In a press call Thursday, Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin called the U.S. war with Iran “yet another broken promise from this president who pledged to end foreign conflicts, not start them.”

“President Trump may have forgotten the lessons we learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Wisconsinites have not,” Baldwin told reporters. “They remember the cost of war started without good reasons and without a plan to get us out.”

Objecting to the fact that Congress, which has the power to declare war, was not consulted before the Trump administration began bombing, Baldwin added, “This is a war of choice. But it shouldn’t be the president’s choice.”

The Trump administration, she said, has offered multiple, conflicting reasons for starting the war, which as of Thursday had so far claimed the lives of seven U.S. service members and injured 140 others, as well as leading to the deaths of more than 1,000 civilians, including 175 students and teachers at a girls’ school.

“All signs point to this president getting us into this war haphazardly, and it’s deeply concerning because it’s Wisconsinites who are going to pay the price,” Baldwin said. “Wisconsinites need some answers. They should know why this administration is spending billions of dollars on a war with Iran instead of investing in our schools or lowering the cost of groceries, health care or rent.”

She pledged to use her leverage as a U.S. Senator to demand public hearings at which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other members of the administration would answer questions about the rationale for the war and plans to bring it to an end, and said she had not yet heard back from Senate Majority Leader John Thune about holding such a hearing.

Baldwin has also signed onto a war powers resolution with five Senate colleagues aimed at blocking further U.S. military action without congressional approval.

“If Leader Thune refuses to hold public hearings and the Trump administration continues to hide in darkness, I’m prepared to force every single senator to go on record and tell the American people whether or not they support another endless foreign war,” she said.

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Gov. Tony Evers said he would resist any efforts by the FBI and President Donald Trump to seize voting documents in Wisconsin as part of their review of the 2020 presidential election. 

Already this year, FBI officials have seized voting data in Georgia and Arizona, two swing states that Trump lost in 2020. Like Wisconsin, both states have been the regular focus of 2020 election conspiracy theories spread by Trump. 

If the FBI seized absentee ballots cast in Milwaukee County, those documents could reveal how individuals voted because of a state law that includes information that could tie each individual ballot to the voter’s signature in the official poll book. 

Federal officials have already worked to collect voter registration data in states across the country. The effort to collect that data from Wisconsin has been slowed by the state elections commission and the Wisconsin Department of Justice. 

Federal law enforcement has so far not signaled it’s going to expand its 2020 election investigation to include Wisconsin, but local officials have warned Milwaukee could be a target. Evers told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel earlier this week that he’d fight any such effort. 

“The idea that the state should somehow turn over sensitive voter information and documents that could enable the federal government to know how Wisconsinites voted and who they voted for is wrong, and we’ll continue fighting to protect Wisconsinites’ right to vote by secret ballot,” Evers said. “We want to keep our elections safe and secure, and caving to the Trump administration’s demand will do the exact opposite. That’s something we’re going to fight all the way.”

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The U.S. House Agriculture Committee advanced a sweeping farm bill early this month, attempting to revive Congress’ stalled effort to rewrite the nation’s agriculture law the same way it’s been done for decades.

But the vote also exposed the fragile coalition that will determine whether the legislation can ever move forward. 

Those who watch the process closely told States Newsroom they are not sure a new farm bill will be enacted, given the rupture in the traditional alliance that has in the past successfully brought together agriculture interests and anti-hunger advocates to support farm bills across party lines.

Historically, farm bills have brought together a diverse coalition of advocates and lawmakers across party lines. The arrangement dates back to the 1973 farm bill, when Congress first combined nutrition programs with farm subsidies to build a coalition strong enough to pass the legislation. The sweeping legislation now includes food and nutrition programs, energy, conservation, and rural development, as well as farm support and crop insurance. 

Now, cuts and changes in the nation’s biggest nutrition program, which could impose major new financial burdens on states, have been made by Republicans completely outside the usual farm bill process. This added to changes Democrats made in 2022, when they skipped the farm bill and used budget reconciliation to increase funding for climate-friendly farm conservation programs — though it is the food aid cuts that have most roiled the current debate.

These recent shifts could fundamentally change how the farm bill moves through Congress, said Christopher Neubert, deputy director of the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. He is also a former Democratic staffer on both the Senate Agriculture and Budget committees.

“It’s a careful balance …. but the farm bill was one thing that felt kind of certain,” Neubert said in an interview. “Now we’re entering a new period that I think does make a lot of people uneasy.”

“Unless there’s a real push to take a look at some of the serious challenges that exist and meaningfully address them, it might be very difficult to get a five-year farm bill across the finish line,” Neubert said.

Policy and funding together

The Agriculture Committee approved its version of the farm bill in a 34–17 vote March 5, following a markup that stretched more than 20 hours and featured sharp partisan disputes, particularly over the previous cuts to nutrition programs.

The legislation would set policy and funding levels for major food, agriculture and conservation programs for the next five years. The text and a title-by-title summary of the 802-page bill can be found here. 

The farm bill’s five-year timeline in the past gave some certainty and planning ability to farmers and ranchers, while bringing lawmakers and stakeholders back to the table periodically to reexamine the programs.

Congress last passed a farm bill in 2018, which expired in 2023. Since then, lawmakers have kept many programs running through temporary extensions, as negotiations over new versions fell through.

In the meantime, Congress made some of the largest changes to farm bill programs outside the normal reauthorization process – a major shift that has disrupted the usual process.

Last year’s GOP spending and tax cuts package, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” reshaped nutrition funding, cutting the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. 

SNAP, administered by states, is the nation’s largest anti-hunger program. It provides monthly, income-based benefits to help low-income individuals and families purchase groceries. Democrats have widely criticized the changes to the program.

Some Democrats do sign on 

Even so, the House Agriculture Committee vote showed some bipartisan support. 

Seven Democrats joined Republicans in backing the legislation: Reps. Jim Costa of California, Sharice Davids of Kansas, Don Davis of North Carolina, Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico, Adam Gray of California, Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan and Josh Riley of New York. 

That was slightly more bipartisan than when the committee advanced a farm bill two years ago. Only four Democrats supported a measure that included some SNAP cuts within the farm bill.

Among those crossing party lines this year was Rivet, a freshman lawmaker and member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition.

Rivet hosted a press event on March 10 at a Saginaw County farm to promote the bill, highlighting the balancing act some moderate Democrats may face if the legislation reaches the House floor in an election year. 

“Farmers need solutions and certainty,” Rivet said, noting that she backed the bill because of provisions related to disaster relief, crop insurance and specialty crop support.

Still, she acknowledged the legislation will need changes as it moves forward.

“I was excited to be able to vote ‘yes’ on this farm bill,” Rivet said. “But I need to say that the bill is not perfect. We do need to reverse the devastating cuts to SNAP for hungry kids and families.”

Restoration of SNAP funding resisted

The debate over SNAP and other nutrition programs loomed over much of the committee’s work and will continue to be a major factor as the legislation moves forward. 

“The historic cuts to SNAP jeopardize the path forward for this bill and future farm bills,” Davids said during the committee debate.

Democrats offered multiple amendments to restore SNAP funding, but Republicans did not support any.

Scott Faber, senior vice president for government affairs at the liberal-leaning Environmental Working Group and a longtime farm policy advocate, said the longstanding alliance between those who back SNAP and farm supporters helped Congress pass farm bills for decades even as fewer Americans lived in rural communities. 

But he argues that the recent policy decisions have effectively dismantled that agreement. The cuts to nutrition programs in last year’s budget reconciliation bill helped offset new investment in farm subsidies, which Faber and other advocates contend go disproportionately to large farmers and do little to support smaller farms.

“Republicans chose to blow up the farm bill coalition in the one big, beautiful bill …so if Congress fails to pass another farm bill ever again, it will be Republicans who rightfully will bear the blame,” Faber said in an interview.

Faber called the political shift around the farm bill “a historic once-in-a-generation miscalculation by the farm lobby that will, in the long run, undermine public support for the farm safety net.”

Full effects of SNAP cuts still to come

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the SNAP changes would reduce federal SNAP spending by roughly 20% through 2034 while imposing stricter work requirements and shifting some program costs to states.

Some provisions will not take effect until 2027 and 2028, meaning the full effects have yet to be felt.

The changes have drawn criticism from hunger advocates and state officials who warn the shift could strain state budgets and make it harder for families to access food assistance.

In a recent letter, the National Governors Association and other state and local organizations told Congress that the policy changes could throw hundreds of millions of dollars in costs onto states and risk destabilizing the program if lawmakers do not intervene.

During debate on an amendment from Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., that would have reversed the SNAP cuts, a proposal that ultimately failed, the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, warned the longstanding farm bill coalition could be unraveling.

“We could be driving the last nail in the coffin of this coalition today,” Craig said. “For some of us, this is your first farm bill markup. For all of us, it could likely be our last, because by decimating the nutrition title in the farm bill, by splitting the food and farm programs apart as Republicans have done in this process, you have destroyed the farm bill coalition.”

Craig said a path forward for this committee’s bill would be fraught, calling it a “shell of a farm bill” that is “absolutely flawed” and “a missed opportunity” to address the economic pressures facing agriculture.

“It is going to have challenges getting broad bipartisan support on the House floor if it even makes it there,” Craig said during the markup. “My sincere hope is that this is just ‘act one’ of several acts.”

‘There is more work to be done’

The House Agriculture Committee’s farm bill proposal, titled the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026, closely resembles the legislation the panel advanced two years ago. 

That earlier bill never received a vote on the House floor, and the Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to advance its own farm bill framework.

