President Donald Trump and European Union leaders announced a trade framework over the weekend that will set 15% import taxes on EU goods. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and European Union leaders announced a trade framework over the weekend, just days ahead of Trump’s self-imposed Friday deadline to increase import taxes and his emergency tariffs come under scrutiny in federal appeals court Thursday.

Under the agreement, a 15% tariff will be applied to all products, with some exceptions, coming into the U.S. from the 27 member nations that make up the EU.

The 15% rate will also apply to automobiles, down from the 25% levy on foreign vehicles that Trump ordered in April. Trump’s 50% sectoral tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum will remain unchanged for the EU. The deal exempts certain products, including aircraft, from tariffs altogether.

Tariffs are import taxes paid to the U.S. government by businesses and other buyers that import foreign goods.

“Fifteen percent is not to be underestimated, but it was the best we could get,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told reporters during a press conference Sunday.

Similar to the deal Trump announced with Japan on July 23, the EU has agreed to invest $600 billion in the United States over Trump’s term. The bloc of nations has also agreed to purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy, including liquid natural gas, over the next three years as a way to wean off of Russian fossil fuels.

‘Fundamentally rebalancing’

The White House touted the deal as “fundamentally rebalancing the economic relationship between the world’s two largest economies,” in a press release issued Monday.

The U.S. imported more goods from the EU than it exported by about $235.8 billion in 2024, according to Census data.

Trump had threatened to raise what he describes as “reciprocal” tariffs — tariffs on products outside sectoral categories of steel, aluminum and vehicles —  to 30% by Aug. 1 on products from Europe, Japan and numerous other trading partners.

Trump set the date as the new deadline for his “Liberation Day” tariffs to take effect. The president announced the tariffs in early April and then promptly paused them after markets plummeted around the globe. The episode triggered a trade war with China, during which U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods peaked at 145% before the two parties agreed to negotiate.

Appeals case looms

On what the president described as “Liberation Day” on April 2, Trump heralded a universal 10% tariff on all foreign products, plus staggering additional so-called reciprocal import taxes on countries across the globe that carry trade imbalances with the U.S.

Trump justified the steep duties by declaring trade imbalances a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In February, Trump became the first president to trigger tariffs under the 1977 emergency powers law when he increased import taxes on Canada, Mexico and China in response to illegal fentanyl smuggling.

The emergency tariffs are at the center of a case that will go before the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit Thursday.

The case stems from two lawsuits, now consolidated, filed by a handful of businesses and a dozen Democratic state attorneys general who argued the president doesn’t have authority to impose tariffs under the emergency law.

The U.S. Court of International Trade struck down Trump’s emergency tariffs as unconstitutional on May 28.

Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Oregon were among the states that brought the suit.

V.O.S. Selections, a New York-based company that imports wine and spirits from 16 countries, led the business plaintiffs. Others included a Utah-based plastics producer, a Virginia-based children’s electricity learning kit maker, a Pennsylvania-based fishing gear company and a Vermont-based women’s cycling apparel company.

Upon appeal from the White House, the Federal Circuit allowed Trump’s tariffs to remain in place while the case moved forward.

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh. (Miles Maguire | courtesy of the photographer)

Republican lawmakers are proposing a state law to  limit tuition increases after the University of Wisconsin system approved another tuition hike earlier this month. 

The Board of Regents voted earlier this month to increase tuition by 5% at most UW campuses. UW-Green Bay is the exception with a 4% tuition increase after opting out of an additional 1%. UW-River Falls received a 5.8% increase in tuition to help support student success initiatives. 

According to the UW system, the increase will be an average of about $382. 

The draft bill, coauthored by Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken) and Rep. David Murphy (R-Greenville), would prohibit the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents from increasing undergraduate tuition by more than the consumer price index increase in a given year. The authors said the latest increases were “roughly double the increase in the Consumer Price Index over the past year.” 

“Now more than ever, the Legislature must implement a common sense law placing controls on these types of skyrocketing tuition increases,” the lawmakers wrote in a cosponsorship memo. “That’s why we are again introducing legislation to cap tuition and fee increases for in-state Wisconsin undergraduates at levels no higher than the rate of inflation.”

UW spokesperson Mark Pitsch said in a statement responding to the bill that the UW is “among the most affordable across the U.S.” 

“It is critical that we have the flexibility to maintain the quality that students deserve and parents expect,” Pitsch said. 

UW President Jay Rothman proposed the tuition increases earlier this month following the signing of the new state budget, which provided a little over $250 million to the UW system — an amount that fell below the requests the system had said would be necessary to avoid tuition increases. 

“After a decade of a tuition freeze and lagging state aid, we believe we have struck a balance for students and families with this proposal and the recent state investments in the UWs as part of the 2025-27 biennial budget,” Rothman said in a statement at the time.

This is the third consecutive tuition increase since the end of the 10-year tuition freeze — a trend that comes as state funding makes up a smaller portion of the UW system’s budget.

State funding currently makes up about a fifth of the UW’s total revenue. In contrast, state general purpose revenue made up 41.8% of the UW System’s budget in 1984-85. 

Regent Ashok Rai said that even with the state investment, there continues to be a gap between the funding and the UW system’s ability to keep up with inflation and compensation increases for faculty and staff. 

“The proposed tuition rates will ensure that UWs remain affordable compared to our neighboring peers,” Rai said.

According to the UW, its tuition increased just 7.7% from 2015 to 2025 — a rate below the tuition increases for its peers in other states, which had tuition increases ranging from 21.7% to 28.8% over the 10 years.

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Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said the state would provide $11 million in funding if Planned Parenthood loses its lawsuit and federal support. There are 30 clinics in the state that serve 10,000 patients every year. (Photo by Jake Goldstein-Street/Washington State Standard)

Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide are once again protected from a “defunding” provision passed by Congress after a federal judge in Massachusetts granted an emergency request for a new preliminary injunction.

The order from U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, appointed by former Democratic President Barack Obama, comes one week after an initial injunction blocked only certain clinics from receiving Medicaid funds under the new law. One of the affiliates that filed the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, along with affiliates that did not provide abortion services or that did not bill Medicaid more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023 were protected, which covered a fraction of the 600 clinics nationwide.

In the weeks since President Donald Trump signed massive budget reconciliation bill H.R. 1 on July 4, the mere threat of cuts has caused clinics to close or restrict services in several states. Two clinics shut their doors in rural areas of Ohio, two closed in the Houston area of Texas, and five closed in California, according to news reports. In California alone, the Medicaid cuts would create a loss of $300 million in funding for the state’s 114 clinics that serve more than 1 million patients per year, according to CalMatters. 

In Washington state, where abortion access is legal and available until fetal viability, Gov. Bob Ferguson announced on July 9 that the state would provide the $11 million in federal funding lost if the lawsuit is unsuccessful. There are 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in Washington that serve 10,000 patients every year, and Medicaid covers about half of them, Washington State Standard reported.

The national group, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the initial decision was disappointing and asked the court to reconsider, which Talwani granted Monday.

Attorneys for the Trump administration appealed the initial injunction on July 23, and told the court they opposed the emergency request for a new injunction.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and affiliates in Massachusetts and Utah sued just a few days after Congress passed the bill that included the provision the organization said directly targeted their services for Medicaid funding cuts  — a longstanding goal of anti-abortion advocates and many Republican elected officials. Federal Medicaid dollars cannot be used for abortion services except in cases of rape, incest, or certain health conditions.

The clinics rely heavily on Medicaid funding to provide standard reproductive health care at little to no cost, including treatment for sexually transmitted infections, cancer screenings and contraception. Planned Parenthood provides services for about 2 million patients every year, and 64% of clinics are in rural areas or places with health care provider shortages.

In the order, Talwani said the law — part of a sweeping package of tax and spending cuts approved by a party-line vote — unfairly targets Planned Parenthood for punishment without a trial, and violates free speech constitutional rights by preventing the organization from advocating for reproductive health care.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice have argued Congress was free to target those clinics because “larger providers carry out more abortions and receive more government subsidies,” and said the law is meant to “stop federal subsidies for Big Abortion.” Talwani said those arguments were not persuasive, and that it is unlikely they can justify the defunding as part of a goal to reduce abortion.

“… it is unclear how including only entities that are non-profits and provide medical services in underserved communities is in any way related to reducing abortion. Nor is it clear how withholding Medicaid reimbursements from Planned Parenthood Members who do not provide abortion furthers that end,” Talwani wrote.

Dominique Lee, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, called the ruling a “powerful reminder that patients, not politics, should guide health care.”

Lee said in a statement: “In Massachusetts and beyond, we will keep fighting to ensure everyone can turn to the provider they trust, no matter their insurance or zip code.”

Sheena Scarborough, mother of Sade Robinson, a 19-year-old woman murdered last year, thanked Rep. Shelia Stubbs for her efforts calling attention to the violence Black women and girls face. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

For the third session in a row, State Rep. Shelia Stubbs (D-Madison) is calling on Wisconsin lawmakers to create a task force to examine the violence African American women and girls face and develop policy solutions to prevent others from going missing and being murdered.

The bill would establish a 17-member task force to produce a report on the issue. Members would include two Senators, two Assembly representatives and other stakeholders, along with law enforcement representatives and representatives from advocacy or legal organizations, including those that focus on Black women and girls. 

“This is my third time to try and get a critical piece of legislation passed into law,” Stubbs said at a press conference Friday. 

Stubbs, inspired by a similar task force in Minnesota and one focused on Indigenous women in Wisconsin, first introduced the proposal during the 2021-2023 legislative session, but it failed to gain traction. The second iteration of the bill, during the 2023-25 session, passed the Assembly but stalled in the Senate as former Sen. Duey Stroebel initially refused to allow the bill to move forward. It eventually received a public hearing and was approved by a committee but never advanced to a vote on the Senate floor. 

“Can anyone tell me why this critical legislation could not get scheduled? Can you tell these families why their loved one was not important enough to at least get a hearing?” Stubbs asked at the press conference. “It is not fair to these victims and their families that they have to continue to wait for this Legislature to do something.” 

Stubbs said Wisconsin has the “worst disparity in the nation” when it comes to Black women and girls being killed. A 2022 investigation by the Guardian found five Black women and girls were killed each day in the U.S. in 2020. Wisconsin was the worst in the country, with the rate doubling that year. 

Coauthors on the new bill include Rep. Pat Snyder (R-Weston), Sen. Jesse James (R-Thorp) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee). 

“I’m demanding that we get an answer,” Stubbs said. “I am demanding that we get justice. How many more victims do we need in this state before we do something?”

Stubbs was joined at the press conference by Sheena Scarborough, mother of 19-year-old Sade Robinson, who was murdered last year.

