Schoemann spoke at the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting on Tuesday. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann stepped up to the front of a room in the back of Kavanaugh’s Esquire Club on the east side of Madison with a grin and quickly started a chant about Gov. Tony Evers.

“Tony’s got to go. Who’s with me?” Schoemann said about the current second-term Democratic governor. He encouraged others in the room to join him. “Tony’s gotta go… Tony’s gotta go. I’d like him to hear it if you don’t mind.”

The crowd of about 30 clapped enthusiastically and slowly started to pick up the chant.

Schoemann, who wore a red UW-Madison quarter zip up, jeans and a camo hat with his campaign logo across the front, was at the restaurant for the Dane County Republican’s monthly “Pints and Politics” meeting. It’s the one of the latest stops for Schoemann, who is the first candidate of either major party to launch his campaign in the 2026 governor’s race. 

Evers’ decision on whether he will seek a third term is still up in the air. He recently told WisEye that he is “not spending very much time at all thinking about whether I’m going to run or not.” 

Getting a head start

With about 14 months before a Republican primary might be held, Schoemann is working to get a head start on other potential candidates. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is mulling a run for the office, was critical of Evers as he addressed party members at the state GOP’s annual convention. Bill Berrien, a Whitefish Bay businessman and Navy SEAL veteran, recently formed a political action committee.

Schoemann said that it’s “entirely possible” for Wisconsin to be more competitive for Republicans. He launches his campaign as the Republican Party of Wisconsin is reevaluating how to win after their preferred candidate lost in the state Supreme Court race and as Democrats have won 12 of the last 15 statewide elections.

Schoemann sought to start his “Tony” chant a couple times as he spoke to the group — at one point telling attendees that he is the son of a Lutheran Minister and “can’t handle a congregation unless they join with me.” The crowd joined the chant more quickly this time, but Schoemann cut it off quickly as he pulled his camo hat off and placed it over his heart and encouraged attendees to stand up to sing “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” with him.

Schoemann has worked in Washington County as the elected county executive for the last five years and as the county administrator for six years prior. He owns a farm in the town of Trenton, located between West Bend and Grafton, with his wife and is the father of two.

Schoemann told attendees that he joined the Army National Guard, attended UW-Whitewater and then served in Iraq in 2003. Throughout the event, Schoemann returned to his faith and military service, telling the crowd that “love your neighbor” has been central to his work and will be central to his campaign. 

“It’s changed the trajectory of my life permanently,” Schoemann said, describing a memory of his time in Iraq when he gave bottles of water to a child who was drinking from a puddle.

“As he approaches the puddle, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just going to jump around in the puddle and play.’ He kneels down, and starts cupping his hands and starts drinking out of that puddle,” Schoemann said. 

“When I came back home, that moment kept coming back to me over and over and over, and I dedicated the rest of my life to the service and sacrifice of the guys and gals who didn’t come home, either in whole or in part, and of my Lord, Jesus, by loving my neighbor,” he continued, “ and that, ladies and gentlemen, is how we are going to win this election. We are going to turn Wisconsin red by loving our neighborhood.”

Rush Limbaugh and Ronald Reagan

Schoemann said he grew up a “Rush Limbaugh” and “Ronald Reagan baby” — with beliefs in smaller government, lower taxes and strong defense — and that those ideas have shaped his service in local government.

Schoemann repeatedly criticized Evers and spoke about his record.

“Under the education governor, are your schools better than they were six years ago?” Schoemann asked, with answers of ‘no’ coming from some in the room. “He’s filling potholes right now — getting his picture taken in every community can get to… Are your roads really all that much better than they were six years ago? No, no. They’re not, and if you look across the state of Wisconsin on every issue issue after issue, things aren’t better.”

Evers has been traveling across the state last week helping fill potholes as a part of an annual effort to call attention to the issue of improving the roads and his recent budget proposal of to dedicate funds for that purpose —  though Republicans have removed that from the budget. At one stop on his trip, Evers told reporters that he didn’t know much about Schoemann but thinks he’s “gonna have to be another Donald Trump.” 

“That’s the only way Republicans can kind of move forward in this day and age,” Evers said, according to WSAW-TV 7.

Schoemann said that he decided to run because he is “sick and tired of our kids, leaving the state for other opportunities in different states and not coming back” and “sick and tired of our retirees leaving this state that has become a complete tax hell.”

Schoemann also compared himself to former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

“Back when I was a kid in 1986, Tommy Thompson took out another Tony — [former Gov.] Tony Earl. A young, energetic Republican did very, very well in Dane County, and eventually by 1994, I believe he won Dane County,” said Schoemann, who is 43. 

Goal: Lose by less in Dane County

Thompson is the last Wisconsin governor to win a third term in office, and Schoemann wants to ensure that stays true by taking a page out of Thompson’s playbook. Schoemann said he would have three rules for his campaign: go to the Northwoods, go to Milwaukee and go to Dane County. He said that since his campaign launched he had visited Florence County to talk with a group of people, who, he said, likely “hadn’t seen a statewide elected official in decades,” had been on the radio in Milwaukee and his Tuesday evening stop in Madison was his second already. 

Schoemann said Republicans need to lose by less in Dane County, pointing out that President Donald Trump won the state of Wisconsin with nearly 23% of the vote in the deep blue county. 

“We’ve got to be pushing back towards 26, 27, 28[%], and we’re only going to do it by having conversations with our neighbors and physically being present,” Schoemann said. “I can tell you you’re going to get sick of seeing me because I will be back again and again and again. I want to hear from you what this state needs to be. I want to hear from you what direction the state needs to go.”

Schoemann then took questions from the audience.

One attendee asked about what he would do about property taxes. Local communities across the state have been strapped for funds in recent years due to restrictions in the ways that they can raise revenue with many turning to raising property taxes through referendums to help afford services.

“How many of you live in the city of Madison? How are you liking that new referendum for the school district and the city — one-two punch?” Schoemann replied. He added that property tax rates in Washington Co. are low because of decisions he’s made. He said that at times when they have “considered alternatives where we needed additional resources, we go to the people and ask.” 

The county went  to referendum in 2024 to help prevent cuts to its public safety services. While the referendum failed, a deal on shared revenue and a local sales tax for Milwaukee that  lawmakers and Gov. Tony Evers made helped the county avoid the cuts. 

That deal led to a back and forth over social media between Schoemann and Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson after Schoemann took a jab at the city because of the tax. Milwaukee leaders were prominent advocates in helping secure the state funding, which has helped communities across the state, including Washington County.

Banning ‘Democracy in the Park,’ encouraging early voting

In response to a question about elections, Schoemann said that he believes in purging voter rolls, banning voting events including ‘Democracy in the Park” — a COVID-era effort held by the city of Madison where poll workers picked up absentee ballots from voters who dropped them off  — and having “significant election integrity” measures. He also talked about promoting early voting in more rural areas. 

“The clerks are part time, most of them work out of their houses. They don’t have an office at the town hall… In those places. If you want to have in-person absentee voting, you have to schedule an appointment at the home of the clerk. In Madison and in Milwaukee… the convenience level is through the roof right now,” Schoemann said. “It’s not quite seven days a week, 24 hours a day for those 13 days, but it isn’t far either, especially as compared to those towns.” 

Schoemann said his county sought to incentivize local municipal workers to add in-person absentee voting days and times by paying them 150% of the cost. He said the state needs to “completely transform how we think about elections in Wisconsin.” 

Schoemann segued to criticizing Evers for his relationship with lawmakers and the number of bills he has vetoed, saying changes in law need to come as the result of the governor working as a “coequal” branch with the Legislature. He said that the governor should work with bills before outright vetoing them.

“The fact that this governor doesn’t have the leadership capability to walk down the hallway and talk to legislative leaders is an embarrassment to our state,” Schoemann said, referring to communication difficulties between lawmakers and Evers, who are currently negotiating the next state budget.

Schoemann said that he wouldn’t want to “throw money” to help address education problems, though he thinks the system currently in place is outdated. He also said that he would seek to help change the veto power that governors have. 

This will be the first time Schoemann runs in a statewide election. He promised the room that no one would “outwork” him. 

“There might be more money. There might be worse press, there might be all kinds of things, but no one will outwork me,” Schoemann said.

In the weeks before deciding to run, Schoemann told the room that he asked his wife if she was sure she wanted him to run. 

“You know what she said to me?” Schoemann asked. “‘Well, can’t be worse than Iraq.’”

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State Sen. Kelda Roys, holding her toddler, speaks about legislation Democrats are proposing to provide ongoing funding for child care providers. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Democratic lawmakers are circulating a draft bill to extend the soon-to-end state child care support program and fund it with $480 million that was stripped from the 2025-27 state budget.

The proposed legislation follows action earlier this month by Republican lawmakers to remove child care support and more than 600 other items that Gov. Tony Evers included in his draft budget.

Both Evers’ proposal and the Democrats’ bill aim to continue support that child care providers have been receiving since 2020 as part of federal pandemic relief.

“This funding has been essential in continuing successful programs that support our early educators, child care providers, parents, and most importantly, our kids,” said state Rep. Alex Joers (D-Middleton) at a Capitol news conference Thursday announcing the legislation.

The $20 million that Wisconsin paid out each month to providers through mid-2023 “kept our early educators in the workforce, held tuition down for parents and provided a direct investment in our children during the most crucial years of their childhood development,” Joers said.

Payments were cut to $10 million a month in June 2023, and the last of those funds will be paid out by early July.

“But with this impending deadline, child care providers and early educators are faced with the impossible decision to either raise rates or have to close altogether,” Joers said. “Without assurance of this funding lifeline, many have already made that decision and have devastatingly shut their doors forever.”

Citing recent reports, Joers said that there are 48,000 children on waiting lists for child care in Wisconsin. In a survey of providers, 78% said they would have to raise fees for infant care — the most expensive age group in most child care programs.

“Altogether, if nothing changes, parents are looking at having to find an additional up to $2,600 in their yearly budget,” Joers said.

First-term Sen. Sarah Keyeski (D-Lodi), the lead state Senate author on the legislation, said that when she was running for office last year, voters repeatedly shared their concerns about the cost and scarcity of child care.

“We have historically undervalued and underpaid child care and early education professionals,” Keyeski said. “This is no longer tenable.”

She described the plight of one constituent who had to change providers three times after the first and then the second provider went out of business because of financial difficulties or other constraints. The mother told her that her current provider — the third — had rates that are “at the top” of what the family could afford.

Keyeski said the provider has told the woman that unless the state can continue with its support, the center’s rates will go up $40 a week, or $160 a month. For the couple, “this increase is unsustainable,” she said. “Her family is left wondering, what to do next?”

Wisconsin’s rural communities have been especially hard hit, she added: In 70% of them, there are three or more children for every child care opening.

“In my district alone, over 34,000 children need care, but there are only about 26,000 available slots,” Keyeski said.

Child care should be viewed as essential infrastructure, said state Rep. Renuka Mayadev (D-Madison).

“And as a state, we support infrastructure. We maintain roads, we maintain bridges. Why is funding childcare such a fight?” Mayadev said.

Wages of less than $14 an hour are driving child care workers out of the field, she added. “There is no other industry where such high value work is being done at such dismal low wages.”

Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) — accompanied by her toddler son before she took him to his child care provider near the Capitol — said the legislation calls for $480 million in state funds over the next two years.