Throughout the markup, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., urged lawmakers to support the measure. He repeatedly encouraged members to “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good” as they debated amendments to the bill’s 12 titles covering farm supports, conservation, trade, rural development and nutrition.

“I am proud of this bill and the work we have done to further improve it. There is more work to be done,” Thompson said at the conclusion of the markup, which he called a “long slog.” 

Thompson has said he has met with House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., about bringing the measure to the House floor. 

But the legislation will likely need some Democratic support, particularly to move through the Senate, where votes to advance legislation like the farm bill typically require a 60-vote supermajority.

Senators, farm interests

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., the top Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said during a hearing March 10 that she hopes lawmakers can craft a bipartisan farm bill that addresses the needs of both farmers and families who rely on SNAP.

“I am hoping we can get to a better place. I hope as we look at a farm bill, that we include some corrections to what happened last summer,” Klobuchar said, referencing the “big beautiful” law.

For his part, U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said he appreciated the House effort to advance the farm bill and indicated he may want to go in a similar direction.

“This builds off the historic investments we made in the Working Families Tax Cuts to strengthen the farm safety net and provide producers with greater certainty while demonstrating unwavering support for strengthening rural communities and safeguarding our food supply,” Boozman said in a statement. 

Farm groups are watching closely, hoping a five-year farm bill will provide some certainty farmers have lacked in recent years.

American Farm Bureau Federation President Zippy Duvall called on Congress to “finish the job and deliver a modern farm bill” and urged farmers to contact lawmakers and encourage them to advance the legislation. The Farm Bureau has 5 million members.

The National Farmers Union, which represents about 220,000 family farmers and ranchers, said it is grateful for progress on the farm bill but offered a more cautious response.

“We remain concerned that this proposal does not yet meet the scale of the crisis facing family farmers and ranchers,” NFU President Rob Larew said in a statement. “The path from committee to a final, signed farm bill is long. NFU will continue working with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to strengthen this legislation.”

WASHINGTON — Members of a U.S. Senate panel expressed bipartisan consensus Thursday that the country should be cautious of “malign” foreign dollars flowing to American colleges and universities, with some Democrats also arguing recent funding cuts undermine the country’s lead in global research.

The hearing in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on “malign foreign influence in higher education” came as President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have pushed for increased transparency requirements when it comes to foreign gifts and contracts entering these schools.

Higher education institutions receiving federal financial assistance are required to disclose any foreign gifts or contracts valued at or above $250,000 annually. The requirement has been in place since 1986, when the Higher Education Act of 1965 was amended to include the reporting provision, known as Section 117. 

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and chair of the panel, said college is ultimately “about setting students up for success and they should be our priority, but that priority can be undermined when foreign adversaries attempt to exercise influence on college campuses … inherently threatening national security.” 

A bill that would broaden Section 117 disclosure requirements and lower the reporting threshold from $250,000 to $50,000 passed the House in March 2025. Rep. Michael Baumgartner, a Washington state Republican, sponsored the measure. 

Cassidy, who is co-leading a Senate companion bill with North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis, called for protecting college campuses through “transparency,” noting that his legislation would be the next step in that effort.  

Thursday’s hearing also came as the administration continues its efforts to dismantle the 46-year-old Education Department, including through a series of interagency agreements that outsource several of its responsibilities to other departments. 

In one of those agreements, the State Department will help Education manage foreign gift and contract reporting under Section 117.  

Research cuts add vulnerabilities

Though Democrats saw a need to root out “malign” foreign influences in higher education, a handful took aim at the administration’s cuts to federal research funding and broader “attacks” on higher education. 

“While I agree that it’s important to stamp out dangerous sources of foreign influence in our higher education system, I think it’s important that we also address how cuts to research funding can increase foreign influence on the global stage and undermine U.S. competitiveness,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks.

The Maryland Democrat pointed to the impact of the administration’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the country’s premier medical research agency under the Department of Health and Human Services that is headquartered in her state. 

Sen. Tim Kaine pointed to a loss of researchers in the United States as a result of research funding cuts. 

“This administration has canceled billions of dollars in federal research, making many of our researchers vulnerable to being recruited by universities in other countries, not necessarily China, but Canada, the (United Kingdom) and universities in Europe,” the Virginia Democrat said. 

Sen. Patty Murray said she found it “absurd” that Trump and Republicans are “willing to burn billions of dollars a day” in the ongoing war with Iran, when she and many others are fighting “tooth and nail” to get the administration to “release billions of dollars that Congress appropriated to be delivered to our students.”

“It’s not happening, and states like mine are having to routinely file lawsuits,” the Washington state Democrat said, while also calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to testify before the panel on the ongoing dismantling efforts. 

Cassidy said the panel was in talks with the department to schedule McMahon’s testimony.

Transparency dashboard

The department’s public transparency dashboard — housed on a portal launched in January where colleges and universities are responsible for disclosing foreign gifts and contracts — also came to the forefront during Thursday’s hearing. 

The dashboard, visualizing four decades of data, offers a snapshot of the foreign funding disclosures submitted by colleges and universities.

At least 559 institutions have disclosed $72.1 billion in foreign gifts and contracts between 1986 and late January 2026, according to the dashboard.

But the current version of the dashboard’s usability is limited by an inability to filter by year.

Robert Daly, senior fellow at the Asia Society and former director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Wilson Center, told the panel the dashboard’s cumulative nature is one of its “biggest silences.” The tool does not allow the public to see any fluctuation over the years in the amount of money in foreign gifts and contracts received by schools. 

He added that “not only do we need to see how giving from each country is moving over time, we need to be able to distinguish different kinds of giving.” 

The Wisconsin State Legislature is being sued over its use of private lawyers by progressive firm Law Forward. The lawsuit, filed on Feb. 19 in Dane County Circuit Court, takes aim at a provision in the lame duck law passed by the Republican majority and signed by outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker in 2018 before Democratic Gov. Tony Evers took office for his first term. The provision allows the Assembly speaker and Senate majority leader to obtain outside legal counsel.

A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigation published in July 2025 found that since 2017 lawmakers had spent over $26 million in taxpayer money on legal fees to private law firms, many of which had ties to the national Republican party and the state DOJ under former Republican state attorneys general.

Law Forward President and General Counsel Jeff Mandell said in a statement that Wisconsinites “deserve to know their money is being spent lawfully to advance a valid public purpose.” 

“This lawsuit challenges the tens of millions in taxpayer funds, most of which is wasted by the Republican-controlled Legislature on private legal counsel in pursuit of private interests, in clear violation of the Wisconsin Constitution’s public purpose doctrine and Wisconsin’s system of divided government,” Mandell said.

The lawsuit argues that the retention of private lawyers using public funds is unconstitutional because it is duplicative of the legal services provided through the Department of Justice that the state already pays for and has been used primarily for private, partisan or political interests. 

The Wisconsin Constitution prohibits spending public funds for purposes that aren’t public.

It asks the court to declare the use of private counsel unconstitutional and to block the state Department of Administration from processing future payments for private counsel for lawmakers. 

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of three Wisconsin taxpayers: Daniel Theno, a Brown County Board Supervisor and former state senator, Randy Scannell, a former Green Bay City Council alderman, and J. Drew Ryberg.

The defendants named in the suit include the Assembly, Senate, and the Department of Administration (DOA) as well as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg), Senate President Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk) and other legislative leaders. 

“The Legislature hires attorneys to defend Wisconsin’s laws because the people of Wisconsin deserve a rigorous defense of the laws on the books. Even though the Attorney General can defend our laws, we have seen that the Department of Justice is unable to put politics aside on partisan issues,” Lemahieu and Vos said in a joint statement. “Hiring outside counsel simply allows the legislature to ensure all sides are presented vigorously so the judiciary can hear all points of view to make the best decision.”

One case that the lawsuit cites is Wisconsin State Senate v. City of Green Bay.  The case, which was settled in July 2024, centered on the City of Green Bay and Mayor Eric Genrich alleging that audio recording devices installed in City Hall in 2021 violated state electronic surveillance laws. 

The Senate and its member, Sen. André Jacque (R-New Franken), initially brought the case, but the Senate was dismissed as a party after it was filed. The Law Forward suit alleges that the Senate continued paying for private counsel “with bills sometimes exceeding $150,000 in a month” and argues the Senate and Jacque “initiated and persisted in litigation for no discernable public purpose.” 

Another case cited is the hiring of Michael Gableman by Vos in 2021 to investigate Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential results, which Trump falsely claimed had been rigged to cause his loss. The Assembly paid Gableman over $1.3 million in public dollars for Gableman, other staff and expenses until August 2022 when Gableman was fired.

Referencing a statement made by Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) after the ordeal, the lawsuit argues that “‘nothing’ actually overstates the value to the people of Wisconsin of the services rendered” and that Gableman’s efforts “led to a bevy of litigation, in multiple circuit and appellate courts.” The lawsuit also claims that afterwards the Assembly hired outside counsel to represent Gableman and sometimes the Assembly in circuit and appellate courts in litigation that was the result of the investigation.

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Wisconsin lawmakers are advancing a bill through the Senate that would place policies in statute and provide funding to help the University of Wisconsin navigate changes in college sports allowing  student athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness (NIL). 

University of Wisconsin-Madison Athletic Director Chris McIntosh said at a public hearing on the bill last week that the measure is necessary to help UW maintain its athletics programs and competitiveness. 

A recent landmark antitrust settlement in a House v. NCAA lawsuit allows college athletics programs to directly provide NIL compensation to student athletes. 