“The things that we have gone through as a family,” Scarborough said. “They stand behind me knowing exactly what it’s like being a victim of a severe traumatic crime in the worst possible way… We are still dealing with ongoing trauma daily.” 

A jury found Maxwell Anderson guilty last month of murdering and dismembering Robinson, who had gone on a first date with him in 2024. Anderson’s sentencing is this week. 

Scarborough said there wasn’t enough support as she dealt with law enforcement and navigated the criminal justice system for the first time following her daughter’s murder. The lack of support  pushed her to start the Sade’s Voice Foundation, she said. The nonprofit was formed to advocate and provide  support for the families of missing Black women and girls.

“There weren’t many other supports through this time…. It doesn’t matter if you are Republican or Democrat. These are our babies. This was my daughter. She was a granddaughter. She was a sister. She had her whole life ahead of her,” Scarborough said. “The task force is definitely needed.”

The task force would examine several related issues. They include systemic causes of the violence Black women and girls experience, the appropriate methods for tracking and collecting data on violence against Black women and girls, government practices including policing related to investigating and prosecuting crimes against Black women and girls, measures that could reduce violence against them and ways to support victims and their families.

The final report, which would be due by 2027, would need to recommend policies and practices that would be effective in reducing gender violence and increasing the safety of Black women and girls and help victims and communities to heal from violence.

Angela Arrington, the social action coordinator for Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., said that  the task force could help address the persistent violence that Black women and girls face. 

“They are more likely to experience homicide, sexual assault and other forms of violence than their white counterparts, and these cases often go unsolved or receive less attention,” Arrington said. “The epidemic of violence is a complex issue with deep-rooted historical and systemic causes requiring comprehensive and coordinated action to address.” 

Attorney General Josh Kaul said lawmakers are needed to establish a task force and that a state investment must be included.

Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers included creating a task force in their budget proposals, but the Republican-led Joint Finance Committee did not include it in the final proposal. 

“People are ready to step up,” Kaul said. “The problem now is not whether there is interest among folks in collaborating and working to identify solutions. What we need is legislative will. We need the legislators and the Senate and the Assembly to pass legislation that will help ensure we have this task force… It’s clear that there is a need not just for action, but for there to be an investment so that we can seriously consider these issues.” 

He alluded to the new budget approved earlier this month that was celebrated as a bipartisan compromise by legislative leaders and Gov. Tony Evers.

“The Legislature was so close to passing legislation that would help us move forward on this issue, but we’ve seen there’s an opportunity for some compromise in this legislative session,” Kaul said. 

The bill includes one position supported with state funding of $80,200 in 2025-26 and $99,500 in 2026-27. 

Kaul said the additional Department of Justice employee would be essential to coordinate the work of the task force, including gathering data that may be needed. 

A similar task force focused on Indigenous women and girls was formed in 2020 by Kaul after legislation failed. Kaul started that task force without state funding by using federal funding from the Violence Against Women Act. He said at the press conference that the agency doesn’t have funding  for a similar pathway for the proposed new task force. 

The 2023 version of the bill did not include funding when it passed the Assembly. 

“This is a really significant issue that takes the investment of time and resources, and I don’t want to see a group come together without having the resources they need to be successful,” Kaul told reporters. “I want to see this done properly and right and that’s what this bill would do.”

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Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner

The divestment of staff, science and sustainability programs at USDA isn’t just a budget cut; it could be a direct threat to the nation’s food system. Experts warn of far-reaching consequences: unsafe food for consumers, more invasive and economically damaging pests for farmers, and an agriculture industry forced to adapt to climate change with less scientific insight.

“We might see more farming in the dark, essentially,” said Michal Happ, a climate change and rural community expert at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Investigate Midwest spoke with multiple agricultural experts and more than 30 current and former USDA employees to better understand Rollins’ leadership style, her impact on the department and the profound consequences her administration will have for farmers, rural families and consumers.

What emerged was a picture of a leader who has brought sweeping changes and largely embraced President Trump’s agenda of downsizing the federal government. However, Rollins has also been tasked with managing Trump policies that she has privately rebuked and cuts made before she assumed office.

Trump tapped Rollins to head the massive federal department at a crucial time for American agriculture. Farmers are grappling with changing weather patterns, shifting trade policies, and even internal administration critiques of pesticide use — a report from Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission, which Rollins applauded, slammed farms’ pesticide reliance.

Trump has praised Rollins’ performance. In mid-April, as an aside during a press conference, Trump thanked her for lowering egg prices. “Brooke Rollins, secretary of agriculture, did a great job,” he said. During his first term, she maneuvered into his inner circle and, as Politico reported, has quickly become “one of the most powerful conservatives in the country.”

Rollins has said her mission is to be the voice of farmers in Trump’s cabinet. She appears to have pull with the president, but questions remain about her influence over decisions affecting the USDA and its staff.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, appeared to wield significant control over department operations, at least until recently. It influenced everything from policy language to which USDA offices remain open, according to court records and Rollins’ hearing testimony.

In a statement to Investigate Midwest, the USDA rejected any characterization that Rollins was not solely responsible for department actions.

“The claims you cite are absurd and without merit,” it said. “Secretary Rollins was appointed by President Trump to lead the Department and to insinuate that anyone other than the Constitutionally directed cabinet officer is making the decisions at USDA is unwarranted.”

She’s also been sandwiched between Trump’s signature policy, an extreme stance on immigration, and the reality of agriculture’s labor force.

“We might see more farming in the dark, essentially.”

Michal Happ, a climate change and rural community expert at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Because of immigration raids, some farms’ labor pools have been depleted, and, already, some fields have not been harvested. Farmers have pleaded for relief. In early June, Rollins pushed Trump to pause enforcement on farms, The New York Times reported. After the news broke, Rollins proclaimed she was in lockstep with Trump.

Raids on farms resumed days later, but Trump recently expressed support for giving farmers discretion over undocumented workers.

“Brooke Rollins brought it up, and she said, ‘So, we have a little problem. The farmers are losing a lot of people,’ and we figured it out, and we have some great stuff being written,” he said during a July 4 speech.

On July 8, Rollins said undocumented farmworkers would receive “no amnesty.”

Farming is inherently risky. Making a living depends on good weather and profitable markets. Farmers try to limit variables, but Rollins’ first months have added disorder into the food system, said Mike Lavender, a policy expert for the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

“All of it is this theme of creating needless uncertainty and confusion amongst people who are trying to do the exact opposite in order to be successful in their livelihoods, support their families and ultimately support their communities,” he said.

The USDA did not directly answer questions about Rollins’ tenure, and, in a statement, it said she was cleaning up a mess left by her predecessor, Tom Vilsack.

“Secretary Rollins is working to reorient USDA to put Farmers First and be more effective and efficient at serving the American people,” the department said. “President Biden and Secretary Vilsack left USDA in complete disarray, including hiring thousands of employees with no sustainable way to pay them.”

In congressional hearings, Rollins said the USDA, which has lost more than 15,000 employees, has enough staff to fulfill its mission. Trump’s desire to make new deals with trading partners — which is causing confusion and financial anxiety for farmers — will create stability for agricultural producers, Rollins has said.

“I do believe, with every fiber of my being, that this era of unlimited or unprecedented prosperity for the ag community is just around the corner,” Rollins told Congress in June. “I’m just really, really sure of that.”

Rollins has painted the present as being “strikingly similar” to the time of the American Revolution, a period she often invokes in speeches. She has also cast her leadership in Biblical terms, citing Romans 13:12, saying she wears an “armor of light” in her current position.

“There is just a lot of darkness — not with this White House or my current boss, President Trump, or our cabinet, but the government in general,” Rollins told Decision Magazine, a religious publication, during an interview last month.

The USDA did not answer when asked if Rollins views rank-and-file employees as part of the “darkness.” But her management of employees varies drastically from her two predecessors, Vilsack and Sonny Perdue, Trump’s first agriculture secretary.

Perdue was a veterinarian and, as governor of Georgia, had led a large bureaucracy, experience that translated into running a complex federal department in a “thoughtful, analytical way,” said Kevin Shea, a USDA employee for 45 years under Republican and Democrat administrations.

“The first Trump administration at USDA was run very professionally,” Shea said. Now, however, “the USDA political leadership seems to be particularly scornful of its career workforce.”

For instance, very little information filters down to employees. Leadership has not effectively communicated what it wants, so it’s been a “gradual process of learning what is and is not OK,” said Ethan Roberts, president of AFGE Local 3247, a union representing government employees, and a nine-year USDA employee.

Agency staff used to plan months or years ahead, but that’s difficult now because they don’t know if they’ll still have jobs or if the office will exist, said one current employee who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Her two predecessors regularly sent department-wide emails that communicated their goals and priorities, current and former employees said. Rollins seems to have a different audience in mind.

“She just posts on X what she’s doing,” said Laura Dodson, the vice president of AFGE Local 3403 and a longtime USDA employee. X, the social media company owned by Musk, requires an account to view posts. “It just seems everything’s coming from DOGE and whatever the White House is saying about federal employees.”

The first Trump administration also instituted funding freezes and reduced staff, including relocating USDA offices out of Washington, D.C. One of the affected agencies was the Economic Research Service, which provides insights into markets the industry relies on.

In 2019, Dodson and her colleagues were called into a conference room. If their job description was called, they would remain where they had established their lives. The others, the vast majority, would be relocated to Kansas City, Missouri. Employees started crying.

Despite that episode from Trump’s first term, Dodson said, the tone of his second stint is markedly different as DOGE, overseen by Musk until May, has wantonly carved up federal agencies.

“They still maintained a veneer of respectability. They were trying to do this for the greater good,” she said about the USDA under Perdue. “Now, with people like Elon Musk, it’s clear this is not the pursuit of efficiency. It’s the pursuit of cruelty.”

For instance, school nutrition researchers were told to flag any studies that included the word “class” — an attempt to discover funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, a Trump target, said one employee who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Another time, DOGE’s main liaison to the USDA, Gavin Kliger, requested that the word “tracking” be added to the list of words to flag in grants that could be terminated, according to an email included in a lawsuit.

“Tracking the exact carbon output of soybean yields does not provide a direct benefit to farmers,” he reasoned in an email to staff, “and we can reallocate that funding in a way that more directly benefits farmers.”

Kliger’s LinkedIn resume does not show any experience in agriculture. He graduated from the University of California-Berkeley in 2020 and has worked exclusively for tech and artificial intelligence companies. He has helped slash staff and funding at other agencies, including the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

It’s unclear how he came to this understanding about carbon tracking.

