Communities are recovering after a major weekend blizzard, dropping record-breaking amounts of snow in some parts of Wisconsin. From the Northwoods to Milwaukee, snowfall shut down roads, caused power outages and challenged plow trucks and public services.

The National Weather Service, calling the snowstorm “historic,” said that in central Wisconsin, snow fell at a rate of 4 inches per hour. “Near-blizzard conditions developed Sunday afternoon, fueled by northeast winds gusting between 35 and 50 mph,” the weather service stated in an update. Windspeeds reached 59 miles per hour  at the Green Bay Airport, and 60 miles per hour in De Pere. “This combination of heavy falling snow and high winds created whiteout conditions and massive drifting,” the National Weather Service stated.

Historic amounts of snow reached approximately 30 inches in communities from Wausau to Marinette and Door County. In Green Bay, where 26.1 inches of snow fell as of Monday, the storm was the area’s largest in 136 years. By Sunday Green Bay had seen 17.1 inches accumulate, making it the city’s third-snowiest day and its heaviest day of snowfall since 1889. Over 11,000 people were reported to have lost power as well.

A “No Travel Advised” notice was posted on the Department of Transportation’s webpage as the storm loomed. “The heavy snow load and high winds caused widespread power outages, most notably in Door and Marinette Counties, and building collapses were reported in Sturgeon Bay and Kewaunee County,” the National Weather Services noted. “Many schools and businesses remained closed through Monday.” The snow was so overwhelming that snow plow operations halted in Marinette County, forcing the sheriff’s office to warn that emergency responses might also slow. That was an acute concern for people stranded in cars along the roadways.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sturgeon Bay in Dane County saw 33 inches of snow blanketing roads and neighborhoods over three days. The city of Madison recorded 5.6 inches on Monday. The state capital’s previous record was set in 2006 when 3.5 inches of snow fell. In western Wisconsin, the town of Montana received 26.5 inches of snow, more than any other area in the region. The city of Mondovi also may have broken a record with 16.5 inches the city’s unofficial record was 16 inches, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

Over the three-day snowfall event, Madison was covered in nearly eight inches. Some residents reported they were unable to open their front doors. 

Fallen trees and other damage was also reported as far south as Racine.

Waukesha County also struggled with the storm, after strong winds uprooted trees as early as Friday. The winds heralded an all-day rain storm which then turned into a blizzard. The shifting weather patterns meant that the county had to adapt rapidly. About seven inches of snow fell in Waukesha from Sunday to Monday. Crews with the Waukesha County Department of Public Works pulled 16-hour shifts. 

“In severe weather government services matter most,” Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow said in a statement. “Waukesha County’s teams were out early, stayed out late, and worked around the clock so residents could reach essential services safely. Thank you to our crews and to the public for slowing down and giving plows the space they needed to do their jobs.” 

From 2 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday, Waukesha County’s 911 communications center received 47 calls for disabled vehicles, 25 for vehicles in ditches, nine reports of property damage, and three for traffic hazards. In many areas people struggled to dig their cars out, with Wausau residents reporting having literally not seen their cars for days until they were uncovered from the snow. Although temperatures were below freezing on Tuesday, the weather is expected to warm as the week continues. By the weekend, temperatures are expected to reach 70 degrees before tampering off again.

Researchers have long warned that extreme weather events would become more common due to climate change. Some of the communities recovering from the blizzard have yet to fully recover from record-breaking floods that occurred in August. In January 2025, extreme arctic cold enveloped the region, challenging communities with large numbers of people living unhoused on the street. This most recent snowstorm came as other parts of the United States dealt with rashes of tornadoes, heatwaves, and flooding. 

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In two narrow votes, the Wisconsin Senate on Tuesday passed bills to legalize online sports betting in the state and create a set of rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for University of Wisconsin athletes. 

Both bills were passed and sent to the desk of Gov. Tony Evers despite opposition within both party caucuses. 

Sports betting

After initially appearing to be on the legislative fast track upon its introduction last fall, the sports betting bill faced strenuous opposition and only  passed on the last day of normal floor of activity in both the Assembly and Senate. 

The bill passed the Senate 21-12 but divided both Democrats and Republicans. Only nine Senate Republicans voted in favor of the bill. Three Democrats joined nine Republicans in voting against the bill. The Republicans who opposed the bill said they were concerned about the consequences of the availability of frictionless sports betting in people’s pockets. 

Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) said that the bill would be responsible for “family disintegration” across the state. Nass, who is not running for re-election, said in a statement that the passage of the sports betting bill was one of the reasons why he believes Republicans will not have a Senate majority in the next session. 

“Lost productivity, addiction treatment, bankruptcy, increased demand for social services, criminal justice costs and diminishing household savings far exceed any revenue benefit in the state,” Nass said. 

Under the Wisconsin Constitution, gambling is only allowed on the property of the state’s Native American tribes. It’s been legal to place bets on sports in person at tribal casinos in Wisconsin since 2021. 

The sports betting bill models Wisconsin’s program after Florida’s online sports betting law, which allows online gambling if the servers hosting the bets are located on tribal land. 

The state’s tribes have been supportive of the bill, arguing that it allows them to keep pace with the expansion of sports betting in neighboring Illinois and the emergence of quasi-sports betting prediction sites such as Kalshi and Polymarket. 

Several Democrats said Tuesday they were supporting the bill because it would help the tribes. 

“I really think that this moment is about a collective assertion of tribal sovereignty and the preservation of exclusivity that the tribes have fought for decades to protect,” Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) said. 

Name, Image and Likeness 

Just days before the start of the 2025 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the Senate passed a bill that would establish rules for managing name, image and likeness deals for collegiate athletes. 

The bill passed with no debate in a 17-16 vote with six Democrats joining 11 Republicans to vote in favor of the bill. 

College athletes have been eligible for NIL payments since a 2021 U.S. Supreme Court decision. NIL has upended college sports, with major programs such as UW-Madison’s football team being pushed to line up large amounts of money to attract recruits. 

UW-Madison Athletic Director Chris McIntosh said at a public hearing on the bill last week that its passage is necessary to retain the school’s athletics competitiveness. 

The bill 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.

The bill also prohibits 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.

A controversial provision of the bill creates a sweeping exemption for UW NIL agreements from the state’s open records law. The provision has raised concerns among open government advocates in the state. 

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The Wisconsin Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday that, once signed, will release $125 million set aside nearly three years ago to address PFAS contamination in the state’s water supplies. 

The vote, on the last day the Senate was scheduled to be in session for the year, was the culmination of a multi-year legislative saga involving negotiations between legislative Republicans, Gov. Tony Evers, the state Department of Natural Resources and a number of outside interest groups. 

A similar bill passed the Legislature during the last legislative session but was vetoed by Evers over objections from Democrats and environmental groups that the bill was too lenient to polluters responsible for PFAS contamination. 

The “innocent landowner” exemptions at issue in the first version of the bill were more narrowly constructed this time after a negotiation process with the DNR. Those changes drew the ire of the state’s largest business lobby, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, and groups representing the state’s paper industry over concerns that industrial manufacturers such as paper mills were being singled out. 

The two-bill package passed unanimously in both legislative chambers despite the opposition from WMC, which is usually one of the largest supporters of Wisconsin Republicans. 

The bill’s author, Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) noted on the floor Tuesday how “meticulously drafted” the final version was to make sure all the parties were on board. 

“The result is a bill that helps people who need to be helped and stops the government from going after people who are genuinely innocent of causing a hazardous discharge,” he said.

Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement that he was looking forward to signing the bill so the money could get out the door. 

“While I wish it wouldn’t have taken nearly as long for the Legislature to join me in this important work, I’m thrilled that these bills will soon be on the way to my desk so that we can get these critical and long-overdue investments out the door to the folks and families who need them,” Evers said. “Whether it’s kids in the classroom, families at home, or our farmers and agricultural industries, folks should be able to trust that the water coming from their tap is clean and safe. I’m incredibly proud we were able to work across the aisle to get this done — and get it done right.”

Under the bill, landowners who spread PFAS contaminated materials on farm fields under a DNR-authorized permit, local governments and airports that used PFAS-containing firefighting foams, solid waste disposal facilities and anyone who had PFAS move onto their property through shifting groundwater will not be held responsible for PFAS pollution under the state’s toxic spills law. 

The spills law allows the DNR to require property owners responsible for pollution to pay for testing and cleanup of that pollution. The risk that the PFAS legislation could undermine the spills law was the largest objection from environmental groups to the first version of the bill introduced in the last session. 

The second bill in the package creates the programs through which the $125 million will be spent. Those programs include grants to municipal water systems and private well owners, as well as expanding the state’s testing capabilities and studying the long-term effects of PFAS.

The $125 million was first set aside in the state’s 2023-25 biennial budget. Throughout that time, communities across the state have continued to be affected by PFAS contamination of their water supplies. Places including Marinette, the town of Stella near Rhinelander and French Island near La Crosse have been managing the pollution, which has been tied to birth defects and cancer, for years. 

Save Our Water, an advocacy group made up of residents of PFAS-affected communities, frequently complained throughout the long negotiations that the Legislature wasn’t working to enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS pollution in the state’s groundwater. The state has established standards for PFAS in municipal drinking water and surface water, but not groundwater, which is the source of drinking water for residents across the state with private wells. 

In a statement, the organization celebrated the bill’s passage while noting they’ll continue to push for the creation of a groundwater standard. 

“This legislation will help impacted communities and innocent landowners who are forced to deal with PFAS contamination which they didn’t cause and don’t have the resources to clean up,” the group said. “[We] will continue to push forward to achieve a meaningful groundwater standard for PFAS and look toward using the bipartisan approach taken with this legislation as a model for future PFAS legislation.” 

Erik Kanter, the government affairs director of Clean Wisconsin, said this bill is only the first step as the state continues to manage the effects of widespread PFAS contamination, including the likelihood that even more money will need to be spent on the effort and the need for a groundwater standard. 

“The Legislature created the PFAS trust fund 32 months ago, and since then, people in Marinette, Peshtigo, the Town of Campbell, the Town of Stella, and communities throughout the state have waited and waited for our state government to create the programs through which the PFAS trust fund can be allocated. Now, an end to that waiting is finally in sight,” Kanter said in a statement. “The long, difficult work toward compromise on what should have been a straightforward spending bill is a telling sign that toxic PFAS contamination is evolving into a widespread, costly public health and environmental crisis — one that touches everyone from consumers to farmers and manufacturers. It’s a crisis our state cannot ignore. This must be the first of many actions from Wisconsin lawmakers to take real, meaningful action that protects all of us from these pervasive, harmful chemicals. The state must now establish PFAS groundwater standards to provide clean water protection for rural Wisconsinites on private wells.”

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WASHINGTON — More than two dozen U.S. House Democrats cast a spotlight Tuesday on a newly installed commemorative plaque for those who defended the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. 

The members — led by New York U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, the top Democrat on the U.S. Committee on House Administration — led reporters on a visit to the honorific plaque, displayed on the Senate side of the Capitol close to a West Front entrance.

The plaque, quietly installed earlier in March in an area of the Capitol not usually visited by tourists, garnered criticism for its lack of public visibility, as well as a three-year delay to get it installed. 

The memorial is also at the center of a lawsuit by two police officers who defended the Capitol that day. 

“This is not in a prominent location — the actual law that we passed dictates where the location is — this is not it,” Morelle told States Newsroom. 

Trump pardons

The honorary plaque was installed more than five years after the deadly riot, where a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to block Congress from certifying former President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Trump in January 2025 pardoned the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants.

The visitors Tuesday included Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat who was speaker of the House during the Jan. 6 insurrection and a target of the rioters. 

A 2022 law mandated that an honorific plaque be installed within a year of its enactment and be placed “at a permanent location on the western front of the United States Capitol.” 

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, has received flak for delaying the installation. 

Merkley, Tillis push Senate action

The plaque installation came after the Senate in January unanimously agreed to a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to “prominently display” the plaque in a “publicly accessible location” in the Capitol’s Senate wing, “until the plaque can be placed in its permanent location.” 

Morelle praised that effort, led by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, but said “this isn’t a place where visitors will see it,” noting that “tours are not allowed down here” and “this is an emergency exit only.”

The New York Democrat said that if Democrats win back the majority in November, he would do everything he could to “make sure it’s moved to the place it’s supposed to, where Americans will come by and see it and honor the sacrifice of the men and women who defended us that day.” 

Lawsuit

Meanwhile, Harry Dunn, a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, and Daniel Hodges, a current Metropolitan Police Department officer, sued the Architect of the Capitol over the plaque installation delay in June 2025. 

Shortly after the plaque was displayed, the two argued on March 10 that their lawsuit should continue.

They said the Architect of the Capitol’s “decision to install the plaque in a part of the Capitol hidden from the public fails to comply with the text law, which requires the memorial to be displayed on the Capitol’s ‘western front,’ an exterior part of the building.” 

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans pressed forward Tuesday with a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and a photo ID to cast a ballot, despite long odds the legislation will ever become law amid bipartisan opposition. 