According to written testimony, starting in fiscal year 2026 the settlement will add an expected $20.5 million annual expense to the UW-Madison athletics budget to cover the cost of the revenue-sharing requirements. The settlement allows schools to pay athletes up to an annual cap that starts at about $20.5 million per school in 2025-26 and increases every year potentially reaching over $32 million by 2035.

AB 1034 would provide $14.6 million annually in state funds to go towards debt service for the maintenance costs of UW-Madison’s athletic facilities. It also includes $200,000 annually in state funds for debt service for maintenance costs of the UW–Milwaukee Klotsche Center as well as $200,000 for the UW-Green Bay soccer complex. The purpose is to free up funds that the UW can use to provide students with opportunities for NIL agreements. 

“If this bill doesn’t pass and is pushed off into the future, it will continue to put tremendous financial strain on athletics and on the university. We will have our backs up against a wall financially by the time that this would come forward in 2027,” McIntosh said. UW-Madison has 23 sports teams and he said this would especially help support its Olympic and women’s programs.

Without the bill, McIntosh said UW-Madison will need to reevaluate “our expectations on the success of our sports” or “how they’re supported or how many of them exist.”

There are at least 32 states that have passed laws to regulate NIL agreements for student athletes. 

The bill seeks to codify the policies that UW-Madison and other campuses already have in state law. Some of those include prohibiting NIL contracts that conflict with school policies or  provide money in exchange for athletic performance, as well as those that require student athletes to endorse alcoholic beverages, gambling, banned athletic substances or illegal activities or substances. It also includes a requirement that student athletes disclose third-party NIL deals they enter. 

UW schools will also be able to contract with organizations that can help student athletes find NIL opportunities.

The bill is coauthored by Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) and Reps. Alex Dallman (R-Markesan), Scott Krug (R-Rome) and Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc). 

UW exempted from state open records law

Open records advocates have questioned the broad nature of an open records exemption included in the bill.

Beth Bennett, executive director of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, said in written testimony that the language in the bill related to open records “appears to extend far beyond” its intended purpose and could “create a sweeping exemption for any financial record connected to a public university’s athletic program.”

The language included in the bill states that “to protect competitive interests and student privacy,” records related to the “generation, deployment, or allocation of revenue generated by an intercollegiate athletic program that are the subject of reasonable efforts under the circumstances to maintain the secrecy of the records, when competitive reasons require confidentiality” will not be subject to the open records law. 

Bennett said the bill “creates a subjective and potentially expansive loophole” that would “enable a public institution to shield broad categories of financial decision-making from scrutiny simply by asserting competitive harm” and undermine “Wisconsin’s long-standing commitment to open government.”

Bennett said the bill’s language should be narrowly tailored if it is seeking to protect sensitive NIL agreements involving student-athletes.

Nancy Lynch, vice chancellor for legal affairs for UW-Madison, told lawmakers at the Senate public hearing on the bill that it would put the university on a competitive footing with peer institutions in other states, and said the open records exemption is important for that purpose. 

“The need for the explicit exemption is focused on protecting competitive interests and student privacy,” Lynch said. “We seek only to codify our existing practice of denying access to student athlete NIL agreements and certain university records that are related to NIL strategy, allocation, revenue generation and use, the release of which would put us at a competitive disadvantage with our competitors. 

Lynch said the provision would just provide “certainty” for student athletes and “clarity” for records seekers, not give them “an unlimited exemption to withhold anything we wish.” She noted that UW-Madison has released NIL records that don’t implicate students or competitive interests including its temporary NIL policy and the full athletics budget.

“This legislation would not change that,” she said. 

However, she said the broad nature of the language would provide flexibility that allows the university to determine their response as requests come in.

“As the NIL landscape continues to evolve, the language as it’s been drafted helps us anticipate additional types of records that we don’t know yet may exist,” Lynch said.

A Legislative Council member told lawmakers during the hearing that the specific language in the bill “is not limited to the name, image or likeness under that specific phrasing,” but “does have to be limited to … generation, deployment or allocation of revenue related to the athletic program and it has to be when competitive reasons require the confidentiality.”

Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit) asked whether the university would be open to an amendment that would ensure that the language applies to NIL.

Lynch said she didn’t necessarily have an objection to that but noted that the bill is not currently written that way and changes to the bill at this point could delay the legislation until the next legislative session. 

The Assembly passed the bill in a 95-1 vote with little floor debate last month. 

The state Senate will be in session in March, but the Assembly adjourned for its last regular floor session last month. Any changes to the NIL bill would need to be approved by both the Senate and the Assembly before the bill could go to Gov. Tony Evers.

The Joint Finance Committee voted 8-5 Tuesday to concur in the bill. There was no debate on the bill, though Sens. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), Rob Stafsholt (R-New Richmond), Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) and Kelda Roys (D-Madison) all voted against it.

The Senate Government Operations, Labor and Economic Development committee also voted 3-2 via paper ballot Wednesday to approve the bill with Bradley and Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) in opposition.

With four Republicans opposing, the bill will likely need Democratic support to pass in the Senate.

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An ally of the man whose son was killed by Kenosha police two decades ago is raising new questions about a thwarted attempt to reopen the investigation of the 2004 fatal shooting.

In 2023, the state Crime Victims Rights Board rejected an attempt by Michael M. Bell to hold the Wisconsin Department of Justice responsible for ignoring his pleas to examine what happened the night his son was killed.

In new legal papers filed this week, Russell Beckman, a retired Kenosha police detective, charges that the Wisconsin DOJ improperly worked with the Crime Victims Rights Board during its review of Bell’s claim.

Beckman contends that conversations involving a top-ranking DOJ official, an attorney working for the victims rights board and the board’s director were “illicit” and deprived Bell of a fair hearing into his complaint.

The DOJ declined comment on Beckman’s filing.

Bell’s son, Michael E. Bell, was shot and killed on Nov. 9, 2004, after a police encounter. In the years since, the elder Bell has repeatedly sought to draw attention to discrepancies in the Kenosha Police Department’s account of the incident. He argues those discrepancies call into question the police department’s narrative — including the reason that his son was shot.

The official police department account asserts that Albert Gonzales, the Kenosha police officer who shot Michael E. Bell, acted in self-defense after another officer shouted that Bell had grabbed his service weapon during an ongoing struggle.

What really happened the night Michael Bell’s son died?

Bell’s father has consistently argued that eyewitness testimony and physical evidence show that his son could not have grabbed the second officer’s gun. He has said that while he believes the second officer was genuinely mistaken, Gonzales was in a position to know otherwise but shot Bell in haste.

The second officer later took his own life. Gonzales, who has self-published an account of the case using fictional names for some of the people involved — including the Bells — has denied the elder Bell’s claims and stood by the Kenosha Police Department’s scenario of the incident.

For more than 15 years Michael M. Bell has urged authorities to reexamine the details of his son’s death, to no avail. Beckman has been working with Bell as a volunteer for more than a decade on those efforts.

Bell says since 2018 he has several times sought meetings with Attorney General Josh Kaul and requested information from the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

After receiving no response, Beckman, acting on Bell’s behalf, filed a complaint to the Crime Victims Rights Board in 2022, charging that by ignoring Bell’s requests Kaul had violated his rights as a crime victim. The board dismissed the complaint in 2023.

The board ruled that the alleged conduct by Kaul and the DOJ wouldn’t be considered “crimes that confer victim status” on Bell. The ruling added: “The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons.”

After that ruling, Beckman obtained billing records and other materials related to Bell’s complaint before the victims rights board through open records requests. In an affidavit he filed this week, Beckman said those records showed that DOJ lawyers, the Crime Victims Rights Board’s operations director and a private attorney the board hired to provide legal counsel regarding Bell’s complaint, had conducted telephone conferences about the case in February 2023.

Another open records request turned up an email message from Mel Barnes, the chief legal counsel for Gov. Tony Evers, telling the lawyer advising the CVRB that  Deputy Attorney General Eric Wilson “can provide some background” about the Bell complaint and can “connect you with the board.”

The Wisconsin law that empowers the Crime Victims Rights Board states that “actions of the board are not subject to approval or review by the attorney general.”

In his affidavit Beckman contends those conferences could be considered “illicit” in light of that law. “Wisconsin law and CVRB organization rules create a specific separation of the authority between the CVRB and the Attorney General/WI DOJ,” the affidavit states.

Beckman also charges that those conferences could constitute “improper ex parte influence from a named adverse party” — the DOJ. 

Beckman says in the affidavit that because of earlier email messages he sent to DOJ in his and Bell’s effort to persuade Kaul to look into the 2004 fatal shooting and their allegations of a Kenosha police coverup, it would be “a conflict of interest” for the DOJ lawyer to confer with the CVRB lawyer.

Beckman filed the affidavit and a related document in Brown County circuit court as part of his petition for a judicial review of the Crime Victims Rights Board ruling that dismissed Bell’s complaint.

The circuit judge dismissed Beckman’s judicial review petition on the grounds that Beckman missed a filing deadline. Beckman has appealed the judge’s action, arguing that he did not miss the deadline based on the wording of the state’s online form. His appeal is in the Wisconsin Appeals Court 3rd District, where it has been for more than a year.

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Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia now reject at least some federal vaccine guidance as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to de-emphasize the importance of childhood vaccinations under U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., according to research by KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization based in California and Washington, D.C. 

The tally as of March 10 reflects states that have announced they will go their own way on childhood vaccines since last May, when Kennedy began to make changes to the vaccine schedule. Those changes culminated with a reduction in recommended routine childhood vaccinations, from 13 to 7, as of January. 

New state-by-state recommendations reflect a partisan divide, as all states with Democratic governors have rejected federal childhood vaccine guidance while many Republican states have not. 