Carbon is essential to soil health, producing higher yields. Knowing how much carbon is escaping their soil can help farmers adopt better soil management techniques. This not only helps farmers grow more efficiently but helps keep the plant from warming. Soy industry groups have expressed the importance of tracking carbon footprints.

Also, under a Biden-era rule, measuring carbon output helps put money directly in farmers’ pockets — they can sell their output on carbon offset markets.

Despite this misguided reasoning, Kliger appears to have had considerable influence at the USDA.

In the same email, he said he wanted to surpass DOGE’s goal of cutting $120 million in climate-focused grants by a certain date. “I spoke with the Secretary tonight who was supportive of these initiatives – working on getting a memo formalized for her signature in parallel,” he wrote.

Kliger did not respond to requests for comment to his USDA email address. The USDA did not respond when asked about the email or how much influence Kliger had.

“All decisions made at the USDA are at the direction of secretary Rollins to best fulfil (sic) president trumps (sic) agenda,” the department said.

Kliger appears to have moved on. The USDA said his access to the National Finance Center, which manages employee payroll, has been “deactivated due to lack of use. … We would refer you to” the Small Business Administration.

While voices with no agricultural experience have been elevated, those with expertise — USDA employees — have been pushed aside and silenced, current and former employees said.

One skirmish between DOGE and the USDA’s rank-and-file has involved the Trump administration’s return-to-office policies. Some Republican leaders and Musk have claimed that allowing employees to work remotely is a waste.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced remote work for staffers at the Farm Service Agency, which helps farmers access federal funding. As the year progressed, Perdue, the agriculture secretary at the time, considered calling workers back to the office.

However, an internal study found that employees had actually been more efficient, said Charles Dodson, a 30-year FSA veteran who retired late last year.

Despite that, Trump ordered remote workers back to offices when he retook the presidency. At the same time, DOGE began canceling leases of local offices around the country.

At a May hearing, members of Congress accused Rollins of being unaware that local FSA offices were being closed. Rollins did not deny the accusation. Then at a June hearing, she said the General Services Administration, a DOGE target, was behind the closures. (Some offices have since reopened.)

On the ground, the situation has caused confusion and consternation for USDA employees.

When one employee reported to a new office, they were told they weren’t on the list of transfers. How could they follow the order to report to an office if they weren’t allowed in? Another USDA employee, a researcher, was ordered to report to a Forest Service trailer in the woods. And another employee, according to NPR, was told to report to a shed where a boat was stored.

The USDA has also intimidated its workforce, current and former employees said.

According to Roberts, the department veteran and union representative, USDA scientists have been instructed to deflect questions from university researchers — their frequent collaborators — about the agency’s internal affairs.

“They’re being told to say those things for fear it looks like the USDA is silencing them,” he said, “which they are.”

Surveillance also has increased. While the government has used software to monitor employee emails for years, the Trump administration has altered it to detect emails sent to a personal or college account. As part of a leak investigation, one staffer was placed on administrative leave after emailing their personal account, even though it did not contain the leaked material officials were looking for.

The USDA did not respond to a question about the leak investigation.

Some employees have responded by doing only what is asked of them, not going above and beyond. Dodson, the retiree, recounted what a current staffer told him: “I’m afraid to do anything else. I just want to survive and not get fired.”

The lack of staff is a major obstacle, Shea said.

“There couldn’t be a worse time to lower our guard,” he said. “APHIS cannot do its job with that level of personnel. It simply cannot do it. I’ve never been more concerned about the agency’s ability to carry out its mission going forward.”

The USDA has implemented a hiring freeze, but in April it exempted APHIS. The agency has posted job listings online.

“Secretary Rollins will not compromise the critical work of the Department,” the USDA said. The exempted positions “carry out functions that are critical to the safety and security of the American people, our national forests, the inspection and safety of the Nation’s agriculture and food supply system.”

Another challenge Rollins has faced is trade, the lifeblood of U.S. agriculture.

When Trump returned to office, he generated chaos in the agricultural markets by starting a trade war and implementing higher tariffs. In response, Rollins has embarked on a global tour to establish new trade partners.

She has announced a few “Make Agriculture Great Again trade wins.” She recently proclaimed that Namibia, an African country, agreed to accept frozen poultry from the U.S. The Biden administration had opened the market after allaying the country’s concerns about bird flu. Also, she declared Costa Rica accepting U.S. dairy a win for Trump. An industry trade group said the “win has been several years in the making.”

Rollins has said repeatedly that the agricultural trade deficit — the U.S. imports more products from overseas than it exports — is bad for the country. The tariffs were intended to address the deficit, but the narrative hit a snag in early June.

Politico reported the USDA had delayed a regularly scheduled report because it showed Trump’s tariffs could exacerbate the trade deficit. Days later, Rollins defended the delay. “I want to be sure every piece of research we move out is the best, the best-cited, etc.,” she told Congress. (The hearing was about a week after news broke that the MAHA report, which Rollins supported, cited nonexistent studies.)

Perhaps the most pressing issue facing Rollins is helping the agriculture industry as it grapples with climate change, which is altering how farmers grow food and commodities. Rollins, however, has denied the planet is warming.

Her husband is an executive at an oil and gas company, and in a 2018 speech, she said “research of CO2 being a pollutant is just not valid,” according to Inside Climate News. More recently, she led the America First Policy Institute, which pushes Trump’s agenda. She employed another Trump loyalist, Carla Sands, who once said the idea of climate change is “Marxism to control humanity,” according to Politico.

In January, before Rollins was sworn in, USDA employees were directed to “unpublish any landing pages (on the USDA’s website) focused on climate change,” according to court records. Research involving climate change has also been effectively banned, current employees said. If studies include words such as “climate,” “clean energy,” “sustainable construction” or dozens of others, the research will not be funded.

Climate change is having profound effects on agriculture. For instance, the Corn Belt — considered the prime region for growing the valuable commodity used in everything from soft drinks to gasoline — is inching northward. In decades, instead of Iowa and Illinois, Minnesota and the Dakotas could be America’s breadbasket, researchers have predicted.

More recent research shows that, as the world keeps warming and farming gets harder, U.S. corn production could fall by 40% by century’s end.

If the USDA ignores climate issues, farmers could be struggling alone, said Happ, of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

“They want to adapt to what’s going on,” he said. “They want to still have their land there and steward it for the next generation or two. Without those resources, they’re going to just have to figure it out on their own.”

The USDA did not respond when asked about Rollins’ household’s financial stake in fossil fuels. At a congressional hearing, Rollins agreed with a representative who said sound policy follows sound science. The USDA did not respond when asked why the USDA was not following climate change science.

The USDA has forced out 98 of 167 food safety scientists at the Agricultural Research Service, a department arm that studies how to prevent deadly pathogens, such as E. coli or Salmonella, from entering the food supply.

Foodborne illnesses could become more prevalent because the work the scientists were doing will likely just end, said Roberts, the union representative who works for the Agricultural Research Service.

“Who knows what we’ve lost? What discoveries or products that were going to be invented that we’ll just never see?” Roberts said. “We’ll be stuck with the tools we have now.”

A robust food safety system, with research and vigilant monitoring, is necessary to help prevent foodborne illnesses, which not only can hospitalize consumers but also have long-lasting health consequences, said Barbara Kowalcyk, a longtime food safety researcher who is now at George Washington University. In a 2013 study, Kowalcyk and her colleagues showed foodborne infections could lead to, among other conditions, chronic kidney disease, arthritis and cognitive deficits.

An example of science and government oversight working in concert to save lives stems from a deadly outbreak in the 1990s, she said. After eating undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box, more than 700 people fell ill and four children died.

The scandal put the USDA’s food safety system under an intense microscope, and the department changed how it protected America’s meat supply. Instead of eyeing and smelling a carcass, the USDA began testing for pathogens, a monumental task to implement.

The original testing procedure was first developed in the 1960s and refined over the decades. Since the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service began using the system — named Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point — cases of foodborne illness from beef have declined dramatically.

“Lots of effort went into that,” Kowalcyk said. “We don’t see the same level of outbreaks in ground beef that we used to.”

Rollins plans on altering the USDA’s, and the country’s, future through her actions. Cutting funding to farmers, axing scientists, instilling fear in remaining employees — it’s about changing the country’s course.

“It isn’t just about the next four years,” she told Breitbart in May. “It’s about the next 250 years.”

But it could all backfire on farmers, rural communities and consumers, said Lavender, with the national sustainable agriculture coalition.

“The draining of expertise at USDA,” he said, “whether that’s scientific expertise or just expertise of people who have been there for a period of time and have built up knowledge —  it will ultimately come home to roost.”

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This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To republish, go to the original and consult the Investigate Midwest republishing guidelines.

The library at the Green Bay Correctional Institution. Wisconsin Books to Prisoners and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections plan a second test of having books sent to incarcerated people. (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Corrections)

The nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners told the Wisconsin Examiner that another pilot project involving the nonprofit and the Wisconsin Department of Corrections will take place in the next six to eight weeks. 

The collaborations between the nonprofit and the department might lead to the books project being permitted to send used books to people incarcerated in prisons across the state. 

The department said last year that it could no longer accept used books from anyone, including the nonprofit. The DOC cited concerns about drug smuggling and alleged that some book shipments tested positive for drugs. This led to scrutiny of the department’s rationale for the used book ban. 

“We have hundreds of requests for books that haven’t been fulfilled since the only-new-books policy was established,” Camy Matthay of Wisconsin Books to Prisoners said over email. 

In an August 2024 email to the books project, a DOC official said the concern was not with the nonprofit but with people who would impersonate it. 

In late June, the books project organizers said they were able to send used and new books to Oakhill Correctional Institution in a pilot program. The books were added to the library collection, making them available for checkout by those who requested them. 

DOC communications director Beth Hardtke said the pilot program was designed to allow the DOC to test and refine its screening process for donated reading materials to ensure safety. 

Hardtke said that between 2019 and 2023, 20 incarcerated people died of drug overdoses in DOC facilities, while none have died of drug overdoses in 2024 or so far in 2025. She also cited a study about harmful effects that can occur when incarcerated people are exposed to drug-soaked paper strips. 

“The goal is to eventually allow WBTP to send reading materials to individuals at any DOC facility — safely,” Hardtke said in late June. 

Hardtke said at the time that starting July 1, WBTP would be able to send requested materials directly to individuals at Oakhill instead of the library.

Instead, the DOC has asked for a second pilot, Matthay said. For that, the books project will send books to a library at a second prison, Redgranite Correctional Institution. Matthay said this pilot will take place in the next six to eight weeks. 

“Should our books pass inspection without issues at prison number two, WBTP hopes to return to fulfilling our mission, i.e., sending books directly to prisoners who request books from us,” Matthay said. 

She said the group is not likely to return to sending books to prisoners directly before September. 

