Amanda Becker, reporter for The 19th, and Colleen Long, editor for NBC News, presented their post-Dobbs books at the 2025 Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Maryland, May 17. Becker’s “You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America” and Long and Rebecca Little’s “I’m Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America,” were both published in 2024. (Photo by Sofia Resnick/States Newsroom)

During the pandemic, when many people were reevaluating their life goals, Colleen Long texted her childhood best friend and fellow journalist Rebecca Little to see if, together, they could write a relatable, even funny, book about pregnancy loss.

“My friend Rebecca … she likes to say she kind of had the pu pu platter of loss,” Long said during an author panel at the 2025 Gaithersburg Book Festival in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on May 17. “She had all sorts of terrible things happen: a stillbirth; she had to end the pregnancy of twins; she had several miscarriages. And I had a stillbirth.”

They wanted to understand why it was so hard to talk about pregnancy loss in public, and thus difficult to process.

“She and I started talking about how what we would really like to do is to write a book about why we are so bad at talking about pregnancy loss,” said Long, a senior editor at NBC News. “What is it about our culture that makes it impossible to sort of discuss this, and yet, when it happens to you, then all of these people come out of the woodwork and talk about it. We’re saying it’s like ‘Fight Club,’ but maybe we should be taking fewer cues, you know, from Brad Pitt.”

Long and Little ended up speaking to about 100 people who experienced some form of pregnancy loss and continue to hear from people with experiences since their book, “I’m Sorry for My Loss: An Urgent Examination of Reproductive Care in America,” came out last year. Their book is also about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of federal abortion rights in June 2022, with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, has exacerbated the consequences when pregnancy doesn’t go the way it’s supposed to. In the book, Little and Long document how pregnant and miscarrying women have been denied standard medical treatments because of state abortion bans, and how many people — disproportionately people of color — have been criminalized for decisions made while pregnant, long before Dobbs.

“In some ways, reproduction in America has been stripped back to basics, but we don’t find ourselves suddenly reliving a colonial life,” they write. “We would argue it’s more perverse in some ways because the advances in medicine are available, but they’re being withheld. Like the Back to the Future timeline where Biff Tannen runs a dystopian Hill Valley, we’re going back to a place we never really were.”

Joining the panel was The 19th’s Amanda Becker, whose “You Must Stand Up: The Fight for Abortion Rights in Post-Dobbs America,” also published in 2024, tells the story of the first year after Roe v. Wade was overturned, from the perspective of abortion providers and reproductive rights activists.

“I truly think a lot of the people I feature in my book are heroes,” Becker said. “Being around them was just so incredibly inspiring, and how hard they’re working to help people and take care of people and preserve the ability to access care where people can still get it, and fighting to get it back where they can’t.”

States Newsroom reporter Sofia Resnick moderated the Q&A with the authors. The version below has been edited for brevity and clarity. The full conversation is scheduled to be broadcast on C-SPAN 2 Book TV on June 8.

States Newsroom: You both were working on these books before the Dobbs decision and you’ve been both covering major national stories. Why did you both decide to dedicate so much time to this particular story?

Colleen Long: When Roe fell, it really sort of informed our reporting in a different way, because a lot of the procedures that are used to treat pregnancy loss are used to treat abortion. So, our book was focused more on pregnancy loss. But really, our sort of principle for the book is, what has happened in the past 50 years — since Roe has been codified and now fallen — is that we sort of hold out everything that isn’t a perfect pregnancy or the end of an unwanted pregnancy. But there’s this vast middle ground that a lot of people tend to experience. … When Roe fell, everybody was like, “Oh, this is not going to affect miscarriage care. This could possibly not affect a woman who is wanting a pregnancy and is unable to continue her pregnancy.” And so what we’ve seen, obviously, since the fall of Roe, is that actually these things are all very much intertwined. So our idea was to better inform everyone.

Amanda Becker: My background is as a political reporter, not a health care reporter. So I was more interested in how reproductive rights, and abortion specifically, have really reordered our politics. It’s the biggest political story of my lifetime, and because I’m a person that was capable of giving birth, I also thought it was the most important story overall that affects more than half of this country directly. And I would argue that it affects everyone indirectly in some way.

I just knew it was going to be a very big year, and that’s why I decided to structure the book — it literally starts with the decision in June, and it ends the next June — because it was just such a sprawling story that I knew would affect every single state in a different way, and the residents in those states in different ways.

SN: What were the parts of your books that were hardest to write?

Long: Rebecca trained at [the famed Chicago improv theater] Second City, so she’s funny, she will be the first to tell you. We wanted to make this book readable … so we worked on the tone a lot. That said, the hardest part about writing this book was interviewing the people. We interviewed 100 different people, and they ran the gamut. Some experienced a miscarriage, some had a stillbirth, some had multiple stillbirths. Some had to end their pregnancies because of a host of reasons. We interviewed people from every religion, conservative people, liberal people, all kinds of different people, and it was hard. As a journalist, you are used to listening to people and hearing stories that are upsetting, but I think the thing that was most upsetting for us was how common a lot of their stories were in that they all felt, like, alone, unsure, didn’t know where to go.

Becker: I was trying to write a book that was ultimately hopeful. … I would say the most difficult points were just, like, the overwhelmingness of what was happening that year. And because my book is kind of looking at the loss of abortion rights as happening in tandem with the erosion of our democracy, which is something I care a lot about, it just would start to feel overwhelming sometimes. Like, how are we going to fix these things that have been happening over the last 100 years, you know? How can we get reproductive rights back unless we fix gerrymandering?

SN: In your respective historical research, what were some things that surprised you?

Becker: I was floored when I found out that the American Medical Association came into being to elevate male doctors over female midwives and then go on an anti-abortion crusade over the next 30 years that eventually changed the laws in almost every state in this country.

[Addressing Long:]And you get into this in your book, too: The father of gynecology did non-consensual experiments without anesthesia on enslaved women. And I’m learning this history of women’s healthcare and gynecological care and being like, this is how we ended up here.

Long: We have a long history in the beginning of our book — it’s literally called “How We Got Here” — to sort of explain how our attitudes have changed over the years on pregnancy and pregnancy loss. Because, for example, the way we view pregnancy — this was really surprising to me — the way we view pregnancy today is really only like 47 to 48 years old, and it has to do so much with modern medical advances, sonograms, the home pregnancy test. Our ideas about how we bond and the way we discuss pregnancy is just so different. 

SN: What have been some of the impacts of increased anti-abortion laws on health care and grief and loss?

Long: My OB-GYN came from Oklahoma [where abortion is banned] because she was, like, “I feel as though I can’t practice safely.” … And the other thing we’re noticing is that doctors — not OB-GYNs, but like any doctors — they’re considering where to go to medical school. And the states in which the abortion laws are very strict, they’re sort of looking away from those states because … they’re afraid of their own medical care. So I would expect us in — I don’t know, five years, maybe, let’s say six years — we’re going to start seeing like a real disparate situation in the United States, where we have some states with very good medical care, and other states, which, let’s face it, already had poor medical care, are going to have worse medical care.

Becker: You don’t find out about a lot of really bad fetal abnormalities until the 20- to 21-week anatomy scan, so [people] made really difficult decisions, and a lot of them that I’ve spoken to feel like they can’t even grieve that openly because of what’s in the public discourse right now about abortion and abortion bans. Yes, they had an abortion, but they’re grieving a pregnancy that they very much wanted and a child that they very much wanted, and I think it’s just making it more difficult for people to talk about.

Long: This is where politics is tricky. … We interviewed a lot of women who identified as politically left-leaning who felt they weren’t allowed to mourn their miscarriage because they didn’t want to be seen as a traitor to the cause of abortion rights, which is hard.

And then … you have what has happened with the restrictions and the fetal personhood laws. … This is a very new concept, to have the sort of baby and the mother have the same legal rights, and that’s what we’re seeing play out in some of these places. And it plays out in really strange ways. Because when you have a life or death situation and you have these two entities, one does not exist without the other. And like, who is worth saving more? It’s just a really complicated morass.

Becker: If you talk to experts, both legal and medical, in fetal personhood and what it means in practice, they will tell you that in a fetal personhood situation where you’re putting at odds the rights of a fetus versus the right of the gestational parent, the fetus always wins when we apply fetal personhood. And so we’re going to see more and more of that.

Audience Member: It seems to me that in the last political campaign, we started to hear a lot about the impact of these laws on women, and somehow that’s fallen out of the news. And so how do we mobilize around this issue?

Becker: I think we were hearing about it in part because it was an election season and a presidential election, and I would expect that to come back around for the midterms and the next time we have a lot of abortion ballot measures on ballots. … Politicians pay attention to what gets them elected or not elected. So if that’s a reason you’re going to elect someone or not elect them, let them know that. 

Long: I covered the [presidential] campaign, and like even during the campaign, I felt like these issues sort of only caught fire when they thought it could be a winning issue. And the Democrats are in a weird rebuilding phase right now, and so I think they’re trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. … They were really hoping that reproductive rights and reproductive health was going to drive people to the polls, in particular women, and in the end, they lost. … And the conversation is no longer happening. But if you think about it, the conversation was never happening. It only just started happening, and then it was a blip. And then now we’re sort of back to where we were, which is super annoying. 

Teen protesters call for DACA protections during the first Trump administration. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

WASHINGTON — Ximena Arias-Cristobal knows the risks that can come with driving as a person living in the U.S. without legal authorization, where a simple traffic stop could lead to being deported.

That fear materialized last month when she was pulled over by local police in Dalton, Georgia, for making an improper turn at a red light, but instead of a traffic ticket, the 19-year-old was detained at Stewart Detention Center for nearly three weeks, she said at a virtual event Tuesday.

“Even though my time there was short … the emotional weight is overwhelming,” Arias-Cristobal said during a panel conversation organized by advocacy groups opposing the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown on students without legal authorization and international students.

“This isn’t just an immigration issue, it’s a human rights issue,” Arias-Cristobal said.

She and her parents arrived in the United States without legal authorization from Mexico when Arias-Cristobal was 4 years old. Her father was in the car with her last month and was also detained at the Stewart Detention Center, she said. He has since been released.

“What affected me the most was the transfer itself, being shackled at the waist and ankles,” Arias-Cristobal said of being transferred by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to Stewart Detention Center.

Arias-Cristobal is eligible to apply for deportation protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, policy. DACA allows some people who were brought into the country as children without legal authorization to obtain a drivers license and work permits and remain in the country, under certain conditions.

But the agency that issues such protections, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, stopped accepting applications in 2021 as part of a court case from Republican state officials challenging DACA’s legality.

The case remains pending and is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arias-Cristobal now faces deportation to Mexico as she tries to complete her higher education at Dalton State College, where she is studying economics and finance. 

