Abortion-rights advocate Kristin Hady helps a car navigate past protesters toward  A Preferred Women’s Health Center of Atlanta in Forest Park, Georgia, in August 2023. Independent clinics are facing fresh challenges, and at least 23 more closed this year, bringing the total to 100 since the Dobbs decision. (Photo by Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder) 

When Wisconsin Planned Parenthood clinics temporarily paused abortion services in October because of a new law halting federal Medicaid reimbursements, patients turned to the state’s two independent clinics for care. 

Demand at Affiliated Medical Services in Milwaukee quadrupled, according to clinic director Dabbie Phonekeo. 

“It happened all of a sudden. We were all scrambling to figure out what we needed to do and how we were going to accept all patients,” Phonekeo said. 

The staff secured additional funding to meet need before Wisconsin’s Planned Parenthood clinics resumed abortions, adapting under a law that bans certain reproductive health care providers from receiving federal funding until July 2026. 

“This was a reminder of why it’s so important to have independent clinics and abortion access overall,” Phonekeo said. 

At least 23 independent clinics have closed this year, according to a report released Tuesday by Abortion Care Network, compared with 12 last year.

Most were in states with abortion-rights protections, the report found. 

Independent providers face less recognition than Planned Parenthood and ongoing barriers to funding. Donations to abortion clinics and funds have waned, leading to more out-of-pocket costs for patients, States Newsroom reported last year.  

Independent clinics provide 58% of all abortions nationwide, while Planned Parenthood provides 38%, hospitals 3%, and 1% occur at physicians’ offices, according to the latest Abortion Care Network findings. 

Medication abortion, allowed during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, has been a focus of abortion-rights advocates and opponents this year. But independent clinics are more likely to offer legal procedural abortions after that. 

More than 60% of all U.S. clinics that offer abortion care after the first trimester are independent, 85% that provide abortion at 22 weeks or later are independent, and all clinics that perform the procedure after 26 weeks are independent, according to the report. 

“While both medication and in-clinic abortion are safe and effective, people may need or prefer one method over another,” the report states. “This is especially true for patients for whom it’s not safe or feasible to terminate outside the clinic — including those experiencing intimate partner violence, minors without support at home, people experiencing homelessness, and patients who cannot take time off from work or caretaking.” 

The latest clinic closures come more than three years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision forced many to cease operations: 100 independent clinics closed between 2022 and 2025. 

Affiliated Medical Services in Wisconsin is one of the few independent abortion providers that was able to reopen after closing the day the nation’s highest court overturned federal abortion rights on June 24, 2022. 

The clinic reopened in March 2024 a few months after a Wisconsin judge ruled that a 19th century abortion ban was invalid, Wisconsin Examiner reported. 

Phonekeo said people were initially hesitant to book appointments at the clinic. 

“Most of our patients that we saw had asked, ‘Is this legal? Am I going to go to jail if I have an abortion today? Can we do this in Wisconsin?’ So I think a lot of patients were still afraid to be seen,” she said. 

Independent clinics could become even more significant to reproductive health care access if lawmakers permanently bar Planned Parenthood from receiving federal resources.  

Some anti-abortion groups have urged the Trump administration to disqualify Planned Parenthood as a federal vendor, States Newsroom reported in November. 

Nearly 50 Planned Parenthood clinics closed this year due to federal health officials’ cuts to Title X and Medicaid. At least 20 closed since a federal “defunding” provision that halts Medicaid funds for reproductive health care providers that offer abortion and received more than $800,000 in fiscal year 2023 took effect, according to a tally released on Nov. 12 by the national organization. 

Some of the clinics that closed did not offer abortion. And under the law, federal funding only covers abortions in extreme circumstances, so the Medicaid reimbursement ban primarily affects patients who go to Planned Parenthood for other services, like birth control, cervical cancer screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. 

Some independent clinics offer non-abortion care, too, but many don’t accept Medicaid, clinic directors said at a Wednesday news briefing. 

Amber Gavin is the vice president of advocacy of operations at A Woman’s Choice, an organization that has three clinics in North Carolina and one each in Florida and Virginia. She said staff members at the Charlotte location have seen an uptick in patients seeking STI testing and related services. 

Karishma Oza, chief of staff at DuPont Clinic in Washington, D.C., also said providers there have seen an increase in patients who are uninsured or underinsured since the Medicaid ban, which mostly affects Planned Parenthood, took effect. 

Phonekeo said the Wisconsin clinic hasn’t dealt with more demand for reproductive health care services beyond abortion. Still, Affiliated Medical Services offers birth control pills, IUDs, STI testing and treatment, miscarriage care and even follow-up care for medication abortion provided through online-only clinics such as Hey Jane. 

While all three clinic leaders said they don’t accept Medicaid, they offer sliding-scale payments for people who cannot afford the full cost of care. 

“We’re more than just abortion providers,” Phonekeo said. 

Lucid Motors has plenty on its plate already. Cash burn, slow production ramps, a delayed Gravity SUV launch, and media stories about drivers being shafted with huge repair costs. Now it can add one more thing to the list: a high-profile lawsuit from its former chief engineer that claims a serious lack of harmony at the Newark, CA, HQ.

Eric Bach, who spent a decade at Lucid and rose to become Senior Vice President of Product and Chief Engineer, has filed a federal lawsuit alleging wrongful termination, discrimination, and retaliation.

What Sparked the Fallout?

At the center of the complaint is a claim that a senior HR executive referred to him as a “German Nazi” during an internal investigation into workplace culture. Bach was born and raised in Germany and says the remark was deeply offensive and discriminatory.

Also: Spilled Water Bricks Lucid, Repair Costs As Much As A Used Corolla

According to the lawsuit, Bach learned about the comment in mid-2025, months after the start of an HR-led culture probe Bach claims was already “tainted by racist beliefs.”

During that investigation, he says he was stripped of key responsibilities, including oversight of Lucid’s electric powertrain division, and excluded from board meetings.

After encouraging a colleague to report the remark through internal channels, Bach claims Lucid confirmed the comment was made, yet failed to act meaningfully.

Pushed Out

Things escalated from there. Bach says the company began pressuring him to resign in October 2025 before firing him outright on November 5. Lucid’s public statement at the time merely said he had “departed,” offering no hint of the brewing conflict behind the scenes.

Lucid, for its part, is having none of it. The automaker issued a blunt response calling Bach’s legal claims “absurd” and says it is confident the facts will show legitimate reasons for his termination.

Company sources have pointed to long-running product delays, quality issues, and execution problems, arguing that leadership restructuring was overdue.

Bach’s responsibilities were partially handed to Emad Dlala, who was promoted to Senior Vice President of Engineering and Digital after Bach’s exit.

Tricky Timing

The lawsuit lands at an awkward moment for Lucid. The company is still trying to ramp production of the Gravity SUV while developing a more affordable midsize EV due in late 2026.

Executive turnover has been relentless, with former CEO Peter Rawlinson resigning earlier this year and multiple vice presidents exiting across different strands of the business.

Also: Lucid Teases $50K Mid-Size SUV As It Readies L4 Autonomous Driving

Bach’s complaint paints a very different picture of his standing, citing praise from board members and repeated salary increases, and even suggestions that he was being groomed for a future CTO role.

He’s now requesting damages and a very public jury trial. For a company built on calm luxury, Lucid’s latest saga is anything but serene.

Sources: Wigdor, Tech Crunch

A homeless man sits in his tent in Washington, D.C., this summer. New rules from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will sharply restrict how $3 billion in homelessness aid will be spent, allowing no more than 30% of federal grants to be used for permanent housing. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

As the housing shortage pushes more Americans into homelessness for the first time, the Trump administration wants to focus federal housing aid on mental health treatment and enforcement against street homelessness, rather than on finding people permanent homes as quickly as possible.

The administration’s new plan to tie federal housing aid to work requirements and drug treatment could be a boon to states such as Alabama, Florida and Wyoming that already are pursuing that strategy. But for many other states — and nonprofit providers across the country — the rules represent a sudden pivot from past expectations. In California, the new federal funding priorities face a direct conflict with state law.

Under new rules announced last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will place new restrictions on $3 billion in homelessness aid, allowing no more than 30% of federal grants to be used for permanent housing. That approach, known as Housing First, prioritizes getting people into safe, stable housing ahead of other treatment and enforcement, and had been a key focus for the federal government’s Continuum of Care Program for homelessness.

Now, HUD’s new rules — a shift to Treatment First policies — could result in a major reprioritization of who gets funding and for what purpose. Backlash from many nonprofits and homelessness service providers across the country has been swift, and 20 states and Washington, D.C., have filed suit to stop the rules, arguing they violate federal law. Several cities and counties across the country also have joined a lawsuit against the department.

While service providers point to success stories from permanent supportive housing, the Trump administration points to rising homelessness — and a perception of violent crime — as a reason to shift funding away from the long-standing approach.

But Martha Are, CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, said the Trump administration is putting the onus on  nonprofits and service providers to fix a homelessness crisis that is propelled by a lack of housing that people can afford.

“If homelessness numbers go up, some assume the homeless-response system doesn’t work. But the real driver is the housing market, not the interventions,” Are said. “HUD is penalizing communities for following the rules they set in previous years. I’ve never seen them say, ‘You complied with our guidance, and now you lose points for it.’”

Easy transition for some states

An analysis of publicly available federal data by the National Alliance to End Homelessness found that 88% of federal Continuum of Care dollars flow to permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing, the models with the strongest evidence of reducing chronic homelessness. The new HUD rules would force cuts large enough to cause roughly 170,000 people to lose that housing, according to the advocacy group’s projections.

But a handful of Continuum of Care programs already devote far less to permanent housing. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, that includes that includes certain county or state programs in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming.

These programs operate closer to HUD’s new funding requirements and are unlikely to face major disruption. Some even may become more competitive for federal funding, especially in states where policymakers have already adopted enforcement-heavy approaches to homelessness.

Such states — including Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas — may be better positioned under HUD’s new grant-funding criteria, which prioritize jurisdictions that criminalize public camping, expand law enforcement involvement or restrict low-barrier shelters, which may have more flexible policies than traditional shelters.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling in June 2024 allowing localities to ban outdoor camping even if there is no homeless shelter space available, roughly 150 cities in 32 states have passed or strengthened such ordinances.

The annual point-in-time count of people sleeping outside reported that homelessness reached an all-time high in 2024, the most recent data available from HUD. The count, taken during the last 10 days of January 2024, found that 771,480 people were experiencing homelessness, an 18% increase over the previous year and the largest one-year jump in the history of the count.

HUD told Stateline the administration is shifting its approach to emphasize “long-term self-sufficiency and recovery” rather than the number of housing units funded or filled.

The agency rejected advocates’ claims that the new rules will increase homelessness, arguing instead that “failed” Housing First policies have contributed to rising numbers. HUD said it hopes communities will convert many permanent supportive housing programs into transitional housing with stronger requirements around addiction and mental-health services.

Skepticism about Housing First

The impact of these cuts won’t be evenly distributed.

Some areas with the deepest investments in the Housing First approach — including Cleveland, Ohio; Los Angeles; and New York City — stand to lose thousands of units that currently serve older adults, those leaving domestic violence situations, people with disabilities, veterans and families.

Those in favor of HUD’s funding shift argue that long-standing as it may be, Housing First has failed to reduce homelessness.

HUD’s annual counts show national homelessness rising for most of the past decade, and the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that while Housing First stabilizes individuals, it has not reduced the number of people experiencing homelessness.

A 2021 Harvard University study found that while most people in permanent supportive housing remained housed in the first year, retention dropped sharply over time — with only about 12% still housed after 10 years.

Conservative think tanks such as the Cicero Institute, American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute suggest that Housing First undervalues mental health and substance use treatment. They point to Oregon’s homelessness struggles after drug decriminalization as evidence that voluntary services alone cannot stabilize the most vulnerable residents.

They further argue that permanent housing grants crowd out shelter, detox and transitional programs, and that many nonprofits defending the model are financially invested in maintaining the status quo.

At a moment when tight housing markets are pushing record numbers of people into first-time homelessness, local providers, who stand to lose grants, warn that HUD’s policy reversal will function more like a mass eviction than a funding shift — sending tens of thousands of people back into shelters, onto waiting lists, or directly onto the streets.

Losing trust in the system

In Orlando, Florida, many residents are experiencing homelessness for the first time. Shelters are full and a recent law in Florida allows police to arrest people for sleeping outdoors.

Are, of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida, said the proposed HUD changes would eliminate more than 500 permanent housing subsidies that her organization offers in the Orlando area alone.

For providers, these subsidies cover the rent for units where people already live. If HUD defunds them, tenants would lose support, landlords would stop receiving payments and people would be evicted unless local governments backfill the funds, she said. And most local governments can’t afford to, she added.

Central Florida has built a system that uses data to focus on high-need individuals and keep them housed — in long-term rental units paired with voluntary support services — at a lower cost than mandated hospitalizations or treatment, Are said. HUD’s abrupt policy reversal would unravel years of progress and leave communities with “no place to put people.”

“Our permanent supportive housing costs about one-twentieth of what inpatient institutional programs cost in this region, and the outcomes are far better,” she said.

Nashville, Tennessee, had expected stable homelessness funding until HUD overhauled the rules “out of [the] blue” and at a time when it would be hard for providers to plan for sudden changes, said Wally Dietz, legal director for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County.

When Congress approved a two-year cycle for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, localities were told they wouldn’t have to reapply for money, he said. That changed this fall.

“Nashville was given 60 days, spanning Thanksgiving and Christmas, to rewrite and resubmit its entire homelessness funding application, which is something the city typically prepares for a full year,” Dietz said.

If the changes to Nashville’s funding go through, not only will people lose their housing, he said, but a 20-year infrastructure will crumble and the164 landlords who partnered with the city will lose faith once rent aid stops flowing.

“Once evicted, people will not reengage with the system, and trust will be impossible to rebuild,” Dietz said.

Nashville is among a handful of localities, including Boston, San Francisco and Tucson, Arizona, that filed a joint lawsuit Monday to block the rule changes, accusing HUD of bypassing Congress. The suit, whose plaintiffs also include the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, was filed in U.S. District Court in Rhode Island.

“If the administration wants to overhaul homelessness policy, it has to go through Congress,” Dietz said. “That gives cities time to prepare, to testify, to budget. But we didn’t get that chance.”

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

U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, D-Arizona, speaks to the media during a primary election-night party at El Casino Ballroom in South Tucson on July 15, 2025. Grijalva claims she was pepper-sprayed during an ICE raid in Tucson on Dec. 5, 2025, but the Department of Homeland Security denies it. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)

Arizona’s U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva was involved in a clash with federal agents during a protest of immigration raids in west Tucson Friday, during which she claims she was hit with pepper spray. 