The 51-48 vote to formally begin debate on the measure, which GOP lawmakers have named the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, only starts the process. Senators are expected to vote on several amendments in the days, or possibly weeks, ahead. 

But at least 60 lawmakers will be needed to end floor debate, a highly unlikely prospect with Democrats arguing the bill would disenfranchise millions of voters. 

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican to vote against starting debate. North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis didn’t vote. 

Murkowski wrote in a social media post last month the November midterm elections are “fast approaching” and that implementing “new federal requirements now, when states are deep into their preparations, would negatively impact election integrity by forcing election officials to scramble to adhere to new policies likely without the necessary resources. 

“Ensuring public trust in our elections is at the core of our democracy, but federal overreach is not how we achieve this.”

Trump threatens retaliation

President Donald Trump has made enacting nationwide changes to voting his top legislative priority ahead of the midterm elections, although Republicans swept unified control of government less than two years ago. 

He wrote in a social media post Tuesday morning that he plans to campaign against anyone who doesn’t support the legislation, which the House passed last month.

“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” he wrote. “If they do, each one of these points, separately, will be used against the user in his/her political campaign for office – A guaranteed loss!”

Dems predict millions kicked off voting rolls

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said during floor remarks the legislation would require Americans “to run through an obstacle course of red tape unlike anything we have ever seen in voter registration.”

The bill becoming law, he said, would lead to millions of Americans being kicked off voter rolls due to a requirement that states run their list of registered voters through a “deeply flawed” Department of Homeland Security database.

“If you’re kicked off the rolls, you may never be told,” he said. “There’s no requirement to let you know.”

Schumer argued the bill is less about ensuring only Americans vote in elections and more about Republican concerns they will lose at least one chamber of Congress later this year. 

“It’s funny. I don’t remember MAGA Republicans screaming about stolen elections and voter fraud after the 2024 election that they won,” he said. “Well, the same rules that governed the 2024 election are going to be the ones that govern the 2026 election. The only difference is that this time MAGA Republicans know they’re in trouble politically. So now they’re suddenly saying the system is compromised and broken and it needs to be changed. It’s all lies.”

77 instances of noncitizen voting 

It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and anyone found guilty could face fines and up to a year in prison. There are limited instances of people not eligible to vote actually casting a ballot, according to analysis from the Bipartisan Policy Center of data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, an especially conservative think tank. 

BPC’s examination “found only 77 instances of noncitizens voting between 1999 and 2023” and that “there is no evidence that noncitizen voting has ever been significant enough to impact an election’s outcome.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., reiterated a few hours before the procedural step that “the votes aren’t there” to pass the bill via a talking filibuster, a path several of his members want him to take. 

“So what we are doing is we are having a fulsome debate on the floor of the United States Senate, which is something that I think the Senate has done in the past, and probably should do a lot more of,” he said. “But we’ll have it up. Everybody will have their say. At some point, we’ll have votes.  And we’ll see where the votes are.”

A talking filibuster would require Democratic senators to give a series of floor speeches in order to delay or prevent final passage. That process could tie up the Senate floor for months.

Thune said he wasn’t sure when votes on amendments would begin, but that he expects the process to last “for the foreseeable future.”

“I think at least for right now, there’ll be some flexibility to see where the road leads,” he said. 

Mail-in voting, gender-affirming surgeries, sports

Trump has asked GOP senators to add several provisions to the legislation, including new restrictions on mail-in voting, a federal prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries for transgender youth and a new law barring transgender women from participating in women’s sports. 

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Policy Committee chair, said she doesn’t believe the federal government should tell states how to manage mail-in ballots. 

“A lot of states, red states and blue, have more than a majority of the votes that are mail-in ballots,” she said. “So I think we’ve got to be careful there.”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson said that once debate on the SAVE America Act has concluded, he wants GOP leaders to hold a floor vote on whether to keep the rule that requires at least 60 senators vote to limit debate on bills, known as the legislative filibuster. 

“I think the days of the minority preventing legislation from passing is over. Because Democrat voters, they want their members to end it. Republican voters want us to end it,” he said. “So in the end, it’ll be that public pressure that I think will eventually end the filibuster. And I’d just rather beat them to the punch so we can pass things like SAVE America Act.”

Thune said during an afternoon press conference he believes the 60-vote procedural hurdle should remain in place because “throughout history it’s protected Republicans and conservative priorities and principles a lot more often than it’s protected Democrats.”

Photo ID

The bill would require local election officials to ensure anyone registering to vote proves they are an American, likely by showing a passport or a birth certificate. Then, when people go to cast a ballot by mail, during early voting, or on Election Day, they would need to show a valid photo ID, like a driver’s license or military identification card. 

The legislation would require state governments to submit their voter rolls to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security so its officials can run them through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, system to check if anyone already registered isn’t a U.S. citizen. 

The legislation doesn’t provide state or local governments with any extra money or time to implement the changes, if it were to become law. 

The Bipartisan Policy Center writes in a brief about the legislation that the organization “recommends that policymakers avoid making major changes in an election year given the likelihood that they result in administrative errors and create confusion for voters.”

The three BPC experts who analyzed the bill said it “prioritizes expediency over precision.” 

“The act becomes effective on the date of enactment, giving states no time to adjust processes,” they wrote. “It also requires that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission offer implementation guidance to states within just 10 days of enactment.”

Lawsuits

The legislation would give private citizens the ability to sue election officials who register someone without evidence of U.S. citizenship.

Jeffrey Thorsby, legislative director at the National Association of Counties, wrote in a post about the legislation’s impacts that the “liability provisions could discourage election workers and volunteers from serving at a time when many counties already face recruitment challenges.” 

“Currently, the onus on a non-citizen who registers or votes is on the illegal voter,” he wrote. “SAVE America Act proposes a radical change in how we punish fraudulent voting.”

The voting overhaul measure that the U.S. Senate began debating Tuesday would cause major headaches for underfunded state and local election officials, without meaningfully stopping fraud, according to a collection of voting rights advocates and elections officers.

The so-called SAVE America Act, which President Donald Trump is relentlessly pushing, would create chaos for state and local elections administrators by immediately imposing several new requirements without adding funding, former North Carolina elections chief Karen Brinson Bell said on a press call Tuesday organized by Washington U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell.

“I cannot emphasize enough the Herculean effort that the SAVE America Act would present for election officials across this country,” Brinson Bell, who now advises election officials as a co-founder of the group Advance Elections, said. “Please do not set our country or these public servants up for failure. Bring us to the table. Develop this legislation properly and provide adequate funding and resources so we can all succeed.”

No new money

The bill would initially add $35 million in costs for Washington state to administer this year’s midterm elections, Clark County Auditor Greg Kimsey said. The measure would cost an estimated additional $12 million annually in presidential election years for the state’s elections administrators, he added.

But it would not provide federal funding for states and localities to meet the new costs.

“When I looked at the SAVE America Act to understand how it would affect election administration, I did a control-F for the dollar sign, and I did not see a single dollar, much less the hundreds of millions needed to implement these changes,” Brinson Bell said.

The bill, which Trump and other proponents say is necessary to stop immigrants from voting, would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. They would also have to provide a photo ID at polling places.

But the measure “is the very definition of a solution in search of a problem,” Kimsey said on Tuesday’s call. Noncitizens voting in federal elections is exceedingly rare.

Barriers for voting by mail

Overall, the bill would make voting more difficult, especially for people who have changed their names, tribal citizens and people without photo ID, participants on the call said. That counters the goal of elections officials: to make voting easier.

“The problem isn’t that the wrong people are voting,” Kimsey said. “The problem is that not enough people are voting.”

The bill would also create barriers for vote-by-mail, which Washington and other states have used for decades. 

The system has increased voter participation and is widely popular across party lines. 

“The state of Washington’s vote-by-mail system is such a strong system,” Cantwell said. “The whole country should be moving more towards that and not away from it.”

Voting integrity

The bill’s backers, including most Republicans in Congress, say it would erect commonsense safeguards to protect U.S. elections.

In a Tuesday floor speech setting up debate on the measure, U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune called it “essential.”

“If there’s anything essential to the integrity of elections, it’s ensuring that those who are registered to vote are eligible to vote – and that those who show up to vote at polling places are … who they say they are,” Thune, a South Dakota Republican, said.

The way to do that, he added, was to require proof of citizenship and photo identification.

Photo IDs, though, aren’t as universal as commonly thought, League of Women Voters of Maine Executive Director Chrissy Hart said.

Eighteen percent of citizens older than 65 lack a photo ID, as well as 16% of Latino voters, 25% of Black voters and 15% of low-income Americans, Hart said.

Election denial

Kimsey, who identified as a Republican during his first run for office in 1998 and became an independent after the pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol following the 2020 election, was asked if the measure was a continuation of Trump’s efforts to undermine U.S. elections.

He answered that what he deemed the “election denial movement” lost momentum after Trump’s 2024 victory, but that it seemed to be reappearing ahead of the midterms.

“In my view, this is nothing more than a very clumsy — and I hope not effective — but a very clumsy attempt to create chaos in this year’s midterm elections,” he said.

WASHINGTON — Sure, Sen. Thom Tillis has become the most visible, outspoken Republican insider critic of the second Trump administration. But don’t mistake Tillis for a maverick.

The North Carolina senator is being who he’s long been, the sort of GOP stalwart known as an establishment Republican. A Republican who’s conservative on fiscal issues, usually pragmatic on other stuff. A Chamber of Commerce Republican. A Bush-Romney Republican.

“Thom Tillis was, and is, best understood not as a moderate, but as a pragmatist,” said Christopher Cooper, author of “Anatomy of a Purple State,” which analyzes North Carolina politics.

“When he speaks, when he acts, and when he stays quiet is all calculated to achieve the goals he has in mind,” said Cooper, professor of political science at Western Carolina University. “With no chance for reelection, it’s simply that his speech now is less costly.”

Tillis is stepping down after two Senate terms. Over the last nine months, he has shown a more blunt public side.

“The only rational explanation I’ve seen” for his recent outspokenness, said veteran North Carolina Republican strategist Carter Wrenn, “is that he’s free of all the politics right now.”’

Tillis would not consent to an interview for this story.

Tillis vs. Noem

The latest, most public Tillis blowup came March 3, when he torched soon-to-be-former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Tillis had voted last year, along with 51 other Republicans and seven Democrats, to confirm Noem as secretary.

This time, he talked about the “disaster that President Biden left behind,” and a “failed DHS.” But, he said, he was critical of Noem because of how she’s run the agency.

Tillis maintained an angry tone throughout his confrontation with the secretary. “What we see is a disaster under your leadership, Ms. Noem,” he protested. “Time after time I’ve been disappointed.”

He threatened to hold up unrelated U.S. Senate business unless he got satisfaction.

He cited a letter from her department’s Office of Inspector General, which noted several times she had made it tough for the agency to proceed with investigations of her department.

He recalled how Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency agents shot and killed two Minnesota protesters in January, both U.S. citizens. “Why can’t we just say we made a mistake?” Tillis asked. Noem would not apologize during the hearing for the shootings.

Tillis brought up Noem’s dog, which she shot because it could not be trained, an incident that became famous after she wrote about it in a 2024 book while South Dakota governor.

“You decided to kill that dog because you had not invested the appropriate time in training. And then you have the audacity to go into a book and say it’s a leadership lesson about tough choices?” Tillis asked incredulously.

The willingness to distance himself from party orthodoxy was vintage Tillis. The unrelenting exasperation was new.

The establishment Republican

Michael Bitzer, professor of politics and history at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina, described state Republicans this way: Two-thirds are firm Trump loyalists. The other one-third make up the traditional GOP.

That means their roots are often in “Chamber of Commerce, mainstream, party-oriented Republicanism rather than the personality of Trump,” he said.

These Republicans still tend to run the U.S. Senate Republican Conference, led by senators such as Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota and former GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

They have a long history of conservatism that tends toward a practical approach that gets the job done.

They teamed with Democrats in 2001 and 2002 to get President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind education reform passed. They wooed enough Democratic support in 2002 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq. They helped the party nominate Arizona Sen. John McCain for president in 2008 and former Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah four years later.

When Tillis first ran for Senate in 2014, he got the backing of Romney, who appeared in a television ad for the candidate. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush campaigned for Tillis. They were not Trump fans.

Tillis and Trump

When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced in 2016, a few weeks before the presidential election, showing GOP nominee Donald Trump making crude remarks about women, Tillis was critical.

“As a proud husband and father of a daughter, I find Donald Trump’s comments indefensible,” Tillis tweeted at the time.

Tillis, though, had a history of keeping the Republican faithful happy.

He stirred controversy in 2011, when while North Carolina House speaker, he said in a video, “What we have to do is find a way to divide and conquer the people who are on assistance.”

His examples: “We have to show respect for that woman who has cerebral palsy and had no choice, in her condition, that needs help and that we should help.”

But, Tillis added, “We need to get those folks to look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government and say at some point, ‘You’re on your own. We may end up taking care of those babies, but we’re not going to take care of you.’”

