in the states as Donald Trump upends Washington and our economy,” Stewart-Cousins said, adding that Neubauer “embodies the diverse expertise needed to drive and elevate our strategy to build durable state power through the end of the decade.”

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The seven members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court hear oral arguments. (Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)

This story was published in partnership with the Center for Media and Democracy, 

The more than $100 million spent on this spring’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin set a new national record for spending on a state judicial race. The figure almost doubles the previous record of $51 million, which donors poured into the Wisconsin Supreme Court race in 2023. 

“The spending in this race is an indication of just how dominant state high courts have become in the biggest political fights playing out today,” Douglas Keith, a senior counsel in the Brennan Center’s Judiciary Program, told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). He pointed to the “growing recognition” of the significance of state courts in ruling on both challenges to election laws and abortion rights since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. 

The record spending on the 2025 Wisconsin race, the pathways the money traveled and the outsized influence of a few major donors raise questions about the future and fairness of judicial elections in Wisconsin and beyond. 

Outside spending

The campaign for liberal candidate Susan Crawford — who ultimately won the election by 10 points — raised more than $28.3 million, while her conservative counterpart Brad Schimel pulled in over $15.1 million in campaign funding, according to a CMD analysis of Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. 

Special interest and ideological political action committees (PACs) accounted for the majority of the spending, dropping almost $57 million on both the liberal and conservative candidates. Thirteen of those outside groups spent more than $1 million each (and in many cases, well over $1 million) on the race, for a total of $48.8 million — more than the combined total raised by the two campaigns. 

 

“Big money has ruined us,” Janine Geske, a retired Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, told CMD. “It distresses me. It just goes to the heart of the independence of the judiciary.” 

Several of the highest spending groups are linked to just a small number of individuals. Billionaire Charles Koch’s astroturf operation Americans for Prosperity spent more than $3.3 million, while shipping giant Richard Uihlein’s Fair Courts America super PAC spent over $4.4 million. 

Few backers drew more attention than Trump’s top campaign donor Elon Musk, who funneled nearly $18.7 million into the race to boost Schimel through his America PAC and the Building America’s Future PAC, a group he has reportedly funded in part since 2022.

“The Musk involvement helped politicize [and polarize] the race,” Charles Franklin, professor of law and director of the Marquette Law School Poll, told CMD. “That was a brand new element.” 

There was a strong turnout in the April election, with 51% of Wisconsin’s eligible voters casting ballots — remarkably high for an election in which the state Supreme Court was the highest office on the ballot. 

“Voter turnout is up because the race is important, but it’s also up because so much money is being poured into it,” Franklin said, noting a 15-year rise in turnout in the state’s elections for its highest court. 

Political party loophole

Although Wisconsin Supreme Court elections are officially nonpartisan, the state’s Republican and Democratic parties played major roles. “It’s been so obviously a de facto partisan race for several cycles,” said Franklin, who also highlighted the significance of endorsements from President Trump and former President Obama in the election. 

The maximum amount that can be legally given to the campaign committee of a candidate running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court is $20,000. However, individuals can make unlimited contributions to a political party. Some donors use this as a legal loophole to funnel money to judicial candidates by first giving money to the state party, which then transfers the funds to the candidate’s campaign committee. 

In the most recent election, the Wisconsin Democratic Party gave more than $10.4 million to Crawford while the state GOP contributed over $9.5 million to Schimel, according to a CMD analysis of Wisconsin Ethics Commission filings. The contributions from the state parties accounted for almost two-thirds of Schimel’s overall campaign spending and more than a third of Crawford’s. 

The top donor to one of the two major political parties in Wisconsin is Diane Hendricks, who has given just under $3.6 million so far this year to the state GOP. She is the owner of Hendricks Holdings and a co-founder of ABC Roofing Supplies, the largest roofing supply company in the country. 

 

In addition to the $18.7 million Musk spent through PACs, he also gave $3 million to the Wisconsin GOP this year. Similarly, Richard Uihlein has given nearly $1.7 million to the

Wisconsin GOP in 2025 on top of the $4.4 million his PAC dropped on the race. His wife, Elizabeth Uihlein, gave more than $2.1 million to the state party. The couple each sent the maximum individual contribution of $20,000 to Schimel’s campaign as well. 

Major donations also flowed in on the Democratic side. Billionaire investor George Soros gave $2 million and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker gave $1.5 million to Wisconsin’s Democratic Party. 

Reform prospects 

The Marquette Law School Poll conducted in February found that 61% of respondents believe party contributions reduce the independence of judges. 

“It’s crucial that the public be able to look at courts and think they’re doing something different than raw politics,” Keith said. “This kind of an election makes it really hard for them to think of courts that way if the process for picking judges looks like the process for picking a U.S. senator.” 

Geske, who supports judicial elections in principle, shares that concern. “If there is no faith, we don’t have a system. It doesn’t work.” 

Yet, in that same poll, 90% of respondents said it was better to elect rather than appoint state Supreme Court justices. Wisconsin is one of 14 states that rely on nonpartisan elections to choose their Supreme Court justices, a practice it has followed since becoming a state in 1848. 

While the Marquette Law School Poll suggests there is broad public support for electing judges, record-breaking spending on those races raises concerns about judicial independence. 

The rising tide of outside spending is unlikely to recede, particularly given the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) allowing unlimited outside spending on elections, including for judicial races. 

“Citizens United really set us back,” Geske said. “It destroyed the ability to have an independent judicial race where people can really look at the quality of the candidate versus the politics of it.” 

In 2017, she was one of 54 judges who petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court for stricter ethics rules to prevent judges from hearing cases involving major campaign contributors. But since the petition was ultimately rejected, no state rule currently requires a judge’s recusal or automatic disqualification from hearing such a case. The decision to recuse is left up to each individual justice in each case. 

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (2009) held that a judge’s recusal is required when the campaign support received is so significant that it creates a “serious risk of actual bias,” but that standard has rarely been applied since the decision.

Geske had hoped that Wisconsin’s highest court would revisit the possibility of stricter ethics rules in this context but now thinks that is unlikely given the significant financial contributions several justices have received. She believes that stronger guidelines rather than requiring mandatory recusal may be a more viable option. 

Even if recusal guidelines were strengthened, Geske noted there would be practical complications if a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice stepped aside from a case. Unlike some other states, Wisconsin has no system for replacing a recused justice. If one of the seven justices steps aside, the court could be left with risking a deadlocked 3–3 decision. 

Beyond the question of independence, Keith said more could be done to enhance transparency in Wisconsin judicial elections overall, such as requiring more frequent financial disclosures. “While we know a lot about what groups were spending and how much they spent, we know very little about where their money was coming from,” he pointed out. “A lot of it is informed guesswork.” 

“The unprecedented and obscenely high amount of political money being raised and spent in Wisconsin Supreme Court elections is a fairly new and horrific development in our state,” wrote Jay Heck, executive director of Common Cause Wisconsin, in 2024. “It wasn’t always this way here and it cannot and should not continue.” 

Heck pointed out that Wisconsin enacted the Impartial Justice Act in 2009, which provided public financing for state Supreme Court campaigns in exchange for a voluntary spending cap and a ban on soliciting private contributions. However, Republican Governor Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled legislature repealed the measure and dramatically weakened Wisconsin’s campaign finance laws. 

“We went from being the progressive good government promised land to the political wasteland of the country,” Heck said. 

Common Cause has called for updating and reinstating the 2009 reforms, along with strengthening recusal rules and prohibiting coordination between campaigns and outside groups. 

A recent poll by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign found that almost three of four Wisconsin voters want limits on outside PACs, but that reform is not possible until the Citizens United decision is overturned. 

Next year’s Supreme Court election 

Major reforms are unlikely before the next election in April 2026, when conservative Justice Rebecca Bradley will be seeking to retain her seat. Spending will likely be lower than in this year’s race given that the court’s new 4–3 liberal majority will not be in play.

However, the scale and tone of the 2025 race may influence the 2026 election and others in different ways. Geske said she knows judges who would have previously considered running for the state Supreme Court but are no longer interested. 

“When you get into these kinds of numbers and that kind of race, they’re not going to put themselves and their families through it,” she said. “It narrows the number of people who are willing to run for the court.” 

Geske said that if judicial elections had been like this when she ran in 1993, she wouldn’t have run. “When I was running, we really tried to have bipartisan support,” she said. “Now it really is: ‘Whose side are you on?’” 

“I think that will continue and, as a result, I think that big money will continue to follow.”