According to a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency partnered with the Internal Revenue Service to carry out as many as 16 warrants in southern Arizona in a “years-long investigation into immigration and tax violations.” In videos posted to social media by community advocates, several masked federal agents in tactical gear can be seen near the westside location of popular Mexican seafood and grill restaurant Taco Giro. 

The raids prompted a protest and federal agents deployed tear gas and pepper spray against the crowd. The Arizona Daily Star reported that multiple employees who live near the west Tucson restaurant were detained. At least one protester was among those taken into custody by federal agents. AZ Family reported that Taco Giro locations in north Tucson, Casa Grande and Vail were also targeted. ICE spokesman Fernando Burgos-Ortiz confirmed to the Arizona Mirror that multiple people were arrested, but didn’t clarify how many or confirm claims that agents had pepper-sprayed a sitting U.S. Congresswoman.

Tricia McLaughlin, the spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, dismissed Grijalva’s account. McLaughlin accused Grijalva of hindering the work of federal agents and appeared to question Grijalva’s claim that she was pepper-sprayed by highlighting her lack of visible physical reaction in the video. 

“If her claims were true, this would be a medical marvel,” McLaughlin wrote. “But they’re not true. She wasn’t pepper sprayed. She was in the vicinity of someone who *was* pepper sprayed as they were obstructing and assaulting law enforcement. In fact, 2 law enforcement officers were seriously injured by this mob that (Grijalva) joined. Presenting one’s self as a ‘Member of Congress’ doesn’t give you the right to obstruct law enforcement.”

Tucson Sentinel reporter Paul Ingram, who was on-the-ground covering the ICE raid and protest, reported that federal agents shot pepper spray into his face and eye, even though he was clearly identified as a member of the press.

A video from Univision reporter Óscar Gómez shows federal agents shooting pepper spray directly into the faces of protesters, with Grijalva in close proximity. An agent is then seen coming after Gómez directly, covering his camera with pepper spray, even as Gómez appeared to be backing away.

The large-scale raid of several Taco Giros in Southern Arizona is the second time this year a restaurant chain was the subject of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations, a division within ICE, that ensnared multiple employees who lack legal immigration status. 

In July, federal agents raided Colt Grill BBQ and Spirits locations in Northern Arizona. The operation was the culmination of a multi-year investigation into a money laundering and labor exploitation scheme. Along with the husband-and-wife owners of the Northern Arizona restaurants, and two undocumented immigrants who were involved in recruiting and exploiting other immigrant workers, several more undocumented employees were also arrested. 

In a video posted to her X account, Grijalva described as many as 40 agents gathered at the westside location she visited with her staff for lunch, and said that she was treated with hostility even after identifying herself as a member of Congress. 

“I was here, this is like the restaurant I come to literally once a week, and was sprayed in the face by a very aggressive agent, pushed around by others when I literally was not being aggressive,” she said. “I was asking for clarification which is my right as a member of Congress.” 

A video of the incident posted to Grijalva’s social media accounts shows a federal agent spraying several bursts of pepper spray directly at demonstrators in the street, close to where Grijalva is standing. Grijalva’s staffer jumps in front of her. Coughing can be heard offscreen. Later in the video, a pepper ball appears to explode inches from Grijalva’s feet as she walks away.

Grijalva, Arizona’s first Latina congresswoman, has been a fierce critic of immigration enforcement activity in her district. Earlier this week, she publicly condemned a Border Patrol raid of a humanitarian group’s migrant aid station in the desert on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, criticizing it as an example of President Donald Trump’s “cruel (and) unconstitutional” mass deportation agenda. 

 In a statement issued shortly after she said she was pepper-sprayed, Grijalva said her office was working to get more information on Friday’s immigration arrests.

“Our residents deserve to know whether these raids are targeting genuine public safety threats – or law-abiding neighbors who have called our communities home for decades,” she wrote. “ICE has become a lawless agency under this Administration – operating with no transparency, no accountability, and open disregard for basic due process.”

While Trump administration officials have time and again emphasized their intent to detain the “worst of the worst”, many of the immigrants that ICE has arrested during Trump’s second term have no criminal record. A June survey of people in immigration detainment facilities at the time found that nearly half, 47%, lacked any criminal history and fewer than 30% of them had been convicted of crimes.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, the state’s top legal officer, denounced the incident on social media. In a post on X, the Democrat, who has long criticized Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics, called the incident “unacceptable and outrageous.”

“Enforcing the rule of law does not mean pepper spraying a member of Congress for simply asking questions,” Mayes wrote. “Effective law enforcement requires restraint and accountability, not unchecked aggression.”

Grijalva voiced concern for how federal officials interact with people who don’t have her authority, in light of how she was mistreated on Friday.

“While I am fine, if that is the way they treat me, how are they treating other community members who do not have the same privileges and protections that I do?” she questioned, in her written statement. 

***UPDATE: This story has been updated with eyewitness reporting from the Tucson Sentinel and Univision. 

Doctors and health influencers are always telling us that drinking tons of water is the secret to clearer skin, sharper minds, strain-free poops and longer lives. But if there’s one group that absolutely should not stay hydrated, it’s modern electric vehicles, because a few drops could leave them with a massive medical bill.

Just ask Reddit user u/raging_onyx who leased a Lucid Air and saw his Thanksgiving week turn into a $15,000 lesson in why electric cars and water should never meet.

What Happened?

The disaster started with a perfectly innocent trip to a grocery store to refill a water container. But a pothole encountered on the way back tipped that container over, causing a catalog of faults that eventually rendered the vehicle completely immobile.

Also: $4,900 For A Taillight? Lucid’s Ridiculous Lease Charges Are Scaring Off Buyers

Within seconds of the spill happening the dash lit up like Times Square, the EV jumped into limp mode, regen braking tapped out, and the driver got a warning to pull over. When he found a local residential area to stop and tried to reboot the system, the Air wouldn’t shift out of Park.

A Very Expensive Lesson

Lucid customer support, in an impressive display of holiday cheer, suggested two things: call insurance, and brace for the possibility the car was totaled. Happy Thanksgiving!

Also: Insurance Offered $1,700 For This R1T Mishap, Rivian Wanted A Fortune

There was more bad news when the first tow truck driver arrived and said he couldn’t move the sedan, since the Air wouldn’t shift into neutral. Fortunately, by the next day, neutral was found and a second truck was able to tow the stranded car.

Finally, the EV reached a service center, where the advisor initially estimated the repair at under $1,000. Bearable, right? This turned out to be off by roughly the price of a used Corolla.

The real number, the rep later confirmed, was about $15,000, and it wouldn’t be covered by warranty, because the spill was technically the driver’s fault.

More: A $2 Water Bottle Just Cost This Hyundai Driver Nearly $12,000

As of the Reddit post, the driver was still waiting to find out whether his insurance would step in to cover the costs. You’d think the answer would be yes, but that’s not always how these things always play out.

Just last month, we reported on a similar incident involving a Hyundai Ioniq 5. A small water spill in the rear footwell damaged the car’s wiring, and neither the manufacturer nor the insurance company was willing to cover the $11,882 repair bill.

Source: Reddit

A bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would make youth who received life without parole eligible to appeal to shorten their sentences; currently 28 states ban life without parole for juveniles offenders | Getty Images

Since the 2022-23 session of the Wisconsin Legislature, a bill (SB-801/AB-845) has been discussed that would eliminate the court-imposed sentence of life without parole for a juvenile (under 18 years of age) and require the court to consider specific factors when sentencing youth, namely their level of maturity.

The bill would also allow those already sentenced to life as a juvenile the opportunity to appeal and adjust their sentences after serving 15 years for crimes that didn’t involve murder and at 20 years for those who were convicted of homicide.

Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings (Miller v. Alabama, 2012, and Montgomery versus Louisiana, 2016) have held that life without parole for a juvenile comes under the category of cruel and unusual punishment. The Court has found that youth shouldn’t be held to the same level of accountability as adults because they are not psychologically or emotionally as mature and their brains are not fully developed.

According to an April 2024 report by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, “Unusual & Unequal: The unfinished business of ending life without parole for children in the United States,” 28 states have banned juvenile sentences of life without parole (JLWOP):

“The scientific understanding that young people have limited decision-making abilities and impulse control informed widespread, rapid rejection of JLWOP in state legislatures, the Supreme Court, state courts, and the court of public opinion. Declaring that youth is ‘a mitigating factor’ that must be considered by sentencing judges in Miller v. Alabama (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court held that life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of youth.”

Nikki Olson, founder and executive director of Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice, is one of the advocates pursuing the legislation in Wisconsin.

“Their liberty was taken away before they even had full rights because they were kids,” she said of juveniles sentenced to life. “We are talking about people who weren’t even 18, who couldn’t legally smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or couldn’t even drive without their parents’ permission. They couldn’t sign contracts or be on a jury or vote in society. We understand that kids are fundamentally different. The science says kids are fundamentally different. The Supreme Court says they are fundamentally different. We would like Wisconsin law to reflect that as well.”

Two past Republican sponsors of the proposed Wisconsin legislation are Rep. Todd Novak and Sen. Jesse James.

“Ending juvenile life without parole in Wisconsin is not just about reforming our justice system; it’s about restoring hope, potential and the promise of a future for our youth,” Novak has said. “This would also ensure that Wisconsin remains in compliance with the United States Supreme Court precedent.”

Sen. James has also gone on the record endorsing the bill. “The science is clear: brains are still developing. They cannot fully comprehend the extent of their actions,” James said. “For example, how is a 15-year-old supposed to understand life without parole when that sentence is literally quadruple the entire time they’ve been alive. People can grow; people can change, especially when their brains are still forming. Juveniles deserve a second chance.”

According to Sen. James’ office, the bill will be reintroduced as soon as the Department of Corrections (DOC) provides data on how many people currently incarcerated in Wisconsin  would be eligible to apply for a sentence adjustment if the bill is passed. The advocacy group Kids Forward puts the number somewhere north of 100.

Sen. James was asked whether his Republican colleagues known for supporting tough-on-crime legislation would also back the bill.

“As legislators, we introduce legislation with the hope that it’ll pass,” he said. “It is a part of our job to advocate for our bills and highlight the potential benefits and positive impact of the legislation with supportive research. Last session was my first time authoring this bill, and I’m still learning new information about this issue myself. We unfortunately didn’t get the opportunity to have a public hearing on this bill in the Senate last year, so myself and other advocates have not had the chance to testify in support and provide that background and context to members of the Senate.”

Convicted as a juvenile, serving life as an adult

Zachary Reid, 33, incarcerated at the New Lisbon Correctional Institution, has been in prison for 17 years. He is serving a life sentence, but he can apply for extended supervision after serving 40 years. If there isn’t a change in the law or Gov. Tony Evers doesn’t offer him a commutation or pardon, Reid is looking at another 23 years of incarceration.

If the bill does become law, Reid said he would apply at his 20-year mark, and he would be granted a hearing for a sentence adjustment.

The current language of the bill says the hearing should consider “relevant information” including “expert testimony and other information about the youthful offender’s participation in any available educational, vocational, community service, or other programs, the youthful offender’s work reports and psychological evaluations, evidence of the youthful offender’s remorse and the youthful offender’s major violation of institutional rules, if any.”

In 2008, when Reid was 16, he was charged with killing his father. Then, in 2009, a Winnebago County trial jury convicted him of first degree  intentional homicide, and he was given a life sentence which he began to serve in Waupun Correctional Institution when he turned 17.

Reid continues to contend that the death of his father was not intentional but an accident and that  Reid was defending himself from his alcoholic, abusive father, who was wielding a knife and making threatening gestures. Reid claims he choked his father with the intention that his father would pass out, not die.

But Reid also admits he did some things after his father’s death that he shouldn’t have, such as placing the body in the trunk of his father’s car instead of reporting the death immediately to the police.

 At 16, Reid said, he was a very immature young person, often in trouble, using drugs, not attending school, and stealing, making many poor decisions.

“At that age, you think you’re an adult; you think you know everything,” he said. “Those things adults tell you to do, some certain things, and you think you know better. And I was guilty of all the same types of thoughts like that, of just thinking that I really knew what was best for my life.”

When Reid was arrested in October of his junior year of high school, he had not attended very many days of class, a trend of skipping school he had started as a sophomore.

“And I just thought I didn’t have to prove anything to anybody, like, I know this stuff,” he said. “Why do I have to prove to a teacher that I know? Just an ignorant way of thinking and really low maturity level compared to how I am now. I look back, and I just kind of shake my head a lot of the time. There’s just a lot of the stuff that I did, and on top of it, I was doing drugs and drinking. At the time, I was already binge drinking. I started drinking really bad when I was 15, and it really picked up even more when I was 16, because my grandmother passed, and I used it as basically a reason to implode. And so the combination of being immature and the drugs and drinking, I was making a lot of really poor decisions.”

At Waupun, Reid could have been a prison statistic with an attitude and gotten into drugs and gangs and trouble, but instead he decided to take a different path by learning to weld and machining and later to crochet and donate items to charities. He was transferred to New Lisbon, where he continued to work as a welder and machinist, and then five years ago, he began training dogs that assist the blind.

“We do basically high-level obedience training, preparing the dogs to be able to go to harness school, where they learn the actual skills of working with a blind person or visually impaired person, to basically give them back their life, to be able to get them out of their house and be able not to be stuck there,” he said.

In prison, Reid said, he’s applied himself to learn new skills and gain an education.

“I have valuable skills that Wisconsin needs right now, you know, like welding and fabricating is a really in-demand training, even the machining,” he said. “Like I can run a mill, a lathe, you know, that type of stuff. I’ve gotten two vocational certificates since I’ve been here. I got an electromechanical service technician certificate. It’s also part of a pre-apprenticeship program through the Department of Workforce Development. I’m actually a certified professional dog trainer, like I got that through Chippewa Valley Technical College. I just finished my associate’s degree earlier this year, so I have an Associate of Science through Milwaukee Area Technical College.”

Reid also intends to pursue a bachelor’s degree from Marquette University in peace studies.

“I contribute to society right now in the environment I’m in, so I have no doubt that I can contribute in a meaningful way out there,” said Reid.

Since he has been in prison, Reid claims he has only received two conduct reports or complaints, one in 2010, his first year in prison, and another in 2016 for a tattoo.

Not many 33-year-old men have to wake up every day and live with the consequences of an action they took as a 16-year-old.

“Most of the time I try to just, kind of like, live in the right now,” he said. “I know it’s kind of like, you hear that phrase a lot, like live in the now type of stuff. I try to do that to the best of my ability as a coping mechanism, because, dwelling, obviously, on what happened and everything like that, like it was my dad, you know, so to me, I think it’s even a little bit more burdensome than for most of these people in that, I mean, my intent wasn’t to kill him. I was trying to just get him to stop attacking me in the situation we were in, and he passed away. So it’s like it’s not only just the guilt of taking a life, but it’s like I was so drug-addled or whatever it was, but it’s like I failed in that moment, like that was my failure.”

