Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., walks back onto the Senate floor after speaking to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building on June 30, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans were closing in Monday on passing their version of the “big beautiful” tax break and spending cut bill that President Donald Trump wants to make law by a self-imposed July Fourth deadline.

But the chamber’s Democrats first kicked off a marathon of amendment votes, forcing their GOP colleagues to go on the record on tough issues, including cuts to health and food safety net programs. As of early evening, Democrats had not prevailed on any votes.

The tactic is used by the opposition party during massive budget reconciliation fights to draw attention to specific issues even as their amendments are likely to fail.

Democrats decried numerous measures in the mega-bill, including new work reporting requirements for Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people and people with disabilities.

Loud opposition has also swelled as legislative proposals shift significant costs of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, to states for the first time.

“I say to our colleagues, ‘Vote for families over billionaires,’” Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said on the Senate floor.

The heart of the nearly 1,000-page legislation extends and expands the 2017 tax law to keep individual income tax rates at the same level and makes permanent some tax breaks on business investments and research and development costs.

The bill would also put in motion some of Trump’s campaign promises, including no tax on qualifying tips, overtime or car loan interest, but only for a few years.

The tax cuts are estimated to cost nearly $4.5 trillion over 10 years, and a provision in the bill raises the nation’s borrowing limit to $5 trillion as the United States faces record levels of debt.

Overall, the Senate bill is projected to add $3.25 trillion to deficits during the next decade, according to the latest calculation from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Here are some key votes so far:

Planned Parenthood 

Washington Democratic Sen. Patty Murray tried to remove language from the bill that would block Medicaid payments from going to Planned Parenthood for one year unless the organization stops performing abortions.

Federal law already bars funding from going toward abortions, with limited exceptions, but GOP lawmakers have proposed blocking any other funding from going to the organization, effectively blocking Medicaid patients from going to Planned Parenthood for other types of health care.

Murray said the proposal would have a detrimental impact on health care for lower-income women and called it a “long-sought goal of anti-choice extremists.”

“Republicans’ bill will cut millions of women off from birth control, cancer screenings, essential preventive health care — care that they will not be able to afford anywhere else,” Murray said. “And it will shutter some 200 health care clinics in our country.”

Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith opposed efforts to remove the policy change and raised a budget point of order, which was not waived following a 49-51 vote. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski voted with Democrats.

“There was a time when protecting American tax dollars from supporting the abortion industry was an uncontroversial, nonpartisan effort that we could all get behind,” Hyde-Smith said.

Medicaid for undocumented immigrants

Senators from both political parties crossed the aisle over whether the federal government should reduce how much a state is given for its Medicaid program if that state uses its own taxpayer dollars to enroll immigrants living in the country without proper documentation.

The provision was included in an earlier version of the bill, but the Senate parliamentarian ruled it didn’t comply with the complex rules for moving a budget reconciliation bill.

The vote was 56-44, but since it was on waiving a budget point of order, at least 60 senators had to agree to set aside the rules and move forward with the amendment, so the vote failed.

Democratic Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia voted with GOP senators. Maine’s Collins voted with most of the chamber’s Democrats against moving forward.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn asked for the vote, saying he believes the policy change would reduce undocumented immigration.

“Border patrol talks about push and pull factors,” Cornyn said. “One of the pull factors for illegal immigration is the knowledge that people will be able to receive various benefits once they make it into the country.”

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., opposed Cornyn’s attempt to get the language back in the bill, saying the policy change would financially harm states that expanded Medicaid under the 2010 health care law for simple mistakes.

“What this amendment says is that if one person, despite state law, through a bureaucratic mistake, is receiving funds, then the whole state pays the price and has their rate on expanded Medicaid changed from 90% to 80%,” Merkley said, referring to the percentage paid by the federal government.

Reduction in funding for Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

An amendment to stop a nearly 50% reduction in funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was blocked by Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who chairs the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat who championed the CFPB after the 2008 financial collapse, attempted to bring the amendment to the floor saying the agency “is the financial watchdog to keep people from getting cheated on credit cards and mortgages and Venmo and payday loans and a zillion other transactions.”

“When this financial cop can’t do its job there is no one else in the federal government to pick up the slack,” Warren said.