Impact on higher education

Gaby Pacheco, president and CEO of advocacy group TheDream.US, said that cases like Arias-Cristobal’s are becoming more common under the second Trump administration and that “Dreamers are under attack.”

Pachecos’ group provides scholarships to young immigrants without legal status, including Arias-Cristobal, to pursue higher education.

She said that while DACA recipients have not been caught in deportations, “we have heard of people (being) held and questioned” by ICE agents.

“The level of cruelty, inhumanity and lawlessness that we’re seeing from the Department of Homeland Security… is completely alarming,” Pacheco said.

That type of immigration enforcement has impacted higher education, said Miriam Feldblum, the president of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates for international students and students without proper legal authority to attend college.

The Department of Homeland Security informed Harvard University last month that it was revoking the Ivy League school’s ability to accept international students. A federal court has temporarily blocked the move while the case is pending.

“This will directly harm our enrollment at U.S. institutions,” she said of the Trump administration’s stance on limiting how many international students can attend higher education.

Feldblum said that because international students pay full tuition, those costs often subsidize scholarships for U.S. students. 

Elon Musk arrives for a meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Billionaire and former Trump administration official Elon Musk published a flurry of social media posts Tuesday slamming the “big, beautiful bill” in Congress, but his criticisms were mostly ignored or brushed aside by Republican senators.

Musk wrote that the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination” and told the GOP lawmakers who voted for it in the House that they “did wrong.”

“In November next year, we fire all politicians who betrayed the American people,” he wrote in a later post.

But Musk’s frustrations largely fell flat.

White House press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed Musk’s opposition, saying that President Donald Trump is well aware of his views on the legislation and will be moving forward anyway.

Musk last week said he will continue to advise Trump despite stepping away from his official role as a special government employee who oversaw dramatic spending cuts as head of the U.S. DOGE Service.

The tax and spending package would cut about $1.5 trillion in federal funding for several programs during the next decade, including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is expected to release its full analysis of the package Wednesday, including how changes made just before the bill went to the floor will impact state budgets and people’s access to safety net programs.

‘We have a job to do’

Leavitt’s comments came just before Republican senators were peppered with questions about Musk’s statements following a closed-door working lunch on Capitol Hill.

Many disregarded Musk’s lobbying efforts during brief interviews, saying they don’t expect his opposition to affect Senate debate on the sweeping tax and spending cuts package that the House passed last month.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said that he and Musk clearly held differing opinions about the package, which he said was possibly based on Musk’s reading of analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Thune said that he expects the tax and spending cuts policies included in the package would “lead to significant growth” and that would lead to a reduction in the annual deficit.

“My hope is that as he has an opportunity to further assess what this bill actually does, that he’ll come to a different conclusion,” Thune said. “But nevertheless, we have a job to do, the American people elected us to do. We have an agenda that everybody campaigned on, most notably the president of the United States, and we’re going to deliver on that agenda.”

Thune added he expects the legislation “can be strengthened in the Senate in a number of ways,” though he didn’t detail exactly what those would be.

‘We’ll see what President Trump does’

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said that Musk is “entitled to his opinion” and that GOP lawmakers are well aware that he’s “frank,” but that likely won’t sway them in the weeks ahead.

“President Trump is the one that’s going to be the biggest advocate, biggest influencer, in terms of how the Senate deals with this vote,” Capito said. “So no matter what Elon Musk or anybody else says — and I don’t want to diminish him, because I don’t think that’s fair — it’s still going to be second fiddle to President Trump. So we’ll see what President Trump does.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman said he doesn’t expect Musk’s tweets will have much of an impact on internal GOP debates about the bill.

“He’s entitled to his opinion. I don’t think it will make any difference,” Boozman said, adding efforts to cut spending are already a central part of the GOP’s goals for the package.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis said the tweets won’t have any influence on which amendments GOP senators propose to the legislation.

“No,” Tillis said, when asked about Musk’s overall sway.

Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno said people raising concerns with the legislation need to give that chamber time to review what the House passed and figure out what they’re going to keep and what they’re going to change.

“We have to refocus and remember that this bill, all along, wasn’t supposed to solve every problem on Earth,” Moreno said. “This bill was about making certain that President Trump had the resources to secure our border, that was the biggest part of the election; to avoid a $4 trillion tax increase, that is something that Americans care a lot about; and to start a process of reducing government spending. So that’s what we’re doing.”

‘Donald Trump is our president, not Elon Musk’

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said he didn’t have much of a reaction to the social media posts, while laughing, other than to say that Musk is “entitled to his opinion.”

Hawley said he doesn’t expect Musk’s lobbying efforts would have any impact on how GOP senators amend the bill, before sending it back to the House.

West Virginia Sen. Jim Justice noted that Musk isn’t the president, when asked how the tweets might impact his deliberations on the legislation.

“Y’all may like this or not like this, but you know, Donald Trump is our president, not Elon Musk,” Justice said.

“And really and truly, I don’t know of the disagreement that they may have with one another or what they have going on,” Justice added. “I really respect Elon Musk, and I think he did a great job and I’m very, very pleased with all the things that he uncovered. But with all that being said, I think we all should stand by our president.”

‘All of us are a little frustrated’ 

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he hopes Musk’s attempts to influence lawmaking will yield more spending cuts than the $1.5 trillion in the House bill, though he didn’t say he’d oppose the measure if that doesn’t happen.

“Well, I think all of us are a little frustrated. We’re not getting as much cuts as we thought we would, but we could in the long run, because we’re not done with it,” Tuberville said. “So I think that was a little bit of an encouragement.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he shares Musk’s skepticism about the legislation’s impact on the annual federal deficit and the rising national debt.

But when asked how influential Musk has been at swaying Republican senators to oppose the package, Paul noted that anyone standing against the bill risks “the ire of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” referring to the White House’s address.

Paul said that if he and Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, who has also raised concerns about the way the package is written, can get the support of two more GOP senators, then they believe they can begin direct talks with Trump.

“The president will negotiate if he needs to,” Paul said. He won’t if he doesn’t need to.”

Then-U.S. Rep. Billy Long speaks during a press conference on Feb. 22, 2022, in Jefferson City, Missouri. (Madeline Carter/Missouri Independent)

WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Senate tax writers voted Tuesday to move Missouri Republican former Congressman Billy Long one step closer to taking the reins at the Internal Revenue Service, despite protests from Democrats over his alleged involvement with a company that peddled fake tribal tax credits.

Members of the Senate Committee on Finance advanced Long’s nomination along party lines, 14-13, to the full Senate as the revenue collection agency faces the possibility of a more complex tax code as congressional Republicans are poised to extend and expand President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.

Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo said Tuesday that Long presented a “vision to transform the IRS through systems modernization, a renewed focus on efficiency and a much-needed change in IRS culture” during his May confirmation hearing. 

“If confirmed, I look forward to working with him to ensure the IRS focuses on helping American taxpayers to better understand and meet their tax responsibilities, and that it enforces the law with integrity and fairness to all,” the Idaho Republican said.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top Democrat, slammed the nominee in remarks delivered ahead of the vote. Wyden said Long “has no tax policy experience, but he has lots of tax fraud experience.”

“When he left office, he threw in with a bunch of fly-by-night operators selling tax deals that were sketchy at best,” Wyden said.

Wyden highlighted contributions Long received to his dormant U.S. Senate campaign from officials at the Arkansas-based White River Energy Corps after revelations that Long was tied to the company and its sales of nonexistent tax credits.

The Oregon Democrat said Long’s “scandals here are too big to ignore.”

Long testified before the committee on May 20 and denied any wrongdoing.

Long, who served in the House from 2011 to 2023 and previously spent multiple years as a talk radio host, told lawmakers on the panel that he plans to get rid of “stinking thinking” at the IRS and implement a “comprehensive plan” to modernize the agency and “invest in retaining skilled members of the team.”

The agency has lost more than 11,000 employees, or 11% of its workforce, either through deferred resignations or mass firing of probationary workers since Trump began his second term, according to a May 2 report from the agency’s inspector general.

Trump announced Long as his pick for the IRS post in December. 

A sign for the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS,  is seen on its building headquarters on Feb. 18, 2025, in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration sent its first spending cuts request to Congress on Tuesday, asking lawmakers to swiftly eliminate $9.4 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and various foreign aid programs.

The request for what are called rescissions allows the White House budget office to legally freeze spending on those accounts for 45 days while the Republican-controlled Congress debates whether to approve the recommendation in full or in part, or to ignore it.

The proposal calls on lawmakers to eliminate $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. That means NPR and PBS would lose their already approved federal allocations, if the request is approved by Congress.

President Donald Trump issued an executive order in May seeking to block the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from providing funding for NPR and PBS, leading to two separate lawsuits citing First Amendment concerns.

In the rescissions request, Trump wants to cut $8.3 billion from foreign aid programs, including the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global initiative to combat HIV/AIDS, and the African Development Foundation.

The proposal is the first of several that will seek to codify efforts undertaken by U.S. DOGE Service and billionaire Elon Musk before he left his official role as a special government employee.

White House budget director Russ Vought wrote in a letter accompanying the request that it “emphasizes the need to cut wasteful foreign assistance spending at the Department of State and USAID and through other international assistance programs.”

“These rescissions would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests, such as funding the World Health Organization, LGBTQI+ activities, ‘equity’ programs, radical Green New Deal-type policies, and color revolutions in hostile places around the world,” Vought wrote. “In addition, Federal spending on CPB subsidizes a public media system that is politically biased and is an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”

GOP leaders in Congress appear likely to hold floor votes on the request, which only needs a simple majority to pass the Senate, avoiding the need for Democratic support to get past the 60-vote legislative filibuster.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a statement the House “will act quickly on this request.”

“This rescissions package reflects many of DOGE’s findings and is one of the many legislative tools Republicans are using to restore fiscal sanity,” Johnson wrote. “Congress will continue working closely with the White House to codify these recommendations, and the House will bring the package to the floor as quickly as possible.”

But Republican leaders could run into problems with centrist Republicans in each chamber, especially those on the Appropriations committees, which approved the funding in the first place.

The GOP holds especially narrow majorities in Congress, requiring the support of nearly every one of the 220 Republicans in the House and the party’s 53 senators.

Republican leaders may need to negotiate what exactly gets written into the rescissions bill if too many moderate Republicans raise objections to cutting off the funding.

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, wrote in a statement the committee “will carefully review the rescissions package and examine the potential consequences of these rescissions on global health, national security, emergency communications in rural communities, and public radio and television stations.”

Foreign aid, public media take hits

The request calls for lawmakers to make cuts to dozens of foreign aid programs, including $500 million out of $4 billion for certain global health programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

“This proposal would not reduce treatment but would eliminate programs that are antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children, like ‘family planning’ and ‘reproductive health,’ LGBTQI+ activities, and ‘equity’ programs,” the request states. “This rescission proposal aligns with the Administration’s efforts to eliminate wasteful USAID foreign assistance programs.”