“But I think the real question is what it will cost the state if we don’t do it,” Roys said. She forecast “continued massive closures” of child care centers.

“Already over 60% of child care providers have classrooms sitting empty or slots that can’t be filled because they don’t have the teachers to fill them,” she added.

Roys said child care was a critical need in order for the state to address persistent shortages of people to fill jobs.

“In critical areas like public safety, in K-12 education, in health care — what is it going to mean if the parents of even more kids can’t get child care?” Roys said. “We can’t afford that. We have to make this investment.”

Gov. Tony Evers celebrates "historic" tax cuts in the last state budget. Schools are still facing austerity. Photo via Gov. Evers' Facebook page

As Republicans in Congress struggle to deliver President Donald Trump’s massive cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, education, health research and just about every other social good you can think of, in order to clear the way for trillions of dollars in tax cuts to the richest people in the U.S., here in Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and state lawmakers are working on the next state budget.

The one thing our Democratic governor and Republican legislative leaders seem to agree on is that we need a tax cut.

After throwing away more than 600 items in Evers’ budget proposal, GOP leggies now say they can’t move forward with their own budget plan until  Evers makes good on his promise to meet with them and negotiate the terms for the tax-cutting that both sides agree they want to do. Evers has expressed optimism that the budget will be done on time this summer, and said the tax cuts need to be part of the budget, not a separate, stand-alone bill. Evers wants a more progressive tax system, with cuts targeted to lower-income people. In the last budget, he opposed expanding the second-lowest tax bracket, which would have offered the same benefits to higher earners as the lower middle class.

But what if we don’t need a tax cut at all?

It has long been an article of faith in the Republican Party that tax cuts are a miracle cure for everything. Trickle-down economics is  a proven failure:  The wealthy and corporations tend to bank their tax cuts rather than injecting the extra money into the economy, as tax-cutters say they will. The benefits of the 2017 tax cuts that Congress is struggling to extend went exclusively to corporations and the very wealthy and failed to trickle down on the rest of us. 

 In the second Trump administration, we are in new territory when it comes to tax cutting. The administration and its enablers are hell-bent on destroying everything from the Department of Education to critical health research to food stamps and Medicaid in order to finance massive tax breaks for the very rich. 

If ever there were a good time to reexamine the tax-cutting reflex, it’s now.

Evers has said he is not willing to consider the Republicans’ stand-alone tax-cut legislation, and that, instead, tax cuts should be part of the state budget. That makes sense, since new projections show lower-than-expected tax revenue even without a cut, and state budget-writers have a lot to consider as we brace for the dire effects of federal budget cuts. The least our leaders can do is not blindly give away cash without even assessing future liabilities.

But beyond that, we need to reconsider the knee-jerk idea that we are burdened with excessive taxes and regulations, that our state would be better off if we cut investments in our schools and universities, our roads and bridges, our clean environment, museums, libraries and other shared spaces and stopped keeping a floor under poor kids by providing basic food and health care assistance. 

Wisconsin Republicans like to tout the list of states produced annually by the Tax Foundation promoting “business friendly” environments that reduce corporate taxes, including Wyoming, South Dakota, Alaska and Florida. They also like to bring up ALEC’s “Rich States, Poor States” report that gave top billing last year to Utah, Idaho and Arizona for low taxes and deregulation. 

What they don’t track when they lift up those states are pollution, low wages and bankrupt public school systems. 

I’m old enough to remember when it was headline news that whole families in the U.S. were living in their cars, when homelessness was a new term, coined during the administration of Ronald Reagan, the father of bogus trickle-down economics and massive cuts to services for the poor. 

Somehow, we got used to the idea that urban parts of the richest nation on Earth resemble the poorest developing countries, with human misery and massive wealth existing side by side in our live-and-let-die economy.

Wisconsin, thanks to its progressive history, managed to remain a less unequal state, with top public schools and a great university system, as well as a clean, beautiful environment and well-maintained infrastructure. But here, too, we have been getting used to our slide to the bottom of the list of states, thanks in large part to the damage done by former Republican Gov. Scott Walker. 

We now rank 44th in the nation for investment in our once-great universities, and the austerity that’s been imposed on higher education is taking a toll across the state. Our consistently highly rated public schools have suffered from a decade and a half of budget cuts that don’t allow districts to keep pace with inflation, and recent state budgets have not made up the gap. 

Now threats to Medicaid, Head Start, AmeriCorps, our excellent library system, UW-Madison research and environmental protections do not bode well for Wisconsin’s future.

In the face of brutal federal cuts, we need to recommit to our shared interest in investing in a decent society, and figure out how to preserve what’s great about our state.

Tax cuts do not make the top of the list of priorities.

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Susan Poupart, who disappeared and whose remains were found in 1990, is now the subject of a reward for information relating to her death. (Wisconsin Examiner photo illustration)

The Lac du Flambeau (LDF) Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians is offering a reward of $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the 1990 murder of Susan “Susie” Poupart, a LDF tribal member.

The tribe has also offered a $25,000 reward for information concerning a tribal member, Melissa Beson, 37, missing since March 17. 

“Poupart was last seen on May 20, 1990, in Lac du Flambeau in Vilas County,” the band stated in a press release issued May 16. “She had left a house party at approximately 4 a.m. on that date and was walking home alone when two men in a car pulled up next to her. Witnesses saw her enter the car but never arrived at her home, and her family reported her missing two days later.”

There was no LDF Tribal Police Department at the time of Poupart’s disappearance, so the Vilas County Sheriff’s Department investigated the case and is still the lead investigative organization.

“Deputies and fire department personnel conducted ground searches for four or five days, hoping to find her alive and return her to her two young children,” said the press release. “Eventually, specially trained tracking dogs were brought in from Minnesota to assist in search efforts, to no avail.”

The release said deer hunters found her remains, along with her purse and tribal ID card six months later, on Nov. 22, 1990. They were found in the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, about 12 miles from her home. 

“Poupart’s death was determined to be a homicide, and in the decades since her murder, continuous improvements in DNA technology have kept her family’s hopes alive that her murderers will be brought to justice,” the press release states. “Investigators share that hope, as even now they await the results of DNA testing on evidence that was recently sent to sophisticated, high-tech crime laboratories for DNA analysis.”

The release also states that “police believe there are persons who have information that could result in the arrest and conviction of the persons responsible for Susan Poupart’s murder.”.

The tribe’s governing board said it was offering the $25,000 to “incentivize anyone with information relating to Poupart’s murder to come forward.”

The Wisconsin Examiner reached out to LDF Tribal Governing Board Chairman John Johnson to ask why the tribe was now offering a reward after over 35 years, but Johnson did not return phone calls.

Detective Cody Remick of the Vilas County Sheriff’s Department, who was assigned to the case two years ago, said he had heard from Poupart’s daughter that at one time there had been a $10,000 reward for information.

While the cold case is 35 years old, Remick said, his office only recently began working with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Office of Justice Services (OJS) Missing and Murdered Unit.

The only other Wisconsin case the BIA OJS is presently working on is the 1989 murder of Rhys Pocan, a Menomonie tribal member living in Milwaukee. Pocan went missing in August 1989, and her headless body was discovered in September 1989 in Sheboygan County. Later, her head and hands were found in Waukesha County.

Though the press release says DNA is being analyzed, Remick said his office has items it is “preparing for DNA examination” that may lead to a break in the Poupart case.

“It goes without saying that Poupart’s children, now grown, deserve answers in the death of their mother, who was so cruelly taken from them,” said the May 16 press release. “The Lac du Flambeau Tribal Community, too, deserves to know what happened to one of their own. Most important, Poupart deserves justice. She was only 29 years old when she was murdered. She had her whole life in front of her, and her two beloved children to raise. Her killers must answer for their crime, so that Susie can finally rest in peace, and her family and community can begin to heal.”

Anyone with any information regarding the disappearance and murder of Susan Poupart is asked to call the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office at (715) 479-4441 or the Wisconsin Department of Justice at (608) 266-1221 or the Lac du Flambeau Tribal Police Department at (715) 588-7717.

The tribe said the reward will be apportioned as deemed just by the governing board in the event, for example, multiple credible tips are received. Employees of law enforcement and correctional agencies are not eligible to collect the reward.

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Highway 170 in North Hollywood, California. (Photo by Trevor Srednick/Getty Images)

The U.S. Senate voted early Thursday to prevent California from enforcing regulations on tailpipe emission from new cars and trucks, upending state regulations for the nearly 40% of Americans whose states follow California standards.

The House has already passed an identical measure, meaning the Senate vote sends the resolution to President Donald Trump’s desk.

The 51-46 vote, with Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin joining all Republicans present to vote in favor, cleared a Congressional Review Act resolution repealing Environmental Protection Agency waivers that allow California to set regulations for emissions from cars and light-duty trucks.

The state policy includes a ramp-up to having no new gas-powered cars sold in the state by 2035.

Democrats blasted the near-party-line vote for contradicting the Senate parliamentarian, who’d ruled the waiver that the EPA had granted to California to set its own tailpipe standards was not a regulation that could be rolled back under the Congressional Review Act, or CRA.

The CRA allows for a simple majority in the Senate to vote to repeal recent executive branch rules, bypassing the chamber’s usual 60-vote threshold for legislation.

‘Chaos and uncertainty’ around the U.S.

The EPA under President Joe Biden issued waivers under a Clean Air Act provision that allows California, which had more stringent standards than what Congress enacted in the 1970 law, to set its own standards for air pollution.

No other state is allowed to set independent standards, but any state may adopt California’s.

For the light-duty vehicle emissions rule, 17 other states — Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington — and the District of Columbia adopted some portion of the standard.

The action by the Senate, particularly because of the mechanism for revoking the waiver, made the future of the standards in all those states uncertain, Justin Balik, vice president for states at the national environmental advocacy group Evergreen Action, said in a Thursday interview.

“What, fundamentally, they’re doing is sowing a huge amount of chaos and uncertainty in states around the country, not just in California,” he said of the senators.

Slotkin, who voted against procedural measures before her vote in favor of the resolution itself, said her vote was in defense of her state’s automotive industry. Slotkin campaigned on a promise not to allow an electric vehicle mandate.

“Today, I voted to prevent California and the states that follow its standard from effectively banning gas-powered cars by 2035,” she wrote in a statement. “I have a special responsibility to stand up for the more than one million Michiganders whose livelihoods depend on the U.S. auto industry.”

Debate over choice

Critics said the state regulation was effectively an electric vehicle mandate that robbed consumers of the option to purchase the vehicle of their choice.

Because of California’s market share — the state accounts for 11% of cars and trucks sold in the country, according to the California Air Resources Board — and adoption by other states, the Golden State standard had a virtually nationwide effect, they argued.

Republicans in the Senate focused on the 2035 deadline to end sales of new gas-powered vehicles, describing it as an electric vehicle mandate.

In a video posted to social media, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, John Barrasso of Wyoming, stood next to Shelley Moore Capito, the West Virginia Republican chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and touted the vote as a victory for consumer choice.

“Republicans have defeated Democrats’ delusional dream of forcing every American to drive an electric vehicle,” Barrasso said. “They wanted to force-feed the entire country things that don’t necessarily work, not practical.”

But proponents of the California standards said the Senate was removing choice from state policymakers, despite Republicans’ longtime advocacy for state and local control.

Manish Bapna, the president of the advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, blasted the move in a statement that said senators undermined state power.

