OTTUMWA, Iowa — Leisa and Kent Walker recently received a disturbing notice: The private company managing their son’s Medicaid coverage intends to cut nearly 40% of what it spends for caregivers who help him live at home instead of in a nursing home.

Sam Walker, 35, has severe autism and other disabilities. He is deaf and cannot speak. Sometimes when he’s frustrated, he hits himself or others.

Medicaid provides about $8,500 a month for health workers who visit his apartment in the basement of his parents’ home. The staffers help him with everyday tasks, including dressing, bathing, and eating. They also take Walker on outings, such as dining at restaurants, volunteering at Goodwill, and exercising at a recreation center or on park trails. They stick to a strict routine, which soothes him.

His parents say that without the in-home services, their son would need to move to a specialized residential facility in another state. Sending him away would break their hearts and cost taxpayers much more money. They strive to keep him home because they know change makes him anxious.

“The last thing I want is to put him into some kind of care facility, where he’ll just get kicked out,” said his mother, Leisa. The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to KFF Health News’ questions about the Walkers’ case.

Federal cuts raise pressure

Patient advocates say state administrators in Iowa appear to be reining in Medicaid spending by cutting what are known as home and community-based services for people with disabilities, and they’ve heard of multiple families facing battles like the Walkers’.

Disability rights advocates expect the pressure to intensify as states respond to reductions in federal Medicaid funding called for under the Trump administration’s signature tax and spending law, which passed last year.

June Klein-Bacon, CEO of the Brain Injury Association of Iowa, said the cuts and proposed rule changes appear to be part of a quiet attempt to save money in response to the state’s budget deficit and expected reductions in federal Medicaid funding.

Medicaid, jointly financed by the federal and state governments, covers people with low incomes or disabilities. Walker is one of nearly 2 million people served by “Medicaid waiver” programs, which pay for care that allows people with disabilities or who are at least 65 to live at home.

Unlike most parts of Medicaid, waiver programs are optional for states. Idaho’s governor noted that fact in January, when he suggested legislators consider cutting them. Disability rights groups fear other states will do the same. Leaders in Colorado, Missouri, and Nebraska have considered such cuts this year.

Leisa Walker has heard Trump administration officials claim the national Medicaid cuts are intended to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse. That’s not how it will play out, she said. “These are real people, real families, and this causes real suffering when you do this to people,” she said. “It’s a very scary time.”

Iowa Total Care, a private insurance company that manages Sam Walker’s Medicaid benefits, intends to cut his in-home care coverage by about $3,200 per month, his mother said. Company leaders told a judge they are following state officials’ direction, but they did not dispute Leisa Walker’s math.

Walker has been on the waiver program for three decades. It covers assistance from workers known as “direct service providers” — one of whom has been with him for 25 years. His parents receive no pay for the hours they spend caring for him when the aides aren’t working.

On a February morning, Leisa and Kent Walker drove an hour and a half to Des Moines for an appeal hearing. An administrative law judge sat behind a wooden desk in a conference room as the Walkers and their lawyer faced off against three representatives from Iowa Total Care, a subsidiary of the national insurer Centene Corp.

Leisa testified that her son is 6 feet tall and weighs 230 pounds. Although he knows some sign language, he has trouble communicating, she said. When he becomes frustrated or his routine is interrupted, he sometimes wails and hits himself or other people. “It’s devastating to watch,” she testified.

He’s not a bad person, she said. “He doesn’t understand how strong he is.”

She said her family would try to keep his main caregiver employed under the planned Medicaid reduction but would have to drop others who cover nights and weekends. She said no residential facility near their southern Iowa home could address her son’s complicated needs. She said a case manager told her that a Florida facility might be the closest one that could safely handle him.

Leisa Walker testified that the state’s Medicaid program would pay about $22,000 per month to put him in an institution, more than double what the program spends on his home care.

Sam Walker’s longtime psychiatrist, Christopher Okiishi, testified that Walker’s family and their support staff spent years developing a “fragile” but stable existence for him.

Lori Palm, a senior manager for Iowa Total Care, testified that Sam Walker gets about 16 hours of daily assistance financed by Medicaid. Palm said much of that time amounts to “supervision.” She said state officials recently advised her company that the program should pay mainly for “skill-building” time, not supervision.

The Walkers showed the judge a 2018 document in which a previous Iowa Medicaid director stipulated that supervision of people with disabilities is an allowable service for workers paid under the program.

Judge Rachel Morgan asked the Iowa Total Care representatives if the recent policy change was made in writing by the state Department of Health and Human Services. They said it was not and that they couldn’t specify who at the department had given them the new guidance.

The judge suggested during the hearing that for someone like Sam Walker, learning to regulate emotions could be an important form of skill-building. Three days later, the judge ruled in the Walkers’ favor, writing that the insurer’s attempt to cut care hours was improper. The insurer appealed the decision to the director of the Iowa Department of Health Human Services, who could overrule it. The dispute could eventually wind up in district court.

Iowa Total Care and the state Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions about the reports that many other Iowans with disabilities face reductions in care hours covered by Medicaid. Department spokesperson Danielle Sample said in an email that the agency supports home and community-based services, which, she noted, help “states save money by avoiding expensive long-term facility care.”

Spokespeople for the federal Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees Medicaid nationally, did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.

Medicaid waiver programs started in the 1980s, after President Ronald Reagan heard about an Iowa girl with a disability who was forced to live in a hospital for months because Medicaid wouldn’t pay for home care. The Republican president thought it was outrageous that the girl, Katie Beckett, had to live that way, even though home care would have been cheaper.

Members of Congress approved allowing states to use their Medicaid programs to pay for in-home care. But they made the change optional, to offer states flexibility and encourage innovation.

Designating such spending as optional “waiver programs” also made the change more politically palatable, said Kim Musheno, senior director of Medicaid policy for The Arc of the United States, which represents people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Prospects were much different for babies born with serious disabilities before the change, Musheno said. “Doctors instructed families to forget they existed, and to put them in an institution.”

Waivers have been cut before

All states have Medicaid waiver programs, but benefits and the number of people covered vary significantly. Applicants often wait months or years to get into the programs because of limited funding. More than 600,000 Americans were on waiting lists or “interest lists” for waiver services in 2025, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

Disability rights advocates and care providers have fought for decades to maintain funding for the programs, but a national leader said the threat feels especially severe now.

“When Medicaid is cut, people with disabilities are at the center of the impact,” said Barbara Merrill, CEO of the American Network of Community Outcomes and Resources, which represents agencies that care for people with intellectual disabilities or autism.

That’s what happened after Congress reduced Medicaid funding in 2011, according to a recent paper published by Health Affairs.

States could again rein in waiver programs by limiting enrollment, reducing covered services, or cutting pay for caregivers, who already are in short supply.

However, states that try to cut the in-home care programs could face legal challenges, Musheno said. The U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1999 that people with disabilities have a right to live outside of institutions if possible. The decision, in the case of Olmstead v. L.C., has been cited in lawsuits against states that fail to provide care options apart from nursing homes and similar facilities.

Several Iowans who belong to a Facebook group for Medicaid participants have posted in recent weeks that their families were notified of impending cuts in coverage of home care services for people with disabilities.

Sam Walker’s main caregiver, Andy Koettel, has worked with him since Walker was in fourth grade. Koettel, who works full-time, knows how to keep Walker calm in most situations and soothe him during a blowup. Their relationship took years to build, and it is a key reason Walker can continue to live at home with his parents, Koettel said.

“If I was not there, it would be incredibly difficult for all of them,” he said.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated following the day’s ceremonies. 

COLUMBIA — Thousands of mourners came to South Carolina’s capital Monday to say “thank you” to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the iconic civil rights figure whose activism helped change a nation.

Jackson died Feb. 17 at his home in Chicago at age 84. Though never an elected official himself, he inspired generations of Americans through his historic 1984 and 1988 campaigns for president. Two of his sons became congressmen: former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and U.S. Rep. Jonathan Jackson of Illinois.

But it was at a segregated library in Greenville in 1960, while as a college student home from summer break, that their father’s leadership in the Civil Rights Movement began.

Both inside the Statehouse and later at a church ceremony, the audience declared “I am somebody” — the iconic phrase Jackson used to encourage and empower youth, whether with children on Sesame Street or to open a music festival in a Los Angeles coliseum.

“From the streets of South Carolina to the global stage, he carried a message rooted in faith and committed to expanding opportunity for all,” reads the program for a Statehouse ceremony “welcoming home a son of South Carolina.”

The tribute in his home state began with a mile-long procession of his casket on a horse-drawn wagon from Leevy’s Funeral Home to the Statehouse. On top of the dome the flags flew at half-mast in his honor from sunrise to sunset. His closed casket, draped with an American flag, was brought into the Statehouse shortly before 10 a.m.

By then, people had already been standing in line for nearly two hours.

They included Camden residents Shirley Stanley Gorham, 79, and Mary Stanley, 78, who attended the 1963 March on Washington, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech. Jackson, also in the crowd, later marched alongside King and witnessed his 1968 assassination in Memphis.

Gorham’s daughter, Theresa Allen, said the voices of King and Jackson gave her hope and a belief in equality.

She came to the Statehouse to give him one last “ginormous ‘thank you’ for his service,” Allen, also of Camden, told the SC Daily Gazette. “Being here today is also saying to him, although you earned your wings, we’re still here to be that voice for you.”

Gentarra Williams, 30, of Columbia, watched the procession with her mother and 1-year-old nephew Jordan.

“We get to witness history,” Williams said. “I want my nephew to see a history book and see this picture and say, ‘Everybody, I was there. I saw it.’”

Jackson’s stop at the Statehouse was a “high and unusual honor,” said his eldest daughter, Santita Jackson.

He’s among only a dozen or so people to lie in honor in the Statehouse and likely the first who was not an elected official.

Santita Jackson thanked Gov. Henry McMaster for the honor. The Republican governor approved the family’s request after the office of U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson denied a similar request that Jackson lie in state beneath the U.S. Capitol Rotunda. McMaster did not attend the morning ceremony but later stopped by the casket to pay his respects.

Monday’s events are part of a nationwide opportunity for people to say goodbye to Jackson, who learned directly from King before mentoring others and launching the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in Chicago that helped create the modern Democratic Party.

Celebrations of his life are also scheduled in Chicago and Washington, D.C.

It’s more fitting that Jackson lie in state in South Carolina anyway, said Jesse Jackson Jr.

“Our father was a South Carolina native. He began his fight for civil rights here. He brought meaningful change back to benefit his home state,” he said.

‘I am somebody’

Ahead of the doors opening to the public around noon, more than 100 people gathered inside the Statehouse to celebrate “a life well-lived and a job well-done,” said Rep. Jermaine Johnson, a Hopkins Democrat who’s running for governor.

Johnson, who emceed the hour and-a-half ceremony, was among scores of Black politicians, businessmen and activists who credited Jackson with paving the way for their successes.

Underscoring Jackson’s outsized impact was the celebrity-attendance at the invitation-only ceremony.

They included U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn; former U.S. Rep. Andrew Young of Georgia, a close confidante of King during the Civil Rights Movement; and University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley. Greg Mathis, of TV fame for the show “Judge Mathis,” credited Jackson with telling him to take his TV opportunity.

Legislators past and present attending both events included former Rep. James Felder. In 1970, he, I.S. Leevy Johnson and the late Herbert Fielding made history as the first Black South Carolinians elected to the House since 1902.

Felder said he first met Jackson when their schools took a field trip to the Statehouse. As Black students, however, they had to stay outside.

“He stood in the force of history and changed its course,” Felder said.

Clyburn said he too first met Jackson in high school. The two played for rival schools in football and basketball.

Jackson was his school’s starting quarterback, while Clyburn was “a prolific benchwarmer,” he said.

But Clyburn befriended Jackson’s mother, who supported Clyburn’s political career from the get-go. At her urging, Clyburn and Jackson became friends, and eventually their families grew so close that their children became friends, too.

“This is a friendship that spans generations,” Clyburn said.

State Rep. Chandra Dillard, a Greenville Democrat, and Greenville Mayor Knox White talked about Jackson’s work in his hometown.

That included organizing a July 1960 sit-in at the then-segregated Greenville County Public Library. The arrest of the Greenville Eight, as the group of students became known, prompted the library’s integration several months later.

Nearly half a century later, in 2005, Jackson led a march in his hometown to honor Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, as a way to highlight Greenville County’s status as the nation’s last to recognize MLK Day as a holiday for public workers. The County Council voted the next month to make MLK Day a holiday starting in January 2006.

That was six years after MLK Day became a permanent state holiday as part of a compromise that brought the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome and put it on a 30-foot flagpole beside a monument along Columbia’s main thoroughfare. It was a compromise that neither Jackson nor the NAACP supported.

Jackson was back in the Statehouse in July 2015 to watch the Legislature vote to remove the battle flag from Statehouse grounds for good. He was among those who called for the flag to come down after an avowed white supremacist killed nine people at a historic Black church at the conclusion of a Wednesday night Bible study.

“He identified with the leftover, the lowdown and the mistreated,” Dillard said. “And he gave them a home by telling them that they were somebody.”

Because of him, “little boys like myself are able to say, ‘I am somebody,’” said Sen. Karl Allen, a Greenville Democrat and friend of Jackson’s.

Allen and politicians who followed his speech repeated Jackson’s mantra, declaring with the crowd: “I am somebody.”

Jackson often cited those words from a 1950s poem by an Atlanta pastor.

During a nearly three-hour memorial at Brookland Baptist in West Columbia, Jesse Jackson Jr. led the crowd of hundreds in a roaring call and response of the words he father often repeated and adapted.

“Respect me,” Jackson Jr. said, as the crowd chanted back each phrase. “Protect me. Never neglect me. I am somebody.”