The rescissions request proposes Congress eliminate $400 million of the $6 billion for global health programs that seek to control HIV/AIDS, which OMB writes “would eliminate only those programs that neither provide life-saving treatment nor support American interests.”

The request asks lawmakers to eliminate $2.5 billion of the $3.9 billion they approved for development assistance, which “is intended to fund programs that work to end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies, but in practice, many of the DA programs conflict with American values, interfere with the sovereignty of other countries, and bankroll corrupt leaders’ evasion of their responsibilities to their citizens, all while providing no clear benefit to Americans.”

The proposal calls on lawmakers to eliminate more than $1 billion in funding across two fiscal years for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which the administration wrote “would be used to subsidize a public media system that is politically biased and an unnecessary expense to the taxpayer.”

President and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Patricia Harrison wrote in a statement the organization “is firmly committed to ensuring that funding for public media provides local communities with accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news and information, and we take seriously concerns about bias that have been raised.

“The path to better public media is achievable only if funding is maintained. Otherwise, a vital lifeline that operates reliable emergency communications, supports early learning, and keeps local communities connected and informed will be cut off with regrettable and lasting consequences.”

President and CEO of PBS Paula Kerger wrote in a separate statement that the “proposed rescissions would have a devastating impact on PBS member stations and the essential role they play in communities, particularly smaller and rural stations that rely on federal funding for a larger portion of their budgets.

“Without PBS member stations, Americans will lose unique local programming and emergency services in times of crisis.”  

Kerger wrote that PBS would seek to keep its funding by demonstrating “our value to Congress, as we have over the last 50 years, in providing educational, enriching programs and critical services to all Americans every day for free.”

NPR CEO Katherine Maher wrote that Congress enacting the rescissions “would irreparably harm communities across America who count on public media for 24/7 news, music, cultural and educational programming, and emergency alerting services.”

“Public safety in every community across the nation could also be affected. NPR, as the entity chosen by public radio stations to operate the nationwide Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), receives Presidential-level emergency alerts and distributes them across the country within minutes,” Maher wrote. “In the event of a national attack or emergency, communities no longer served by a station would not receive this lifesaving, early warning and civil defense alert.”

More details

A summary of the proposal shared with States Newsroom by the White House budget office ahead of its official release later in the day says the funding cuts would affect programs that sought to reduce xenophobia in Venezuela; support electoral reforms and voter education in Kenya; fund voter identification in Haiti; provide electric buses in Rwanda; broadcast the longtime PBS children’s show “Sesame Street” in Iraq; and strengthen the resilience of LGBTQ global movements.

The proposal would also cut off funding to Harvard University to conduct research models for peace and to New York University to analyze democracy field experiments in South Sudan, according to the OMB summary.

PEPFAR would no longer have funding for circumcision, vasectomies, and condoms in Zambia, or for services for “transgender people, sex workers and their clients and sexual networks” in Nepal, according to the OMB summary.

Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a vocal supporter of PEPFAR, said during a brief interview that he was told “that PEPFAR had some cuts, but that the basic core mission was continued.”

Cassidy — chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee — said his staff was carefully reviewing the request and knows he cares “about this deeply.”

The rescissions request, which asks lawmakers to claw back already approved funding, is different from the president’s budget request, which proposes spending levels for thousands of federal programs for the upcoming fiscal year.

Both are merely proposals, since the Constitution grants Congress the power of the purse in Article I, Section 9, Clause 7.

Timing on Senate floor vote unclear

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Monday that lawmakers in that chamber will begin reviewing the rescissions request this month, but didn’t detail exactly when he’d hold a floor vote. 

“Another item high on our list to begin work on in June is a rescissions package the White House intends to send Congress this week,” Thune said. “The administration has identified a number of wasteful uses of taxpayer dollars and we will be taking up this package and eliminating this waste. We’ll make that a priority.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement released Monday that “Trump is looking to go after PBS and NPR to settle political scores and muzzle the free press, while undermining foreign assistance programs that push back on China’s malign influence, save lives, and address other bipartisan priorities.”

“If Republicans choose to go along with this rescission package, they will follow Trump at their peril,” Schumer and Murray wrote. “The power of the purse is one of Congress’s most fundamental Constitutional responsibilities. Democrats will not allow Republicans to play games with the budget.”

Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy said during a brief interview Tuesday that he plans to “carefully” evaluate the rescissions request.

West Virginia GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said Tuesday that she would go over the proposals once it officially arrives from the White House to determine whether she can support moving it across the floor.

“It could be a fight. It could not be a fight,” Capito said. “We just don’t know.”

The House Freedom Caucus, a group of far-right members led by Maryland Rep. Andy Harris, posted Monday its members hope the administration sends additional rescissions requests as quickly as possible.

“Passing this rescissions package will be an important demonstration of Congress’s willingness to deliver on DOGE and the Trump agenda,” the Freedom Caucus statement said. “While the Swamp will inevitably attempt to slow and kill these cuts, there is no excuse for a Republican House not to advance the first DOGE rescissions package the same week it is presented to Congress then quickly send it for passage in the Republican Senate so President Trump can sign it into law.”

U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon testifies at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies on June 3, 2025. (Screenshot from committee livestream)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators from both parties pressed Education Secretary Linda McMahon on Tuesday over the Trump administration’s proposal to eliminate funding for key programs administered by the Education Department for disadvantaged and low-income students.

McMahon defended those and other sweeping changes outlined in President Donald Trump’s fiscal year 2026 budget request — which calls for $12 billion in spending cuts at the department — while testifying before the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to outline the president’s proposal.

Tuesday’s hearing followed the Education secretary’s testimony in front of the corresponding House panel in May. The House and Senate appropriations committees share jurisdiction over the bill to fund the department for the coming fiscal year.

McMahon said the budget request takes a “significant step” toward her and Trump’s goal “to responsibly eliminate the federal bureaucracy, cut waste and give education back to states, parents and educators.”

Senators blast move to eliminate programs

But the budget’s proposal to do away with the Federal TRIO Programs, which were funded at nearly $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2024, as well as the Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs, or GEAR UP, which were funded at $388 million, garnered criticism from both Republicans and Democrats on the panel.

While the Federal TRIO Programs include federal outreach and student services programs to help support students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, GEAR UP aims to prepare low-income students for college.

Neither TRIO nor GEAR UP has “met most of its performance measures for a number of years” and states and localities are “best suited” to determine how to support the activities in the programs rather than the federal government, according to the summary of the department’s more detailed budget request.

Sen. Susan Collins, chair of the broader Senate Appropriations Committee, said she “strongly” disagrees with the budget’s proposal to cut the TRIO programs.

The Maine Republican, who co-chairs the Congressional TRIO Caucus, said she’s “seen the lives of countless first-generation and low-income students, not only in Maine, but across the country, who often face barriers to accessing a college education changed by the TRIO program.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chair of the subcommittee, echoed Collins’ concerns about cutting TRIO and GEAR UP, and encouraged her panel to reevaluate those parts of the budget request.

The West Virginia Republican said “my state, and many of our states, but mine in particular, I think, has a lot of first-time collegegoers, a lot of students that don’t have the aspirational goals either within their family, they’re not looking at how they can achieve education or a certificate or whatever, and that’s where I think these programs have been particularly useful.” 

McMahon said that while she “absolutely” agrees that there is some effectiveness in the TRIO programs, “these programs were negotiated at very tough terms in that the Department of Education has no ability to go in and look at the accountability of TRIO programs.”

“It specifically eliminates our ability to do that, and I just think that we aren’t able to see the effectiveness across the board that we would normally look to see with our federal spending,” she said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley fired back at McMahon’s claim, noting that there are benchmarks set and annual performance reports required for grantees.

“Let me just say, your argument that there’s no studies, no accountability, is just actually wrong, and the fact that you’re coming here not even having looked at your own department’s studies of these programs in order to be informed about them is profoundly troubling,” the Oregon Democrat said.

Education Department ‘responsibly winding down’

The White House released new details on the proposed budget last week, and according to a summary, the $12 billion spending cut “reflects an agency that is responsibly winding down.”

The more detailed request includes lowering nearly $1,700 from the maximum amount a student can receive annually through the Pell Grant — a government subsidy that helps low-income students pay for college.

The budget proposal also calls for consolidating 18 grant programs for K-12 education and replacing them with a $2 billion formula grant that would give states spending flexibility. The document asks for a $60 million increase to expand the number of charter schools in the country.

The proposal came as Trump has sought to dramatically redefine the federal role in education.

The administration was hit with a major setback to its education agenda in May after a federal judge in Massachusetts ordered the Education Department to reinstate the more than 1,300 employees who were gutted through a reduction in force effort.

The judge also blocked the agency from carrying out Trump’s executive order calling on McMahon to facilitate the closure of her own department and barred the department from carrying out the president’s directive to transfer the student loan portfolio and special education services out of the agency.

President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a rally at the US Steel-Irvin Works on May 30, 2025, in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. Trump signed an order Tuesday doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum, a policy he'd announced at the Pennsylvania event. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed a directive Tuesday doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum, marking another escalation in his on-and-off policy rocking global trade.

Trump announced the increased levies to 50%, up from 25%, on steel and aluminum Friday during a visit to U.S. Steel’s Irving plant in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh. The president told the crowd he would hike the tariffs to “even further secure the steel industry in the United States.”

The increase will mark the second time since Trump’s second term began that he triggered national security duties on steel and aluminum, a major import into the U.S.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during Tuesday’s daily press briefing that Trump would sign the directive Tuesday afternoon. The White House published the proclamation just before 5 p.m.

The move comes as the administration presses governments around the globe to strike new trade deals before a self-imposed deadline of July 9.

That’s when Trump’s staggering “liberation day” tariffs are set to kick in again, even as the U.S. International Trade Court ruled them unlawful. A federal appeals court restored Trump’s ability to impose them while the case proceeds.

The court order only applies to Trump’s tariffs triggered under a national emergency law, and not to tariffs imposed on national security grounds to protect certain industries — meaning the increase on steel and aluminum could go forth regardless.

Trump’s back-and-forth tariffs have been seen by some allies as strong-arming. Major trading partners including Canada and the European Union expressed disapproval of the significant price hike for U.S. companies that buy steel and aluminum imports from their producers.

The U.S. is the world’s largest steel importer with the bulk coming from Canada, according to figures from the U.S. International Trade Administration. The U.S. imported 26.2 million metric tons of steel in 2024 from 79 countries and territories, according to the administration.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spoke Friday to government officials from across the country about plans to “supercharge” Canada’s economy and shield against economic fallout from U.S. tariff rates.