In-prison testimonies

At a future hearing to have his sentence adjusted, Reid would likely hear from others who would offer endorsements.

Patricia Muraczewski provided the dog training for the residents in New Lisbon and worked with Reid for two years. She was impressed by his work ethic and character and believes Reid should be considered for an early release.

“He was a member of the Paw Forward team of inmates who train dogs for the visually impaired,” she said.  “Mr. Reid was extremely diligent in class attendance and was very serious in acquiring and understanding the methods needed to train each dog that he was partnered with.  He had a very relaxed demeanor and got along with all of the other teams.  Even though there were frustrations at times with new instructors and conflicting material, he never expressed any anger.”

She added, “Over the course of my time in New Lisbon, never was Mr. Reid disrespectful and he never broke any rules or overstepped his position.” 

“Of all of the inmates I had worked with during that time, in my opinion, he was the inmate most likely to be successful when released and least likely to reoffend,” she said, adding,“During the four years this program has been in existence at New Lisbon none of the men that have been released have reoffended.” 

Brandon Horak knew Reid as a fellow resident at Waupun and later at New Lisbon. Horak had been sentenced to 10 years of incarceration for felony murder in the commission of an armed robbery after he set up a drug dealer for a robbery that resulted in the murder of the dealer.

“I wasn’t in a good state of mind,” he said when he first entered Waupun and met Reid.  “I had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison, so I met him in Waupun and he ended up encouraging me to get a job, so we worked in the laundry room together for a year and a half or two years. He encouraged me to get into school, and I didn’t want to do any of this stuff, so he was a really big influence on my life.”

Both Reid and Horak left Waupun and then later met up again in New Lisbon, where Reid had begun training dogs, and Horak said he noticed that Reid had lost a defensive, protective shield that many residents carry in amaximum security prisons like Waupun.

“I asked him why he didn’t care if someone stole something from him, which is obviously a big no-no in prison, and he said the dog program had changed his life and he had something to live for,” said Horak.

Even though Horak wasn’t officially in the dog program, Reid taught Horak what he had learned, and after he left prison, Horak set up his own dog training business based on Reid’s mentoring, a business called EDU Training.

“We train dogs in people’s homes, and to be honest, it was all thanks to Zach,” he said.

Out of prison, Horak often reaches back to Reid and his cellmate for advice on working with client pets.

“I’ve never been back to jail,” Horak said “I have a full-time job. I own a business. I do all this stuff, and I honestly do not believe I would have been able to do it without his (Reid’s) help. I just talked to him last week and he always tells me, ‘You better be doing good out there.’”

In prison, Horak said, he saw many people released and then come right back. Because of that, he doesn’t automatically believe everyone deserves leniency. Still, he says, Reid isn’t one of those who should be in prison and he believes he could do more good on the outside.

Engaged to be married 

Reid and his fiancée Samantha, got to know each other as pen pals in 2013, and that developed into a relationship in 2018. In 2019, they became engaged. In 2024, she moved from Florida to Wisconsin to be closer to Reid.

“The only reason we’re not married right now is that we’re hoping to get him out one day,” said Samantha, “so we can have just a normal marriage out here, versus having a marriage done or a wedding ceremony done inside the prison.”

Samantha said she has been communicating with Reid since they were both in their early 20s, and she’s seen him mature over the years.

“But just even in the last maybe five years, it’s just blown up like he has just matured and wants to do so much good,” she said. “ … He loves that he can actually make a difference, and he’s done other charity programs that even the prison doesn’t offer. He crochets hearts for suicide prevention.”

She said it recently occurred to her how much Reid is trying to do good for others and also maintain a relationship with her from prison.

“That is work, too, to just step up and almost religiously call somebody regularly, and never let me down, and to take care of me with all this distance,” she said.

If the legislation is passed, Samantha says that Reid would be the “poster child for this bill.”

“It’s like he went out of his way to get welding experience,” she said. “He went out of his way to do charity work. He went out of his way to do all these wonderful things over the years. And I mean, just since I’ve known him, he’s grown and matured. He’s checking off every box he can possibly check off, and could prove that over the course of 17 years, like he is not that person [that he was at 16], and look at all these good things he is doing and all the things he could contribute to society, and right now we’re just warehousing him. We’re wasting all these taxpayer dollars housing somebody that is very clearly not a threat.”

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Boxes of the diabetes drug Ozempic rest on a pharmacy counter in Los Angeles. Drugs like Ozempic have grown in popularity to treat obesity, prompting more than a dozen states to pay for them. But with major budget pressures, several state Medicaid agencies are either stopping coverage altogether or restricting who can get access to the therapy. (Photo illustration by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Some states are rethinking their coverage of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss as budgets tighten and Medicaid programs brace for the cuts included in President Donald Trump’s broad tax and spending law.

As of Oct. 1, 16 state Medicaid programs covered GLP-1s for obesity treatment, up from 13 last year, according to a survey of Medicaid directors by KFF, a health policy research group. But some states have announced they will discontinue coverage or restrict who can qualify for it.

Many doctors and patient advocates say the drugs will save money in the long run by reducing obesity-related diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. Many states, however, have concluded they just can’t afford them.

North Carolina Medicaid ended coverage of GLP-1s for obesity last month, citing shortfalls in state funding. California, New Hampshire and South Carolina have said they will end coverage on Jan. 1. Starting next year, Michigan Medicaid will limit coverage to people who are “morbidly obese.” Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Wisconsin also are considering new restrictions.

In last year’s KFF survey, about half the states said they were interested in covering GLP-1s for weight loss, according to Elizabeth Williams, a senior policy manager at KFF who focuses on Medicaid. This year, most states are moving in the opposite direction.

“This likely reflects recent state budget challenges and the significant, significant costs associated with coverage,” Williams said. “After a number of years of robust revenue growth right after the pandemic, states are starting to see slowing revenues, increasing spending demands and a lot of fiscal uncertainty due in part to recent federal actions.”

In April, the Trump administration scrapped a Biden-era proposal that would have required state Medicaid programs to pay for some GLP-1s for obesity treatment. Earlier this month, Trump announced that his administration had reached agreements with the manufacturers of Wegovy and Zepbound to reduce the prices of the drugs for Medicaid, Medicare and consumers buying the drugs directly, But it’s unclear whether the deals will reduce costs for states.

Health plans for state workers also are reassessing their coverage of the drugs for obesity. North Carolina, for example, ended GLP-1 obesity coverage for state workers last year, and West Virginia canceled a 1,000-person pilot program.

GLP-1 medications, which balance blood sugar levels, have long been prescribed to patients with Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular conditions. All state Medicaid programs, which are funded jointly by the states and the federal government, cover GLP-1s for those uses.

But the drugs also curb hunger signals and can help people lose significant amounts of weight. Medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound have become wildly popular for that purpose.

Between 2019 and 2023, the number of outpatient Medicaid prescriptions for select GLP-1s to treat diabetes and obesity grew from 755,300 to 3.8 million, according to KFF. During the same period, Medicaid spending on those drugs increased from $597.3 million to $3.9 billion.

A study published last year in The BMJ, the journal of the British Medical Association, found that the number of patients without diabetes who started GLP-1 treatment in the United States increased from roughly 21,000 in 2019 to 174,000 in 2023, or more than 700%.

More than 2 in 5 U.S. adults have obesity, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC defines obesity as having a body mass index — a calculated measure of body weight relative to height — of 30 or higher. Obesity costs the U.S. health care system almost $173 billion per year, according to the agency.

Recently, the manufacturers of some GLP-1s have lowered their prices, selling them directly to consumers for $500 or less per month. But many patients cannot afford to pay that much out of pocket.

States in a tough financial position

In North Carolina, Dr. Jennifer McCauley, a weight management physician at UNC Health, said Medicaid coverage of GLP-1s was “incredibly helpful for our patients.”

“Now they’ve stopped coverage, so those people are now going back, regaining some of the weight, because they’re unable to obtain these medications, and also are suffering the health consequences of obesity,” McCauley told Stateline.

Some critics of expansive GLP-1 coverage say it isn’t cost effective, because many patients gain back the weight they lost when they stop treatment. But McCauley said the “downstream effects of obesity are even higher.”

“There are definitely vulnerable populations that probably would not be able to obtain weight loss without these medications.”

James Werner, a spokesperson at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, blamed the coverage change on the state legislature’s failure to budget enough money for Medicaid.

In an email to Stateline, Werner said coverage of GLP1s for weight loss “would be reconsidered if Medicaid is fully funded.”

Some states are trying to maintain at least some coverage of the expensive drugs by tightening the eligibility requirements for a prescription, according to Colleen Becker, a project manager at the National Conference of State Legislatures, a policy research group.

“States are really looking at how to balance access and provide that access to patients, but they’re stewards of their budgets, and they need to be good stewards of it,” Becker said.

Michigan and Pennsylvania are among the states considering such options. Meanwhile, Connecticut has decided to maintain coverage of weight-loss drugs for state employees, but to require beneficiaries to try online weight-loss counseling before they can get a prescription.

Some future possibilities

One state, North Dakota, has taken a different approach to GLP-1 coverage after legislation that would have required the state’s Medicaid program to cover the drug failed. Instead, North Dakota this year became the first state to mandate that insurers on the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace cover the drugs for weight loss.

North Dakota Deputy Insurance Commissioner John Arnold said the insurance department calculated that the mandate wouldn’t cause insurance premiums to rise significantly.

“It’s not that anybody can walk into the doctor’s office and say, ‘Hey, I want to have this covered,’” Arnold said. “It is really for those who have a medical need for the drugs, then it would be covered.”

The insurance department had to ask the legislature for permission to make the change, according to North Dakota Republican House Speaker Robin Weisz. He said insurance carriers were concerned that it was going to be “open season for everybody who could lose 20 or 30 pounds.”

He said it will take time to see whether the policy raises insurance premiums.

“If the carriers can come in a couple years and say, ‘Wow, here’s what we’ve spent on these … we’ll take a hard look at it,” Weisz said. “But, it’s way too early to tell at this point.”

Arnold says other states may have the flexibility to consider mandating ACA insurers to cover the drugs.

“Our biggest concern was reducing those comorbidities and the long-term impact that that has on the cost of insurance in general, because more comorbidities means more claims,” Arnold said, referring to diseases and conditions associated with obesity.

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

It’s hard to argue that owning a vehicle with 1,070 horsepower (797 kW) wouldn’t be extremely fun. However, that excitement turns on its head when you realize that there’s nowhere to refuel, or rather in this case, recharge it.

That’s exactly what just happened to a Brooklyn-based Lucid Gravity Dream Edition buyer. After snatching this unique EV up brand new in September of 2025, he ended up selling it just 400 miles later for a huge loss.

More: Lucid’s Cheaper Gravity Lost Hundreds Of Horses But Found You Thousands In Savings

The seller on Cars & Bids shared a photo of the window sticker for this luxury SUV, listing an MSRP of $141,550. When the hammer fell on his auction sale of the car, it brought just $123,000. That’s a painful $18,500 lesson for 400 miles of usage in a little over a month, amounting to $46.25 for every mile he put on the odometer.

Where Do You Plug In?

Why take such a big loss for a vehicle that the owner says is “an awesome car”? It all comes down to charging it up. For the owner, it was almost like buying a Hellcat and then realizing that the closest gas station is 220 miles away.

Cars&Bids

He says that his initial plan was to charge where he works but then one option after another fell apart until he had to take the loss we’re talking about here.

“I was planning to charge at work but the chargers at my work aren’t working and there is seemingly no plan to fix them. Since I don’t have a charger at home and can’t get one installed this became an unsolvable,” he said in response to a question about the situation.

He then went on to fault his living location, New York, more than anything else.

“I tried to find another solution but in NYC most chargers (all the ones convenient to me) were in parking garages where you had to pay exuberant [sic] prices to park in order to use the chargers. I live a busy life so just couldn’t find a workable solution,” he added.

It’s a little ironic that in a city as vast and densely packed as New York, famous for both its wealth and its gridlock, a high-end EV can still be this impractical. For now, he’s out, but he hasn’t sworn off electric power entirely. According to him, he’ll be back behind the wheel of another EV “as soon as [a solution] presents itself.”

Source: Cars&Bids

There is growing attention on the links between artificial intelligence and increased energy demands. But while the power-hungry data centers being built to support AI could potentially stress electricity grids, increase customer prices and service interruptions, and generally slow the transition to clean energy, the use of artificial intelligence can also help the energy transition.

For example, use of AI is reducing energy consumption and associated emissions in buildings, transportation, and industrial processes. In addition, AI is helping to optimize the design and siting of new wind and solar installations and energy storage facilities.

On electric power grids, using AI algorithms to control operations is helping to increase efficiency and reduce costs, integrate the growing share of renewables, and even predict when key equipment needs servicing to prevent failure and possible blackouts. AI can help grid planners schedule investments in generation, energy storage, and other infrastructure that will be needed in the future. AI is also helping researchers discover or design novel materials for nuclear reactors, batteries, and electrolyzers.

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere are actively investigating aspects of those and other opportunities for AI to support the clean energy transition. At its 2025 research conference, MITEI announced the Data Center Power Forum, a targeted research effort for MITEI member companies interested in addressing the challenges of data center power demand.

Controlling real-time operations

Customers generally rely on receiving a continuous supply of electricity, and grid operators get help from AI to make that happen — while optimizing the storage and distribution of energy from renewable sources at the same time.

But with more installation of solar and wind farms — both of which provide power in smaller amounts, and intermittently — and the growing threat of weather events and cyberattacks, ensuring reliability is getting more complicated. “That’s exactly where AI can come into the picture,” explains Anuradha Annaswamy, a senior research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of MIT’s Active-Adaptive Control Laboratory. “Essentially, you need to introduce a whole information infrastructure to supplement and complement the physical infrastructure.”

The electricity grid is a complex system that requires meticulous control on time scales ranging from decades all the way down to microseconds. The challenge can be traced to the basic laws of power physics: electricity supply must equal electricity demand at every instant, or generation can be interrupted. In past decades, grid operators generally assumed that generation was fixed — they could count on how much electricity each large power plant would produce — while demand varied over time in a fairly predictable way. As a result, operators could commission specific power plants to run as needed to meet demand the next day. If some outages occurred, specially designated units would start up as needed to make up the shortfall.

Today and in the future, that matching of supply and demand must still happen, even as the number of small, intermittent sources of generation grows and weather disturbances and other threats to the grid increase. AI algorithms provide a means of achieving the complex management of information needed to forecast within just a few hours which plants should run while also ensuring that the frequency, voltage, and other characteristics of the incoming power are as required for the grid to operate properly.