Those inspirational phrases, as well as his father’s use of them, were more than political, he said.

“I believe dad’s contribution is psychological,” he said. “That ‘I am somebody’ restores the hope of a people who did not believe in themselves.”

Other civil rights leaders sharing their memories of Jackson included Cleveland Sellers, the former president of Voorhees College, a historically Black private school in Denmark.

Sellers worked as Jackson’s campaign coordinator for southeastern states. Their early activism required sacrifice, he said.

During the 1960s, peaceful protests in the South landed people in jail on trumped up charges, put them in harm’s way and often took them away from their families. But Jackson did it anyway, said Sellers, who also paid a price. He was the only person imprisoned for what became known as the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, when state troopers killed three and injured 28 students who were protesting a whites-only bowling alley. Sellers, among the injured, received a one-year sentence for inciting a riot.

A formal apology from the state took 35 years, issued by Gov. Mark Sanford.

“It doesn’t look easy,” Sellers said. “It never was easy.”

Santita Jackson also talked about the family side of her father, who often brought her and her siblings with him on trips. He was daddy first, she said, before singing “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” with the church choir’s backing.

Jackson’s children urged the audience to continue working toward the dream of equality.

“We thank God for this king, this son of South Carolina, this great man who will live forever and ever and ever, as long as you call his name and as long as you don’t just remember him but resemble him,” said Santita Jackson.

“Do the work,” she finished.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Monday temporarily blocked a Department of Homeland Security policy that instituted a seven-day notice requirement for members of Congress to conduct oversight visits at facilities that hold immigrants, finding it likely violates appropriations law that allows for unannounced visits.

The order from Judge Jia Cobb of the District Court for the District of Columbia rejects initial arguments from the Trump administration that the separate funding stream from the tax cuts and spending package passed last year circumvents a 2019 appropriations law that allows for unannounced oversight visits to those facilities from lawmakers.

Members of Congress sued the government over the policy from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

“Throughout this litigation, Defendants have emphasized the vast amount of money appropriated to DHS and ICE under the (One Big Beautiful Bill Act). The Court agrees that these funds are indeed staggering,” Cobb said. “But the power of the purse rests with Congress, and even a deep-pocketed agency must comply with Congress’s restrictions on the permissible uses of appropriated funds.” 

The Department of Justice appealed the decision shortly after the order was given. 

DHS shutdown

Monday’s decision came amid a partial government shutdown of DHS over Democrats’ concerns about enforcement tactics used by immigration agents following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.  

The group representing the 13 members of Congress who filed suit, Democracy Forward, praised the decision.

“Today’s ruling makes it clear that Secretary Noem cannot operate detention facilities in the shadows or silence elected officials who are doing their jobs,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement. “The court has once again affirmed that oversight is not optional, transparency is not negotiable, and human rights do not disappear at the doors of a detention center.”

The 13 Democratic members of Congress who sued included: Joe Neguse of Colorado, Adriano Espaillat of New York, Kelly Morrison of Minnesota, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Robert Garcia of California, J. Luis Correa of California, Jason Crow of Colorado, Veronica Escobar of Texas, Dan Goldman of New York, Jimmy Gomez of California, Raul Ruiz of California, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Norma Torres of California.

This policy is the third from Noem to require members of Congress to notify the agency to conduct an oversight visit. A 2019 appropriations law, referred to as Section 527, allows any member of Congress to carry out an unannounced visit to a federal facility that holds immigrants.

The Wisconsin Elections Commission has recommended that the Racine County District Attorney file charges against 13 people for unlawful irregularities in the petitions collected during a failed attempt to recall Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in 2024. 

In a letter sent on Friday, WEC said that it was recommending charges against two people who collected signatures on behalf of the recall effort who had listed addresses that aren’t their residences on paperwork they submitted for  the signature drive. WEC recommended charges against another 11 people for turning in petition paperwork that listed signatures from people who later said they did not sign to support the recall. 

However WEC did not recommend charges against recall effort organizer Matthew Snorek. The letter states that in a complaint to WEC, Vos made “vague allegations” against Snorek, but they weren’t enough to confirm that he had broken a state law. 

The recall effort at the center of the allegations was the second failed recall drive against Vos in 2024. A faction of the Wisconsin Republican party, particularly around Vos’ Racine County district, has become especially engaged in conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election. The recall drives were started because of what organizers charged was Vos’  failure to adequately investigate claims that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald Trump. 

This is also not the first time that conservatives have run afoul of the rules while opposing Vos. The state ethics commission alleged that during the 2022 primary elections, a political action committee connected to Trump, the Langlade County Republican Party and then-state Rep. Janel Brandtjen worked to illegally funnel $40,000 to the campaign of Vos’ primary challenger. 

Vos announced last month that he will not seek reelection this year, ending his time as the state’s longest serving Assembly Speaker. For the past eight years under Wisconsin’s divided government, he has been the most powerful Republican in the state. 

In a statement, Vos called the recommended charges “just another example of how these recall attempts were a complete waste of time and money when we hold regularly scheduled elections every two years.”

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WASHINGTON — A federal circuit court announced Monday it will hold oral arguments in May to determine whether a lower court erred when it blocked the Pentagon from downgrading Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s retirement rank and pay for appearing in the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” video. 

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s new schedule came just days after the Trump administration requested an expedited timeline.

“In light of the public’s unusual interest in prompt disposition of this appeal, the government respectfully requests that this Court set an expedited briefing schedule that will allow the Court to hear oral argument this Term, before the Court’s summer recess,” Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate wrote in a filing submitted Friday. 

The circuit court now expects the Trump administration to file a brief by March 20 explaining why it appealed the district court’s ruling and for Kelly’s legal team to file its reply brief by April 27. Attorneys for both sides would then present their oral arguments May 7. 

Karen LeCraft Henderson, nominated by President George H.W. Bush in 1990; Cornelia T.L. Pillard, nominated by President Barack Obama in 2013; and Florence Y. Pan, nominated by President Joe Biden in 2022, make up the three-judge panel that will rule on the appeal.  

90-second video

The Defense Department’s attempt to punish Kelly stems from when he and five other Democratic lawmakers posted a 90-second video last year, telling members of the military and those in the nation’s intelligence communities that they can and must refuse illegal orders. 

Kelly, a former Navy captain, was the only member of the group still subject to the military’s judicial system, leading Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to issue a letter of censure and initiate proceedings to downgrade the senator’s retirement rank and pay. 

Kelly filed a lawsuit in January, seeking to block those efforts on several fronts, including that it violated his constitutional rights. 

“The First Amendment forbids the government and its officials from punishing disfavored expression or retaliating against protected speech,” Kelly’s lawsuit stated. “That prohibition applies with particular force to legislators speaking on matters of public policy. As the Supreme Court held 60 years ago, the Constitution ‘requires that legislators be given the widest latitude to express their views on issues of policy,’ and the government may not recharacterize protected speech as supposed incitement in order to punish it.”

Judge rules for Kelly

Senior Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court wrote in his 29-page ruling granting Kelly a preliminary injunction that “it is a particularly valuable asset for our country to have retired veterans contributing to public discussion on military matters and policy. 

“Given their ‘distinct perspective and specialized expertise,’ it is essential for retired veterans to contribute to our ‘public discourse’ on issues of military policy. Allowing Defendants’ actions against Senator Kelly to stand would further chill the speech of these retired servicemembers and thereby ‘impoverish public debate on critical issues relating to our military and its role in domestic and foreign affairs.’”

The Department of Justice had sought a grand jury indictment against Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander for their participation in the video. But it was unsuccessful. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday he expects war with Iran will continue however long it takes to achieve his objectives, which include eliminating the country’s missile program, preventing its leaders from building a nuclear weapon and ensuring it cannot fund terrorism.

“Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks,” he said at a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “But we have capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it. Whatever.”

His remarks followed an early morning briefing by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who emphasized to those in attendance the U.S. war on Iran will continue unabated on Trump’s terms, with more troops on the way and more casualties expected.

Speaking in public for the first time since the United States and Israel launched a massive attack early Saturday, Hegseth would not specify a timeline or exit strategy for the mission.

“We will finish this on America first conditions of President Trump’s choosing, nobody else’s, as it should be,” Hegseth said.

By 4 p.m. Eastern, U.S. Central Command had updated the death toll of American service members to six, though little detail was provided. Their names, ranks and hometowns have not been disclosed.

Trump mentioned the U.S. military troops who had been killed as a reason to continue with his war.

“Today, we grieve for the … heroic American service members who have been killed in action, and send our love and support to their families,” he said. “In their memory, we continue this mission with ferocious, unyielding resolve to crush the threat this terrorist regime poses to the American people, and a threat, indeed it is.”

Trump said the objectives of the conflict with Iran “are clear.”

Military forces, he said, will destroy the country’s missile capabilities and its navy, prevent it from building a nuclear weapon and block its leaders from sponsoring terrorism.  

Trump did not say whether he would seek approval from Congress, which holds the power to declare war under the Constitution. And he did not take questions from reporters as he left the Medal of Honor ceremony about whether he would send U.S. ground troops into Iran.

Hegseth at his briefing commented on the three U.S. service members whose deaths were announced Sunday. The secretary said that “a squirter” — apparently referring to an offensive missile or drone — was not intercepted by air defense systems.

“And in that particular case, (it) happened to hit a tactical operation center that was fortified, but these are powerful weapons,” Hegseth told reporters.

The Associated Press reported Sunday the troops were U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Kuwait.

Congress heads toward war powers votes

Votes are expected this week in both the U.S. Senate and House on war powers resolutions attempting to check Trump’s power to engage in armed conflict.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said during an afternoon floor speech that lawmakers need to “pick a side” this week, urging them to reject what he described as “a war of choice, not necessity.”  

“Donald Trump has just launched America into a full-scale conflict against one of our most fervent adversaries without a plan, without an end game and without authorization from Congress, or even a debate in full view of the American people,” he said. 

Instead of engaging in “military escapades,” Schumer said, Trump should focus on implementing policies that would bring down the cost of living and focus on ensuring Americans have good-paying jobs. 

“They don’t want a war that leads to lost American lives and that costs billions and billions of taxpayer dollars,” he said. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., was much more supportive of Trump’s military endeavors, saying the “administration relentlessly pursued a diplomatic solution to the threat posed by Iran,” but that country’s leaders “refused diplomatic off-ramps.” 

“Iran has relentlessly pursued the development of its own nuclear program despite repeated violations identified by the international atomic watchdog, the (International Atomic Energy Agency),” Thune said. “Iran is also aggressively growing the range and inventory of its ballistic missiles and launchers, an inventory that is already the largest in the region. Combine that with a navy that aims to threaten a key shipping channel and it is clear that Iran poses a serious risk to America’s national security interests as well as those of our allies and partners.”

Thune and Schumer both said their prayers were with the families, loved ones and fellow service members of the U.S. troops killed so far in the war. 

House war powers vote

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said following a closed-door briefing that he believes the vote on the House floor later this week will fail, allowing Trump to keep pursuing war in Iran. 

“I am certainly hopeful and I believe we do have the votes to put it down,” he said. “That’s going to be a good thing for our country and our security and civility.”

Johnson said he doesn’t believe that Trump needed to seek congressional authorization to begin the war, arguing that “the president was acting well within his authority” since he believes U.S. military actions were “defensive in nature and design and necessity.”

Johnson said that since Israel was going to strike Iran and that intelligence sources believed Iran would have retaliated by striking both Israel and the United States, Trump acted appropriately when he began the war without lawmakers’ sign off. 

There is a chance that if the war drags on the Trump administration will ask Congress to provide additional funding for military operations, but Johnson said “it will be some time before we can put a final number on it.”

Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, ranking member on the Intelligence Committee, said after the same briefing that there was “no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians.

“There was a threat to Israel. If we equate a threat to Israel as the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States then we are in uncharted territory.”

Rubio: ‘Hardest hits are yet to come’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill Monday afternoon that the administration has “complied with the law 100%” in briefing congressional leadership ahead of Saturday’s attack, and notifying all of Congress within 48 hours afterward.

“If they want to take a war powers vote, they can do that. They’ve done that. They’ve done that a bunch of times,” Rubio said. He added: “There’s no law that requires the president to have done anything with regards to this.”

The secretary told reporters “there absolutely was an imminent threat” that Iran would attack U.S. troops in the region upon Israel striking Tehran.

“We were not going to sit there and absorb a blow before we responded, because the Department of War assessed that if we did that … we would suffer more casualties and more deaths,” Rubio said. 

“We went proactively in a defensive way to prevent them from inflicting higher damage. Had we not done so, there would have been hearings on Capitol Hill about how we knew that this was going to happen and we didn’t act preemptively to prevent more casualties,” he said as he continued on his way to a classified briefing with the congressional leadership and heads of intelligence committees.

When pressed by a journalist on whether the U.S. was forced to act because of Israel, Rubio said, “no matter what, ultimately, this operation needed to happen.”

Rubio said the U.S. focus is narrowly on destroying Iran’s current conventional weapons capabilities, which he repeatedly claimed are a “shield where they can hide behind” as they continue to build up a nuclear weapons program.

“I’m not going to give away the details of our tactical efforts, but the hardest hits are yet to come from the US military. The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now,” Rubio said.

Caine says more troops on the way

Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine, at the briefing with Hegseth, said more U.S. troops and airpower were expected to arrive in the region Monday.

“This is not a single overnight operation. The military objectives that (U.S. Central Command) and the Joint Force have been tasked with will take some time to achieve, and in some cases will be difficult and gritty work. We expect to take additional losses, and as always, we will work to minimize U.S. losses,” Caine said.

Hegseth said the mission, dubbed by the administration as Operation Epic Fury, is “laser focused” on eliminating Iran’s nuclear ambitions by destroying its offensive missile stockpile and production facilities, as well as its naval and security infrastructure.