In 2014, he told NBC News he regretted using the words “divide and conquer.”

As a U.S. senator, Tillis has voted with Republicans much of the time. He ranked 35th out of 100 senators in the nonpartisan GovTrack’s “ideology score,” which starts with the most conservative senators. 

Twelve Republicans had lower scores (just below Tillis was Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., nominated by Trump to replace Noem).

Breaking with Trump

The most public, most noticed breaks have come in the last year or so. 

Tillis was sharply critical of Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Martin was controversial because of his ties to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump wound up pulling the nomination.

The loudest schism came in June, when Tillis voiced concern with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law on July 4. He went on to vote against the final version.

This was and still is the signature domestic achievement of the president’s second term. It extends the 2017 tax cuts and adds new ones. But it also cuts $1 trillion from Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that helps pay costs incurred by lower-income people.

Tillis called Trump’s health care advisers “amateurs,” and described how he did extensive research to assess the impact on his state. He found it potentially devastating.

“So, what do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding is not there anymore, guys?” he asked his colleagues.

Trump was furious. “Tillis is a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER! “ he posted on his Truth Social website.

The day after Tillis made his speech, he said he would not seek reelection.

He was free. His decision made political sense.

“It looked like he was free of constraints,” said Wrenn.

Next up: Federal Reserve

Tillis will soon be in the spotlight again, as he’s vowed to hold up Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh as Federal Reserve chairman.

While he sees Warsh as qualified, Tillis added that the Justice Department “continues to pursue a criminal investigation into Chairman Jerome Powell based on committee testimony that no reasonable person could construe as possessing criminal intent.” 

The investigation is connected to Powell’s comments about spending on the renovation of the Fed buildings.

“My position has not changed: I will oppose the confirmation of any Federal Reserve nominee, including for the position of chairman, until the DOJ’s inquiry into Chairman Powell is fully and transparently resolved,” Tillis said.

A federal judge last week blocked the Justice subpoenas to Powell, saying “the government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime.”

Tillis is still not relenting.

“This ruling confirms just how weak and frivolous the criminal investigation of Chairman Powell is and it is nothing more than a failed attack on Fed independence,” the senator said in a statement.

“We all know how this is going to end and the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office should save itself further embarrassment and move on. Appealing the ruling will only delay the confirmation of Kevin Warsh as the next Fed Chair.”

Trump badly wants to replace Powell, thinking that Powell has been too unwilling to take steps to lower interest rates.

Classic Tillis

The Warsh drama is the latest vintage Tillis move, said congressional experts.

Tillis “is a creature of the legislature. He came with a very long legislative resume, knew how to play the game and was adroit at moving around and changing positions when it came to his advantage,” said Ross Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

He also wanted people to remember he was pragmatic, willing to be independent. Warsh provides one fresh opportunity. The Noem hearing offered another.

The day after the Noem hearing, Trump fired her, the first person in his second-term Cabinet to be dismissed.

Tillis, Baker said, “wanted to leave a memorial to himself, which may be something like the end of Kristi Noem’s career as secretary of Homeland Security.”

After all, he said, “Tillis is a good government guy.”

WASHINGTON — Electricity rates “increased significantly” in nearly every U.S. state in 2025, with residents in a dozen states seeing at least a 10% jump, according to a congressional report released by Democrats Tuesday.

Minority members of the Joint Economic Committee released state-by-state figures from monthly utility bill data showing, on average, American households paid roughly $110, or 6.4%, more for electricity in 2025, compared to 2024. 

The analysis came amid other gloomy economic headlines, including a steep increase in gasoline prices since the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began, and a lousy jobs report last month.  

States that saw the highest spikes included New Jersey, 16.9%; Indiana, 16.3%; Illinois, 15.9%; Pennsylvania, 12.1%; Kentucky, 11.8%; Maryland, 11.6%; Tennessee, 11.6%; New York, 11.4%; Ohio, 11.1%; Missouri, 11%; Maine, 10.6%; and Washington state, 10.3%. 

The District of Columbia topped the list with an increase of 23.5%, according to the two-page report.

Rates dropped by 18% in Nevada, 3.1% in California, 2.4% in Hawaii and 1.6 % in Arizona.

Campaign pledge

Democrats on the committee pointed to President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to slash electricity costs, among other prices, by half.

Affordability is a key issue ahead of the 2026 midterm elections in November that will determine control of Congress. Trump has repeatedly referred to the issue of affordability as a “hoax.”

“American families don’t need a report to tell them that the President has broken his campaign promise to slash energy costs; they already feel the impact of President Trump’s actions every single day. But this report is yet another indication that sky-high costs are continuing to rise — and are continuing to hurt American families,” the committee’s ranking member, Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., said in a statement.

The committee pulled the electricity bill data from the federal Energy Information Administration.

 

 

As of December, the majority, by far, of electricity in the United States is generated by natural gas. Next in generation are nuclear power and coal, followed by wind, conventional hydroelectric and solar, according to the Energy Information Administration. 

Experts and economists challenged Trump’s campaign promise to cut domestic energy costs by expanding U.S. drilling, highlighting petroleum is priced on a global, not local, market, as noted in an October 2024 report by FactCheck.org.

 

 

Trump recently gathered tech CEOs in the Oval Office to sign a symbolic “ratepayer protection pledge” meant to combat rising energy costs due to AI data center demand. 

“It’s a big deal; it’s going to have a tremendous impact on electricity costs… Under this new agreement, Big Tech companies are committing to fully cover the cost of increased electricity production required for AI data centers — and that would mean prices for American communities will not go up, but in many cases, will actually come down,” Trump said.

Gasoline prices, too

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 4.8% increase in electricity costs over the past 12 months, according to the consumer price index for February. The report showed energy services overall rose 6.3% year over year as piped gas utility costs spiked 10.3% since February 2025.

Expenses overall rose 2.4% over the past year, according to the latest figures, continuing to exceed the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%. 

But nowhere has a price increase been more noticeable in recent days than at the gas pump.

Gas prices nationwide averaged just under $3.72 Monday — that’s up from $2.93 one month ago, according to AAA. 

Roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum products have been choked off as Iran continues to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz with threats to shell any oil tankers passing through, except for a few negotiated trips.

The U.S.-Israeli war in Iran began Feb. 28.

More than 70 school referendum questions will appear on ballots across the state in April, continuing the trend of school districts going to voters to ask permission to raise property taxes to keep up with costs.

The requests this spring include 60 operational referendum requests, totaling over $1 billion in requests, and 14 for capital expenses. Two school districts, Sauk Prairie and Howard-Suamico, have a capital and an operating request on the ballot.

The requests come as state leaders debate the best way to provide property tax relief to Wisconsinites, as a group of teachers, students and community members have turned to the court system to find relief and as districts grapple with the consequences of referendum outcomes. 

Ahead of Election Day on April 7, the Wisconsin Examiner checked in with three school districts seeking to raise property taxes to help with costs. The stakes are high in local communities as passage or rejection will determine which school programs are offered, whether staff get pay raises and whether school consolidation may be on the table.

Dodgeville tries for operational referendum for a third time

Dodgeville School District is one of four school districts in southeastern Wisconsin that have not passed an operational referendum, though not for lack of trying. 

The district is asking voters in the spring to weigh in on a $7.5 million request that would provide $2.5 million annually for operational expenses over the next three years. 

The district had a failed referendum in November 2024 and another failed request in April 2025. Its new request is a slimmed down version of the last one.

A Wisconsin Policy Forum report from April 2025 found that “retry” efforts have increased as districts have become more willing over time to retry operating referenda that failed. According to the report, from 2000 to 2017, about half of failed operational referendum requests were not retried within two years, but since 2018, more than three-quarters of operating referendum failures were retried. 

District administrator Ryan Bohnsack told the Examiner the district needs additional funds to keep up with costs. He said the district has been making cuts where it can, including by delaying technology upgrades, day-to-day maintenance and curriculum upgrades, but that can only go so far.

“We’ve gotten to the point where we know we don’t have the funds to keep operating,” Bohnsack said, adding that the district’s fund balance is below its operational balance and it will  need to start borrowing money to pay its bills.

Bohnsack said rising costs, including for staff pay, declining enrollment and stagnant state aid have all played a role in the district’s financial situation.

Randell Thompson, the treasurer for the Dodgeville School Board, emphasized that the district’s need for an operational referendum is not unique.

“If you look across the 421 school districts in Wisconsin, the vast majority have needed to go to an operating referendum at some level,” Thompson said. “Part of the state funding formula is to get local taxpayers to have a say in how much of the school budget they want to cover.”

According to 2023 census data, Wisconsin has fallen to 26th in the nation in per pupil K-12 education spending and is spending 10% below the national average. The state was ranked 11th in 2002, and at the time spent 11% above the national average. 

In the most recent state budget, lawmakers invested state funds in special education, though recent estimates find the amount of money set aside will not be enough to reimburse school districts at the promised 42% rate. The Legislature also declined to provide additional state aid to schools — blaming Gov. Tony Evers’ 400-year veto that extended  districts’ authority to bring in an additional $325 per pupil, which districts will only be able to take advantage of through raising property taxes.

A lawsuit recently filed in Eau Claire County Circuit Court is challenging the state’s school funding formula, arguing that it is unconstitutional as it does not meet the state’s constitutional obligation to provide educational opportunities to all students. 

State leaders are also discussing ways to provide property tax relief through special education funding, school funding and school levy tax credits, though discussions so far have not yielded any results. While Gov. Tony Evers wants to provide additional funding to school general aids, Republican lawmakers have proposed investing in the school levy tax credit, which provides property tax relief but doesn’t provide direct dollars to school districts. 

The last time Dodgeville had an operational referendum was in 2012, which was just a one-year ask. The district has passed two capital referendum requests since then. 

Bohnstack said this means that an operational referendum is a “new concept” to many residents in the area, but that “given the strategy at the state level now… we’re now kind of at the mercy of the local control being able to support the school through the operational day to day expenses.”

The school district lays out the distribution for the referendum on its website. A little over $1 million annually, or 43% of the referendum, would be used for staff costs, $525,591 or 21% would be for the district’s fund balance and the rest would go towards technology costs, curriculum, facilities, playground safety updates at the elementary school and classroom supplies. 

In addition to inflationary costs, Bohnstack said the district is grappling with declining enrollment, which has not helped its financial situation. 

Data from the Department of Public Instruction reports that Wisconsin public schools lost 14,087 students this year. Wisconsin school funding is a complicated per-pupil formula that is tied to student enrollment, meaning that districts receive less state funding if they have a drop in the number of students.

“The challenge I have is I could lose 100 kids in my school district, but not be able to eliminate a single teaching position, because those kids are spread out over 12, 13 different age groups, and if I was originally of class sizes in the thirties, and I now have class sizes in the twenties, I still need a teacher either way,” Bohnstack said.

The state’s funding system also leaves districts with few options, he said.

“They don’t fund special education in a way that you can budget for it,” Bohstack said. “I also see this stalemate right now all because of this 400-year [veto], $325, and to me, who pays the price right now because they won’t work together, is the educators, the kids caught in the middle and the schools and the communities,” Bohnstack said, adding that lawmakers should make use of the $4.6 billion state budget surplus to fund Wisconsin schools.

Over the weekend, Democratic lawmakers introduced a $1.3 billion proposal that would provide over $445 million towards general school aid for the 2026–27 school year and provide schools with a special education reimbursement at 60% sum sufficient, meaning schools would be guaranteed that rate. It’s unlikely that the package will advance in the Republican-led Legislature. 

Bohnstack isn’t holding his breath for action. 

“Hope is not a strategy. I have no hope that they will do anything… Let’s solve our own problems, and in the end, if they do well, we adjust,” Bohnstack said. 

Without the referendum, Bohnstack said the district is looking at freezing staff salaries. He said the district is already preparing to go to referendum in November if voters reject their spring request, though it would likely mean a larger request. 

“There were certain positions that we cut that we cut deeper than what we needed to, and we need to ensure we have the programming in place to recruit and retain teachers, so there are some staffing positions that we need to rebuild,” Bohnstack said. He added that the technology and curriculum in the district needs to be updated.

Thompson said that a later referendum likely won’t be “any easier for people from a tax standpoint, I suspect,” but the district has to “be realistic about it and plan for what happens if it doesn’t pass.”

And still, the passage of the referendum wouldn’t be the end of Dodgeville’s referendum conversations. Its nonrecurring request would end in 2029 and could put it back at the financial point where it is now.

“Either the Legislature changes the formula, or we’re going to be coming back for a referendum in three years,” Bohnstack said. “We’re not going to be able to cut our way out of this challenge that we’re currently in.”

Lake Country’s referendum to determine consolidation or dissolution conversation

Chad Schraufnagel, the district administrator of the Lake Country School District, said his district has no choice but to go to referendum. The district, which is one of seven public school districts that feed to Arrowhead Union High School District, is going for its third “retry” attempt. 

One operational request in 2024 failed, though a capital referendum passed that same year. A second operational request failed in April 2025

Schraufnagel said that without a referendum to help with operational costs, the district is looking at dissolving. 