Scott blocked her using a budget point of order, saying the reduction still provides “ample funding” for the agency. Democrats tried to waive that procedural tactic, but failed following a 47-53 vote.

An original provision to completely zero out the budget for the CFPB was not included because it did not meet the reconciliation process’ parameters.

Medicaid hospitals and maternal mortality

Senators voted 48-52 to reject Delaware Democratic Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester’s proposals to send the legislation back to committee to remove language cutting certain funding for Medicaid, which she said would negatively impact “vital hospital services, especially labor and delivery rooms.”

“Today, Medicaid is the single largest payer of maternity care in the United States, covering 40% of births nationwide and nearly half of the births in our rural communities,” Blunt Rochester said. “Obstetric units, particularly in rural hospitals, are closing at alarming rates, actually creating maternity deserts.”

No Republicans spoke in opposition to the proposal, though Maine’s Collins voted in support. 

Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

New Mexico Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján offered a motion to commit the bill back to committee in order to remove all changes related to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. It was rejected following a 49-51 vote, though Alaska Republican Sens. Dan Sullivan and Murkowski voted in favor.

“I’m offering my colleagues the opportunity to step away from these devastating cuts, to show our fellow Americans that in this country we care for our friends, family and neighbors who need support,” Luján said.

Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., opposed the proposals, saying that SNAP is “on an unsustainable path wrought with mismanagement and waste.”

“This program has devolved into viewing success as enrolling more individuals to be dependent on government assistance,” Boozman said. “SNAP is long overdue for change.”

Medicaid work requirements

Senators voted 48-52 to reject a proposal from Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons that would have sent the bill back to committee to remove language requiring Medicaid enrollees to work, participate in community service, or attend an educational program at least 80 hours a month. Alaska’s Murkowski was the only member of her party to vote in favor of the effort.

Democrats have expressed concern for weeks that some people would lose access to Medicaid if they forgot to complete paperwork proving that time commitment or didn’t understand how to show the government they met the new requirement.

“It is cruel and dishonest to bury patients, kids and seniors in paperwork and then blame them when they lose their health care, all to further rig our tax code for the very wealthiest,” Coons said.

Kansas Republican Sen. Roger Marshall urged opposition to the proposal, saying that working helps people.

“My question is, don’t you think a job brings value, that it brings dignity?” Marshall said. “Do you not think it brings purpose and meaning to life?”

Rural hospitals and Medicaid

Maine’s Collins and Alaska’s Murkowski both voted for a proposal from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey that would have removed parts of the bill changing Medicaid.

But even with some bipartisan support, the changes were rejected on a 49-51 vote that would have technically sent the bill back to committee for three days to implement the changes.

“My Republican colleagues’ so-called Medicaid cuts replacement fund is like giving aspirin to a cancer patient,” Markey said. “It is not enough. It is pathetically inadequate to deal with the health care crisis Republicans are creating here today on the Senate floor. No billionaire tax break or Donald Trump pat-on-the-back is worth the risk of people’s lives.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, spoke out against the proposal, saying that rural hospitals have long had financial challenges and that it was clearly “intended to derail this very bill.”

“Unfortunately for far too long some rural hospitals have struggled to achieve financial stability, even with a wide-range of targeted payment enhances,” Crapo said. “These issues pre-date the consideration of the reforms that we are including in the legislation today.” 

 

The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

The Joint Finance Committee convened at 10:17 p.m. Friday — over 12 hours after it was originally scheduled — to vote on a fraction of the budget areas it had originally planned and to release part of the literacy funding that is set to expire next week.  

Legislative leaders have been working behind closed doors over the last week to negotiate with Gov. Tony Evers and work out the details of the state budget as the end of the fiscal year approaches next week. 

Areas of the budget still left to take up are at the center of negotiations including the University of Wisconsin system, where Republicans have considered cuts, and the Department of Children and Families, which is responsible for the state’s Child Care Counts program. Evers has said he would veto a budget without funding for the program, which will run out of federal money soon. The committee also still needs to take up the Department of Health Services, the Department of Transportation, the capital budget and more. 

The committee co-chairs did not take questions from reporters ahead of the meeting, but as the meeting started Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) said the other agencies “will be taken up at a later date.” He didn’t specify when that would be.