“We’re hitting them surgically, overwhelmingly, and unapologetically with every passing day. Our capabilities get stronger and Iran’s get weaker. We set the terms of this war from start to finish,” Hegseth said.

The secretary sidestepped a question on how much of Iran’s infrastructure has been destroyed since Saturday. Caine said assessing what remains of Iran’s long-range strike capabilities “will take some time.”

Trump reiterated that a bombing campaign he initiated earlier this year “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program, though he said the country’s leaders, many of whom are now dead, “ignored those warnings and refused to cease their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”

“In addition, the regime’s conventional ballistic missile program was growing rapidly and dramatically, and this posed a very clear, colossal threat to America and our forces stationed overseas,” he said. “The regime already had missiles capable of hitting Europe and our bases, both local and overseas, and would soon have had missiles capable of reaching our beautiful America.”

Iranians began rebuilding the facilities bombed by the U.S. and Israel in June, but  authorities had blocked international inspectors from assessing the areas, according to a PBS report citing an anonymous U.S. official.

Iran retaliation

The conflict rapidly spread Sunday and into Monday across the Middle East, as Iran launched retaliatory missiles and drones following the targeted fatal strike by Israeli defense forces and U.S. intelligence of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On Monday, Iran attacked key energy infrastructure, interrupting oil and gas production in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, two of the world’s largest suppliers, according to international media outlets. 

Gulf nations, usually safe havens and luxury getaways in the volatile region, ground to a halt as strikes and debris from intercepted missiles damaged the United Arab Emirates’ Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest, and nearby iconic tourist destinations, according to Reuters. 

The U.S. State Department issued directives for Americans in the region, including a shelter-in-place order Sunday for all U.S. embassy staff in Qatar as airspace remained closed.

Jets go down over Kuwait, deaths in Iran and Israel

No deaths were reported after three U.S. F-15 fighter jets crashed over Kuwait Monday in an apparent friendly fire incident, according to U.S. Central Command. Video of an apparent U.S. fighter jet falling from the sky circulated on social media Monday.

The fighting spread to Lebanon after Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters fired rockets into Israel. Israel returned fire, including in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. Several media outlets reported casualties, citing Lebanon’s health officials.

Nine people were killed Sunday in central Israel after a missile hit a synagogue bomb shelter, The Associated Press reported.

The death toll across Iran hit at least 555 since the conflict began, according to Iranian Red Crescent Society figures cited by Al Jazeera. Iranian officials attributed more than 150 deaths to a strike Saturday on a school in southern Iran, according to numerous international reports.

Buildup of troops over past month

The administration began amassing thousands of troops, aircraft and naval ships over the past 30 days in the region, including relocating its largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, from its position in the southern hemisphere where U.S. troops apprehended Venezuela’s leader on Jan. 3.

The “rapid buildup,” Caine said, included service members from Wisconsin’s Army National Guard, which was operating in Kuwait and Iraq, and Air National Guard units from various states, including Vermont and Virginia.

Caine would not answer questions about the total number of U.S. troops involved.

Trump gave the final order for the attack on Friday, just before 4 p.m. Eastern, and joint strikes with Israel’s forces commenced overnight Saturday, at 9:45 a.m. Tehran time.

“The president directed, and I quote, ‘Operation Epic Fury is approved. No aborts, good luck,’” according to Caine.

Operations centers in Tampa, Florida and at the Pentagon directed strikes on more than 1,000 targets in the first 24 hours, Caine said.

WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers called Saturday for Congress to weigh in on President Donald Trump’s order launching “major combat operations” in Iran, while Republicans largely provided cautious support of the attacks.

Trump said in a video posted to social media at 2:30 a.m. Eastern that U.S. forces struck targets in the Islamic republic. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attacks were conducted in conjunction with Israel. 

Trump said, “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people. Its menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas, and our allies throughout the world.”

Late Saturday afternoon, Trump said on his Truth Social platform that Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in the strike. 

“This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” said Trump. “The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

U.S. Senate leaders react

On Saturday morning, as word of the attack spread, numerous Democratic members of Congress were urging a vote on Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s War Powers Resolution.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had “implored” Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a briefing this week to make a straightforward public case for any military operation in the Middle East.

The New York Democrat criticized the administration’s strategy, though he also had tough words about the Iranian regime. He called for an “immediate all-senators classified briefing” ahead of a vote on a War Powers Act resolution.

“The administration has not provided Congress and the American people with critical details about the scope and immediacy of the threat,” Schumer said in a statement. “Confronting Iran’s malign regional activities, nuclear ambitions, and harsh oppression of the Iranian people demands American strength, resolve, regional coordination, and strategic clarity. Unfortunately, President Trump’s fitful cycles of lashing out and risking wider conflict are not a viable strategy.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune praised Trump for taking action to deter Iran from expanding its nuclear program and supporting terrorist groups in the region.

The country poses “a clear and unacceptable threat to U.S. servicemembers, citizens in the region, and many of our allies,” the South Dakota Republican wrote in a statement. “Despite the dogged efforts of the president and his administration, the Iranian regime has refused the diplomatic off-ramps that would peacefully resolve these national security concerns.”

Thune added that administration officials would brief senators as the operation continued.

Nuclear weapon ambitions

Trump said in the early-morning video that the U.S. aims to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from ever obtaining nuclear weapons. “This regime will soon learn no one should challenge the strength and might of the United States armed forces,” said Trump. 

He acknowledged that “we may have casualties. That often happens in war. But we’re doing this not for now, we’re doing it for the future.”

Trump also encouraged the Iranian people to rise up against their government. “Finally, to the great, proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don’t leave your home. It’s very dangerous outside. Bombs will be dropping everywhere. When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take,” Trump said. “It will be probably your only chance for generations.”

Trump spoke from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, where he flew Friday night following an appearance in Corpus Christi, Texas. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on social media Trump monitored the situation overnight with members of his national security team, and he spoke with Netanyahu by phone.

Prior to the attacks, dubbed “Operation Epic Fury,” Leavitt said Rubio notified both Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress.

Netanyahu in a statement on social media thanked Trump and echoed the U.S. president’s comments about nuclear arms.

“This murderous terrorist regime must not be allowed to arm itself with nuclear weapons that would enable it to threaten all of humanity,” Netanyahu said. “Our joint operation will create the conditions for the brave Iranian people to take their fate into their own hands.”

Iranians say they tried to prevent war

Iran Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi early Saturday afternoon wrote a letter to the secretary-general of the United Nations and the president of the U.N. Security Council that “strongly condemned the coordinated and extensive armed aggression by the United States and the Israeli regime against Iran’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” according to a statement on social media by the Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The Foreign Ministry of the Islamic Republic of Iran also said that the attack came while the United States and Iran were in the midst of diplomatic talks, and vowed a response.

“Now the Iranian people are proud that they did everything necessary to prevent war,” the ministry said. “Now is the time to defend the homeland and confront the enemy’s military aggression. Just as we were ready for negotiations, we have been more prepared than ever for defense. The armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to the aggressors with authority.”

The Associated Press said the first strikes appeared to target the compound of Khamenei in Tehran. The Reuters news service said the skies above Tehran were filled with smoke.

The strikes were not specifically authorized by Congress. Trump also ordered airstrikes in Venezuela and the capture of the country’s president earlier this year.

Some members of Congress expressed skepticism about that operation, saying it should have been brought to the legislative branch that is supposed to have war-making powers under the Constitution.

The United States and its allies have long debated how to approach Iran’s nuclear program. The country’s regime is strongly anti-American and the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions for the nearly half-century since a revolution installed a theocratic supreme leader.

Republicans echo Trump

Republicans largely laid responsibility for the attacks on the Iranian regime, saying its aggressive posture invited action.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina praised the move on social media early Saturday. “I echo President Trump’s call to the Iranian military, IRGC and security forces to lay down their arms. I echo his call to the Iranian people to take back their government,” said Graham.

“President Trump was right when he said he’s the first president in 47 years to stand with the people of Iran and give them the backing they need.”

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, a Florida Republican, said the strikes were “the inescapable response to 47 years of continuous and calculated aggression by the Ayatollah of Iran and all his generals against the United States, our allies, and the Iranian people.”

“Every day under this regime, the United States and our allies have been under imminent threat of attack by Iran and its terrorist arms across the globe,” Mast said. “They chanted ‘Death to America’ while seeking nuclear weapons and the missile technology to strike our homeland. The days of America waiting to be attacked by Iran are over.”

Democrats warn of long-term commitment 

Democrats, though, called out the administration for going around Congress. Many said Trump should be more focused on domestic issues.

“Though there is bipartisan support for stopping the development of nuclear weapons in Iran, there is no consensus for another interminable war in the Middle East,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said. 

“A war in Iran with the goal of regime change could be another long-term military commitment with deadly consequences for thousands of American troops. The rash and unpredictable conduct of President Trump is a well-established worry in many ways but an impulsive commander in chief is a deadly combination.”

House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts blasted Trump for violating a campaign pledge of “no new wars” by launching the attack “under cloak of night, without congressional approval of even a clear rationale.”

“Families do not want another war,” she said. “They want a reasonable cost of living. They want health care they can afford. They want an end to (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)’s terror in their neighborhoods. And they do not want their sons and daughters placed in harm’s way by a reckless President. The people of this country deserve better.”

Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey called for an immediate vote on a war powers resolution.

“Americans don’t want to go to war with Iran,” Kim said on social media.

“By launching strikes, President Trump has made the same dangerous and foolish decision President Bush did a generation ago. He put Americans in harm’s way without clearly showing there’s an imminent threat to our national security. He put the Iranian people in harm’s way by calling on them to rise up without a broad coalition of partners to assist in their protection. And Trump once again started a cycle of violence that has already escalated and could spiral out of control. This is unacceptable.”

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts said diplomatic talks should be continued. “Trump’s military attack on Iran is illegal and unconstitutional. It was not approved by Congress and holds dangers for all Americans. Trump’s illegal actions raise the threat of escalation into a wider regional war with grave risks for U.S. troops and civilians in the region,” Markey said in a statement.

Dennis Simmons didn’t expect that a regular visit to his probation officer would end in his arrest, and the prospect of being sent to prison. After a life spent in and out of the criminal justice system, Simmons was employed and trying to avoid trouble. “When I came in they arrested me and told me that I was being charged with robbery, battery, and carjacking,” the 28-year-old told Wisconsin Examiner, recalling that day in April 2025. “The detectives never came and questioned me to ask nothing, they just ended up charging me with it.”

Simmons learned that he was being accused of assaulting a man and stealing his car. But his attempts to explain that he had proof that the accusations were false fell on deaf ears, Simmons said. Instead, his probation agent planned on moving forward with revoking  Simmons’ release anyway. 

Had that happened, Simmons would have been among the over 8,100 people sent back to prison in 2025, according to Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) data. When you’re one of the over 64,000 Wisconsinites who are on probation or parole in Wisconsin, an unproven accusation is one of numerous things that can send you back to prison. Probation and parole agents wield immense power over their clients’ futures. 

Simmons told his agent, Laquisha Booker, that his accuser was the subject of a no-contact order with his mother due to a domestic violence case. The accusation against Simmons was false, he told her,   because there was video showing the man violating that no-contact order by arriving at his mother’s home in the very car Simmons’ had been accused of stealing, and attempting to break down the door. Simmons’ uncle, he said, fought the man off. 

“It don’t show me on the camera at all,” Simmons told the Wisconsin Examiner. Booker told the family to send her the footage, but then “acted like she never got the video,” said Simmons. “Well, she kept pushing forward with revocation the whole time. My uncle came in and gave her a statement, let her know what happened, that he was the one that got into the fight with him. And mom sent the video. Mom gave a statement and let them know what happened. My grandma gave a statement. And she still pushed forward with revocation.” 

Fighting against the stream of incarceration

Facing over five years imprisonment, Simmons was shocked and confused by Booker’s push to send him back. “How can you still go through with it?” He asked. “You got evidence showing that it ain’t true. And she, like, ‘Well, I’m pushing forward with revocation.” Simmons wanted to fight the revocation, but knew that it wouldn’t be easy to beat. For months he sat in the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility, a facility which held 637 people while Simmons was there in April 2025 despite only being designed to hold 418.  

Simmons found the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility  to be in a dire state. “They be short staff a lot, you know, so we be pretty much in the room all day,” Simmons told the Examiner. He recalled that people were let out of their rooms twice a day for a little  over an hour. 

“It’s kind of rough in there,” said Simmons. “So we pretty much in the room all day. Come out for a little bit. When you come out, you work out, get in the shower, and then try to make your phone calls, try to get everything did that you got to get did. Then you go back in the room. So it’s pretty much a stressful environment just being in there. Because you be in the room all day thinking, especially if you in there for something that you didn’t do and then you nervous. Like, I was actually kind of scared even though I didn’t do anything, like, they have my back against the wall so I’m like ‘five years, nine months, I got to fight it.’ But they like, ‘If  you lose you could get the whole seven years. And 90% of the people lose here.’ So I’m like, should I take a deal for something that I didn’t do?”

The people Simmons was housed with thought that would be his only option. “Everybody that been there for a while said that’s how it works,” Simmons told the Examiner. “It was stressful.” 

Prior to his final revocation hearing in September 2025, attorney May Lee — of the Lee Law Firm — intervened on Simmons’ behalf. In emails Lee shared with the Examiner, Booker  claimed that the videos sent by Simmons’ mother couldn’t be opened. “I emailed her back and told her to forward the videos to my supervisor,” Booker emailed Lee. “She never did. I won’t be using the videos in the rev hearing.” 