The Lake Country request would provide the district with the ability to bring in $800,000 annually for four years through property taxes. Schraufnagel said the funds would be enough to “just give us time to try and figure out a strategic way to consolidate and move forward.”

“If we don’t get the referendum, our district [is] going to dissolve,” Schraufnagel said. “It’s going to be hard for us to keep the doors open beyond ’26-27.”

The last school district in Wisconsin to dissolve was the Ondossagon School District in 1990. It was absorbed into the Ashland, Drummond and Washburn districts.

Schraufnagel said he explains the difference to residents this way: “Consolidation, it’s a three-year, three- to four-year process, heavily involved, and it takes a lot of time to do it correctly and strategically, given all of the tax implications, contract implications, costs and things like that, but with consolidation, you have local control… Dissolution the state of Wisconsin is going to tell you how it’s going to go, and you have no more local control.”

Schraufnagel said the factors that led to the district’s financial difficulties are threefold: state aid not keeping up with inflation, overstaffing and the cost related to an unemployment benefit that could’ve been cut many years ago. 

“Those three things really were the financial nightmare for the district,” Shraufnagel said. “We could have as a district, I think, survived a combination of the two, but you cannot survive all three together.”

Schraufnagel said the district has worked to make over $1.6 million in cuts including by increasing class sizes, cutting post-employment benefits and eliminating programming such as band and Spanish courses.

“Those were very significant costs on the district that really were in control of the district… Now our problem is we’ve done all those things, but now it’s a matter of the state funding not keeping up,” Schraufnagel said. 

Schraufnagel said the previous requests were likely rejected for a number of reasons, including a large operational request for the Arrowhead Union High School District that was on the same ballot and was also rejected. He said that the district has also worked to be direct with residents on the issues at hand and why the district needs the referendum. 

Kelly Hoesly, a mother of three Lake Country School District students, is leading the “ Vote Yes” advocacy group in the district. She said the group is taking a new approach to informing community members about the referendum including watching social media and hosting events at local bars to provide answers to questions. She spoke with the Examiner one day after an event where she handed out about 130 “Vote Yes” signs to residents. 

Hoesly said she made the decision to send her children to the district because “it just felt like home” and reminded her of “my elementary school that I had growing up,” and she said she is hopeful the referendum will help prop up the district so it can make decisions about its future without its “back against a wall.”

“This referendum is about maintaining that quality of education that our students have today and supporting that,” Hoesly said. “I’m encouraged by how our community’s been engaging this time around. People are asking questions, they’re attending the meetings, they’re having conversations even with different viewpoints. It shows people care. I’m hopeful.”

The effort has not been without its challenges. Hoesly said there is a misunderstanding among some about what could happen if the referendum doesn’t pass. 

“There’s this appetite in our area to consolidate, and when talking about consolidation, everyone thinks it’s easy,” Hoesly said. 

This legislative session, Republican lawmakers, who have pointed out declining enrollment as the main reason for the funding issues plaguing schools — rather than state aid lagging inflation — have proposed that school districts look at consolidation as a solution to the funding woes that are pushing them to go to referendum. They’ve said the state’s 421 school districts constitute an “unsustainable” number of districts. 

During a public hearing in November on a package of bills meant to encourage school consolidation, Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said many districts have gone to referendum to “backfill” the loss of state aid due to declining enrollment, but that there “is no referendum that can be passed or law that can be signed to single-handedly reverse decades of birth rate declines to alleviate the stresses of declining enrollment in our schools. It’s clear that a more long-term solution is needed to address these demographic challenges because the status quo is not sustainable.”

The bills were framed as an option for schools, not mandatory. It is unclear whether the bills, which have passed the Assembly, will become law. They still need to pass the Senate before they can go to Evers to be signed or vetoed. 

Hoesly said that she has concerns given the complicated nature of school consolidation and the need for a referendum approving any consolidation. 

“In order for two districts to consolidate with one another, both voting communities have to go to the polls in a referendum vote and vote to approve it, and if one does and one doesn’t, then what?” Hoesly said. “If the communities don’t approve it, you are back at square one.” 

Schraufnagel told the Examiner that he didn’t think consolidation would not solve the school funding issue.

“If 87% of all districts, those that are K-12, are going to operational referendum, what is consolidation going to do? It’s going to delay you needing to go to an operational referendum for maybe two or three years. The funding has not changed,” Schraufnagel said. 

After consolidation, Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District still goes to referendum

School consolidation did not end funding concerns for Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District, though it did help stave off financial crisis for about a decade, according to District Administrator Tracy Donich.

The district was one of five school consolidations in Wisconsin between 2000 and 2022, according to WPR.

Donich said that when the districts consolidated in 2011, the move cut down on costs in some areas including as the district cut administration down to one principal and one superintendent. The state also provided incentives for school districts that opt to consolidate.

But, Donich said, costs remained the same in other areas.

“The things that don’t change are the number of students. You also have the same amount of transportation, so there are a lot of other costs that don’t go away when you consolidate, but they did what they should. That helped for a little while, and eventually that temporary funding ran out,” Donich said. 

Donich said the district “started to see a deficit budget,” which led to it going to referendum in 2022. Since the referendum was approved, Donich said the district has been considering the next one. 

Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated Grade School District is seeking a $6.8 million nonrecurring referendum. It would provide $1.1 million in year one and $1.9 million in years two, three and four. 

Donich said the district is fortunate that the community has been supportive in the past, and they have worked to provide financial updates at school board meetings as well as set up  displays at athletic events and posts on social media and the school website. 

“We’re really trying to be very transparent with the community and give them all the information they need to make an informed decision,” she said. 

This year’s April requests come as Wisconsin voters appear to be less friendly towards school funding referendum asks. Recent polling from Marquette University Law School found that 57% of voters said they would be inclined to vote against a referendum to increase taxes for schools in their communities. 

Donich said the state’s funding formula “is definitely needing some updates… so the local taxpayers aren’t feeling that pinch quite so much.”

This year, the district’s request has increased from the previous referendum to deal with inflationary costs and a lack of state funding. Donich noted that the district has to transfer over $1 million each year from its general fund to its special education fund to keep up with the mandated costs. 

“If we would not have to do that, it would really help us with having to go to referendum, possibly we wouldn’t even have to go to referendum if they had kept up even with half the amount of inflation,” Donich said. “We wouldn’t be in this situation at all.” 

Without the referendum, Donich said the district will look to cut costs by delaying technology upgrades and having classrooms cleaned less frequently.

“We need to find a way that’s sustainable to help our school system thrive and not being able to rely on the factors at the state level definitely encourages people to go to more referendums,” Donich said. “When we have to do a budget without having any idea what the state will be able to provide, federal funding shifts, the most reliable thing we have is our local community.”

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Andrea Pedro-Francisco was supposed to have surgery more than a month ago.

A cyst on her ovary has swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball and is now at risk of rupturing or cutting off blood supply. The pain is so severe that her doctor prescribed her an opioid.

She’s only received Tylenol or ibuprofen for the pain since she was arrested on her way to work on Feb. 5 in Minnesota and shipped to a Texas detention center, where she’s waiting for a judge to decide whether her detention is even legal.

“I want to be able to go back to my family,” Pedro-Francisco, 23, said in Spanish in a video interview, wearing a navy blue sweatshirt and looking ashen. “I feel sad. I feel tired. I feel desperate to get out of here and see my family again.”

Her case has been taken up by a team of pro bono attorneys and even members of Congress, but to little avail.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Angie Craig, who represents the Twin Cities suburbs where Pedro-Francisco lives, sent inquiries to Homeland Security officials hoping to pressure them to provide adequate medical treatment.

Craig says she’s been stonewalled with demands for various forms and out-of-office messages citing the partial government shutdown. She said she considered flying to El Paso to conduct an oversight visit but the facility is currently in lockdown because of a measles outbreak.

“We are very worried she could have an infection right now … and the Trump administration won’t do a damn thing about it,” Craig said in an interview. “I don’t want Andrea to die.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

Pedro-Francisco is one of 4,000 immigrants the Trump administration says it arrested during Operation Metro Surge — although it has not provided an accounting of all those arrests — with some 3,000 federal agents descending on Minnesota for what the Department of Homeland Security called its largest operation ever.

Many have been ordered released by federal judges who ruled their detentions unlawful. But many others remain languishing in federal facilities across the country even if, like Pedro-Francisco, they have no criminal record and have lived in the United States for years.

While the Trump administration repeatedly claimed to be targeting the “worst of the worst,” the vast majority of those arrested during Trump’s second term have no violent criminal charges or convictions, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by CBS News.

Taken on the way to work

Pedro-Francisco left her native Guatemala for the United States with her mother to seek asylum in 2019 when she was 16 years old. They arrived in Minnesota with virtually nothing and debt from the journey.

They quickly built a new life. They found jobs cleaning houses, moved into a house in Burnsville, and joined a church. Pedro-Francisco sings in the choir and plays the bajo, a Mexican bass guitar.

“I came here with my family to do something, to achieve something with my own strength, with my own hands. And after that, they took me away,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Pedro-Francisco was driving to work with her mother and a neighbor one Thursday morning when they were stopped by two unmarked vehicles. One parked in front and the other behind. Half a dozen masked men surrounded them, demanding to see their documents, she said.

She said she doesn’t know why they stopped her. There was no warrant for her arrest.

It could be they ran the license plate and saw a Hispanic name. Or because the federal agents believed three Latina women in a car was reason enough to initiate a stop. A federal judge appointed by President Trump found that Homeland Security has racially profiled Latino and Somali residents and arrested them without probable cause, which while unconstitutional, nevertheless yielded results as the Trump administration pursues mass deportations.

The agents put handcuffs on Pedro-Francisco and her neighbor.

Her mother pleaded with an agent to let her go, telling him there was no one to care for her children. She has two younger children, a 5- and a 1-year old, both U.S. citizens.

“‘Who’s going to take care of my children?’ I asked him,” said Pedro-Francisco’s mother in an interview in Spanish, choking back tears. She was granted anonymity due to her fear of retribution from federal officials.

“Then he said, ‘Okay, we’re going to let you go, but only today … If another group catches you, they’ll take you away.’”

She gave her daughter one last hug, and the agents placed Pedro-Francisco, handcuffed, in the back of the unmarked car.

Within a couple hours she was on a flight to Texas.

‘They treat us like animals’ 

Pedro-Francisco was taken to Camp East Montana, a troubled tent prison on the site of a former World War II detention camp for Japanese Americans at Fort Bliss near El Paso.

It was hurriedly constructed last summer to meet the growing need for detention space after the Trump administration enacted a policy of mandatory detention for many undocumented immigrants, even those who have lived in the country for years with no criminal history.

The detention facility is now ICE’s largest: around 3,000 people packed into long tent structures. Pedro-Francisco says she is kept in a room with around 60 people except for about an hour a day, when they are chained together and taken outside.

“They chain us up as if we had committed a very serious crime,” Pedro-Francisco said. “They treat us like animals.”

The ceiling leaks when it rains. The food is inedible. Pedro-Francisco says she’s lost around 10 lbs.

The crowded conditions have also made it a hotbed of disease, with outbreaks of COVID-19, tuberculosis and the measles.

Three detainees died in the facility in a six-week period, including a man who was suffocated in a struggle with multiple guards. His death was ruled a homicide. Suicide attempts are so common that some guards take bets on which detainee will succeed next, according to a former detainee who spoke to the Associated Press.

With complaints of crowded quarters, medical neglect and poor nutrition mounting, ICE recently terminated the $1.3 billion contract with the company operating the facility, Acquisition Logistics. It had never run an ICE detention facility before — nor did it even have a functioning website.

When Pedro-Francisco arrived in early February, she wasn’t receiving any medication except the occasional Tylenol. The pain in her abdomen became so unbearable that within a couple days she was taken to a hospital, where she says a doctor confirmed the cyst yet declined to operate on her because she’s in immigration custody.

As the weeks have passed, she can feel herself getting sicker.

Instead of medical care, ICE has offered her another solution: self-deport. Every two or three days, she says, ICE officials enter their room to ask people to sign forms agreeing to voluntary removal.

Many have taken it, including a man from Minnesota whose lawyer said he only agreed because he was being denied medication for his diabetes.

“But my purpose, for me, here in the midst of suffering, pain and illness, my purpose is to be able to return to my family,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Caught in red tape and judicial delays

By swiftly transferring Pedro-Francisco to Texas, ICE has made it harder for her and other people arrested in Minnesota to challenge their detention through what’s called a habeas corpus petition. That seems to be by design.

Minnesota U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank wrote that he’s seen a “pattern of obfuscation” with ICE “attempting to hide the location of detainees, and thus, make habeas proceedings more difficult.”

Judges in Minnesota have been in revolt over the Trump administration’s policy of mandatory detention and repeated violations of their orders to release immigrants, even threatening the U.S. attorney with contempt.

While judges in Texas have also largely ruled against the Trump administration, the ultra-conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in its favor, making Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi more favorable venues for the administration to defend a policy that contradicts three decades of precedent.