Matthay said that per the DOC’s request, the group will no longer fulfill requests for specific titles. Instead, prisoners are asked to request books by subject matter or genre. 

She said the group provides tracking numbers that will validate the source of the books, and that the nonprofit will also include embossed receipts. 

According to Wisconsin Books to Prisoners, in August 2024, the group asked the DOC if the organization could resolve the concerns about impersonation by providing a postal service tracking number for every package of books it ships. 

Hardtke said the department recognizes the importance of education and books as part of rehabilitation and maintains libraries at all institutions, offers books on electronic tablets and has educational partnerships with the University of Wisconsin System and the state’s technical colleges. 

Critics have raised questions about the quality of the selection on the tablets and whether the quality of the libraries varies by institution. 

Matthay said that when boxes of books have been returned to the nonprofit over the years, the cause was confusion in the mailrooms. 

In late June, the nonprofit said that many of the packages of new books sent to prisoners had been returned to the group. Sending new books to prisoners is not banned by the DOC. 

“We think this problem will resolve itself,” Matthay said, as the DOC establishes better lines of communication between the agency’s headquarters and the institutions that take in the books. 

“The DOC understands that this will improve security for WBTP as well as the DOC,” Matthay said. She added that “it is also understood that when these pilots are completed and if we get a greenlight, that the new policy — whatever that may be — needs to be clearly communicated to all employees (and prisoners too) to avoid confusion.”

This report was updated Monday 8/28/2025 with new information on the timeline for the start of the next pilot and the confirmation that it will involve Redgranite Correctional Institution. 

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Multiple ambulances and police vehicles respond to a shooting at CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Mich., in June. Homicides fell 17% in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024, according to the Council on Criminal Justice’s latest crime trends report. (Photo by Emily Elconin/Getty Images)

Amid recent political rhetoric about rising crime and violence in American cities, a new analysis shows that violent crime has continued to decline this year.

Homicides and several other serious offenses, including gun assaults and carjackings, dropped during the first half of 2025 across 42 U.S. cities, continuing a downward trend that began in 2022, according to a new crime trends report released Thursday by the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice.

Homicides fell 17% in the first half of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024, among the 30 cities that reported homicide data, according to the report.

During that same period, five cities saw increases in homicide — ranging from 6% in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to 39% in Little Rock, Arkansas.

While the report’s authors say the continued drop in violent crime — especially homicides — is encouraging, they note that much of the decline stems from a few major cities with historically high rates, such as Baltimore and St. Louis.

More than half of the cities studied have higher homicide rates than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, though, the analysis found that there were 14% fewer homicides during the first half of 2025 compared to the same period in 2019.

The authors say more research is needed before crediting any specific policy or practice for the continued drop in violent crime.

The group’s findings come as President Donald Trump continues to amplify concerns about crime, at times citing misleading statistics and narratives.

In a Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump claimed that cashless bail — a practice that allows people charged with a crime to be released pretrial without paying money, unless a judge deems them a threat to public safety — were fueling a national crime surge and endangering law enforcement.

He wrote: “Crime in American Cities started to significantly rise when they went to CASHLESS BAIL. The WORST criminals are flooding our streets and endangering even our great law enforcement officers. It is a complete disaster, and must be ended, IMMEDIATELY!”

Some research suggests that setting money bail isn’t effective in ensuring court appearances or improving public safety. Opponents of ending cash bail often raise concerns that released suspects might commit new, potentially more serious crimes. While that is possible in individual cases, studies show that eliminating cash bail does not lead to a widespread increase in crime.

The Truth Social post also marked a sharp shift from Trump’s remarks during a June roundtable with the Fraternal Order of Police, where he claimed the national murder rate had “plummeted by 28%” since he took office — a figure that overstates the decline and overlooks the fact that murder rates began falling well before he returned to office.

According to data consulting firm AH Datalytics, which manages the Real-Time Crime Index — a free tool that collects crime data from more than 400 law enforcement agencies nationwide — the number of homicides between January and May 2025 was 20.3% lower than the same period in 2024.

Similarly, data released in May by the Major Cities Chiefs Association showed that homicides fell roughly 20% in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the first three months of the prior year. The group’s data is based on a survey of 68 major metropolitan police departments nationwide.

Researchers at the Council on Criminal Justice note in their report that it’s difficult to pinpoint a single reason for the drop in homicides, but they note that fewer people appear to be exposed to high-risk situations, such as robberies.

Most major crimes fell in the first half of 2025 compared with the same period last year, according to the council’s report.

Motor vehicle thefts dropped by 25%, while reported gun assaults fell 21%. Robberies, residential and non-residential burglaries, shoplifting, and aggravated and sexual assaults also saw double-digit declines

Drug offenses held steady, while domestic violence reports rose slightly — by about 3%. Carjackings declined 24% and larcenies were down 5%.

Compared with the first half of 2019, before the pandemic and nationwide reckoning over racial justice and policing, overall homicides are down 14%, robberies by 30%, and sexual assaults by 28%.

Still, more than 60% of the cities in the council’s study sample report homicide rates that remain above 2019 levels.

Motor vehicle theft remains the only crime tracked in the report that is still elevated compared to pre-pandemic levels — up 25% since 2019 — although it has declined sharply since 2023.

The council also released another analysis on the lethality of violent crime, showing that while violent incidents have decreased, the share of violence that ends in death has increased significantly. In 1994, there were 2 homicides per 1,000 assaults and about 16 per 1,000 robberies. By 2020, those figures rose to 7.2 and 55.8, respectively.

Stateline reporter Amanda Hernández can be reached at ahernandez@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.

Heavy traffic moves along Interstate-395 on Nov. 22, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has submitted a proposal to scrap a years-old finding that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the environment and public health, a move that former agency officials say would gut the EPA’s authority to reduce emissions and is sure to end up in the courts.

The EPA sent a draft proposal to the White House late last month calling for scrapping what’s referred to as the endangerment finding on top of vehicle emissions standards for certain cars and trucks. The White House Office of Management and Budget could finish reviewing the draft on Monday and some expect an announcement on the issue the last week of July, Joe Goffman, a former assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said in an interview.

Former EPA officials say such a move would gut the agency’s own power to curb greenhouse gas emissions, which have been widely found to cause global warming.

“It’ll be the most decisive step taken to make the agency totally irrelevant, which then will become an excuse to just get rid of it,” Christine Todd Whitman, the EPA administrator from 2001 to 2003 under President George W. Bush, said in a phone interview.

Whitman said she thinks “the long-term goal of all of this is to ensure that the agency can’t do regulations.”

‘Suffocating its own authority’

The EPA finalized what it is known as the endangerment finding in late 2009. It said that greenhouse gases are a threat to both the environment and public health and that emissions from vehicles pollute the air with greenhouse gases. The finding is what obligates the EPA to address greenhouse gas emissions, Goffman said.

“Essentially what the EPA is doing is suffocating its own authority under the Clean Air Act…to establish programs and rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” said Goffman, who worked at the EPA during the administrations of Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

“They’re making it impossible to take steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” in a deliberate fashion, he said.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced back in March that the agency was going to reconsider the finding.

Its proposal — which was submitted to the executive branch’s Office of Management and Budget on June 30 — will be shared for public comment following interagency review and after Zeldin has signed it, an EPA spokesperson said Thursday in an email.

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Court fight ahead

The Trump administration’s moves to scrap the finding and vehicle emissions standards are its latest plays to dial back U.S. climate policy and efforts to fight climate change.

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans scaled back support for renewable energy projects and other climate policies in the budget reconciliation bill signed into law July 4.

Trump also signed executive orders during his first days back in office to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement again and to aid fossil fuel production.

The EPA said the endangerment finding went beyond the agency’s statutory authority under the Clean Air Act, according to a summary of part of the proposal that was sent to the White House.

The Clean Air Act “does not authorize the EPA to prescribe emission standards to address global climate change concerns,” an executive summary of the proposal sent to the White House states, according to an excerpt obtained by States Newsroom.

Because of that, the agency is proposing rescinding “the Administrator’s findings that GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines contribute to air pollution which may endanger public health or welfare,” it said.

The agency in its proposal also raises a key 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in the case of Massachusetts v. EPA that determined the EPA is allowed to regulate greenhouse gases as part of the Clean Air Act because they pollute the air.

The EPA argued that the decision doesn’t support how the agency has carried out the Clean Air Act. On top of that, the agency says that the “EPA unreasonably analyzed the scientific record” and that “developments cast significant doubt on the reliability of the findings.”

Similar to numerous other executive actions taken by the Trump administration, Whitman and Goffman said they expect this latest move will end up in the courts.

“This is the beginning of a long, long saga,” Goffman said.

From left, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley will look to run for governor in the 2026 Democratic primary, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez announced her campaign Friday and Attorney General Josh Kaul declined to comment on his plans. (Photos by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Less than 24 hours after Gov. Tony Evers announced he wouldn’t run for another term in office, the field for the Democratic primary for governor is beginning to take shape as Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez launched  her campaign Friday morning while other potential candidates are still considering. 

Evers’ video announcing that he would retire because of his family ended months of speculation about a potential third term and triggered the start of the first open race for governor in Wisconsin since 2010. 

The Republican field is still shaping up, with Washington County Executive Josh Schoemann and Whitefish Bay manufacturer Bill Berrien have officially announced. Other potential candidates include U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany and businessmen Eric Hovde and Tim Michels, both of whom have recently lost statewide campaigns. 

The first Democrat in the race, Rodriguez in her campaign launch video took aim both at Republicans in Washington and at the GOP majority in the Legislature. 

“We’ve got a maniac in the White House. His tariffs are killing our farmers and his policies are hurting our kids,” Rodriguez said of President Donald Trump. “Our [state] Legislature refuses to expand Medicaid, even though 41 other states have done it. I mean Arkansas expanded Medicaid. Arkansas, but not Wisconsin. I’ll get it done.” 

Rodriguez was elected lieutenant governor in 2022, when Evers won his second term. She succeeded former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson that year. 

“I’ve been an ER nurse, a public health expert and a small business owner. I’m used to being on my feet and getting right to the point,” Rodriguez said in her video. “I have an announcement: I’m running for governor.” 

“I know what you’re thinking, you don’t have the time for the rest of this video,” Rodriguez said. “Look, I get it I’m a busy parent too, so here’s what you should know: I’ve got two kids that are way too embarrassed to be in this video, a dog named Chico and I met my husband salsa dancing – all true. My parents were Wisconsin dairy farmers. My dad served during Vietnam and fixed telephones at Wisconsin Bell. Mom was a union member who helped kids with special needs.”