The budget committee did approve the budget for several state agencies including the Department of Natural Resources, part of the Department of Justice, the Higher Education Aids Board, the Department of Administration and the Tourism Department. Each action the committee did take passed along partisan lines.

Portion of $50 million for literacy released

The committee voted unanimously to release $9 million of the nearly $50 million left in funding for literacy initiatives that was first allocated in the 2023-25 state budget. The majority of the money has been withheld by lawmakers since 2023 and is slated to lapse back into the state’s general fund if not released by the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Lawmakers said action on the other $40 million will be taken soon. 

“This has taken a long time to get here. One of the things that this bill was originally about was to make it so that kids could read. We want to help kids read. We want to give schools the tools to be able to do that,” Rep. Tip McGuire (D-Kenosha) said. “Unfortunately, it’s taken this Legislature a tremendous amount of time to allocate the funds for that, and ultimately, that’s simply not acceptable.” 

Born said he is glad lawmakers were releasing part of the money Friday and would have further motions on it in the future. He also said the delay on the funding was Evers’ fault. Lawmakers were holding the funding back due to a partial veto Evers exercised on a bill related to the literacy funding. The Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled on Wednesday that partial veto was  unconstitutional and restored the original language of the law.

“We’re glad that justice has been done, and we’re here now with the proper accounts and able to do these two separate motions here in the next couple of days in the committee to get this program that was a bipartisan program moving along,” Born said. 

Certain projects funded in DNR budget, Knowles-Nelson not 

Noticeably missing from the Republicans’ Department of Natural Resource motion was funding for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, which allows the agency to fund the purchase of public land and upkeep of recreational areas.

Rep. Deb Andraca (D-Whitefish Bay) said lawmakers were missing an opportunity by not funding the program in the budget. 

“There’s a lot of individual pet projects in here that seem to be of interest to individual legislators, but there aren’t a lot of park projects that are of interest to Wisconsinites, particularly Knowles-Nelson,” Andraca said.

The committee approved funding in the budget for an array of projects including $42 million to help with modernization of the Rothschild Dam, $500,000 to go towards the repair of a retaining wall for the Wisconsin Rapids Riverbank project, $2.2 million environmental remediation and redevelopment of Lake Vista Park in Oak Creek, $70,000 for a dredging project in Manitowoc River in the Town of Brillion, $1.75 million for dredging the Deerskin River and $100,000 for assistance with highway flooding in the Town of Norway in Racine County. 

Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc), who is the author of a bill to keep the program going, said lawmakers are working to ensure it handles the program in the best way, which is part of why the funding is not in the budget as of now. 

“We actually have until 30th of June of 2026 to work on this. It’s something that Sen. [Patrick] Testin and I have been working on along with our staff over the last six months. It’s something that is a bipartisan effort. We’ve met with so many different stakeholders, so many different groups, so many fellow legislators on getting this done,” Kurtz said. “We are committed to get it done.” 

Kurtz said that the hearing on the bill was “good” and there will be “a lot more coming up in the future” when it comes to Knowles-Nelson. 

The committee also approved raising nonresident vehicle admission sticker fees, nonresident campsite fees and campsite electricity fees. 

Office of School Safety, VOCA grants get state funding

The Department of Justice’s Office of School Safety will get 13 permanent staff positions and $1.57 million to continue its work. That’s about $700,000 less than what the agency had requested, but is about what Evers had proposed for the office. 

The office serves as a resource for K-12 schools — helping them improve security measures by providing training on crisis prevention and response, grants for safety enhancements, threat assessment training and mental health training. It also operates the Speak Up, Speak Out tipline where students can anonymously report safety concerns.

The Wisconsin DOJ will also get help filling funding gaps for Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) grants left by federal funding cuts. 

Wisconsin’s federal allocation for VOCA grants has been cut from $40 million to $13 million. Domestic violence shelters and victim services organizations along with the state DOJ have been navigating the limited funding for over a year. The organizations that receive VOCA grants help people who are the victims of a crime by assisting them with finding housing, providing transportation to and from court appearances and navigating the criminal justice system.