Virginia announced in February that it would not follow CDC guidelines, a change after the inauguration of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who took over after a Republican predecessor. Spanberger had campaigned on the issue, saying she would not support a rollback of childhood vaccinations.

In Florida, the state Senate passed a bill March 9 making it easier for parents to let their children go unvaccinated, though state House leaders have said they will not consider a similar bill despite support for it from Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

In Louisiana, the state has adopted a policy of not promoting vaccines or holding clinics. Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician who reluctantly agreed to Kennedy’s confirmation despite objecting to his views on vaccines, is facing a primary fight. 

Fifteen Democrat-led states sued Kennedy in federal court in February, seeking a reversal of the new vaccine guidelines. A preliminary hearing is scheduled May 29.

Some states have created formal alliances to share health information. The Northeast Public Health Collaborative, composed of Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York state, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York City, said in January it will continue following guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics instead of the federal government.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released its immunization schedule for 2026, which kept in place the schedule as it was before HHS’s overhaul. Twelve medical professional organizations endorsed the academy’s schedule. 

And governors of 14 states have formed another alliance to share public health information, including on vaccines. The updated CDC guidance “creates confusion and introduces unnecessary barriers for families who want to protect their children from serious illness,” said the Governors Public Health Alliance in a January news release. The governors are all Democrats, though the group says it is nonpartisan.

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

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Wednesday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the revocation of legal status for more than 350,000 Haitians, opening them up to deportations. 

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to block a lower court’s ruling that found the Trump administration unlawfully ended Temporary Protected Status for Haiti. 

TPS is a status given to nationals who hail from a country deemed too dangerous for return. The program grants work permits and deportation protections through renewal cycles ranging from six to 18 months. 

As President Donald Trump aims to carry out mass deportations, the administration has moved to revoking legal status, such as TPS, for millions of immigrants, which means they then may be deported.  

Administration argues status is temporary

In court filings, Sauer argued that the decision from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia harms the Trump administration’s “national interest and foreign relations.” 

He added that TPS is supposed to be “temporary,” and notes that Haiti has had the designation since 2010. 

The high court asked for a response by Monday from attorneys representing the TPS holders who initially sued. 

Haiti first received TPS designation after a devastating earthquake in 2010, and had it renewed following the president’s assassination in 2021 by gangs. 

The Trump administration moved to end TPS designation by Feb. 3. But Haitian TPS holders sued, arguing that the end of the designation did not take into account the country’s current condition. Haiti is dealing with gang violence and political instability. 

Other TPS moves

The Trump administration has also asked the high court to allow for the stripping of TPS for 6,000 Syrian nationals. The Supreme Court has not ruled on that emergency appeal yet. 

The Trump administration has sought to end legal protections for immigrants with TPS status. 

So far, the administration has revoked TPS status for 13 of the 17 countries that were designated at the start of the president’s second term. 

Those 13 countries are Afghanistan, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, Myanmar, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  

The four remaining countries with TPS expiring this year without an extension are El Salvador, Lebanon, Sudan and Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense must quickly release the results of its investigation into whether the U.S. military bombed a girls’ elementary school in Iran that left at least 168 people dead, according to a letter sent Wednesday that was signed by nearly every Senate Democrat. 

“To be clear, the war against Iran is a war of choice without Congressional authorization,” they wrote. “Nonetheless, as these military actions continue, the United States and Israel must abide by U.S. and international law, including the law of armed conflict.”

The letter from 46 senators to Secretary Pete Hegseth calls on Pentagon officials to conduct “a swift investigation into the strikes on this school and any other potential U.S. military actions causing civilian harm, and the findings must be released to the public as soon as possible, along with any measures to pursue accountability.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Defense said in a statement the “incident is under investigation.”

US responsibility probed

President Donald Trump said while leaving the White House Wednesday that he didn’t know anything about preliminary reports that the U.S. is responsible for the bombing. The New York Times reported earlier in the day that an “ongoing military investigation has determined that the United States is responsible for a deadly Tomahawk missile strike on an Iranian elementary school.”

The lawmakers’ letter requests the Pentagon answer a series of questions, including 

• Whether the U.S. military conducted the strike on Feb. 28 on the girls’ elementary school.
• If it was a U.S. strike, what the military meant to bomb and what led to the school being hit instead.
• Whether the department is “complying with rules to prevent the commission of war crimes.”
• If the DOD created a “no-strike list” before bombing began in Iran and what other steps military officials have taken to reduce or prevent harm to civilians. 
• Whether the military is using artificial intelligence tools in its operations in Iran. 
• What steps the department took to comply with the laws of war. 

Senators signing letter

The letter was signed by Arizona Sens. Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, Colorado Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, Connecticut Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, Delaware Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons, Georgia Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Hawaii Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, Illinois Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, Maryland Sens. Angela Alsobrooks and Chris Van Hollen, Massachusetts Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Michigan Sens. Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin, Minnesota Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, Nevada Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, New Hampshire Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen, New Jersey Sens. Cory Booker and Andy Kim, New Mexico Sens. Martin Heinrich and Ben Ray Luján, New York Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, Oregon Sens. Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, Rhode Island Sens. Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, Washington Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. All are Democrats. 

Maine Sen. Angus King and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, both independents who caucus with the Democrats, signed the letter as well. 

Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman was the sole Democrat not to sign the letter. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday heard oral arguments in a case that centers on a dispute between state Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature about who controls money the Department of Justice is awarded as part of lawsuit settlements. 

The suit is yet another challenge to the lame duck laws Republican legislators and outgoing Gov. Scott Walker enacted in 2018 in the days before the end of Walker’s term and another instance of the Supreme Court stepping in to enforce the separation of powers between Wisconsin’s executive and legislative branches. 

Under several provisions of the lame duck laws, the Legislature sought to limit the executive branch’s authority to spend money. The Supreme Court previously struck down provisions that required the approval of legislative committees before executive agencies could act. 

The Legislature argues that under the law, the attorney general is required to put money from a financial settlement into the state’s general fund, which legislators control through the normal budget process. Kaul argues he can put the settlement funds in accounts controlled by DOJ but doesn’t have the authority to spend those funds without approval from the Legislature’s budget-writing Joint Finance Committee. 

Initially filed in Polk County Circuit Court in 2021, when a conservative majority controlled the Supreme Court, the case appeared in the 2nd District Court of Appeals in 2024 where a 2-1 decision reversed the circuit court’s ruling that Kaul could direct settlement funds into DOJ accounts. 

That majority opinion was authored by Judge Maria Lazar, a conservative judge now running for a seat on the Supreme Court. 

“Despite the legislation expressly designed to bring all settlement funds under legislative control and despite the simple and plain language of that legislation, the Attorney General has continued to act precisely in the manner which the Legislature sought to end,” Lazar wrote.

Generally, conservative legal interpretations of the law involve strict adherence to the exact language of a statute while liberal legal interpretations take into account intent. In this case, that typical structure is flipped. The DOJ argues that it is following the exact language of the law by directing the settlement money into accounts for specific DOJ programs that fall under the umbrella of the general fund and not spending those funds without approval from JFC. DOJ also notes that historically, Wisconsin attorneys general have had broad authority to spend settlement money. 

DOJ attorney Hannah Jurss argued to the Court Wednesday that it isn’t DOJ’s fault the Legislature wasn’t precise enough when crafting the law — though the law has effectively cut off Kaul’s ability to direct the expenditure of settlement funds. 

“We now do not have discretion to expend those monies. So if the intention was to prevent the attorney general’s expenditure of settlement funds as properly understood, it did that,” Jurss said. “There are now monies sitting there that are left to the attorney general’s discretion that the attorney general cannot spend. Instead, I think what the court is seeing in the Legislature’s arguments are unsupported assertions about some sort of broader intent that, frankly, have no support whatsoever in the text of the statutes, in statutory history.” 

Jurss added that a similar structure guides the budget statutes across state government, so if the Court sided with the Legislature, much of the existing budget framework would be affected. She noted programs in the Departments of Tourism and Military Affairs that would be hit. 

“This Court should not cut the wire on the budget statute structure across Wisconsin statutes simply for the Legislature to accomplish its preferred outcome here,” she said. 

Misha Tseytlin, the attorney for the Legislature — whose former position as state solicitor general was cut by the Legislature in the lame duck laws — argued the Court should side with the Legislature to stop Kaul from finding ways around the law. 

“Because the attorney general had found his way around the Legislature’s prior attempt,” Tseytlin said. “I know there’s not a lot of sympathy for the Legislature from the courts, but imagine how frustrating it is. You’re trying to rein in the attorney general, you’re trying to get them to stop these practices, you enact this JFC provision, and they find a way around that.”

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Passengers at a handful of airports this week waited in hours-long security lines as the government shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security dragged on.

Though Transportation Security Administration officers are required by law to work during a lapse in funding, more than usual have been absent after receiving only a partial paycheck during the most recent pay period. TSA officers will miss an entire paycheck this weekend if the shutdown is still in effect then. 

No end to the shutdown appeared imminent Wednesday, as the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would have funded TSA and other agencies in DHS that are not related to immigration enforcement.

In the meantime, TSA officers are not being paid. 

Most live paycheck-to-paycheck, said Johnny Jones, the secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 100, which represents TSA agents.

The lack of pay has contributed to absenteeism, Jones added. The union does not condone coordinated “sick-outs,” which are illegal. 

But individual officers miss work for one of three reasons during a shutdown, he said: pre-planned time off, legitimate illness or personal emergencies, and those calling in sick but seeking other work to pay bills.

“If you’re normally receiving a paycheck, you wouldn’t have that third group,” he said.