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Examiner staff members Baylor Spears, Henry Redman, Erik Gunn, Ruth Conniff and Criminal Justice Fellow Andrew Kennard with Milwaukee Press Club awards on May 9, 2025 | Wisconsin Examiner photo

Wisconsin Examiner staff members were recognized for investigative reporting, public service reporting, explanatory reporting, and in several feature-writing categories in the Milwaukee Press Club annual Excellence in Journalism contest for work published in 2024.

Henry Redman received the Bronze award for online investigative reporting for a series of stories that uncovered the influence of an out-of-state right-wing pro-development group on land use planning in Oneida County.

Editor Ruth Conniff was recognized in the public service reporting category for a special report on human trafficking in Wisconsin agriculture. For the third year in a row, Conniff also received an award for the best online column for a selection of her work.

Criminal Justice Project Fellow Andrew Kennard received a bronze award for explanatory reporting online for a story about problems with access to telephone communication for incarcerated people in Wisconsin prisons.

Baylor Spears was honored with a bronze award for hard news feature writing for her story on how Democratic Party candidates were campaigning in parts of the state that they have been shut out from in the past by gerrymandering. 

Deputy Editor Erik Gunn was the recipient of a silver award for feature writing for his story on a project in La Crosse by college students and neighborhood activists to eliminate the use of mulched rubber as a playground surface.

Gunn also received a bronze award for personal profile writing for his story on a mother who has campaigned for years to have meningitis vaccines required in Wisconsin after her son died of the illness in college.

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Newark Mayor Ras Baraka being released from a federal building hours after his arrest on May 9, 2025.

NEWARK — Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested Friday and accused of trespassing at an immigration detention center, was released from custody hours after his detainment to cheers from hundreds of supporters.

Baraka, a Democrat, walked out of the federal building where he was being held just before 8 p.m. to the strains of “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” by McFadden & Whitehead blaring through speakers that had been set up by protestors.

The mayor, one of six Democrats running for governor in the June 10 primary, said he “didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t know this morning when I woke up that I would be in this facility here, that I would end up incarcerated for something that I believe is my democratic right to show up and speak out against what I think was happening here, a violation of city and state laws,” he said.

He was ordered to be released by U.S. District Court Judge Andre M. Espinosa at roughly 7:30 p.m. Baraka said he was charged with trespassing and will have to appear in court May 15. He said Department of Homeland Security agents treated him “very nicely.”

https://x.com/amandaleetv/status/1920995570405040155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1920995570405040155%7Ctwgr%5Ef3f7eb1d5a2e197815e2fbc1eb0ed07f6c3e6334%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fnewjerseymonitor.com%2F2025%2F05%2F09%2Fthis-shouldnt-have-happened-newark-mayor-says-hours-after-his-arrest-during-ice-protest%2F

Baraka’s release capped off a wild day in Newark that started with him and three members of Congress — Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver, and Rob Menendez — appearing in Newark to visit Delaney Hall, a 1,100-bed immigration detention center that Baraka has tried to prevent from opening, saying the jail’s owner has not obtained necessary city permits.

Baraka said he was with fire officials Friday attempting to gain entrance to the facility, and videos show he was warned by federal agents that he would be placed under arrest.

After immigration agents arrested Baraka, acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba claimed the mayor was trespassing. McIver and Menendez said Baraka was invited onto the jail’s property before he was arrested.

A scuffle broke out after protestors locked arms to protect Baraka, with Watson Coleman and McIver being pushed by immigration agents, videos show. Menendez was also seen yelling at officers not to arrest the mayor.

Baraka was walked away by masked agents and plainclothes officers.

The Department of Homeland Security characterized the incident as a “bizarre political stunt.” It claims the House members were “holed up in a guard shack” with protestors while a bus of detainees entered the security gate. It also denied claims that Delaney Hall does not have the proper permitting — allegations at the center of a lawsuit Newark filed against the jail’s owner, Geo Group — and said inspections and fire codes have been cleared.

Once protestors and officials found out Baraka was being held at an ICE facility on Frelinghuysen Avenue about 10 minutes away from Delaney Hall, the protest moved there — and grew. Hundreds of supporters and immigration activists stood in the pouring rain, relentlessly chanting for hours for federal officials to free the mayor.

State senators, county commissioners, local council members, and politicos from nearby New York also joined the protest. Meanwhile, statements of support poured in from other Democrats who are also running for governor, while Republicans used it as an opportunity to attack Baraka. Baraka’s campaign also sent out a fundraising text while he was detained.

During the protest, ICE agents peered through windows of the brick building where Baraka was being held, and a group of six agents stood in the parking lot, keeping watch on the crowd.

Watson Coleman told reporters that she had been “manhandled” during Baraka’s arrest. And Menendez called it an “act of intimidation” to keep the public from speaking about the Trump administration’s increasing immigration enforcement.

“The fact that they pushed, physically assaulted two female members of Congress, ask yourself if this is the beginning or if they’re going to change course,” Menendez said. “I have no faith that they’re going to change course, but we will continue to speak out against it.”

Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said on social media that while he was happy to see Baraka released, “the bottom line is he never should have been detained in the first place.”

While walking with police officers down Frelinghuysen Avenue after his release, Baraka was asked what his next steps would be.

“See my children,” he said.

New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent prepares to testify before the Senate Finance Committee during his confirmation hearing  in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Jan. 16, 2025, in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department announced Friday that Congress must address the debt limit before August, setting a firm deadline for Republicans to wrap up work on the “big, beautiful bill” that will raise the nation’s borrowing limit by up to $5 trillion.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote in a letter to congressional leaders that “there is a reasonable probability that the federal government’s cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted in August while Congress is scheduled to be in recess.

“Therefore, I respectfully urge Congress to increase or suspend the debt limit by mid-July, before its scheduled break, to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The projection marks the first time the Trump administration has weighed in publicly on when the government will likely reach default since the last suspension expired in January. 

In the months since then, the Treasury Department has used accounting maneuvers known as extraordinary measures to pay all of the country’s bills in full and on time.

Treasury’s projection is similar to a report the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released in March predicting the country would reach default in August or September unless Congress acted before then.

Reconciliation package

Republicans are hoping to lift the debt limit without having to negotiate a bipartisan agreement with Democrats, which is typically how lawmakers have addressed the debt limit during the past couple decades.

GOP leaders plan to raise the debt limit by between $4 trillion and $5 trillion in the 11-bill reconciliation package they’re using to address tax law, overhaul higher education aid and cut federal spending.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., expects his chamber will vote on that legislation before the end of May, though Senate leaders haven’t put a timeline on when they’d bring the bill to the floor in that chamber.

GOP senators are likely to propose several amendments to the package, and any changes by the Senate would require the bill to get a final sign-off in the House before it could head to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The Treasury Department’s projection that a debt limit default will likely take place if no action is taken before August puts a firm deadline on when Republicans will need to reach final agreement.

Caution against waiting

Bessent also cautioned lawmakers against waiting until the last minute to get their work done.

“Prior episodes have shown that waiting until the last minute to suspend or increase the debt limit can have serious adverse consequences for financial markets, businesses, and the federal government, harm businesses and consumer confidence, and raise short-term borrowing costs for taxpayers,” he wrote. “A failure to suspend or increase the debt limit would wreak havoc on our financial system and diminish America’s security and global leadership position.”

A default on the country’s debt would limit the federal government to spending only the money it has on hand, likely leading to delayed, incomplete, or nonexistent payments on thousands of programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, troop pay, veterans benefits and nutrition programs, among many others.

It would also lead to a downturn in the global economy with a recession being among the better scenarios.

A default is vastly different from a partial government shutdown and would lead to more significant consequences for federal spending and the economy. 

A protester holds a sign in support of funding for public media during a May 1, 2025, rally at the Kansas Statehouse in Topeka as part of a 50501 national day of action. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump urged Congress to eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during his first term, but was largely unsuccessful.

Now, in his second go-around, Trump is once again asking lawmakers to scrap federal spending on the private, nonprofit corporation that Congress established in the 1960s.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting allocates funding to National Public Radio, or NPR, and the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS, as well as more than 1,500 local radio and television stations throughout the country.

Trump’s renewed focus on public media — in his budget proposal, an executive order and an expected rescissions request — has led the organizations that benefit from the CPB to start talking more than they have in recent years about their funding and their journalism.

Katherine Maher, president and CEO of NPR, rejected the idea that ending funding for the CPB would have a significant impact on the federal ledger, since the “appropriation for public broadcasting, including NPR and PBS, represents less than 0.0001% of the federal budget.”

Maher also opposed what she viewed as the Trump administration seeking to influence journalists and news organizations.