The Republican-approved motion will provide $20 million to cover the federal funding loss. It will also provide $163,500 for two staff positions, which will expire in July 2027. The Wisconsin DOJ had requested an additional $66 million in the budget to make up for the funding gap. 

McGuire noted the funding would be significantly less than what the state agency had requested and would essentially create a two-year program rather than an ongoing one.

“[This] maintains the Legislature’s level of input, but it doesn’t actually maintain the same level of service because of the declining revenues as a result of the federal government,” McGuire said. “While we can’t fix all the things that are the result of what the federal government is doing wrong … this is something that will have an impact on communities across the state. It’s going to have an impact on people who’ve had the worst day and the worst week in the worst month of their life. It’s gonna have an impact on people who have been harmed by violence who have been in toxic, abusive relationships. It’s going to have an impact on people who desperately need services through no fault of their own. These are really vulnerable people and they should receive our support.  

Wisconsin Grants to get slight infusion, UW budget postponed 

The committee did not take up the budget for the University of Wisconsin system. It’s been one of the key issues for debate as Republican lawmakers have considered cuts, while Evers and UW leaders have said the university system needs $855 million in additional funding. Evers has said that in negotiations he and lawmakers were discussing a “positive number.”

The committee did take up the Higher Educational Aids Board, which is the agency responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s student financial aid system, investing in the Wisconsin Grant Program. The program provides grants to undergraduate Wisconsin residents enrolled at least half-time in degree or certificate programs.

The Wisconsin Grants program would receive an additional $5.6 million in 2025-26 and $11.9 million in 2026-27 under the proposal approved Friday. The UW system, private nonprofit colleges and Wisconsin Technical College System would receive equal dollar increases. It also includes a $75,000 increase for tribal college students.

Evers had proposed 20% increases for the Wisconsin Grants for the state’s public universities, private nonprofit colleges and technical colleges — a total $57.7 million investment.

The Wisconsin Technical Colleges System had requested $10.8 million in each year of the biennium, saying there has been a waitlist for the grants for the first time in 10 years and that list is projected to grow.

The committee also approved $3.5 million in 2026-27 in a supplemental appropriation for emergency medical services training costs to reimburse training and materials costs. 

“Recruiting volunteer EMS personnel is a challenge all over the state of Wisconsin — certainly is in my Senate district,” Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said. “We believe that this will remove one barrier to recruitment of volunteers in our EMS units all across the state.” 

Other portions of the budget approved Friday evening include: 

• $30 million to the Tourism Department for general marketing, and an additional $1 million in the second year of the budget, as well as about $113,000 for state arts organizations and two staff positions and funding for the Office of Outdoor Recreation. The motion includes $5 million for Taliesin Preservation Inc. for restoration projects at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin home located in Spring Green supporting private fundraising for an education center, the restoration of visitor amenities and the stabilization of some buildings.
• $193,700 to the Wisconsin Elections Commission with over $150,000 of that going toward information technology costs and the remaining going towards costs for the Electronic Registration Information Center.
• $20.9 million and 147 positions for 12 months of personnel related costs for a Milwaukee Type 1 facility, which is meant to serve as a portion of the replacement of youth prisons Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake, which the state had been working to close for years. The 32-bed facility in Milwaukee has a planned completion date in October 2026.
• The WisconsinEye endowment received $10 million to continue video coverage of the Legislature.
• The committee also approved $11 million for grants to nine of Wisconsin’s 11 federally-recognized tribes. The committee has been excluding two tribes — the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa — from the grant funding for several years due to disputes over roads. The exclusion “strikes me as inappropriate,” McGuire said. He added that it’s “an insult to those people.” 

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House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana speaks to reporters about the Republican budget reconciliation package at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

This report has been updated.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republicans were scrambling Tuesday to restructure several proposals in the “big, beautiful bill” that don’t meet their chamber’s strict rules for passing a reconciliation package, while GOP lawmakers on the other side of the Capitol warned those changes may doom its passage in the House.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said he and several others are working on a way to bolster rural hospitals, which could experience financial strain as a result of the various changes to Medicaid and other health care programs in the package.

“We are working on a solution for rural hospitals and that’s something that’s been in the works now for several days in response to a number of concerns that our colleagues have mentioned in ensuring that the impact on rural hospitals be lessened, be mitigated,” Thune said. “And I think we’re making good headway on that solution.”