Canada’s steel manufacturers warned Saturday that Trump’s tariff increase will cause “unrecoverable consequences” for the industry and urged retaliatory measures, according to a statement from the Canadian Steel Producers Association.

The EU told several media outlets Saturday the bloc is planning “countermeasures” on U.S. goods by mid-July if a trade agreement cannot be reached.

The EU and Canada threatened countermeasures in mid-March after Trump hiked import taxes on steel and aluminum to 25%. 

The Menomonee Falls village board voted to cut the library budget by $300,000 last month. (Menomonee Falls Public Library)

Menomonee Falls residents are concerned about the future of their public library after the village board voted late last month to move $300,000 from the library’s 2026 budget to the police department. 

Board members said the May 19 move, which passed in a unanimous 6-0 vote, was intended to help the police increase staffing in response to an uptick in crime. Critics of the decision said the move is likely to force the library to cut back on staff, hours and programming — potentially putting its certification from Waukesha County at risk. 

The resolution, which was passed months before the board begins working on writing the village’s 2026 budget, also comes as libraries across the country are about to be hit by funding cuts from the federal government as part of President Donald Trump’s effort to slash federal spending. 

This year, the library’s budget was set at about $2.3 million, making the $300,000 cut about 15% of the library’s total budget. The cut is larger than the $225,000 the library was budgeted to spend on purchasing new materials this year. The police department’s 2025 budget is more than $12 million. 

“If village board members are so obsessed with firing librarians, just say so and be transparent with the community, because that is the impact of stealing 20% of the library’s funds,” Ian Dickmann, a community resident and former member of the library board, said at the board meeting. “You will be firing multiple librarians, cutting library hours and negatively impacting library programs, materials and services. The community has spoken in support of the library on multiple occasions. Yet here we are again. If you as a village board cannot manage to properly fund the police and the library, then you have failed as a board.” 

Menomonee Falls Police data shows that crime has increased slightly this year, and through retirements, resignations and leaves, the department currently has fewer than the 65 sworn officers in its budget. Police Chief Mark Waters said at a board meeting in April that the department was working with 54 fully trained officers. 

At that meeting, Waters said that this year, class A offenses, which include more serious crimes such as assaults, robberies and drug offenses, are up 18% compared to the first quarter of 2024. However, much of that increase is due to a 41% increase in drug offenses, of which Waters said the vast majority was “a lot of marijuana taken out of traffic stops.” 

As of April, there had been 41 thefts in Menomonee Falls this year, according to police data, an increase of six incidents from the first quarter last year. The clearance rate, the percentage of crimes that are solved, on those thefts was 51%.

Menomonee Falls Assistant Police Chief Gary Neyhart said in an email that the department has had problems  with staffing, but that budget decisions are up to the board. 

“Chief Mark Waters provides public quarterly updates to the Village Board and a consistent message has been that staffing has been an issue here at the police department,” Neyhart said. “The Village Board then determines how best to address these stated staffing concerns. I also cannot speak on their behalf. I don’t believe we are alone with our staffing issues and that many area departments are in a similar situation as well as dealing with retention and recruitment. We will always strive to provide the highest level of service that our staffing allows.”

Board member Paul Tadda, said at the May meeting that the resolution to cut the library budget was made to maintain the level of police services a suburban community expects. 

“We’re down to 52 fully trained officers. That requires forced overtime to maintain shifts are full and able to respond to emergencies as necessary and provide police services that the village has been accustomed to,” he said. “I do not want to live in Milwaukee.” 

Andy Guss, co-leader of the community group Grassroots Menomonee Falls, told the Wisconsin Examiner he is used to Tadda’s “racist dog whistles,” and that he is more concerned about the library’s ability to remain certified and serve as an important resource for village residents. 

In Wisconsin, counties set a tax levy for library services. Those funds are distributed to municipal libraries to compensate for the use of services by people who live in communities without a library. Municipal residents are exempted from paying the library tax if they live in a community that has a library which meets standards set by the state and county board. 

The Waukesha County standards require the village to provide at least $1,630,000 in the annual library budget, be open at least 60 hours a week, employee at least 17.61 full time employees, have a collection size of at least 125,400 materials, have at least 20 public computers and provide wireless internet access. 

Guss says he’s worried the cuts will put the library dangerously close to not meeting the standards. 

“We’re going to be really close to not hitting the Waukesha County standards,” he says. “And I’m fearful of what will happen if we also lose additional funding from the federal government, because then how short will we be? How many people, how many librarians will we have to fire? How many services will we have to cut? How many books do we not get, how much new material can we not get? How many computers? It’s scary to think about, because it limits access to people that need it. Because I don’t go to the library all the time for books, I use the library for a lot of other things, like book clubs or meeting spaces. What happens to that when the hours are reduced?” 

But at the meeting, board members brushed aside concerns community members raised about the standards. Board member Ann Lessila said in an email to the Examiner that the library won’t suffer.

“By reallocating funds ahead of the budget process, we have allowed the library board extra time to prepare,” Lessila said. “The library has been funded well over the required amount every year, without having to make any significant adjustments. The library remains well funded! Just about every other department has made significant adjustments over the years.” 

Steve Heser, a Menomonee Falls resident and the director of the Milwaukee County Federated Library System, said he highly doubts claims that residents won’t see any impacts from the cuts and that one community library failing to meet the county standards strains the whole county system — which in this case is the Bridges Library System covering all the libraries in Jefferson and Waukesha counties. 

“What you really don’t want in a system is one library failing to meet those standards, and then they’re kind of relying on the other municipalities to foot the bill for their library,” Heser said. 

Aside from the county standards, Guss said he’s also worried about the village board diminishing a community gathering space, especially for kids and teenagers who have already had recreational opportunities taken away. 

In March, the board voted to ban any children over the age of 12 from hanging out unaccompanied at Menomonee Falls Village Park, which is across the street from North Middle School. Village officials said the move was meant to deter vandalism. 

“They’ve got the playground across the street. They ban the 12-year-olds so they can’t go there,” Guss said. “But we do have at the library, they have a teen room that is well managed. I know it’s well attended, but I would assume that, based on these cuts, that they’re going to lower hours, lower staff, and maybe we would even lose the teen room.” 

The Menomonee Falls Village Manager Mark Fitzgerald and six of the village board members did not respond to requests for comment.

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Victor Garcia in a photo from his Facebook page | Photo courtesy the Garcia family

Months after a suicide attempt at Columbia Correctional Institution, an online court database indicates that Victor Garcia, 34, died on April 5. 

His sister, Susan Garcia, said her brother was removed from a ventilator and died from complications from his attempt to hang himself on July 19 in a Columbia Correctional Institution shower. At the time, Garcia was on clinical observation because he said he was feeling suicidal.

Garcia gave the Examiner access to records her family received from the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, including incident reports that provide accounts from the day of Garcia’s suicide attempt. 

Questions remain about the purpose and origin of the tether Garcia used in the suicide attempt, as well as why an officer waited for a supervisor and did not immediately remove the tether when Garcia was found. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections has received notice of an anticipated lawsuit being filed against the department on behalf of Victor Garcia, DOC communications director Beth Hardtke said in an email in response to questions from the Examiner. DOC practice is not to comment on matters relating to pending or ongoing litigation, Hardtke said. 

Attorney Lonnie Story said he plans to file a lawsuit involving Victor Garcia’s attempted suicide at the facility. He said he needs to obtain more information before filing a suit. 

Garcia’s prison sentence and mental health strugles

In March 2008, when he was 16, Victor Garcia was found guilty of criminal trespassing in a dwelling, battery, disorderly conduct and a domestic abuse incident. He was sentenced to two years of probation. Garcia’s probation was revoked in July 2008, and in August he was sentenced to nine months in jail. 

When he was 18, Garcia was found guilty of being party to a crime for burglary and being armed with a dangerous weapon, causing substantial bodily harm and two counts of armed robbery with use of force. He was sentenced to over 20 years in prison. 

Garcia was placed in clinical observation on July 8. According to records provided by Susan Garcia, Victor Garcia was placed there because he told security staff and psychological services that he was feeling suicidal. 

An incident report said that Garcia stated he was using psychological services to remove himself from general population status “due to fears that he was being targeted as an informant.” Susan Garcia said her brother had suicidal thoughts and had been threatened by another incarcerated person. 

In the two days prior to his suicide attempt, Garcia did not engage with staff during multiple attempts to evaluate him. According to a review on July 16, Garcia said he felt depressed and felt like dying every day. 

The report said it appeared other members of the psychological services team had recommended exploring a stabilization referral for Garcia to the Wisconsin Resource Center (WRC). WRC provides treatment for severe impairments in daily living caused by mental health challenges. Susan Garcia believes her brother should have been sent to WRC earlier in his time in prison. 

According to a mental health report dated July 19, Victor Garcia was to be monitored every 15 minutes. 

Under the DOC’s clinical observation policy, the frequency with which a patient is monitored can vary. Depending on the level of risk, a patient might be observed at 15, 10 or 5-minute intervals, or constantly. 

According to an incident report by Psych Associate Chastity Drake, Drake thought she heard someone from the clinical observation area “yell they were ‘going to hang’ themselves.” She was unsure who it was. Her report was dated July 19, with an incident time of 2:30 p.m. 

Drake asked who had yelled, and the clinical observation checker told her who it was. The name is redacted in the incident report. Drake stopped at a door to check with that person about whether he was the person who had yelled about hanging himself, and he denied it. 

In front of the shower, Drake reported she “heard a man yelling and it sounded like the voice heard earlier. Due to PIOC going into shower, this writer determined she would touch base with him after the shower.” 

Garcia had access to a ‘tether’ 

At 2:30-3 p.m., Drake followed the observation checker to check in with Garcia, who was seated on the floor with his back against the door, according to her incident report. Drake could see a “tether” around his neck. She began to bang loudly on the door, yelling “Garcia.” He did not respond. 

Both ends of the tether were secured to the shower door near the shower drain.

Another incident report was completed by correctional officer Anthony Rego, who drove to the hospital where Garcia was treated. He wrote in the report that he’d learned Garcia had been in the shower for approximately 40 minutes, and at some point had the tether around his neck. 

It is unclear if the tether was meant to be attached to the shower door. One incident report said Garcia had used “the tether that was attached to the shower door.” An incident report by correctional officer Tyler Peterson also mentions a tether.

In his report, also dated July 19, Peterson wrote that he was assisting with removing and escorting Victor Garcia from a cell to the observation shower. Once he was in the shower and the door was shut, another correctional officer “removed the tether and wrist restraints,” he wrote. 

Family member questions why Garcia was left tethered while unresponsive 

An incident report by Courtney Schmidt, a licensed psychologist, states she was in RH1 at approximately 2:30 p.m. Schmidt’s report states that she and Drake were waiting to check in with Garcia to assess him for risk and that at the time, he was naked in the shower.