Moreover, AI can make possible new ways of increasing supply or decreasing demand at times when supplies on the grid run short. As Annaswamy points out, the battery in your electric vehicle (EV), as well as the one charged up by solar panels or wind turbines, can — when needed — serve as a source of extra power to be fed into the grid. And given real-time price signals, EV owners can choose to shift charging from a time when demand is peaking and prices are high to a time when demand and therefore prices are both lower. In addition, new smart thermostats can be set to allow the indoor temperature to drop or rise —  a range defined by the customer — when demand on the grid is peaking. And data centers themselves can be a source of demand flexibility: selected AI calculations could be delayed as needed to smooth out peaks in demand. Thus, AI can provide many opportunities to fine-tune both supply and demand as needed.

In addition, AI makes possible “predictive maintenance.” Any downtime is costly for the company and threatens shortages for the customers served. AI algorithms can collect key performance data during normal operation and, when readings veer off from that normal, the system can alert operators that something might be going wrong, giving them a chance to intervene. That capability prevents equipment failures, reduces the need for routine inspections, increases worker productivity, and extends the lifetime of key equipment.

Annaswamy stresses that “figuring out how to architect this new power grid with these AI components will require many different experts to come together.” She notes that electrical engineers, computer scientists, and energy economists “will have to rub shoulders with enlightened regulators and policymakers to make sure that this is not just an academic exercise, but will actually get implemented. All the different stakeholders have to learn from each other. And you need guarantees that nothing is going to fail. You can’t have blackouts.”

Using AI to help plan investments in infrastructure for the future

Grid companies constantly need to plan for expanding generation, transmission, storage, and more, and getting all the necessary infrastructure built and operating may take many years, in some cases more than a decade. So, they need to predict what infrastructure they’ll need to ensure reliability in the future. “It’s complicated because you have to forecast over a decade ahead of time what to build and where to build it,” says Deepjyoti Deka, a research scientist in MITEI.

One challenge with anticipating what will be needed is predicting how the future system will operate. “That’s becoming increasingly difficult,” says Deka, because more renewables are coming online and displacing traditional generators. In the past, operators could rely on “spinning reserves,” that is, generating capacity that’s not currently in use but could come online in a matter of minutes to meet any shortfall on the system. The presence of so many intermittent generators — wind and solar — means there’s now less stability and inertia built into the grid. Adding to the complication is that those intermittent generators can be built by various vendors, and grid planners may not have access to the physics-based equations that govern the operation of each piece of equipment at sufficiently fine time scales. “So, you probably don’t know exactly how it’s going to run,” says Deka.

And then there’s the weather. Determining the reliability of a proposed future energy system requires knowing what it’ll be up against in terms of weather. The future grid has to be reliable not only in everyday weather, but also during low-probability but high-risk events such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires, all of which are becoming more and more frequent, notes Deka. AI can help by predicting such events and even tracking changes in weather patterns due to climate change.

Deka points out another, less-obvious benefit of the speed of AI analysis. Any infrastructure development plan must be reviewed and approved, often by several regulatory and other bodies. Traditionally, an applicant would develop a plan, analyze its impacts, and submit the plan to one set of reviewers. After making any requested changes and repeating the analysis, the applicant would resubmit a revised version to the reviewers to see if the new version was acceptable. AI tools can speed up the required analysis so the process moves along more quickly. Planners can even reduce the number of times a proposal is rejected by using large language models to search regulatory publications and summarize what’s important for a proposed infrastructure installation.

Harnessing AI to discover and exploit advanced materials needed for the energy transition

“Use of AI for materials development is booming right now,” says Ju Li, MIT’s Carl Richard Soderberg Professor of Power Engineering. He notes two main directions.

First, AI makes possible faster physics-based simulations at the atomic scale. The result is a better atomic-level understanding of how composition, processing, structure, and chemical reactivity relate to the performance of materials. That understanding provides design rules to help guide the development and discovery of novel materials for energy generation, storage, and conversion needed for a sustainable future energy system.

And second, AI can help guide experiments in real time as they take place in the lab. Li explains: “AI assists us in choosing the best experiment to do based on our previous experiments and — based on literature searches — makes hypotheses and suggests new experiments.”

He describes what happens in his own lab. Human scientists interact with a large language model, which then makes suggestions about what specific experiments to do next. The human researcher accepts or modifies the suggestion, and a robotic arm responds by setting up and performing the next step in the experimental sequence, synthesizing the material, testing the performance, and taking images of samples when appropriate. Based on a mix of literature knowledge, human intuition, and previous experimental results, AI thus coordinates active learning that balances the goals of reducing uncertainty with improving performance. And, as Li points out, “AI has read many more books and papers than any human can, and is thus naturally more interdisciplinary.”

The outcome, says Li, is both better design of experiments and speeding up the “work flow.” Traditionally, the process of developing new materials has required synthesizing the precursors, making the material, testing its performance and characterizing the structure, making adjustments, and repeating the same series of steps. AI guidance speeds up that process, “helping us to design critical, cheap experiments that can give us the maximum amount of information feedback,” says Li.

“Having this capability certainly will accelerate material discovery, and this may be the thing that can really help us in the clean energy transition,” he concludes. “AI [has the potential to] lubricate the material-discovery and optimization process, perhaps shortening it from decades, as in the past, to just a few years.” 

MITEI’s contributions

At MIT, researchers are working on various aspects of the opportunities described above. In projects supported by MITEI, teams are using AI to better model and predict disruptions in plasma flows inside fusion reactors — a necessity in achieving practical fusion power generation. Other MITEI-supported teams are using AI-powered tools to interpret regulations, climate data, and infrastructure maps in order to achieve faster, more adaptive electric grid planning. AI-guided development of advanced materials continues, with one MITEI project using AI to optimize solar cells and thermoelectric materials.

Other MITEI researchers are developing robots that can learn maintenance tasks based on human feedback, including physical intervention and verbal instructions. The goal is to reduce costs, improve safety, and accelerate the deployment of the renewable energy infrastructure. And MITEI-funded work continues on ways to reduce the energy demand of data centers, from designing more efficient computer chips and computing algorithms to rethinking the architectural design of the buildings, for example, to increase airflow so as to reduce the need for air conditioning.

In addition to providing leadership and funding for many research projects, MITEI acts as a convenor, bringing together interested parties to consider common problems and potential solutions. In May 2025, MITEI’s annual spring symposium — titled “AI and energy: Peril and promise” — brought together AI and energy experts from across academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations to explore AI as both a problem and a potential solution for the clean energy transition. At the close of the symposium, William H. Green, director of MITEI and Hoyt C. Hottel Professor in the MIT Department of Chemical Engineering, noted, “The challenge of meeting data center energy demand and of unlocking the potential benefits of AI to the energy transition is now a research priority for MITEI.”

© Image: Igor Borisenko/iStock

“Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic," Assembly Minority Greta Neubauer (D-Racine). (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Wisconsin Assembly met for its final floor session of 2025 Wednesday, where Democratic lawmakers sought to pass a bill that would extend Medicaid coverage for new mothers for one year after the birth of a child, though Republicans blocked it. Bills to encourage school district consolidation and make changes to elections laws passed.

Republicans block Democratic efforts to get a vote on postpartum Medicaid bill 

Wisconsin is one of two states in the U.S. that have not taken the federal government’s postpartum Medicaid expansion, and Democratic lawmakers hoped to begin the process of changing that during the floor session. 

The bill, which passed the Senate in April on a 32-1 vote, would allow eligible mothers to keep their Medicaid coverage for a year postpartum. Currently in Wisconsin, mothers only get 60 days of coverage if they don’t otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Assembly Democrats planned to employ a rarely used Assembly rule to pull the bill out of committee and bring it up for a vote. Under the rule, if 50 lawmakers sign a petition, a bill can be brought to the floor. Democratic lawmakers hoped to have the chance to convince some of the Republican cosponsors of the bill to sign on.

Before that could come to fruition, however, the Assembly clerk notified Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) of the plan, Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) told reporters. 

Republicans moved the bill from the Assembly Rules Committee, where it had sat since May, to the Assembly Organization Committee — triggering a rule that says a  withdrawal petition on the bill cannot be circulated for 21 days. 

“This is a great effort by the Speaker to prevent this important bill from getting a vote on the floor,” Neubauer said. 

Neubauer said she didn’t know why the clerk notified the Assembly Republican leaders.

“There had been some conversation with staff about the timeline for [the petition], but I’m not really sure why it happened the way it did,” Neubauer told reporters. She said that Rick Champagne, director of the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau, told the lawmakers that notification should have happened when they turned the petition in with the 50 signatures, not prior to the petition circulating.

All 45 Democratic lawmakers are cosponsors of the bill as are over 20 Republicans, but the bill has been hung up in the Assembly due to opposition from Vos, who has said in the past that he doesn’t support expanding “welfare.” The bill only needs a simple majority of 50 votes to pass the Assembly.

Neubauer read out the names of the Republican cosponsors during the press conference. 

“These are legislators who believe that this bill should become law, so they say, but they have been bullied by their speaker into not pushing for a vote on this bill on the floor,” Neubauer said. “Frankly, Robin Vos’ move to prevent us from circulating this petition and his refusal to bring this bill to the floor is pathetic, and when moms in Wisconsin and their babies are put at risk, their health and well-being is put at risk, because they do not have adequate health care in the year after they have given birth, it will be Robin Vos’ fault.” 

The Republican lawmakers on the bill include Reps. Patrick Snyder (R-Weston), Jessie Rodriguez (R-Oak Creek), Scott Allen (R-Waukesha), Elijah Behnke (R-Town of Chase), Barbara Dittrich (R-Oconomowoc), Bob Donovan (R-Greenfield), Cindi Duchow (R-Delafield), Benjamin Franklin (R-De Pere), Rick Gundrum (R-Slinger), Nate Gustafson (R-Omro), Dean Kaufert (R-Neenah), Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay), Rob Kreibich (R-New Richmond), Scott Krug (R-Rome), Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), Dave Maxey (R-New Berlin), Paul Melotik (R-Grafton), Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), Adam Neylon (R-Pewaukee), Todd Novak (R-Dodgeville), Kevin Petersen (R-Waupaca), David Steffen (R-Howard), Rob Tusler (R-Harrison), Chuck Wichgers (Muskego), Rob Wittke (R-Caledonia), Rob Summerfield (R-Bloomer), Calvin T. Callahan (R-Tomahawk), Clint Moses (R-Menomonie) and Joy Goeben (R-Hobart). 

Democratic lawmakers also tried to introduce amendments to a bill on the floor that would have extended postpartum Medicaid coverage, but those were also blocked by Republicans.

“It shouldn’t be this hard to get Republicans to do the right thing. Wisconsin women deserve access to quality, affordable health care and that includes postpartum care,” Vining said before she was cut off by Speaker Pro Tempore Kevin Petersen who said she wasn’t on topic.

“This is a disgrace,” Vining yelled out.

School district consolidation 

Democratic and Republican lawmakers split over a package of bills that would encourage school districts to consolidate. Republican lawmakers argue the bills are necessary due to falling enrollment, which they say is the reason for school districts’ financial struggles. 

Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) said at a press conference that the bills would address declining enrollment and the cycle of repeatedly going to referendum to raise money from local taxpayers that school districts are in. Schools in Wisconsin have seen a drop of about 53,000 students over a decade, from the 2013-14 to 2022-23 school years.

Of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts, about two-thirds are struggling with declining enrollment with preliminary numbers from the Department of Public Instruction showing that enrollment for public school districts in the 2025-26 school year fell by about 13,600 students. Total enrollment across Wisconsin school districts is about 759,800 this year. 

“Districts with declining enrollment receive less in state aid and to make up for that revenue loss. We’ve seen a growing cycle of constant referendums with varying degrees of success,” Nedweski said. “Wisconsin taxpayers are frustrated with our public school system… They are frustrated with districts continuously asking them to raise their own taxes, frustrated that their generous investments have not produced matching results.”

Democrats blamed Republicans for school districts having to go to referendum, noting that state aid has not kept pace with inflation in nearly two decades. They also said Wisconsinites have not been asking to close schools. Neubauer said Republicans were “proving how disconnected they are from our constituents.”

“Wisconsinites do not want to close school buildings, break up their communities, force their kids to ride on the bus for hours a day, or lose their local sports teams. Wisconsinites want us to fund our public schools,” Neubauer said. “Republicans’ push to close schools misses the mark completely, and Wisconsinites deserve better… Don’t close schools, fund them.”

According to the Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin is spending the least, proportionally, in state revenue that it has ever spent on schools under the current funding formula. About 32.1% of state general purpose revenue goes to state general aid to schools, while that percentage used to be around 35%.

Rep. Angelina Cruz (R-Racine) noted during floor debate that many school districts lost state aid this year. Data from DPI for the 2025-26 school year shows that of 421 districts, 71% — or 301 districts — will receive less state aid this year compared to the prior year and 26% will receive more.

“For 15 years, Wisconsin has intentionally divested in our public schools while expanding privatization through voucher schemes,” Cruz said at a press conference, adding that Racine Unified School District has felt the loss of revenue acutely.

According to DPI data, about 15% of Racine’s revenue limit — or $43 million — goes to pay for voucher program participants.

“Since 2011, our community has gone to referendum three times —  in 2014, 2020 and 2025 — asking residents to raise their own property taxes to provide what the state has refused to fund,” Cruz said. “Even after those referendum paths, our district has been forced to close and consolidate schools including… the school where I grew up as a teacher. This is not about a lack of community commitment. It is about the state failing its constitutional obligation to provide free and as nearly uniform as practicable schools to children… Let me be clear, if there is money to close public schools, there is money to fund public schools.”

Rep. Joel Kitchens (R-Sturgeon Bay) rejected claims that the choice program is to blame.

“That’s a tiny little percentage of this,” Kitchens said. “It’s happening because of declining birth rates, of people choosing to have less kids, waiting long to have kids. I can’t imagine how anybody can look at our 421 school districts that we have right now and think that in 30 years, that’s going to be sustainable.”

Kitchens also emphasized that the bills are voluntary.

“Let’s trust our communities to work through these things and decide for what’s best for themselves,” Kitchens said. 

Republicans also rejected Democratic lawmakers’ insistence that the state needs to invest more money in its public schools. 

“[Democrats] want us to believe that if we simply spend more on K-12, people will flock to Wisconsin and increase enrollment,” Nedweski said. She compared Wisconsin to New York, which according to the New York Focus spends more per public school student than any other state. “Their outcomes are no better than ours, and they are losing students even faster than Wisconsin. As they elect more communist leaders like [New York City Mayor-elect] Zohran Mamdani, I suspect more New Yorkers will rapidly leave tax-and-spend Democratic Socialist policies. More spending is not a strategy, it’s denial.”