Thune said GOP lawmakers shouldn’t let the “perfect be the enemy of the good,” though he predicted there “could be” two or three Republicans who vote against the package.

“We’ve got a lot of very independent-thinking senators who have reasons and things that they’d like to have in this bill that, in their view, would make it stronger,” Thune said. “But at the end of the day this is a process whereby not everybody is going to get what they want. And we have to get to 51 in the United States Senate.”

More objections to Medicaid cuts

Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, who has been vocal about Medicaid changes and rural hospitals, said he had “no details whatsoever” about the rural hospital fund or how it would work if it’s added to the bill.

But he said he’s not going to support a bill that takes away working people’s health care.

“We’ve got 1.3 million people on Medicaid in Missouri, hundreds of thousands of kids. That’s 21% of my population. Most of these people are working people. They’re on Medicaid, not because they’re sitting around at home; they’re on Medicaid because they don’t have a job that gives them health care and they cannot afford to buy it on the exchange,” Hawley said. “They don’t want to be, but it’s their only option. And I just think it’s wrong to take away health care coverage from those folks. Now if they’re not working, then sure, they should be.”

Senate Republican Policy Committee Chair Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she had a “lengthy discussion” with her home state’s hospital association earlier in the day.

“This has a lot of impacts and we want to make sure we have a lot of rural hospitals. That’s why this rural hospital fund idea is developing,” Capito said. “I don’t think anything is set yet but that is an issue. I think Medicaid, we need to preserve it for the people it’s intended for and get rid of the people who don’t deserve it and don’t qualify and are bilking the system.”

Capito said she hadn’t yet formed an opinion on the rural hospital fund since there isn’t yet a formal proposal written down.

Public lands

In one major development, the Senate parliamentarian ruled Monday that a controversial provision championed by Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee to mandate the sale of at least 2 million acres of public lands in 11 Western states did not comply with the chamber’s rules for reconciliation.

Lee, a Utah Republican, has said the provision would free up land to build new housing. But Democrats and some Republicans from the affected states strongly opposed it.

Lee said on social media Monday evening that he was working to rewrite the proposal to comply with reconciliation rules. A spokesperson for his office did not return a message seeking comment Tuesday morning.

SNAP cost-sharing under debate

In another turn of events, Senate Agriculture Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., earlier Tuesday had announced the panel successfully reworked a provision that would transfer some of the cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments.

But a spokesperson for the panel said later that the parliamentarian actually has not yet made a ruling. The spokesperson said “we’ve gotten some clarification from leadership and it’s steering in the direction it would be compliant but not official.”

Boozman earlier had said his proposal would improve SNAP. “Our commonsense approach encourages states to adopt better practices, reduce error rates, be better stewards of taxpayer dollars, and prioritize the resources for those who truly need it,” Boozman wrote in a statement.

The new language, if accepted, would give states the option of selecting fiscal year 2025 or 2026 as the year that the federal government uses to determine its payment error rate for SNAP, which will then impact how much of the cost the state has to cover starting in fiscal year 2028. Afterward, a state’s payment error rate will be calculated using the last three fiscal years.

Any state with an error rate higher than 6% will have to cover a certain percentage of the cost of the nutrition program for lower income households.

Rushing toward deadline

The internal debates among lawmakers about how to rewrite major pieces of the tax and spending cuts package have led to a rushed feeling among Republican leaders, who have repeatedly promised to approve the final bill before the Fourth of July — an exceedingly tight timeline.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said during a press conference shortly after a closed-door House GOP conference meeting Tuesday that he’s hopeful the final bill that comes out of the Senate won’t make too many changes to what the House approved earlier this year.

“I remain very optimistic that there’s not going to be a wide chasm between the two products — what the Senate produces and what we produce,” Johnson said. “We all know what the touchpoints are and the areas of greatest concern.”

Republicans, he said, know they need to focus on preserving a fragile compromise on the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, that helps offset the cost of living in some higher-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York.

A deal Johnson brokered with GOP lawmakers in the SALT Caucus has been significantly rewritten in the Senate, but is expected to move back toward the House version, though not entirely.