Schmidt wrote that as they walked back to the clinical observation shower, she saw Garcia hanging from the tether. He was unresponsive and she could see that the tether “was wrapped tightly around his neck.” 

Drake began to pound on the shower cell door, and the officer accompanying them called for a “supervisor/help over his radio.” Drake left to go and wait for help in the front, while Schmidt stayed with Garcia. She wrote that she saw his belly slightly moving. 

Schmidt asked the officer if he could take the tether off, “but he stated ‘I am not taking it off until a supervisor comes.’” He then called again over his radio, and Schmidt waited until help arrived. 

In an interview with the Examiner, Susan Garcia questioned the decision to wait for another person to arrive. She thinks the door should have been  opened, and staff should not have waited to assist her brother, “if you obviously see something’s wrong.”

Drake wrote that she heard the officer call for help and went to the clinical observation table to wait for help to arrive. She wrote that “the response appeared delayed due to other high priority events happening at the same time.”

“This writer went to find help and ran into Dr. Stange and Sgt. Ferstl,” Drake wrote. “Sgt. Ferstl and moments later Lt. Laturi and support staff rushed to the clinical observation shower. I observed as the PIOC was removed from cell and began to receive medical treatment.”

In his incident report, supervising officer Steven Laturi wrote that he was working as a shift supervisor. At about 2:40 p.m., he was responding to another emergency in Restrictive Housing Unit 1 (RH1) when he heard a radio call for a supervisor to report to the observation area. 

Laturi wrote that he was unable to respond immediately because he and a team were responding to someone else, whose name was redacted in the report. This person was in a restraint chair in a program cell, and he had tipped his restraint chair back and removed his legs from it. 

According to Ferstl’s incident report, he was assisting Laturi and completing inventory when Drake came out from the RH1 observation area and told staff that Garcia was unresponsive. He reported that at around that time, the observation check officer made a radio call, asking for a supervisor to come to the observation area for an inmate who was harming himself. 

Ferstl wrote that he arrived in the RH1 observation area and saw Garcia sitting upright at the shower door. He tried to get Garcia’s attention, but Garcia was unresponsive. Ferstl made a radio call for a supervisor to report to the observation area. 

Ferstl then “unsecured one end of the door tether which removed the tether’s tension,” he wrote, allowing Garcia to rest in a lying position near the cell door. Ferstl made another radio call, asking the health services unit to report to RH1 immediately. 

How Garcia described himself

Garcia has a profile on penacon.com, a website for finding an incarcerated pen pal. Susan Garcia said her brother set up the profile, which includes photos of artwork. 

Garcia described himself as “an avid reader that enjoys educating, empowering & entertaining myself mentally in a place designed to break the mind, body & spirit.” 

He wrote that being incarcerated at 17 “forced me to mature fast.” “When I’m out,” he wrote, on his bucket list was traveling the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts, experiencing the life of different cultures through food. 

“He would call my kids almost every day,” Susan Garcia said. “Weekly, definitely weekly. He would send them gifts. He loved kids… My brother would give the clothes off his back for you. He was emotional, but hid it. He hid it very well.” 

Further information not yet available 

According to the DOC’s mental health training policy, the department’s division of adult institutions (DAI) is supposed to provide annual update training in suicide prevention to all DAI staff who have contact with incarcerated people. DAI facilities are also supposed to conduct drills simulating a suicide attempt by an incarcerated person and staff response.

On April 17, the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office said it could not release any information pertaining to the investigation at this point. The investigation was being reviewed by the Columbia County District Attorney’s Office, and additional investigation may need to occur. On May 23, the sheriff’s office said there had been no change in the status of the case. 

On May 21, the Examiner submitted a public records request to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, asking for any records produced by any DOC investigation of Garcia’s death.

The DOC denied Susan Garcia access to body camera and security camera footage of Victor Garcia’s suicide attempt, citing security concerns and the public interest in protecting the safety of incarcerated people and staff. 

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People wait outside of the Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital in Houston. For years, states have taxed hospitals and other health care providers to draw down federal matching funds and help finance their Medicaid programs. Now, states may lose their ability to raise or implement new taxes. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

The tax and spending bill the U.S. House approved targets a strategy states have used to boost the Medicaid dollars they get from the federal government. The measure would cap or freeze the taxes states levy on medical providers, potentially leaving states with major holes in their Medicaid budgets.

As a result, states would face the choice of either replacing the lost federal money with state dollars, scaling back services or providing coverage to fewer people.

Medicaid is a joint state-federal program, primarily for people with low incomes. For the traditional Medicaid population — children and their caregivers, people with disabilities and pregnant women — the federal government matches state Medicaid spending on a sliding scale, ranging from 50% for the wealthiest states to 77% for the poorest ones.

Consider a state that gets half of its Medicaid funding from the federal government. If that state collects $100 million by taxing providers, it can use $50 million of the revenue to draw down $50 million in federal matching funds, which it can use to expand Medicaid coverage to more people. Then it can take the remaining $50 million in revenue and use that money to draw down $50 million in federal dollars to pay providers more for caring for Medicaid patients.

Forty-nine states — all but Alaska — use the strategy. In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, states relied on provider taxes to fund 17% of their Medicaid spending, up from 7% in 2008, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

As part of their effort to cut federal Medicaid spending by roughly $625 billion over the next decade, House Republicans have proposed capping the state provider taxes and freezing them in place, preventing states from raising them or implementing new ones in response to inflation. Under current law, states can levy taxes of up to 6% on tax providers’ net revenue. The GOP measure also would add work requirements for Medicaid recipients, a step that would save money by reducing the rolls.

A report from the Congressional Budget Office, the bipartisan research arm of Congress, says eliminating the taxes entirely could save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

Many conservatives say the taxes are an accounting trick that allows states to draw down money from the federal government without having to front their true share of the Medicaid program. Some have even called the provider taxes a “money laundering” scheme.

“States are gaming the system — creating complex tax schemes that shift their responsibility to invest in Medicaid and rob federal taxpayers,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a May 12 news release.

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative policy group that is working with Republicans to formulate Medicaid cuts, described provider taxes as “a way that states and providers can rip off the federal government.”

“States need to have some accountability for the spending in their programs,” Blase said.

But advocates of these taxes, including state Medicaid directors and even the hospitals that pay the taxes, describe them as legal and legitimate financial tools that have helped providers cover essential services and states fund their Medicaid programs for years. The result of eliminating these taxes or freezing them, they say, will be hospital closures and service cuts.

“We don’t like to pay these taxes, but the alternative is resources or access to care aren’t there for that community,” said Jason Pray, vice president of legislative affairs at America’s Essential Hospitals, an association representing about 350 hospitals. “The state would more than likely have to then tax individuals to make up for that, to keep the services at the same level and keep the resources at the same level.”

Blase said the provider taxes allow hospitals to make windfall profits from the additional federal matching funds that flow back to them, representing a type of “corporate welfare.”

But Pray said often hospitals in his association are losing money. By allowing states to boost payments to hospitals and other providers that serve Medicaid patients, he said, the tax enables hospitals to stay open in the long run, not garner a windfall.

Pray also noted that in the past, support for the taxes has been bipartisan.

“Republicans for years have shown they support provider taxes and have understood the value of them,” he said.

Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, pointed out that some hospitals pay the tax and don’t get much back, because they serve few Medicaid patients. The hospitals that benefit most are the so-called safety net hospitals that do care for many low-income patients, he said.

Park said he is worried that once the strategy is off the table, states will have to cut their Medicaid spending to balance their budgets.

Jay Ludlam, deputy secretary for North Carolina Medicaid, is worried about that, too. In North Carolina, Ludlam said, almost all of the tax revenue the state collects from providers helps pay for Medicaid services.

“The money goes to providers when they provide services. It’s not special. It’s just another way that states tax themselves and put money into the program,” Ludlam told Stateline. “If it means that there’s going to be less money in Medicaid … we’ll have to cut eligibility, cut benefits, cut provider rates, in order to maintain the program.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Left to right, Denver Mayor Michael Johnston, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, are sworn in during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on sanctuary cities' policies at the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Homeland Security over the weekend took down a public list of cities and jurisdictions that the Trump administration labeled as “sanctuary” cities, after a sharp rebuke from a group representing 3,000 sheriffs and local law enforcement.

On Saturday, National Sheriffs’ Association President Sheriff Kieran Donahue slammed the list as an “unnecessary erosion of unity and collaboration with law enforcement.”

“The completion and publication of this list has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration,” Donahue said.

DHS published the list Thursday and it was unavailable by Sunday. It’s unclear when it was removed, but internet archives show Saturday as the last time the list was still active.

In a statement, DHS did not answer questions as to why the list was removed.

“As we have previously stated, the list is being constantly reviewed and can be changed at any time and will be updated regularly,” according to a DHS spokesperson. “Designation of a sanctuary jurisdiction is based on the evaluation of numerous factors, including self-identification as a Sanctuary Jurisdiction, noncompliance with Federal law enforcement in enforcing immigration laws, restrictions on information sharing, and legal protections for illegal aliens.”

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem on Fox News Sunday did not acknowledge that the list was taken down, but said some localities had “pushed back.”

“They think because they don’t have one law or another on the books that they don’t qualify, but they do qualify,” Noem said. “They are giving sanctuary to criminals.”

List followed Trump executive order

Local law enforcement aids in immigration enforcement by holding immigrants in local jails until federal immigration officials can arrive.

The creation of the list stems from Donald Trump’s executive order in April that required DHS to produce a list of cities that do not cooperate with federal immigration officials in enforcement matters, in order to strip federal funding from those local governments.

Those jurisdictions are often dubbed “sanctuary cities,” but immigration enforcement still occurs in the city — there’s just no coordination between the local government and the federal government.

The jurisdictions are often a target for the Trump administration and Republicans, who support the President Donald Trump campaign promise of mass deportations of people without permanent legal status.

Congressional Republicans in March grilled mayors from Boston, Chicago and Denver, on their cities’ immigration policies during a six-hour hearing before the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

‘Strong objection’

Local officials were puzzled by the list.

One law enforcement association in North Dakota questioned why several counties — Billings, Golden Valley, Grant, Morton, Ramsey, Sioux, and Slope — were listed as sanctuary jurisdictions because those areas cooperate with federal immigration officials.

In a statement, the North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association said the “methodology and criteria used to compile this list is unknown,” and there has been no communication from DHS “on how to rectify this finding.”

“The elected Sheriffs of these counties take strong objection with language in this release characterizing them as ‘deliberately and shamefully obstructing the enforcement of federal immigration laws endangering American communities,’” according to NDSDA.