“This vote is an unprecedented and reckless attack on states’ legal authority to address the pollution causing asthma, lung disease and heart conditions,” Bapna said. “After a multi-million dollar lobbying campaign from Big Oil, Republicans readily jettisoned their long-held view that states can best enact measures that reflect the values and interests of their residents.

“If other states don’t like California’s approach, they don’t need to follow it,” the statement continued. “But federal lawmakers shouldn’t be intervening to block states from providing cleaner air and a healthier environment.”

Procedural fight

Republicans’ use of the Congressional Review Act provoked a backlash from Democrats and environmental allies, who described it as “going nuclear” to tank the chamber’s filibuster rule.

The Senate parliamentarian and the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said the waiver could not be repealed with a CRA resolution, but Senate Republicans opted to use the procedure anyway.

“Senate Republicans exposed themselves as fair weather institutionalists. By overriding the parliamentarian — which the chair explicitly noted that the parliamentarian has been overridden — and in order to do the bidding of the fossil fuel industry, Republicans have eroded away at the Senate foundation and undermined this institution they claim to care about,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said after a procedural vote late Wednesday.

Republicans defended the move, saying they were responding to an unprecedented case in the chamber. The question of how Senate rules applied to the waiver should be decided by senators themselves, Majority Leader John Thune said.

“I believe that when the Senate is facing a novel situation like this one, with disagreement among its members, it is appropriate for the Senate to speak as a body to the question – something the Senate does when questions over application of the rules arise,” he said in a floor speech.

Thune, of South Dakota, noted that the Senate resolved a rules question with a floor vote just last year after a Democrat raised a point of order against a Republican’s attempt to fast-track a measure.

“Nobody at the time cried nuclear, nobody said the Democrat member was blowing up the Senate – in fact, most members probably don’t even remember the situation, because it was just the Senate doing what the Senate is supposed to do, and that’s voting on how to apply the rules when faced with a new situation.”

Uncertainty abounds

Critics of the move attacked the process, the policy and the precedent, saying the Senate undid a half-century of a California-federal government relationship regarding the Clean Air Act that had served all parties well.

John Boesel, the president and CEO of clean transportation industry group CALSTART, called the Senate action radical.

“This vote upends decades of policy that has successfully resulted in cleaner air and the growth of a robust clean transportation industry,” he said in a statement. “It is a brazen, yet futile, attempt to bring the clean transportation industry to a sudden halt. CALSTART will continue to partner with the states working to fill this gaping void left by today’s federal action.”

And the unusual use of the Congressional Review Act will likely lead to lawsuits from California and at least some of the states that follow it to “protect their authority,” Balik, of Evergreen Action, said.

“But that’s going to take some time to play out,” he said. “In the meantime, the whole marketplace has been plunged into unnecessary chaos. Part of what the industry always says is, ‘We need certainty.’ And if anything, right now, we have the exact opposite thanks to what Congress is doing.”

Changes a U.S. House bill makes to the federal program known as FoodShare in Wisconsin would increase costs for the state, the state Department of Health Services (DHS) reports. (Getty Images Creative)

Food and nutrition cuts in the reconciliation bill that passed the U.S. House early Thursday would cost Wisconsin taxpayers at least $314 million if they are signed into law, a state health official said Thursday.

A requirement for the state to pick up some of the costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, a provision penalizing the state for errors in distributing benefits, expanded work requirements for recipients and the elimination of a nutrition education program will all contribute to that cost, said Bill Hanna, Medicaid director at the Department of Health Services (DHS) in a briefing for reporters Thursday afternoon.

The SNAP program is known as FoodShare in Wisconsin and administered by DHS.

SNAP currently includes a work requirement for adults ages 18 to 54 without children to receive benefits. The legislation would raise the upper age to 65 and add the requirement to adults with children who are 7 or older.

Wisconsin has an employment and training program to help FoodShare recipients meet the existing work requirement. With the increase in people who would have to meet the requirement, “We estimate that would cost another $44 million a year,” Hanna said.

Currently the federal government funds 100% of the food benefits under SNAP. The new bill requires states to pick up a portion of the cost, which is tied to a state’s error rate, Hanna said. Errors include the payment of more benefits than a person qualifies for or the payment of fewer benefits than they qualify for.

“When errors are identified, we correct them, meaning if there was an overpayment to a member, that is recouped on future benefits, or if there’s an underpayment, we fix that and back pay those payments,” Hanna said.

Wisconsin’s error rate is low enough to require the state to submit only a 5% match for SNAP funds under the House Republican proposal, he said. But another change — which would allow zero tolerance even for errors that in the past have not counted against state programs — would boost the state’s required match to 15%.

DHS estimates based on the proposed new requirements the state would have to pay about $207 million a year in benefit costs, he said. If the state is able to reduce its error rate to qualify for the 5% match, it would still need to pay $69 million a year.

A higher state share of administrative costs in the bill would add $51 million to the state’s costs for SNAP, Hanna said.

The state would also lose the $12 million it receives for SNAP-Ed, a program that provides education to SNAP participants on healthier food choices.

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The Milwaukee County Jail. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A man who died at the Milwaukee County Jail earlier this week has been identified as Gabriel Muniz-Jimenez, 33. Records from the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office, obtained by Wisconsin Examiner, show that Muniz-Jimenez was pronounced dead Wednesday at 10:56 p.m. He is the second person to die in the jail so far this year. 

On Thursday, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) reported that an unidentified 33-year-old man had died after his cellmate reported to correctional officers that the man “appeared to be unconscious and in medical distress,” Urban Milwaukee reported.

The sheriff’s office said that the deceased man had been booked into the jail in November on felony methamphetamine possession. Online court records show that Muniz-Jimenez was charged with methamphetamine possession in April 2024 and the court case was filed in July. 

Booking information online shows that Muniz-Jimenez was booked into the jail in late November on methamphetamine charges. Court records showed that Muniz-Jimenez required a Spanish interpreter in court. 

The sheriff’s office announcement this week said officers attempted lifesaving measures including the use of Narcan, which can reverse an opioid overdose. A demographic report from the Medical Examiner’s Office on Muniz-Jimenez labels the cause as undetermined. MCSO has not responded to a request for comment, and the Waukesha County Sheriffs Department, which is investigating the death, declined to identify who died in the jail. The MCSO is a member of the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), which handles officer-involved deaths such as shootings and in-custody deaths. 

The Milwaukee County Jail has garnered controversy for deaths in recent years. The 2022 suicide of 21-year-old Brieon Green was the first of six in a 14-month period, and families of people who died have allied with activists to call attention to the deaths. In March, 48-year-old Joseph Boivin died at Froedtert Hospital after being found by a nurse in the middle of a health emergency at the jail. A jail audit detected numerous issues, including use of force and what the auditors called “dangerous suicide watch practices.”  

A recent review by the Texas-based auditor Creative Corrections found that the jail has come into full compliance with 71.2% of the proposed corrective actions, with another 28.8% being in partial compliance. The jail still needs to fund two new suicide watch cells. Jail officials are renovating housing areas and have said they are updating suicide watch policies.

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The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building pictured on Nov. 25, 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Education must temporarily reinstate the hundreds of employees laid off earlier this year and cannot follow through on an executive order from President Donald Trump seeking to dismantle the agency, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled Thursday. 

The ruling stems from a pair of March lawsuits — one from a slew of Democratic attorneys general, another from a coalition of advocacy and labor groups — and blocks three Trump initiatives, marking a major blow to the president’s education agenda as his administration seeks to dramatically reshape the federal role in education.

The lawsuits challenge some of the administration’s most consequential education initiatives so far: a reduction in force effort at the agency that gutted more than 1,300 employees, Trump’s executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department and Trump’s proposal to rehouse the student loan portfolio in the Small Business Administration and special education services in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“A department without enough employees to perform statutorily mandated functions is not a department at all,” U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun wrote in his 88-page memorandum and order granting a preliminary injunction.

“This court cannot be asked to cover its eyes while the Department’s employees are continuously fired and units are transferred out until the Department becomes a shell of itself,” wrote Joun, whom former President Joe Biden appointed.

Joun’s preliminary injunction took effect immediately and will remain until the merits of the consolidated case are decided.

A department spokesperson said the administration would immediately appeal the ruling. The agency has since filed an appeal.

Win for Democratic states

One of the cases comes from a coalition of Democratic attorneys general in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and Wisconsin.

The other lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Teachers, its Massachusetts chapter, AFSCME Council 93, the American Association of University Professors, the Service Employees International Union and two school districts in Massachusetts.

The department’s reduction in force plan prompted concerns from education advocates and leaders over how the agency would be able to carry out its core responsibilities after roughly halving its workforce, including major cuts to key units including the Office of Federal Student Aid, Office for Civil Rights and the Institute of Education Sciences.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers unions in the country, celebrated the ruling in a Thursday statement.

“Today, the court rightly rejected one of the administration’s very first illegal, and consequential, acts: abolishing the federal role in education,” Weingarten said.

“This decision is a first step to reverse this war on knowledge and the undermining of broad-based opportunity. For America to build a brighter future, we must all take more responsibility, not less, for the success of our children.”

Joun’s order also bars the agency from carrying out the president’s directive to transfer the student loan portfolio and special education services out of the agency.

Trump announced the proposal, which had no accompanying executive order, at the opening of an Oval Office appearance with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The department had told States Newsroom earlier this week that it had nothing new to share at this time regarding the proposed transfer. 

Judge ‘dramatically overstepped’

Madi Biedermann, a spokesperson for the department, said the agency “will immediately challenge this on an emergency basis.”

“Once again, a far-left Judge has dramatically overstepped his authority, based on a complaint from biased plaintiffs, and issued an injunction against the obviously lawful efforts to make the Department of Education more efficient and functional for the American people,” she said in a statement shared with States Newsroom.

“President Trump and the Senate-confirmed Secretary of Education clearly have the authority to make decisions about agency reorganization efforts, not an unelected Judge with a political axe to grind. This ruling is not in the best interest of American students or families.”

Thursday’s ruling came just a day after McMahon took a grilling from U.S. House Democrats over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her department during a hearing in a panel of the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations.

McMahon appeared before the lawmakers to outline Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, which calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House early Thursday approved the “big, beautiful bill” that Republican leaders spent months negotiating with centrists and far-right members of the party — two distinct factions that hold vastly different policy goals — over intense opposition from Democrats.

The 215-214 vote ships the package to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers are expected to rewrite much of it, before sending it back across the Capitol for final approval, a process likely to stretch through the summer.

President Donald Trump, who said he backed the House version, would then need to sign the legislation, which under the complicated process being used by Republicans can pass with just a majority vote in the GOP-controlled Senate.

Trump called on the Senate to pass the legislation as quickly as possible, writing in a social media post that “(t)here is no time to waste” and that the bill is “arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!”

Speaker Mike Johnson said minutes before the vote that he expects lawmakers to give the measure final approval before the Fourth of July.

“Now, look, we’re accomplishing a big thing here today, but we know this isn’t the end of the road just yet,” Johnson, R-La., said. “We’ve been working closely with Leader (John) Thune and our Senate colleagues, the Senate Republicans, to get this done and delivered to the president’s desk by our Independence Day. That’s July 4. Today proves that we can do that, and we will do that.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., argued against the legislation, saying it “undermines reproductive freedom, undermines the progress that we have made in combating the climate crisis, undermines gun safety, undermines the rule of law and the independence of the federal judiciary. It even undermines the ability of hard-working and law-abiding immigrant families to provide remittances to their loved ones, who may just happen to live abroad.”