Johnson also mentioned GOP efforts to roll back certain clean-energy provisions that Democrats approved and President Joe Biden signed into law in their signature climate change, health care and tax package, called the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, in 2022.

“We’ve got to get the SALT negotiation number right. We’ve got to make sure the IRA subsidies are handled in an appropriate manner,” Johnson said. “Look, you’ve got a number of provisions.”

Johnson said he expects the Senate to vote on its final bill by Friday or Saturday and that he’s told House lawmakers to “keep your schedules flexible” on being in Washington, D.C., for a final House vote. 

Trump goads Republicans

President Donald Trump sought to spur quick approval of a final bill, posting on social media that GOP lawmakers should get the package to him as soon as possible.

“To my friends in the Senate, lock yourself in a room if you must, don’t go home, and GET THE DEAL DONE THIS WEEK. Work with the House so they can pick it up, and pass it, IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “NO ONE GOES ON VACATION UNTIL IT’S DONE. Everyone, most importantly the American People, will be much better off thanks to our work together. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin said there are concerns among his fellow Republicans about all of the provisions that must be removed or significantly reworked to meet the complex rules for moving a reconciliation bill through that chamber.

“Every time something comes out that we’re using as a pay for, it takes the deficit reduction down. And they’ve taken out nearly $300 billion so far. We’ve got to make that up,” Mullin said after leaving the closed-door House GOP meeting. “The Senate can’t come in below the House version as far as deficit reduction. So that makes it difficult.”

Mullin, who has been acting as his chamber’s top negotiator with SALT Republicans in the House, told reporters he expects the deduction for state and local taxes to remain at the $40,000 level negotiated in the House. But said the Senate will likely rewrite the $500,000 income ceiling to qualify for the tax deduction.

“I think 40 is a number we’re going to land on,” Mullin said. “It’s the income threshold that’s in negotiations.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said “most of us would like to make it zero.”

“I hate the idea of $40,000 but if that’s what it takes to pass the bill, I probably could do it. I would like to maybe find some other tweaks to it, somehow, like changing the income levels,” he said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told reporters he expects a resolution on SALT in the next 24 to 48 hours.

“I had a very successful lunch meeting with the senators. I think that we are on track,” Bessent said.

The ‘red line’ in the House

New York Republican Rep. Mike Lawler told reporters following the closed-door meeting that Senate leaders shouldn’t assume whatever they pass will be accepted by the House.

“I’ve been very clear about where my red line is. So, you know, we’ll let this process play out,” Lawler said. “I think the Senate should recognize the only number that matters is 218, and 50 plus 1. That’s it. And how do you get there?”

Republicans hold 53 seats in the Senate, so leadership cannot lose more than four votes and still approve the package, given that Democrats are universally opposed.

In the House, GOP leaders have 220 seats and need nearly every one of their members to support whatever the Senate sends back across the Capitol for it to make it to the president’s desk before their self-imposed deadline.

In addition to the SALT tax compromise, Lawler said he has concerns about how the Senate has changed other provisions, including those addressing Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income people.

“Yeah, there are a number of concerns about decisions that they’re making,” Lawler said. “And obviously, the bill on their side is not final, so we’ll see where it goes.”

Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee that crafted the tax provisions in the reconciliation bill, stood by the House’s version of the Opportunity Zone Tax Incentives. The House version extends the incentive from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for a year, while the Senate’s version makes it permanent.

The Opportunity Zone Tax Incentive was pushed by South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott during the first Trump administration, which aimed to create tax cuts for businesses and real estate to invest in low-income communities, but it had mixed results.

“The tax bill that we’re going to deliver is gonna deliver for working families, small businesses and farmers,” Smith said.

Thumbs down from one House Republican

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris, R-Md., posted on social media that he doesn’t support how the Senate has changed the bill and that he would seek to block it from becoming law. 

“The currently proposed Senate version of the One Big Beautiful Bill weakens key House priorities—it doesn’t do enough to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, it backtracks on Green New Scam elimination included in the House bill, and it greatly increases the deficit – taking us even further from a balanced budget.

“If the Senate tries to jam the House with this version, I won’t vote ‘present.’ I’ll vote NO.”