“The North Dakota Sheriff’s and Deputies Association is working to gather more information regarding the lack of transparency and reasoning as to why the Department of Homeland Security did not fact check prior to incorrectly naming these North Dakota counties.”

Local advocacy groups also noted the problems with the DHS list.

“I assume they’ve removed (the list) because they were bombarded with complaints about inaccuracy and how and why these various jurisdictions got on the list,” Steven Brown, executive director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, said in an interview Monday.

According to the Internet Archive website Wayback Machine, the states, as well as the District of Columbia, that were on the list included Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Washington state and Wisconsin.

Christopher Shea and Amy Dalrymple contributed to this story. 

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

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from invalidating work permits and other documents that granted legal status to 5,000 Venezuelans, a subset class of the nearly 350,000 whose temporary legal protections the U.S. Supreme Court last month allowed to be terminated.

The Saturday order from U.S. District Judge Edward Chen will, for now, allow the work permits and deportation protections for that subgroup to last until October 2026, or until the entire case, which challenges the end of temporary protected status for Venezuelans and Haitians, is decided. 

Those 5,000 Venezuelans were granted extended protections by immigration officials before the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on May 19 that allowed the Trump administration to move forward with revoking  protections.

During a hearing last week, Chen said he was considering an order to preserve work permits for that small group of 5,000 Venezuelans. All 350,000 previously held temporary protected status, or TPS, which allows immigrants to live in the United States for a set period because their home country is deemed too dangerous for return.

Chen, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama to a seat in the Northern District of California, acknowledged that last month’s Supreme Court decision created a small group of Venezuelans who had gotten work permits approved until October 2026 — before the high court’s order moved up the date their TPS status expired, which was April 7.

Chen in March blocked the Trump administration from ending temporary protections for the group of all 350,000 Venezuelans. Last month’s Supreme Court order means that those Venezuelans will be able to continue to challenge in court the end of their work permits and the possibility of removal, but they no longer have protections from deportation.

The case is also before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear oral arguments in July.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on National Security, Department of State, and Related Programs at the Rayburn House Office Building on May 21, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by John McDonnell/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is personally working to facilitate the return of a man wrongly deported to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador, at the request of the Department of Homeland Security, the Trump administration said on Monday in court documents.

If successful, the man, identified in documents in federal court in Maryland only by the pseudonym of “Cristian,” would be the first deported person returned from the brutal Salvadoran Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT.

Bringing him back to the United States would also contradict the Trump administration’s long-running argument in the courts and to the public that El Salvador has custody over hundreds of men sent there in March, not the U.S.

The Trump-appointed judge in Cristian’s case on Friday had blasted the administration for not detailing to her its actions to return him.

The Trump administration has made the same argument in the case of another wrongly deported man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, despite a U.S. Supreme Court order to facilitate his return.

Trump and other top U.S. officials have alleged Abrego Garcia is a gang member, though there is no evidence of that. President Donald Trump has also acknowledged he could bring Abrego Garcia back if he wanted to do so.

‘Prompt and diligent efforts on behalf of the United States’

The court document in Cristian’s case filed Monday by U.S. Department of Homeland Security official Mellissa B. Harper says that Rubio “has a personal relationship” with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele and Salvadoran government officials that dates back over a decade to the Florida Republican’s time on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

The case is being heard in Baltimore, in the District of Maryland.

“Based on this deep experience with El Salvador and the Secretary’s familiarity with political and diplomatic sensitivities in that country, he is personally handling the discussions with the government of El Salvador regarding persons subject to the Court’s order detained in El Salvador,” according to the document.

“Secretary Rubio has read and understands this Court’s order, and wants to assure this Court that he is committed to making prompt and diligent efforts on behalf of the United States to comply with that order,” the document continues.

The document notes that DHS has asked the State Department for “assistance in complying with the Court’s order, including by entering into negotiations to facilitate Cristian’s return.”

Harper, who submitted the declaration, works at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division as the acting deputy executive associate director.

Judge harshly criticized administration

The document was filed after U.S. District Judge for the District of Maryland Stephanie Gallagher Friday slammed the Trump administration for its “blatant lack of effort to comply” with her order earlier this month to report steps taken to bring back Cristian, who in court documents is said to be 20 years old.

On May 6, she affirmed her decision that the Trump administration must facilitate Cristian’s return.

Gallagher, whom Trump appointed in 2018, gave the Department of Justice until Monday to comply with her order.

Cristian was among roughly 300 men sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison CECOT. About 200 of those men were removed under an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, and the rest, such as Abrego Garcia, were removed under other immigration laws.

Cristian arrived in the U.S. as an unaccompanied minor and was part of a class action that barred removal from the U.S. while his asylum case was pending in immigration court.

Like the Abrego Garcia case, the administration said earlier it was powerless to compel the Salvadoran government to release Cristian, an argument Gallagher expressed frustration with Friday.

“Defendants simply reiterated their well-worn talking points on their reasons for removing Cristian and failed to provide any of the information the Court required,” Gallagher wrote in her order.

The Trump administration is paying El Salvador up to $15 million to detain removed immigrants from the U.S.

“As a Venezuelan native, he is in El Salvador only because the United States sent him there pursuant to an agreement apparently reached with the government of El Salvador,” Gallagher wrote.

Protesters gather outside of the Federal Building in Milwaukee to denounce the arrest of Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

A Milwaukee man was charged Monday after writing a letter to the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that threatened to assassinate President Donald Trump. Demetric Scott told investigators that he wrote the letter claiming to be 54-year Ramón Morales Reyes, a Mexican-born Milwaukee resident who does not have permanent legal status. Scott was already incarcerated in the Milwaukee County Jail for armed robbery and aggravated battery and allegedly victimized Morales Reyes when he committed that crime. 

WISN 12 reported that Scott told investigators that he wrote the letter framing Morales Reyes because he didn’t want Morales Reyes  to testify against him during his trial in July. Scott reportedly told a person during a recorded jailhouse call that if Morales Reyes “gets picked up by ICE, there won’t be a jury trial so they will probably dismiss it that day. That’s my plan.” 

The letter Scott authored was written in perfect English, with only a few misspellings. “We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans,” it stated, adding, “I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 (sic) to shoot your precious president in the head – I’ll see you at one of his big ralleys (sic).” The letter was likely referring to a .30-06 (pronounced 30 ought six) high caliber rifle round, and appeared to be an assassination threat against the president. 

On Friday, lawyers representing Morales Reyes and local immigration advocates from Voces de la Frontera held a press conference, asserting that Morales Reyes could not have authored the letter. The 54-year-old father, who works as a dishwasher, comes from a rural part of Mexico where he received little formal  education. He does not speak English and cannot read or write proficiently even in Spanish. 

After Morales Reyes was arrested by ICE, his daughter contacted Voces de la Frontera and shared information about his background. Days after the arrest, Department of Homeland (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem issued a press statement, condemning Morales Reyes as having threatened President Trump’s life. Noem said  the letter was part of a  series of  dangerous threats to the president. 

Morales Reyes’ attorneys and Voces de la Frontera called on DHS to retract Noem’s  statement and clear his name. It’s unclear why Noem issued the statement, as CNN reported that MPD was investigating the likelihood that the letter was a fake on the day Morales Reyes was arrested. Scott told investigators that he did not receive any help in writing the letters. 

Democratic U.S. Reps. Gween Moore and Mark Pocan visited the Dodge County jail, Wisconsin’s only ICE detention facility Monday, on a  congressional oversight visit. They were not permitted to talk to anyone incarcerated there and did not receive any response to their questions from ICE.  

“In this facility, ICE is still detaining Ramón Morales Reyes despite being wrongfully accused of a crime,” Moore and Pocan said in a joint statement.  “ICE is also working without transparency to Congress, which was only magnified by today’s visit when we tried to call the local Milwaukee field office number on its website, but the number was disconnected. It is unacceptable for ICE to be inaccessible to Members of Congress. As members of Congress, we will continue using all tools available to conduct oversight.”

This article has been edited to correct the labeling of the .30-06 (pronounced 30 ought six) rifle cartridge.

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Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, U.S. President Donald Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Education Secretary Linda McMahon attend an event for the Make America Healthy Again Commission report in the East Room of the White House on May 22, 2025 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration released significantly more detail about its budget request Friday evening, giving Congress the information it needs for lawmakers to draft the annual government funding bills.

The 1,224-page document sheds light on where exactly President Donald Trump and White House budget director Russ Vought want lawmakers to cut federal spending during the upcoming fiscal year.

The Office of Management and Budget released a “skinny” version of the annual proposal in early May, requesting lawmakers cut domestic spending by $163 billion and keep funding for defense programs flat in the dozen annual appropriations bills.

While the documents in that request provided some insight into how Trump wants to reshape the size and scope of about $1.7 trillion in discretionary funding, which is spending that Congress directs, they didn’t include the level of detail that the Appropriations committees need to begin their work.

The appendix document released Friday should aid in that, though it does not represent a full budget request. That type of proposal would include the White House’s goals for mandatory programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which make up about two-thirds of federal spending. Such spending is required by law and is not subject to annual appropriations.

A full budget request also typically includes tax policy proposals, though with Republicans in Congress already working to enact an extension of the 2017 GOP tax law in the “big, beautiful bill,” those sections would likely be of little use to lawmakers at this point.

Work on spending bills launching

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to release and debate its 12 government funding bills throughout June, before voting to send those measures to the floor.

Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., will likely include funding levels and policy closely aligned with the White House request, since legislation in that chamber can pass a floor vote with a simple majority

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine, has a more challenging task, since regular bills in that chamber require bipartisanship to get past the 60-vote legislative filibuster. Republicans control the Senate with 53 members.

In general, that means the Senate panel’s bills tend to look much more like the final version that becomes law than the House bills, though not always. 

Both chambers are supposed to reach a bipartisan, bicameral agreement on the dozen bills before the start of the next fiscal year on Oct. 1, but that rarely happens.

Congress is much more likely to use a stopgap spending bill until mid-December to give members more time to negotiate funding levels and policies on thousands of government programs.

The House and Senate were unable to reach agreement for this fiscal year, and instead leaned on a series of three continuing resolutions to keep the government up and running.

Partial shutdown could loom again

Tensions over the proposed funding cuts in Trump’s first budget request of his second term could reach a boiling point if Cole, Collins, House ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senate ranking member Patty Murray cannot broker an agreement before their deadline.

Failure to enact some sort of government funding legislation — either the dozen full-year bills, or a stopgap spending measure — would lead to a partial government shutdown. 

Murray, D-Wash., wrote in a statement released Friday evening that it was “telling that President Trump has chosen to release his budget on a Friday night with no fanfare whatsoever.”