“The President’s order is an affront to the First Amendment rights of NPR and locally owned and operated stations throughout America to produce and air programming that meets the needs of their communities,” Maher wrote in a statement. “It is also an affront to the First Amendment rights of station listeners and donors who support independent news and information.”

Paula Kerger, CEO and president at PBS, also defended the CBP as well as the news programs that receive its funding.

“There’s nothing more American than PBS, and our work is only possible because of the bipartisan support we have always received from Congress,” Kerger said. “This public-private partnership allows us to help prepare millions of children for success in school and in life and also supports enriching and inspiring programs of the highest quality.”

NPR receives about 1% of its direct funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, while PBS receives about 15%. Those numbers fluctuate for the local stations, which tend to get more, but not all, of their operating budgets from CPB funding.

Senate likely to balk

House Republicans, who have sought to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in recent appropriations bills, are likely to get on board. But senators, who write broadly bipartisan bills, haven’t taken that step and appear unlikely to do so this year — possibly helping public media resist Trump’s cutback attempts, as it did during his first term.

The differences between the House and Senate will lead to heated debate for months to come about future spending on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as well as the dozens of other programs Trump told lawmakers to stop funding in his budget request.

Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, ranking member on the panel that funds CPB, told States Newsroom during a brief interview she hopes lawmakers “can effectively fight back against that proposed budget.”

“I find that some of my Republican colleagues, especially those from rural states, hear from their constituents that they are reliant on public broadcasting, especially radio for local information, news, etcetera,” Baldwin said. “And there’s not a lot of other radio resources out there. But I think the same can be said about the public television offerings.”

Opinions among Republicans vary, though.

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy, who sits on the spending panel, said funding for CPB “may have made sense at one time, but the American taxpayer has no business spending half a billion dollars a year subsidizing media.”

Kennedy said he doesn’t expect rural residents will lose access to local television and radio programming should Congress eliminate the funding.

“Rural communities have the same access as everybody else to cable, to streaming, to getting their news off of this thing,” Kennedy said, pointing to his cell phone. “It’s just an argument by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to hold on to a government subsidy.”

Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee, pushed back against defunding.

She wrote in an op-ed published in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner that while she shares “the desire to reduce government spending, defunding the CPB, and particularly the essential reporting it allows locally owned radio and television stations to provide in Alaska, is not the place to start.”

Alaska’s local stations received $12 million last year from CPB, which made up between 30% and 70% of their total budget, in addition to individual donation and state funding, according to the op-ed.

“Not only would a large portion of Alaska communities lose their local programming, but warning systems for natural disasters, power outages, boil water advisories, and other alerts would be severely hampered,” Murkowski wrote. “What may seem like a frivolous expense to some has proven to be an invaluable resource that saves lives in Alaska.”

CPB has a state-by-state breakdown on its website detailing how much it provided during each of the past six years. The individual profiles show what portion of each state’s funding went to different programs, like the Next Generation Warning System, radio programming, Ready to Learn and Television Community Service Grants.

Public media among multiple Trump targets

Trump’s skinny budget request, released last week, calls on Congress to cease funding the CPB as well as dozens of other organizations, including the National Endowment for Democracy and the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP.

The section on CPB says the request is “consistent with the President’s efforts to decrease the size of the Federal Government to enhance accountability, reduce waste, and reduce unnecessary governmental entities.”

Trump has also signed an executive order directing the CPB Board of Directors as well as executive departments and agencies to halt funding NPR and PBS.

The order stated that the “viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

Patricia Harrison, president and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, wrote in a statement responding to the executive order that Trump didn’t have the authority he was trying to wield.

“CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President’s authority,” Harrison wrote. “Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government.

“In creating CPB, Congress expressly forbade ‘any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors…’ 47 U.S.C. § 398(c).”

There are also several news reports that the Trump administration will send a rescissions request to Capitol Hill, asking lawmakers to pull back funding already approved for CPB. But the Office of Management and Budget hasn’t yet taken that step.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received steady funding from Congress starting at its founding, before the last Trump administration asked lawmakers to phase out its appropriation.

The last Trump administration’s first budget request called on lawmakers to “conduct an orderly closeout” by providing $30 million for CPB that would have gone toward salaries, rent and other costs.

The proposal argued that “private fundraising has proven durable, negating the need for continued Federal subsidies.”

“Services such as PBS and NPR, which receive funding from the CPB, could make up the shortfall by increasing revenues from corporate sponsors, foundations, and members. In addition, alternatives to PBS and NPR programming have grown substantially since CPB was first established in 1967, greatly reducing the need for publicly funded programming options.”

Funding increased despite Trump

Congress didn’t go along with the fiscal 2018 budget request for the CPB, and it wouldn’t for the rest of Trump’s first term.

In March 2018, lawmakers approved $445 million, followed by the same amount in the next year’s bill. Congress then lifted spending to $465 million in December 2019 and then again just before Trump left office for a total funding level of $475 million.

Those allocations continued rising during the Biden administration, reaching a $535 million appropriation in March 2024, the last full-year spending law enacted before Trump returned to the Oval Office. 

House Republicans did, however, try to phase out funding for CPB during the second half of President Joe Biden’s term. The House GOP provided a two-year advanced appropriation until 2023, when Republicans announced they wanted “the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to compete with other programs in the bill for annual funding.”

Those efforts didn’t work and the final spending bill, which became law in March 2024, included funding for CPB.

Senate Democrats wrote after negotiating the bipartisan agreement that it “protects funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to support more than 1,500 locally owned TV and radio stations nationwide—rejecting House Republicans’ proposal to zero out funding and weaken Americans’ access to local reporting.

“The bill maintains a critical investment of $60 million for digital interconnection and $535 million as a two-year advance appropriation, of which roughly 70% is provided directly to local public TV and radio stations.”

Final resolution far off

Congress is expected to begin work on its dozen annual appropriations bills sometime this summer, which collectively total about $1.8 trillion and make up about one-third of all federal spending. 

The House Appropriations Committee will likely propose phasing out CPB funding, or at least its advanced appropriation, in its bill.

The Senate Appropriations Committee tends to write more bipartisan bills, so as long as several of the panel’s members advocate for CPB in its funding measure, the program will likely receive its advanced funding in that bill.

Final agreement between the House and Senate is supposed to come before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1. But that rarely happens and lawmakers often use a stopgap spending bill to push off final negotiations until mid-December.

That’s likely the earliest this year the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and those who rely on it will learn if Congress will reduce or eliminate its funding. That is, unless lawmakers fail to reach agreement on that particular funding bill.

Congress would then have to use a stopgap spending bill, which mostly keeps funding levels on autopilot, until it can enact a full-year bill. 

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, one of six Democrats vying to become New Jersey's next governor, has been a vocal critic of a new migrant jail in the city he runs. (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark and one of six Democrats running to be New Jersey’s next governor, was arrested and detained by federal immigration agents Friday, according to his campaign.

This comes just over a week after the migrant jail, Delaney Hall, opened its doors as the largest detention center on the east coast. Baraka, whose city filed a lawsuit challenging whether the facility’s owner secured proper city permits before opening, has spent the week protesting outside the jail and attempting to gain entry, to no avail.

A photo taken by Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12), who was also at Delaney Hall Friday, shows a handcuffed Baraka being led away from the facility in handcuffs. It’s unclear whether he has been charged with any crime and where he is being held.

Acting U.S. Attorney of New Jersey Alina Habba said on social media that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center.”

“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody,” said Habba.

Habba, a personal lawyer for President Donald Trump, said in April that she is investigating Gov. Phil Murphy and state Attorney General Matt Platkin over the state ban on local law enforcement assisting in civil immigration enforcement. Under a 2018 attorney general directive, state, county, and local cops are barred from aiding federal agencies in civil immigration arrests or providing access to state or local resources and databases.

In February, private prison firm Geo Group announced it had secured a 15-year contract with ICE to use Delaney Hall as a 1,100-bed detention center amid ramped-up immigration enforcement. Trump has made mass detention and deportation of immigrants — including some here legally — a pillar of his second term in office.

Delaney Hall, which held immigrant detainees from 2011 to 2017, reopened May 1, despite Newark officials’ attempts to block the opening through the lawsuit. ICE officials have confirmed that detainees are being held there, but have not said how many.

The Attorney General’s Office and the governor’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.

Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) told reporters that they would be starting from “base” with the budget. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Finance Committee kicked off its work on the next Wisconsin State Budget Thursday by eliminating over 600 items from Gov. Tony Evers’ sweeping budget proposal, saying they would start from “base” and his budget had too much “irresponsible” spending. Democrats criticized Republicans for blocking all of Evers’ proposals without presenting a plan of their own to address the concerns of everyday Wisconsinites.