Rattlesnakes and the Senate

West Virginia Republican Sen. Jim Justice told reporters that it’s important for the Senate to take its time in its changes to the reconciliation package and that GOP lawmakers need to be patient.

“If you’re walking through the woods and you look right over there at that wall and there’s a rattlesnake all curled up there and everything, what do you do?” Justice asked. “Most people just jump and take off runnin’, well … rattlesnakes run in pairs and if you just jump left or right or behind, that one can hurt you right there.”

Rattlesnakes are typically solitary creatures, but new research has shown that rattlesnakes are more social than previously thought.

Justice said the best course of action when dealing with a rattlesnake, or two, is to stand still for a moment.

“Look to the left, look to the right, look behind you, and then decide which way you’re going,” he said. “That’s what I think we need to do (in the Senate).”

Mike Leslie, 66, helps manage the fleet of staff vehicles at the Top of Alabama Regional Council of Governments, a support services agency in Huntsville, Ala. Leslie got the job through a workforce development program for older adults that could see its funding eliminated by Congress. (Photo by Anna Claire Vollers/Stateline)

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Mike Leslie, 66, sits at a desk beneath the buzz of fluorescent office lights, his fingers hovering over his new laptop keyboard. He smiles, eyes crinkling beneath a worn baseball cap. It’s a place he never imagined he’d be sitting.

Before last year, he’d never used a computer.

For most of his life, Leslie hadn’t needed one. He spent 36 years in pipe manufacturing near his North Alabama hometown, in jobs that included welding, driving forklifts, mixing concrete and running crews as a foreman. The work was hard and physical, but he didn’t mind.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Layoffs followed.

Leslie found himself looking for a job to make ends meet, at an age when more affluent men might think of retiring. He was no longer suited for manufacturing work. But he also lacked experience with the technology that now powers even the most basic tasks in nearly every modern workplace, such as the internet, email and Microsoft Office.

“A lot of people think old people are obsolete, but they’re not,” he said. “There’s a lot of knowledge in their heads. They just need the opportunity to get it out and learn new things.”

His life’s unexpected second act began in late 2023, thanks to an obscure state-federal initiative called the Senior Community Service Employment Program. For people ages 55 and older with low incomes, it provides paid part-time work at local nonprofits and government agencies such as libraries, senior centers and the Red Cross. Its on-the-job training is meant to prepare participants to transition into permanent jobs.

But 700 miles away in Washington, D.C., Congress is considering axing the funding for the very program that has made this new chapter of Leslie’s life possible. In his budget for the coming fiscal year, President Donald Trump has recommended eliminating this and some other programs that fall under the Older Americans Act, a landmark 1965 law that provides social and meal services for older people. The U.S. House also proposed eliminating the employment program’s funding, while the Senate proposed keeping it.

At this point, experts say, anything is possible.

Advocates fear that the loss of this program, which serves about 50,000 older adults nationwide, could affect not just participants like Leslie, but also stretch further into communities, removing tens of thousands of employees from local libraries, city recreation facilities and senior centers.

Isolated and unsure

Sitting at home post-layoff, Leslie felt isolated and unsure about what to do next. A friend told him about the job program, and he eventually decided to apply. He got in.

Now he helps manage the fleet of vehicles at the Top of Alabama Regional Council of Governments, a multicounty agency based in Huntsville that provides support services to older Americans and people with disabilities. As part of the program, he enrolled in a digital certification program that provided him with a laptop, prepaid internet access and a 10-week education course that taught him the basics of the Microsoft Office suite, email, internet, social media and other skills.

For Leslie, it’s been a foothold into a workforce that felt like it had moved on without him.

“You’ve got purpose,” he says, “getting up every morning, coming to a job you like.”

He’s a favorite around the office, where everyone calls him “Mr. Mike.”

In April, he wore a three-piece suit to the officewide celebration where he received a graduation certificate for acing his digital skills courses. He made his co-workers cry as he told them about how the program had given him his confidence back.

‘Lost in D.C.’

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, in a conference room not far from Leslie’s desk, some of his managers at the Top of Alabama Regional Council of Governments, known as TARCOG, were sitting around a table discussing what to do.