Jeffries raised concerns with how the proposals in the bill would impact the economy and the federal government’s financial stability.

“Costs aren’t going down. They’re going up. Inflation is out of control. Insurance rates remain stubbornly high,” Jeffries said. “Our Moody’s rating, our credit rating, has been downgraded, and you’ve got people losing confidence in this economy. Republicans are crashing this economy in real time and driving us toward a recession.”

Ohio’s Warren Davidson and Kentucky’s Thomas Massie were the only Republicans to vote against passing the bill, which members debated throughout the night prior to the vote just after daylight in the nation’s capital. All Democrats, who dubbed it “one big ugly bill,” were opposed. Maryland GOP Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, voted “present.”

Massie spoke against the bill overnight, calling it “a debt bomb ticking.”

“I’d love to stand here and tell the American people: We can cut your taxes and we can increase spending, and everything’s going to be just fine. But I can’t do that because I’m here to deliver a dose of reality,” Massie said. “This bill dramatically increases deficits in the near term, but promises our government will be fiscally responsible five years from now. Where have we heard that before? How do you bind a future Congress to these promises?”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing later in the day that Trump wants Davidson and Massie to face primary challenges next year during the midterm elections.

“I believe he does,” Leavitt said. “And I don’t think he likes to see grandstanders in Congress.” 

In the works for weeks

The 1,116-page package combines 11 bills that GOP lawmakers debated and reported out of committee during the last several weeks.

The legislation would:

• Extend the 2017 tax law, including tax cuts for businesses and individuals;
• Bolster spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars;
• Rework energy permitting;
• Restructure higher education aid such as student loans and Pell Grants;
• Shift some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program food aid program for low-income Americans to state governments; and
• Overhaul Medicaid, the nation’s program for health care for low-income people and some people with disabilities.

The bill would make deep cuts to Medicaid spending, reducing the program by $625 billion over 10 years under the latest estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

The budget measure would also raise the debt limit by $4 trillion.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday showed the package tilted toward the wealthy, projecting it would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Republicans hold especially thin majorities in the House and Senate, meaning that nearly every GOP lawmaker — ranging from centrists who barely won their general elections to far-right members who are more at risk of losing a primary challenge — needed to support the bill.

Balancing the demands of hundreds of lawmakers led to nearly constant talks during the last few days as Johnson struggled to secure the votes to pass the bill before his Memorial Day deadline.

Any deal Johnson made with far-right members of the party risked alienating centrist GOP lawmakers and vice versa.

An agreement finally came together Wednesday evening when GOP leaders released a 42-page amendment that made changes to various sections of the package, including the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, and Medicaid work requirements and nixed the potential sale of some public lands.

Tax cuts

House debate on the package fell largely along party lines, with Democrats contending it would benefit the wealthy at the expense of lower-income Americans, including millions who would lose access to Medicaid.

Republicans argued the legislation is necessary to avoid a tax hike at the end of the year, when the 2017 GOP law expires, and to curb government spending in the years ahead.

Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said the tax section of the package would halt a tax increase for many that would have taken place after the vast majority of the provisions in that law expire at the end of this year.

“Working families, farmers and small businesses win with this bill,” Smith said. “We expand and make permanent the small business deduction and increase the child tax credit, the standard deduction and the death tax exemption.”

The legislation would increase the tax rate for colleges and universities with substantial endowments, which would match the corporate tax rate, he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Richard Neal, ranking member on that tax-writing committee, said the legislation would lead the United States to “borrow $4 trillion and with interest payments over the next 10 years, $5 trillion, to justify a tax cut for the billionaire class.”

Neal said that the wealthy would see a greater benefit from the GOP tax provisions than working-class Americans.

“If you made a million dollars last year, you’re going to get $81,000 of tax relief. If you made less than $50,000 Guess what? Not quite so lucky,” Neal said. “But you know what? $1 a day goes a long way, because that’s where the numbers land.”

Neal said Democrats would have worked with Republicans to extend the 2017 tax cuts if the GOP had capped them for those making less than $400,000 a year, with people making more than that going back to the higher rate. 

Child tax credit

The child tax credit will increase to $2,500, up from the $2,000 enacted under the 2017 tax law. The refundability portion of the credit, or the amount parents could receive in a refund check after paying their tax liability, will remain capped but will increase with inflation by $100 annually. As of now, the amount a parent could receive back per child stands at $1,700.

While Republicans hailed the increase as a win for families, critics say it continues to leave out the poorest families as the refund amount is dependent on how much a parent earns. The credit phases in at 15 cents per income dollar, one child at a time.

“The Republican bill will leave out 17 million American children who are in families that don’t earn enough to receive the full child tax credit,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington said Wednesday in the House Committee on Rules. Her amendment to make the tax credit fully refundable was rejected.

On the House floor Thursday morning, DelBene criticized the bill as a “big, broken promise.”

SALT

Republicans from high-tax blue states declared victory on the increase in the SALT cap, or the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted from federal taxable income. After long, drawn-out disagreement, Republicans representing districts in California, New Jersey and New York secured a bump to $40,000, up from the $10,000 cap enacted under Trump’s 2017 tax law.

However, the cap comes with an income limit of $500,000, after which it phases down. Both the $40,000 cap and the $500,000 income threshold will increase annually at 1% until hitting a ceiling of $44,000 and $552,000.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York said during debate that he “would never support a tax bill that did not adequately lift the cap on SALT.”

“This bill does that. It increases the cap on SALT by 300%,” Lawler said. “And I would remind my Democratic colleagues, when they had full control in Washington, they lifted the cap on SALT by exactly $0, zilch, zip, nada.”

Medicaid work requirements 

Energy and Commerce Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said his panel’s bill would ensure Medicaid coverage continued for low-income families, individuals who are disabled and seniors through new work requirements and other changes.

“This bill protects coverage for those individuals by ensuring ineligible recipients do not cut the line in front of our most vulnerable Americans,” Guthrie said. “The decision by left-leaning state governments to spend taxpayer dollars on people who are ineligible for the program is indefensible. Medicaid should not cover illegal immigrants, deceased or duplicative beneficiaries, or able-bodied adults without dependents who choose not to work.”

The policy change would require those who rely on the state-federal health program, and who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, those in the foster care system, people who were in foster care who are below the age of 26 and individuals released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

New Jersey Democratic Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member on the committee that oversees major health care programs, said the Republican bill would not only cut funding for Medicaid, but also for Medicare, the program relied on by seniors and some younger people with disabilities.

“Republicans are stripping health care away from people by putting all sorts of burdensome and time-consuming road blocks in the way of people just trying to get by,” Pallone said. “The vast majority of people on Medicaid are already working. This is not about work. It’s about burying people in so much paperwork that they fall behind and lose their health coverage, and if someone loses their health coverage through Medicaid, this GOP tax scam also bans them from getting coverage through the ACA marketplace.”

While the GOP bill doesn’t directly address Medicare, he said, a federal budget law, known as the Pay-As-You-Go Act, would force spending cuts called sequestration to that health program.

“The Medicare cuts will lead to reduced access to care for seniors, longer wait times for appointments, and increased costs,” Pallone said.

States to share in food aid costs

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., pressed for support for his piece of the legislation, saying changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, are needed.

“SNAP is the only state-administered welfare program that does not have a cost-share component, and while the federal government funds 100% of the benefit, states are tasked with operating it,” Thompson said. “The only problem: They aren’t operating it well.”

He also cheered several of the package’s tax provisions, saying they would benefit farmers.

“The one big, beautiful bill makes permanent and expands the Trump tax cuts. It also prevents the death tax from hitting over 2 million family farms,” Thompson said. “It locks in the small business deduction, helping 98% of American farms stay afloat.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the proposed changes would “make America hungrier, poorer and sicker.”

“At a time when grocery prices are going up and retirement accounts are going down, we must protect the basic needs programs that help people afford food and health care,” Craig wrote. “As a mother and someone who needed food assistance at periods in my own childhood, I condemn this attempt to snatch food off our children’s plates to fund tax breaks for large corporations.”

Border security, air traffic control, EV fees

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., said his piece of the package would combine “critical investments in border security, national defense and modernization of America’s air traffic control system, while eliminating wasteful spending and other deficit reduction measures.”

“Specifically, this bill addresses long overdue needs in the United States Coast Guard, which for over two decades has received less than half of the capital investment necessary to effectively carry out its critical missions,” Graves said.

The transportation section of the package, he said, includes $21 billion for the Coast Guard and $12.5 billion to modernize the air traffic control systems while establishing a $250 annual fee for electric vehicles and a $100 annual fee for hybrid vehicles that would go toward the Highway Trust Fund. That account has traditionally been funded through a gas tax. 

Washington Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, ranking member on the transportation panel, said he wanted “to continue historic funding for transportation, infrastructure, and stronger and healthier communities.”

“Unfortunately, this reconciliation package leaves very little room for those investments,”  Larsen said.

“This bill causes immediate harm by yanking money from locally selected projects that our constituents in Republican and Democratic districts alike are counting on,” he added. “And for what? To help pay for the tax cuts for the richest Americans and largest and largest corporations.”

Student loan overhaul, medical research

House Education and Workforce Committee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va., urged opposition to what he called the “big, bad billionaires bill,” saying it would lead to a massive reshaping of higher education aid.

“The bill not only can increase the deficit, it has 4 million students who will lose their Pell Grants, 18 million children could potentially lose their free school lunch, 13.7 million people are set to lose their health care and everybody loses when the National Institutes of Health research is cut,” Scott said.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., said his portion of the legislation would “generate over $20 billion in savings and new revenue for the federal government, primarily by direct royalty and lease fees from the sale of oil, gas, timber and mine resources, while curbing wasteful spending.”

“Our title reinstates onshore and offshore oil and gas lease sales, holds annual geothermal lease sales and ensures a fair process for critical mineral development nationwide,” Westerman said. “We’ve also directed the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management to utilize long-term timber sale contracts.”

The Trump administration released a Statement of Administration Policy on Wednesday urging GOP lawmakers to approve the legislation, when it still appeared several members of the party might delay or even block the bill in the House. 

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act reflects the shared priorities of both Congress and the Administration,” the SAP states. “Therefore, the House of Representatives should immediately pass this bill to show the American people that they are serious about ‘promises made, promises kept.’

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises, and failure to pass this bill would be the ultimate betrayal.”

From left, parents Jessica Seawright and Brooke Wampole talk with Sen. Tammy Baldwin about their concerns over the impact of Medicaid cuts on families with children such as theirs who have disabilities. (Screenshot/Zoom)

As members of Congress continue to debate the Republican budget reconciliation bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, Jessica Seawright ponders what that could mean for her young son.

Seawright is a social worker in Southeast Wisconsin. She’s also the mother of a 9-year-old boy with complex medical needs resulting from a genetic condition.

She and her husband — a college professor — have medical coverage through work, but with her son’s condition, which includes cerebral palsy, their health plans could never cover the degree of care he requires.

Medicaid has made the difference, Seawright said Wednesday. It’s helped through the Katie Beckett  program, which enables children with disabilities to have Medicaid coverage while living at home instead of being in an institution; the Medicaid children’s long-term support coverage; and Medicaid support that public schools receive to cover certain services that students with disabilities require.