The committee spent last month hearing from members of the public, many of whom called for investments in public education and health care, and from some agency heads, who have defended Gov. Tony Evers’ budget requests. The state has a $4 billion budget surplus it’s considering, and Evers proposed the state tap those funds and raise income taxes on the wealthiest Wisconsinites to fund his proposals. 

The list that lawmakers eliminated from the budget bill spanned about 20 pages and includes a new 9.8% income tax bracket for high-income earners, Medicaid expansion, nearly $500 million for the Child Care Counts program, marijuana legalization and taxation, $125 million to create a grant program to address PFAS, $200 million to address the replacement of lead pipes and other provisions to help address lead poisoning and many provisions related to public schools including free school meals, a “grow your own” teaching program and ensuring access to menstrual supplies in schools, funding for the Office of School Safety and a provision to cap participation in the state’s voucher programs.

Ahead of the budget meeting, committee co-chairs Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) and Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) told reporters that they would be starting from “base” with the budget, meaning removing all of the items and taking the budget back to the one in place for 2023-2025. 

Born said legislators are accustomed to “the way we have to manage the governor’s executive budgets.” Since Evers took office in 2019, Republicans have kicked off every  budget cycle by removing all of his proposals.

“Unfortunately, [Evers] sends us an executive budget that’s just piles full of stuff that doesn’t make sense and spends recklessly and raises taxes and has way too much policy,” Born said. “So, we’ll work from base and the first step of that today is to remove all that policy… and then begin the work of rebuilding the budget.”

Responding to Democrats’ criticism  that Republicans are removing items that are popular with the public, Marklein said they should draft separate bills and use the regular legislative process to advance those ideas. 

“I can point to things in the budget bill that we’re going to pull up that I like… and we’re pulling that out as well. It’s a policy,” Marklein said. “It’s got nothing to do with the budget.” 

Born noted that there are also other ways that lawmakers could address issues of concern apart from Evers’ suggestions, saying the removal of items “doesn’t mean that when we build this budget over the next couple of months, we won’t impact those areas in positive and significant ways.”

“The governor has one idea on how to fund child care or one idea on how to impact mental health,” Born said. “There are other ways that we can do that in current law and current budget operations by inserting more money in things that I can most likely see us do.”

Marklein also noted that there could be some changes to how they go about drafting the budget this year following the state Supreme Court upholding Evers’ partial veto in the last budget.

“I anticipate that you’re not going to see too many references to digits, years anymore,” Marklein said. “My guess is that our drafting attorneys are going to recommend that you spell out those years, and those dates in the budget.” Born said the decision could also affect the education budget because there are increases already “baked into the cake.” 

Evers slammed Republicans for gutting his proposal, saying that they are refusing to help Wisconsinites.

“The most frustrating part for me as governor is that Republicans consistently reject basic, commonsense proposals that can help kids, families, farmers, seniors and Wisconsinites across our state, all while Republicans offer no real or meaningful alternative of their own,” Evers said. “Republicans talk a lot about what they’re against, but not what they’re for.”

During the meeting, Democrats proposed keeping 19 items in the budget across a handful of motions that touched on certain issue areas, saying they hoped they could carve out some spots for agreement. 

One would have placed $420 million back in the budget to fund the Child Care Counts program, as well as several other child care related measures. 

Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) said Republicans are “willing to pull out really, really important items” and said the child care proposals are essential, warning that money for the Child Care Counts program is expected to expire in June. 

“We are at risk of losing 87,000 [child care] slots… The fact that these things are being pulled out of the budget today and as of today, there is no mention or discussion of a replacement plan for something as important as this,” she said, is creating uncertainty among Wisconsinites and exacerbating a crisis. 

“Our children deserve quality services. Our families deserve affordable rates,” Johnson said. 

Another motion would have placed Medicaid expansion back in the budget. Wisconsin is one of only 10 states that haven’t accepted the federal expansion, which would allow coverage for those up to 138% of the federal poverty line. 

“Families are struggling to afford the care they need, and we have an opportunity — and I would argue an obligation — to do something,” Andraca said.

Andraca noted that Congressional Republicans, including Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, are considering cuts to the Medicaid program as they aim to extend the 2017 tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term.

“We heard how people are fearful of cuts to the programs that they rely on, and they are forced to make increasingly hard choices between groceries and prescriptions,” Andraca said. “Are you still willing to turn your backs on the people who entrusted us to vote for their best interests? Honestly, our constituents deserve better than this.”

The final proposal from Democrats would have kept items in the budget related to veterans including tax credits for veterans, funding for a veterans’ mental health program and for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum as well as an item to designate Juneteenth and Veterans Day as holidays. 

Rep. Tip McGuire (R-Kenosha) said he hoped they could agree on not making veterans’ lives harder.

“I recognize that it’s sort of the whole brand of the Republican party right now is to make everyone’s life a little bit more difficult,” McGuire said. “Certainly, it’s harder to travel in this country, It’s harder for people to access health insurance, it’s harder for people to afford college or go to college or manage their student loans. It’s harder for people to afford groceries and there may even be a question of what you can have full shelves soon… I know it’s your whole brand to make people’s lives harder, but I think we can all agree… [veterans] should still deserve some support.” 

Republicans rejected each motion.

McGuire doubled down on his point, saying that Republicans’ opposition to supporting even smaller parts of Evers’ proposal is a sign that they don’t want to help the average person.

“People are struggling and it is a challenging world and the one thing we should not be doing the one thing that nobody votes for their legislator to do is to make their life harder,” McGuire said. “Yet, that is all we are seeing out of the Republican party right now. That’s all we see out of the federal Republican party and frankly the Republican party here,” McGuire said, noting that Republican lawmakers recently passed legislation that would place additional restrictions on unemployment benefits.

“You’re making things less affordable and more difficult for regular [people] and that’s bad and we shouldn’t do it,” McGuire said.

Marklein said he was “glad we’re going back to base” because Evers’ budget proposal included a 20% increase in spending, an additional 1,300 positions funded by general purpose revenue and an increase in taxes. 

“When I talk to my constituents about the process, they are truly supportive of us not starting from this inflated budget that [Evers] put before us,” Marklein said, noting that Evers signed the last budget after they went through a similar process. “The idea that the door is closed on all these things is pretty ridiculous.” 

McGuire pushed back on Marklein’s comments, saying that lawmakers are pretending it is a “nice and friendly” process. 

“Part of the process that occurs here today is that not only do you remove the governor’s budget items, which make life easier for Wisconsinites, but then, you also prohibit anyone from ever discussing them ever again,” McGuire said. “And that’s really bizarre… This is a top-down totalitarian committee where we’re not permitted to discuss things past a certain point.”

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A Wauwatosa police squad on the scene of a non-fatal officer-involved shooting. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

The State Assembly’s Committee on Judiciary held a public hearing Wednesday to discuss a bill which, if passed, would restrict the use of John Doe hearings in cases where prosecutors decline to charge police officers after deadly force incidents. Republicans and law enforcement supporters of the bill (AB-34) said officers need to be protected from repeated investigations, and that anti-police groups have abused Wisconsin’s John Doe law to harass innocent officers who’ve been involved in civilian deaths. A long line of attorneys, legislators, social workers and others spoke in opposition to  the bill, arguing that it adds to an array of legal privileges and protections police already enjoy.

Wisconsin’s John Doe law allows for a judge to be petitioned to review a case where prosecutors have already decided not to file charges. Once a John Doe hearing has been called, the judge may hear arguments from the petitioner as to why probable cause should be found that a crime was committed. If the judge agrees that probable cause does indeed exist, then special prosecutors may be appointed by the judge to review the case. Those prosecutors, however, ultimately decide whether charges will be pursued, regardless of whether a judge finds probable cause of a crime. 

Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie), an author of the bill, said the law had been used to “unfairly target” two officers who’ve been involved in deadly incidents. Former Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah killed Jay Anderson Jr. in 2016, claiming that Anderson lunged for a gun on the passenger seat of his vehicle. Anderson was the second person Mensah had killed in a year. He was involved in a total of three fatal shootings over his five year career at Wauwatosa PD. Mensah left Wauwatosa PD in late 2020 and was hired by the Waukesha County Sheriffs Department, where he is a detective. 

In 2021, a John Doe hearing was called to review Anderson’s shooting, after which Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Glenn Yamahiro found probable cause existed to charge Mensah with homicide by negligent use of a dangerous weapon. The second John Doe hearing, started in 2023, focused on Madison police officer Matthew Kenney for the 2019 killing of 19-year-old Toney Robinson. A judge declined to allow the hearing to go forward. 