Lee shot back that Dennis’ mother had sent the videos “to your agency a total of three times, including once to your supervisor. She was unaware that you or your supervisor were unable to open the files and she is now locked out of her iCloud account, requiring Apple’s assistance to access those videos again.” Lee continued preparing for the revocation hearing, asking Booker to share the videos with her so she could try to open them, and to provide a supervisor’s contact information.

During the revocation hearing, Simmons’ uncle testified that his nephew was innocent and it was  he who had engaged in the fight leading to the accusation of assault. The uncle also testified to having already given Booker a statement that exonerated Simmons. Booker admitted during the hearing that she had lost the uncle’s statement, something which Lee said contradicted what the probation agent had told her in the days leading up to the hearing. According to a DOC human resources bureau review of Booker’s conduct, Lee had been told by Booker that the uncle never came to give a statement. 

After the Sept. 10 hearing, Lee emailed Booker to demand that the allegations against Simmons be dismissed given what came out during the hearing. Lee also noted that Booker’s supervisor was able to access the videos which Booker claimed didn’t work.  “The information you know to be true does not support the allegations against Dennis,” Lee emailed Booker. “I am hopeful you will consider doing the right thing here. I look forward to hearing from you.” 

The next day Booker responded that after talking with her supervisor, “the department is not going to withdraw the allegations against Mr. Simmons and will continue with the revocation hearing.” Emails obtained by Wisconsin Examiner show Booker’s supervisor asked her about the conflict over the uncle’s statement. Booker said that Lee was misunderstanding what she said, “I told her I reached out to [the uncle], we spoke but he never came in to give a statement. So I can see how she’s thinking I said he never gave a statement at all.” 

Later that day, Lee again asked Booker for her supervisor’s contact information. Otherwise, she said, she’d have to go above their heads to a DOC regional chief “and outline the blatant misrepresentations” made about Simmons. “We are expected to uphold justice, and I provided an opportunity to rectify this situation,” Lee emailed Booker. “As you have chosen not to, I have no other option but to escalate this matter.” Lee then notified DOC Regional Chief Niel Thoreson about her concerns. 

 

 

By Sept. 15, Thoreson and Lee were emailing about finally releasing Simmons. Although another agent was supposed to be assigned to Simmons, when he was released it was Booker he met with to review the rules of his conditional release. “It is unacceptable that she was allowed to meet with him after she attempted to use her own lie to strip away another five years of his life to lock him up as if his human life holds no value,” Lee emailed Thoreson on Sept. 22. “This was egregious due to the already six months he spent in custody because of those allegations.” Lee added,  “what is going on over there??” 

The tables turned 

Simmons recalled his last interaction with Booker. “When I came to the office the day I was released, I was actually excited, at the very least I was happy, and then I seen her,” said Simmons, adding that Booker told him that this wouldn’t have happened if she’d received the videos and statement from his uncle, essentially reverting to her original claims. “I was like yeah, this is crazy,” said Simmons. 

Booker was later interviewed by the DOC human resources department. She was  new to her job,  having started in January 2025. During her HR  interview, Booker was asked whether she received a statement from Simmons’ uncle. “Yes sir,” she began. “Well let me rephrase that, I didn’t have to. [The uncle] reached out to me and said he wanted to make a statement.” Booker said that he came to the office and that she gave him paper to write the statement. “I did not sit there and take his statement personally, but I did get a statement from him that he turned in to the front desk.” 

She went on to say, “I am being completely honest. From the time that reception told me that the statement is ready to pick up, I don’t remember if I went to get the statement from him or not or if I grabbed it and misplaced it sometime after that.” Booker said that she couldn’t recall whether she actually read the statement, or even if she’d picked the statement up from the desk. The statement wasn’t included in the packet prepared for Simmons’ revocation hearing because according to Booker, she didn’t have it. 

Booker denied telling Lee that she never took a statement from the uncle, but said that she admitted in court to having lost his statement. Booker couldn’t remember at what point she first realized she’d lost it, however. When asked during the human resources interview whether she ever told attorney Lee about the uncle’s statement Booker said, “Yes…I can’t recall. I have had many conversations with her at that time.” Booker said that her supervisor had told her that “we are proceeding with rev no matter what.”  

She added that, “I realize I made a mistake and that I tried to correct that violation and I understand that I messed up. No matter what my [supervisor] was proceeding with rev and I am a new agent and I talked to her to get alternatives because I knew mom and grandma were testifying and I tried to do other things. That was my first revocation hearing and I don’t even know how revocations go and I don’t have any rapport with the client because he was arrested before I even knew him…I am a new agent and I don’t have any information on that process or how it went.” 

The DOC found that Booker had potentially violated rules regarding falsifying records, insubordination, and negligence. The report asserts that Booker was aware of the statement clearing Simmons of wrongdoing, but that she didn’t tell her supervisor, and declined Lee’s attempts to provide her with another written statement. The HR report adds that Booker “knowingly provided false information” to Lee regarding her ability to access video footage sent by Simmons’ mother, and the uncle’s statement. 

A DOC spokesperson said that Booker resigned in November during her disciplinary investigation. For the first seven weeks of her time at DOC, Booker would have participated in the DOC’s basic training for agents, which all agents must graduate before working with clients. The training is intended to provide agents with baseline and foundational skills to help agents navigate tasks, make decisions, and understand the DOC’s expectations. 

Crushed hopes and an uncertain future 

The entire ordeal was a major blow to Simmons’ ability to settle back into civilian life after serving a seven-year sentence. “You’re not even giving me a chance,” said Simmons, “and I’m showing you what’s going on.” 

Simmons told the Examiner that he’s tired of the revolving door to prison in his life. “I had a mindset of I’m tired of going to jail, I don’t want to be in prison no more,” Simmons told the Examiner. “I’ve been doing this my whole life, I’m going to try something different. Because the way I’ve been doing it keep getting me in trouble, it’s not working. So I want to try a way to stay up out. So when I get out and I decide that I’m not doing nothing that can put me back in prison, and try to stay away from it, and then I get locked up for something I didn’t do, it just make me feel like, ‘Man like, it’s hopeless. Should I just be back in the streets?” 

Simmons said the experience “crushed all the hope I had for even trying to do something the right way. Like…I ain’t understand it.” He told the Examiner that it’s important not to judge people solely based on what they did in the past. “That’s not who they are, that’s who they was,” said Simmons, recalling that he started getting into trouble when he was 13 years old. “I’ve been in and out since I was a kid,” he said. 

Growing up, Simmons said he didn’t have many positive role models around. “So basically if you grow up around people, if your whole family is involved in certain things and they teach you that the right thing to do is live the street life — be in the streets, sell drugs, do whatever in the streets — that’s what you’re going to grow up believing is the right thing to do,” he explained. “Now a lot of my family…They breaking the cycle of being in and out of prison. My dad started his own business. My auntie started her own business. Everybody is breaking the cycle from getting in trouble and going back to jail.” 

It took Simmons until his last prison sentence to decide he had to break the cycle. Before the experience with Booker, Simmons was working with his uncle and staying away from old friends and bad influences. But when he spoke to the Examiner, Simmons was being held at Milwaukee’s Community Reintegration Center, after being charged with firearms-related offenses in December for which he has yet to be convicted, and remains presumed innocent until proven guilty. If he beats this new case, Simmons hopes to transfer his probation to Texas where he has family, and leave Milwaukee behind. The DOC has recommended that his supervision be revoked. 

“I made some mistakes, I did some things in the past, made some bad decisions, and that made me who I am today,” said Simmons. “Everything I went through made me want to do better and be better.”

 

In Johnson County, Iowa, the number of tuberculosis cases has increased in recent years — and so has the cost of containing it.

The cost of contact tracing and surveillance, traveling each day to patients’ homes to ensure they take their meds or booking hotel rooms to quarantine patients, has surged from $17,000 in 2020 to $65,000 last year.

That doesn’t include $13,000 spent last year for language translation, as many of the cases were among the local immigrant communities, said Danielle Pettit-Majewski, director of the Johnson County public health department. She said the rise in spending is directly tied to the increase in diagnoses since 2020, with latent infections tripling, from 27 that year to 90 last year.

Last week, the state informed the county that the greater number of cases had made it too costly to help pay for the home visits, forcing the county to pay for them on its own.

“I was kind of dumbfounded,” Pettit-Majewski said. “It was surprising.”

Tuberculosis cases have been rising nationwide since 2021, and in 2024 — the most recent year for which data is available — they reached the highest level since 2011. Thirty-four states and the District of Columbia reported increases in TB case counts and rates from 2023 to 2024, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2024, there were 10,347 reported cases nationwide, up 8% from the 9,622 cases reported the year before.

The case numbers for 2025 won’t be released until the end of March. But the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown last year might have dissuaded some people from seeking care, perhaps leading to fewer recorded diagnoses, some TB experts say.

Some states, however, are reporting preliminary data to the National Tuberculosis Coalition of America that shows that the number of cases grew from 2024 and 2025 by between 10% and 20%, said Donna Hope Wegener, the coalition’s executive director.

“There are a number of [tuberculosis] program managers that are reporting double-digit increases,” Wegener said, adding that the cost of antibiotics to treat TB is rising. “These back-to-back increases that states are contending with are certainly alarming.”

In San Antonio, Texas, case numbers have been steady, but the local public health department is still struggling to cover treatment costs.

Tommy Camden, health program manager at the City of San Antonio’s tuberculosis clinic, said the city has proposed eliminating a full-time specialist position that assists with TB contact tracing, blood draws and home visits.

Whatever the 2025 numbers show, many public health agencies are struggling to keep up, especially as they also contend with a growing measles outbreak that so far has affected 26 states.

Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection with both active and latent stages. A person with active tuberculosis disease, which can be deadly, can spread the disease. A person with a latent infection can’t, but they can develop the disease at any point.

Consistent, daily antibiotic treatment for four to nine months, with no skipped doses, is crucial to knocking it out. Skipping doses can allow the germs to mutate into drug-resistant TB, which is one reason health agencies spend so much to ensure patients take their medication.

In the U.S., the disease disproportionately affects people born in countries where it’s more common, as well as Hispanic, Black, Asian American, Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities, according to the CDC.

Immigrant communities tend to be disproportionately affected, in part because the disease can spread more easily in multigenerational households and other crowded home and work settings. Poverty, a lack of access to health care because of language, transportation and cultural barriers, and the stigma around the disease also can make those communities more vulnerable, Pettit-Majewski explained.

The California Department of Public Health says the cost of drugs to prevent a latent tuberculosis infection from turning into full-blown disease can be about $857 for what is usually three to four months of treatment. In contrast, diagnosing and treating one infected person who develops active tuberculosis disease can cost about $43,900.

While there is a vaccine for tuberculosis, it isn’t recommended for use in the U.S. because it can cause false positives in TB tests taken by skin sample. The vaccine also isn’t consistently effective against adult pulmonary tuberculosis.

Research has been underway for developing a new vaccine. But the Trump administration’s antipathy toward vaccines of all kinds is dampening investment in new products.

Immigration crackdown

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, tuberculosis was the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing about 1.5 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. It remains a leading infectious disease killer globally. Immigrants coming to the U.S. are screened for active TB and connected with treatment, and U.S. residents may be asked about travel abroad during routine checkups.

Many immigrants might be reluctant to seek care amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, said Dr. Michael Lauzardo, a University of Florida associate professor at the division of infectious diseases and global medicine and director of the Florida TB Physicians Network.

“I think the numbers will be lower because people are afraid,” Lauzardo said of the soon-to-be-released 2025 data. “A lot of the people at risk for TB are not seeking care, I suspect.”

Munira Maalimisaq, a family nurse practitioner in Minneapolis, said such fear has been rampant across immigrant communities in her area. After President Donald Trump was elected, a health care center where she worked had to drop a routine question on patient intake forms that asked where a patient is from, because people were scared to answer it. The question was meant to assess exposure to TB in countries where it’s more common.

“That was a big barrier, because people would just not answer that question, or would not even want to engage and say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Maalimisaq, CEO of a nonprofit health care center in Minneapolis, Inspire Change Clinic.

She said such fear could cause more active cases later on, as people with latent TB may not get diagnosed or get care — increasing the risk that they’ll develop the disease and become contagious.

“The whole thing delays seeking care,” she said. “If I don’t get screened for it, there’s no way that my provider is going to diagnose me.”

In Iowa, Pettit-Majewski said she hopes that Johnson County residents won’t be scared to seek care.

“If you are a Johnson County resident, you are our neighbor, and it is our responsibility to keep you safe and healthy — and we take that very seriously,” said Pettit-Majewski. “We want to make sure that folks are able to get the best care, regardless of immigration status, regardless of where you came from.”

People in detention or correctional facilities also are disproportionately at risk of infection. In recent weeks, two tuberculosis cases cropped up at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in El Paso, Texas. Last year, California, Alaska and Arizona also saw cases at ICE detention facilities.

ICE didn’t respond to Stateline’s questions about the recent two cases at the El Paso facility. On a recent visit to the detention center, Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents El Paso, said she saw agents go into a community pod, which can hold between 30 to 70 detainees, without protective attire.

“I was about to walk into a pod with the ICE agents, and the security guard said, ‘No, no, ma’am, you don’t want to walk in there. They’ve not been tested for TB yet,’” Escobar told Stateline.

“But I did see contractor staff coming in and out of the pod, and so I asked, ‘Why are they not wearing [personal protective equipment]? Why aren’t they wearing a mask?’ And my concerns were pretty much dismissed, and I was told it’s their choice and they don’t have to if they don’t want to.”

Cuts to public health funding 

Earlier this month, the Trump administration told Congress it intends to rescind $600 million in public health funds to four Democratic-led states: California, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota. Many of the grants targeted HIV, and some also targeted tuberculosis.