Some of those who are working are going without lunch or making other sacrifices, Jones added. And he said two colleagues were evicted during the most recent shutdown last fall, which lasted for 43 days.

The U.S. war against Iran, which has an estimated price in the billions of dollars in just its first two weeks, has also driven resentment among TSA workers, Jones said.

“One of the things that I’ve heard from the colleagues is that, man, we got plenty of money to go fight wars and bomb Iran, but we can’t pay our own employees,” he said.

Long lines

No exceptionally long wait times were reported Wednesday, but the previous few days saw several examples of snarled security lines.

Security lines topped three hours at Houston’s William P. Hobby International Airport on Monday and Tuesday. 

Lines at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were up to two hours Monday and the airport’s social media drew a direct line to the shutdown.

“Due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown, there continues to be a shortage of TSA workers at the security checkpoint … which is causing longer-than-average lines,” the airport’s X account posted.

Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport also urged passengers to leave extra time to account for factors including “TSA staffing constraints.”

CBS News reported Wednesday that more than 300 TSA agents have left their jobs since the shutdown began. TSA officials did not respond to messages seeking confirmation of that figure.

Senate gridlock

The top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, Washington’s Patty Murray, sought unanimous consent Wednesday for the Senate to approve a bill that would fund all of DHS other than Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and the secretary’s office.

Sen. Katie Britt, an Alabama Republican who chairs the subcommittee on Homeland Security funding, objected.

Murray’s bill “would effectively defund our law enforcement officers that are charged with keeping Americans safe,” Britt said.

Each party blamed the other for the impasse, which has been unbreachable since the department’s funding lapsed Feb. 14.

Following the January fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by immigration officers in Minneapolis, Democrats are demanding changes to immigration agencies’ conduct as a condition of funding the department.

Republicans have said they are willing to negotiate the issue, but the parties disagree on what to do for the department, which also includes the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, in the meantime.

Republican leaders sought to pass a short-term continuing resolution to fund the entire department, but Democrats rejected it, saying it would allow the operation of immigration agencies without adding accountability measures.

“Right now, TSA agents are going without pay because Republicans and the White House have decided they would rather shut down all of DHS than pass some very basic reforms to rein in ICE and Border Patrol,” Murray said. “We also want TSA and FEMA funded, but we are not going to be blackmailed into cutting a blank check for ICE to get it done.”

Politics cited

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, of South Dakota, said Democrats have stopped negotiating on DHS funding in a bid to keep the issue alive for the November midterm elections. 

“The American people are tired,” he said. “Lines get longer at the airports because TSA isn’t funded. The American people want us to do our jobs. Republicans are at the table. We’re ready to work toward a solution. Democrats have walked away.”

Jones, the AFGE member and TSA officer, declined to say which approach to short-term funding was preferable, but said it was Congress’ job to fund the federal government.

“We all swear the same oath to the same Constitution,” he said. “Now my job function is a little different than theirs, so they need to do theirs so I can do mine.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats and education advocates Wednesday marked one year since the U.S. Department of Education initiated sweeping mass layoffs.

Those layoffs set the stage for more unprecedented efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year to wind down the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to return education “back to the states.” 

Meanwhile, a new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the staffing reductions affected the government’s ability to determine how well student loan servicers are doing their jobs.

Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono hosted the press conference outside the U.S. Capitol, joined by fellow Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, along with advocates, to underscore the impact of the mass layoffs and other major cuts on students and families across the country. 

The U.S. Supreme Court in July 2025 temporarily greenlit the mass layoffs, along with Trump’s plan to dramatically downsize the agency, which he had outlined in an executive order signed later in March 2025. 

Rachel Gittleman, president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 252, which represents Education Department workers, said the administration “has shown it will stop at nothing, even ignoring court orders and violating federal law to dismantle the department and sow chaos for students, families, communities and my coworkers.” 

“They will continue to undermine the careers of thousands of dedicated public servants who work every day to support our students and families,” Gittleman added.

The March 2025 Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort, hit wide swaths of the agency, taking heavy hits to units such as the Office for Civil Rights and Federal Student Aid. 

Student loans

Two Government Accountability Office reports — including the one released Wednesday — underscored the impact of the staffing reductions at these two units on the department’s abilities to carry out its key responsibilities. 

In February 2025, FSA “stopped assessing student loan servicers on accuracy and call quality due to lack of staff capacity,” the government watchdog reported.

Between January and December 2025, the department saw a drop in 656 staffers at FSA, according to the report.  

“By not assessing servicer accuracy and call quality, FSA lacks assurance that borrower records are correct and that servicers are giving borrowers quality information,” according to the GAO report.

Civil rights

Another GAO report, released in February, found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees not working between March and December 2025, who were put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

The government watchdog found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint.

The agency later moved to rescind the RIFs against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded. 

“So they wasted taxpayer money while they also tried to undermine the laws of the United States that guarantee civil rights to every student,” Van Hollen said during Wednesday’s press conference.  

Interagency agreements 

Members of Congress and advocates also pushed back against the Education Department’s several interagency agreements with other departments, which transfer many of its responsibilities to Labor, Health and Human Services, Interior and State.

The department has clarified in fact sheets regarding the agreements that it would “maintain all statutory responsibilities” and oversight of the programs involved. 

The effort has drawn strong backlash from Democratic members of Congress, labor unions and advocates.

“Trump is setting these programs up to fail,” Hirono said, adding that by “shoving these programs to departments that do not have the experience or wherewithal to run these programs, he is setting these programs that our kids rely on (up) for failure.” 

Funding increase

Meanwhile, Congress earlier this year rebuked a request from the president to dramatically slash funding for the department as he and his administration seek to dismantle it. 

Trump signed a measure in February that funds the department at $79 billion this fiscal year — roughly $217 million more than the agency’s fiscal 2025 funding level and a whopping $12 billion above what Trump sought.

The spending package does not provide ironclad language to prevent the outsourcing of the department’s responsibilities, but it does direct the department and the agencies part of the transfers to provide biweekly briefings to lawmakers on the implementation of any interagency agreements.

The department did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress have not formally authorized a war in Iran, though they may soon be expected to approve emergency funding for the endeavor without any projection from the Trump administration as to how long it may last or the full cost, not just in dollars but in American troop and civilian lives. 

Experts on defense spending interviewed by States Newsroom say the cost of weeks of air bombing will mount into the billions of dollars, a sum that will balloon if ground troops are sent into Iran to undertake regime change and if the war extends for months to come.

Defense Department officials briefed Congress on Monday that the Pentagon spent $5.6 billion on munitions alone during the first two days of the war, according to a congressional aide not authorized to speak publicly. The aide expects DOD has spent into the double digits in the days since. 

President Donald Trump has sent mixed signals about the timeline and end goals for the war, called Operation Epic Fury. He at first said the bombing campaign he began alongside the Israeli government could last between four and six weeks and on Monday said it is possible it will end “quickly.” Trump, however, hasn’t ruled out a longer assault or the deployment of ground troops.  

Republican lawmakers who control Congress say the ongoing attack is an essential national security undertaking and that they won’t constrain Trump in his role as commander-in-chief. 

Democrats, who tried unsuccessfully to remove U.S. troops from hostilities until approved by Congress, will be needed to provide enough votes to move any supplemental spending request through the Senate — one possible obstacle to a prolonged conflict. 

Even a relatively brief war will have long-lasting, far-reaching consequences for the millions of people pulled into the conflict. 

“One lesson of history is that a war that is supposedly short or brief has these huge repercussions that ripple across time,” said Stephanie Savell, director of the Cost of War project at the Watson School of International & Public Affairs at Brown University.

Neither the White House nor the Office of Management and Budget have disclosed publicly how much the bombing has cost taxpayers so far or how much spending it might eventually require. A Defense Department spokesperson said they “have nothing to provide on this at this time.” The top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, has asked the Congressional Budget Office to come up with a number.

Comparison with Iraq, Afghanistan

Michael O’Hanlon, director of research in the foreign policy program at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said a ballpark estimate for the military costs of war during an “extended air campaign” would normally run a couple of billion dollars a month. 

“But at this point, I think we’re more likely in the couple billion a week range,” he said. 

Achieving long-lasting regime change, which Trump has spoken about often since the war began, could be much more costly, both in terms of American spending and troops’ lives, as well as civilian casualties. 

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq averaged about $1 million per deployed U.S. troop per year once all of the infrastructure, equipment, health care and other factors were rolled into the cost of war.  

During the peak of those wars, O’Hanlon said, there were about 100,000 to 175,000 troops in those two countries and the United States was spending about $200 billion annually. 

“If you needed at least 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, you could conceivably need a quarter million or more in Iran if you’re really going to try to occupy and stabilize the whole country,” he said. “So that means now you’re getting into the range of $250 to $300 billion a year for a presence that would stay in Iran for a full 12 months. And then each and every year it would be additional.”

That, however, is just the potential cost for the military. It doesn’t include damage to U.S. diplomatic facilities in the region or other costs associated with war. 

“You’ve got your infrastructure damage as well as higher energy costs around the world. And already talk of less fertilizer being produced, which is going to reduce crop yields,” O’Hanlon said. “So there are all sorts of second-order effects.”

‘Wars are never quick or cheap or easy’

The death toll for U.S. troops, seven of whom have already died, could also increase depending on the scope of the conflict. 

There were about 150 combat fatalities during the first Gulf War in the early 1990s, as well as about 150 deaths from training and accidents in the lead-up and aftermath, O’Hanlon said. 