“After the investigations, the court confirmed that he had acted in self-defense,” Moses said of the John Doe hearing in Anderson’s case. Mensah’s John Doe hearing “mirrored” reviews done by the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, U.S. Attorney’s Office, FBI, and Wauwatosa PD, he said. “It’s concerning that such investigations, which echo previous exhaustions, can be perpetuated, consuming significant time and resources,” said Moses. 

While speaking Wednesday, Moses incorrectly referenced Mensah’s 2015 shooting as being the reason for the John Doe hearing in 2021. “Officer Mensah used self-defense to protect himself while on the job in a situation in 2015,” Moses testified on Wednesday. In 2015, Mensah killed 29-year-old Antonio Gonzales while still in his probationary period at Wauwatosa PD. Neither Gonzales, nor Mensah’s third fatal shooting of Alvin Cole in 2020, were the subjects of John Doe hearings.

Last year, when the bill was first introduced, Moses joined Sen. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield) in claiming that families of people killed by police were seeking vengeance against officers. Moses confused details of Mensah’s shootings during those hearings as well. When asked about the mix up, Moses admitted to Wisconsin Examiner that he had not closely followed the Mensah cases. 

As Moses testified on Wednesday, Hutton joined him in the committee room. Hutton, who has brought forward Senate versions of the bill, has said that although he’s taken extensive feedback from law enforcement about the bill, he has not reached out to the families of people killed by police. During a hearing in February, Mensah testified in favor of the bill.

Mark Sette, vice president of the Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police, said the bill is “crucial” and that law enforcement “have both the duty and right” to use deadly force to protect themselves or others. Sette said that police must make split second decisions in high-stress circumstances, and that deadly use of force incidents “are rare”. Sette praised Wisconsin’s process of conducting reviews of deadly force incidents led by an outside agency, saying that the investigations are thorough. Sette said that repeated investigations prevent officers from moving on with their lives, and trap them in a cycle of psychological trauma and financial stress. 

West Allis Police Chief Patrick Mitchell, a former president and current legislative chair of the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, also praised the investigative process. Mitchell pointed to the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT) as an example of how thorough reviews of deadly force incidents by police can be. 

Not everyone was sold on the bill, however. Rep. Andrew Hysell questioned Sette and Mitchell about whether or not it’s possible for a district attorney to make a mistake in clearing an officer of wrongdoing. Sette said although it’s possible, that it’s “incredibly unlikely” because of the thoroughness of deadly force investigations. Hysell said that district attorneys aren’t infallible, and that the bill — if passed — would set in stone a prosecutor’s decision, and deny one legal avenue for families of people killed by police.

After Moses, Sette, and Mitchell came numerous people from a variety of backgrounds voicing opposition to the bill. Gregory Jones, vice president of the Wisconsin NAACP and president of the organization’s Dane County branch, urged lawmakers to dig deep, ask tough questions, and consider all aspects of how the bill could negatively impact civil rights and the pursuit of  justice. 

Amanda Merkwae, advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, stressed that the bill takes away judicial discretion and elevates law enforcement as a privileged class above all other citizens. Merkwae noted that prosecutors and law enforcement have close working relationships, and that district attorneys often rely on the very officers whose actions they’d need to review when citizens are killed. 

The advocacy director also cited investigations by MAIT, citing an investigation by Wisconsin Examiner in partnership with Type Investigations, which reviewed 17 MAIT investigations from 2019-2022, all of which resulted in no charges against officers. Merkwae listed the article’s findings including that officers who kill citizens are interviewed as witnesses or victims only, can refuse to have their interviews recorded, and may amend their statements after viewing video evidence. In several MAIT investigations, officers were not separated from one another to prevent statement contamination despite this being a required policy. 

Mensah and other officers provided contradictory statements and were not separated from one another after his third shooting. These facts were raised during a federal civil trial into Alvin Cole’s death earlier this year. The trial ended in a hung jury, with jurors unable to unanimously agree on whether Mensah’s killing of Cole was excessive. 

Merkwae said that last year, Wisconsin had 24 fatal police encounters, up from 14 incidents the prior year. “So by creating a separate standard for police officers, this bill sends the message that they are above the law,” said Merkwae. “Which, I think, is a dangerous precedent that erodes trust and makes community engagement with law enforcement more fraught and less effective.” 

Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) also spoke in opposition. Clancy said that he hadn’t planned to speak on the bill, but decided to when he heard Mensah’s name being used. “The idea that an officer who killed three people in three different incidents is a poster boy for why this is good legislation rather than bad is mindblowing to me,” said Clancy. “Joseph Mensah serves as an example of how our current system is failing the people that it is designed to protect. Had Joseph Mensah been held accountable after the first time he shot and killed somebody, he wouldn’t have shot and killed a second and a third person, in three different incidents. And it is sickening to me that he was brought up as an example of how this is necessary because he feels that some folks are mean to him in trying to find some measure of accountability.”

More people rose to speak against the bill after Clancy. Some were social workers and medical staff, who recounted being spat on, punched, kicked, scratched, and hurt yet never once considering criminally charging the person who hurt them. It’s a privilege that police officers have which they do not, the speakers argued. At one point, a Wisconsinite who wished to be identified only as G. Lee attempted to testify while wearing a hat that used an obscenity to criticize President Donald Trump. Committee Chair Ron Tulser (R-Harrison) called the hat offensive and got into an argument with Lee, after which he called for the assistance of the  Capitol Police and called the committee into recess. 

When the hearing re-started, G. Lee was allowed to testify on AB-34 while wearing the hat, though he was warned any breaches of decorum would result in him being removed. Lee apologized that the hat “threatened or offended” Tusler, and stated that Tusler reacted from a position of power. Comparing that to the powers police have, Lee said “what scares me about the decorum set in this room, and the measure tied to this bill, is about power.” 

Lee, speaking directly to Tusler, said that when the hearing was stopped because of Tusler’s feelings, “One of my concerns here is that we are privileging the feelings of law enforcement over the feelings of families who’ve actually lost loved ones to bullets. That’s an important thing to consider here. The whole system is set up to protect a particular part of the state power, and you’ve used your state power to make a message.”

This article has been edited to correct a misspelling of Menomonie, represented by Rep. Clint Moses.

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As the Legislature begins working on the Wisconsin State Budget, a dangerous idea to give school vouchers their own separate line item could become a huge drain on resources. | Getty Images Creative

The top issue Wisconsinites brought to legislators’ attention at budget hearings around the state last month was the need to adequately fund public schools.

But now, as the Legislature’s powerful budget committee is beginning to work on the budget in earnest, a low-profile plan that never came up in those public hearings aims to turn school vouchers into a statewide entitlement, sucking up all the resources that might otherwise go to public schools and putting Wisconsin on a path to a full–blown budget crisis. 

The plan, contained in two bills that failed in the last legislative session, would stop funding school vouchers through the same mix of state and local funding that supports regular public schools, and instead pay for school vouchers just out of the state’s general fund. 

“It’s certainly something that I personally support. … I’m sure it will be part of the discussion,” Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), co-chair of the powerful Joint Finance Committee, told Lisa Pugh on Wisconsin Eye when she asked about “decoupling” Wisconsin voucher school funding from the rest of the school finance system.

“Decoupling” would pave the way for a big expansion in taxpayer subsidies for private school tuition. While jettisoning the caps on available funds and enrollment in the current school formula, voucher payments would become an entitlement. The state would be obligated to pay for every eligible student to attend private school. It’s worth noting that most participants in Wisconsin’s voucher programs never attended public school, so what we are talking about is setting up a massive private school system with separate funding alongside the public K-12 school system. That’s more than Wisconsin can afford.

Anne Chapman, research director for the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials (WASBO), has followed the issue closely. “It could come up last-minute, on very short notice,” she warns. 

She worries that Wisconsin is following the same path as other states that have steadily expanded public funding for private schools without accurately assessing what the expansion would cost. In a recent WASBO paper, “The price of parallel systems,” Chapman writes that Wisconsin already ranks third among states with the highest proportion of state education dollars used in private schooling options (9%). The top two states, Florida (22%) and Arizona (12%), she writes, are “cautionary examples.” 

Florida’s universal voucher program will cost the state $3.9 billion this year. The state, which until now has been running budget surpluses, is projecting a $6.9 billion deficit by 2027-28, fueled by the voucher expansion along with tax cuts. Arizona is also facing much bigger than expected costs for its universal voucher program. After projecting it would cost $64 million in 2023-24, the state found that it underestimated the cost of vouchers by more than 650%. The real cost of universal vouchers in Arizona in 2023-24 was  $738 million. The result: a huge budget deficit and significant cuts to public schools.