Federal officials have said they simply ran out of space to hold people in Minnesota during an unprecedented surge in arrests.

Approximately 200 people detained in Minnesota have been transferred out-of-state and remain in detention centers across the country — in Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Nebraska and Mississippi — according to Sarah Brenes, executive director of the Binger Center at the University of Minnesota Law School and one of the directors of the Minnesota Habeas Project.

By the time Pedro-Francisco was connected with a lawyer, she was already in Texas. Her case was taken up by attorney Asra Syed, managing partner at the Austin law firm Botkin Chiarello Calaf. She was referred to Pedro-Francisco’s case through the informal network of volunteer lawyers that sprung up during Operation Metro Surge.

Syed filed a habeas corpus petition to challenge Pedro-Francisco’s detention on Feb. 13 and mentioned her urgent need for medical attention. While the federal government usually has three days to justify its detention of a person, U.S. Judge Leon Schydlower gave the government more than three weeks from when the petition was filed to respond.

“She doesn’t have a way to get the health care that she needs unless she’s out of detention. And how is she supposed to get out of detention unless the judge rules on the habeas petition quickly?” Syed said.

In the interim, Syed filed two more motions asking the court to speed up Pedro-Francisco’s case and order the federal government to administer her prescribed medications and have her examined by an independent hospital physician. They went unanswered.

Syed also reached out to her representative, Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, who connected her with Craig. Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents the El Paso area that’s home to the detention center, also got involved.

Syed became hopeful, but she and the congresswomen were quickly moored in ICE’s kafkaesque bureaucracy.

In order to conduct oversight, the congresswomen needed Pedro-Francisco to fill out a form authorizing the visit and for Homeland Security to share information about her. But there is no way for Pedro-Francisco to fill out or mail the form in detention. There’s no commissary to buy envelopes and stamps, Syed said. Pedro-Francisco also can’t sign releases giving her attorneys access to her medical records.

An attorney planned to visit the detention center to get Pedro-Francisco’s signatures in person. Then came the measles outbreak, which has stopped anyone from visiting detainees in person, be they attorneys or members of Congress.

Craig said she reached out to a senior DHS official but received a bounceback citing the partial government shutdown. Congressional Democrats are refusing to support renewing funding for the agency without reforms to what they say are ICE’s unconstitutional tactics.

“It’s just stunning, but not surprising at all, that … even as a congressional office, we haven’t been able to get her the help that she needs and deserves,” Craig said.

Her office has received some information from DHS about Pedro-Francisco’s condition — that they’re giving her an antidepressant and birth control pills.

But that’s at odds with what Pedro-Francisco says she’s receiving. She said she went days without even Tylenol to dull the unbearable pain, and then about a week ago also started receiving a prescription, though she’s unsure what it’s called.

Pedro-Francisco said she was also recently examined by a man in the detention center who conducted an ultrasound. He told her she didn’t have anything and gave her two pills to go to the bathroom, but she doesn’t trust anybody in the facility. She’s requested the man’s name and records of her treatment in detention to show her lawyers but has not received either.

Inadequate medical care and poor record-keeping have been documented repeatedly at Camp East Montana, even by ICE’s own inspectors, who found 60 violations in 50 days.

Pedro-Francisco’s case remains at a standstill. The federal government filed an answer to her habeas corpus petition justifying her detention as an undocumented immigrant “seeking admission,” as if she were just apprehended at the border, and cited the recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.

Now it’s up to a judge to decide, though when that will happen is unclear.

“I want to get out of here because I know that at home, where my family is, they can take care of me, and I can go to a doctor,” Pedro-Francisco said.

Madison McVan contributed translation. 

As federal immigration officers made more “at-large” arrests in communities across the country in the first year of the current Trump administration — including at homes, places of worship and workplaces — more than 1,100 Nebraska families developed family safety plans in the event a parent or breadwinner faced detention or deportation.

These plans help families decide who will take care of the children, handle school and medical decisions, and manage finances if a parent suddenly cannot be there.

Families are encouraged to choose a trusted adult — such as a relative or family friend — who could temporarily care for the children. They’re making sure children have passports, updating school emergency contacts, and letting family members know how to locate a parent if they are detained.

“This is not unique to immigrant families, but it’s of course more nuanced for immigrant families in the sense that their family can be separated at any time,” said Lina Traslaviña Stover, a sociologist who also is executive director of the Heartland Workers Center, a Nebraska nonprofit that advocates on behalf of workers in the meatpacking, restaurant, construction and cleaning industries.

“There are a lot of ripple effects when families prepare for the possibility of separation. In some cases, older siblings are being asked to step into the role of head of household if a parent is detained or deported. Imagine a high school senior suddenly carrying the responsibility for the family’s finances and stability. Even if it’s just a ‘what if’ scenario, that kind of pressure can change a young person’s plans for the future.”

The effort in Nebraska, and similar ones around the country, points to the social and economic fallout from the immigration crackdown. The deportation of a breadwinner, the potential exposure of tenants’ personal data and stricter federal housing policies can all stress families, advocates say, even as some policymakers are trying to help.

Demand for rental housing is driven primarily by U.S. citizens, but immigrants have long been a key subset of renters: They headed 9.6 million renter households (21%) in 2024, according to the recently published America’s Rental Housing report by the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. Researchers also note that immigrants contribute to the economy and pay taxes, supporting the communities they live and work in.

“For households living paycheck to paycheck, losing just a few days of wages can mean losing housing,” said Meesha Moulton, a Las Vegas-based immigration attorney. “Housing insecurity in these communities doesn’t start with an eviction notice, it starts with the empty chair at a job site.”

Fear can also affect how or whether immigrant families — with or without legal status — apply for food, housing or health programs they qualify for because they worry it could put them on the government’s radar. Both Americans and immigrants with legal status have been arrested during the past year’s enforcement crackdown. And nearly three-fourths of the people in immigration detention in late January had no criminal record.

Jacob Rugh, a sociologist and associate professor at Brigham Young University who studies immigration enforcement and housing, said high-profile incidents of aggressive and fatal encounters between federal agents and U.S. citizens and noncitizens have shifted public opinion in ways that could help affected immigrants.

In a Quinnipiac University poll conducted shortly after a federal immigration officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Good, roughly 80% of respondents said they had seen video of the shooting.

“People are seeing videos everywhere and there’s more visibility in the non-immigrant community,” Rugh said. “It makes the issue much more salient in ways that didn’t exist before. People donate, help on the ground and become part of the solution.”

‘We cannot GoFundMe our way out of a crisis’

Policymakers in many affected places are looking for ways to help.

In Los Angeles County, officials declared a state of emergency in 2025 after federal immigration raids, allowing the county to provide rent relief, legal aid and other services to residents affected by immigration enforcement in Southern California last year.

In Clark County, Washington, a $50,000 rental assistance program was launched to help families who have a family or household member — and are missing a primary wage-earner — detained or deported by immigration officers. Officials say the demand for assistance is already exceeding available funds.

In Santa Ana, California, a $100,000 emergency assistance program is aimed at helping renters affected by federal immigration raids. It offers up to one month of rent or utility assistance for a household that lost income as a result of a member’s detention or deportation.

Few places better illustrate the direct relationship between immigration enforcement and housing insecurity than Minnesota, where the Trump administration in December sent thousands of federal agents. Operation Metro Surge closed streets and businesses amid protests and shelter-in-place orders, and agents detained more than 4,000 people, according to the White House.

The Minneapolis City Council approved extending the time frame for eviction notices, but Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the measure and instead proposed $1 million in city funding in rental assistance.

Landlords across Minneapolis and St. Paul have filed 2,585 eviction notices so far this year, 25% above the same time period in 2023 and 2024, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University.

Many residents have reported losing jobs, said Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenant Union Federation, a national union of tenant unions involved in a new tenant campaign in the Twin Cities. Some fell behind on rent, and with income-earners detained, some families have attempted to fill the void by raising money on GoFundMe.

“We cannot GoFundMe our way out of a crisis of this scale,” Raghuveer said in an interview. “Many people have not been able to work, and as a result many people have not been able to pay rent, and the economic pain created by this invasion will still be with everyday people long after ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents are gone.”

Minneapolis and St. Paul have each allocated about $1 million in emergency rental assistance.

Last week, Minnesota’s Democratic-led Senate approved $40 million in rental assistance, but the legislation isn’t expected to pass the evenly split House. Republicans argued that residents living in the country illegally shouldn’t receive aid, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

Trust between landlords and immigrant tenants

Immigration enforcement has also caused a ripple in the relationship between landlords and their tenants who lack legal status. In Tennessee, a law enacted in 2025 criminalizes harboring such immigrants for financial gain, which some critics argue could pressure landlords to evict tenants or refuse rentals out of fear of legal consequences.

In Oregon, lawmakers passed legislation that would restrict landlords from disclosing a tenant’s immigration status and sensitive personal information without clear legal requirements. The measure would protect information such as immigration status, Social Security numbers and financial records. It’s awaiting action by the governor.

A New Jersey bill that would bar landlords from using a tenant’s immigration status is advancing in the legislature.

California, Colorado and Illinois have enacted so-called immigrant tenant protection acts, with provisions to prevent landlords from harassing, intimidating or evicting tenants based on their citizenship or immigration status.

Democratic Oregon state Rep. Pam Marsh, who sponsored the Oregon legislation, told Stateline that the idea emerged after reviewing tenant records from her own experience as a small landlord.

“I realized I had file drawers full of very sensitive data,” she said. “It made me start asking what the law actually requires about confidentiality.”

The measure ultimately passed with bipartisan support after negotiations with landlord groups.

Immigration authorities have taken a new legal position that civil administrative warrants may allow agents to enter residences without a judge-signed warrant, according to guidance compiled by the National Apartment Association’s legal team. Many legal experts dispute the directive, and at least one court has found it unconstitutional.

A proposed U.S. Housing and Urban Development rule would prohibit “mixed-status” families — households with both U.S. citizens and people without legal immigration status — from living in public or other subsidized housing.

HUD estimates that about 25,000 mixed-status households currently receive agency-assisted housing, less than 1% of all federally aided renters. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates about 80,000 people could lose housing assistance, including roughly 37,000 children, nearly all U.S. citizens.

Some landlords are concerned their tenants may end a lease early or not renew based on rumors or threats of immigration agent sightings, according to Alexandra Alvarado, director of marketing and education for the trade group American Apartment Owners Association.

María Monclova, a Mexican-born immigration lawyer, says that landlord compliance with requests from federal agents is in part due to ignorance of obligations to cooperate with federal matters.

“There have been credible reports of immigration authorities requesting leases, rental applications and identification documents from landlords or property managers,” she said.

“Many landlords don’t fully understand the difference between an administrative request and a court-issued subpoena or warrant,” she said. “When that distinction isn’t clear, some property owners may overcomply out of fear of liability.”

Given the current administration’s attempt to determine immigration status through public housing data, Moulton, the immigration attorney, thinks some immigrant and mixed-status families may be avoiding formal leases altogether.

“They’d rather live in a crowded basement with no paperwork than sign a legal contract that has their name on it. This is all bad for everyone,” Moulton said. “It leads to ‘shadow housing’ where buildings aren’t inspected, safety rules are ignored and slumlords can take advantage of people. When we push people into the shadows, we lose the data we need to keep our neighborhoods safe.”

Some neighborhoods — and the groups of people who live and call them home — have been reshaped by immigration preceding the current Trump administration and dating through the George W. Bush, Obama, first Trump and Biden administrations.

A 2025 study from Rugh and other researchers in the journal Demography found that when local police helped enforce immigration laws, Latino and white residents were less likely to live in the same neighborhoods over time. Researchers say tougher enforcement can make immigrant families feel less secure financially and more likely to move.

“When large numbers of men are detained or deported — and most deportees are men — they’re suddenly no longer contributing to household income,” Rugh said in an interview.

“When you detain and deport large numbers of people, it affects entire communities,” he said. “Landlords lose renters, property values can fall, local businesses suffer, and people who aren’t immigrants feel the economic effects.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has halted enforcement of several key vaccine policies imposed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., ruling that the Trump administration illegally overhauled a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee dedicated to issuing immunization recommendations.

The decision, which comes in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Academy of Pediatrics last July, temporarily blocks the enforcement of all recommendations voted on by the panel. That includes the overhaul of a decades-old recommendation that all newborn babies receive a vaccine against hepatitis B, a push to emphasize the risks of COVID-19 vaccines and a ban on vaccine preservatives like thimerosal. 

The ruling also temporarily halts participation from 13 of the panel’s 15 members, complicating a meeting that was scheduled to begin later this week.

The CDC’s committee, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, is charged with setting national guidelines around which people should be vaccinated against a wide range of preventable diseases and when those vaccines should be administered. The recommendations play a key role in determining which vaccines insurance companies are willing to cover and how accessible those immunizations are to the public.

Last June, Kennedy abruptly dismissed all 17 members of the committee and replaced them with a slate of hand-picked appointees, many of whom are seen as vaccine skeptics. In his Monday decision, District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy ruled that the Trump administration likely violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to appoint qualified, nonpartisan experts, as the panel’s charter requires.