The four states have sued to stop the cuts, arguing that the administration is targeting them with “devastating funding cuts to basic public health infrastructure based on political animus and disagreements about unrelated topics such as federal immigration enforcement.”

A federal judge has temporarily halted the cuts, saying the administration’s statements suggest “hostility to what the federal government calls ‘sanctuary jurisdictions’ or ‘sanctuary cities.’” An agency action, U.S. District Judge Manish S. Shah said, can’t be honored “if it is arbitrary or capricious.”

One of the California grants affected is a grant to the Tuberculosis Elimination Alliance, a partnership of community-based organizations that conduct outreach and education about tuberculosis.

The group received notice Feb. 11 that its grants were ending — putting in jeopardy $100,000 the alliance distributes to groups serving high-risk communities across California, Illinois, Washington state, the District of Columbia and U.S. island territories.

One of the largest tuberculosis outbreaks in recent weeks occurred at a San Francisco Bay Area high school, where latent TB was detected in more than 200 students and staff.

“It’s just such a scary and confusing time for our communities,” said Chibo Shinagawa, associate director of infectious diseases at the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, which leads the Tuberculosis Elimination Alliance.

“The instability, the uncertainty right now — it’s such a disruption to public health, to the trust we’ve built in our communities.”

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

Some Republican lawmakers have routinely proposed criminally prosecuting women for getting abortions since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, despite bipartisan condemnation and criticism from national anti-abortion organizations. 

These bills never made it to the finish line, but they keep circulating in legislatures across the country. So-called “abortion abolitionists” who believe that abortion should be classified as homicide, and that fetuses, embryos and zygotes should have the same legal protections as people are often behind these measures, States Newsroom reported. 

This year, the Foundation to Abolish Abortion praised Republican lawmakers in Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee who introduced bills that would punish people who get abortions. 

In Illinois, Republican Sen. Neil Anderson filed a bill that would have banned abortion from the moment of fertilization and classified abortion as homicide in the Democratic-led state. Anderson’s bill did not move past introduction, and he lost a leadership position in the chamber this month, Capitol News Illinois reported. 

In Tennessee, legislation concerning an anti-abortion monument was amended to criminalize abortion, potentially allowing women who seek abortion to be charged with murder. Sen. Mark Pody, the bill’s GOP sponsor, said he doesn’t have the votes in the Senate to pass the bill with the criminalization amendment, Tennessee Lookout reported. 

Elsewhere, proposals to crackdown on the availability of abortion medication — the most common way to terminate a pregnancy — are advancing in several Republican-led legislatures, while Democratic lawmakers are moving to fortify shield laws. 

Our reproductive rights reporting team will be tracking related bills through biweekly roundups as sessions continue this winter and into the spring. Depending on the partisan makeup of a state’s legislature and other state government officials, some bills have a better chance of passing and becoming law than others.

GOP legislators still introducing bills classifying abortion as homicide

Kentucky   

House Bill 714: Abortion is already illegal in Kentucky with no exceptions for victims of rape and incest. This bill, called the “Prenatal Equal Protection Act,” would go further by classifying abortion as homicide unless it’s needed to treat miscarriages or save a pregnant woman’s life. The penalties would be the same as those for killing a person, so violators could face anywhere from one year to life in prison. 

GOP Rep. Richard White introduced a similar bill last year that didn’t go anywhere. The Foundation to Abolish Abortion praised the new measure in a Tuesday news release. The organization criticized a Kentucky prosecutor’s decision last month to drop a fetal homicide charge against a woman who was accused of taking abortion medication.  

Status: Introduced in the House on Tuesday, Feb. 24, and sent to the Committee on Committees 

Sponsors: Republican Reps. Josh Calloway and Richard White  

South Carolina 

House Bill 3537: Legislation introduced by GOP Rep. Rob Harris would ban abortion from the moment of fertilization. Harris’ bill would also allow the prosecution of people who get abortions unless it’s necessary to manage miscarriages or save a pregnant person’s life. 

Harris filed this bill in previous legislative sessions, but it hasn’t gained traction, SC Daily Gazette reported. “Bills like these do nothing but terrify women out of wanting to get pregnant,” Tori Nardone, a woman who had to leave South Carolina to get an abortion for a fatal fetal anomaly, told lawmakers last month. “Please don’t make it worse than it already is.”

Status: Stalled in the House Judiciary Committee 

Sponsor: Republican Rep. Rob Harris 

South Dakota   

House Bill 1212: South Dakota bans abortion in most cases, but this bill would have codified abortion as fetal homicide in state law and defined abortion as a Class B felony, which carries punishment of up to life in prison and a fine of up to $50,000. The proposal included exceptions for miscarriage treatment or when a pregnant patient’s life is in danger.

The bill was deferred to the last day of the legislation session by the House Health and Human Services Committee, essentially preventing it from advancing.  

Status: Sidelined 

Sponsors: Rep. Tony Randolph and Sen. John Carley, Republicans 

Republican-led states push bills to crack down on abortion pills

Mississippi   

House Bill 1613: This legislation would make it illegal to sell, manufacture, distribute or dispense abortion-inducing drugs in the state, which bans all abortions unless the mother’s life or health is at risk, and if rape or incest is reported to law enforcement. 

Violators could face between one and 10 years in prison, and the state attorney general could enforce civil penalties against the person, too, Mississippi Free Press reported. The House passed the bill on Wednesday, Feb. 11. If the bill becomes law, it would take effect in July. 

Status: Referred to Senate Judiciary Committee last week 

Sponsors: Republican Reps. Kevin Horan and William Tracy Arnold 

South Dakota  

House Bill 1274: The state House passed a bill this week that would make dispensing, distributing, selling or advertising abortion pills and any other abortion-related “instrument” or “article” illegal, South Dakota Searchlight reported. 

Under the measure, the attorney general could seek penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation, and the money would go in a fund used to pursue anti-abortion litigation, according to Searchlight. South Dakota’s AG is already involved in a legal battle with a New York-based nonprofit over abortion medication ads it ran at gas stations across the state last year. 

Status: Approved in the House on Tuesday, Feb 24; in the Senate State Affairs committee 

Sponsors: Republican Reps. John Hughes and Greg Blanc 

Democratic lawmakers move to strengthen abortion-rights protections 

New Hampshire   

Senate Bill 551: New Hampshire, which has a Republican trifecta in government, is the only state in New England without a law that protects abortion providers and patients from out-of-state investigations into reproductive health care. Legislation introduced by Democratic Sen. Debra Altschiller in February would secure the right to reproductive health care and prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with investigations into related health care, New Hampshire Bulletin reported. 

The bill would make it illegal for the governor to comply with extradition requests for abortion providers and patients. It would also ban insurers from penalizing reproductive health care providers and let residents sue people or agencies that attempt to interfere with their reproductive rights, the Bulletin reported. 

Status: The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-2 on Tuesday, Feb. 17, that the bill was “inexpedient to legislate.” 

Sponsor: Democratic Sen. Debra Altschiller

Oregon   

House Bill 4088: An Oregon law approved in July 2023 protects providers who offer reproductive health care from losing their licenses, and shields patients and providers from related out-of-state investigations. Legislation introduced this year would beef up those safeguards. 

This bill would bar the governor from accepting extradition requests from other states against providers who offer legally protected reproductive health care and prohibit law enforcement from cooperating with interstate investigations into related care, Oregon Capital Chronicle reported. It would also block state officials from revoking midwifery licenses for people who face prosecution for reproductive health care in other states. 

Status: Approved by the House on Monday, Feb. 16; approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, Feb. 25

Sponsors: Rep. Lisa Fragala and Sen. Lisa Reynolds, Democrats 

There is a content warning on page 7 of a friend-of-the-court brief recently submitted in a high-stakes abortion medication case by women who say they were injured or traumatized from taking the pills. 

“Warning: these accounts are raw, graphic and real.”

About 30 mostly anonymous people recount their medication abortions, saying they were uninformed about what they would experience mentally and physically. The graphic accounts and bloody portraits are meant to bolster the argument that the practice is a barbaric and gruesome one that states have the authority to ban. The brief argues the problem is perpetuated by telehealth abortion. 

“We call it a particularly gruesome and barbaric procedure, the pill, because Dobbs allowed particularly gruesome and barbaric procedures to be prohibited by the states,” said attorney Allan Parker of the Justice Foundation.

It’s one of many arguments made in the main complaint, though not the focus of Tuesday’s oral arguments over a preliminary injunction that could, if granted, halt access to telehealth abortion throughout the country. But it’s one with a winning history for the anti-abortion movement, whose leaders are frustrated with rising abortion rates and the Trump administration’s failure to restrict the pills. 

But reproductive legal experts who support abortion rights say the gruesome or barbaric argument mischaracterizes the realities of medication abortion, which is approved to induce a miscarriage within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. 

Abortion opponents are focused on disrupting national access built largely on shield laws and a Biden-era policy that has allowed women to have first-trimester abortions via medication at home with a remote physician consultation, even in states with bans. 

The Justice Foundation, which co-authored the brief alongside the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, recruits women who regret their abortions to testify in court and before legislatures and has collected nearly 5,000 legally admissible affidavits, according to the brief. 

The lawsuit was originally filed last year by Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and co-plaintiff Rosalie Markezich, who said her partner ordered pills without her consent and then coerced her to take them.

The complaint cited the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart that upheld a federal ban on an abortion procedure called intact dilation and extraction, which at the time some doctors said was a preferable method for ending certain pregnancies, typically in the second trimester, without damaging the woman’s cervix. The anti-abortion movement effectively rebranded the method “partial-birth abortion.” In upholding the ban on this method, the Supreme Court opinion, which was referenced in the 2022 Dobbs decision overturning federal abortion protections, included a reference to it as “gruesome and inhumane.” 

While the intact dilation and extraction method was used later in pregnancy and in a minority of terminations, telehealth abortions early in pregnancy made up 27% of abortions in the U.S. in the first half of December, according to the Society of Family Planning.  

“What it feels like is happening with some of these briefs is that they’re going back to the last argument that worked in shaping popular opinion,” historian and law professor Mary Ziegler said. “Because while they managed to overturn Roe, that was not a success from a popular opinion standpoint.”

The argument that abortion is barbaric and gruesome is not likely to touch public opinion the same way it did two decades ago, she said, because unlike with intact dilation and extraction abortion, most women have experienced a medication abortion or a miscarriage and know what it’s like.  

“It would be hard, I think, to convince people that a procedure that’s happening in week seven, is equally barbaric,” Ziegler said. “The whole success of partial-birth abortion as a strategy is in the name, right? The argument was, This is happening late enough in pregnancy and close enough to birth that it resembles infanticide. And with abortion pills, for many people, it’s going to much more closely resemble a very early miscarriage.”

The potential to unleash chaos

Attorneys on either side of the abortion rights divide agree that the stakes are high in the Louisiana case, because a ruling would likely apply nationally and once again shake up the abortion access landscape in the U.S. If the court grants Louisiana’s request to force the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reinstate old restrictions while litigation continues, the action could effectively ban telehealth abortion appointments, medication dispensation at retail pharmacies, and the mailing of abortion pills even in states where abortion remains legal.

Katie Keith, founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the O’Neill Institute at Georgetown University, said a ruling in plaintiffs’ favor could “unleash chaos and confusion in the market.”

“What would happen to medication that’s already on the shelves?” she asked. “And how quickly could folks move from telehealth to in-person dispensing again? And what guidance would FDA give? And how quickly would all this get appealed?” 

It would be extremely disruptive in a year when abortion providers have already seen a lot of chaos, she said. 

Dr. Angel Foster is the co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which provides telehealth abortion to all 50 states. She said plaintiffs’ claims do not match up with national and international data on medication and telehealth abortion or with her experience as a provider. 

“Louisiana has taken things that are exceptional and presented them as common, has tried to put the ugliest face on the abortion process as possible, and has mischaracterized the kind of care that telemedicine medication abortion providers are offering,” Foster said. 

Her organization has served more than 40,000 patients seeking abortion care since 2023, she said, 95% in states with abortion bans. Patients are counseled on what to expect in terms of pain and what they might see, and are screened for potential coercion and other issues. 

For example, if a patient lists her husband’s email address, Foster said she would call the patient directly to confirm the abortion is her choice. She said a bad actor could try to bypass their screening and force someone to take abortion pills without consent, which is already a criminal offense under existing law. 

“I don’t think that the remedy is to say that nobody should be able to get abortion pills by mail,” Foster said.  

National domestic violence awareness groups have filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Louisiana case asking the court to deny plaintiffs’ request for an injunction. They note that reproductive coercion is not limited to abortion pressure but can also include a partner barring access to birth control or other health care. 

Beyond the federal courts, states continue to try to pass laws to ban or further restrict medication abortion. Attorneys general in Louisiana and Texas have led the charge in suing shield law providers in states without abortion bans. Texas’ attorney general filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday against California physician Rémy Coeytaux, telehealth abortion nonprofit Aid Access and its founder Dr. Rebecca Gomperts. 

Foster said she has not yet been sued but that her attorneys have been in close communication with Massachusetts’ attorney general over whether the state’s shield law would protect their practice depending on how the judge rules. 

“Our intent is to continue to provide medication abortion care with mifepristone and misoprostol for as long as we can legally do so,” she said. 

Will a federal judge let the Trump administration delay?

For now, Louisiana v. FDA is in limbo. After Louisiana filed its preliminary injunction request, the Trump administration asked the court to delay while it continues to review abortion pill safety — a review that was prompted by pressure and controversial research from the anti-abortion movement. 

Trump-appointed district Judge David Joseph on Tuesday did not indicate when he might rule on Louisiana’s request for an injunction but gave the federal government’s attorneys seven days to file a brief explaining how the FDA would take emergency action if the agency discovered mifepristone presents a public health risk during its review.