“This is a draconian proposal to hurt working people and our economy, and it is dead on arrival in Congress as long as I have anything to say about it,” Murray wrote. “But this is just another reminder we need Republicans to join us to reject these reckless cuts, focus on the investments we actually need to make in our communities and security, and to finally force Trump to follow the law and end his devastating funding freeze.”

DeLauro wrote in a statement that the “government envisioned by President Trump only serves billionaires and the biggest corporations and would do nothing to lower the cost of living.”

“This is not a complete budget,” she wrote. “We are supposed to start putting together the funding bills for 2026 next week. If, as expected, House Republicans follow what President Trump has proposed so far, it is not a serious effort to deliver for the American people.”

A sign for the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS,  is seen on its building headquarters on Feb. 18, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Public Broadcasting Service and Lakeland PBS in Minnesota sued the Trump administration Friday, arguing an executive order seeking to cut off their federal funding violates the Constitution and would “upend public television.”

The lawsuit was filed just days after a collection of National Public Radio stations sued President Donald Trump over the same executive order, which blocked the Corporation from Public Broadcasting from funding the networks.

PBS wrote in its 48-page filing that it disagrees with claims made by the executive order, including that federal spending on public media is “corrosive to the appearance of journalistic independence” and that the news organization doesn’t present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.”

“PBS disputes those charged assertions in the strongest possible terms,” the lawsuit states. “But regardless of any policy disagreements over the role of public television, our Constitution and laws forbid the President from serving as the arbiter of the content of PBS’s programming, including by attempting to defund PBS.”

The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, but hadn’t been assigned to a judge as of Friday evening.

White House: PBS supports ‘a particular political party’

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields wrote in a statement responding to the lawsuit that the “Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is creating media to support a particular political party on the taxpayers’ dime.

“Therefore, the President is exercising his lawful authority to limit funding to NPR and PBS. The President was elected with a mandate to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and he will continue to use his lawful authority to achieve that objective.”

The lawsuit says Trump’s executive order violates the law that governs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which gives it independence from politicians who might try to control its programs.

“Congress took pains to ensure that the development of public television would be free from political interference, including with respect to content and funding decisions,” the suit states.

It also claims implementing the order would violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.

“The EO makes no attempt to hide the fact that it is cutting off the flow of funds to PBS because of the content of PBS programming and out of a desire to alter the content of speech,” the lawsuit states. “That is blatant viewpoint discrimination and an infringement of PBS and PBS Member Stations’ private editorial discretion.”

PBS says federal funds ‘instrumental’ for operations

The lawsuit says the loss of funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting envisioned in the executive order would upend programming at PBS and its member stations throughout the country.

“Public television stations receive approximately $325 million in annual federal funding from CPB, nearly all of which goes to PBS Member Stations,” the lawsuit states. “Those funds, which comprise more than 50% of the overall budgets of certain PBS Member Stations, are instrumental to enabling them to operate, to produce programming that serves their local communities, and to pay PBS dues that make PBS programming and services possible.”

Waupun Correctional Institution, photographed in 2017 (Wisconsin Department of Corrections photo)

A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed Thursday over the death of Joshua Botwinski, 43, at Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI). The lawsuit named Randall Hepp and Yana Pusich as defendants, the then-warden and then-security director of the prison. 

According to the lawsuit, Botwinski suffered from a severe drug addiction and from mental illness at all times while serving his prison sentence at WCI. It says he died of a fentanyl overdose.

The lawsuit alleges prison staff known to be smuggling drugs were assigned in proximity to Botwinski. It also alleges a failure to order Botwinski into close observation until drug smuggling could be controlled. 

The DOC’s online offender locator dates Botwinski’s death on January 19, 2023. Botwinski is at least the eighth incarcerated person to die at the prison since 2023. The death of Damien Evans, 23, was at least the seventh death at the Waupun prison since 2023, according to reporting from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel earlier this year. 

Another man incarcerated at Waupun, Tyshun Lemons, died on Oct. 2, 2023 when he overdosed on a substance containing fentanyl, the Examiner reported. 

The estate of Joshua Botwinski is the plaintiff for the lawsuit, by special administrator Linda Botwinski. The lawsuit alleges Hepp and Pusich were deliberately indifferent to a serious medical need, knowingly created a danger for Botwinski and knowingly failed to protect him from danger. It argues that their alleged deliberate indifference caused Botwinski’s death. 

In January, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that nearly a dozen prison employees had resigned or been fired since the U.S. Department of Justice’s launch of a probe into a suspected smuggling ring within the prison.  

In September, William Homan, a former facilities repair worker at WCI, pleaded guilty to smuggling contraband in exchange for bribes. A sentencing memorandum by prosecutors said the presence of contraband in WCI contributed to a “lack of institutional control.” 

In late April, Hepp was convicted of a misdemeanor and fined $500 in the death of Donald Maier, who was incarcerated at WCI. 

A sentencing memorandum by a lawyer for Hepp said that in March 2023, “conditions and actions of the inmate population created an environment that posed an immediate threat to the safety of the staff and inmates while also threatening the security of the institution.” 

The memo said Hepp put the prison in modified movement, “at times referred to as a ‘lockdown.’” 

“This led to an investigation of the conditions and a search of the institution,” the memo said. “Information and physical evidence that was developed revealed a level of corrupt behavior taking place that was historical in scope involving trafficking of illegal drugs, cellular telephones, finances, and other contraband.”

The sentencing memo from Homan’s case said the lockdown involved incarcerated people “being confined to their cells twenty-four hours a day except for medical or other emergencies.”

“As part of its efforts to reestablish control, a facilitywide search was conducted, resulting in the recovery of numerous cellular phones, controlled substances, and other contraband,” the memo said. “WCI provided information obtained from its investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which included information that WCI staff were receiving bribes in exchange for smuggling in contraband.”

The lawsuit alleges that before Jan. 19, 2023 — and therefore before the lockdown and investigation — “via the reports they received from staff, both Pusich and Hepp knew that illegal drug use was rampant at WCI, and they knew that prison staff was smuggling drugs into WCI.”

Lawsuit includes alleged timeline leading to overdose

The lawsuit alleges that on August 15, 2022, WCI officials found out that Botwinski was under the influence of drugs. Botwinski tested positive for opiates and stimulants. 

Incidents of prisoners being under the influence of drugs “is automatically reported to Pusich as security director,” and Pusich would report incidents of prisoners using illegal drugs to Hepp, the lawsuit alleges. 

Before Jan. 19, the day of Botwinski’s death, Pusich and Hepp knew illegal drug use was “rampant” at the prison, the lawsuit alleges. 

“From the reports of drug use and overdoses, they knew that inmates had an almost unfettered access to drugs in prison,” the lawsuit alleges. “Botwinski’s access to drugs in WCI was greater than his access to drugs outside of WCI.”

The lawsuit alleges that Hepp and/or Pusich assigned prison staff known to be smuggling drugs into the prison in proximity to Botwinski. It alleges that they knew placing staff who smuggled drugs into the prison in Botwinski’s proximity would lead to overdose. 

According to the lawsuit, staff observed Botlinski in his cell at about 5:10 p.m. 

“At about 6:45 p.m., Botwinski was discovered in his cell: he had been the victim of a drug (fentanyl) overdose, from which he died,” the lawsuit says. 

The Wisconsin Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Examiner. 

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Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan at a town hall meeting in Eau Claire, with a chair for Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden who represents the 3rd Congressional District that includes Eau Claire. The chart behind Pocan shows most of the tax cuts passed by House Republicans go to those in the highest income brackets. | Photo by Frank Zufall/Wisconsin Examiner

“Is Derrick here?” asked U.S. Rep.  Mark Pocan, the Democratic congressman representing Wisconsin’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes  Dane County. Pocan was in Eau Claire, the 3rd Congressional District represented by Derrick Van Orden, a Republican, on Saturday, May 31, at a town hall organized by Opportunity Wisconsin, a coalition of grassroots groups, at the Pablo Center at the Confluence, Eau Claire’s performing arts center.

Van Orden was invited to attend the event but declined.

Pocan is one of several congressional Democrats who have begun holding town hall meetings in Republican districts where Republican representatives have been reluctant to meet their constituents who are upset about  budget cuts that threaten access to Social Security, Medicaid and federal food assistance. 

Pocan focused on what President Dondald Trump (R) has called “the Big Beautiful Bill” that was recently passed by the House of Representatives, and which  Pocan called “the worst bill I’ve ever seen introduced by anyone, by any political party.”

He chided Republican supporters for cutting  Medicaid benefits  for nearly 14 million Americans,  raising the premiums for the Affordable  Care Act (ACA), and cutting food assistance to 11 million mostly low-income children through Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

The Republican budget reconciliation package  also extends  tax cuts passed in 2017 for America’s top earners, resulting in a nearly $5 trillion national deficit over 10 years.

A May 20 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of the GOP budget bill projects it would increase the national deficit by $3.8 trillion and decrease Medicaid spending by $698 billion and SNAP spending by $267 billion.

A May 22 CBO projection notes the bill would reduce SNAP participation by “roughly 3.2 million people in an average month over the 2025–2034 period.”

There are different projections on how many people would experience a Medicaid cut, with estimates ranging from 7.5 to 10 million.

Van Orden sent out a release after Pocan’s appearance in Eau Claire:

“What Mr. Pocan is doing is absolutely despicable – continuing to fearmonger our vulnerable populations, including seniors, veterans, hungry children, individuals with disabilities and pregnant women. This bill protects Medicaid and SNAP for those most in need and prevents a 25% tax hike on Wisconsin families. Anyone telling you anything different, including Mr. Pocan, is lying to you.”

Van Orden also disputes  the CBO’s analysis, stating that the CBO has been wrong in the past and tends to be overly critical of Republican-sponsored legislation.

“There are not cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, veteran benefits, SNAP and WIC (Women, Infants and Children program) are not being cut,” Van Orden told a local TV station after the House passed the bill.

But Pocan said Van Orden has been corrected even by other Republicans who admit the bill would reduce spending on Medicaid.

“83% of the benefit goes to the top 1% of the people,” Pocan said of the tax cuts, “so they are taking from the pockets of pretty much everyone in this room and putting it into the pockets of Elon Musk and Donald Trumps and others.”

Pocan added that  only 5% of the tax cuts in the bill will go to working people, including those who won’t have to pay taxes on tips,  seniors and to offset interest payments on car loans. And, he noted, those cuts will  sunset, while the much larger tax cuts for top-earners, which account for  83% of the cost of the bill, are permanent.

“The single largest cut to health care in American history is in this bill, 13.7 million people are estimated would lose access to health care because of the cuts to Medicaid,” Pocan said. “But what doesn’t get as much coverage is they also cut some of the premium assistance for the Affordable Care Act. So it’s a $700 billion cut to Medicaid, but also a $300 billion cut to the Affordable Care Act. We don’t even have the estimates of the numbers yet, but millions more will pay increased premiums.”