By ignoring those requirements, “the Government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions,” Murphy’s ruling reads.

Dr. Andrew Racine, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, celebrated the ruling, calling it “a historic and welcome outcome for children, communities, and pediatricians everywhere.”

“For decades, the AAP partnered closely with the federal government to advance our mission of attaining the optimal health and well-being of children and youth,” Racine added. “We would much prefer to return to that partnership and collaborate with federal healthcare agencies instead of litigating against them.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are challenging guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that plaintiffs allege imposes new rules and funding conditions they say could weaken state protections against housing discrimination — and their ability to investigate them. 

The lawsuit focuses on two HUD memos in September detailing how it will prioritize resources for cases with clear evidence of intentional discrimination.

HUD withdrew several fair housing documents including guidance policies on disparate impact — a theory of discrimination where neutral-seeming policies disproportionately exclude or harm certain groups — along with procedures for referring discrimination cases to the Department of Justice, and credit programs aimed at expanding access to housing. 

On April 11, it will be 58 years since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Fair Housing Act into law in an effort to combat housing discrimination and partner HUD with state and local agencies to enforce those laws. Through the Fair Housing Assistance Program, HUD refers complaints to state agencies, which use HUD funding to investigate cases, train staff and conduct outreach.

The September memos stipulated that state agencies receiving HUD dollars to enforce fair housing laws won’t be reimbursed for cases regarding discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, criminal record, source of income or English-language proficiency.

Attorneys general filing the lawsuit say HUD has significantly reduced staffing and the number of discrimination cases it pursues, while dismissing whistleblowers who raised concerns about the agency’s ability to enforce fair housing laws or look into acts of housing discrimination.

If the HUD changes go through, many state laws could be in conflict with this guidance. 

Several states, including some represented in the lawsuit, have fair housing laws that extend protections beyond those covered by federal law and could be impacted by HUD’s guidance.

Included in the lawsuit alongside are attorneys general from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia. It was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

Among state laws that offer protections cited in the HUD memos, California state law protects tenants based on sexual orientation, gender identity and lawful source of income, including housing vouchers. 

Other states such as Illinois and Washington extend protections based on immigration status. Colorado, Massachusetts and Rhode Island also provide protection against discrimination on the basis of identities such as gender identity, sexual orientation and source of income.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Monday said it will hear oral arguments in April in two cases brought by immigrants hailing from Syria and Haiti after the Trump administration tried to end their temporary protections, initially granted because their countries had been deemed too dangerous for return. 

Monday’s order consolidates two cases, one brought on behalf of 6,000 Syrians with Temporary Protected Status and another from 350,000 Haitians. 

The justices also declined to grant the Trump administration’s request to stay a lower court order that prevented the end of TPS for those two countries, meaning that protections from deportation will remain for now for those immigrants. 

The justices will hear arguments for the cases in the last week of April, with final briefs due by April 20. A specific date has not yet been set.

Congress created TPS to allow immigrants from countries dealing with war, natural disasters, political violence or other instabilities to remain and work in the United States on a temporary basis, ranging from six months to 18 months. 

The TPS holders who sued the Trump administration have argued that their countries’ conditions were not considered when the Department of Homeland Security determined their protections should end. 

The Trump administration has sought to cancel legal protections for immigrants, so far revoking TPS status for 13 of the 17 countries that were designated at the start of President Donald Trump’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.

Gov. Tony Evers has vetoed legislation that would have broadened a tax credit for businesses that invested in child care services.

A “catch-all” provision in the bill would have awarded the tax credit for “any other cost or expense incurred due to a benefit provided by an employer to facilitate the provision or utilization by employees of child care services.”

The provision “invites the possibility of a business claiming various expenses only tangentially related to child care services,” Evers wrote in his veto message, signed Friday. He added that it “significantly increases the risk of fraud” and didn’t including funding to cover the increased costs for the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to ensure against employers scamming the system.

Republican lawmakers introduced the legislation, SB 291 / AB 283, in 2025 as the Evers administration and child care advocates were seeking up to $480 million in the Wisconsin 2025-27 state budget to support child care workers’ wages and avert increased child care tuition for families. The final budget included about $110 million for direct payments that expire this summer. 

The GOP measure proposed expanding the state’s Business Development Tax Credit, which since 2023 has allowed employers to get a tax credit for 15% of the capital expenditures they make for child care facilities for their employees. The original tax credit had no takers.

Child care providers were critical of the expansion proposal and argued that that it wasn’t adequate to address increased costs and reduced capacity for child care in Wisconsin.

The measure passed the Senate in November 2025 on a 19-14 vote with all but one Democrat voting against it. The Assembly concurred with the Senate bill on a 63-31 vote in February, with nine Democrats joining the GOP in favor of the bill.

In his veto message, Evers noted that he signed a bill in December, permitting employers to take the tax credit if they invest in a third party that establishes a child care program or in a revolving loan fund for that purpose. That measure, 2025 Act 78, was an example of “making smart and strategic modifications” Evers wrote.

“Unfortunately , this bill fails to do the same,” he wrote. “I am vetoing this bill in its entirety because I object to the Legislature making drastic and vague expansions to tax incentive programs without providing the necessary funding for proper implementation and the clarity necessary to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.”

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Appeals Court Judge Maria Lazar, the conservative candidate in the race for an open seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, has built her campaign around the idea that she will be an independent justice while her opponent, Appeals Court Judge and former Democratic legislator Chris Taylor, will be a partisan actor on the bench. 

Lazar has frequently said on the campaign trail that she’s “never been a member of a political party” — a claim aided by the fact that Lazar has never served in partisan office and Wisconsin voters don’t register their party affiliation — while at a recent event Taylor, who served in the state Assembly for nine years, affirmed that she’s a Democrat. 

The argument of the Lazar campaign closely mirrors the arguments made by the last two conservative candidates for the Court. 

Last year, former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel frequently said that as a justice he’d be like a baseball umpire, simply calling balls and strikes about the law. During the 2023 race, former Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly said that if he was elected Wisconsin would have “the rule of law” while if his opponent Janet Protasiewicz were elected Wisconsin would have the “rule of Janet.” 

Schimel and Kelly both brought long histories of work on behalf of the Republican party, its allies and its causes to their races. Both rode the argument that they would be impartial arbiters of the law to double digit losses. 

But in both of the last two Wisconsin Supreme Court campaigns, the ideological balance of the Court was at stake after years in which Republicans had held control of most of the state’s political levers. Those races broke fundraising records and drew national attention.

Lazar is making her argument this year in a much sleepier race as part of an effort to prevent the Court’s liberals from securing a 5-2 majority. Lazar says it’s important to protect ideological diversity on the Court. 

“You don’t want a court that has a point of view, one point of view,” Lazar said at an event in Brown County earlier this month. “You might as well have one judge, one justice. You need people there to be that diversity of thought.”

But like Kelly and Schimel, Lazar’s opponents have argued she’s not as non-partisan as she claims. 

Lazar has been endorsed by some of the state’s leading anti-abortion groups, prominent 2020 election deniers and all six of Wisconsin’s Republican members of the House of Representatives. She’s received financial support from major GOP donors including Richard and Liz Uihlein. She has also regularly appeared with far right national political figures and has spoken to right-wing groups across the state. 

Her campaign staff includes consultants with deep ties to Wisconsin Republican politics. 

“I don’t really care if you’re a member of the Green Party, the Constitution Party, or any party,” Lazar told the Wisconsin Examiner. “You cannot be a member of a party at any point in time and be a judge, because everyone will rightly say, ‘Where are your interests? Are you ruling for the law, or are you ruling for your party?’”

As an attorney for the state Department of Justice, she defended Republican lawmakers in a lawsuit alleging they violated the state’s open meetings laws while passing the controversial anti-union measure that became Act 10. She also defended the gerrymandered 2011 electoral maps that locked in Republican control of the Legislature for more than a decade. 

At an event earlier this month, Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said that as a Department of Justice attorney, Lazar carried “the flag of the right-wing interests.” 

Opponents have also pointed to appeals court decisions in which Lazar has sided with 2020 election conspiracy theorists trying to gain access to private voter information and with corporate interests trying to weaken the state’s toxic spills law. The District 2 Court of Appeals on which Lazar sits is considered the most reliably conservative appeals court in the state. 

After the 2020 presidential election, the state Supreme Court, then controlled by a conservative majority, ruled in a 4-3 decision not to hear a lawsuit from the campaign of President Donald Trump challenging Wisconsin’s election results. 

With the Trump White House signaling a willingness to interfere in the conduct of state election systems, Democrats and left-leaning organizations have argued the Supreme Court race this year will build an important barrier against Republicans copying the 2020 playbook in the 2028 presidential election. 

Earlier this month, Lazar told PBS Wisconsin she wouldn’t weigh in on the merits of that Trump 2020 case, but that she believes “every legal, valid vote should be counted.” 

But in the election disputes that have simmered in Wisconsin during the six years since Trump’s Stop the Steal effort culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the debate has often centered exactly on the question of what counts as a legal, valid vote — a question that the Supreme Court may be called on to answer. 

Lazar said it would be shortsighted for a judge or justice to decide an election case “because it helps the side that you most personally align with.”

“A vote is a vote, and I’m not going to get into all the ins and outs of what judges have to look at when they’re determining what’s a legal, valid vote,” she told the Examiner. “But my concern is — and I’m seeing it not just in Wisconsin, I’m seeing it nationally — I’m seeing that this is being treated like a game. It’s a very serious right, and I think it’s an obligation that people vote, and I don’t like seeing anyone disenfranchised for any reason whatsoever.” 

The effort to cast doubt on election results was sparked by Trump and led in Wisconsin by Republicans and former conservative Supreme Court justices Currently, Republican members of Congress are debating a bill that could drastically restrict access to the ballot to people unable to produce a certified copy of a birth certificate or other documents proving U.S. citizenship. But Lazar said she sees judges on both sides trying to help their side win. 

“I don’t like the fact that courts and justices and judicial candidates are making these arguments and winking and nudging on both sides and saying, ‘Oh, if you elect me, I’m going to make sure that your party is going to win,’ or ‘if you elect me, I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen, or this does.’ That’s inappropriate,” she said.

Observers representing a range of political views have lamented the massive amount of money that has flowed into Wisconsin’s Supreme Court races, which has accelerated the perception that the body is more partisan than it used to be.                                                

Under Wisconsin’s divided government, the Supreme Court has been regularly tasked with deciding disputes over the separation of power between the governor and Legislature. With an open race for governor and competitive legislative races across the state, November’s elections could result in one party trifecta control of the lawmaking branches or give state government a big shakeup that results in a still-divided government under a different layout. 

Lazar said a justice deciding these separation of power cases shouldn’t try to game out which party will be helped because in Wisconsin’s swing state politics, the shoe could just as quickly be on the other foot. 

“Be careful what you wish for,” she said. “You have to have a long view, and the courts really have the longest view. And we should be looking not to what helps someone today, but we should be saying, ‘how do we affect the appropriate law for generations?’”

In recent years, and especially since the start of Trump’s second term, conservative leaning candidates have not fared well in non-major elections. Democrats and left-leaning judges have performed far better when turnout is lower through a combination of higher motivation against a liberal base eager to cast a protest vote against the unpopular president’s party and the lower engagement in state and local politics among a Republican base that only turns out en masse when Trump is on the ballot. 

Lazar said she understands that’s a barrier she has to overcome. 

“It does seem to be non-major election years that the April elections seem to be a little sleepier, or they possibly even trend a little bit away from the more conservative candidate, or the more independent, in this case, candidate, and we recognize that,” she said. “Everyone in this state should be looking at this race and looking at what rights they have, and to making sure that they take steps so that they have someone that they can have faith in.” 

A Marquette Law School poll released in February found that a large swathe of Wisconsin voters still had very little information about the Supreme Court race. With six weeks before Election Day, 66% of voters said they were still undecided. Among those polled who had decided, Taylor had a slight edge. 

But despite Taylor’s slight lead in the poll, Lazar said her takeaway was that the Taylor campaign’s TV ads in the state’s largest metro areas had done little to move the public.

“My opponent has spent a lot of money, run a lot of ads and not gaining any traction,” Lazar said. “And I think it shows that the state of Wisconsin is saying we want to take a step back, maybe a little bit of election fatigue from last year, and we want to take a step back to really make a good, wise decision on who we want to give a 10-year term on this Court.”

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Former Waupun Correctional Institution officer Jamall Russell pled no contest to misdemeanor charges on Wednesday in a Dodge County Circuit Court case. The criminal complaint in the case charged Russell and others in the death of Donald Maier, the Examiner reported in June 2024. 

Maier, 62, was incarcerated at the Waupun prison and was reportedly found dead in February 2024. Authorities said Maier’s death was due to dehydration and malnutrition.

Russell, 41, was originally charged with misconduct in public office and with neglecting a person confined in a correctional institution, which are both Class I felonies that carry a penalty of imprisonment of up to three and a half years, a fine of up to $10,000 or both.