Anti-abortion activists have been frustrated with the administration’s efforts to delay the Louisiana case. 

“We are disappointed that the Trump administration is asking the court to pause our case and deny our clients immediate relief while the FDA takes another year to study the known harms of abortion drugs,” said Erik Baptist, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing Markezich, in a written statement.

With the approaching midterm elections, Ziegler said she’s curious what the administration will finally say about its position on abortion pills. 

“It’s our first look at what the Trump administration will do if the court doesn’t respond by just giving them more time,” Ziegler said. “Because so far, they’ve been essentially just avoiding it, by saying they’re thinking about it, and they need more time, and they’re studying the matter, and, you know, not really taking a side.” 

Nearly a quarter of pregnant women aren’t getting prenatal care in the early stages of pregnancy, according to a new analysis from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The share of pregnant women getting prenatal care had been improving: It rose between 2016 and 2021 to a high of more than 78%, but then declined to 75.5% by 2024, wiping out previous gains.

The trend is worrying because getting care early in pregnancy can improve the likelihood of a healthy pregnancy and baby.

The decrease in early prenatal care held true for nearly all race and ethnic groups, but the drops were sharpest for Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders, Black women and American Indian and Alaska Native women.

By 2024, less than half of Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander mothers received prenatal care in their first trimester — the first three months of pregnancy.

Anne Markus, a professor at George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health, said that because the statistically significant decline began around 2021, two events could explain some of the decrease: the COVID pandemic, with its associated stay-at-home orders, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022 that dismantled the constitutional right to abortion.

“Both disproportionately affected, and continue to affect, communities of color, and the decline in early entry into prenatal care has been disproportionately bigger for racial and ethnic minorities since 2021,” said Markus, whose work focuses on public policy and access to health care. She was not involved in the analysis.

A lack of early prenatal care has also been disproportionately seen in “very young women who are more likely to have a pregnancy that they do not want,” Markus said. “The Dobbs decision and the fear and uncertainty it generated could be particularly relevant in explaining this disproportionate effect observed in the data.”

The share of women getting late care — beginning in the seventh month of pregnancy or later — or no care at all increased in more than half of states from 2021-2024. Utah saw the biggest rise in late or no care, followed by Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The number of Utah women getting late or no prenatal care jumped 54%, up to nearly 6% of women.

More than 1 in 10 women had late or no prenatal care by 2024 in Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas.

“Geographic and financial barriers to accessing care are often behind late entry to recommended care, including prenatal care,” Markus said.

Late or no prenatal care decreased in six states: Arkansas, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The CDC compiled the report based on information from birth certificates, and includes information for all births that occurred in the United States.

Stateline reporter Anna Claire Vollers can be reached at avollers@stateline.org.

President Donald Trump promoted his second-term record in a wide-ranging speech at the Port of Corpus Christi in Texas on Friday, building on themes from his State of the Union address earlier in the week.

But he did not issue a highly anticipated endorsement just days before a heated U.S. Senate primary that’s pitted incumbent John Cornyn against two challengers, state Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.

Before the event, Trump told reporters he had “pretty much” decided on who he would endorse in the midterm election contest, but wouldn’t do so Friday, according to a White House pool report.

While leaving the White House en route to Texas earlier in the day, Trump also suggested he might direct a “friendly takeover” of Cuba, saying the Cuban American community would appreciate such action.

“We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba after many, many years,” he told reporters. “They’re in big trouble, and we could very well (do) something good, I think, very positive for the people that were expelled or worse, from Cuba that live here.”

Tensions are high between the United States and Cuba. The Cuban government said Thursday its border patrol killed four Cuban expatriates living in the United States who sought to infiltrate the country in a speedboat.

Little discussion of energy policy

The Texas speech was advertised as an address on energy, and Trump spoke in front of signs reading “American Energy Dominance” and against a backdrop of oil tankers. 

But he hardly mentioned the issue apart from short sections at the start and end of his remarks in which he claimed credit for lowering gas prices. 

Instead, the president jumped from topic to topic, defending his administration’s controversial record on immigration enforcement and a military operation in Venezuela while attacking Democrats as out of touch and ramping up calls for election administration changes he said would keep the party from winning future elections. 

Among them are the House-passed SAVE America Act, which would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. While it has little chance of Senate passage, Trump has continued to advocate for it.

He claimed, without evidence, that Democrats can only win elections by cheating. If Congress makes changes to national elections laws, the party would be shut out, he said.

“They will never win because their policy is no good,” he said. “They want men playing in women’s sports. They want transgender for everyone. They want open borders so that the world’s criminals can pour into our country, which we’ve done a good job. I’ll tell you what: ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has done such a great job.”

Midterm stakes

Trump joked early in the appearance that he was advised to not make political statements.

But several of his digressions were focused on elections this year and beyond.

After exulting, in sometimes exaggerated language, his record through one year of unified GOP control, he said it was crucial for Republicans to maintain their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. 

Noting that Democratic members did not stand and applaud at several points of his State of the Union address, a point that Republicans have seized upon repeatedly as a campaign issue in the days since the speech, Trump said the Democrats were “crazy.”

“They’re crazy,” he said. “We got to win midterms. We brought this country back. We don’t want to lose the midterms. We got to win the midterms.”

Election forecasters project the most likely outcome of November’s midterms is for Democrats to gain control of the House while Republicans keep the Senate. Very few seats are seen as toss-ups.

Trump also teased a potential third presidential term, which would violate the Constitution’s prohibition of more than two terms. He said he was entitled to another term because an election was “stolen” from him, a reference to the 2020 election that he lost to Joe Biden and ever since has claimed, without evidence, wrongly decided.

“Maybe we do one more term. Should we do one more?” he asked the crowd. “Well, we’re entitled to it because they cheated like hell in the second.”

Texas Senate GOP battle

In the Senate contest, Trump shouted out Cornyn, Paxton and Hunt, without indicating which he might favor.

Election Day is Tuesday, though with three major candidates, it is likely headed for a May runoff between Cornyn and Paxton.

Trump wore a version of his signature red hat with the phrase “Gulf of America” across the front instead of the usual “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico early in his second term. Corpus Christi’s port is on the gulf.

Venezuela 

At the open and close of the roughly hourlong speech, Trump promoted his energy policy and criticized Biden for regulations that Trump said slowed energy production. 

By boosting production and bringing in oil from Venezuela after deposing leftist President Nicolás Maduro in January, Trump said he has brought down the price of gas and consumer products across the board.

Biden and congressional Democrats “waged a radical-left war on American oil and natural gas like you’ve never seen before,” he said. “They were killing our country…. All of that changed my first day back in office.”

The latest government statistics, though, show that energy costs in January were about the same as they were when Trump took office, dropping only .1%, while inflation in the economy as a whole stubbornly continues at about 2.4%.

U.S. involvement in Venezuela, following Maduro’s capture, would also help spur the energy sector, Trump said. 

The new government, led by Maduro’s vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, has been receptive to selling crude oil to the United States, where it will be refined, Trump said Friday. The arrangement would benefit both countries, he said.

WASHINGTON — American colleges and universities received gifts and contracts worth more than $5.2 billion from foreign entities in 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Education, which also recently published summaries of foreign investment in U.S. higher education dating back to 1986. 

Qatar, the United Kingdom, China, Switzerland, Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia marked the largest sources of reportable gifts and contracts to U.S. institutions in 2025, according to the agency, which released the latest funding disclosures this month. 

The department also made public roughly 40 years of data on a transparency dashboard that offers a snapshot of the foreign funding disclosures submitted by colleges and universities. The administration described the move as a transparency effort, but critics say it lacks key context. 

The dashboard shows cumulative data since 1986, when Congress amended the Higher Education Act of 1965 to mandate colleges and universities receiving federal financial assistance disclose any foreign gifts or contracts valued at or above $250,000 annually.

The provision, known as Section 117, “came about due to concerns about malign actors trying to either use educational platforms to promote agendas that were not in the national interest or about getting access to American youth or about exerting influence on institutions,” said Rick Hess, senior fellow and director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

And while the Education Department this month heralded the dashboard as a major step toward transparency in foreign influence in U.S. education, the tool does not separate gifts and contracts by year, limiting its use to help the public spot trends or identify major gifts.

Details about the gifts and contracts, such as what was given or what work was contracted, are not displayed on the dashboard.

Trump priority

President Donald Trump and his administration have sought to increase transparency requirements when it comes to foreign funds entering U.S. colleges and universities.

Part of the administration’s effort includes an April 2025 executive order that sought to “end the secrecy surrounding foreign funds in American educational institutions” and to “safeguard America’s students and research from foreign exploitation.” 

The public transparency dashboard is housed on a portal, launched in January, where colleges and universities are responsible for disclosing foreign gifts and contracts. 

The Education Department announced Feb. 23 that it would partner with the State Department on foreign gift and contract reporting under Section 117.

The move — one of several interagency agreements announced so far by the administration — is part of the administration’s ongoing efforts to dismantle the 46-year-old agency. 

State will help the Education Department manage its foreign funding reporting portal and “use its national security and foreign national academic admissions expertise to review and assess the industry’s compliance with the law, share data with the public and federal stakeholders, and identify potential threats,” the Education Department said. 

Nearly $70 billion disclosed 

At least 555 institutions have disclosed $67.6 billion in foreign gifts and contracts between 1986 and mid-December 2025, according to the dashboard.

The institutions that have received the most funding in foreign gifts and contracts since Section 117 was enacted are Harvard University in Massachusetts, at $4.2 billion; Carnegie Mellon University, in Pennsylvania, at $3.9 billion; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at $3.5 billion; Cornell University in New York, at $3.1 billion and the University of Pennsylvania, at $2.8 billion. 

The dashboard also includes a separate section on the total value of transactions in foreign gifts and contracts with “counterparties located in countries of concern,” such as China, Russia and Venezuela. 

The universities that received the most money from counterparties in these “countries of concern” are Harvard, at $610.8 million; MIT, at $490.1 million; New York University, at $462.5 million; Stanford University in California, at $418.5 million; and Yale University in Connecticut, at $400.2 million.  

Concerns from higher ed groups 

Some higher education groups expressed concerns over the dashboard, including limitations they see with how the data is portrayed. 

The cumulative nature of the dashboard does not allow the public to see how the amount of money in foreign gifts and contracts received by schools fluctuated throughout the years. 

“There’s no way to kind of break out what the funding is by the year, or perhaps by the funding cycle, so you can’t really see any funding trends,” Sarah Spreitzer, vice president and chief of staff for government relations at the American Council on Education, told States Newsroom. 

The association serves as the major coordinating body for the country’s colleges and universities, representing roughly 1,600 institutions. 

Spreitzer emphasized a lack of context throughout the dashboard, including on the list of foreign entities of concern and whether such funding is active or reflects past funding. 

For instance, the U.S. Department of Commerce designated the Chinese tech company Huawei as an entity of concern in 2019.

Huawei has provided roughly $22.7 million in funding to American universities, overall, according to the dashboard. But the dashboard doesn’t show the gifts and contracts all came prior to the entity-of-concern designation, Spreitzer said.

“None of our institutions have taken funding from Huawei since 2019, if not earlier, when we were informed of the concerns around Huawei,” Spreitzer said. “However, the way that the information is presented, it seems to imply that our institutions are still taking funding from Huawei.” 

Spreitzer said that the dashboard “demonstrates that our schools are complying with Section 117 and they are meeting their reporting obligations.”

“I hope that people are not making broad assumptions based on how the data is presented right now,” added Spreitzer, who hopes the administration will continue making improvements to the dashboard, such as separating the disclosures by year and adding additional context.

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Friday demanding the administration refund businesses that paid tariffs to import goods into the United States under authority the Supreme Court has ruled the president never held. 

“The American people — small business owners, importers, manufacturers, and the consumers who ultimately bore the cost of these illegal taxes — deserve better than this stonewalling,” the group wrote. “This money does not belong to the federal government. It belongs to the businesses and individuals you illegally taxed.”

The Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 20 that President Donald Trump wrongly instituted tariffs under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, writing “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Trump held a press conference later that day declaring he would institute tariffs under other authorities that he and members of his administration believe Congress has granted the president. But he didn’t give a clear answer about whether the federal government would refund the businesses that paid IEEPA tariffs.

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said at the time. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Senate Democrats’ letter says the Trump administration “collected over $130 billion in illegal taxes and then refused — with a smile and a shrug — to give it back.”

Democrats wrote in the letter the administration must tell U.S. Customs and Border Protection “to begin processing automatic refunds for all tariffs and customs duties unlawfully collected under IEEPA since January 20, 2025.”

The Trump administration, they wrote, should release a timeline within 90 days for when it would begin those refunds. 

The letter was signed by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Whip Dick Durbin, Maryland Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Delaware Sens. Chris Coons and Lisa Blunt Rochester, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Mexico Sen. Ben Ray Luján, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock.

The Treasury Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Three new county sheriff’s offices have signed agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that allow deputies to enforce federal immigration law. 

The sheriffs of Dunn, Green Lake and Walworth counties have signed the agreements under ICE’s 287(g) program. ICE records show the Dunn County agreement was signed Feb. 10 while the other two are still pending. All three counties have signed on to the program under the warrant service officer model, which allows county sheriff’s deputies to arrest people targeted by ICE with administrative warrants. 

With the three new agreements, 19 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties have joined the 287(g) program. Most of the counties have joined the program under the warrant service model while Kenosha and Marathon counties have joined under the jail enforcement model — which allows departments to notify ICE of undocumented immigrants detained in county jails. Kewaunee, Sauk and Waukesha counties have signed up under both models. 

Dodge County does not have a 287(g) agreement with ICE but for years has had a contract to hold federal detainees in its county jail, which includes people arrested by ICE. 