The war in Afghanistan led to the deaths of about 2,500 U.S. troops across roughly two decades. About 4,500 Americans died in the 15 years of the war in Iraq, he said. 

Savell, of the Cost of War program at Brown University, said research has shown that “wars are never quick or cheap or easy.”

The Iraq War that began in 2003, she said, is one of many examples of political leaders messaging ahead of time that a conflict would be “short and decisive and relatively inexpensive.” 

“We see many of those kinds of narratives being, you know, a refrain these days in relation to Iran as well,” Savell said. “So I think that the comparison in that sense is apt.”

The Iraq war also had major unanticipated consequences for those living in the region, including “that the U.S. invasion was partially responsible for the rise of the Islamic State,” Savell said.

“And that militant group has now spread its terror attacks around the world,” she said.

In addition to the direct deaths of both troops and civilians that come from bullets, bombs and other weapons of war, there will be indirect deaths that stem from a lack of clean water, food and medical care.

“Those kinds of things have really, really long-lasting and deep impacts for people, especially women and children,” Savell said. “In contemporary wars, children ages zero to five are often the ones who end up suffering in the long term because of the diseases and the malnutrition that can be a reverberating effect of war.”

Regime change ambitions

Seth G. Jones, president of the defense and security department at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said during a roundtable discussion that he believes it will be “very difficult” for the U.S. and Israeli militaries to cause “major damage to the Iranian regime largely from air and naval assets.” 

“I think even with ground troops, trying to social engineer a foreign government is incredibly difficult,” he said. 

The U.S. military’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as operations in Libya, he said, all used a combination of tactics, including ground forces. 

“Those wars persisted for years, if not decades, after that. And we saw civil wars in all three cases and insurgencies,” Jones said. “So, trying to do that without a meaningful ground presence, I think, is going to be virtually impossible. And then you run the risk of what the U.S. did in 1991 in Iraq and Hungary in 1956, which is it urged individuals to rise up, and they were slaughtered in both cases, the Kurds and the Hungarians.” 

Shaping an entirely new Iranian regime, he said, would take “months if not longer.” 

A prolonged conflict could lead to several challenges for the U.S. military, one of which will be restocking munitions like the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, about a quarter of which were drawn down in 2025, according to Jones. 

“The more the U.S. fires, the less munitions it has, offensive and defensive, including available for its war plans … against China in the Taiwan Strait, against North Korea on the Korean Peninsula and against Russia,” Jones said. 

There is also a chance the conflict could widen even further if Iranian supporters outside of that country decide to begin targeting the U.S. military or civilians. 

“Do the Houthis start firing from Yemen? Do we see Iraqi Shia militia start conducting attacks, including against U.S. forces in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, or other locations?” Jones said. “Or do we see the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force and its partners conduct attacks elsewhere? We know they’ve conducted assassination plots, at least, in the U.S., including in the city of Washington. So how does that expand?”

The defense budget

Mara Karlin, visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of practice at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, said during a panel discussion that while the U.S. military has a large budget, its resources aren’t infinite. 

Congress approved $838.7 billion for the Department of Defense in January as part of its annual government funding process. Republicans approved another $150 billion for the Pentagon to spend on specific programs, like air and missile defense, as well as shipbuilding, in their “big, beautiful” law enacted in 2025.

“Fundamentally, the U.S. military can often find ways to walk and chew gum; it just gets really hard to do so and the costs can only increase,” she said. 

And while the possibility of Trump sending in U.S. ground forces isn’t completely out of the picture, Karlin said that “is almost inconceivable.”

“Ground troops mean you’re getting ready for a lot of casualties, especially given that you have the potential for regime collapse,” she said. 

Making that type of choice, to put U.S. troops into Iran, would likely ensure the war “will be long and it will be ugly,” despite the possibility of significant change.

“Iraq 2026 actually looks pretty different. The costs to get to that from 2003 onward were so extraordinarily high,” Karlin said. “And I think that it is safe to assume that if one were to use that analogy, you would see something as rough, if not much, much worse.” 

Abby Wurzburger, a 14-year-old from Wauwatosa, is leading the charge on a bill to ban animal testing by cosmetics manufacturers in Wisconsin.

“Although the total number of animals and testing facilities are not disclosed to the public, this doesn’t stop the fact that any amount of unnecessary testing is too much,” Wurzburger said at a press conference in the Wisconsin State Capitol on Tuesday. 

The middle school student was joined by Democratic lawmakers including Rep. Robyn Vining (D-Wauwatosa), who represents the young advocate and helped her work on the bill. The bill’s lead authors are Rep. Christine Sinicki (D-Milwaukee), Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis), and Sen. Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit). Vining described her constituent as the “driving force” behind the legislation before passing the microphone to allow Wurzburger to speak about the issue. 

Wurzburger said her concerns about animal testing started after she became a vegetarian a couple of years ago. A meal on a cruise spurred her decision. 

“It had an all-you-can-eat buffet, and I was actually eating a hamburger, and I was looking at, like all the waste I saw, the animal products and stuff,” she said, “I was like, this is a lot of waste, and this needs to be stopped.” 

Wurzburger explained at the press conference that animal testing involves putting cosmetic products, including perfume, nail polish, makeup and hair products, on the skin, eyes and other body parts of an animal.

“It’s basically just seeing how it reacts with them, and it’s cruel and inhumane,” she said. 

Wurzburger first contacted Vining two years ago and has worked with her since — contacting members of Congress from across the country, reviewing legislation in other states and meeting with Wisconsin Legislative Council to work on the bill draft. She said that in the beginning she wasn’t getting much response from lawmakers. 

“That was kind of frustrating, but it worked out,” Wurzburger told the Examiner. 

Vining complimented her constituent’s work, emphasizing that Wurzburger worked on the issue outside of school and saying she brought printed documents to their meetings with highlighted areas, notes and questions.

“You did difficult research,” Vining said to Wurzburger while they spoke with the Examiner. “You were sorting through bills from the federal level and Virginia, and you kept going through and figuring out what you thought was the right way to do something… if you were writing it for Wisconsin.” 

Members of Congress have introduced proposals to implement a federal ban on cosmetic animal testing as recently as last year, but none have been successful. There are at least 45 countries that ban cosmetic animal testing.

There are 12 states in the U.S. that have bans, including Virginia, Illinois, and Louisiana. California became the first state to adopt a cosmetic animal testing ban in 2018 and Washington state became the latest in 2025.

“We need Wisconsin to be the 13th,” Wurzburger said at the press conference. “This is an issue that is very near and dear to my heart as I’ve been an animal lover my whole life.” 

Wurzburger said “the Wisconsin Humane Cosmetics” bill is modeled closely after Virginia’s bill. 

“After these bills have been passed, cosmetic companies started to drift away from these practices and are becoming more cruelty free, so those other bills have definitely promoted cosmetic cruelty free,” she said. 

According to the bill draft, cosmetic manufacturers would be prohibited from conducting animal testing, manufacturing or importing ingredients that were developed using cosmetic animal testing or selling cosmetics that were produced using animal testing. The ban would take effect on Dec. 31, 2026.

One change that Wurzburger said she thought about involved the penalties included in the bill. Under the bill draft, a person would be subject to $5,000 forfeiture for a violation and an additional $1,000 for each day the violation continues.

“We didn’t want to make it too high for small businesses who would suffer from that,” Wurzburger told the Examiner about deciding to mirror the penalty established in Virginia’s law. “I was thinking it would be really easy for the big businesses just to pay it off and keep testing, but then we thought about the small businesses.”

In the afternoon, Vining gave Wurzburger the opportunity to speak to a couple of fourth grade classes who had come to tour the Capitol. Wurzburger told the students about how she first emailed Vining in the sixth grade and said they could email their lawmakers about anything they want to see change. 

“I want to make sure that you guys know that nobody is too small to make a change that you believe in,” Wurzburger said.

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Public concern about rising costs is fueling hopes for a blue wave in the November midterm elections, as well as Democratic wins in Wisconsin that could deliver trifecta control of the Legislature, governor’s mansion and state Supreme Court.

But even if the would-be autocrat in the White House does not find a way to disrupt the midterms, the rise of affordability as the dominant public issue is a both blessing and a trap. The intense focus on micro (household) economics neglects a bigger battle Democrats must fight. 

It’s dangerous to make too narrow a response to President Donald Trump’s authoritarian threat. Democracy is menaced on two fronts: first the immediate attack on its institutional bedrocks — fair elections, equal justice, constitutional checks and balances — and second by the underlying cause of the civic emergency: a profound crisis in legitimacy arising from a chronic failure of government to deliver on the most pressing problems affecting peoples’ lives and futures. 

The long-term failures of the U.S. government to promote and protect a decent life for most people have  produced combustible political kindling, exploited by an authoritarian movement and its charismatic leader, to seize power  and ignite the most profound crisis in democracy since the darkest days of the Great Depression.

Thousands of our neighbors in Minnesota and Illinois, thrust into the first front of the struggle, are responding with courage and discipline. They are demonstrating the power of organized people and civil society groups with active members, aided by the elected officials they inspire to action, to hold the line for democracy. Grassroots defenders of democracy must continue to peacefully resist every authoritarian offensive, but if we fail to also address the underlying drivers of the crisis, victory will be fleeting.

Wisconsin’s crucial role

As a state that will determine the outcome of the 2028 presidential election, Wisconsin may be fated to play its most important role on the second front: the challenge of demonstrating that democracy is up to the task of meeting the challenges of 21st century life. To meet this charge we must come to terms with the depth of public discontent that has opened millions to the scapegoating rhetoric of authoritarian demagogues while demoralizing and disengaging still more who have come to believe, through embittering experience, they have no stake in democracy.