The criminal complaint charged Russell with neglect through a failure to act that caused unreasonable suffering, misery or physical harm. It also accused him of misconduct by reporting false information. 

The complaint stated that Maier had severe mental health issues and medical problems, and that multiple staff had noted he could not effectively communicate his needs. Maier’s inability to speak coherently to communicate his medical needs was likely a factor in why he didn’t receive needed medical and psychological intervention, the complaint said. 

According to camera footage, on four consecutive days, Russell “does not feed a meal (breakfast or lunch)” to Maier, according to the complaint, causing eight out of 12 meals to not be fed to Maier. During six of eight deliveries, he didn’t ask Maier if he would like to eat. 

Maier refused or wasn’t provided medication for his known medical and psychological conditions during his approximately nine days in the restricted housing unit, with the exception of one possible distribution where it’s unclear if he ingested the medication given to him, the complaint said. 

Russell said that an incarcerated person’s refusal of medication is when they don’t respond or say no when a medication pass is conducted, the complaint stated. In the case of Maier, Russell said that “he would either yell obscenities or ignore him completely, so he did not distribute medications to him.” 

Russell also said he wouldn’t give medications to an incarcerated person if  he couldn’t verify the person was taking them, because of the possibility that the person would hoard the medications and abuse them later. 

Russell said he had written incident reports involving self-harm or suicidal actions. He said that writing an incident report about an inmate losing weight and getting thinner or flooding his cell, which Maier reportedly did, was not in line with his training. Russell claimed that he told a nurse he was worried about Maier because he was not eating, not responding, his movements were getting slower and his skin appeared to be paler, the complaint stated. Dodge County Sheriff Dale Schmidt said the water in Maier’s cell  “appears to have been shut off for a significant amount of time”; based on the criminal complaint, this appeared to be in response to Maier flooding his cell. 

Russell said he told a sergeant about unusual observations of Maier’s activities and reported his meal refusal to a sergeant and hospital unit staff. 

Schmidt said that the required number of cell checks was not conducted and supervisors knew cell checks were commonly skipped.   

Camera footage showed that 14 times over two days, Russell did not complete  rounds in the restrictive housing unit  that he reported he had completed, the complaint stated. 

A nurse was present during Maier’s intake into restricted housing and didn’t proceed with an evaluation because he was verbally abusive, according to the criminal complaint. Maier was placed in a cell and never again removed or seen in person, other than through a window, to determine if he needed medical attention.  

Correctional officer and sergeant vacancies at the Waupun prison have decreased after a peak of about 56% in February 2024, around the time of Donald Maier’s death. The latest rate reported online by the DOC is about 25%.

The Examiner reported in June 2024 on criminal charges against nine Waupun staff members, including Russell, with abuse of prisoners and misconduct, after the deaths of Maier and Cameron Williams, 24, who were both incarcerated at the prison. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Russell is no longer a correctional officer. 

Russell pleaded no contest to three counts of violating the law governing a state or county institution. This misdemeanor carries up to a $500 fine, up to 30 days of imprisonment or both. 

However, the plea agreement, signed by Russell and Dodge County District Attorney Andrea Will on Wednesday, would impose different requirements: probation, community service hours, honest testimony and the inability to work as a correctional officer.

Former Waupun warden Randall Hepp was convicted last year and fined $500 and court costs, the Examiner reported. He also pleaded no contest. Maier’s mother filed a lawsuit against Hepp, Wisconsin Department of Corrections Secretary Jared Hoy and others, seeking compensatory and punitive damages. 

According to an article in the Appleton Post-Crescent last year on the conviction of a different Waupun staff member, Dodge County Assistant District Attorney Shawn Woller read a letter from Maier’s mother during the prosecution’s sentencing argument. He said she requested for the letter to be read at each of the sentencings for those convicted of crimes relating to her son’s death. 

“I feel that each and every person who ignored my son and therefore had a hand in his death should spend some time in jail so that they learn firsthand what it is like to be dependent on other guards for food and water and medical care and protection,” her letter states, according to the Post-Crescent. “Nothing can bring my son back, but I’d like to think that we as a society would at least learn something from this tragedy, so this never happens to anyone else’s son.”

Plea agreement does not include jail time

The plea agreement states that in exchange for truthful testimony in any trial surrounding the death of Donald Maier, the state will recommend a withheld sentence on each count for two years of probation.

This comes with the condition that Russell can’t be employed as a correctional officer, as well as 100 hours of community service and following “all other conditions deemed appropriate by the agent.” Russell would also be responsible for all applicable court costs and fees. 

If the state believes that Russell does not provide truthful testimony or refuses to testify, the state will be free to argue at sentencing for whatever sentence it prefers, the agreement states. 

The plea offer depends upon truthful testimony against any co-actors who go to trial. 

Next in Russell’s case is a May 11 scheduling conference, to pick a date for his sentencing. 

Where do the other prosecutions stand?

In June 2024, charges were brought against Hepp and eight members of his staff: Russell, Lt. Brandon Fisher, Sgt. Alexander Hollfelder, nurse Jessica Hosfelt, correctional officer Sarah Ransbottom, Sgt. Jeramie Chalker, nurse Gwendolyn Vick and Sgt. Tanner Leopold. 

Ransbotton, Hepp, Fisher and Russell each pleaded no contest to one or more charges of violating the law governing a state or county institution after each originally was charged with one or more felonies. 

In the time leading up to Maier’s death, Ransbottom reported in the log that she completed rounds that surveillance footage showed she did not complete, according to a criminal complaint. 

Fisher pled no contest to two counts of violating the law governing a state or county institution, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. He has a sentencing hearing scheduled for May 29. The complaint said Fisher did not act on information he received to further investigate Maier’s condition or well-being.

In an incident report, Fisher wrote that the night before Williams’ death was reported, Leopold said he could see Williams breathing and slight movement of his head, but could not get a verbal response from him, the complaint said. 

Leopold reported that he told Fisher about the situation and was told that he had to contact the health services unit, so that they could determine whether it was necessary to assemble a team to remove Williams from his cell. 

According to the complaint, Fisher told detectives that “because (Williams) had a history of faking things, (Fisher) advised that a nurse should be contacted to visually look at him and see if there was a medical reason to pull him out of the cell, but if they don’t have a reason, he didn’t want to play games with (Williams) because he was attention seeking.”

Nurse Megan Leberak came to Williams’ cell front and noted that he was breathing but would not respond. Leberak indicated that usually, when a cell entry is done, she would be called to come over after staff entered the cell, if there was a medical issue, the complaint said. 

Leberak said she gave the go ahead for a cell entry to be conducted, but video footage showed Leopold, Fisher and nurse Gwendolyn Vick didn’t check on Williams, the complaint said. Leberak was at the end of her shift, and reportedly gave an update to Vick, who was later criminally charged.

Leopold said he received a call from Vick, telling him that entry wasn’t necessary at that time and that they would wait, according to the complaint. 

The case against Chalker was dismissed on a motion from the prosecution. Camera footage did not show Chalker completing 2:30 p.m. and 3 p.m. rounds on one day, contrary to what Chalker had logged, according to the criminal complaint. The Journal Sentinel reported that prosecutors said the investigation determined Chalker’s superior officer had instructed Chalker to fill out the rounds sheets.

The case against Hollfelder was also dismissed on a motion from the prosecution. The Journal Sentinel reported that they determined Hollfelder properly communicated concerns to his supervisor and a member of the health services unit, and had limited contact with Maier because of time he spent off work on family and medical leave. 

Cases against Leopold, Vick and Hosfelt are still active. Each is charged with neglecting someone confined in a correctional institution, which is a felony. Vick has a trial scheduled for May, while Hosfelt has a scheduling conference on March 27 and Leopold has a scheduling conference on March 23.

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As telehealth access to abortion medication has grown in the years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, anti-abortion groups and attorneys general from states with abortion bans are accelerating efforts to ban access to the medication, including by attempting to revoke the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sued the FDA in October and asked the district court to strike down a 2023 provision allowing telehealth prescriptions for mifepristone, one part of a two-drug regimen commonly used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks. Included in the lawsuit is Louisiana resident Rosalie Markezich, who said her boyfriend pressured her into taking the pills. 

Louisiana officials argue doctors in states without abortion bans should not be allowed to prescribe and mail the medication into a state where it is illegal, and say Markezich would not have been harmed if the 2023 provision hadn’t made it possible for the medication to be mailed to her boyfriend. Murrill asked the court to block the 2023 rule with a preliminary injunction, and if granted, it could limit access for people nationwide.

A ruling in that case is pending, along with another abortion pill lawsuit in Missouri about the FDA’s approval of a generic brand of mifepristone last year.

Aside from court cases, legislatures around the country are also considering legislation restricting or banning mifepristone, which is also used to treat miscarriage and high blood sugar for some patients. Louisiana designated the drug a controlled substance in the same category as Xanax and Valium, and South Carolina’s House of Representatives passed a similar bill in February.

Whether in court briefings or before state policymakers, plenty of talking points about abortion medication are repeated that are not based on scientific fact or evidence, according to experts. Here are some of the most common:

1. The rate of serious adverse events associated with mifepristone is less than 0.5%, according to extensive scientific study.

Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion interest groups have cited an April 2025 paper to argue that mifepristone is dangerous and results in a much higher rate of serious adverse events than the FDA reported. That paper, which was not peer reviewed, was published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative advocacy group that partners with groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal firm that has led many anti-abortion lawsuits, including the Dobbs case.

The policy center’s report finds a nearly 11% rate of “serious adverse events” based on commercially available health claims data. Experts dispute that the center defined a serious adverse event the same way the FDA does, as a condition that requires hospitalization, is life-threatening, or causes disability and permanent damage or death.

Dr. Mitchell Creinin, an OB-GYN at the University of California Davis Health who has researched the safety of mifepristone since studies first began in 1992, said there is overwhelming evidence that the medication is safe and the rate of serious adverse events is extremely low. In a report published by the Society of Family Planning, Creinin identified errors in the way the policy center’s analysis calculated events, saying there was double counting of issues associated with the same patient, and found that the report was counting serious adverse events that don’t meet the FDA’s criteria, including going to the emergency room.  

“It’s all about playing with science to make it say what you want it to say,” Creinin said.

One of Creinin’s studies from 2015 combined all relevant published studies on mifepristone and misoprostol between 2005 and 2015, a total of 20 studies with 33,846 women through 70 days of gestation, and found severe outcomes requiring blood transfusion and hospitalization occurred in less than 1% of cases.

2. Testing for Rh blood status is unnecessary in early pregnancy.

A common argument from anti-abortion groups like Students for Life of America, including in its amicus brief to the Louisiana court, is that telehealth abortion care cuts off the opportunity for doctors to test a pregnant patient’s Rh status before an abortion, which they argue can threaten the health of future pregnancies. 

A doctor will test a pregnant patient’s blood at some point during pregnancy to determine if they are Rh-positive or negative. If a patient knows their blood type, such as A or O, the positive or negative sign associated with the type is the Rh factor. Sometimes the pregnant patient’s marker is positive and the fetus is negative, which can result in the patient’s body identifying the blood cells of the pregnancy as foreign. That can cause the pregnant patient to develop antibodies against the blood cells. There needs to be enough of these cells to create a reaction, which doesn’t occur until after the first trimester, around 12 weeks. A treatment can be given in those cases to prevent antibodies from forming. 

Those antibodies can also form after miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy and abortion, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and it could affect future pregnancies.

But the organization said in its amicus brief to the court in Louisiana that the risk of serious outcomes related to Rh issues before 12 weeks’ gestation is low, and it affects a small minority of the population, so limiting access based on that rare outcome would be a “disproportionate response.”

Creinin said research shows there aren’t enough fetal cells in early pregnancy to mount an immune response, such as a 2023 study of 506 first-trimester abortion patients in which all but one of them were below the threshold for an immune response. Most countries worldwide do not recommend treatment in a patient with the condition in early pregnancy, and that is the recommendation in the U.S. as well.

“There’s all this really good evidence that says you don’t need to do it,” Creinin said.

3. A patient doesn’t need an ultrasound before taking mifepristone.

A pregnant person is not required to have an ultrasound or be seen by a provider in person in order to obtain mifepristone, according to the FDA. Ultrasounds weren’t required even before the FDA stopped requiring in-person visits, and most pregnant patients aren’t given an ultrasound for an early pregnancy until at least eight weeks’ gestation, even if they intend to keep it. Symptoms of ectopic pregnancy, when an embryo implants in a fallopian tube instead of the uterus, usually begin by seven to eight weeks of pregnancy, and mifepristone is only approved for use up to 10 weeks.

The mortality rate of ectopic pregnancy is extremely low, at less than 50 deaths per year, and if someone has significant risk factors for ectopic pregnancy, Creinin said, they should be evaluated earlier. That’s part of the counseling involved in a telehealth appointment.