Nedweski said the bills are a “lifeline” for school districts that can use it and will encourage savings and “invest in increasing opportunities for students who may not otherwise have access to things like AP classes, world languages, advanced tech ed and specialized learning services.”

The six bills in the package:

• AB 644 would increase additional state aid to schools that consolidate in 2027, 2028 and 2029 to $2,000 per pupil in the first year. Under current law, school districts receive additional aid when they consolidate. For the first five years after consolidation, a consolidated school district gets $150 per pupil. In the sixth year, the aid drops to 50% of what the school district received in the fifth year and in the seventh year, the aid drops to 25% of the fifth year. It passed 53-44 with Rep. Shae Sortwell (R-Two Rivers) joining Democrats against the bill. 

• AB 645 would provide grants of up to $25,000 to groups of two or more school district boards for the costs of a feasibility study for school district consolidation or whole grade sharing agreements. It passed on a voice vote.
• AB 646 would launch a study of Wisconsin’s school districts, looking at current school district boundaries, potential school district consolidations, existing school district facilities, staffing levels and salary scales, the population of school-age children in each school district, and revenue limits and current overall spending. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 647 would create a four-year grant program for school districts that enter into a whole-grade sharing agreement, agreeing to educate students at one location. School districts would get up to $500 per pupil enrolled in a single grade. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

• AB 648 would help create new supplemental state aid for consolidated school districts to  address differences in school districts’ levies when they merge. The measure is meant to address concerns of higher property taxes for residents of low-levy districts when a consolidation takes place. It passed 54-43 along party lines.
•  AB 649 provides the funding for the bills, including $2.7 million for grants to schools that enter whole-grade sharing agreements, $3 million to provide state aid to offset levy limit differences and $250,000 for feasibility studies. It passed 54-43 along party lines.

Vote on online sports betting bill delayed

After being fast tracked through the public hearing process, a vote on a bipartisan bill that would legalize online sports betting in Wisconsin was postponed. 

The Wisconsin Constitution requires that gambling in the state must be managed by the state’s federally recognized Native American tribes. Following that requirement, sports betting has been allowed in Wisconsin since 2021, but bets have had to be made in person at tribal casinos. 

AB 601 would expand this to allow for online sports betting anywhere in the state by placing servers running the betting websites and apps to be housed on tribal land; this is known as a “hub and spoke” model. It was introduced in October and received hearings in the Assembly and Senate earlier this month. 

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August (R-Walworth) said that he still would have had the votes on the bill if it had come up for a vote, but he had conversations with members of his caucus over the weekend that brought new issues to his attention. He would not provide details on what the concerns were, though he said they didn’t deal with issues of constitutionality.

“I’m not going to get into the details of the conversations that I’ve had with members,” August said. “We’re just working through some of that right now, and I’m confident that there’s no rush on this. It’s the right thing for the state, and I’m confident that we’ll get there.”

Neubauer said she planned to support the bill. 

“We know that our tribes in Wisconsin have the right to control gaming in our state, and right now, that’s not happening with online sports betting,” Neubauer said. “I do hope that we pass a bill that puts control of that industry back in their hands.”

The Assembly passed and concurred in a total of over 50 bills. Others include:  

• AB 596 and AB 597, which passed unanimously, would direct $1.9 million to be used for a state grant match program for veterans’ housing. A nonprofit group would need to be participating in the federal program, which currently provides about $82 per day per veteran housed to groups that offer wraparound supportive services to homeless veterans, to be eligible for a state matching funds of $25 per day per veteran. While no one voted against the bills, Democratic lawmakers expressed concerns that the bill would not fill the gaps that currently exist due to the closure of two Veterans Housing and Recovery Program sites earlier this year. 
• AB 602, which would instruct Evers to opt into a federal school choice program, passed 54-44 along party lines. 
• A pair of bills meant to help address students who are disruptive in class passed in 54-43 votes. AB 613 would require principals to provide written notification to parents every time a student is removed from a class and “the quality or quantity of instructional time provided to the pupils in the class is diminished.” AB 614 would add language into state law to say that teachers are allowed to maintain order in the teacher’s classroom, establish and enforce classroom rules, call 911 in an emergency, take immediate action if a pupil’s behavior is dangerous or disruptive and request assistance from school administrators during a disruptive or violent incident.
• AB 207, which would provide information about constitutional amendments to voters including their potential effects, passed on a voice vote.
• AB 312  passed on a voice vote. It would require absentee voting sites to be open for at least 20 hours during the period for voting absentee in-person.
• AB 385 passed in a 55-42 vote with Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh) joining Republicans in favor. The bill would prohibit a political committee, political party or conduit from accepting contributions that are made with a credit card online unless the contributor provides their credit card verification value (CVV) or code and the billing address associated with the card is located in the United States. Republican state lawmakers introduced the bill following efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to target ActBlue — a Massachusetts-based platform that processes donations to Democratic campaigns.
• AB 617 passed 53-44. Rep. Paul Tittl joined Democrats voting against the bill. It would make a number of changes to elections law, including requiring that alternate absentee ballot sites must be in a building or facility constituting a fixed location and requiring absentee ballots with faulty or missing certifications be returned to voters if they are received seven days before the election. It is similar to a bill introduced last session, but it does not include a provision that would have allowed for Monday processing of absentee ballots. Rep. Scott Krug (R-Rome) said that he is speaking with the Assembly Elections Committee chair about potentially having an informational hearing on Monday processing.

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The Lucid Gravity is a finalist for 2026 North American Utility Vehicle of the Year and their case is getting stronger with the introduction of a new Touring trim. It was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show and is currently available to order.

Designed to slot beneath the range-topping Gravity Grand Touring, the latest variant is instantly recognizable and features a familiar design. Few details were released, but it sports LED lighting units, a glass roof, and flush-mounted door handles. They’re joined by 20-inch wheels, acoustic front glass, and a power liftgate and frunk.

More: Meet The Finalists For North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicle Of The Year

The five-seat interior sports PurLuxe upholstery as well as heated front chairs with 12-way power adjustment. Buyers will also find a 34-inch curved display as well as a lower 12.6-inch touchscreen.

Elsewhere, there’s a wireless smartphone charger, a ten-speaker audio system, and a four-zone climate control system. Other highlights include an ambient lighting system and an auto-dimming rearview mirror.

An assortment of options will be available including leather, a third-row, and a 22-speaker premium audio system with Dolby Atmos technology. Customers can also get a heated steering wheel as well as heated, ventilated, and massaging front seats.

Tech That Watches Your Back

The crossover comes standard with an air suspension as well as the DreamDrive 2 suite of driver assistance systems. It includes Adaptive Cruise Control, Automatic Emergency Braking, and Drive Assist (Lane Centering).

There’s also Lane Departure Protection, Front & Rear Cross Traffic Protection, and Blind Spot Monitoring with Active Intervention. Rounding out the highlights are Speed Limit Assist, Traffic Sign Recognition, Safe Exit Warning, and High Beam Assist.

While that’s a pretty comprehensive list, buyers can upgrade to DreamDrive 2 Premium or DreamDrive 2 Pro. The latter allows for hands-free driving as well as remote automatic parking.

Performance and Range

Power is provided by an 89 kWh battery pack that feeds a dual-motor all-wheel-drive system developing up to 560 hp (418 kW / 568 PS). That’s 268 hp (200 kW / 272 PS) less than the Grand Touring, but the crossover can hit 60 mph (96 km/h) in four seconds flat.

The Touring has an EPA-estimated range of up to 337 miles (542 km), which trails the Grand Touring by 113 miles (182 km). That’s a pretty significant difference, but the 300 kW DC fast charging capability enables the crossover to get 200 miles (322 km) of range in as little as 15 minutes.

If you want to take advantage of the native NACS port and use a Tesla Supercharger, you’ll be limited to 220 kW. That’s a bit of a bummer, but it’s still relatively speedy.

What Will It Cost You?

Pricing starts at $79,900 before a $1,650 destination fee. This makes it significantly cheaper than the Gravity Grand Touring, which begins at $94,900.

In Canada, pricing starts at $113,500 and this includes a $2,300 destination fee, a $200 documentation fee, and a $100 federal air conditioning tax.

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., amid fog on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators began debating how to reduce health care costs for Americans during a hearing Wednesday, where experts’ varied recommendations and comments from lawmakers previewed the rocky and potentially long path ahead. 

Republicans on the Finance Committee argued the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has led to a spike in health insurance costs for individuals  that shouldn’t be offset by tax credits any longer. 

Democrats urged their colleagues to extend the enhanced subsidies for at least another year to give Congress more time to address larger, more complex issues within the country’s health insurance and health care systems. 

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, said the hearing marked “the first step in building the foundation for” health care reform.

“We need both short-term and long-term solutions,” Crapo said. “In the short term, we cannot simply throw good money after bad policy. If we keep advancing a system that drives up premiums, we will make this problem even harder to solve.”

“Instead, we should set the groundwork for giving Americans more control over their health care choices,” Crapo added. “Rather than accepting the current system of giving billions of taxpayer dollars to insurers, we should consider providing financial assistance directly to consumers through health savings accounts, which are now available on the Obamacare exchanges through a provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

Such tax-advantaged accounts are used to save money to pay for medical expenses and generally are used in conjunction with a high-deductible insurance plan, but an HSA “is a trust/custodial account and is not health insurance,” according to the Congressional Research Service.

The ACA, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010, overhauled the U.S. health care system with the intent of reducing high rates of uninsured people and ending insurance industry practices such as exclusions based on pre-existing conditions and the sale of policies with high costs and skimpy coverage. The law also expanded Medicaid and, for individual coverage, introduced the health insurance exchanges, or marketplaces, that now are at issue.

According to the health organization KFF, the number of uninsured Americans fell from about 14% to 16% in the years preceding passage of the law to a record low of 7.7% in 2023.

Pessimism about health care action

Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the panel, rebuked Republicans for focusing on other policy areas throughout the year instead of making improvements to health care.

“Sitting on your hands has consequences,” he said. 

Wyden doesn’t see a way for Congress to extend the enhanced tax credits set to expire at the end of the year for people who get their health insurance from the ACA marketplace, despite Democrats pressing for that during the 43-day government shutdown that ended in mid-November. 

Wyden expressed support for working with Republican senators to address health insurance companies’ structure, though he said he is “skeptical” his GOP colleagues will actually approve legislation on that particular issue in the months ahead. 

“Now if they are serious about taking on the crooks that dominate big insurance, like UnitedHealthcare, I’m all in,” Wyden said. “In my view that starts with a laser focus on lower costs for consumers, going after fraud where it truly exists, and cracking down on middlemen.”

‘Very little that this Congress can do’

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president at the center-right American Action Forum and former chief economist at the Council for Economic Advisers during the President George W. Bush administration, told the committee the structure of the Affordable Care Act poses problems. 

“As a piece of health policy, economic policy and budget policy, the ACA has always been a troubling construct,” Holtz-Eakin said, later adding there is “very little that this Congress can do to change the outlook” for 2026. 

Holtz-Eakin testified that Congress is long “overdue for a real rethinking of health care policy at the federal level” that he believes should focus on two primary areas. 

The first is to “rationalize the insurance subsidies” and the second is to address what he referred to as “high-value care,” which he said should include Medicare, the health program that covers 69 million Americans over 65 and some people with disabilities. 

“Medicare is a great budgetary threat, and so I encourage the committee and the Congress as a whole to take a hard look at that and make some progress toward better health care outcomes and better budgetary outcomes,” Holtz-Eakin said.  

Jason Levitis, senior fellow of the Health Policy Division at the left-leaning Urban Institute and a Treasury employee who led the ACA implementation at the department during the Obama administration, urged lawmakers to address the “too complicated and segmented” health insurance marketplace. 

Levitis said the best short-term option for Congress would be to extend the enhanced tax credits for ACA enrollees during 2026, despite the time crunch. 

“At this point the only feasible option is a clean extension of the existing enhancements,” Levitis said. “The marketplaces have already built that option and have been preparing for months for the possibility of an extension.” 

Former Trump adviser says ACA ‘failed’

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and a former special assistant to President Donald Trump at the White House National Economic Council, said bluntly that the Affordable Care Act has “failed.”

“The law entrenched an inefficient insurance-dominated health sector with massive subsidies flowing straight from the Treasury to health companies,” Blase said. 

The subsidies for ACA marketplace plans, he said, were “ill-designed and inflationary,” urging lawmakers not to extend them for another year.  

“The enrollee share of the premium is capped regardless of the total premium. When enrollees pay only a small slice of the premium or no premium at all, insurers face almost no price discipline,” Blase said. “Insurers can raise premiums knowing the taxpayers will absorb almost all of the increase.”

Blase said he believes the ACA’s regulations on health insurance companies are one of the reasons costs have spiked. 

“For example, under the medical loss ratio, insurers must spend a minimum share of premium revenue on medical claims. In other words, to increase profits, insurers must increase premiums,” Blase said. “The ACA’s essential health benefits require plans to cover the same set of services regardless of what people want or need. These rules increase premiums and wasteful spending.”

The medical loss ratio was included in the ACA in response to insurers who spent “a substantial portion” of premiums on administrative costs and profits, including executive salaries, overhead and marketing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

‘We all believe we need to reform’

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters separately from the hearing the debate over how to restructure health insurance to bring down costs has highlighted the “differences of opinion” among GOP lawmakers. 

“We’ve got a lot of people who have strong views, but the one thing that unites us is we all believe we need to reform, and we’ve got to do something to drive health care costs down,” Thune said. 

GOP leaders, he added, are “looking for solutions that will lower health care premiums, not increase them. And what we see today is just constant inflationary impacts from some of these policies of the past.”

Trump, who would need to support any health care overhaul bill for it to move through Congress, wrote in a social media post Tuesday that he wants lawmakers to send money straight to Americans, without detail on how that would work. 

“THE ONLY HEALTHCARE I WILL SUPPORT OR APPROVE IS SENDING THE MONEY DIRECTLY BACK TO THE PEOPLE, WITH NOTHING GOING TO THE BIG, FAT, RICH INSURANCE COMPANIES, WHO HAVE MADE $TRILLIONS, AND RIPPED OFF AMERICA LONG ENOUGH,” Trump wrote. “THE PEOPLE WILL BE ALLOWED TO NEGOTIATE AND BUY THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, INSURANCE. POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Congress, do not waste your time and energy on anything else. This is the only way to have great Healthcare in America!!! GET IT DONE, NOW. President DJT”

Reading Time: 7 minutes

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

The most powerful Republican in Wisconsin stepped up to a lectern that was affixed with a sign reading, “Pro-Women Pro-Babies Pro-Life Rally.”