Wisconsin, which launched the first school voucher program in the nation in Milwaukee 35 ago, has steadily increased both the size and per-pupil expenditures of its system of voucher schools. That’s despite a research consensus that school vouchers have not improved academic outcomes for students and, in fact, have done significant harm.

Testifying recently against a school voucher bill in Texas, University of Michigan professor and school voucher expert Josh Cowen described the “catastrophic” results of vouchers on educational outcomes across the country over the last decade.

‘Horrific’ voucher results

Cowen has been evaluating school vouchers since the 1990s, when the first pilot program in Milwaukee had a measurable, positive impact on the 400 low-income kids who used vouchers to attend traditional private schools. As school vouchers expanded to serve tens of thousands of students and “subprime” operators moved in to take advantage of taxpayer dollars, however, the results took a dramatic downturn. Cowen described the “horrific learning loss” he and other researchers have recorded over the last decade among kids who started in public school and then moved to private school using vouchers. He was used to seeing trends in education that simply didn’t work to improve outcomes, he told the Texas legislators, but “it’s very rare to see something that harmed kids academically.” The worst drops in test scores, he said, came in 2014-15 — the same year that states began taking the programs statewide. He concluded that the smaller programs that had paid close attention to students and offered them a lot of support became something entirely different when vouchers were scaled up. Yet despite the abysmal results, more and more states are moving toward universal voucher systems.

Imagine, Cowen told the Texas legislators, if “30 years ago a vaccine showed some positive effects in clinical trials for a few hundred kids.” Then, when the vaccine was approved and used on thousands of children, “the health effects became negative, even atrocious.”

“No one would say, ‘let’s just hang our hat on the pilot and focus on results from 30 years ago,” Cowen said. But that’s exactly what’s happening with school vouchers. The kids vouchers were originally supposed to help — low-income children in underresourced schools — have suffered the most. 

Studies from research teams in Louisiana, Indiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., show learning losses for kids who left public school to attend voucher programs that surpassed the learning loss experienced by students in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina or by children across the country from the COVID-19 pandemic, Cowen said.

Instead of helping those struggling students, who often attend the “subprime” schools Cowen discussed, the voucher programs in Wisconsin and other states mostly provide a taxpayer-financed benefit to private school families — 70% of whom have never put their kids in public school.

Anti-government ideologues and school choice lobbyists are selling a faulty product with the rapid expansion of school vouchers.

Part of the scam is the effort to hide the true costs from taxpayers. That’s the part Chapman, the school business expert, is worried about. As school districts struggle with lean budgets, under the current system, at least local taxpayers can see how much they are paying to support the voucher schools in their districts. If the Legislature succeeds in moving the cost of school vouchers into the general statewide budget, that transparency will be lost. And, at the same time, the state will open the door to unlimited spending on vouchers, no matter how expensive the program becomes. 

School choice advocates in Wisconsin have long pushed for “a voucher in every backpack” — or universal eligibility for the private school voucher program.

“Eligibility” doesn’t mean the same thing as “access,” however: In Wisconsin voucher schools have a track record of kicking out students who are disabled, challenging to educate, LGBTQ or for any other reason they deem them a bad fit.

Those students go back to the public schools, whose mission is to serve all students. In contrast, private schools in the voucher system can and do discriminate. Yet, Chapman reports, we are now spending about $629 million for Wisconsin’s four voucher programs, which serve 58,623 students. That’s $54 million more than the $574.8 million we are spending on all 126,830 students with disabilities in Wisconsin, as school districts struggle with the cost of special education. 

Federal tax deduction windfall for voucher schools

As if that weren’t enough, at the federal level, the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2025 (ECCA), currently being considered by Congress, would give a 100% tax deduction on donations to nonprofits known as Scholarship Granting Organizations, which give out private K-12 school vouchers.

Normally, donors to nonprofits can expect a tax deduction of 37 cents on the dollar at most. The 100% tax deduction means financial advisers across the country will push clients, whether they are school choice advocates or not, to give money to voucher schools. Under the bill, contributors would also be allowed to give corporate stock and avoid capital gains tax. “This would allow wealthy ‘donors’ to turn a profit, at taxpayer expense, by acting as middlemen in steering federal funding into private K-12 schools,” the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy reports. ITEP estimates that the ECCA would cost the federal government $134 billion in foregone revenue over the next 10 years and would cost states an additional $2.3 billion.

The very least we can do as citizens is to demand accountability and transparency in the state budget process, before we blow all of our money on tax breaks and tuition vouchers for people who don’t need them. 

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Phil Tritz, Jeff Schwartz and Matt Swan, left to right, all AmeriCorps volunteers from New Orleans, work with Habitat for Humanity building homes for Hurricane Katrina victims in Rockefeller Plaza on Sept. 23, 2005, in New York City. Habitat for Humanity, along with the NBC News "Today" show and the Warner Music Group, planned to build around 20 homes with thousands of volunteers working 24 hours a day for five days, starting on Sept. 26. (Photo by Michael Nagle/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Hillary Kane learned on a Saturday morning in April that within days, she would lose AmeriCorps funding for two programs that match mentors with West Philadelphia high schoolers and first-generation college students — both vulnerable groups at risk of not completing diplomas and degrees.

Kane, director of the Philadelphia Higher Education Network for Neighborhood Development, dreaded calling her AmeriCorps members to say the federal government had just terminated their positions in the nationwide service program. It embeds nearly 200,000 Americans each year in community nonprofits, schools and other organizations.

“My first thought was just a string of expletives, just that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach,” she said, recalling the April 26 morning.

The federal agency dedicated to community service and volunteerism, which works in close partnership with states, is the latest target since President Donald Trump began his second term with an aggressive campaign to dismantle programs and slash the federal workforce.

The agency abruptly cut $400 million, or 41% of its budget, and placed 85% of its staff on administrative leave last month, according to court records.

AmeriCorps had provided $960 million to fund 3,100 projects across the United States each year, according to general undated figures available on the agency’s website.

Two of Kane’s grants were abruptly canceled as part of the cuts, and as of May 20, she’ll lose nearly 30 AmeriCorps members.

“They’re literally just left stranded,” she said. “You know, I have members who are single moms with kids and suddenly don’t have insurance, or at least by the end of the month they won’t.”

Five of Kane’s members were placed in three high schools in West Philadelphia helping students with career exploration, resumes and college applications. They also provided recreation activities after school.

“We’re in under-resourced schools,” Kane said. “We’ve got schools that have one counselor for 300 students, and they’re not even primarily a college counselor, right? They’re guidance counselors who are dealing with all kinds of other issues.”

Even more short-staffing

The cuts have produced upheaval for many nonprofits.

AmeriCorps members serve various roles in organizations that support environmental conservation projects, rebuild after natural disasters, prepare adults for the GED exam, tutor children and more.

Rick Cohen, of the National Council of Nonprofits, said the announcement was a blow to community organizations that are already stretched thin.

“Groups that were already short-staffed and facing all these other headwinds are now even further short-staffed and trying to figure out how to keep things going and how to keep helping people,” said Cohen, the chief communications officer and chief operating officer for the advocacy organization.

“It’s a very difficult time for a lot of people in the nonprofit sector because you never want to have to tell somebody that’s coming to you for help that you can’t help them, and that there’s not somewhere else for them to turn,” Cohen said.

Aaron Gray, who helped run an AmeriCorps program serving at-risk youth in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County from 1997 to 2017, said “it’s a shame.”

Over the years as an assistant director, Gray placed thousands of service members with community organizations, faith-based programs and schools.

“I think this is gonna be detrimental. AmeriCorps has been around since the 90s, and it took a long time to build up to this, and it’s just being eviscerated overnight. If it survives, or if it’s brought back at some later point, it’s going to take a generation to rebuild.”

Clinton administration

Congress created AmeriCorps in 1993 when President Bill Clinton was in office. Then titled the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency absorbed other government service programs including Volunteers in Service of America, or VISTA, created in 1964 to combat poverty, and the National Civilian Community Corps, referred to as NCCC, created in 1992 to assist natural disaster recovery.

The agency grew to include FEMA Corps in 2012 and Public Health AmeriCorps in 2022, among other specialized programs.

Service members, who are not federal employees, are provided a meager stipend of a few hundred dollars a week and receive an education award to pay for college or student loans upon completion of service, which typically lasts just under a year. As of 2024, the award was roughly $7,300.

Members, who range in age from young adults to senior citizens, can also receive health insurance while serving. While participants are not allowed to apply for unemployment, some can seek food assistance.