Her son has been able to thrive living with her and her husband, Seawright said — but worry clouds the future.

“We look toward his adulthood, knowing that disability and aging programs that would support him staying in the community — where we, our family and our community, know he belongs — are being dismantled and defunded,” Seawright said. “Forcing us and others like us into medical bankruptcy is not a solution.”

Seawright was one of two parents who said Wednesday that their lives and their children’s lives could be profoundly upended by the Medicaid reductions that are included in the budget reconciliation proposal.

They spoke during a webinar conducted by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), who has been an outspoken critic of the budget bill’s Medicaid cuts.

“Our neighbors, our friends and our colleagues at work who rely on Medicaid and are scared, really scared,” Baldwin said. She cited estimates produced by Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee that with cuts to Medicaid as well as to the Affordable Care Act, the legislation could reduce health care for nearly  14 million Americans, including almost 230,000 Wisconsin residents.

The money saved, she added, would be used to extend and expand tax cuts enacted in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has said the tax cuts primarily favor the wealthy and corporations.

“It’s giveaways for their wealthy friends at the cost of Americans’ health and lives,” Baldwin said. “That’s the deal.”

Baldwin said the choice that U.S. House Republicans made to advance the bill in committee in the early hours of Wednesday morning was a sign that “Republicans know what they’re doing is deeply unpopular.”

She dismissed claims that the objective of the bill’s authors was to address waste, fraud or abuse in Medicaid and other safety net programs.

“I would be happy to come to the table to write a bill that truly gets at fraud and abuse,” Baldwin said. “We want that out of Medicaid. We want that out of Medicare. But that is not what this bill does. This bill terminates health care for Wisconsin families.”

Besides being a mother of a child who has been helped by Medicaid’s programs, Seawright has experienced Medicaid through two other lenses.

When she and her sister were growing up, their mother was relying on Medicaid for the family’s health care. That helped give the family stability so that her mom could go to community college, become a medical assistant and get full-time work in health care with insurance through her employer, Seawright said.

In her own job as a social worker, she added, some of the clients she works with have Medicaid.

Both her childhood experience and her role as a mental health provider have made her critical of proposals to cut Medicaid, Seawright said — especially one to add work requirements as a condition for adults considered “able-bodied” to enroll in Medicaid.  

“Creating more barriers for people to access the care they need … individuals losing their primary care providers and their specialists, from my perspective, is just a cruel response that is steeped in distrust of those of us who are doing the work day to day,” Seawright said.

Also on the webinar was Brooke Wampole, who lives in northern Wisconsin. She and her husband have a 4-year-old son who was found to have long delays in his development.

About two years ago he was screened and qualified for services and therapies covered by Medicaid programs for children with disabilities, and over time, his clinicians helped him first to “exist, to self-regulate, to see the world around him and not find it to be a threat,” Wampole said.

The family’s regular health insurance “could never cover the cost” those treatments required. “ Medicaid programs “have been absolutely instrumental in our lives.”

In the last year, her son has begun speaking one-syllable words. “My favorites or Mommy and Dada,” Wampole said, then added with a smile, “however, he is pretty partial to talking about trapezoids. And raisins.”

The thought of losing Medicaid coverage “is terrifying,” Wampole said — both because of the loss of services for her son, but also because of its impact on other families.

“I worry what our world looks like without Medicaid,” Wampole said. “Other families, they could be way worse off … and cutting Medicaid could hurt them even more than my family. I don’t want to be part of a system that contributes to that.”

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Carol Chapin's son joins a protest in Madison to oppose cuts to the Medicaid program. (Photo courtesy of Carol Chapin)

This week, the U.S. House of Representatives and Wisconsin’s Republican members — U.S. Reps. Bryan Steil, Derrick Van Orden, Glenn Grothman, Scott Fitzgerald, Tony Wied and Tom Tiffany — are supporting a budget that would slash federal Medicaid funding by $790 billion, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office estimate. 

For my family, this isn’t just a number on a budget sheet somewhere in Washington. For us, it is deeply personal. These cuts have the potential to devastate our lives.

My son Liam lives with a developmental disability. Thanks to Medicaid — and more specifically, a category known as Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) — he’s able to live independently in his own apartment. He receives support each day to help him manage meals, take his medications, and safely get to his two part-time jobs using paratransit.

He volunteers at a local food pantry. He makes art. He participates in community programs for people with disabilities. He takes community college courses and continuing education classes, and his goal is an associate’s degree in architectural technology. He’s proud to call Madison’s Eastmoreland neighborhood home.

All of this is possible because of Medicaid. But the Home and Community-Based Services that make his life possible are considered “optional” under federal Medicaid law. They’re on the chopping block if Congress moves forward with the proposed cuts.

If the federal government cuts its share of Medicaid funding, our state will face a painful decision. We will either use more state dollars to fill the gap, or make cuts — fewer people covered, fewer services, lower provider pay. For Liam and others, that means less support, fewer community programs and a greater risk of institutionalization. 

Even with Medicaid, it took our family years to find a supportive care agency with an opening. These services are already stretched to the limit. Some Republican members of Congress are advocating for hard caps on Medicaid costs which would further degrade these essential programs.

Medicaid is not just an insurance program. It is the infrastructure that makes independent living possible for people with disabilities. And it is already under strain. Here in Wisconsin, some disability advocacy organizations have gone months without federal funding due to administrative budget cuts. The signs are all around us: The safety net is fraying. 

If Congress ultimately cuts federal Medicaid spending, we will witness the unraveling of vital support systems: most critically, Home and Community-Based Services. For thousands of people like Liam, this would mean being forced from their homes, with many facing the possibility of institutionalization.

Keeping people in their homes has been a bipartisan issue for decades. Home and Community-Based Services are both significantly cheaper and more empowering for our community-members with disabilities. 

I urge our elected officials — especially those who have said they want to protect “the vulnerable” — to stop these irresponsible cuts to Medicaid. Liam’s life, and the lives of so many others in Wisconsin, depend on it.

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U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on May 21, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon took heat from U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday over the drastic cuts and proposed changes at her federal agency in the months since President Donald Trump took office.

Democrats on a panel within the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations expressed dissatisfaction with McMahon’s education initiatives so far, as well as Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request released earlier this month. The request calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department.

McMahon appeared before the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to outline the budget request as part of the panel’s work to write the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.

McMahon told the panel that the department aims to “shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money and empower states — who best know their local needs — to manage education in this country.”

“We’ve reduced a department that was overstaffed by thousands of positions, cut old contracts that were enriching private parties at taxpayer expense, suspended grants for illegal (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs and now are putting forward a budget request that reduces department funding by more than 15%,” she said.

Trump and his administration have sought to dramatically reshape the federal role in education, including an executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department, the gutting of more than 1,300 employees at the agency, threats to revoke funds for schools that use DEI practices and a crackdown on “woke” higher education.

‘Disdain for public education’

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the full panel and the subcommittee, called McMahon’s actions at the department “lawless,” adding that they “reek of disdain for public education” and are “hurting the most vulnerable in our nation.” 

“Under your leadership of the department, hundreds of millions of dollars have been frozen, and entire programs have been terminated,” the Connecticut Democrat said. “Funding for vital research, protection of students’ civil rights and programs that support the recruitment and professional development of effective educators have been terminated.”

DeLauro also lambasted the budget’s proposal to consolidate 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replace them with a $2 billion formula grant that would give states spending flexibility.

A White House document summarizing major changes in the budget request said the consolidation would cut spending by more than $4.5 billion, a point DeLauro emphasized.

“Yet at the same time, you propose that we provide $4.5 billion less to educate our nation’s children overall,” she said. “A block grant is a cut — all of my colleagues here know that the states cannot afford to pick up the slack.”

In another exchange in the lengthy hearing, McMahon pushed back against New Jersey Democratic Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman’s assertion that the department’s Office for Civil Rights is “being decimated.” The unit has seen significant staffing cuts as part of the department’s reduction in force effort along with the closure of several regional offices.

“Well, it isn’t being decimated,” McMahon said. “We have reduced the size of it, however, we are taking on a backlog of cases that were left over from the Biden administration and we’re working through those.”

Watson Coleman proceeded to press McMahon on why the department would reduce its resources if the agency has a backlog in addition to confronting cases that will come before it now. 

“Because we are working more efficiently in the department,” McMahon replied.

Prioritizing school choice

Meanwhile, Republicans focused largely on school choice initiatives and how McMahon and the department are prioritizing those efforts.  

The term “school choice” applies to alternative programs to a student’s assigned public school. Proponents say school choice programs are necessary for parents dissatisfied with their local public schools, though critics argue these efforts drain critical funds from school districts.

Rep. Robert Aderholt, chair of the subcommittee, said “too many schools, encouraged and facilitated by federal funding, have let things like social justice advocacy and divisive issues crowd out the focus on teaching students and the core subjects.”

“Thankfully, some states have pursued choice options for students whose traditional public schools have not served them well, including through charter schools,” the Alabama Republican said.

McMahon said increasing school choice was one of her priorities as secretary and highlighted the budget’s proposed increase of $60 million to expand the number of charter schools in the country, according to the budget request.

“The president absolutely believes, as do I, that the more choice that parents have, the better off the students are, and we’ve seen that repeatedly in different states,” she said. 

U.S. House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris, R-Md., center, speaks to reporters on Wednesday, May 21, 2025 at the U.S. Capitol. From left are Republicans Keith Self of Texas, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Chip Roy of Texas. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Republican leaders released changes to their “one big beautiful bill” late Wednesday after marathon negotiations with conservatives demanding deeper cuts to safety net programs, teeing up debate and a final vote likely sometime Thursday.

The alterations, which will have to be adopted later, moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid by at least a couple of years and tossed out plans to sell some public lands. The new language also tightened the timeline for clean energy tax breaks and raised the ceiling for taxpayers who deduct state and local taxes.

The package of adjustments — the manager’s amendment — was incorporated into the larger reconciliation bill, which was approved by the House Rules Committee just before 11 p.m. Eastern on an 8-4 party-line vote. Far-right holdout Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was absent.

Next, the package must pass a procedural vote on the House floor before lawmakers can debate and take a final vote.

With a razor-thin margin, House Speaker Mike Johnson can only lose a handful of members on each vote. Democrats are expected to uniformly vote “no” in the procedural and final votes.

Medicaid

Republicans moved up implementation of work requirements for Medicaid enrollees from taking effect after January 1, 2029 to no later than December 31, 2026. That could mean some states will make the changes before next year’s midterm elections.

The provision would require those who rely on the state-federal health program for lower-income Americans and some people with disabilities, who are between the ages of 19 and 65, to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month.

The language has numerous exceptions, including for pregnant people, parents of dependent children, people who have complex medical conditions, tribal community members, people in the foster system, people who were in the foster system who are below the age of 26 and people released from incarceration in the last 90 days, among others.

The GOP changes also would bar Medicaid from covering gender transition procedures for anyone in the program. The bill previously barred that type of treatment for anyone below the age of 18.

Clean energy tax credits

Republicans also tightened the timeline on the termination of clean energy tax credits enacted under President Joe Biden. Hardliners focused on reducing the deficit had demanded a quicker phase-out for the credits.

The new language would accelerate phase-outs for clean energy investment tax credits to 2028, up from 2031, with special carve-outs for nuclear facilities. Companies that break ground on new facilities 60 days after the bill is enacted, if passed, will not qualify for the tax credits. The same applies to any facility placed into service after 2028.