Immigrants’ rights and civil rights groups have criticized the 287(g) agreements, arguing that law enforcement openly stating its support for ICE and its often aggressive tactics discourages immigrants of all legal statuses from reporting crimes as victims or coming forward as witnesses. 

“287(g) agreements do not make anyone safer — they stoke fear and erode trust, deter residents from reporting crime, and divert local resources away from addressing real public safety concerns and the needs of the community,” the ACLU of Wisconsin said in a statement in January after the Kenosha and Sauk county sheriffs signed their agreements.

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WASHINGTON — The Trump administration must explain to a circuit court before the end of March exactly why it appealed a lower court’s ruling that allows Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly to keep his retirement rank and pay while a First Amendment case about the “Don’t Give Up The Ship” video plays out.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit’s order gives the Department of Justice until March 30 to provide a series of documents in its appeal of the district court’s preliminary injunction.

That ruling, from Senior Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court, said Defense Department officials, including Secretary Pete Hegseth, erred when trying to apply rules that affect active-duty military members to Kelly, a retired Navy Captain.  

“Secretary Hegseth relies on the well-established doctrine that military servicemembers enjoy less vigorous First Amendment protections given the fundamental obligation for obedience and discipline in the armed forces,” Leon wrote. “Unfortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military. This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon was nominated by former President George W. Bush. 

DOD seeks to downgrade Kelly retirement rank

The lawsuit began earlier this year after the Defense Department began proceedings to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank and pay for appearing in the 90-second video.

The six Democrats, all of whom are former members of the military or intelligence agencies, said in the video they understood the people working in those fields “are under enormous stress and pressure right now.” 

“Americans trust their military. But that trust is at risk,” they said. “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.”

They went on to say the “laws are clear” and that illegal orders can and must be refused. The video ended with them saying, “Don’t Give up the Ship,’ a long-held phrase in the U.S. Navy.

The Democrats’ video infuriated President Donald Trump, leading the Defense Department to open an investigation into Kelly.

Justice Department officials also launched an investigation into Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander.

The Justice Department failed to get a grand jury to indict the lawmakers earlier this month. 

Kelly cites effects on millions of retired veterans

Kelly wrote on social media Tuesday, after the Justice Department filed its appeal on behalf of the Defense Department, that the Trump administration didn’t “know when to quit.” 

“A federal judge told Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth that they violated my constitutional rights and chilled the free speech of millions of retired veterans,” Kelly wrote. “There is only one reason to appeal that ruling: to keep trampling on the free speech rights of retired veterans and silence dissent. I went to war to defend Americans’ constitutional rights and I won’t back down from this fight, no matter how far they want to take it.”

With the potential for a Democratic majority next year, Wisconsin’s Legislative Black Caucus closed this year’s Black History Month by laying out its policy goals on issues ranging from housing to education to civic engagement for the next legislative session.

Each year, the caucus starts Black History Month with a celebration and ends it with a day of work by bringing community members together in the state Capitol for Black Advocacy Day to discuss the issues facing Black Wisconsinites, meet with Democratic and Republican legislators and network with other community members. The day was created by former Sen. Lena Taylor, who was a member of the caucus during her time in office and is now a Wisconsin circuit court judge in Milwaukee County. 

Lawmakers developed their plans from listening sessions with Black Wisconsinites in four communities across the state.

Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), who chairs the caucus, told reporters that the caucus’ policy agenda will serve as a guide in the future for drafting legislation. 

“We know that the landscape is changing, and so we want to be proactive and make sure that we have a clear agenda of setting policy for next year,” Drake said.

Drake and Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee), who sits on the Joint Finance Committee, said they believe Democrats will be able to win majorities in the state Legislature in this year’s midterm elections. Democrats are two seats away from control of  the state Senate and five seats in the state Assembly. 

“We can’t continue to not address these issues,” Johnson said, specifically noting Medicaid and providing resources to the Wisconsin public school system.

During a briefing, Johnson was joined by her fellow caucus members as well as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, who formerly served in the state Assembly and is currently running in the Democratic primary for governor, and Wisconsin Voices executive director and former state Rep. David Bowen. 

The platform covered seven issue areas: improving affordable housing and protecting renters; education, literacy and economic opportunity; expanding access to affordable, comprehensive health and mental health care; ending mass incarceration and creating a rehabilitative criminal legal system; protecting people’s ability to participate in the democratic process; and helping communities by ensuring they have safe roads, clean air and affordable housing. 

Johnson detailed some of the disparities that Black Wisconsinites face. 

Housing

“Poverty hits Milwaukee the hardest, especially for Black Milwaukeeans,” Johnson said, adding, “30% of Black residents in Milwaukee live below the poverty line, which is the highest rate among major U.S. metropolitan areas. [Only] 27% of Black [people are] homeowners in Milwaukee, compared to the 56[%] for white households; $37,000 is the median household income for Black families in Milwaukee. That ranks us dead last among the 50 largest metropolitan areas. Poverty among Milwaukee’s African-American children is a whopping 38.8[%], which is the third worst out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas.”

Housing and protections for renters are at the top of the caucus’ agenda. Priorities include  tenants’ rights and developing housing affordability programs for communities with high displacement risk, including a first time homebuyers program and a home repairs program.

Johanna Jimenez of the Community Development Alliance, a Milwaukee-based organization dedicated to increasing homeownership for Black and Latino residents, told the Examiner that the organization supports the goals of the Black caucus and sees a need to connect  with lawmakers and other advocates.

“People there are struggling to become homeowners, to rent affordably and to live in safe housing,” Jimenez said. “Even though, like, we do housing every day, coming together on a larger scale and with more people, it’s super important. We recognize that not one person, not one organization, can get everything done, but we do have proof that when we come together, we get more done, and we get laws passed, people protected and more resources coming down.” 

Jimenez said prioritizing renters and helping people become homeowners is important to  building and stabilizing communities. She noted that out-of-state investors, who buy up property in Milwaukee communities, especially on the city’s North Side, driving up prices and limiting options for first-time homebuyers, continues to be an issue

“The tenants that are in our neighborhoods, they want to live in the neighborhoods, and so if we can focus on homeownership and putting resources aside for homeowners rather than giving investors an ‘easy way in,’ it would help communities… help families thrive.”

The caucus wants increase the state minimum wage, which currently sits at $7.25 an hour, expand access to job training in high-demand fields, including technology and skilled trades, provide targeted support for Black-owned small businesses and entrepreneurs, including grants and low-interest loans, and expand state investment in economic development in underserved communities.

Education

Johnson noted that the graduation rate for white students in Wisconsin is roughly 92.7% while  the graduation rate for Black children is 71% — the largest gap in the country.

“Absenteeism is also a strong predictor of involvement with youth in the criminal justice system,” Johnson said, noting that data from the 2023-24 school year shows that Black students in Wisconsin have chronic absenteeism rates that hover around 47%, which is more than four times higher than the 11.2% absenteeism rate for white students. 

Under its platform, the caucus says that it wants to work to “fully fund” public schools with targeted resources to bring up low literacy scores; expand evidence-based literacy programs, including early childhood and reading intervention initiatives; strengthen accountability and transparency in voucher schools and support development and recruitment of teachers and culturally responsive curricula.

It also wants to help protect people’s participation in the democratic processes by establishing a “Wisconsin John Lewis Voting Rights Act” that would ensure fair electoral maps and end gerrymandering, strengthen voting rights protections and expand civic education and community-led voter outreach. 

Criminal justice reform

Johnson said the caucus also wants to end the cycle of  mass incarceration. One attendee shook her head in agreement and said “amen” as Johnson spoke. 

Some caucus priorities in that area include reforming sentencing guidelines, increasing community oversight of law enforcement practices, expanding reentry programs and ending crimeless revocations. 

One proposal from the caucus meant to help improve the state’s criminal justice system, which was introduced this week, is a constitutional amendment proposal that would ensure Wisconsin bans slavery and involuntary servitude without exceptions.

Black history

When the Wisconsin Constitution was adopted in 1848, it included a prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude. The state joined the union to ensure it followed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which forbade slavery in the territory, and to establish itself as a free state. However, that provision includes an exception for slavery or involuntary servitude if it is imposed as punishment for a crime.

Last week, the Republican-led Assembly refused to take up a resolution to recognize February as Black History Month, which wouldn’t have an effect on policy in the state but which lawmakers said represents a recognition of their history, achievements and work that has shaped the state. 

During the Assembly floor session last week, Rep. Supreme Moore Omokunde (D-Milwaukee) said Republicans’ refusal to recognize Black History Month was “a horrific attempt to silence Black voices and to give us a subtle inference that our history isn’t as important as we think it is.” 

Moore Omokunde noted that in the past Republicans have easily passed resolutions to honor President Ronald Reagan, Charlie Kirk and Rush Limbaugh — who Moore Omokunde noted called once called President Barack Obama a “magic negro.”

“At most, we should aspire to be one of the few Black faces in white spaces, and in order to be successful, we should strip ourselves of all of our identity and our traditions…This is only a glimpse of what it’s like to be a Black legislator in this building,” Moore Omokunde said. “You’re welcome to be here, as long as you have a signed permission slip.”

This year’s resolution sought to recognize Black people with ties to the state including Marcia Coggs, who was the first Black woman to be elected to the state Legislature and the first Black lawmaker to sit on the powerful Joint Finance Committee, Bob Mann, who was the first Black player to play a regular season game for the Green Bay Packers, and Malcolm X, who was a prominent Black Nationalist during the Civil Rights movement and had “unique ties” to Wisconsin. 

Malcolm X’s family lived in Wisconsin while he was young after they fled Nebraska due to harassment from the Ku Klux Klan and moved to Milwaukee. His young brother, Reginald, was born in Wisconsin’s largest city. The family lived on West Galena Street on Milwaukee’s North Side until 1929 when they relocated to Lansing, Michigan. 

Malcolm X returned to Wisconsin many times in the 1960s, visiting Milwaukee and speaking to local communities about racial injustice. His work inspired grassroots organizing in the state. 

This year was not the first time that lawmakers have fought over proposals to recognize Black History Month. The state Assembly passed a resolution in 2025 honoring the month, but the resolution left out names of any individual people. The Senate passed that resolution in March 2025. 

Whether or not Democrats do win control of the Senate and Assembly in November, Johnson and Drake expressed confidence that Republicans would not be able to continue to block their work on the issues in the same way that they have for many years. 

“Even if we just get one house, we’re in a better position to hold them accountable,” Johnson said. “They’ll literally have to answer for why these things aren’t good ideas, or why this isn’t good governance when they see the numbers that we’re dealing with.”

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Vice President JD Vance did not utter the word “tariffs” a single time during his upbeat speech at a Plover, Wisconsin, machining plant Thursday. The visit, aimed at shoring up vulnerable Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden ahead of the 2026 midterms, was part of a post-State of the Union victory lap Vance is taking to market the so-called Golden Age of prosperity President Donald Trump claims he and the Republicans have delivered to rural and blue-collar voters.

It’s a tough sell. 

The latest Marquette University Law School poll, released the day before Vance parachuted into Wisconsin, shows Trump hitting a second-term low with Wisconsin voters, with 44% saying they approve of the job he’s doing and 54% saying they don’t approve. Across partisan affiliations, the rising cost of living is voters’ No. 1 concern, while 55% of respondents told pollsters tariffs are hurting Wisconsin farmers. Manufacturers are not happy, either.

“I can tell you from my experience running our company, from everyone I talk to in my networks — 95% of people in manufacturing — 99% do not support the tariffs,” said Sachin Shivaram, CEO of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, a Wisconsin-based company with locations across the Midwest.

Shivaram spoke on a press call with Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin ahead of Vance’s speech Thursday. Many business owners, he said, are afraid to publicly share their criticisms of the Trump administration. When he meets other leaders of manufacturing companies in boardrooms, he said, “It’s like, look, we can’t say anything about how dumb the tariff policy is, because we’re going to be the next one whacked on X.” But, he added, “it’s costing all of them, all of us, a lot of money.”

Tariffs have caused “chaos and uncertainty” for businesses, agreed Kyle LaFond, owner and founder of American Provenance and Natural Contract Manufacturing, a small business that makes personal care products. “Last year, when these tariffs were first instituted, I absorbed those costs as much as possible. I did that for about eight months,” LaFond said. “But that is not a sustainable business practice.” Ultimately, he said, businesses have to pass along the cost to their customers:  “Tariffs are just attacks on the American consumer.” 

There’s a reason slim majorities of Wisconsin voters chose Trump in 2016 and 2024. Vance put his finger on it in his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico.”

Wisconsin manufacturing workers and farmers suffered tremendously from global trade deals. Democrats and Republicans alike brushed aside their pain and tried to tell them that the booming stock market and increasing corporate profits were worth the crashing prices and job losses. Never mind the communities ruined and all the families that fell out of the middle class.

Trump and Vance spoke to those voters. In his convention speech, Vance cleverly tied global trade deals supported by both political parties to immigration.“Now, thanks to these policies that Biden and other out-of-touch politicians in Washington gave us,” he said, “our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor.”

But the immigrants who make up 70% of the labor force on Wisconsin dairy farms did not drive the collapse of Wisconsin’s small-farm economy. They, too, were displaced by globalization that drove down prices and accelerated a “get big or get out” economy that has taken a heavy toll on working people on both sides of the border. The arrival of immigrants willing to work long hours for low pay on farms that were forced to expand rapidly to stay afloat was a blessing to farmers who simply couldn’t find American workers to fill those jobs.

Today’s increasingly virulent, demagogic attacks on those hardworking immigrants should make everyone queasy. 