The affordability crisis is not transitory, it is a symptom of a long-term decoupling of the general economy, and democratic government itself, from the bread-and-butter worries of working people. The widespread realization that the economy is stacked against most people casts a pall over American politics. According to a recent New York Times/Siena poll, two-thirds of respondents believe the middle class is beyond the reach of most Americans. 

Until the late 1970s, majorities of voters could believe that a thriving economy would benefit them personally, and that most had a pathway to the middle class. There were glaring inequalities along racial, gender and geographic lines, yet for millions of working class people, including immigrants from around the globe and Black refugees from the Jim Crow South, macro and micro economics were conjoined.

After 50 years of economic rigging orchestrated by the ultra wealthy, the most rapacious corporations, and pliant politicians from both parties, this faith has been dashed. While lacking the suddenness of the 1929 crash, the cumulative effect is like a slow motion slide towards depression for the working and middle classes. In the richest country on Earth a stunning 60% of Americans worry about affording the basics of life, while in Wisconsin 35% of all households, and 60% of Black households, make less than a survival income.

This is no accident. As Harold Meyerson details in The American Prospect, through a half century of deliberate policy choices most of the benefits of growth have been funneled to the privileged few, resulting in a $79 trillion shift in assets to the top. If national income were distributed now as equally as in 1975, each wage earner would make an astounding $28,000 more per year on average. Combined with the deliberate encouragement of massive corporate monopolies with the power to jack up prices, this immiseration is pushing people to  a breaking point, making affording health care, housing, energy, food and education more and more challenging for the less than rich.

Despite its effectiveness in abetting the largest wealth transfer in history, government at all levels has been rendered stunningly inept when it comes to public works, social policy, and almost everything else that benefits the working and middle classes. 

A parallel crisis in the 1930s

In the New Deal economic order, there seemed to be nothing the government could not accomplish, from the work programs of the 1930s, to the economic mobilization against fascism, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, and the moon mission. Now everything from high speed rail to rural broadband, affordable housing, health care, child care, public education and cheap, renewable energy is tied up in knots.

While much of the blame can be placed on  the deliberate sabotage of government by an unholy alliance of grasping billionaires, big corporations, and right wing ideologues, a growing chorus of social critics also point the finger at a major shift in liberalism in the 1960s and 1970s. Recent books by Paul Sabin, Marc Dunkelman, Richard Kahenberg, Yoni Appelbaum, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and to significant degrees Bill McKibben and Gary Gerstle, make parts of a compelling case that the reaction against abuses of administrative power provoked liberals to overcorrect by creating so many regulatory and legal hurdles that government struggles to get anything big done that benefits the working and middle classes.

Further tarnishing public trust, this impotence does not apply to oligarchic power. The only force with the political and economic resources to cut through all the landmines and bottlenecks to bold action are the giant corporate monopolies, as we are seeing with the reckless buildout of highly unpopular AI data centers without guardrails to protect the public interest in affordable energy, clean air, and the stability of the climate on which we all depend.

The most useful historical analogy to our perilous situation is what Franklin Roosevelt confronted after Herbert Hoover’s futility in responding to the calamity brought on by that era’s economic royalists. Jonathan Alter and Eric Rauchway show that top opinion leaders of the era such as Walter Lippmann and William Randolph Hearst believed democracy too paralyzed to succeed, and openly advocated for Roosevelt to suspend Congress and assume dictatorial powers. 

Roosevelt was reportedly quite taken with the movie Gabriel Over the White House, a Hearst-funded production about a president seizing dictatorial power and curing the Great Depression. Ultimately, Roosevelt refused to take this path, although he fretted that failure would make him the last president. Democracy’s last near death experience in the 1930s has passed from collective memory only because Roosevelt did not fail. 

Drawing on reforms developed over three decades of progressive and labor organizing, Roosevelt amassed sufficient power to take radical action within the constitutional order to restructure and democratize the economy. Despite atrocious racial discrimination baked in by segregationist Democrats, the reforms tangibly improved material circumstances enough to restore the public’s belief that democracy could deliver. Despite receiving only half a loaf, even Black voters defected from the GOP in droves.

A difference between 1933 and 2026 is that authoritarians had not yet seized power, and despite sharp policy disagreements, Hoover and Roosevelt were committed to democratic norms. Today’s political crisis, like the crisis of the 1930s, is driven by economic elites capturing public policy and destroying democracy’s capacity to deliver what people need to thrive.

Divided Democrats

Within the big tent of the current pro-democracy coalition there is a comparable division to that of Roosevelt’s time on the necessity of structural reform. The division is even more dangerous now, in the face of an actual authoritarian takeover. This fissure is exemplified by the vast gulf between two of the most successful “blue wave” candidates of 2025: New York Mayor Zoran Mamdani, and Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who gave the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union. 

Spanberger’s affordability agenda focuses on the cost of health care, housing, and utilities. Although strongly messaged, substantively she offers a series of opaque technocratic fixes and small bore policies that will not shift pricing power away from monopolies, nor raise the incomes of workers. For example, she nibbles around the edges of health care, yet keeps the foxes in the henhouse, leaving hospital monopolies, big insurance and Big Pharma in control of setting grossly inflated prices.

This contrasts sharply with Mamdani, who offers remarkably clear and understandable solutions — a rent freeze, fast free buses, a $30 minimum wage, free universal child care, paid for with a wealth tax — which would make one of the world’s most expensive cities more affordable for working and middle class New Yorkers. While Mamdani’s agenda is challenging to achieve in a system stacked against bold action, in contrast to Spanberger’s suite of solution-ettes, its clarity means voters can fulfil their democratic role by holding either the mayor or those who block his agenda accountable.

This divide among Democrats does not necessarily map on a left to center axis but on whether the affordability crisis requires small adjustments to an otherwise healthy system or structural reform that democratizes power and tangibly improves material circumstances. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), the co-chair of the centrist Blue Dog Democrats, declares: “You do not save democracy by running around, yelling about saving democracy. You do it by demonstrating that democracy and Democratic values deliver better quality of life for normal people.”

Springing the affordability trap

Donald Trump is feeling the brunt of public outrage for his false sales pitches on affordability. If he actually had a program to lower prices and raise wages he would have built greater support for his authoritarian project. We may not be so fortunate if a more effective autocrat is elected in 2028.

This is why affordability is a trap for Democrats: winning elections on empty promises will only deepen the crisis in democracy, setting the table for future authoritarians. Josh Bivens writes for In These Times that creating a more equal and affordable economy requires a “sharp change” in the “policy path” of the last half century.

The only solution to the ails of democracy is deeper and more robust democracy. As I wrote in the Wisconsin Examiner after Gov. Evers ignored public pressure to fight for a better state budget, the future of multiracial democracy does not depend on elected officials alone. It depends on more people organizing effectively to push them towards compelling and forceful action. Movements make leaders, not the other way around. 

We have already seen this happen on the first front of the fight to save democracy. Democratic leadership in Congress is fighting harder and using the power they have to more assertively check Trump’s lawless usurpations only because of immense pressure from organized people and everyday Americans. We must now apply this same pressure to demand that candidates and electeds fight to transform the rigged economy and ossified governing structures stacked against effective action. 

Because of Wisconsin’s enormous influence in presidential elections, we have a special obligation to light a fire under Democratic candidates for the Legislature and governor in a crowded primary field. We need more people to push the candidates, and more to join with organizing groups that are working to impel them to fight for bold and impactful reforms that a beleaguered and disillusioned people will feel in their daily lives. How Wisconsin Democrats run in 2026, and especially how they govern in 2027, will have a tremendous influence on how presidential contenders run in 2028, a year that could be democracy’s last best hope.

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Thousands of low-income people living with HIV could be losing drug coverage as states impose limitations on HIV assistance programs amid constrained budgets — raising alarms over consistent access to lifesaving medications.

Many factors are putting budget constraints on state programs, including federal funding — which has remained flat for years and hasn’t been adjusted for inflation — increased drug costs and rising insurance premiums.

The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is the national safety-net program supporting more than 600,000 low-income people living with HIV across the nation. States receive federal grants and drug rebate money — the latter making up the bulk of state program budgets — to, among other things, help pay for medications and support community groups and specific populations, such as women and children.

Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance.

As of January, at least 18 states have pulled back their Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, known as ADAPs, in some way, according to a March 2 analysis by health research group KFF and a report by the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors, which offers consultation for states.

There are roughly 1.2 million people in the United States living with HIV, and about 1 in 4 people get support from a state drug assistance program.

A disproportionate number of HIV/AIDS patients are gay, bisexual and other men who have male-to-male sexual contact, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. LGBTQ+ communities have been targeted in recent years by some federal and state policies, including the rollback of civil rights, shutting down a youth mental health hotline, restricting health care access, and imposing discussion and book bans in public schools.

Florida has introduced the most dramatic restrictions on income eligibility for its HIV drug program — cutting individual eligibility for the program from 400% of the federal poverty level to 130%. That means uninsured and underinsured people up to that 400% poverty line no longer have coverage under the program.

That’s roughly slashing maximum annual income of $63,840 for an individual down to $20,748. The state says the change will prevent a $120 million shortfall.

“(That) creates an immense coverage cliff,” for example, for childless adults not eligible for Medicaid, said Amber Tynan, CEO of Big Bend Cares, a North Florida Ryan White provider. Florida is among the 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.

Florida’s department of health didn’t respond to Stateline’s request for comment.