4. Taking mifepristone at home does not disproportionately result in traumatic experiences.

Anti-abortion groups such as the Justice Foundation have submitted amicus briefs to the Louisiana court about people who said taking abortion medication and managing the treatment at home led to traumatic outcomes because they weren’t prepared for what they would see.

That can happen, said Jessie Losch, director of government affairs for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, but most doctors will counsel a patient first on what to expect and what they might see after the pills are taken, including passing fetal tissue.

Losch acknowledged that there can be a gap between hearing about what to expect and seeing it in person, but that isn’t a reason to take the option away from those who benefit from being able to choose when and where the treatment occurs. That can be especially important for victims of abuse, Losch said.

“I understand why somebody might be taken by surprise at the reality of it, but we can’t control for that with legislation,” she said.

Although there are few recent scientific studies that specifically examine at-home abortion management, one Society of Family Planning study from 2022 with more than 3,100 participants found 98.4% were satisfied with the experience and about 95% thought self-managing was the right choice for them.

5. There is no evidence to support the idea that taking mifepristone is harmful for the environment.

This argument has largely come from the anti-abortion group Students for Life of America, which says mifepristone pollutes the water supply and contends the FDA should have done an environmental review including effects on endangered species before easing restrictions on the drug. Multiple states have considered legislation to create environmental restrictions around the drug or bills requiring providers to instruct patients to collect fetal tissue in medical waste kits and return it to the provider rather than flush it.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency may also conduct a review that could be used to restrict access in the future, States Newsroom reported.

Losch said she hasn’t found any evidence that mifepristone is either detectable in the water supply or that it has a detrimental effect on wildlife, including the hormonal structure of fish or other aquatic animals.

In 1996, the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research issued a finding of no significant impact on the water supply from mifepristone.

“The Center … has concluded that the product can be manufactured, used and disposed of without expected adverse environmental effects,” the finding stated. That included endangered or threatened species.

In an extraordinary break from the federal government, the public health departments of at least three states and New York City are joining the global alert network of the World Health Organization, spurred by President Donald Trump’s decision to remove the United States from the United Nations agency responsible for coordinating international public health.

So far, the state public health departments in California, Illinois, New York, as well as the public health agency in New York City, have joined the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN), which is part of the World Health Organization (WHO). The U.S. officially left the WHO this past January.

California joined GOARN in January, while Illinois, New York state and New York City joined last month.

GOARN, which includes more than 310 national public health agencies, United Nations agencies, academic institutions, and nongovernmental groups, helps identify and manage infectious disease outbreaks worldwide. Since it was established in 2000, GOARN says it has helped manage more than 175 global health emergencies across 114 countries.

GOARN maintains relationships with some medical and research institutions in the U.S., including the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans and university medical centers in Nebraska and Texas. Until now, however, state public health agencies have not been members, because they relied on the U.S. government’s participation in GOARN for information on global outbreaks.

Dr. Ali Khan, a medical epidemiologist who is the dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a former member of the GOARN steering committee, said the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted how “disease has no borders” and the importance of sharing information globally to quash the spread of contagious diseases.

Khan said the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the WHO “throttles the information from WHO to the U.S. government, specifically the [federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], and which then flows to states. Those states are now left in a position where they’re joining the GOARN.”

“Let’s be clear, it doesn’t substitute for the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO, but it does allow states to directly get information about what’s going on globally that may impact their own citizens. So it allows them to sort of keep their own radar on when the U.S. has decided to no longer participate in this global information sharing.”

In explaining its decision to withdraw from WHO, the Trump administration said the U.S. had “for decades carried a disproportionate share of the organization’s financial burden.” It insisted the country would “continue to ensure detection and response to infectious disease outbreaks” without being a member of the organization.

“These are the same democrat-led states and cities that imposed unscientific school closures, toddler mask mandates, and vaccine passports during the COVID era,” Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an email.

“They are the ones who destroyed public trust in public health that we are now restoring. We are working with the White House in a deliberative, interagency process on the path forward for global health and foreign assistance that first and foremost protects Americans.”

Dr. James McDonald, commissioner of the New York State Department of Health, told Stateline that the department’s decision to partner with GOARN was apolitical, and that it makes sense for New York because the state is “the world’s gateway to the country.”

“Everybody comes to the United States. Many come through JFK [John F. Kennedy International Airport], but an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo does matter to me, so learning about it sooner helps protect New Yorkers and also helps protect the United States,” McDonald said.

McDonald added that New York is a part of a new public health consortium of Northeast states — the Northeast Public Health Collaborative — and plans to share any information it gathers from GOARN with fellow members Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. New York City also is a member of the consortium.

“One of the things about scientists and health care providers is we’re used to just sharing information with each other, sharing knowledge. It’s not political,” McDonald said.

Doua Yang, a spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health, said that even before officially joining GOARN in January, the agency had been attending weekly operational calls for several months, and even made a presentation on how it has handled bird flu outbreaks.

“As the fourth-largest economy in the world, California cannot afford to let down its guard, or its people,” Yang wrote in an email. “Participating with GOARN is one step California is taking to maintain uninterrupted communication with WHO and protect the state from potential health threats.”

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

The U.S. Department of Justice has begun connecting its push to obtain sensitive personal data on millions of voters to whether the upcoming midterm elections will be fair and secure, laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to potentially cast doubt on the results.

The Justice Department has sued 29 states and the District of Columbia over their refusal to provide unredacted voter rolls that include the driver’s license and partial Social Security numbers of voters. The department has lost three of those lawsuits so far this year.

But as the Justice Department begins appealing the losses, it has filed emergency motions warning the “security and sanctity of elections” would be questioned in those states — California, Michigan and Oregon — without immediate rulings.

Election experts told Stateline that federal appellate courts are unlikely to move quickly for the Justice Department. Instead, the department’s court filings suggest that without the data, the Trump administration may question the validity of the midterm elections in November.

“Absent a final Court determination on this matter there is no other process to ensure a fair election in 2026,” the Trump administration’s motions say.

President Donald Trump has made identifying noncitizen voting, an extremely rare occurrence, a priority of his administration, and the Justice Department has said the detailed personal data is necessary to ensure states are properly maintaining their voter rolls. At least a dozen Republican-led states have provided the information.

Democratic election officials, and some Republicans, have condemned the demands as an invasion of voters’ privacy and have voiced concerns the Trump administration plans to use the information to target political opponents or create a national voter list. Other Republican election officials and the Trump administration and have downplayed privacy concerns and said the data will help ensure only eligible voters cast ballots.

The DOJ’s sense of urgency comes after the department spent months sending letters to state officials demanding voter data, followed by successive rounds of lawsuits against states that refused to comply — all in what department officials said was the pursuit of noncitizen voters.

“We know this isn’t a big problem nationwide,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research and a former senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

“We know the states have adequate safeguards,” Becker said. “We see Republicans — Republicans — coming out and saying this repeatedly. So there is no problem that urgently needs to be solved in advance of the election.”

But the Trump administration has increased its attention on elections in recent weeks. In early February, Trump voiced a desire to “nationalize” elections. He demanded Congress pass a proof of citizenship voter registration requirement and strict voter ID rules. The U.S. Senate is expected to debate the bill next week, but it is unlikely to have enough votes to advance.

The FBI has also seized ballots from the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, and the Arizona Senate complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to its 2020 audit of that year’s election results in Maricopa County, Arizona.

Michigan responded to the Justice Department in a March 6 court filing by asserting that its case involves no emergency. Lawyers representing Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, wrote that the appeal doesn’t challenge any state election law or rule and that the outcome of the case would have little to no effect on the 2026 election.

In response to an interview request, Benson’s office referred Stateline to a news release that quoted the secretary as urging election officials across the country “to stand up to the federal government’s overreach and to safeguard citizens’ private voting information we’ve been entrusted to protect.”

Oregon Democratic Secretary of State Tobias Read said in an emailed statement to Stateline that he’s “confident in our case, and trust the courts will continue to uphold the Constitution and the privacy rights of all Oregonians.”

California Democratic Secretary of State Shirley Weber didn’t respond to an interview request.

Race against time

Federal judges have so far ruled that even though states must perform maintenance on their voter rolls, federal law doesn’t give the Justice Department authority to obtain full voter lists.

While the Justice Department now claims the security and sanctity of upcoming elections necessitates the need for speed, the department hasn’t alleged any states are violating federal voter list maintenance requirements, said Derek Clinger, senior counsel and director of partnerships at the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.

“This is the first time in all the litigation that DOJ has claimed that there’s an urgent need to resolve the cases,” said Clinger, who is tracking the voter data lawsuits.

Even if courts ultimately determine that states must provide the voter data, it’s not clear that the Justice Department could make effective use of it before the midterms.

Federal law generally prohibits states from conducting significant purges of registered voters less than 90 days before primary and general elections. For example, that period will begin in Michigan on May 6 ahead of the state’s Aug. 4 primary election.

The Justice Department has asked for all court documents in its Michigan appeal to be filed by April 1. Even if the appellate court immediately ruled in the department’s favor, only 35 days would be left until the pre-primary blackout period.

Lawyers for Michigan wrote in its court filing that it is “dubious” that any serious assessment of the state’s 7.3 million voters could occur in that time frame.

Still, Rosario Palacios, a naturalized U.S. citizen who leads the good-government group Common Cause Georgia, said she’s worried the federal government could wrongly flag her or others like her as noncitizens if the Justice Department eventually obtains her state’s unredacted voter roll.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security operates a powerful online program called SAVE (Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements) that it uses to verify citizenship. It has previously invited states to run their voter rolls through the program, and the Trump administration in September confirmed the Justice Department is sharing state voter roll data with Homeland Security. But SAVE has faced criticism from some election officials for mistakenly flagging U.S. citizens for review.

After the department sued Georgia for refusing to turn over its data, Palacios and Common Cause intervened in the lawsuit to oppose the demand.

Palacios said in an interview she’s worried some may choose not to participate in the election. “The fear alone of this is going to make people withdraw.”

Some GOP states share voter data

The Justice Department has offered few details about how it intends to analyze the voter data it obtains. The agency didn’t answer questions from Stateline and declined to comment.

Idaho Republican Secretary of State Phil McGrane last month said he wouldn’t turn over voter data. McGrane declined an interview request, but in a Feb. 26 letter to the Justice Department he raised concerns about data security.

“While I appreciate the Department’s representations that Idaho’s data will be safeguarded, I cannot take that now-apparent risk in the absence of clear legal duty to do so,” McGrane wrote.

Some Republican election officials have decided to share their state’s data, however.

Eric Neff, the acting chief of the Justice Department’s Voting Section, wrote in a March 2 court filing that 18 states had either shared voter data or planned to do so soon. He didn’t name those states.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, which tracks the voter data requests, has identified at least a dozen states that have provided the data: Alaska, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming.

Two of those states — Alaska and Texas — provided their voter rolls after signing a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, with the Justice Department.

The document, marked confidential, says that after the state provides its voter roll, the department agrees to test, analyze and assess the information. Each state agrees to “clean” its voter roll within 45 days by removing any ineligible voters. States would then resubmit their list.

Tennessee Elections Coordinator Mark Goins, who works under Tennessee Republican Secretary of State Tre Hargett, said in an interview that the state had shared its voter data after concluding that DOJ was entitled to it as part of its authority to enforce federal voting law. But Goins said Tennessee had decided against signing the memorandum of understanding because of concerns that the agreement conflicted with the National Voter Registration Act, which sets rules on when election officials can remove voters from their lists.

“When you’re dealing with this much data, and we have 4 million registered voters here, there could be a false flag and you certainly don’t remove anyone improperly,” Goins said.

In Texas, it’s unclear when the Justice Department will provide feedback on the state’s voter list. The state is currently in the preelection blackout period on sweeping changes to its voter registration list ahead of a May 26 primary runoff election, a spokesperson for Texas Republican Secretary of State Jane Nelson told Stateline.

Texas already ran its voter roll of more than 18 million voters through Homeland Security’s SAVE program last year, identifying 2,724 potential noncitizens registered to vote. County election officials were then left to investigate the flagged voters.

Christopher McGinn, executive director of the Texas Association of County Election Officials, said he’s unsure what would happen now, given that the state’s voter roll was recently examined by SAVE.

“Especially since those noncitizens were, in theory, cleaned up,” McGinn said.

In Alaska, the decision to share voter data has produced blowback from some state lawmakers. The state constitution guarantees a right to privacy that “shall not be infringed.”

Alaska Director of Elections Carol Beecher faced skeptical lawmakers during hearings last week that probed her refusal to waive attorney-client privilege to divulge the legal advice she received before providing the voter roll. In response to questions from Stateline, Beecher’s office referred back to her remarks to lawmakers.

“At this point, I am not willing to waive that privilege,” Beecher said at an Alaska Senate hearing.

Alaska state Sen. Bill Wielechowski, a Democrat who was among those who questioned Beecher, in an interview predicted the state will soon face lawsuits challenging the data sharing. He also said lawmakers are looking into pursuing legislation that would direct state officials to seek the return of the information from the Justice Department.

“I just think there’s a total lack of trust in what the federal government will do with this information,” Wielechowski said.

Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.