State and local taxes

A separate contingent of Republican holdouts reached a deal with Johnson to raise the SALT cap to $40,000, up from the $10,000 lid enacted under the 2017 tax law. The SALT cap  — the amount of state and local taxes constituents can deduct from federal taxable income — is a top issue for Republicans who represent districts in high-tax blue states, including California, New Jersey and New York.

The amount of SALT taxpayers can deduct decreases for those making more than $500,000 annually. The SALT cap and the income cut-off will increase by 1% each year from 2027 until 2033.

Public lands sale

The amendment removed language that would have allowed the sale of public lands in Nevada and Utah.

The National Wildlife Federation credited Montana Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke with removing the provision.

“Thank you to Rep. Ryan Zinke and his colleagues who listened to their constituents and worked with House leaders to eliminate the provision from the budget reconciliation bill,” NWF Associate Vice President for Public Lands David Wilms said in a statement. “We urge all members of Congress to refrain from similar attacks on America’s public lands.”

Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable, wrote in a statement that “Congress avoided setting a dangerous precedent that lands can be sold anytime the U.S. Treasury needs a budget ‘pay-for’ and threatening outdoor recreation businesses and rural communities alike that need certainty, access, and long-term infrastructure.”

The Center for Biological Diversity’s Great Basin Director Patrick Donnelly wrote in a separate statement that it was “appalling that GOP leaders tried to get away with auctioning off some of our country’s most beautiful landscapes to fund tax cuts for billionaires and make developers richer. This is Gilded Age-level stuff, and I hope people remember it the next time Republicans try to pretend they care about public lands.”

A separate provision in the amendment appeared to narrow the federal authorizations energy projects could bypass by paying a $10 million fee. The section had been attacked by environmental groups as a “pay-to-play” for energy companies.

White House meeting

The changes come after Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, and far-right holdouts huddled with President Donald Trump at the White House Wednesday afternoon.

Johnson, speaking to reporters at the Capitol following the meeting, said that lawmakers had “a good discussion” and that he believes the GOP is “in a very good place.”

“I think that all of our colleagues here will really like this final product, and I think we’re going to move forward,” Johnson said.

Johnson said members of the Freedom Caucus, who previously argued the legislation doesn’t go far enough to restructure Medicaid and reduce federal spending, may end up supporting the bill, in part because Trump plans to address their other concerns through unilateral actions.

“You will see how all this is resolved. But I think we can resolve their concerns and it’ll be probably some combination of work by the president in these areas as well as here in Congress,” Johnson said. “So there may be executive orders related to some of these issues in the near future.

“And, you know, this is a commitment the president has made. He wants to go after fraud, waste and abuse.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt released a written statement saying the “meeting was productive and moved the ball in the right direction.

“The President reiterated how critical it is for the country to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill as quickly as possible.”

Complex process

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.

Republicans are using the package to extend the 2017 tax law, increase spending on border security and defense by hundreds of billions of dollars, overhaul American energy production, restructure higher education aid and cut spending on Medicaid.

A new Congressional Budget Office analysis released late Tuesday projected the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

Freedom Caucus

Earlier Wednesday, members of the Freedom Caucus told reporters following a different meeting with Johnson that they believed negotiations were moving in the right direction, but were skeptical of trying to approve the entire package this week.

Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris, chairman of the group, said they wanted the legislation to go further in terms of addressing “waste, fraud and abuse” within Medicaid, though he declined to elaborate.

The Medicaid proposals in the version of the bill prior to the negotiated changes would cut $625 billion in federal spending during the next decade, under a CBO analysis. Democrats have warned the result would be millions of vulnerable people losing access to the health program for lower income people and some people with disabilities.

Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy said during that same impromptu press conference that leadership and members of the Freedom Caucus had made “significant progress” toward a final agreement.

“We’re trying to deliver so that the people who are actually out there working hard can actually get the health care that they want to get, that they can get, and get it the best way possible,” Roy said. “That’s what this is all about; changing a broken system, making sure we’re saving taxpayer dollars and being able to provide a better environment for people to be able to thrive.”

Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Scott Perry, who used to chair the Freedom Caucus, said that holding a House vote before Memorial Day was a made-up timeline and that if negotiations needed to last longer, they should.

“This is a completely arbitrary deadline set by people here to force people into a corner to make bad decisions,” Perry said. “It’s more important to get this right, to get it correct, than to get it fast. We are sitting at the table to do that.”

Jacob Fischler contributed to this report.

Detainees board a plane chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at King County International Airport on April 15, 2025 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in Boston Wednesday found the Trump administration violated his preliminary injunction barring third-country removals of migrants without due process, after immigration lawyers say their clients were placed on deportation flights to South Sudan.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy said. “The government’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order.”

Murphy said he will narrowly tailor a remedy to the violation of his April order. He said the Trump administration must give proper due process to the eight men who were placed on deportation flights on Tuesday and given less than 24 hours to challenge their removal to South Sudan.

South Sudan, in East Africa, is violence-ridden and the U.S. State Department advises against travel there.

Department of Justice attorneys would not confirm where the plane landed, but according to flight tracking data reviewed by the New York Times, there is a chartered plane owned by a company used in the past for deportations that has landed in the East African nation of Djibouti.

Murphy did not detail what contempt charges would look like, but asked Department of Justice attorneys for a list of names of people involved in the flights for potential consequences.

The hearing in Massachusetts is one of several clashes between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch over the issue of due process in immigration enforcement, as the Trump administration aims to enact mass deportations.

The White House in a statement attacked Murphy as a “far-left activist judge” trying to protect migrants with criminal convictions. The list of individuals the White House said were on the flight were from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, South Sudan, Burma and Vietnam.

Flight originated in Texas

An hour before Wednesday’s hearing, top Department of Homeland Security officials at a press conference defended the decision, but declined to confirm if the migrants were sent to South Sudan and argued the country was not their “final destination.”

However, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons said that South Sudan had agreed to take the men.

“We conducted a deportation flight from Texas to remove some of the most barbaric violent individuals illegally in the United States,” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said at the press event.

McLaughlin said that the men were still in DHS custody.

Murphy, appointed by former President Joe Biden, has not ordered the Trump administration to return any of the men. At the hearing, he did question a top ICE official in Texas, Marcos Charles, and directed him to find out if it were possible to hold credible fear interviews for the men instead of requiring they be returned to the U.S.

Immigration attorneys who last night had asked for the emergency hearing pushed for the immigrants to be brought back to the U.S.

DOJ attorney Drew Ensign disagreed and said that any remedy from Murphy should be narrowly tailored and that ordering the men to be returned would be “too broad.”

Ensign also said the Trump administration’s position is that 24 hours is enough time for an immigrant to challenge their removal to a country that is not their home.

Trina Realmuto, of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, argued 30 days is preferable, because many of those removed do not have legal representation and need time to find an attorney and determine if they could face possible harm in another country.

Murphy said that he would clarify how much time is appropriate. He directed DOJ attorneys to make sure that everyone involved in third-country removals, from pilots to immigration officers, to be aware of his order and the possible criminal contempt charges if it’s not followed.

On late Tuesday, in an emergency hearing, Murphy ordered the government to keep the eight migrants in DHS custody until more details could be revealed in Wednesday’s hearing to determine if his April order was violated.

In that earlier order, Murphy barred the Trump administration from removing individuals from a country that is not their home country without giving them time to raise any concerns that they might face harm in the country they would be removed to.

Repeated conflicts between administration and judges

Sending migrants to South Sudan would bring the same concerns as sending them to Libya, another third country with a history of clashes.

The Trump administration extended Temporary Protection Status to nationals of South Sudan for six months to remain in the U.S., meaning those immigrants were granted work permits and deportation protections because their home country was deemed too dangerous to return to. 

In early May, Murphy warned Trump officials that any deportations to a third country such as Libya and Saudi Arabia — countries with human rights violations that the Trump administration was considering for deportations — would have clearly violated his April preliminary injunction. 

It’s not the first conflict between federal judges and the Trump administration.

A federal judge in Maryland grilled Department of Justice lawyers and accused the administration of stonewalling information on its efforts to return a wrongly deported man from El Salvador. Another federal judge in Maryland ordered the return of a separate wrongly deported man to an El Salvador prison, an order that the DOJ is currently appealing.

A federal judge in the District of Columbia ordered the administration to return deportation planes to the U.S. carrying men removed under the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798, but the planes landed in El Salvador to take the migrants to the notorious prison CECOT. The judge threatened possible contempt against the Trump administration.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday again rejected a request from the Trump administration to remove its block on using the Alien Enemies Act over concerns about due process.

The Trump administration in March invoked the Alien Enemies Act to apply to Venezuelans 14 and older with suspected gang ties to rapidly deport them, raising concerns about a lack of due process. 

SEIU Wisconsin and UnityPoint Health-Meriter hospital will meet May 29 to resume contract talks covering 950 nurses. But the hospital management and the union have given conflicting accounts about plans for earlier negotiations. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

SEIU Wisconsin and Meriter hospital management confirmed Wednesday plans to meet on Thursday, May 29 to resume negotiation on a new contract covering about 950 nurses.

Talks ended Monday without an agreement, and the union said it would go forward on Tuesday, May 27, with a five-day strike.

On Wednesday, however, the two parties gave contradictory accounts of the conclusion of their talks and the prospect of further negotiations before the walkout begins.

In Meriter’s initial statement on Tuesday after the strike was announced, the hospital reported that a bargaining session was scheduled for Monday, May 26.

In a statement Wednesday, however, the union bargaining committee said they had never scheduled talks for that day.

UnityPoint Health-Meriter issued an updated statement Wednesday asserting that “SEIU Wisconsin notified Meriter on Tuesday that they are no longer available to meet on May 26 and are now offering May 29 as their first available date to resume negotiations.”

The management statement quoted Meriter’s vice president of human resources Shana Wuebben: “SEIU Wisconsin has declined the bargaining session previously set for Monday, May 26 and has rescheduled bargaining sessions to Thursday, May 29 near the end of the 5-day strike period,” Wuebben said.

The bargaining committee flatly disputed the characterization that the Monday date had been agreed to.

“There was no agreement between the parties to meet on Monday May 26,” the committee’s statement said.

In the hospital’s statement, Wuebben said, “Meriter is listening. We have made great strides in our proposals and tentative agreements to date.  And we are ready to continue bargaining.”  

The union, however, charged that management — not the union — was responsible for ending the talks Monday.

“At our last bargaining session on Monday May 19, the union bargaining committee offered to stay as late as needed to reach an agreement,” the bargaining committee statement said.

“The union was clear that management needed to make movement on our core priorities — priorities we have been crystal clear about since Day 1 — in order to avoid a strike,” the committee said. “Instead of engaging in discussions about our priority issues, management chose to end the bargaining session.”

Wuebben reiterated that Meriter’s management negotiators are “ready to return to the bargaining table at any time.” 

The union statement said bargaining team members are also ready to return to the table, but said they would need to see evidence that management was willing to move on their issues relating to staffing ratios, stronger hospital security and compensation.

“The union bargaining team has consistently made themselves available to meet with Meriter management, and we will continue to do so,” the union statement said. “If Meriter management would commit to make meaningful movement on our priority issues before the strike, we would consider scheduling a meeting with them before Tuesday May 27.”