Delaware, Kansas, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island have also reduced income eligibility for their programs, but to a lesser extent, according to KFF. For example, Kansans with HIV/AIDS whose incomes are above 250% of the federal poverty level won’t be eligible for help with Obamacare insurance premiums. That change will affect about 230 people, the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors estimates.

In Pennsylvania, about 1,600 people will lose HIV drug assistance coverage as the state imposes income eligibility caps at 350% of the federal poverty level.

“We cannot continue to provide services at a certain level when the funding to do so does not exist,” Neil Ruhland, Pennsylvania Department of Health press secretary, told Stateline in a statement. He pointed to drug costs and enrollment numbers that are “steadily rising while funding remains stagnant.”

Florida also is removing the brand-name drug Biktarvy, which is the only single-tablet HIV medication regimen recommended by national guidelines for those starting treatment and is the most widely prescribed antiretroviral medication nationally. There is no generic form.

The medication is highly effective at reducing a person’s viral load, meaning the virus is undetectable in blood tests and untransmittable to others.

Eighty percent of Floridians with HIV who are in the state’s program use Biktarvy, Tynan said.

“Not having the opportunity to stay on lifesaving treatment is creating quite the panic and crisis for our population,” Tynan said. “For decades we’ve worked to turn HIV from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable chronic condition, and that progress depends on one thing: consistent access to treatment. When that stability is disrupted like it has (been) in Florida, it creates real risk for patients and for public health.”

Other states (Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia and Washington, plus the District of Columbia) also are considering limiting which drugs they cover, according to the alliance’s report.

And several other states may impose other limits to their drug assistance program. Health agencies in Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington are considering cutting funding for core medication and support services. Others are considering implementing a six-month recertification period, restricting eligibility, putting caps on expenditures, changing covered medications and lowering assistance for insurance premiums.

While no state has implemented a waiting list for drug assistance, three states — Arkansas, Louisiana and New Jersey — are considering one as a future cost-containment measure, according to the national alliance’s report.

Dr. Sabrina Assoumou, an infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center, said many of her HIV patients are under-resourced and rely on her state’s Ryan White program. She added that she’s relieved Massachusetts’ program hasn’t announced any changes as of February, when the alliance’s report was released, but that she’s worried for patients in the other states.

“We’ve taken HIV from a very serious virus, a deadly virus when it was first discovered in the ’80s, to a very manageable chronic condition because of the medicines,” she said. “It is concerning to see … that we’re sort of moving backwards by not providing that kind of care that’s so much needed, and that’s lifesaving.”

Florida bypassed a rulemaking process when it announced its changes days before open enrollment ended. In late January, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, a global nonprofit agency, sued the state department of health over the changes. The U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services opened a new enrollment period for Floridians losing coverage to enroll in a different marketplace plan.

In late February, Florida issued an emergency rule putting the new eligibility requirements into effect. About 32,000 Floridians get help from the state program in some way — whether it’s through local health departments or the state helping to pay for insurance premiums.

Half of those, around 16,000, will lose coverage entirely — but many others will be affected in other ways, such as losing access to Biktarvy.

“So if you remain in the program, there’s a very high likelihood that you’re still going to be impacted by some of the other changes, like the dropping of the premium assistance, the elimination of Biktarvy from the formulary,” said Tim Horn, director of medication access for the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. “When you take a look at all of these changes in the net, the vast majority of Florida ADAP clients are going to be impacted by this, one way or another.”

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

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin is calling for a nominating commission to try again to agree on a nominee to be the U.S. attorney for Wisconsin’s Eastern District after interim appointee Brad Schimel’s term in the position expires March 17. 

The judges in the district declined to retain Schimel for the job. Schimel previously served as the Republican attorney general under Gov. Scott Walker and in 2024 he ran unsuccessfully as a conservative for the state Supreme Court. 

Schimel was appointed U.S. attorney by Attorney General Pam Bondi in November after the nominating commission failed to reach consensus on who should fill the job in both the Madison and Milwaukee district offices. 

Last week, Baldwin said Schimel was a “clearly partisan actor” in the federal prosecutor role. 

Historically, Wisconsin’s two senators — including Baldwin and Sen. Ron Johnson — have worked together to name members of the nominating commission which agrees on candidates who are then recommended to the president and attorney general. Restarting the commission would require Baldwin and Johnson to agree on a charter. 

Across the country, the president has generally deferred to the home state senators when choosing U.S. attorneys. 

“I’m glad that the judges of the Eastern District of Wisconsin are respecting the process that Senator Johnson and I have to get high-quality, impartial prosecutors to serve Wisconsin,” Baldwin said in a statement. “It has not always been easy, but the hard work is worthwhile for the people we serve.”

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WASHINGTON — The Democratic National Committee Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court aiming to force the Trump administration to admit if it plans to send armed federal law enforcement or U.S. troops to polling locations in the upcoming midterm elections. 

The suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia charges that 11 Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, requests submitted to the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense by the DNC in October have gone unanswered, a violation of public records law. 

“To ensure that the American people obtain timely knowledge of potential threats to free and fair elections and to enable the DNC to take appropriate action to ensure voting rights are protected, the DNC now seeks this Court’s aid to enforce FOIA requirements,” according to the suit. 

The suit was assigned to federal Judge Beryl A. Howell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama.

Voting machines

The suit details how the FOIA requests were filed after comments from President Donald Trump to the New York Times that he regretted not using the U.S. military to seize voting machines after he lost the 2020 presidential election. 

“These and many other actions have raised serious concerns among voters across the country that the President will order armed federal agents or troops to polling places, drop boxes, and election offices, … and will send FBI agents or Justice Department officials to interfere with the orderly administration and certification of elections,” according to the complaint.

The suit also cites comments from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt that she “couldn’t guarantee” that federal law enforcement officers would not be at polling locations this November. 

“Donald Trump wants to bully and cheat his way through a midterm election that he knows Republicans will lose, but we won’t let him,” DNC Chair Ken Martin said in a statement. “The DNC will stand on the side of voters and use every tool in our arsenal to stop voter suppression and intimidation before it can even begin.”

Are there records?

It’s also possible that no records exist.

Congressional Democrats have pressed Trump officials during hearings on plans to send agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to polling locations. 

Both heads of those agencies, ICE acting director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, said there were no plans to send any of their agents or officers to polling locations. 

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is leaving her post at the end of month and being replaced by Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin, was also pressed by Democrats. 

She said there were no plans for ICE agents, but also asked Democrats if they plan for noncitizens to vote in federal elections, something that is already illegal and rarely occurs. 

But during the hearing, Noem would not commit to issuing a directive barring immigration agents from polling locations. 

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Senate panel on Tuesday added to the fierce debate over compensation for student-athletes, with senators and experts agreeing the current system wasn’t working but with different ideas for a path forward.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican and chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, hosted a roundtable of experts, leaders and former college and professional athletes to discuss “fixing college sports.”

Cassidy said the “current system is actually hurting the student-athlete.”

“Our effort will be, what do we do to protect the student-athlete?” he continued, adding that approach would also protect universities.

Two of the five panelists Cassidy brought in hailed from Louisiana State University, including Collis Temple Jr., a member of the LSU Board of Supervisors and former basketball star at the university, along with Julie Cromer, executive deputy athletic director and chief operating officer for LSU Athletics. 

The event came on the heels of a White House roundtable last week, where President Donald Trump pledged to imminently deliver an executive order aimed at reshaping college sports. 

Debate over athletes as employees

The college sports world continues to grapple with the fallout from the NCAA’s 2021 guidelines, which allowed student-athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. 

A federal judge in June 2025 approved the terms of a nearly $2.8 billion antitrust settlement that paved the way for schools to directly pay athletes.

The rules for name, image and likeness deals vary from state to state.

The college sports landscape is also wrestling with gender inequity in NIL deals and the NCAA’s controversial transfer portal, among other issues.

A bipartisan bill on pause in the U.S. House aims to create a national framework for college athletes’ compensation. It would also prohibit college athletes from being classified as employees while providing broad antitrust immunity to the NCAA and college sports conferences.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, expressed optimism over the bill’s fate during the White House roundtable, saying “we’re right on the verge of passage in the House and we now think we have the votes to do that.” 

But the bill would face a dismal path in the Senate, where Senate Democrats have pushed back against it.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan proposal from GOP Sen. Eric Schmitt of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state would provide “a new antitrust exemption allowing college football institutions to jointly sell media rights” and make it “optional for conferences and schools to pool their media rights together.”

Conversation between schools and athletes needed

Jim Carr, president and CEO of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, said “the implications of student-athletes becoming employees, or a lot of these court decisions that are making it difficult to enforce our rules around what we call education-based athletics, is really — I don’t think it’s an overstatement or being too dramatic to say — critical to not only the NAIA but each of our institutions being able to stay in business on a long-term basis.” 

Carr, whose association includes roughly 250 institutions, said at an average NAIA school, 36% of the students are also athletes.

Sen. Chris Murphy called for collective bargaining, where athletes can “speak for themselves,” noting that Congress should not “micromanage” the relationship between colleges and college athletes. 

“We should just empower the colleges or the conferences and the athletes to have a conversation between themselves,” the Connecticut Democrat said. 

Bernard Dennis III, principal at Jackson Lewis P.C. and an employment and sports law expert, said that if students are classified as employees, “they then become subject to several statutory schemes, not the least of which would be the (Fair Labor Standards Act), which would allow them to be compensated for their work time, for overtime and then it becomes a challenge in what constitutes that.”

He added that “under the law, it would be anything that is required for their work, and so when you have eligibility rules about maintaining a certain GPA, things like that, it becomes not only your time on the field, but does going to class become compensable work time? How do you track that?”