The administration terminated all NCCC programs in mid-April. Then, late on Friday, April 25, more than 1,000 grantees were told to pull their members from service immediately, according to court filings.

AmeriCorps did not respond to questions about the cuts.

Lawsuits filed

Two lawsuits challenging the cuts are working their way through the federal courts. Fourteen organizations, the union representing AmeriCorps staffers and three individual plaintiffs who were AmeriCorps members filed suit in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland on May 5.

The nonprofits bringing the lawsuit are based in California, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Virginia.

Plaintiffs say the immediate termination of grants has caused irreparable harm to nonprofits and AmeriCorps members who have now lost income, health insurance and large portions of their education awards, according to the complaint.

Plaintiff J. Doe 3 relocated to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a second year of service, embedded with the Kingdom Community Corporation, a nonprofit that helps first-time homebuyers learn how to avoid foreclosure and that provides counseling certified by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

According to the 55-page complaint, Doe 3 began service in February and was engaging with community members on a daily basis, answering anywhere from 25 to 75 calls. Doe 3 planned to use the education award to continue higher education.

“The sudden cancellation of Doe 3’s AmeriCorps position has left them in a new city, without a job, lacking the experience, skill building, and community they signed up for,” according to the complaint.

States left reeling

States are also affected by the cuts.

AmeriCorps’ structure puts the agency in close connection with states. Each state government establishes its own commission to determine which priorities and organizations receive the annual federal dollars.

For example, in Kane’s state of Pennsylvania, more than 8,500 members were placed in various roles at 1,000 nonprofits in 2024. The state’s commission received $38.8 million in federal dollars, while local dollars supplemented the rest, reaching $54.8 million in total funding for the year, according to the latest AmeriCorps annual state-by-state reports.

On April 29, state attorneys general from nearly two dozen states and the District of Columbia sued the administration, alleging the cuts were illegal.

The 123-page complaint details how U.S. DOGE Service officials arrived at AmeriCorps offices in D.C. on April 8 and began working with the interim agency head, Jennifer Bastress Tahmasebi, to plot program cuts.

“This case presents only the latest chapter in an ongoing saga, as the Administration attempts to dismantle federal agencies without Congressional approval,” according to the court filing.

States that brought the legal challenge include Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

White House response

In a statement provided to States Newsroom Thursday, the White House defended the cuts.

“AmeriCorps has failed eight consecutive audits and identified over $45 million in unaccounted for payments in 2024 alone. President Trump is restoring accountability to the entire Executive Branch,” said spokesperson Anna Kelly.

Editor’s note: D.C. Bureau Senior Reporter Ashley Murray served in AmeriCorps in 2011.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem arrives for a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on Thursday, May 8, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON  — The top Democrat on a U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee panel Thursday slammed Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for her handling of her agency’s funding and the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Sen. Chris Murphy warned Noem that DHS is at risk of running out of its $65 billion in funding by July – two months before the end of the fiscal year – and therefore close to triggering the Antideficiency Act, a federal law prohibiting government agencies from spending funds in excess of their appropriations. 

“Your department is out of control,” the Connecticut Democrat told Noem. “You are running out of money.”

Noem, who appeared before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, was also grilled by Democrats about the high-profile case of a wrongly deported Maryland man sent in March to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The White House’s “skinny” budget proposal suggests $107 billion for DHS starting Oct. 1, and assumes that Republicans pass the reconciliation package under consideration to allocate a massive $175 billion overall in border security.  

“If we now live in a world in which the administration spends down the accounts that were priorities for Republicans and does not spend down the priorities that were priorities for Democrats, I don’t know how we do a budget,” Murphy said.

Sen. Patty Murray, top Democrat on the full Senate Appropriations Committee, slammed Noem for not following “our appropriations laws.”

She was critical of how immigration enforcement has caught up U.S. citizens and immigrants with protected legal statuses.

“Your crackdown has roped in American citizens and people who are here legally with no criminal record,” the Washington Democrat said. 

She also criticized Noem for spending $100 million on TV ads that range from praising the president to warning migrants not to come to the United States or to self-deport.

Noem in addition launched this week an initiative to provide up to $1,000 in “travel assistance” to immigrants without legal authorization to self-deport, which would amount to $1 billion if President Donald Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people is met. The source of those funds in the DHS budget is unclear. 

Murray asked Noem about more than $100 billion in DHS funds not being used or re-programmed elsewhere for immigration enforcement, and called it “an illegal freeze.”

She then asked Noem when DHS would unfreeze those funds.

Noem did not answer and instead blamed the Biden administration, and said the previous administration “perverted” how the funds were used.

Murray said she did not think it was “credible that $100 billion is used to break the law.”

“I am very concerned that DHS is now dramatically over-spending funding that Congress has not provided,” Murray said. “We take our responsibility seriously to fund your department and others. We need to have answers, we need to have accountability, and we need to make sure you’re not overspending money that you were not allocated.”

Abrego Garcia deportation

Noem got into a heated exchange with one of the Democrats on the panel, Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, who traveled to El Salvador to speak with wrongly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Trump administration has admitted his deportation was an “administrative error.”

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia, who was sent initially to brutal CECOT but is now housed in another prison.

Van Hollen asked Noem what DHS has done to bring back Abrego Garcia, who had a 2019 court order barring his return to his home country of El Salvador for fear he would be harmed by gang violence.

Noem did not answer what steps the Trump administration was taking and said that because Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador, he is in that nation’s custody and cannot be brought back.

Trump has contradicted his own administration, stating that if he wanted to bring back Agrego Garcia he would, but won’t because he believes Abrego Garcia has gang ties.

While Trump officials like Noem have alleged that Abrego Garcia has ties to the MS-13 gang, no evidence has been provided in court and federal Judge Paula Xinis, who is presiding over the case, called the accusations “hearsay.”

Noem then questioned why Van Hollen was advocating for Abrego Garcia in the first place.

“Your advocacy for a known terrorist is alarming to me,” she said.

Van Hollen said that he was advocating for due process, which the Trump administration has been accused of skirting in its deportations. A federal judge in Louisiana next week plans to hold a hearing to determine if the Trump administration violated due process in deporting a 2-year-old U.S. citizen and her mother to Honduras.

Murphy also pressed Noem on the issue and asked how she was coordinating with El Salvador for Abrego Garcia’s release.

“There is no scenario where Abrego Garcia will be returned to the United States,” she said.

Noem then said that even if Abrego Garcia were returned to the U.S., “we would immediately deport him again.”

GOP worried about students, TPS holders

Some Republicans on the panel, including the committee chair, raised concerns with Noem about how the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is affecting students with visas.

“There are so many others who do deserve scrutiny,” said Chairwoman Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who said she was worried about students from Canada who attend school in her home state. “But these are dually enrolled Canadian students, and they’ve been crossing the border for years without trouble.” 

She said Canadian students are being stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and given intense screenings.

“They have student visas, but they’re being subjected to extensive searches and questioning,” she said to Noem. “I don’t want us to discourage Canadian students from studying at the northern Maine institutions that we have for education.”

Noem said she would look into it.

Alaskan Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski raised the issue of paperwork not being processed for those with Temporary Protected Status in her state. TPS is granted to those who come from a country that is considered too dangerous or unstable to return to due to war, natural disasters or other instability.

Murkowski said several groups of immigrants in her state with temporary protected status and humanitarian protection are at risk of losing their work protections, such as Afghans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Ukrainians.  

“The majority of these folks are just truly valued members of their new community,” Murkowski said. “They’re helping us meet workforce needs and really contributing to the tax base here. They’ve expressed great concern about their status and work authorizations that may be revoked or allowed to expire.”

She said that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has not processed TPS or humanitarian protection renewals for up to five months.

Noem said that those with TPS are being looked at, and admitted that some Ukrainians got an erroneous email that notified them their status was revoked.

She said DHS has not made a decision on whether or not to renew TPS for Ukrainians, who were granted the status due to Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

“Some of these TPS programs have been in place for many, many years, but the evaluation on why TPS should be utilized and when it can be utilized by a country is the process that the administration is going through,” Noem said. 

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

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the deportation of more than half a million immigrants granted humanitarian protections under the Biden administration.

A federal judge in Massachusetts in April blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from ending the humanitarian parole program for 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. An appeals court rejected the request from the Trump administration to stay the lower court’s order.

In the filing to the high court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as humanitarian parole.

Sauer adds that Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration.

“The district court’s order stymies the government’s ability to terminate parole grants that the Secretary has determined undermine U.S. interests, and thus it inhibits the government’s pursuit of its foreign policy goals,” according to the brief.

Presidents for decades have used their parole authority to allow for migrants to obtain protected status.