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The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — As House Republicans continue to wrangle over the “one big beautiful bill,” a new analysis released late Tuesday projects the massive reconciliation package would decrease resources for low-income families over the next decade while increasing resources for top earners.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the lowest-earning households in the United States would see incomes decrease 2% in 2027, moving to a 4% loss in 2033, as a result of spending cuts to nutrition assistance and Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income individuals and those with disabilities.

The CBO projects resources would meanwhile increase by 4% for the highest-earning Americans in 2027, moving down to a 2% increase by 2033, according to the latest analysis.

The CBO score could change as hardline conservatives press Republican leadership for increased spending cuts to federal safety net programs as a way to pay for, at least in part, the extension and expansion of 2017 tax cuts that come with a price tag of $3.8 trillion.

Rep. Brendan Boyle, ranking member on the House Committee on the Budget, said in a statement late Tuesday that “Donald Trump and House Republicans are selling out the middle class to make the ultra-rich even richer.”

“This is what Republicans are fighting for—lining the pockets of their billionaire donors while children go hungry and families get kicked off their health care,” said the Pennsylvania Democrat.

The bill as written now would slash roughly $800 billion from Medicaid and Affordable Care Act provisions, and $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, according to the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Lawmakers on the House Committee on Rules — the final stop for the 1,116-page package bill before it reaches a House floor vote — have been debating the measure since 1 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, while House Speaker Mike Johnson huddled separately with far-right deficit hawks.

Far-right members of the House Freedom Caucus remained skeptical the bill could reach the House floor by Johnson’s goal of Wednesday.

The Louisiana Republican leader also faces opposition from GOP lawmakers who represent high-tax blue states who want an even higher ceiling for the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, their constituents can deduct from federal taxable income.

Lifting the ceiling, which lawmakers already proposed boosting from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, will increase the cost of the bill.

Johnson needs nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the bill once it hits the floor as House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority.

Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) said SB 231 offers tax credits to encourage more films to be made in Wisconsin. (Screenshot via WisEye)

Wisconsin Republicans advocated on Tuesday for a bill to encourage filmmaking in Wisconsin through tax credits and a state film office. Another bill would declare that “gig workers” for app-based delivery services aren’t employees of a company.

During a Tuesday Senate Utilities and Tourism committee meeting, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin) said SB 231 offers tax credits to encourage more films to be made in Wisconsin. Bradley described  a recent movie called “Green and Gold,” about a fourth-generation dairy farmer in Wisconsin who is on the verge of losing his farm and makes a bet on the Green Bay Packers to help save it. 

Bradley said the director of the film, Anders Lindwall, chose to make it in Wisconsin, but that decision meant a financial sacrifice as the director turned down a major studio offer to purchase his film. The studio wanted him to relocate production to Alabama — a state with film tax incentives.

“He turned down the offer to keep his project authentically Wisconsin,” Bradley said. 

Wisconsin had a film incentive for a brief time in 2010 under former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle, though the Republican-led Legislature discontinued that program just a few years later. Now, Wisconsin is  one of only four states in the country without a film office and one of 13 without any film tax incentives. 

The bill would create new tax credits including one for 30% of the total cost of the salaries paid to employees who reside in Wisconsin and work in Wisconsin, one for 30% of acquiring or improving property and one for 30% production costs paid by a company to produce a film, video, broadcast advertisement or television production. A person’s total credits would be capped at $1 million for a fiscal year. The bill would also create a new State Film Office housed in the Department of Tourism that would implement the tax credits.

Rep. David Armstrong (R-Rice Lake) said having the rate at 30% would put Wisconsin in the top tier of states offering film incentives.

“How many of you like me flinch when you see the Georgia peach logo in the credits after a movie or TV show?” Armstrong asked at the hearing. “Do we want Illinois or Minnesota or Georgia to poach productions that could just as easily be shot in Wisconsin?”

Bradley said the bill “aims to make Wisconsin competitive by attracting filmmakers and productions through meaningful incentives, which in turn support local businesses, job creation, and increased tourism. Simply put, it would encourage filmmakers like Mr. Lindwall to choose Wisconsin, bringing their stories and economic activity to our state.” 

The bill has broad bipartisan support with cosponsors including Sens. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), Romaine Quinn (R-Birchwood) and Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska).

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Grove) expressed some concerns about whether the funding for the proposal would be included in the budget since it is not in the bill. Wisconsin lawmakers are in the progress of writing the next biennial budget and while Gov. Tony Evers included a similar proposal in his budget, it was pulled out along with more than 600 other items by Republican lawmakers on the committee.

“I have a motion to bring that back in,” Bradley told Ratcliff. 

“But if we pass this bill, it does not include the funding?” Ratcliff asked. 

“This bill does not have the funding. The funding would come through the budget… We’re going to fight real hard to try to get that funded,” Bradley said. 

According to fiscal estimates, the cost to state revenues would be at max $10 million. The new office would require three new positions in the tourism agency and would cost about $199,300 in 2026 and $254,000 in 2027. 

Film stakeholders testified in favor of the bill during the hearing. 

Paulina Lule, a Milwaukee native and an actress who recently starred in the MGM+ series Emperor of Ocean Park and has been in other shows including The Good Place and Scandal, told lawmakers that the bill would help people who want to showcase Wisconsin as it is in real life.

Lule said she has a film she has been working on called Sherman Park, which is about the neighborhood in Milwaukee. 

“I have had producers who have been interested in making this film as long as I make it not in Sherman [Park],” Lule said. “I don’t want to, and so this film has sat unfilmed for 10 years.” 

Lule said she recently began shooting a short film version in the Milwaukee park and was proud to be able to include a shot of the neighborhood’s name on a sign. She said that making films in Wisconsin would be a powerful way to promote the state and encourage people to visit. 

“Show off Racine. We can show off the real Green Bay, not just the Packers. There’s more to Green Bay than just the Packers as much as I love them,” Lule said. “You’re missing out on one of the broadest… ways of promoting the state is by having stories that are authentically about Wisconsin, made in Wisconsin… with actors in it that sound like they’re from Wisconsin.”

Michelle Maher, a River Falls movie theater owner, said that having movies filmed in the state would also provide an opportunity for local theaters. She noted that the movie Sinners, a vampire movie set in the Jim Crow South directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, was filmed on-site in Clarksville, Mississippi.

“It was a town similar to the size of the town that I live in, River Falls,” Maher said. “Unfortunately, that town doesn’t have the movie theater that I have in my town… [Coogler and Jordan] got together and said, we are going to make sure this movie shows in this town, so they brought in a crew to be able to show that movie locally to the town that it was filmed at. What if there was a movie filmed in River Falls? Not only would I have a huge premiere for a regional area, I would have an annual event built in that would generate huge tourism opportunities and other ways to invent and reinvent that same wheel.”

Classifying ‘gig workers’ as non-employees

Lawmakers also considered SB 256, which would declare delivery drivers for app-based companies, including Uber and Doordash, are not employees of the company for the purposes of compensation insurance, minimum wage laws and unemployment insurance. The bill would allow “portable benefits” for those workers.

Bradley, the coauthor of the proposal, said the legislation is needed so that companies can provide benefits to workers without changing their “independent contractor” status. Under this type of benefit system, accounts are linked to a worker rather than the employer, meaning the benefits follow workers to other employment opportunities, and companies and workers would both be able to contribute.

“The gig economy is here to stay, and with it, the flexibility that many workers value and desire,” Bradley said. “Unfortunately, current laws prevent drivers from accessing crucial benefits. These include health care, paid leave and retirement savings. That’s the problem SB 256 aims to address. This legislation creates portable benefit accounts funded through contributions from the platforms based on drivers’ earnings. These accounts can be used by drivers to pay for a range of expenses, including health care, retirement, or coverage of loss of wages due to illness or an accident.” 

Lawmakers have considered the proposal before, including last session. The bill passed the Senate but never came up for a vote in the Assembly. 

The bill specifies that if an app-based delivery company doesn’t prescribe dates, times of day or a minimum number of hours during which someone must work; terminate the contract of the driver for not accepting a specific request for transportation or delivery service request; allow drivers to work for other companies; or restrict the driver from working in any other lawful occupation or business, then a driver is not considered an employee or agent of the company. 

“Previous versions of this legislation have garnered bipartisan support, and that support is only growing,” Bradley said. “It’s time we modernize our policies to meet the realities faced by thousands of Wisconsin workers.”

Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) said he found it “embarrassing, disappointing” that the committee was considering the proposal. He said there is an “independent contractor travesty in this country.” 

“As an independent contractor, these workers know what they’re signing up for,” Rep. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan) said. “They understand that they’re on an independent contractor basis. They understand that they want to remain independent contractors.” 

Katie Franger, public affairs manager for Uber, told lawmakers that flexibility is the “fundamental reason” people choose the company’s platform for work. She said that the legislation would fit with this by allowing workers to have flexibility in benefits as well.

“Portable benefits allow each individual to choose what truly matters to them, ensuring resources are directed where they’re most needed,” Franger said. 

When Smith asked about why they couldn’t provide the benefits already, Addison DiSesa, legislative policy advisor for DoorDash, said “providing the benefits proactively jeopardizes the independence of these workers” and that the bill “empowers workers to get access to the benefits that they want while protecting their independence.” 

Maliki Krieski, a Ripon mother and Doordash worker, told lawmakers that she supports the bill because she wants to keep the flexibility that is part of the work currently. She said it allows her to take care of her child, who has diabetes.

“Our state system is outdated…,” Krieski said. “The one thing that stands between us and any form of health care incentive, retirement plan… The only thing that stands between us and that is the state law.”

Stephanie Bloomingdale, president for the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, cautioned that the bill seeks to create an exemption to current law and could be harmful to workers, who depending on the situation might qualify for certain benefits. She also pointed out that it doesn’t require companies to provide access to any benefits. 

“It exempts app-based delivery drivers from settled Wisconsin law concerning our workers compensation, minimum wage and unemployment insurance laws,” Bloomingdale said. 

Bloomingdale noted that to be considered an “independent contractor,” when it comes to worker’s compensation, workers have to meet a nine-part test, otherwise a worker is automatically considered an employee. The bill would replace this with the four-part test, which she said would be quite “minimal.” She noted that depending on the situation some workers could potentially qualify for worker’s compensation. 

A legislative council representative explained that “the default is that you’re an employee, and then there’s a nine factored test and that leads to a determination that you might be an independent contractor.” The bill, he said, would implement a “route that’s more streamlined for these app-based drivers.” 

“We oppose the bill because it does not guarantee any more or less flexibility for workers. It does not guarantee good wages and it does not guarantee benefits for workers in the gig economy. It does none of these things because the bill eliminates employee status for these workers and all the rights that come with that status,” Bloomingdale said. “The bill does not guarantee or require that these tech giants provide any benefits, portable or fixed.”

Bloomingdale said the bill would instead just “create special exemption for these powerful corporations at the expense of Wisconsin’s working men and women” and called the bill a “slippery slope.” 

“If this bill passes, we will be back here as those who do the bidding on international corporations come to this legislative body to similarly carve out a certain class of workers to evade state law and reclassify each group of workers one by one,” Bloomingdale said. “If these companies succeed in passing this bill, their low-pay, no-protection business model could expand in virtually every industry.”