Rodriguez got degrees in neuroscience and nursing before working as a nurse in an emergency room in Baltimore. She has also worked for the Centers for Disease Control and has served as vice president for several health care-related businesses, including at Advocate Aurora Health from 2017-2020.

Rodriguez said in the video that entering politics wasn’t part of her plan, but seeing “a broken system” she decided to run for the Assembly. She flipped a Republican seat that covered parts of Milwaukee and Waukesha in 2020 by 735 votes, and served for one term before making her run for lieutenant governor in 2021. After winning the Democratic primary, she joined Evers on the ticket. 

The Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association quickly endorsed Rodriguez Friday.

Rodriguez noted that control of the state Legislature is also at stake in 2026, with Democrats having the chance under new, fairer maps adopted in 2024 to win control. The last time there was a Democratic trifecta in Wisconsin was in the 2009-2010 session. 

“Look, we’ve got a real shot at flipping the state Legislature, and with a Democratic governor we can finally expand Medicaid and boost our health care workforce. We can strengthen our farms and unions and small businesses, fund our public schools and give teachers the raise they’ve earned. That’s the right path, and it’s what you and your family deserve,” Rodriguez said. “I can’t wait to earn your vote.”

Other Democrats on whether they’ll run

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said in a statement Friday morning that he cares about the future direction of Wisconsin and that “I will be taking steps toward entering the race for Governor,” in the coming weeks. 

“The stakes are simply too high to sit on the sidelines,” Crowley said. “Governor Evers has laid a strong foundation. I believe it’s our responsibility to build on that progress — and I look forward to engaging in that conversation with the people of Wisconsin.” 

Crowley, 33, was elected to the county’s top office in 2020, the first African American and the youngest person to serve in the position. During his time in the job, Crowley has been a staunch  advocate for the state’s largest county, including helping secure a sales tax increase for Milwaukee. He also previously served for two terms in the state Assembly.

Asked whether she plans to run, state Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) told the Wisconsin Examiner Friday she is “giving it really serious consideration.” Roys came in third in the 2018 primary that nominated Evers.

“This is going to be a wide open primary,” Roys said. “I don’t think anybody has a strong advantage in it, and I think the stakes are incredibly high.” 

Roys said she thought Evers has “given more than anyone could ask to this state” and has earned the right to do whatever he wants. She said, however, that Democrats shouldn’t rely on old tactics in 2026 and that people want a candidate who will inspire them.

“Tony Evers has been a beloved governor of this state, and so I think he would have certainly been able to win a third term if that’s what he wanted to do,” Roys said. “At the same time, I think that there is a real hunger in the party and in the country generally, to see the next generation of leaders getting a chance, and we have a very strong bench in Wisconsin.”

Roys also ran for the U.S. House in 2012, losing in the primary for the 2nd District to U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan. 

Roys said that there is a lot at stake in the 2026 race. The country is at an “incredibly dangerous moment” with the Republican control in Washington, D.C., she said, and Wisconsin Democrats could have a “incredible opportunity” to deliver on an array of issues at the state level, including funding public education, supporting Wisconsin’s public universities and technical colleges, expanding access to health care, addressing the high cost of housing and child care, and protecting peoples’ rights and freedoms. 

For the last five years, Roys has served in the state Senate, including as a member of the Joint Finance Committee, and has been a strong advocate for funding child care and reproductive rights. 

Recalling her time in the Assembly from 2009-2013, including the last session when Democrats held a trifecta, Roys said Democrats didn’t accomplish enough.

“I’m determined to make sure that we do not blow this opportunity,” Roys said. “I think we need strong leadership from our next Democratic governor to make sure that we deliver for people in this state.” 

Roys said she is considering many factors in deciding whether to join the race, including whether she would be the right person for the position, her recent experience and her family, including their security.

Whether she runs or not, Roys said she will work across the state to help Democrats flip both houses. She isn’t up for reelection this year and Democrats have set a goal of winning control of the Senate and Assembly for the first time in over 15 years. 

“My hope is that all the candidates who are considering a run for governor are prioritizing flipping the Legislature,” Roys said. During Evers’ two terms with a Republican majority in both houses, “He wrote great budgets. They threw them in the garbage,” she said. “He wanted to pass a lot of great legislation that Democrats offered in the Legislature, and he could hardly sign many into law, because he was busy with that veto pen.” 

Attorney General Josh Kaul, who would likely be a top candidate if he runs, declined to tell reporters about his plans Friday, saying that it is important to reflect on Evers’ service and “the significance of where we’ve come in the last six and a half years.” 

“I don’t have any announcement today,” Kaul said. “I think in the next several weeks, you’ll hear from a number of people as to where they stand.” 

Kaul was first elected to the statewide position in 2018 and won a second term in 2022 in a close race against Eric Toney, a Republican prosecutor from Fond du Lac County. Since Trump took office for his second term, Kaul has joined several multistate lawsuits to push back on some of the federal government’s actions, including the withholding of funding

Other potential candidates include Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

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The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's order blocking President Donald Trump's birthright citizenship order from going into effect nationwide, despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court striking down another nationwide ruling. (Photo by Getty Images)

WASHINGTON —  A federal appeals court dealt a setback for President Donald Trump’s offensive to end birthright citizenship, even after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the lower courts to avoid overly broad immigration rulings. The decision likely sets the stage for the high court to again hear arguments related to the constitutional right for babies born on U.S. soil.

Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued a 2-1 decision late Wednesday declaring Trump’s policy unconstitutional. The ruling upheld a lower court’s nationwide injunction against the controversial order.

The original complaint was brought by Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon over the economic hardship states would bear if birthright citizenship was stripped from the Constitution.

Writing the majority opinion, Judge Ronald M. Gould affirmed the district court rightly made its ruling nationwide, despite the recent Supreme Court decision.

“The district court below concluded that a universal preliminary injunction is necessary to provide the States with complete relief,” Gould wrote. “We conclude that the district court did not abuse its discretion in issuing a universal injunction in order to give the States complete relief.”

An injunction covering only the states that challenged the order would be impractical because migrants covered by the order would inevitably move between states, Gould, who was appointed by Democratic former President Bill Clinton, continued, explaining that states would then need to overhaul verification for numerous social safety net programs.

“For that reason, the States would suffer the same irreparable harms under a geographically-limited injunction as they would without an injunction,” he wrote.

Judge Michael D. Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee, joined the majority opinion.

In a dissent, Judge Patrick J. Bumatay, appointed to the bench by Trump in 2019, wrote that courts must be “vigilant in enforcing the limits of our jurisdiction and our power to order relief. Otherwise, we risk entangling ourselves in contentious issues not properly before us and overstepping our bounds.”

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond for comment.

Supreme Court ruling

The decision comes less than two weeks after a district judge in New Hampshire issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s policy to end birthright citizenship and granted a class certification to infants who would be affected by the order.

The suit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of immigrants whose babies would be affected by the order shortly after the Supreme Court narrowed lower courts’ abilities to impose nationwide orders.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority issued the 6-3 decision on June 27 after the justices reviewed three cases consolidated into one that brought together plaintiffs from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. The District of Columbia and the county and city of San Francisco also joined.

The justices ruled that Trump’s directive to end birthright citizenship can go into effect within 30 days of their ruling in all non-plaintiff states.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building in Washington, D.C., in a file photo from November 2024. (Photo by Shauneen Miranda/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Friday it’ll soon release billions in Education Department funding that has been frozen for weeks, delaying disbursements to K-12 schools throughout the country.

The funding — which goes toward migrant education, English-language learning and other programs — was supposed to go out before July 1, but the administration informed schools just one day before that it was instead holding onto $6.8 billion while staff conducted a review. Members of both parties in Congress objected to the move.

The Education Department released $1.3 billion for before- and after-school programs as well as summer programs in mid-July, but the rest of the funding remained stalled.

Madi Biedermann, a Department of Education spokesperson, wrote in an email to States Newsroom that the White House budget office “has completed its review” of the remaining accounts and “has directed the Department to release all formula funds.”

The administration will begin sending that money to school districts next week, Biedermann wrote.

Appropriators cheer

Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, wrote in a statement the “funds are essential to the operation of Maine’s public schools, supporting everything from classroom instruction to adult education.”

“I am pleased that following outreach from my colleagues and me, the Administration has agreed to release these highly-anticipated resources,” Collins wrote. “I will continue working to ensure that education funds are delivered without delay so that schools have adequate time to plan their finances for the upcoming school year, allowing students to arrive back to class this fall to properly-funded schools.”

Collins and nine other Republican senators wrote a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought earlier this month asking him to “faithfully implement” the spending law Congress approved in March.

“The decision to withhold this funding is contrary to President (Donald) Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states,” the GOP senators wrote. “This funding goes directly to states and local school districts, where local leaders decide how this funding is spent, because as we know, local communities know how to best serve students and families.

“Withholding this funding denies states and communities the opportunity to pursue localized initiatives to support students and their families.”

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee that funds the Education Department, wrote in a statement released Friday she was glad to see the funding unfrozen.

“The programs are ones that enjoy longstanding, bipartisan support like after-school and summer programs that provide learning and enrichment opportunities for school aged children, which also enables their parents to work and contribute to local economies, and programs to support adult learners working to gain employment skills, earn workforce certifications, or transition into postsecondary education,” Capito wrote. “That’s why it’s important we continue to protect and support these programs.”

Michael M. Bell, shown here in a promotional video for a documentary project about his son's death, is asking the Kenosha County district attorney to take a new look at the police shooting that killed his son. (Screenshot/via Michael Bell Facebook page. Used with permission)

The father of Michael E. Bell is asking the new Kenosha County district attorney to open a new investigation of Bell’s 2004 death at the hands of Kenosha police.

In a letter sent this week that arrived at the prosecutor’s office Thursday, Russell Beckman, a retired Kenosha Police Department detective, has asked the DA, Xavier Solis, to meet with Beckman and Bell’s father, Michael M. Bell.

Beckman has been working with the elder Bell for more than a decade to analyze the events on the night of the fatal shooting and challenge the official police account of the incident.

Their research has turned up “credible and well documented issues with the integrity of the investigation,” Beckman wrote. “There are multiple indications of a cover up of the true circumstances of the death by high level Kenosha police and government officials.”

The letter comes after a change in the administration in the DA’s office, and after years of conflict that Bell and Beckman have had with the previous DA, Michael Graveley.

After Graveley opposed an independent investigation of the case — and made claims about some of the evidence that Bell and Beckman disputed — they unsuccessfully sought legal sanctions against Graveley through the state Office of Lawyer Regulation.

Graveley, who served as DA for two terms, did not run for reelection in November 2024. His successor on the Democratic ticket, Carli McNeill, a veteran prosecutor in the DA’s office, lost to Solis, who ran as a Republican.