Pocan said Republicans have said the Medicaid cuts are really about setting work requirements in exchange for benefits and not a straight cut.

“Two-thirds of the people who get Medicaid are working poor,” Pocan said. While they shouldn’t be affected by the new work requirements, the red tape involved in proving their work history will help push people off Medicaid.

 “It’s not about trying to have any accountability,” he said. “It’s to just make it harder for people to get health care.” Pocan pointed to a state work requirement for Medicaid recipients in  Arkansas, where people who lost coverage were actually eligible for care. The work requirements did not boost employment, researchers found and many of those who lost coverage had trouble accessing the online reporting system. 

Pocan also noted that the projected increase in the deficit under the House proposal would trigger a sequestration requirement, resulting in automatic cuts to Medicare of nearly $500 billion.

SNAP cuts would mean a loss of $314 million for Wisconsin.

 Pocan also criticized Trump’s “on again, off again” practice of announcing tariffs, which had created a climate of uncertainty for businesses.

“Not only did Donald Trump not reduce costs like he promised in November, but the tariffs are actually a tax on all of us,” he said.

Pocan criticized Van Orden for not coming to town hall meetings to defend his vote for the Republican budget bill.

Van Orden has said he prefers telephone town halls where the meeting isn’t dominated by people he describes as leftwing critics, and he also has said that his family has received death threats and is vulnerable in an in-person setting.

Pocan acknowledged death threats should be taken seriously, but also stated he and many others in Congress have received death threats, and he criticized Van Orden’s telephone town halls for only allowing his supporters to talk.

Pocan also criticized Van Orden for going back on his promise never to cut Medicaid or reduce SNAP.  Van Orden has claimed  the bill doesn’t reduce Medicaid and that Medicaid and  SNAP payments will continue as usual for recipients if they meet the new work requirements.

A registered nurse who attended the town hall in Eau Claire said many of her clients are on Medicaid and Medicare, with several living in nursing homes, and she asked what would happen to them if the House budget bill became law.

State Sen. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick) who came to the town hall with Pocan,   said approximately 55% of people in long-term care in Wisconsin are on Medicaid and if Medicaid funding is cut it will also impact the other 45-50% who have private insurance  because facilities will close due to lack of funding.

Pocan also responded to questions about cuts to Social Security Administration staff, saying, “When you cut thousands of people who work for Social Security, you make it harder for people to get access to their money.”

Speaking more generally of federal cuts under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, he added, “They fired the people who worked on avian flu, bird flu, which was affecting us greatly recently, and they had to rehire them at the Department of Health and Human Services.” 

Pocan said he believed Trump won in November because the cost of living was high and noted that in other countries incumbents  also lost because of a backlash caused by global  inflation.

“So that was the No. 1 thing going for Donald Trump in November, but today it’s the No. 1 thing that’s taking him down the polls, because he said he would address it. He’s done nothing,” said Pocan.

Asked how Democrats could encourage younger people to vote, Pocan said, “The good news is younger people absolutely agree with more progressive public policy and not conservative policy.” But people “want to fight back, you want something to happen,” he added.

He encouraged Democratic leaders to hold more town hall meetings in Republican districts.

 “We should be going into many more Republican districts,” he said.

Pocan also encouraged attendees to meet Van Orden whenever he is in Eau Claire and ask to talk to him directly, and invite the press to be there for the interaction.

He encouraged the crowd of 100-plus to become active.

“You happen to be in this very unique position of having a member that is in a purple district,” Pocan  said of Van Orden, who  won in 2024 by one of the smallest majorities for a Republican in Congress. He “could lose his seat if he doesn’t listen to you.” 

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A child celebrates Independence Day | Getty Images Creative

Autocrats and authoritarians share certain traits.

They don’t recognize checks and balances nor the institutions tasked with imposing them. 

They do not recognize the rule of law. Laws that do not suit simply do not apply. 

So, a country’s governing documents such as a constitution are malleable. Truth is what they say it is, facts be damned.

Critics who challenge this – journalists and the organizations they work for, law firms, universities, disagreeable judges, artists, etc. – are in for punishment and derision. They are cast as unelected elites, liars and betrayers of the country’s ideals, the better to silence or mute their influence.

But perhaps most importantly, autocrats and authoritarians must identify enemies for the rest of us to hate. Anyone who’s not part of their tribe, ideologically, ethnically, racially, by gender or sexual orientation is a target. If they speak another language, all the better.

President Donald Trump has focused for years on targeting  immigrants.

Trump himself is a  descendant of white immigrants and is married to one, but that’s where he makes an exception. 

He has accepted white South Africans as refugees while dismantling protections for people from countries he once described as sh–holes. Which is to say, refugees who aren’t white. 

He claims white South African refugees are the victims of extreme violence. As descendants of apartheid adherents, they are members of a group that has retained its privilege in South Africa. They are certainly  not victims of genocide, as Trump claims. The data shows that they are less likely to be the victims of violence than Black South Africans.

Trump’s executive order to enshrine English as the country’s official language – America for English-speaking Americans only – is another example of whites-only tribalism. 

Long ago, the languages of European immigrants like Trump’s forebears  were thought to  delay assimilation and demonstrate traitorous loyalty to other countries. But these days, the fear is rooted around Spanish of the Latin American variety and the languages of immigrants from Asia and Africa.

Around the globe, people in  other countries think a populace fluent in many languages is an advantage, not a deficiency. 

But Trump’s American is one of proud provincialism.

In any case, immigrants already recognize English as the indispensable language of commerce and success in this country.

Ask any child of immigrants. My parents desired that I master written and spoken English, though the price was less literacy in their native language – Spanish.

My proficiency in English brought my parents the most pride.

Now, for many people, speaking perfect English is a matter of safety. Trump  is deporting immigrants of color under an assumption they are members of criminal gangs. But in many cases there is plenty of evidence that those charges are misplaced, and people are being deported  without due process. 

Trump is carelessly rounding people up and sending them to a hellhole prison in El Salvador and to other countries he would assuredly describe as sh—holes —  even to a dysfunctional non-country such as Libya, in the midst of a civil war, without giving them time to respond to the charges against them. 

He has long labeled immigrants as terrorists, although there is little discernible link between immigrants and terrorism.

Under his broad definition, importing drugs to satisfy Americans’ appetites for illicit substances is a terrorist threat,  not  a public health issue.

Even when the administration is forced to admit error in deporting people who have a legal right to be here, it is not returning them. See, Abrego Garcia, mistakenly deported to a notorious El Salvadoran prison.

Like many citizens of color, I’ve become hardened to Trump’s racist  animus. We’ve been cast as job stealers, criminals and a threat to American culture. This is the same animus that made the  civil rights movement necessary. 

Not so long ago, we thought  the pendulum had swung to a more equitable, inclusive country.

But then more than 77 million Americans voted for Trump for the purpose of making America great again.

A country led by an authoritarian leader who thumbs his nose at the rule of law is not the America I know. And it certainly isn’t great. 

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Carol Lemke, a member of the nurses union bargaining team at Meriter hospital in Madison, addresses nurses before they return to work Sunday morning after ratifying a new labor contract. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Nurses at Meriter hospital in Madison returned to work Sunday with a new contract at the end of a five-day strike, the first in the hospital’s history.

The agreement, reached Saturday and ratified by union members late Saturday night, for the first time gives nurses direct input on staffing concerns at the hospital, said Pat Raes, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Wisconsin and also a nurse at the hospital. Raes spoke at a short return-to-work rally Sunday morning outside the hospital.

While it falls short of establishing guaranteed ratios of patients to nurses, Raes said the new two-year contract  establishes a precedent by including  language about staffing concerns.

Wages will go up by 10% over two years, Raes said. She said the wage gain offered “meaningful raises” including 8% across the board and the other 2% for “step increases recognizing our experience and attracting new talent.” 

Raes said the contract also contains  “enforceable language” addressing the safety of health care staff and patients, including a commitment to install a metal detector by the end of the summer.

Staffing concerns and a push for the hospital to guarantee specific ratios of patients to nurses on duty were among the issues that the union stressed in contract negotiations and during the five-day walkout.

In public statements during the contract talks and strike, UnityPoint Health-Meriter officials said they shared the union’s concerns for safe staffing levels but opposed dictating ratios, claiming it would hinder  flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

Raes said the agreement builds on an existing system of committees in which nurses are in charge. “We really felt that was the format for having the staffing discussions and noting where those issues were,” she said Sunday.

The contract also commits the hospital to an annual discussion with the union on staffing concerns and issues, Raes said.

“This was a long and difficult negotiation,” Raes said. “We acknowledge Meriter’s management for ultimately coming to the table and reaching an agreement that prioritizes the needs of our patients and our dedicated professionals. Today, we turn the page.”

The final negotiating sessions were conducted with the aid of a mediator from the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC).

“We did not want to walk,” said bargaining committee member Carol Lemke, “but we felt it was the only thing we could do” to get staffing-related language in the contract.

In a statement distributed by UnityPoint Health-Meriter Saturday night after the agreement was announced, Sherry Casali, the hospital’s chief nursing officer, said, “We are grateful for the dedication and hard work of everyone involved in the negotiations. This tentative agreement represents meaningful progress toward a contract that recognizes the important contributions of our nurses.”

Raes said the union is now turning its attention to state legislation lawmakers have reported they are drafting that would establish a state mandate for the ratios of health care workers to patients in health care institutions. 

After five days of large throngs of picketing nurses, the crowd outside the hospital Sunday morning was smaller. The scene was cheerful and celebratory, accompanied by a sense of relief.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway turned out for the 6:30 a.m. return-to-work rally.

“I want to thank you for your courage because I know this wasn’t easy,” she told the nurses.

While she said she was grateful “mostly to the nurses,” Rhodes-Conway also said she was “grateful to management for coming to the table and finally understanding that we are stronger when we collaborate.”

The contract was ratified Saturday night by “a supermajority” of nurses, Raes said. Although the union didn’t release the official vote count, Raes said, “We had more people vote for this contract than we have ever had vote in the past.”

The union pushed to ensure the votes were cast and counted before midnight because the pay increases take effect with the start of the next pay period, Sunday morning.

The timing was also important for another reason. Meriter management told the union and employees that nurses on strike would be removed from the list of active employees effective Sunday, which would end their health insurance coverage.

The union wanted to complete the ratification process Saturday night “so there would not be any issues — there would not be any threat,” Raes said.

“We have nurses that are being treated for long-term health issues that cannot afford to lose their insurance who were out striking, and we have had other ones that felt they had to cross the picket line to not risk their health insurance,” Raes said.

She said she doesn’t expect divisions among members because of those choices, however. “Everybody, all the nurses, will continue to work together and have each other’s back on the floors,” Raes said, “because that is how we have to work.”

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