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Protesters gather to march in Wauwatosa alongside the families of Antonio Gonzales, Jay Anderson Jr., and Alvin Cole in 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Update: Rep. Shae Sortwell issued a statement Wednesday morning disputing claims from Democratic Reps Ryan Clancy and Andrew Hysell that the riot bill was taken off the Assembly’s executive agenda. Sortwell accused Clancy and Hysell of “spreading misinformation” regarding the bill.

“To be clear, the chair never pulled the bill because he has not officially scheduled a vote on it yet after receiving a hearing two weeks ago. I am in discussions with colleagues on the committee, which is standard practice for bill authors after a public hearing. I ask both Democrat representatives to brush up on legislative policy on how bills actually move.”

Wednesday afternoon Rep. Ron Tusler, who chairs the assembly committee, which held public hearings on the riot bill, wrote in an email statement to Wisconsin Examiner that the riot bill needs work before it can be scheduled.

Tusler wrote that the bill “is not on the agenda because, in its current form, it fails to be good legislation. I wanted to give the bill author a chance to explain the bill out of respect for Representative Sortwell and the victims of riots. But in its current form, this bill has constitutional, common-sense, and enforcement issues. Assembly Bill 88, as it exists now, was never going to be scheduled for an executive session until those problems were/are addressed.”

 

A Republican-sponsored bill that would have defined a riot as a gathering of at least three people that could pose a threat of property damage or injury has been removed from the Assembly Judiciary Committee’s executive session agenda. The bill has been criticized for being overly broad, and potentially chilling First Amendment protections of protest and free speech. Besides defining a riot, the bill also exposed accused rioters and riot organizers to felony charges and civil liability including restitution for attorneys’ fees and property damage, and carried a prohibition on government officials with authority over law enforcement from limiting an agency’s response to quell unrest. 

Rep. Andrew Hysell (D- Sun Prairie), a member of the Assembly Committee on Judiciary, said that he criticized the bill because it “actually weakens existing law for the very people it was supposed to help.” The committee held a public hearing on the bill on May 7, at which  a large number of Wisconsinites voiced opposition to the bill. Rep. Shae Sortwell (R- Two Rivers), one of the bill’s authors, testified in favor of the bill, saying that it’s needed to prevent protests from spinning out of control into riots, property destruction, and injury. Sortwell and other republican supporters of the bill referenced protests and unrest in 2020 in Kenosha and  Madison. 

Among those who testified against the bill was Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee). Like other critics, Clancy said the bill was written vaguely in order to be applied broadly to crack down on protest movements. “While myself and many of my Democratic colleagues are tired of wasting our time and our constituents’ resources on badly written, unconstitutional bills like AB-88, I’m ecstatic that Republicans have abandoned this one for now,” Clancy said in a statement after the bill was shelved by the Assembly committee. “It’s clear that passionate, thoughtful testimony from the public, free speech advocates and civil rights experts – along with excellent technical critiques from Rep. Andrew Hysell – has stopped this so-called ‘anti-riot’ bill dead in its tracks.”

Clancy added that “in reality, however, this isn’t an ‘anti-riot’ bill: it’s a threat to free speech, expression and assembly disguised as a public safety measure. Thankfully, it’s now unlikely to move forward this session.” 

During the May 7 committee hearing where people spoke either in favor of or against the bill, one person wore a hat which used an expletive to denounce President Donald Trump. Committee Chair Ron Tusler (R- Harrison) demanded that the man remove the hat because it was offensive. Tusler threatened to have law enforcement remove the man, and called the hearing into recess. Later, when the hearing continued, the man was allowed to continue wearing the hat. Clancy told  Tusler his emotional reaction to the hat and his impulse to call for police was an example of how a broad, penalty-heavy bill for protests like AB-88 is a bad idea.

In his statement, Clancy urged his colleagues to spend “less time trying to dismantle our rights and getting angry at rude hats” and more time “addressing the actual needs of Wisconsin residents. Until that changes, we must all remain vigilant to fight back their next, terrible idea.” 

This article has been updated to add a statement from Rep. Shae Sortwell accusing Reps Ryan Clancy and Andrew Hysell of spreading misinformation about why the bill was taken off the executive session agenda. The article was updated again Wednesday afternoon with Committee Chair Rep. Ron Tusler’s statement regarding the riot bill. It has also been edited to correct Rep. Ron Tusler’s last name. 

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UW-Platteville (UW Platteville)

More details are emerging about a shooting at UW-Platteville Monday which left two students dead. In a statement released Tuesday, the university said the UW-Platteville Police Department had responded to a call at Wilgus Hall, a student residence hall, for a “disturbance.” When officers arrived, they found two individuals with gunshot wounds.

One of the individuals police found on the scene has been identified as 22-year-old Kelsie Martin, who was transported to Southwest Health and then med-flighted to UW Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Martin was the Wilgus Hall Assistant Resident Director and a psychology major from Beloit, the university said in an update. 

The other individual was identified as Hallie Helms, also 22 years old. Helms died on the scene, and preliminary autopsy findings indicate that Helms may have died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Helms was a Wilgus Hall resident, and an elementary education major from Baraboo.

Final exams for the remainder of the week have been cancelled. Students with any questions are encouraged to reach out to the dean’s office for their individual college. Students are encouraged to reach out to counseling resources. University counseling will be offering walk-in urgent sessions Wednesday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and toll free counseling can be reached at 844-602-6680 or 720-272-0004. 

University officials and law enforcement have been tight-lipped about the incident, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. A shelter-in-place order was issued as a large police presence gathered on the campus Monday. The order lasted for about an hour until 5 p.m. Gov. Tony Evers said he was being briefed on the situation and will remain in close contact with university officials.

UW-Platteville enrolls around 5,800 students, with Wilgus Hall, one of 10 residence buildings, housing 230 students , according to the university’s website. Over 2,800 students live on campus. The shooting occurred at the end of the spring semester and on the first day of final exams.

Some students reported seeing ambulances on scene. One student, 24-year-old Amanda Sawatzki, reportedly heard the voices of two people arguing in the afternoon, and then later heard a loud bang while she was working on a senior seminar paper. 

At a 7 p.m. press conference on Monday, UW-Platteville Police Chief Joseph Hallman wouldn’t confirm whether a shooting had occurred, or whether there had been any injuries. Hallman and university officials called it an isolated incident, and said it is being actively investigated by police.

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President Donald Trump arrives with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. House Republicans who have yet to rally behind the party’s “big, beautiful bill” huddled in the speaker’s office Tuesday as different factions tried to hash out agreement on taxes, Medicaid and a few other outstanding issues.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters before those meetings began there were “a number of loose ends to tie up” with deficit hawks and members from high-tax states, who are pressing to raise the state and local tax deduction, also known as SALT.

“We got some hours ahead of us to work this out, and I’m very confident we will,” Johnson said. “I’m going to have a series of meetings that will begin right now in my office to try to tie up the final loose ends. This is a 1,100-page piece of legislation. We’re down to a few provisions so we are very confident, very optimistic we can get this done and stay on our timetable.”

Johnson hopes to pass the legislation this week, though he didn’t appear to have the votes as of Tuesday afternoon.

Trump pays a House call

The smaller meetings followed a closed-door huddle between all the chamber’s GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump earlier in the day that didn’t quite have the intended effect of immediately convincing holdouts to vote for the bill.

Trump, however, appeared to declare victory before leaving the Capitol.

“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want,” Trump said after the morning meeting. “And I think we’re going to have a great victory.”

House Republicans have an extremely thin 220-213 majority, requiring nearly every GOP lawmaker to support the 1,116-page package in order for it to reach the Senate.

Getting SALT-y

The reconciliation bill currently proposes lifting the SALT cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, with a phase-down for those earning $400,000 or more, but that’s not enough for Republicans from states most impacted by the aspect of tax law.

New York Republican Rep. Nick LaLota told reporters in the early afternoon that he would likely lose reelection if he can’t secure a better SALT agreement than what was on the table.

“If I do a bad deal, I would expect my constituents to throw me out,” LaLota said. “If I did a deal at $30,000, my own mother wouldn’t vote for me.”

LaLota said Republicans leaders should prioritize a deal that benefits swing voters to avoid the party losing centrist members and possibly the House majority in the 2026 midterms.

“If we win that one issue, they’ll have a much easier November of 2026. And thus we’ll be able to keep the House and do other fiscally responsible things for the next couple of cycles here, if we get this one issue right,” LaLota said. “Conversely, you get this issue wrong — you vote for a bad bill and you keep the cap low — those folks are getting thrown out of office, we lose the majority, and then we have an open border, then we have an impeached president, and then we have all the other things that America voted against.”

LaLota said later Tuesday, after GOP leaders proposed different SALT cap numbers, that there was still “no accepted deal, yet the parties are talking a little more with an understanding of each other’s position.”

“Leadership understands better what our pain threshold is,” LaLota said. “We clearly rejected the $30,000 number that’s in the Ways and Means bill.” 

He declined to say if the SALT Caucus was prepping a counteroffer for leadership, but said that staff were conducting “some research on some of the mixes of income caps and what SALT cap there would be and how much that would be valued at relative to the entire $4 trillion package.”

‘Bad faith negotiation’

Rep. Mike Lawler, a staunch supporter of raising the SALT cap for his constituents north of New York City, would not comment to reporters outside the speaker’s office about a specific dollar amount but said there’s an “improved offer” on the table.

“We’re waiting on more details. We’ll have more to say later,” Lawler said.

Speaking to Fox News in the hallway, he said, “I’m not going to sacrifice my constituents and throw them under the bus in a bad faith negotiation, which is what this has been by leadership and Jason Smith,” he said referring to the chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means.

“We need to come to an agreement. We need to provide real and lasting tax relief, and that’s what I’m fighting for, for my constituents. I respect the president … but I’ll respectfully disagree,” Lawler said.

Trump urged House Republicans Tuesday morning that raising the SALT cap benefits Democratic governors.

Conservatives still unhappy

Complicating negotiations, some far-right House Republicans remain opposed to the bill, saying it does not go far enough.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, who did not support the bill during a committee vote Sunday night, told States Newsroom Tuesday afternoon that his “concerns and problems still exist.”

Roy argues the massive reconciliation deal does not reduce deficit spending enough, particularly with respect to Medicaid and clean energy tax credits.

When asked whether lawmakers were approaching an agreement, Roy said “Not sure. We’re still talking. We’ve had literally like five meetings today already.”

Thune predictions

The House passing the package this week would only be one of many steps in the long, winding process.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon, just after Johnson spoke during a closed-door lunch, that changes to the package are expected in the upper chamber.

Thune said one of the major questions for GOP senators is whether the legislation holds “sufficient spending reforms to get us on a more sustainable fiscal path.”

“I think most of our members are in favor of a lot of the tax policy and particularly those portions of the tax policy that are stimulative, that are pro-growth, that will create greater growth in the economy,” Thune said. “But when it comes to the spending side of the equation: This is a unique moment in time and in history where we have the House and the Senate and the White House, and an opportunity to do something meaningful about government spending.”

Thune said that GOP senators would likely make “tweaks” to the tax provisions once the House sends over a package, especially around how long certain tax policy lasts.

“They have cliffs and some shorter-term timeframes when it comes to some of the tax policies,” Thune said. “We believe that permanence is the way to create economic certainty and thereby attract and incentive capital investment in this country that creates those good-paying jobs, and gets our economy growing and expanding, and generates more government revenue.”