Michael E. Bell was fatally shot during a confrontation with police in the driveway of the home where he was living on Nov. 9, 2004. A Kenosha Police Department internal investigation exonerated all the officers involved within two days.

Officer Albert Gonzales shot the younger Bell at point-blank range after another officer at the scene shouted that he believed Bell had grabbed his gun.

The elder Bell sued the city, ultimately winning a settlement of $1.75 million in 2010. He subsequently campaigned for a state law requiring that police hand over investigations of deaths in their custody to another agency. The law was enacted in 2014.

Since the settlement of his lawsuit, Bell, with the assistance of Beckman and various technical consultants, has highlighted eyewitness testimony as well as physical evidence that contradict key details in the police department’s account of the events.

Because of those discrepancies, Bell and Beckman contend that the officer who thought his gun had been grabbed was mistaken, and that Gonzales was in a position to realize as much but fired his gun too hastily.

Gonzales, who ran unsuccessfully for sheriff in 2022 and has self-published his own account of the incident, has stood by the official police account.

In his letter to Solis, Beckman wrote, “I feel compelled to state that it is my belief that the actual shooting death of Mr. Bell’s son was legally justified, despite my concerns that it was not necessary.”

Nevertheless, Beckman charged in the letter, Kenosha police and city officials were responsible for “criminal acts committed to conceal the true circumstances of the death. I submit that this cover up started immediately after the shooting and continues to this day.”

Along with the letter, Beckman submitted a 95-page document outlining discrepancies and details that he and Bell have compiled to support their argument against the Kenosha Police Department description of the shooting and their claims of a willful coverup.

One discrepancy that Bell and Beckman found involves where various officers were standing during the confrontation in which Bell’s son was shot.

While the Kenosha Police account placed Gonzales on Bell’s son’s left side, with his gun pointing away from the house, eyewitness testimony and the medical examiner’s report indicated that Gonzales was on the young man’s right side, and his gun pointed toward the house.

That is a key difference that could demonstrate that the other officer who thought his gun was being taken was mistaken, Bell and Beckman contend.

“My son was being accused of trying to violently disarm an officer, and that he was the cause of his own death, according to the Kenosha PD,” Bell said Thursday.

“And that’s not the case. It was an accident,” he added, referring to the shooting. “But instead of coming back and saying it was an accident, they lied about it, and they discredit my son, and they discredit our family, and they discredited the law enforcement system. And so those things are really important to me.”

After Bell retrieved a sample of siding from the house several years later that included an indentation possibly from a bullet, he repeatedly sought the fatal bullet from the city of Kenosha, hoping to compare it to the indentation and support his and Beckman’s scenario of the incident.

As part of that campaign, Bell offered to donate $200,000 to charity and to indemnify the city in return for the bullet. City officials repeatedly rejected his appeal.

This past November, according to Bell and Beckman, they obtained records showing that an officer had signed out the bullet from the evidence material in 2007.

The officer did not document his reasons for doing so and did not disclose he had done so during a deposition in Bell’s lawsuit against the city that was underway at the time, they state in the appendix to the letter to Solis.  

“That’s really a new finding,” Bell told the Wisconsin Examiner, raising additional questions about the police handling of the incident.

The Wisconsin Examiner contacted Solis by email and left a voicemail message Thursday seeking comment on his initial reaction to the letter. The DA has not yet responded.

Bell has begun working with a documentary filmmaker interested in producing a film about his case. He posted a promotional video for the project on Facebook Thursday and later on YouTube as well. 

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Rice-Eccles Stadium on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City is pictured on Monday, Jan. 15, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that bars payments from university boosters and some other private-sector donors to college athletes.

The NCAA changed its rules in 2021 to allow athletes to profit from their own name, image and likeness, or NIL. A White House fact sheet Thursday said third-party payments from boosters and other private donors “created a chaotic environment that threatens the financial and structural viability of college athletics.”

“Waves of recent litigation against collegiate athletics governing rules have eliminated limits on athlete compensation, pay-for-play recruiting inducements, and transfers between universities, unleashing a sea change that threatens the viability of college sports,” the order said.

A patchwork of laws exists across states, with no federal NIL law in place. A federal judge in June approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement, which paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.

“While changes providing some increased benefits and flexibility to student-athletes were overdue and should be maintained, the inability to maintain reasonable rules and guardrails is a mortal threat to most college sports,” the executive order said. 

According to the White House fact sheet, the order’s prohibition of “third-party, pay-for-play payments” does not apply to “legitimate, fair-market-value compensation that a third party provides to an athlete, such as for a brand endorsement.”

The order also seeks to preserve and expand “opportunities for scholarships and collegiate athletic competition in women’s and non-revenue sports” and calls on the secretary of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the “status” of college-athletes.

A day before the order, two U.S. House panels advanced a measure that would set a national framework for college athletes’ compensation and bar them from being recognized as employees.

That bill, the Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements Act, or ‘‘SCORE Act,” was approved in the House Energy and Commerce and Education and Workforce committees, which both have jurisdiction.   

The Federal Corrections Institution in Tallahassee, Florida, photographed on Thursday, July 24, 2025. Ghislaine Maxwell, former girlfriend of the late financier and Florida sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is serving a 20-year sentence at the low-security prison for conspiring with Epstein to sexually abuse girls. (Photo by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix)

WASHINGTON — The fallout over President Donald Trump’s handling of financier and Florida sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s case files permeated business on Capitol Hill Thursday, as Senate Democrats urged release of the information.

Meanwhile, in Tallahassee, Florida, a top Department of Justice official interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend and a key figure in the growing controversy.

David O. Markus, lawyer for Ghislaine Maxwell, speaks to reporters outside the Joseph Woodrow Hatchett United States Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Tallahassee, Florida, on Thursday, July 24, 2025. (Video by Christine Sexton/Florida Phoenix)

Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary accused their Republican counterparts on the panel of “concealing the Epstein files” after they voted to quash an amendment from New Jersey’s Sen. Cory Booker, who proposed tying the start date of an opioid data collection bill to the release of Epstein case material.

The committee’s tumult came a day after U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson sent his members home early for their six-week August break to avoid voting on efforts by both House Democrats and Republicans to make the files public.

Before heading back to their districts, three House Republicans voted Wednesday with Democrats on a House Committee on Oversight panel to subpoena the Department of Justice to turn over all Epstein investigation records. GOP Reps. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania and Brian Jack of Georgia voted in favor of the push led by Pennsylvania Democrat Summer Lee.

Earlier, House Oversight Chair James Comer of Kentucky issued a subpoena for an Aug. 11 deposition with Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Florida for conspiring with the financier to sexually abuse girls.

‘Lies and obfuscation’

Epstein died in his New York City jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges for sex trafficking minors. He pleaded guilty in 2008 in Florida for procuring and soliciting minors for sex.

The wealthy broker was surrounded by a powerful circle of friends, including Trump. Attorney General Pam Bondi informed the president in May that his name appeared among many others in the case files, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. The context in which Trump’s name appears is unclear.

“We had the power today, the possibility today, to force out the truth regarding the Epstein files and the lies and the obfuscation that is happening by this administration,” Booker said after the GOP-led panel advanced an amendment offered by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas that rendered Booker’s effort moot.

Booker eventually withdrew his amendment after roughly 40 minutes of back-and-forth in the middle of a vote, and after Sen. Lindsey Graham vowed to help him with a separate funding issue related to the underlying bill to address opioid overdose deaths.

“What we’re trying to do with this bill is really good, and there’s no end to this (Epstein debate). If this is a headline about ‘Cornyn blocks transparency of Epstein,’ then that would be sad because he’s responding to your amendment that would make the bill, quite frankly, fail,” said the South Carolina Republican. “I don’t think it’s helpful.”

Schumer calls for private Senate briefing

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also put a spotlight on the Epstein case in his floor remarks Thursday, calling for the Trump administration to provide a closed-door briefing for all senators on details uncovered during the Epstein investigation, including whose names appeared in relation to the sex offender.

“The Senate deserves to hear directly from senior administration officials about Donald Trump’s name appearing in these files and the complete lack of transparency shown to date,” Schumer said.

Trump and his supporters, including some now working in his administration, dealt in conspiracy theories for years on the information surrounding the Epstein case, including whose names turned up during the investigation and the circumstances of his death.

A July 7 Department of Justice memo poured cold water on the fervor, declaring no incriminating “client list” exists and that officials would not be releasing any materials because of the risk of revealing victim identities. The department concluded Epstein harmed over 1,000 victims.

Trump answered swift and sharp criticism from his voter base by calling them “weaklings” for falling for a “Jeffrey Epstein hoax” in several social media posts.

In lieu of releasing the files, he ordered the unsealing of grand jury testimony in the case, which a Florida federal judge blocked Wednesday.

The president also told reporters that it was “appropriate” for Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, to interview Maxwell.

Interview at Florida federal courthouse

Blanche traveled to Florida, where reporters Thursday waited at the Joseph Woodrow Hatchett United States Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Tallahassee, where the U.S. attorney’s office is located.

The courthouse is about 4 miles from the city’s Federal Correctional Institution, where Maxwell is serving time.

Blanche arrived around 9 a.m. Eastern at the courthouse, according to media reports. Maxwell’s appellate lawyer, David O. Markus, told ABC News, “We’re looking forward to a productive day” and declined further comment.

Markus, a Miami-based attorney with the firm Markus/Moss PLLC, emerged just before 4 p.m. Eastern and told news media outside the courthouse, including the Florida Phoenix, that Blanche “took a full day and asked a lot of questions, and Ms. Maxwell answered every single question.”

“She never invoked a privilege, she never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability, and that’s all the comment we’re going to have about the meeting. We don’t want to comment on the substance of the meeting for obvious reasons,” Markus said.

Christine Sexton reported from Tallahassee. 

National Public Radio headquarters on North Capitol Street in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (Photo by Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom)

President Donald Trump signed into law Thursday the bill Congress passed earlier this month to revoke $9 billion in previously approved spending for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

Trump’s signature was expected after his Office of Management and Budget compiled the list of requested rescissions.

Congressional Republicans approved a small slice of what the White House initially wanted, but the effort still represents a win for Trump, who used small majorities in both chambers of Congress to claw back money approved in bipartisan spending laws.

The law rescinds $1.1 billion for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a congressionally chartered nonprofit that provides a small share of funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service but accounts for much larger portions of local public broadcasters’ revenue. The funding had been approved to cover the next two fiscal years.

The law also cancels about $8 billion in foreign aid accounts, including global health initiatives.

Republicans have long criticized NPR and PBS news programs as biased toward politically liberal points of view, while Trump’s America First movement has consistently called for reducing foreign aid.