“One of the reasons that I ran for office was to protect the lives of unborn children,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told the cheering crowd gathered in the ornate rotunda of the state Capitol. They were there on a June day in 2019 to watch him sign four anti-abortion bills and to demand that the state’s Democratic governor sign them. (The governor did not.)

“Legislative Republicans are committed to protecting the preborn because we know life is the most basic human right,” Vos promised. “We will continue to do everything we can to protect the unborn, to protect innocent lives.”

Now, however, Vos has parted with some in the national anti-abortion movement in its push for a particular measure to protect life: the life of new mothers.

Many anti-abortion Republicans have supported new state laws and policies to extend Medicaid coverage to women for a year after giving birth, up from 60 days. The promise of free health care for a longer span can help convince women in financial crises to proceed with their pregnancies, rather than choose abortion, proponents say. And many health experts have identified the year after childbirth as a precarious time for mothers who can suffer from a host of complications, both physical and mental.

Legislation to extend government-provided health care coverage for up to one year for low-income new moms has been passed in 48 other states — red, blue and purple. Not in Arkansas, where enough officials have balked. And not in Wisconsin, where the limit remains two months. And that’s only because of Vos.

The Wisconsin Senate passed legislation earlier this year that would increase Medicaid postpartum coverage to 12 months. In the state Assembly, 30 Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation, and there is more than enough bipartisan support to pass the bill in that chamber.

But Vos, who has been speaker for nearly 13 years and whose campaign funding decisions are considered key to victory in elections, controls the Assembly. And, according to insiders at the state Capitol, he hasn’t allowed a vote on the Senate bill or the Assembly version, burying it deep in a committee that barely meets: Regulatory Licensing Reform.

Vos’ resistance has put him and some of his anti-abortion colleagues in the odd position of having to reconcile their support for growing families with the failure of the Assembly to pass a bill aimed at helping new moms stay healthy.

“If we can’t get something like this done, then I don’t know what I’m doing in the Legislature,” Republican Rep. Patrick Snyder, the bill’s author and an ardent abortion foe, said in February in a Senate hearing.

Reached by phone, Vos declined to discuss the issue with ProPublica and referred questions to his spokesperson, who then did not respond to calls or emails. Explaining his opposition, Vos once said, “We already have enough welfare in Wisconsin.” And in vowing to never expand Medicaid, he has said the state should reserve the program only for “those who truly need it.”

His stance on extending benefits for new mothers has troubled health care professionals, social workers and some of his constituents. They have argued and pleaded with him and, in some cases, cast doubt on his principles. ProPublica requested public comments to his office from January 2024 to June 2025 and found that the overwhelming majority of the roughly 200 messages objected to his stance.

“I know this is supported by many of your Republican colleagues. As the ‘party of the family’ your opposition is abhorrent. Get with it,” one Wisconsin resident told the speaker via a contact form on Vos’ website.

Another person who reached out to Vos chastised him for providing “lame excuses,” writing: “The women of Wisconsin deserve better from a party that CLAIMS to be ‘pro-life’ but in practice, could care less about women and children. We deserve better than you.”

 ‘A commonsense bill’

Donna Rozar is among the Wisconsin Republicans who staunchly oppose abortion but also support Medicaid for new mothers.

While serving as a state representative in 2023, she sponsored legislation to extend the coverage up to one year. Her effort mirrored what was happening in other states following the end of Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. Activists on both sides of the abortion issue recognized that there could be a rise in high-risk births and sought to protect mothers.

“I saw this as a pro-life bill to help mothers have coverage for up to a year, in order to let them know that they would have the help they needed if there were any postpartum complications with their pregnancy,” said Rozar, a retired registered nurse. “I thought it was a commonsense bill.”

Vos, she said, would not allow the bill to proceed to a vote even though it had 66 co-sponsors in the 99-person chamber. “The speaker of the state Assembly in Wisconsin is a very powerful individual and sets the agenda,” she said.

Rozar recalled having numerous “frustrating” conversations with Vos as she tried to persuade him to advance the legislation. “He was just so opposed to entitlement programs and any additional expenditures of Medicaid dollars that he just stuck to that principle. Vehemently.”

Vos has argued as well that through other options, including the Affordable Care Act, Wisconsinites have been able to find coverage. While some new mothers qualify for no-cost premiums under certain ACA plans, not all do. Even with no-cost premiums, ACA plans typically require a deductible or co-payments. And next year, when enhanced premium tax credits are due to expire, few people will be eligible for $0 net premiums unless Congress acts to change that.

Rozar lost her race for reelection in August 2024 after redistricting but returned to the state Capitol in February for a Senate hearing to continue advocating for the extension. She was joined by a variety of medical experts who explained the extreme and life-threatening risks women can face in the first year after giving birth.

They warned that without extended Medicaid coverage, women who need treatment and medication for postpartum depression, drug addiction, hypertension, diabetes, blood clots, heart conditions or other ailments may be unable to get them.

One legislative analysis found that on average each month, 700 women fell off the Medicaid rolls in Wisconsin two months after giving birth or experiencing a miscarriage because they no longer met the income eligibility rules.

Justine Brown-Schabel, a community health worker in Dane County, told senators of a new mother diagnosed with gestational diabetes who lost Medicaid coverage.

“She was no longer able to afford her diabetes medication,’’ Brown-Schabel said. “Not only did this affect her health but the health of her infant, as she was unable to properly feed her child due to a diminishing milk supply.”

She described another new mother, one who had severe postpartum depression, poor appetite, significant weight loss, insomnia and mental exhaustion. Sixty days of Medicaid coverage, Brown-Schabel said, “are simply not enough” in a situation like that.

Currently, new moms with household incomes up to 306% of the poverty line (or $64,719 a year for a single mom and baby) can stay on Medicaid for 60 days after birth. But the mother must be below the poverty line ($21,150 for that mom and baby) to continue with coverage beyond that. The new legislation would extend the current protections to a year.

Bipartisan unity on the legislation is so great that Pro-Life Wisconsin and the lobbying arm of the abortion provider Planned Parenthood, which offers some postpartum services, both registered in support of it before the Senate.

“It’s something that we can do and something that’s achievable given the bipartisan support for it,” Matt Sande, a lobbyist for Pro-Life Wisconsin, said in an interview. “It’s not going to break the bank.”

Once fully implemented, the extended coverage would cost the state $9.4 million a year, according to the state Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The state ended fiscal year 2025 with a budget surplus of $4.6 billion.

With the Assembly bill buried by Vos, Democratic Rep. Robyn Vining tried in July to force the issue with a bit of a legislative end run. She rose during floor debate on the state budget and proposed adding the Medicaid extension to the mammoth spending bill.

All of the Republicans who had signed on to the Medicaid bill, except one absent member, voted to table the proposal, sinking the amendment. They included Snyder, the bill’s sponsor, who in an email to ProPublica labeled the Democrats’ move to raise the issue during floor debate “a stunt.”

“Democrats were simply more concerned with playing political games to garner talking points of who voted against what, than they were in supporting the budget negotiated by their Governor,” he said.

Said Vining of the Republicans who tabled the amendment: “They’re taking marching orders from the speaker instead of representing their constituents.”

Well-funded opposition

Vos’ opposition echoes that of influential conservative groups, including the Foundation for Government Accountability, a Florida think tank that promotes “work over welfare.” Its affiliated lobbying arm openly opposed the Medicaid extension for new moms when it first surfaced in Wisconsin in 2021, though it has not registered opposition since then. Reached recently, a spokesperson for the foundation declined to comment.

Over the past decade, the foundation has received more than $11 million from a charitable fund run by billionaire Richard Uihlein, founder of the Wisconsin-based shipping supplies company Uline. In recent years, Uihlein and his wife, Liz, also have been prolific political donors nationally and in the Midwest, with Vos among the beneficiaries.

Since 2020, Liz Uihlein has given over $6 million to Wisconsin’s Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, which is considered a key instrument of Vos’ power. And in February 2024, she donated $500,000 to Vos’ personal political campaign at a time when he was immersed in a tough intraparty skirmish.

One concern cited by extension opponents such as the Foundation for Government Accountability is that Medicaid coverage for new moms could be used for health issues not directly related to giving birth. Questions over how expansive the coverage would be spilled into debate in Arkansas in a Senate committee in April of this year.

“Can you explain what that coverage is? Is it just like full Medicaid for any problem that they have, or is it somehow specific to the pregnancy and complications?” asked GOP Sen. John Payton.

A state health official told him new mothers could receive a full range of benefits.

“Like, if they needed a knee replacement, I mean, it’d cover it?” Payton said.

“Yes,” came the reply.

The bill failed in a voice vote.

In Wisconsin, no lawmaker voiced any such concern during the February Senate hearing, which was marked by only positive feedback. In fact, one lawmaker and some medical experts in attendance openly snickered at the thought that Arkansas — a state that ranks low in public health measurements — might pass legislation before Wisconsin, leaving it the lone holdout.

Ultimately, the Wisconsin Senate approved the legislation 32-1 in April, sending it along to the Assembly to languish and leaving Wisconsin still in the company of Arkansas on the issue.

Despite the setbacks and Vos’ firm opposition, Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin and other anti-abortion activists are not giving up. He thinks Vos can be persuaded and the bill could move out of its purgatory this winter.

“I’m telling you that we’re hopeful,” Sande said.

Rozar is, too, even though she is well aware of Vos’ unwavering stance. “He might have egg on his face if he let it go,” she said.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

He vowed to ‘protect the unborn.’ Now he’s blocking a bill to expand Medicaid for Wisconsin’s new moms. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Maryland Democratic Gov. Wes Moore spent a few minutes sorting donated food before signing an executive order in late October declaring a state of emergency to allow for distribution of food aid. As the federal government reopens, questions remain about how states will be reimbursed for the costs they incurred. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

Though Congress ended the record-setting federal government shutdown, many questions remain for states that were already wading through seismic federal changes.

One major uncertainty: whether and how states will be reimbursed for the costs they incurred, as they have been in previous shutdowns. And for the longer term, the shutdown offered a glimpse into the funding challenges facing states. They’ll have to rely more on their own money and staff to keep federal programs going even at a time when many face their own budget problems.

That’s a top concern for the federal food stamp program, known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Amid conflicting federal guidance during the shutdown, states reacted in different ways: Some issued partial benefit payments, others sent aid to food banks to keep people from going hungry.

But even after the government reopening restores SNAP aid, other challenges loom. The major tax and spending law enacted this summer tied SNAP funding to state error rates, which measure the accuracy of benefit payments. Advocates fear the shutdown will increase error rates because of conflicting federal guidance.

Air travel, SNAP benefits, back pay at issue as federal government slowly reopens

“States are really worried,” said Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research & Action Center, a nonprofit working to address poverty-related hunger.

And states have been rushing to inform rural residents, veterans and older adults that they will soon be forced to meet work requirements or lose SNAP benefits. It’s just the first in a wave of cutbacks to the nation’s largest food assistance program required under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that President Donald Trump signed in July.

FitzSimons said the shutdown highlighted the importance of SNAP and how “untenable” many of the upcoming changes will prove for states. For now, states are working to get benefits to people immediately, and then will focus more on questions of reimbursement and ongoing changes to SNAP.

“The hope is that states will be able to move quickly and then turn their attention to all the changes,” she said.

While public attention has centered on the shutdown chaos in recent weeks, more fundamental changes are occurring outside the spotlight, said Eric Schnurer, founder and president of Public Works, a consulting firm specializing in government performance and efficiency.

“The ground is shifting under their [states’] feet even as this goes on,” he said. “Even if the Trump administration and his policies were to pass on in another three years, there are serious structural changes in the relationship between state and federal government.”

Since taking office, the Trump administration has stripped states and cities of billions of dollars that Congress approved for education, infrastructure and energy projects. And the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act mandates deep cuts to social service programs, including Medicaid and food stamps.

Under the law, states will be required to pay a greater share of administering SNAP in the coming years. That requirement, along with eligibility changes, could result in millions of Americans losing benefits.

“I think the public in general got a taste of what that might look like over the past month,” Schnurer said, referencing the shutdown’s first-ever disruption to SNAP benefits.

State-federal strain

The legislation to reopen the government approved by Congress and signed by the president this week says that states shall be reimbursed for expenses “that would have been paid” by the federal government during the shutdown.

“So that sounds promising for states,” said Marcia Howard, executive director of Federal Funds Information for States, which analyzes how federal policymaking impacts states.

But it’s unclear how that language will be interpreted. For example, states that sent money to food banks for emergency food assistance are less likely to be made whole compared with states that sent funds through existing federal programs like SNAP, she said.

California dedicated $80 million in state funds and deployed the National Guard to food banks across the state. But Virginia launched a temporary state-level version of the federal food stamp program.

Previous administrations have been more flexible with federal funds, making it easier for states to receive funding or reimbursement, Howard said.

“This administration is really more holding states’ feet to the fire perhaps than other administrations have. So I think they’ll be less permissive in who and how they reimburse,” she said.

It could take weeks or months before states know the full fallout from the shutdown, especially with food assistance.

“[States] did such different things, and I think there’s going to be a fair bit of back-and-forth: should this be covered? Should this not be covered?” Howard said.

The shutdown and its aftermath underscore the ongoing strain between state and federal governments, said Lisa Parshall, a professor of political science at Daemen University in New York.

Federal uncertainty can cause state leaders to be more cautious about their own budgets — similar to how an economic downturn can decrease consumer spending, she said.

“There’s a delay of services, there’s a diminishment of capacity and partnership, and those things might be harder to quantify when you’re talking about what is the cost of the shutdown,” she said. “But I think those are real costs.”

And the end of the shutdown does not extinguish those tensions.

“In some ways, even though the shutdown is over, things are not going to go back to ‘normal,’” she said.

More changes coming

Aside from spending cuts and new administrative costs, Trump’s July law made major tax code changes poised to cost many states, said William Glasgall, public finance adviser at the Volcker Alliance, a nonprofit that supports public sector workers.

Most states use the federal tax code as a basis for their own income tax structures, so changes at the federal level can trickle down to state tax systems or states can choose a different structure to avoid those changes.

Last month, a Massachusetts budget official said federal tax changes would cost the state $650 million in revenue this budget year.

So even with the government back open, states have to plan for some level of unpredictability, Glasgall said. And the future of entire agencies like the Department of Education remain up in the air, he noted.

“So there’s still a lot of uncertainty, even with this bill,” he said.

On Wednesday, state budget analysts briefed Maryland lawmakers on the $1.4 billion budget gap they could face as they head into the 2026 legislative session.

That figure does not include the fallout from the federal government shutdown, which may not be known for months, according to Maryland Matters.

In late October, Democratic Gov. Wes Moore declared an emergency and directed $10 million in state funds toward food banks and pantries. Earlier this month, he announced $62 million in state funds would be deployed directly to SNAP recipients.

Rhyan Lake, a Moore spokesperson, told Stateline that Maryland expects the federal government to reimburse the state for its SNAP expenditures during the shutdown.