Alex Jacquez, a former White House economic official in the Biden administration who also worked for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, sees Vance’s rise as a big win for the populist right. Vance’s criticism of global trade deals that hollowed out American manufacturing, and his appeal to the “forgotten” American workers who have never recovered from outsourcing, struck a nerve with voters across the industrial Midwest. 

“But I think the question is whether the actual policies put forward are having the outcomes that they intend here,” Jacquez said in a phone interview Thursday.

Trump ‘s failure to deliver the economic miracle he advertised, along with devastating cuts to health care and the safety net, pose a looming problem for Republicans ahead of the midterms. The solution they’ve hit on is a combination of bluster, bullying and straight up lies. 

In his Plover speech, Vance doubled down on Trump’s scapegoating of immigrants and Democrats in the State of the Union. Following up on Trump’s racist characterization of the entire Somali immigrant community in Minnesota as “pirates” responsible for plundering public aid, Vance  blamed “‘illegal aliens” for fraud in public benefits programs and voting. He brought up Trump’s lurid descriptions of crimes committed by immigrants and, like Trump, excoriated Democrats for not standing up and cheering as the president subjected grieving parents to a gory rehash of violent attacks on their children.

The reason Democrats didn’t stand up during Trump’s speech, Vance suggested, is that “they answer to people who have corrupted this country. They answer to people who opened the border. They answer to people who got rich off of illegal immigrant labor. … We want American workers to get rich for working hard, not illegal aliens.”

Sucker-punching Democrats on immigration was a goal of the State of the Union speech. And Republicans will keep on punching. Their sanctimonious horror at the very idea of their colleagues not standing up and cheering for the victims of violent criminals is a way of changing the subject away from the spectacle of masked federal immigration agents spreading murderous mayhem in Midwestern neighborhoods, and, of course, the fact that none of this is making American workers better off. 

As Jacquez pointed out, “Certainly Trump has cracked down on immigration, but that doesn’t seem to be redounding to the benefit of native-born workers. We’ve seen the unemployment rate creep up even while fewer immigrants are working these days on the manufacturing side.”

“We lost manufacturing jobs in every single month of 2025,” he added. “There has been no resurgence whatsoever in actual people getting jobs in manufacturing and, in fact, in many sectors, some of the trade policies that Trump has advanced have been actively harmful.”

At the end of his speech, Vance took questions from local media that reflected the immediate concerns of voters in western Wisconsin. 

What can his administration do to stop the closure of rural hospitals that are creating a health care desert in the district he was visiting?

Vance blamed the problem on the Biden administration, although rural hospital closures did not begin under Biden and are severely exacerbated by Medicaid cuts under Trump. Vance also claimed the Trump administration is now turning things around with the rural hospital fund included in the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” — $200 million of which was awarded to Wisconsin in December.

Derrick Van Orden also pumped the rural hospital fund in remarks ahead of Vance’s speech, saying it’s “just a lie” that Democrats care about rural health care, because they didn’t vote for the massive tax- and spending-cut bill that contained the rural health care fund. 

KFF projects the fund will only make up for about one-third of the Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid in rural areas. And that offset is temporary. The rural health fund expires in five years. In Wisconsin, meanwhile, 250,000 people are losing their health care coverage because of the Medicaid cuts and changes to the Affordable Care Act passed by Republicans. Those losses are concentrated in rural areas, and have a cascading effect on rural hospitals and entire rural economies.

Van Orden, who has spent his whole political career calling for the elimination of the Affordable Care Act, reversed course and voted with Democrats to extend ACA subsidies last month — right after voting to block the same measure when Democrats brought it up the day before. 

In answer to a question on the health care worker shortage and the aging population of rural Wisconsin, Vance took a swipe at college students who major in women’s studies. The Trump administration — which has focused on repealing a pandemic-era pause on student loan repayment, resumed garnishing the wages of student debtors and imposed less affordable repayment plans — wants to make it easier for people to study to become doctors and nurses without getting “layered up with debt,” Vance declared.

Will the Trump administration withhold Medicaid money from Wisconsin as it recently announced it will do to Minnesota, as punishment for the state’s refusal to hand over the sensitive, personal information of food assistance recipients and of voters?

In answer to that question, Vance said it was outrageous that Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and the Wisconsin Elections Commission have refused to hand over the data Trump is demanding, and left the open the option of withholding federal Medicaid money, saying Democrats “like to cheat” in “voter rolls and welfare rolls.” 

Asked about farmers facing wildly fluctuating commodity prices, Vance celebrated the administration’s success in getting China to open up its market to U.S. soybeans. That’s a head-scratcher, since China was purchasing about half of all U.S. soybeans a year ago, before it stopped amid a trade war caused by Trump’s tariffs. That was a big problem for Wisconsin farmers who were suddenly stuck sitting on a bumper soybean crop after losing their biggest buyer. Even with the new deal, those farmers will not be made whole, Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, told Wisconsin Public Radio, and China has now found new markets, setting up a long-term business loss.

Among Vance’s many preposterous claims, perhaps the most incredible was the picture he tried to paint of a caring, empathetic Trump, who wakes up every morning asking what he can do to solve the problems of the American people. Do even Trump’s supporters buy the idea that the man who made $4 billion off the presidency after just one year in office is driven by selfless concern for the needs of others? 

On one occasion, Vance said, during a discussion of the soaring stock market, Trump asked earnestly what could be done for people who don’t own any stocks. The answer, he said, was Trump’s brilliant plan to give low-income workers a $1,000 federal match for retirement. That idea was actually signed into law by Biden four years ago.

Asked for his further ideas for investing in rural communities, Vance said his administration will mostly “just listen” to voters. He held up Van Orden as the administration’s point man for keeping in touch with constituents in rural Wisconsin. Unfortunately, Van Orden is so notorious for avoiding in-person contact with voters, Democrats have made a regular practice of visiting his district to hold town halls from which he is reliably, notably absent. 

The claim that either he or the Trump administration is concerned about solving the problems of Wisconsin voters is the biggest lie of all. 

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Pressured by businesses on the importance of immigrant labor, some Republican states are backing off plans to require all employers to check for legal employment status before hiring workers.

State and federal legislation to require that employers use E-Verify, a federal system to check legal status, has been limited this year as a push grows from business interests that say checking status could hurt state economies. Business groups have cited the cost of complying with the laws and the potential loss of crucial immigrant workers who don’t have legal work authorization.

Millions of worksites around the country use E-Verify to ensure new hires are legal to work in the United States, but it isn’t required in all states or for every industry. Going after employers has not been as popular with Republicans as immigration enforcement aimed at detaining and deporting people living here illegally.

In Idaho, for instance, legislation that would require all employers to use E-Verify, crafted with help from the conservative Heritage Foundation, is awaiting state House consideration — while a more limited mandate for large state and local government contractors passed the state Senate Feb. 19.

“I think we should tread lightly, and private businesses should not be enforcement agencies,” said state Sen. Mark Harris, a Republican and rancher who sponsored the less-stringent bill, on the Senate floor before the vote.

Idaho Republican state Sen. Brian Lenney, who voted for the bill, spoke resentfully of business leaders who came to the state Capitol to lobby against the broader mandate for all employers to use E-Verify.

“There were men in suits holding a press conference downstairs to let the world know and tell Idaho which industries cannot survive without illegal labor,” Lenney said before the vote. “They’re trying to protect a system that keeps human beings cheap, compliant and silent. … Is this bill making a dent, like it should? Not really.”

An industry-funded report said a sharp drop in unauthorized labor from deportations could cost the state economy billions of dollars and reduce state tax revenue by almost $400 million. The report, funded by the Idaho Alliance for a Legal Workforce and prepared by regional economists, emphasized the importance of immigrants to certain industries: As much as 90% of the workforce in dairy production is foreign-born, for example, and half of those individuals might not be authorized to work in the U.S.

There were 21 states with E-Verify requirements for contracts or business licenses as of 2024, federal data showed. Seventeen states had pending legislation to begin or expand E-Verify mandates as of Feb. 5, said Mick Bullock, a spokesperson for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Some bills have not progressed after business opposition, such as an E-Verify mandate in Kansas opposed by the Kansas Chamber and the League of Kansas Municipalities. The chamber said the bill “would create an aggressive, invasive, and costly system of employment verification on all Kansas businesses” in 2025 testimony.

“The goal of this bill is to prevent illegal immigration, however with the bill’s broad definitions and severe penalties this legislation would suppress business operations,” the chamber wrote in submitted testimony.

Another example of a limited E-Verify mandate is a recent Ohio law. It applies only to nonresidential construction, despite testimony about illegal labor in residential construction. After Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the measure in December, it takes effect March 20.

An earlier version of the same Ohio bill passed the state House in 2024 but did not pass the state Senate. In a hearing at the time, Richard Ochocki, an organizer for the state plumbers and pipefitters union, said he spent three hours at an apartment and condo construction site in Columbus without finding even one person with the legal work status required to join the union.

“The flow of undocumented workers to Ohio has been steadily increasing over my five and a half years as an organizer. I have personally encountered undocumented workers in Cleveland, Canton, Ashland, Lima, Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus,” said Ochocki, speaking in favor of E-Verify, in prepared remarks.

Madeline Zavodny, a professor at the University of North Florida who has researched the effects of E-Verify on the labor market, said exemptions for short-term work such as agriculture or small business is common, but limiting it to part of one industry such as nonresidential construction is unusual.

“The more limited the law is, the less impact it would have,” Zavodny said. “And nonresidential construction may be heavily unionized in Ohio such that there’s not a lot of unauthorized workers anyway. Unauthorized workers are often day laborers who work primarily in residential construction, not nonresidential.”

Meg Rietschlin, majority owner of a construction firm that bids on schools, roads, culverts and other nonresidential construction projects in rural Crawford County, Ohio, said she requires her workers to have a valid driver’s license, which should be enough to show they have legal status. An E-Verify mandate would drive her out of business because of the additional paperwork, she wrote in 2024 testimony.

“If you inundate me with the requirement to collect so much information, I will cease to be,” Rietschlin wrote. “This proposed law is meant to drive the small contractor out of public works opportunities.”

A report Zavodny co-authored in 2015 found E-Verify mandates appeared to help some workers who compete with unauthorized workers, such as Mexican immigrants who became citizens and U.S.-born Hispanic people, but did not measurably help U.S.-born non-Hispanic white people.

A 2020 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no evidence that E-Verify mandates improve the native-born labor market in general, and no evidence that people without work authorization moved away because of the mandates. Unauthorized workers may move from large businesses to small businesses that are less likely to comply with the mandates, the paper concluded.

As the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ramped up last year, restaurants and construction lost the largest number of immigrant laborers compared with 2024, according to a Stateline analysis of federal data. Landscaping, building services and warehousing industries also lost tens of thousands of laborers.

Rick Naerebout, who represents about 350 Idaho dairy farmers as CEO of the Idaho Dairymen’s Association, said his members depend on unauthorized labor to run their farms that together produce more than 18 billion pounds of milk in 2025, behind only California and Wisconsin.

Idaho farms have not seen large-scale raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Naerebout said, though there was one last year in South Dakota and one in New Mexico in June, among others. Naerebout said he believes President Donald Trump has paused most ICE raids on agriculture and tourism, as has been reported by The New York Times and Stateline.

Idaho should limit E-Verify mandates to government as the state Senate bill would do, and shouldn’t pass more stringent mandates as the other bills would do, Naerebout added.

“The president couldn’t be more clear that he wants there to be space for critical industries like agriculture to try and get to where we find the solution,” Naerebout said. “The irony is Idaho voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, and you’ve got Idaho Republicans now saying what the president’s doing isn’t good enough.”

Among other states, Tennessee has a broad E-Verify mandate for all businesses with at least 35 employees, though the exact number of employees has shifted over the years. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law effective in 2023 that lowered the threshold from 50 to 35, and one proposed bill this year could shift it back to 50 employees.

The mandate has faced business opposition but “other than a brief period of adjustment implementation has gone very smoothly,” Republican Lt. Gov. Randy McNally said in a statement to Stateline. McNally and other state officials have collaborated with the Trump administration on a package of proposed state legislation this year, including making E-Verify mandatory for state and local government hires.

Florida also has an E-Verify mandate for employers with 25 or more employees, with a bill under consideration to expand it to all employers. It passed the state House in January and is now in a state Senate committee.

In Democratic-led California, employers starting this month must notify employees about their rights under state law, including a prohibition on using E-Verify in a discriminatory way to screen only some employees. A bill in Democratic-led New York, with 12 Democratic sponsors, would prohibit use of E-Verify to screen job applicants or check on existing employees, which is  already prohibited by federal law. E-Verify can only be used legally after a job offer and before an employee has started work.

Meanwhile, some conservative-leaning states are moving to tighten rules. An Indiana bill would hold public works subcontractors accountable as part of an E-Verify mandate for public agency contracts and a West Virginia bill would require all employers to use E-Verify.

Federal legislation to mandate E-Verify for all employers has bogged down in recent years. A Senate bill last year did not progress beyond a committee, and a similar House bill bogged down in 2018.

Last year, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie introduced a bill that would require E-Verify for federal contractors only, saying it was “an area where mandatory E-Verify makes clear sense” in prepared testimony.

Mackenzie said he had sponsored an E-Verify law as a state lawmaker in 2019, and that it “has ensured there is a lawful workforce in the construction industry in my home state of Pennsylvania, protecting American workers from unfair competition, providing a level playing field for businesses, and helping to confirm all appropriate taxes are paid.”

Mackenzie’s bill on federal contractors had a committee hearing in January, during which California Democratic U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren said the bill would need an exemption for agriculture, since the government buys food and milk produced by undocumented workers for the military and schools on military bases.

“If we don’t exempt ag, we will have a very serious problem throughout the federal government, especially in our military that relies on ag products in feeding our soldiers,” Lofgren said. Her request to amend the bill was voted down.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.