The law does not touch the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, after Senate Republicans removed a provision to defund the program created during Republican George W. Bush’s presidency.

No Democrats voted for the law. Two Republicans in each chamber — Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mike Turner of Ohio — voted against it.

It passed 51-48 in the Senate and 216-213 in the House. Each chamber took votes in the wee hours as Republicans raced to meet a July 18 deadline.

Senate Appropriations Vice Chair Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, warned the move undermined the annual appropriations process, which typically involves consideration of rescissions requests during bipartisan negotiations over government spending.

Congress last approved a stand-alone rescissions bill in 1992, following a series of requests from President George H.W. Bush, according to a report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

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

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday slammed the “assault” on public education by President Donald Trump’s administration, underscoring the impact of billions of dollars in funds still frozen for K-12 schools and ongoing efforts to dismantle the Education Department.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, who hosted a forum alongside several Democratic colleagues that also heard testimony from education leaders, advocates and leading labor union voices, said Trump is engaged in “an all-out, coordinated attack on public education.”

The agency has seen a dizzying array of cuts, overhauls and changes since Trump took office as he seeks to dramatically redefine the federal role in education and take an axe to the agency.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily cleared the way for the administration to carry out mass layoffs and a plan to dramatically downsize the Department of Education that Trump ordered earlier this year.

“How can we expect our schools to plan for the upcoming school year when they are confronted with chaos and uncertainty from this administration?” Hirono said at the forum.

Compounding the issue, the administration garnered bipartisan backlash after notifying states that it would be withholding $6.8 billion in funds for K-12 schools just a day before July 1, when these dollars are typically sent out as educators plan for the coming school year.

The administration last week confirmed the release of a portion of those funds that support before- and after-school programs and summer programs, totaling $1.3 billion, but it has yet to release the remaining $5.5 billion that go toward migrant education, English-language learning, adult education and literacy programs, among other initiatives.

“How dare they take the monies that you appropriated, that schools need right now, as schools start in the next two weeks, taking it away from summer school, from after-school, from kids that need English-language acquisition — how dare they do that?” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said at the forum.

“How come we have to constantly go in and sue them and sue them and sue them to get things that you already appropriated?” said Weingarten, who leads one of the country’s largest teachers unions.

Jacqueline Rodriguez, CEO of the National Center for Learning Disabilities, said the withheld money was devastating to students with disabilities.

“This funding delay is sabotaging student learning, educator preparedness and essential services, causing heavy impacts on those students with disabilities,” she said.

“To educators, this isn’t a delay, it’s a breach of public trust,” she said, adding that the freeze is “forcing schools to make tough choices about how they now have to reallocate funding.”

National school voucher program

The forum also took aim at a sweeping national school voucher program included in the mega tax and spending cut bill that Trump signed into law July 4.

The permanent program starts in 2027 and allocates up to $1,700 in federal tax credits for individuals who donate to organizations that provide private and religious school scholarships.

“What we are seeing is just a wholesale dismantling and disruption of the public education system,” said Denise Forte, president and CEO of the nonprofit policy and advocacy group EdTrust.

“And with this new national voucher scheme — which is exactly what it is — that’s really about making sure that students from wealthier families who had already been participating in private schooling will have access to even more public dollars.”

Former Education secretary speaks out

Earlier Thursday, former U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona also criticized Trump’s “attacks” on education, including the billions of dollars in frozen funds.

“The irony is, this is really impacting many of the communities that really were rooting for this current administration,” Cardona, who was Education secretary under then-President Joe Biden, said on a press call hosted by Defend America Action that also featured Karen Smith, a member of Pennsylvania’s Central Bucks School District School Board as well as Nick Melvoin, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Education.

“They’re being impacted the most in many ways,” Cardona said. “I always say, all students are going to be impacted, but the students furthest from opportunity are going to be impacted the most and more severely and more quickly, so let’s put that perspective on what’s happening in education — policies have consequences, and the consequences are going to be felt for decades, just from what was done in the last five months.” 

Gov. Tony Evers will not run for a third term in office. Evers delivers his 2025 state budget address. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Gov. Tony Evers announced in a two-minute video Thursday that he would not be running for reelection — launching the first open race for governor in Wisconsin since 2010. 

The decision came after months of waiting as Evers said he wouldn’t make a decision until the 2025-27 state budget was completed. After he signed the budget in early July, anticipation of his decision increased along with debate over whether he would be the best candidate among Democrats. 

Evers said there was “no question” he could win another term, but said that “whether I’d win or not has never been part of my calculus about running again.” He said he won’t run in order to spend time with  his family.

“Wisconsin, the only thing I love more than being your governor is being a husband, a dad, and a grandpa,” Evers said. “For five decades, my family has sacrificed to give me the gift of service. They’re my world. And I owe it to them to focus on doing all the things we enjoy and love doing together.” 

Evers was elected to the office in 2018 — ousting Gov. Scott Walker in a close election. Previously he  served as state superintendent of public instruction from 2009-2019 and was known for his advocacy for public education. 

During his time in office, Evers has worked with Republican and Democratic lawmakers to write four state budgets, using  his partial veto power extensively at times, and signed new, fairer legislative maps into law.

A love letter from me to Kathy and my family—and to you, Wisconsin. pic.twitter.com/VDcztZ6JPy

— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) July 24, 2025

 

Democrats on Evers not running

Democrats expressed appreciation for Evers’ service and are now considering the future, including who might run for the office.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Evers’ “commitment to every kid’s education, our teachers, and public schools will undoubtedly shape our future for the better and be a cornerstone of his legacy” and that his “steady hand led us through a once-in-a-generation pandemic, and Wisconsin came out the other side with a strong economy, record low unemployment, and a strong sense of community that bonds us all.” 

Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said Evers’ election in 2019 “signaled the end of an era of right-wing governance and a new path forward for Wisconsin” and commended him for vetoing Republican bills that would have “harmed Wisconsinites” and working under split government to get “get things done where possible.” She said she respects his decision to do what’s right for him and his family. 

“Making the decision to step away from public office is not easy,” Neubauer said. “As Democrats, we will continue the work of ensuring the will of the people is the law of the land.”

Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said Evers’ career has been built on “hard work, compassion, service to others, and family.” 

“He has sought and found practical solutions to tough problems, worked across the aisle when he could, and, when that was not possible, he has fought hard for Democratic principles in the face of Republican extremism,” Hesselbein said. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) told the Wisconsin Examiner that Evers has been a great “goalkeeper” during his time in office, but said Democrats need someone that will try to make goals. He expressed immense disappointment in the budget deal that Evers and Senate Democrats came to with Republican lawmakers and recently penned a letter, which has received over 40 signatures, laying out expectations for a potential 2026 candidate.

“I for one am glad that the governor is reading the room and ready to pass the torch to the next generation to step forward and to lead in this fight,” Larson said. “Now that he is moving on and not running, I’m excited to see who steps forward and what kind of platforms they are going to have to basically meet the moment, not just on K-12 education, but higher ed, on tackling climate change… [and] talking about health care.” 

Larson said he thinks the decision to step down could help build enthusiasm among the party’s base, which could bode well as Senate Democrats work to flip the Senate to a Democratic majority for the first time in 16 years. 

“It builds an energy, and it builds an excitement,” Larson said.

Larson said he isn’t worried about how a new candidate will match up with a Republican candidate. 

“The Republicans, [who are] all lining up behind a right-wing zealot who demands loyalty and has supporters who have driven themselves to be irrational and violent…,” Larson said, referencing Trump, “they’re all going down with the ship.”

This will be the first open election for Wisconsin governor since 2010. Some of the Democrats who have been mentioned as potential candidates include Attorney General Josh Kaul, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, state Sen. Kelda Roys, former Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.

Rodriguez thanked Evers for his work in a statement, saying he has led the state with “integrity, compassion, and a deep belief in doing what’s right – even when it’s hard.”  

“There’s still work to do to make sure every family in Wisconsin has a fair shot at a better life – and I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work,” Rodriguez said. 

Crowley told WISN-12 just before the announcement that he needs to speak with his family as he considers whether to run. In a statement, he praised Evers for his work that has supported Milwaukee County, including the passage of Act 12, which reworked local government funding in Wisconsin and gave Milwaukee the ability to levy a new sales tax.

“I’m especially grateful for Governor Evers’ partnership in passing Wisconsin Act 12 and securing new revenues and resources for Milwaukee County, putting us on a path to long-term fiscal stability for generations to come,” Crowley said. “Simply put, Milwaukee County is stronger, healthier, and better off because of the leadership and partnership of Governor Evers.”

According to the Associated Press, Barnes, who lost the 2022 U.S. Senate race against Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, said he is “considering” running. 

Republicans pan Evers’ record  

Two Republican candidates, Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann and Whitefish Bay businessman Bill Berrien, have already launched their campaigns. Other Republicans are still considering whether to run, including U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany. 

Schoemann said in a statement that he wouldn’t be “outworked” while running for governor and said any Democratic candidate that runs “will be more of the same status quo but even more extreme than Gov. Evers.” 

“I look forward to contrasting my record of cutting taxes, reducing government and innovative reforms with their woke, radical agenda,” Schoemann said. 

Berrien told reporters on a Zoom call that Evers stepping down would not change his approach to the race. He jumped into the race earlier this month, declaring that he is similar to President Donald Trump, as an “outsider” and businessman. He is the CEO and owner of Pindel Global Precision Inc. and Liberty Precision New Berlin, which are contract manufacturers that make machined parts.

“We have a vision and a mission of where we need to take Wisconsin,” Berrien said. “Now that it’s not going to be Gov. Evers that I’m running against, it’s going to be someone probably sharply like him, so, you know, we’ve got our plan. We are aggressively getting around the state, listening and crafting a vision and a strategy.” 

Tiffany fell short of saying whether he would run for the office in a social media post, but said Evers “leaves behind a legacy of decline” and said the state needs to change course before “we end up like MN and IL.” 

Former Gov. Scott Walker also made a cryptic post on social media following the announcement, saying “interesting” with a photo of a red hat with the slogan “Make Wisconsin Great Again” and the numbers 45 and 47, referencing nonconsecutive terms served by President Donald Trump.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) took a more cordial tone, wishing Evers and his wife well.

“No matter what side of the aisle we stand on, the decision to run for statewide office comes with many personal sacrifices that are worthy of recognition,” Vos said. “I want to thank Governor Evers for his service to the state of Wisconsin.”

Republicans have struggled to win statewide elections in Wisconsin in recent years, with the candidates the party supported losing  the last three state Supreme Court races, the last two governor’s races, the last two state superintendent races and the last U.S. Senate race.

Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming said in a statement on  Evers’ decision to step aside that he  “saw the writing on the wall: Wisconsinites are fed up with far-left policies.” 

“While Wisconsin Democrats continue to lose the approval of voters, Republicans are already working on winning up and down the ballot,” Schimming said.

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building in Washington, D.C., pictured on Dec. 18, 2017.  (USDA photo by Preston Keres)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to slash its presence in the Washington, D.C., area by sending employees to five regional hubs, Secretary Brooke Rollins said Thursday.

The department wants to reduce its workforce in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia from 4,600 to less than 2,000 and add workers to regional offices in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City.

The department will also maintain administrative support locations in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Minneapolis and agency service centers in St. Louis; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Missoula, Montana, according to a memorandum signed by Rollins.

The effort, which the memo said is expected to take years, will move the USDA geographically closer to its constituents of farmers, ranchers and foresters, Rollins said in a press release.

“American agriculture feeds, clothes, and fuels this nation and the world, and it is long past time the Department better serve the great and patriotic farmers, ranchers, and producers we are mandated to support,” Rollins said.

“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country. We will do so through a transparent and common-sense process that preserves USDA’s critical health and public safety services the American public relies on.”

U.S. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican, called the announcement “very exciting news for Hoosiers.”

“Great to see these services move outside of DC and into places like Indiana that feed our nation,” he wrote on X.

Top Ag Democrat critical

U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, the top Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, slammed the plan, saying it would diminish the department’s workforce and that Rollins should have consulted with Congress first before putting it in place.

The move by President Donald Trump’s first administration to move USDA’s Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture out of Washington, D.C., resulted in a “brain drain” in the agencies, as 75% of affected employees quit, Craig said.

“To expect different results for the rest of USDA is foolish and naive,” she said Thursday. “Sadly, farmers will pay the price through a reduction in the quality and quantity of service they already receive from the department.

She called on the committee’s chairman, Pennsylvania Republican Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, to hold a hearing on the issue.

“That the Administration did not consult with Congress on a planned reorganization of this magnitude is unacceptable,” Craig added. “I call on Chairman Thompson to hold a hearing on this issue as soon as possible to get answers. We need to hear from affected stakeholders and know what data and analysis USDA decisionmakers used to plan this reorganization.”

Pay rates

The USDA release also appealed to the plan’s cost efficiencies. By moving workers out of the expensive Washington, D.C. area, the department would avoid the extra pay workers in the region are entitled to, the department said.

Federal workers are eligible for increased pay based on the cost of living in the city in which they’re employed.

Washington has among the highest rates, boosting pay for workers in that region by 33%. Other than Fort Collins, whose workers also earn more than 30% more than their base pay, the other hub cities range from 17% in Salt Lake City to 22% in Raleigh, according to the release.

The plan includes vacating several D.C.-area office buildings that are overdue for large maintenance projects, the department said.

The department plans to retain its presence at the Jamie L. Whitten Federal Building and Yates Building, both in D.C., and the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland.

It will vacate the South Building in D.C., Braddock Place in Alexandria, Virginia, and Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland. The George Washington Carver Center in Beltsville will serve as an additional office location during the reorganization, but will also be sold or transferred once the reorganization is complete, the memo said.

Each of USDA’s mission areas will still have a presence in the nation’s capital, according to the release.

But the plan includes consolidating several functions into regional offices in an effort to “eliminate management layers and bureaucracy,” according to the memo.

Forest Service

The U.S. Forest Service, a key USDA agency, will phase out its nine regional offices primarily into a single location in Fort Collins. The agency will retain a small state office in Alaska and an Eastern office in Athens, Georgia, according to the memo.

The Agriculture Research Service will also consolidate from 12 offices to the five regional hubs.

And a series of support functions would be centralized, according to the memo. 

Gov. Tony Evers announced Thursday he will not seek a third term. | Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers announced he will not seek a third term in office Thursday — triggering a competitive Democratic primary ahead of the 2026 general election to fill the office.

In a two-minute video posted to social media, Evers said that he wouldn’t be running for reelection despite being sure he could win a third term, because he wants to spend more time with his family.

“I began my run for governor as a proud Plymouth Progressive, and that’s still who I am today. I’m a science teacher at heart who ended up running for office and winning five straight statewide elections,” Evers said. “So, would I win if I ran a sixth time? Of course. No question about that. But whether I’d win or not has never been part of my calculus about running again.”

“Here’s the truth: Wisconsin, the only thing I love more than being your governor is being a husband, a dad, and a grandpa. I’ve spent 50 years in public service. I’m damn proud I devoted my entire career — and most of my life — to working for you. And from Plymouth to Baraboo, Tomah to Oshkosh, Verona to Madison, and everywhere in between, Kathy and my family supported me all the way,” Evers said. “For five decades, my family has sacrificed to give me the gift of service. They’re my world. And I owe it to them to focus on doing all the things we enjoy and love doing together. It’s why, Wisconsin, I’m announcing that I will not be running for a third term.”

Evers had said he would make a decision following the end of the budget cycle, and after he signed the new budget in early July, public debate about whether Evers should run began picking up steam. Some Democrats, including Rep. Mark Pocan and newly-elected Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Devin Remiker, expressed their hopes that Evers would run. Some Democratic state lawmakers expressed opposition to a third Evers term. .

Evers was first elected to the office in 2018, ousting Republican former Gov. Scott Walker in a close election and placing a Democrat in office for the first time in eight years. Weeks before he entered office Republican lawmakers sought to strip him of some of his executive powers before he even took office.

Prior to his governorship, Evers served as the Superintendent of Public Instruction from 2009-2019 and was known for his advocacy for public education.

Two Republican candidates, Washington Co. Executive Josh Schoemann and Whitefish Bay businessman Bill Berrien, have already launched their campaigns. Other Republicans are still considering whether to run, including U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.

For the updated story, see: Democrats and Republicans react to Evers not running for reelection 

A love letter from me to Kathy and my family—and to you, Wisconsin. pic.twitter.com/VDcztZ6JPy

— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) July 24, 2025

A woman cries after her husband is detained by federal agents during a mandatory immigration check-in in June in New York City. The Trump administration’s arrests have been catching a smaller share of criminals overall, and a smaller share of people convicted of violent and drug crimes, than the Biden administration did in the same time frame last year. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

Despite Trump administration rhetoric accusing Democrats of protecting violent criminals and drug-dealing immigrants, the administration’s arrests have been catching a smaller share of criminals overall, and a smaller share of people convicted of violent and drug crimes, than the Biden administration did in the same time frame.

While the Trump administration has caught more immigrants with convictions for drugs and violence, their share of the rising arrest numbers is smaller, as more people get swept up for minor traffic violations or strictly immigration crimes, according to a Stateline analysis.

Forty percent of the nearly 112,000 arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from Jan. 20 through late June were of convicted criminals. That’s compared with 53% of the nearly 51,000 arrests for same time period in 2024 under the Biden administration.

Worksite immigration raids are supposed to free up jobs for citizens. Here’s what really happens

The share of people convicted of violent crime fell from 10% to 7% and drug crimes from 9% to 5%, according to a Stateline analysis of data from the Deportation Data Project.

The project, led by attorneys and professors in California, Maryland and New York, collects and posts public, anonymized U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Some Democratic states are among those with the highest share of violent criminals in this year’s ICE arrests: Hawaii (15%), Vermont (13%), and California and Nebraska (12%) — while some of the lowest shares were in more Republican states: Maine (2%), and Alabama, Montana and Wyoming (3%).

Immigration attorneys see an increased push to arrest and detain immigrants for any type of violation or pending charge as President Donald Trump pushes for higher arrest and detention numbers to meet his campaign promise for mass deportation. Trump officials have called for 3,000 arrests a day, far more than the current average of 711 as of June and 321 a day during the same time period under Biden.

Arrests have accelerated since about mid-May, when government attorneys began asking to revoke bail and arrest people who show up for court hearings after being released at the border, said Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, practice and policy counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which represents more than 16,000 immigration attorneys.

“We’re not completely sure what the reasoning or the goal is behind some of these policies, other than they want detention numbers up,” Dojaquez-Torres said.

“They seem to have really been struggling to get their deportation numbers up, and so I think that’s one of the reasons why we see a lot of these policies going into effect that are meant to kind of circumvent the immigration court process and due process.”

Arrests of people convicted of violent crimes increased by 45% from about 5,300 to 7,700 compared with last year. For drug crimes, the increase was 21% — and they fell as a share of total arrests, from 9% under the Biden administration to 5% this year.

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Arrests for those not convicted of any crime nearly tripled to about 67,000, and increased from 47% to 60% of arrests.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defended ICE arrests Wednesday. Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that the agency was “targeting dangerous criminal illegal aliens and taking them off American streets. Violent thugs ICE arrested include child pedophiles, drug traffickers, and burglars.”

In Oregon, arrests during the first part of last year increased from 51 under the Biden administration to 227 under the Trump administration, with those not convicted of any crime increasing from 34 to 137. Those with convictions for violent crime increased from 3 to 16. Even some Republicans are concerned with the new emphasis on non-criminals.

“The majority of recent ICE detentions involve people with no convictions. That’s a pattern I find troubling, especially when it risks sweeping up people for things like expired tags or missed court dates,” said Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi, a moderate Republican representing Tillamook and Clatsop counties.

Nationally, nonviolent crimes have risen as a share of immigration arrests. The most common crime conviction for those arrested this year is driving while intoxicated, which was also the top offense last year under Biden.

But this year it’s closely followed by general traffic offenses, which rose to second place from sixth place, surpassing such crimes as assault and drug trafficking.

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Traffic offenses, outside of driving while intoxicated and hit and run, rose almost fourfold as the most serious conviction on record for those arrested, the largest increase in the top 10. Those offenses were followed by increases in the immigration crime of illegal entry, meaning crossing the border in secret, which tripled.

The increase in traffic violations as a source of immigration arrests is a reason for cities to consider limiting traffic stops, said Daniela Gilbert, director of the Redefining Public Safety Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit devoted to ending mass incarceration.

“It’s an important point to consider intervening in so that there can be less interaction, and so ICE has less opportunity to continue its indiscriminate dragnet of enforcement,” Gilbert said.

The institute argues in general that traffic stops should be limited to safety issues rather than low-level infractions such as expired registrations or single burned-out taillights, both because they do not improve public safety and because they disproportionately affect drivers of color.

Such policies limiting stops under some conditions are in place in 10 states and in cities in six other states, according to the institute.

The most recent state polices took effect last year in California and Illinois, while a policy is set to take effect in October in Connecticut. The most recent city policies were in Denver and in East Lansing and Ypsilanti, Michigan. Six other states have considered legislation recently.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@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.