But lawmakers are still gearing up for a hit from major federal changes.

In addition to cuts from Trump’s domestic tax and spending law, Maryland has lost about 15,000 federal jobs, budget officials said. But many federal workers who took buyouts were paid through September. And the shutdown caused a pause in federal employment data, potentially concealing the true impact.

State Sen. James Rosapepe, Democratic chair of the joint Spending Affordability Committee, said he’s worried the state has only seen the beginning of its federally induced fiscal challenges. He also noted that this week’s shutdown-ending legislation only assures the government remains open through January, meaning another shutdown could be just a couple months away.

“We’re less than a year into the administration, and the effects of things they’ve already done don’t seem to have flowed through yet to the data that we have, which leads me to believe that the worst is yet to come,” he said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

It seems Lucid just can’t stop tripping over its own shoelaces when it comes to end-of-lease charges. What began as a few isolated complaints has grown into a steady chorus of frustration, as more customers share stories online about the surprisingly steep bills arriving when their leases wrap up.

Read: Lucid Wants Thousands In Lease Charges For Scratches And A Missing Key Fob

The latest example might be the most egregious we’ve seen so far, and cases like this are already pushing some customers to abandon plans for leasing a Lucid altogether.

Mounting Lease Complaints

As we’ve seen in several recent instances, the first charge this customer faced was for a front bumper replacement. According to the inspector’s report, when the Air was returned, 10 small rock chips, a one-inch crack, and a one-inch scratch were deemed enough to justify replacing the entire bumper. The bill came in at $2,400.

However, this isn’t the most ridiculous charge. The owner notes that the right taillight had a small hairline crack along a glue line. They mentioned that the crack isn’t noticeable unless you zoom in, and that it’s so small it doesn’t even allow for any water ingress. Despite this, they’ve been charged $4,900 for a replacement.

The lessee was also billed $100 for minor damage to the left taillight, which seems inconsistent given the note that the entire unit would be replaced, something that can’t reasonably be done for that amount. Completing the tally was a $200 repair for a seven-inch scrape on the left front wheel.

The automaker’s leasing division, Lucid Financial Services, partners with Bank of America, which is believed to contract independent inspection firms to evaluate vehicles when leases conclude.

The Backlash Builds

Stories like this are taking a toll on Lucid’s image. On Reddit, one user said they had planned to switch from a Rivian to a Lucid when their current lease ended but changed their mind after seeing how these charges were handled. They added that they’d only reconsider “if Lucid get their act together.”

Another commenter said they canceled their Gravity order “100% because of” the excessive end-of-lease fees.

What Lucid Has To Say

It appears Lucid is aware of growing customer discontent. In an email recently sent to a leasing customer and shared to Carscoops, the car manufacturer acknowledged the issues and clarified what end-of-lease charges are appropriate:

“At Lucid Motors, we strive to deliver an exceptional experience at every stage of ownership, including the conclusion of your lease. We understand that some customers have encountered concerns or confusion during the lease-return process, and we want to acknowledge those experiences directly,” the letter reads.

“We sincerely apologize for any frustration or inconvenience you may have experienced. Your feedback has made it clear that, in some cases, our communication, inspection, and billing processes did not meet the standards of transparency and fairness that we hold ourselves to.

“Lucid is currently reviewing all recent lease-end charges to ensure they are accurate, appropriate, and consistent with our published policies. We are also working closely with our finance and inspection partners to improve clarity in inspection reports, final billing, and the overall return experience.

“In addition to these measures, please note that underbody plate scratches and any scratches smaller than 3.5 inches on the body of the vehicle are not subject to charges. We have also eliminated charges for wheel scrapes that are less than 3.5 inches, and reduced charges for wheel scrapes between 3.5 inches and 12 inches to $200. Additionally, there will be no charges for any interior stain that is less than 3.5 inches.

“If you believe that a charge you received may be inaccurate or would like to request a review, please contact Lucid Financial Services at 1-833-423-0369.

“Thank you for being part of the Lucid community and for giving us the opportunity to make this right. Your trust and satisfaction are of the utmost importance to us.”

While Lucid’s acknowledgment and policy adjustments suggest an attempt to regain trust, the lasting effect will likely depend on whether future lease customers see tangible change rather than another round of apologies.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin resumed scheduling abortions on Monday after a nearly monthlong pause due to federal Medicaid funding cuts in President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill that took effect at the beginning of October.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin said it was able to resume scheduling abortions as of noon on Monday because it no longer fits the definition of a “prohibited entity” under the new federal law that took effect this month and can receive Medicaid funds.

The organization said it dropped its designation as an “essential community provider” as defined under the Affordable Care Act. Dropping the designation will not result in changes to the cost for abortions or other services or affect the organization’s funding, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin President and CEO Tanya Atkinson said.

“At this point, in all of our research and analysis, we really shouldn’t see much of an impact on patient access,” she said. “If relinquishing this does ultimately impact our bottom line, then we will have to understand what that path forward is.”

A national fight over abortion funding

Abortion funding has been under attack across the U.S., particularly for affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider. The abortion landscape has shifted frequently since the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 that allowed states to ban abortion. Currently, 12 states do not allow it at any stage of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more ban it after about six weeks’ gestation.

Planned Parenthood has warned that about half its clinics that provide abortion could be closed nationwide due to the ban in the new federal law on Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood for services other than abortion.

Wisconsin, where abortion is legal but the Republican-controlled Legislature has passed numerous laws limiting access, was the only state where Planned Parenthood paused all abortions because of the new federal law, Atkinson said.

Because of the complexities and varieties of state abortion laws, Planned Parenthood affiliates are responding to the new federal law in a variety of ways, Atkinson said. In Arizona, for example, Planned Parenthood stopped accepting Medicaid but continued to provide abortions.

The move in Wisconsin is “clearly aimed at sidestepping” the federal law, Wisconsin Right to Life said.

“Planned Parenthood’s abortion-first business model underscores why taxpayer funding should never support organizations that make abortion a priority,” said Heather Weininger, executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life. “Women in difficult circumstances deserve compassionate, life-affirming care — the kind of support the pro-life movement is committed to offering.”

Impact on Wisconsin abortion clinics

In Wisconsin, pausing abortions for the past 26 days meant that women who would normally go to clinics in the southeastern corner of the state instead had to look for other options, including traveling to Chicago, which is within a three-hour drive of the Planned Parenthood facilities.

Affiliated Medical Services and Care for All also provide abortions at clinics in Milwaukee.

Atkinson said it was “really, really difficult to say” how many women were affected by the pause in services. She did not have numbers on how many women who wanted to have an abortion since the pause went into effect had to seek services elsewhere.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin serves about 50,000 people, and about 60% of them are covered by Medicaid, the organization said.

Given those numbers, the priority was on finding a way to continue receiving Medicaid funding and dropping the “essential community provider” status, Atkinson said.

Wisconsin is part of a multistate federal lawsuit challenging the provision in the law. A federal appeals court in September said the government could halt the payments while a court challenge to the provision moves ahead.

Ramifications for Medicaid

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin cited a Sept. 29 court filing on behalf of U.S. Health and Human Services that said family planning organizations could continue billing Medicaid if they gave up either their tax-exempt status or the “essential community provider” designation.

By giving up that designation, it no longer fits the definition of “prohibited entity” under the federal law and can continue to receive federal Medicaid funds, the organization said. Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin is not giving up its tax-exempt status.

The “essential community provider” designation was originally given to organizations to help make it easier for them to be considered in-network for billing with private health insurers, Planned Parenthood said.

Atkinson called it a “nuanced provision” of the law and she does not anticipate that giving it up will affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to continue providing abortions and other services.

Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of services including cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment. Federal Medicaid money was already not paying for abortion, but affiliates relied on Medicaid to stay afloat. Services other than abortion are expected to expand in light of the new law.

Planned Parenthood performed 3,727 abortions in Wisconsin between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, the group said.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin resumes offering abortions after a nearly monthlong pause is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The roof of the Hotel Verdant in Downtown Racine is topped with a green roof planted with sedum and covered with solar panels. (Wisconsin Examiner photo)

The news that $130 million in already-committed clean-energy funding for Wisconsin is on the chopping block is not abstract politics. It pulls real tools out of Wisconsin homes, schools, farms, and shop floors — right as our state is building momentum. The result is simple: higher bills, fewer choices, and lost jobs.

In a purple state like ours, climate action has succeeded because it’s kitchen-table common sense. It lowers costs, creates good local jobs, and protects the air and water families depend on. Our playbook is pragmatic — align smart policy with market innovation, center justice, and let businesses, workers, tribes and frontline communities lead together. Clawing back funds mid-stream breaks that compact and injects uncertainty just when we need reliability and speed.

What’s at stake here and now

Across Wisconsin, 82 clean-energy projects are moving forward: EV-charging corridors that support tourism and commerce from Superior to Kenosha; solar on schools and farms that cuts operating costs and keeps dollars local; grid upgrades that reduce outages for households and manufacturers. Clean energy already supports more than 71,000 Wisconsin jobs, with manufacturers, contractors and building trades poised to add tens of thousands more if the rules stay steady.

This is not coastal hype — it’s Menomonee Valley and the Fox Valley. Companies like Ingeteam in Milwaukee build components that power wind and EV projects nationwide. Give our manufacturers clear, predictable rules and Wisconsin will keep making core parts of the transition -— batteries, solar panels, wind components, EV chargers, and smart-grid equipment -— right here at home.

Schools and local governments are also using direct-pay to put solar on rooftops, electrify buses, and cut fuel and maintenance. Green Homeowners United and similar groups are helping thousands of households -— including many lower-income homeowners of color — tap rebates that reduce bills and carbon at the same time. These are the practical tools that stretch tight budgets and improve health outcomes in neighborhoods that have carried the burden the longest.

The real cost of policy whiplash

Rolling back incentives is a hidden tax on working families — up to $400 more a year on energy without the savings tools people are using now. With AI and data centers accelerating demand, the cheapest, fastest reliability gains come from efficiency, storage, and renewables. Cut those tools and we invite more price volatility and more outage risk — exactly what Wisconsin manufacturers, hospitals and farms can’t afford.

The “Big, Broken Bill” passed in Washington goes further, weakening EPA pollution standards and letting big polluters sidestep responsibility. That doesn’t eliminate costs; it shifts them to families in the form of asthma, missed school days and medical bills. It’s not fiscal conservatism to socialize pollution costs while privatizing short-term profits.

And for farmers, whose energy and conservation projects were finally penciling out with IRA tools, canceling support mid-contract leaves family farms holding the bag after planning in good faith. That’s not how you build durable rural economies.

Momentum that continues even if funds are cut

Here’s the other half of the story: Wisconsin’s transition won’t stop because some programs are attacked. Market forces, including  the declining cost of renewables and storage, efficiency that pays for itself and corporate and municipal sustainability commitments, continue to drive projects. Public-private partnerships, rural co-ops, tribal governments, school districts and village halls are working together to reduce risk, share data, and scale what works. That coalition will keep moving.

But let’s be clear: Clawbacks and moving goalposts slow us down and raise costs. They strand planning, freeze hiring and deter investment — especially in manufacturing corridors that depend on multi-year production schedules. If Congress wants to improve programs, fine. Just don’t pull the rug out mid-project.

Purple-state practicality: Results over rhetoric

Wisconsin’s approach is neither red nor blue; it’s results-based:

• Lower bills and stronger reliability through weatherization, heat pumps, rooftop and community solar and batteries that keep homes and Main Street businesses running during heat waves and deep freezes.
• Good local jobs in design, construction, electrical, HVAC, machining and advanced manufacturing.
• Cleaner air from electrified school buses and efficient buildings, health benefits that show up in fewer sick days and lower costs.
• Fairness by ensuring benefits land first where burdens have been heaviest.

We’ve also learned to say no when it matters and yes to better options. When a $2 billion methane gas plant was proposed, business and civic leaders asked basic questions: Is this the least-cost, least-risk path for ratepayers? Would it lock us into volatile fuel prices just as renewables, storage, demand response and efficiency are scaling? Pushing for a cleaner, more affordable portfolio wasn’t ideology. It was risk management.

A constructive path forward

• Keep the tools that help Wisconsin build here, hire here, and save here. Don’t rip away commitments families, schools, farms and manufacturers are already using.
• Provide certainty so manufacturers can invest in people and equipment. Certainty is economic development.
• Target affordability and reliability: Expand programs that lower bills, reduce outages, and prioritize investments in communities that have waited the longest for cleaner air and safer housing.
• Let locals lead: Support direct-pay and streamlined approvals for schools, municipalities, tribes and rural co-ops to deploy projects faster and cheaper.

Wisconsin has the talent, the supply chains — more than 350 in-state clean-energy companies — and the tradition of stewardship to lead the clean-energy economy. If we stay focused on trust, collaboration and measurable results, Wisconsin’s green momentum will outpace politics.

Don’t make Wisconsinites pay more to get less. Let’s build it here, power it here and prosper here.

John Imes is co-founder and executive director of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative and village president of Shorewood Hills. He will speak Oct. 22 on the American Sustainable Business Network national panel “Purple State, Green Momentum” — how Wisconsin’s pragmatic climate playbook lowers bills, creates good local jobs, and protects our air and water.

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Although President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” offers new tax deductions and credits across different income levels, low-income households – the bottom 20% of income earners – are largely excluded from any significant tax benefits. 

“It’s particularly shocking because the law is so big,” said Elaine Maag, a senior fellow at The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Typically, when trillions of dollars are spent, you see it really spread across the income distribution.”

The bill was signed into law over the summer.

Benefits that people with low incomes do receive may be outweighed when considered alongside other provisions in the bill, said Andrew Reschovsky, professor emeritus of public affairs and applied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

This is especially true of cuts to safety net programs such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, Reschovsky said.

“This is the dilemma – if you count those things in with the tax side, the net will be that a lot of people are going to be worse off.”

Credits and deductions

A credit is an amount subtracted directly from the tax you owe while a deduction reduces the amount of income that can be taxed. Both can help keep more money in taxpayers’ pockets. 

The bill establishes new credits and deductions. 

The bill increases the: 

• Child Tax Credit from $2,000 per qualifying child to $2,200.  
• Child and Dependent Care Credit, which allows taxpayers to subtract certain costs associated with caring for children under 13 or dependents incapable of self-care. 

The bill introduces new deductions for:

• Workers in jobs where tips are common, allowing them to deduct up to $25,000 of tip income. 
• Individuals who work overtime, allowing them to deduct up to $12,500 of overtime pay. 
• People 65 and older, allowing them to deduct $6,000. 

Limitations

These changes may appear to help people who are financially struggling. But the bill affects federal taxes, so its new deductions and credits apply only to income taxable by the federal government. 