President Joe Biden created the program in 2023 that temporarily grants work permits and allows nationals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to remain in the country if they are sponsored by someone in the United States.

Thursday’s emergency request is one of several immigration related challenges the Trump administration is asking the high court to intervene in after district courts and appeals courts have ruled against the administration.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on ending birthright citizenship, the use of the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, revoking Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and requirements to return a wrongly deported Maryland man from El Salvador.

FBI director Kash Patel testifies before a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Thursday, May 8, 2025. (Photo from U.S. Senate webcast)

WASHINGTON — The case of the missing Federal Bureau of Investigation budget request was on full display Thursday, when senators repeatedly asked the law enforcement agency’s director what resources he needed Congress to provide in the upcoming fiscal year.

FBI Director Kash Patel did not disclose a dollar amount, an unusual development at a hearing at which an agency head traditionally discusses a budget request in detail with lawmakers who hold the purse strings.

The Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science Subcommittee hearing came one day after Patel testified before a House panel that he needs more money from Congress than was asked for in the Trump administration’s budget request.

Patel’s written statement to the House subcommittee said the FBI’s total request was $10.1 billion, but during that hearing he told appropriators the agency needed at least $11.2 billion.

Patel rejecting the Trump administration’s official budget request in support of his own proposal to Congress was significant in that Cabinet secretaries almost always stick to the official request, at least during public hearings.

“The skinny budget is a proposal, and I’m working through the appropriations process to explain why we need more than what has been proposed,” Patel said during the House hearing Wednesday.

Never mind

Less than 24 hours later, he reversed course during the Senate hearing, saying his comments were misconstrued.

“President Trump has set new priorities and a focus on federal law enforcement. I’m here today in full support of the president’s budget, which reprioritizes and enhances our mission of law enforcement and national security,” Patel said in his opening statement. “We’re fighting for a fully funded FBI because we want a fully effective FBI.”

What that dollar amount might be was unclear, though.

During an exchange with Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, ranking member on the full Appropriations Committee, about what exactly the FBI needs in terms of funding, Patel said: “I’m not asking you for anything at this time.”

Murray responded by asking if he believed the FBI could “operate without a budget.” Patel responded that he “never said that.”

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate panel repeatedly brought up that the Trump administration’s “skinny” budget proposal, released last week, doesn’t actually include a total funding level for the FBI. It only has one paragraph calling for lawmakers to cut funding by $545 million.

Patel testified during the two-hour Senate hearing that he had identified most of the accounts that could lose funding, though he wasn’t prepared to share that information with the committee or give a timeline when he would.

Patel also declined to tell lawmakers when the FBI would send Congress its spending plan for the current fiscal year, which is required by law and past due.

“I don’t have a timeline on that,” Patel said.

Kansas senator pleads with Patel for details

Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, the subcommittee’s chairman, said he was holding the hearing to get the ball rolling on the upcoming appropriations process and encouraged Patel to get the committee more details.

“We wanted to get every piece of information we could as early as we could, even though the budgetary process and now the appropriations process is disjointed and things are lacking,” Moran said.

Moran said that he was “concerned by the scale of the cut, especially as I know full well it comes on the heels of two years where the FBI’s budget was essentially held flat, forcing it to absorb hundreds of millions of dollars in unavoidable inflationary increases.”

Patel declined to say if he would testify before the committee again after the Trump administration releases its full budget request, which should include considerably more detail and is expected to come out sometime later this year, though the White House hasn’t said when.

The House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees that fund the FBI will write the bill over the summer and will likely negotiate final bipartisan, bicameral bills this fall.

That bill is one of a dozen that provide funding for many of the departments and agencies that make up the federal government, including Agriculture, Energy, Defense, Health and Human Services. Homeland Security, Interior, State, and many more. 

Madison Police Acting Chief John Patterson speaks at a press conference Thursday about the arrest of Jeffrey Rupnow on charges that he illegally gave his daughter two handguns, including one that she used in the school shooting Dec. 16 at a Madison private school. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

The father of the teenager who shot and killed two people at a Madison private school and took her own life five months ago was arrested Thursday and charged with three felony counts in connection with the December shootings.

Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, was charged with two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under the age of 18 and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. All are Class H felonies under Wisconsin law, subject to a fine of up to $10,000 or a prison sentence of up to six years, or both.

Rupnow was booked into the Dane County jail just before 5:30 a.m. Thursday, according to the jail’s online records.

He is the father of Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old student at Abundant Life Christian School on Madison’s east side who entered the school in the middle of the morning on Dec. 16, 2024, shot and killed a teacher and a student, wounded six other people and then took her own life, all within a matter of minutes.

According to the criminal complaint, which was unsealed Thursday after Rupnow’s early morning arrest, Rupnow purchased two guns for his daughter: a 22-caliber handgun and later a Glock 9 mm pistol — the weapon that was used in the shooting. He said Natalie helped pay for the Glock and he purchased it for her from a gun store, the complaint states.

“All of these weapons, including [a third] one that was about to be gifted to the same teen, were purchased legally,” Madison Police Department Acting Chief John Patterson said at a Thursday afternoon press conference.

“There was a gun safe in the home. Based on our investigation, it did not stop the teenager from having regular access” to the contents,  he said.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said the case “is a call and an action to hold parents accountable … if their children can access their firearms.”

Rhodes-Conway said she wanted to see the Legislature take up “a number of really common sense proposals that have been around for years” to reduce gun violence. Those include measures such as universal background checks before people can purchase a gun as well as “red flag” laws that empower the courts to remove guns from owners who may represent a credible threat to others.

“The other piece of this is really making sure that responsible gun owners are doing everything they can to make sure that those guns do not fall into the hands of people who should not have them,” she said.

Patterson said Rupnow has been cooperative with police throughout the investigation.

In interviews with police, Natalie’s parents as well as two friends described her behavior as depressed and sometimes angry at her parents, who are divorced.

“Why would a 15-year-old open fire in her school and murder a teacher, classmates, and injure six others? We may never fully understand that horror,” Patterson said. “We do know the teenager had a fascination with weapons and school shootings.”

The complaint states that in June 2022 Madison police officers told Jeffrey Rupnow “of high-risk behavior that [Natalie] was engaging in via the internet.” The complaint does not elaborate further on that report. “I can’t speak further to the follow-up that was done” at that time, Patterson said.

Patterson said the investigation remains open in the case. He declined to comment about reports that people in other states were in touch with Natalie Rupnow online.

According to the complaint, Jeffrey Rupnow told police he had 11 guns, including two that were considered Natalie’s. He told police his daughter became interested in guns after he took her to a friend’s farm to shoot guns about two years ago and that they would occasionally go to a shooting range.

Because of her interest, Rupnow told police he bought her a 22-caliber handgun and later the Glock, according to the complaint.

The complaint states that Rupnow described occasional comments by his daughter about wanting to kill herself, but that he generally viewed those remarks as attention-seeking behavior.

Rupnow told police he had a gun safe where he kept all of the guns, including those he had purchased for his daughter. The safe was locked with a security code. He told police he had not told his daughter the code itself, but that he had told her that it was his Social Security number backwards, in case she needed to get into it.

The complaint states that police found maps of the school and a cardboard mockup that appeared to be of the school building among Natalie Rupnow’s things at home.

Police also found notebooks and what Patterson called a “manifesto” — a six-page document titled “War Against Humanity.” That and other documents suggested a fascination with other mass shootings, including one in 2007 by an 18-year-old in Finland, which she noted in one of her writings took place two years after she was born.

In addition, police found and reviewed 30 sets of camcorder videos, some of them with Natalie handling weapons and some depicting what appeared to be animal mutilation, according to the complaint.

According to the complaint, Natalie took both of her handguns to the school on Dec. 16, the day of the shooting, but apparently used only the Glock.

The complaint states she arrived at the school just before 10:40 a.m. and entered a classroom just before 10:50 a.m.

A student in the classroom, a study hall, told police that once in the classroom,  Natalie held the gun with both hands and aimed it at the teacher who was sitting at her desk in the front of the room. The student said he heard gunshots and ran to the back of the room, where he hid behind a beanbag chair.

After the shooting stopped, the student, who was wounded in the leg, saw Natalie Rupnow lying on the floor on her back, with the gun in her hand. The student told police he removed the gun from her hand and put it in a drawer “because he wanted to make sure that no one else got a hold of it,” the complaint states. The police later retrieved the gun from the drawer.

The teacher, Erin Michelle West, and one student, Rubi Bergara, were both killed, according to the Dane County Medical Examiner’s office. Six other students were wounded. One remains hospitalized, Patterson said.

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