People with low income generally owe little or no federal income tax. 

Older low-income adults, for example, often rely primarily or entirely on Social Security benefits and are generally not subject to federal taxes. This means that a new $6,000 deduction would not benefit them, Rechovsky said.   

Rechovsky noted other reasons the new deductions are misleading or extremely narrow. 

“Yes, you’re a waiter and you benefit from not paying taxes on your tips,” he said. “But take someone in the same income range who works as a home health care worker – they don’t benefit at all.” 

Reschovsky also questions how those with low incomes would benefit from reducing the amount owed on overtime pay. 

“One of the reasons some people are low-income is that they’re lucky to get a 40-hour workweek,” he said. 

The same limitation applies to the new credits. 

An analysis by Maag estimates that in 2025 about 17 million children under 17 – or one in four – will receive less than the full value of the Child Tax Credit because their parents earn too little.

The bill also changes which families qualify based on citizenship status.  

The Child Tax Credit will be limited to children who are U.S. citizens and have at least one parent with a valid Social Security number. 

About 2 million U.S. citizen children will lose their Child Tax Credit because of this new requirement, Maag wrote, citing an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation. 

Safety nets

One benefit to people with low incomes from the bill is that it makes permanent many provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, including lower income tax rates and larger standard deductions. 

“It’s true across the board that if taxes go down, your income after taxes goes up,” Reschovsky said. 

But for those with low incomes, the increase is minimal and will likely be outweighed by changes to Medicaid, premium subsidies provided by the Affordable Care Act and changes to SNAP. 

For example, the lowest 10% of earners may see a $1,600 reduction in annual income and benefits, mainly due to cuts in Medicaid and SNAP, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. 

“It’s just that classic view … that, ‘Well, these people are just sucking on the teat of the federal government, so we’re going to just make it as hard as possible for them to do that, because they’re just freeloaders,’” said Anthony Myers, program director of the Riverworks Financial Clinic.

Where to get help

For people with incomes under $67,000, free tax assistance is available through programs such as the IRS’ Volunteer Income Tax Assistance, or VITA. 

VITA sites can be found using the IRS Free Tax Prep Help website. 

Maag and Myers recommend making appointments as soon as possible. 

In addition to serving as a VITA site, Riverworks Financial Clinic operates year-round as the City of Milwaukee Financial Empowerment Center. 

Residents of the city who are 18 years and older can get free one-on-one financial counseling there. 

“Anyone that’s struggling with any of these (One Big Beautiful Bill Act) provisions, we can assist them with navigating through this,” Myers said. 

Here’s how Trump’s new tax law affects people with low incomes is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, opened for new and returning college and university students on Oct. 1. Students typically have until June 1 to apply for the best chance of receiving aid.

The form connects students with loans, grants and scholarships through the U.S. Department of Education and your higher education institution. 

Students considering attending a two- or four-year college or university should fill out the FAFSA form, even if they haven’t committed to a school or are unsure whether they will pursue higher education. 

Getting started

Carole Trone serves on the board for College Goal Wisconsin, an organization that hosts FAFSA completion events around the state. She said the FAFSA process usually runs smoother when parents let their student take the lead. 

“It works best if the student starts their part of the application and then hands it over to the parent,” Trone said.

Students should first make an account, called a Federal Student Aid (FSA) ID. If a student is a dependent, at least one parent or guardian will need to make a Federal Student Aid ID and contribute to the form.

The Department of Education requires students to provide a Social Security number to fill out the FAFSA form. Contributing parents without a Social Security number can make an account but will need to check a box certifying they don’t have a Social Security number.

When creating a Federal Student Aid ID, Trone said, it’s important to double check that all information, including names and dates of birth, are correct. The Department of Education won’t be able to verify your information if these details are incorrect, which Trone said complicates the process.

If students or parents already have a Federal Student Aid ID, Trone said the ID stays with them forever and they should use the same account.  

Filling out FAFSA

What do I need to fill out the form

FAFSA requires certain information from students and parents to verify income, assets and financial need. 

The Department of Education will use applicants’ Social Security numbers to access their income with the Internal Revenue Service. Parents and students must give consent for the IRS to access information on their tax returns, even if an applicant doesn’t have tax returns to supply. 

The Department of Education recommends still having the most recent tax returns for information that isn’t imported from the IRS. 

The form also asks about assets – the current balance of cash, checking and saving accounts – and the net worth of any businesses and investments. 

Students will also need to provide a list of schools they’re interested in attending. Students should list all schools even if they aren’t committed. 

“The options that FASFA gives you is not just for four-year college, it’s for two-year college, it’s for a number of certification programs,” Trone said. “It doesn’t obligate you to anything.”

Types of aid

The types of federal aid you receive can be split into two main groups: loans and grants. The biggest difference is you need to pay back loans but not grants. Filling out your FAFSA form also helps you become eligible for need-based scholarships through your higher education institution.

Loans

You can make payments while enrolled at least part time (six credit hours, usually about two classes) in school but are not required to until after you graduate or go below six credit hours. After you do either of these, it triggers a six-month grace period before you’re required to make payments. 

The federal government offers several types of loans in two categories: Direct and Direct PLUS. 

The amount of interest on these loans depends on the year you take them out. The interest rate changes each year on July 1. 

Direct loans

Students can receive two kinds of Direct loans: subsidized and unsubsidized.

Subsidized loans mean no interest accumulates on the loan while in school or during your grace period, saving the student money in the long run. 

Unsubsidized loans accumulate interest beginning when the student takes out the loan. 

Direct PLUS

The Department of Education also offers Direct PLUS loans, which are federal loans that parents of dependent undergraduate students, graduate or professional students can use to help pay for school.

Parents of dependent students can take a Parent PLUS loan to support additional education costs that aren’t covered by other financial aid. 

This loan originally did not have a cap, but as a result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Parent PLUS loans are now capped at $20,000 per year or $65,000 over the course of an undergraduate school career.

Graduate PLUS loans, which were used to support graduate school education, will be eliminated starting in the 2026-27 school year. 

A new unsubsidized loan program is replacing Graduate PLUS. Students can borrow up to $20,500 annually, up to $100,000 over the course of graduate school. Students attending professional schools like medicine or law will be eligible to take out higher loans. 

Grants

Pell grants: Students in need of a lot of financial aid might qualify for a Pell grant. Unlike loans, these do not have to be repaid. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act expanded Pell grant eligibility to shorter workforce training programs. 

Financial need

The amount of aid you receive depends on your financial need. 

After a person submits a FAFSA form, the Department of Education considers several factors like income and other assets and generates a Student Aid Index that determines your financial need. The lower your Student Aid Index, the greater chance of receiving more aid. 

Colleges and universities look at factors like a student’s Student Aid Index, how many credits are being taken and tuition costs to decide how much aid a student will receive. 

Private loans?

Universities and advocates alike caution against using private loans whenever possible because of concerns about predatory lending, potentially high interest rates and a lack of repayment options and forgiveness.

Interest rates and other conditions of the loan often vary on factors like credit scores. If you need to take out a private loan, try to look at offers from several lenders to pick the best one. 

Where can I go for help?

College Goal Wisconsin is hosting events virtually and in several Milwaukee high schools to help students and parents complete the FAFSA form. Any students looking for help with a FAFSA form can attend, even if they don’t attend MPS. 

Trone said each student who attends is eligible to win one of 15 $1,000 scholarships.

Families who can’t make it to a help session can use resources on the College Goal Wisconsin website or the FAFSA YouTube page, Trone said.

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Upcoming events in Milwaukee

Veritas High School: Monday, Oct. 13

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Veritas High School, 3025 W. Oklahoma Ave. Register here.

Riverside University High School College and Career Center: Tuesday, Oct. 14

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Riverside University High School, 1615 E. Locust St. Register here.

Virtual FAFSA Completion Event: Wednesday, Oct. 15

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.

Virtual FAFSA Completion Event: Wednesday Oct. 22

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.

South Division High School College and Career Center: Thursday, Oct. 23

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at South Division High School, 1515 W. Lapham Blvd. Register here.

Milwaukee School of Languages College and Career Center: Wednesday, Oct. 29

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Milwaukee School of Languages, 8400 W. Burleigh St. Register here.

Virtual FAFSA Completion Event: Wednesday, Oct. 29

6 p.m. to 8 p.m. virtually. Register here.

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Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.

Everything you need to know about FAFSA applications is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Marchers organized by Voces de la Frontera demanded immigration reform from the federal government. (Photo | Joe Brusky)

A family friend who lives in Mexico flew into Chicago last week to visit his college-aged son. We exchanged messages about getting together. Could the two of them come up to Madison, I asked. “The truth is with everything that’s been happening in Chicago, and the arbitrary arrests, we almost haven’t gone out at all these last three days,” my friend wrote back. “This stuff with ICE, it’s unbelievable,” he added. “But there it is. It’s happening.” 

Sadly, he felt safer staying in his son’s apartment and then dashing to the airport Saturday to fly back to Mexico than driving across the border to visit us in Wisconsin.

The same day we exchanged messages, an ICE raid on the northeast side of Madison, not far from my home, swept up seven people. Madison police didn’t even know about the ICE raid until it was over, according to chief John Patterson.

So far, Wisconsin has not been targeted for the massive escalation in immigration raids taking place in neighboring states. But the Thursday morning arrests in Madison and a Sept. 25 sweep of dairy farm workers in Manitowoc mark a sudden shift.

Darryl Morin of the nonprofit Forward Latino addressed the Madison and Manitowoc raids at a Friday press conference in Milwaukee. “While other states such as California and Illinois have borne the brunt of these new immigration enforcement actions,” he said, “I fear we are turning the page and entering a new chapter, a new sad chapter, in immigration enforcement right here in our great state.”

“What we’re seeing in Chicago is now starting to hit closer to home,” agreed Jennifer Maldonado, an immigrants’ rights advocate in Manitowoc, who joined the press conference by video link. She described fielding calls from terrified family members after the crackdown in her area. “Many are people asking, ‘Should I send my children to school? Should I go to work?’” she said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims it disrupted an international sex and drug trafficking ring when it grabbed the 24 Manitowoc farm workers at a Walmart parking lot and in a door-to-door operation targeting workers’ homes. 

But this is the same Department of Homeland Security that insisted a Mexican-born Milwaukee resident wrote a letter threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump — even after the person who actually wrote the letter, Demetric Scott, admitted that he was the real author and that he was trying to frame the other man to keep him from testifying against Scott at trial. Long after that confession a statement from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem celebrating the detention of “this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump” remained on the DHS website, uncorrected, connecting the wrong person to an image of the letter written by Scott. 

Dubious hype about immigrant workers, portraying them as dangerous, violent criminals, is the now-familiar backdrop to a crackdown that does not, in fact, have anything to do with fighting crime. Fewer than half of the people ICE has arrested under Trump are convicted criminals. Of those, only 7% have been convicted of violent crimes and only 5% of drug-related crimes, Tim Henderson of Stateline reports.

In Manitowoc, “This [criminal network] narrative was pushed without any basis to try to paint a negative image of an entire community,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz of Voces de la Frontera said during the Friday press conference. Of the 24 people arrested, ICE identified one person who faced serious criminal charges. But, as Henry Redman reported, that person was not among those rounded up and was already sitting in custody during the Sept. 25 raid. 

Neumann-Ortiz described seeing disturbing videos documenting ICE actions — agents barging into a home “as if this were some kind of cartel, when it’s a working class family” and of a father who was grabbed by ICE while taking out the garbage. “It’s disturbing. It’s very, very disturbing,” she said. 

One bright spot, she said, has been the community response to “the tragedy that we’re witnessing around the U.S. and here in Wisconsin as well.” She praised Wisconsinites’ sense of “urgency to build community — to support each other.” 

Voces and other groups have been training community members across the state, with Know Your Rights seminars and instruction on how to effectively document ICE activity without escalating a dangerous situation. They’ve been lobbying local communities to reject 287(g) ICE cooperation agreements along with the cash incentives the federal government is offering local law enforcement in exchange for rounding up immigrants — a system Neumann Ortiz described as allowing local police to “essentially function like bounty hunters.” And they’ve been trying to help immigrants prepare for the worst, connecting them with immigration attorneys and helping them make contingency plans by naming caretakers for their property and guardians for their children in case they are deported. Forward Latino is sharing helpful information in a “family separation toolkit.”

Advocates, Neumann-Ortiz said, are getting good at “combatting lies,” connecting immigrants with legal support, and moving fast.

Several Manitowoc workers have already been deported, she said, and another was moved to detention outside of Wisconsin, where it’s hard for his family members and his lawyers to be in touch with him. 

Morin said he was on the phone with a Wisconsin resident who had been detained by ICE and he could hear an agent yelling in the background that the man had to sign a self-deportation order. Morin was also yelling, telling the man not to sign, and that they had to let him see a lawyer. “That’s happening on a daily basis,” Morin said. “The violation of constitutional rights is happening right now on a daily basis.” 

Against a gale of misinformation, immigrants’ advocates are fighting to get out the truth. 

“You can fight your deportation. But people need to know that and not be tricked or conned into signing deportation orders,” Neumann Ortiz said.

“It’s not a crime to be undocumented in the US. It’s a civil violation,” Morino added. 

Farmers, alarmed at the prospect of losing the immigrant workers who perform 70% of the labor on Wisconsin dairy farms, have been communicating with each other and with immigrants rights groups, Neumann-Ortiz said, trying to help their employees protect themselves. 

“We need to scale it up even more, so that people are not tricked into giving up their rights,” she said. 

The federal immigration crackdown, and the way it has seeped into local communities, does nothing to improve public safety. We are all safer if immigrants are confident enough to call 911 to report crime and abuse “or if their neighbor’s house is on fire,” as Morin put it. 

Despite the dire news, advocates see progress in community engagement and responsiveness. 

“In the early days we were getting flooded with false reports,” Morin said. “People wanted to spread fear.” Now, through training and preparation, advocacy groups have created a reliable channel for information about ICE raids and are able to screen out unsubstantiated rumors.

And some communities that have been tempted to accept federal dollars and cooperate with ICE have begun to think twice.

In Palmyra, where the local police department signed an agreement with ICE, community pushback has slowed down implementation of the agreement. In Walworth County, Neumann-Ortiz said, public pressure helped persuade the sheriff to reject a 287(g) agreement and Ozaukee County rolled back an agreement to accept federal money in exchange for detaining immigrants arrested by ICE.

The massive increase in funding for ICE — and the incentives it offers local law enforcement agencies to pursue immigrants in their communities — is funded through the same “Big Beautiful Bill Act” that slashes health care, food assistance and education funding. “We’re taking away food from hungry kids, medical care, money from schools, to do what?” Neumann-Ortiz said, referring to the push to terrorize immigrants. “That does not promote public safety.”

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