It had been a chaotic few months. TARCOG is responsible for administering many services for older people, from Meals on Wheels to transportation, caregiver support to services that prevent abuse and exploitation.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration began to dismantle the federal agency responsible for overseeing such services, while his proposed federal budget recommended cutting or freezing spending on them, including the employment program.

Michelle Jordan, TARCOG’s executive director, had been fielding questions from local leaders who were aghast that Meals on Wheels might be canceled. Across the country, national and local advocates at similar agencies sounded the alarm. In some states, local groups like TARCOG have reported delays in receiving federal funds they were promised.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration reversed course and recommended that most of the programs for older adults continue under a new federal agency.

But a few of the Older Americans Act programs would be left without funding. One of the largest is the senior employment program.

“These are real people, and I think that gets lost in D.C.,” said Sheila Dessau-Ivey, who directs the aging programs at TARCOG. “They just see programs and dollars, and say, ‘Well, we don’t need these.’ But those dollars are actually attached to a human life.”

The Senior Community Service Employment Program is a tiny fraction of the size of budgetary behemoths such as Medicaid and Medicare. Its budget is about $400 million and it serves about 50,000 older people nationwide each year. Eighty-six of those slots — including Leslie’s — are in the five-county swath of North Alabama served by TARCOG.

To qualify under the nationwide Senior Community Service Employment Program, a person must be at least 55 years old, unemployed, and have a family income of no more than 125% of the federal poverty level. For an individual, that’s currently $19,562 a year. Veterans are given priority in the program, as are people with disabilities, rural residents, people over age 65 and those experiencing homelessness. Funding comes mainly through the U.S. Department of Labor.

“We’ve had workers who were homeless when they started this program,” Jordan said. Past research found about 3 in 5 participants nationally reported being homeless or at risk of homelessness.

“You forget there are people living with us, sitting next to us in church, going to the grocery store with us, who just don’t have those skills or that confidence,” she said.

And it has an outsize impact on other vulnerable groups. In 2019, about two-thirds of participants were women, and about 44% were Black, according to research. A majority of participants reported having a high school diploma or less.

“These are people who worked hard all their lives, but they can’t pay the heating bill,” said Nancy Robertson, TARCOG’s retired former executive director, who’d come into the office to lend her experience to the group discussing how to advocate for funding.

“They have to decide between medicine and groceries.”

The program participants aren’t the only ones that would be hurt by the loss of the program, she said.

Participants can stay in the program up to four years. While they’re there, they provide more than 40 million hours of work to public and nonprofit agencies across the nation. The agencies and community groups that hire the participants — with salaries paid by the program — would lose those employees. An employee working in a small-town library, for example, might be the only reason the library is able to remain open for certain hours.

In Huntsville, the local senior center would lose 14 of its employees if the employment program closes. Across town at a community rec center, a beloved 91-year-old receptionist would lose the job she trained for.

Congressional chaos

The U.S. population is aging rapidly. In 2003, about 1 in 7 people in the U.S. labor force was 55 or older. By 2023, that share was nearly 1 in 4. One of the looming challenges for lawmakers and community advocates is how to keep older people healthy and thriving.

As Republicans consider adding work requirements to programs like Medicaid, cutting funding for a work program designed to help older people doesn’t make sense, said Marci Phillips, director of public policy and advocacy at the National Council on Aging, a nonprofit organization focused on issues that affect older adults.

“If people age 55 and older have to show they’re working to qualify for Medicaid, but [lawmakers] are cutting the federal program to help workers age 55 and older, there’s a disconnect there,” she said.

Some lawmakers question the usefulness of the program. In 2019, only about 38% of participants who exited the program were employed a few months later, according to a 2022 study. That share was below the U.S. Department of Labor’s goal of 42%. Median earnings were also below federal goals.

Phillips said the program shouldn’t be judged by the metrics that are used to measure whether a traditional workforce development program is succeeding.

“These are older adults who have to work, but the realities of their health and their caregiving situations aren’t changing,” she said. “It’s a standard that doesn’t really recognize the population we’re trying to serve.”

Programs that are funded under the Older Americans Act are discretionary, meaning Congress can’t cut or eliminate them in the reconciliation bill that’s currently before the Senate and that has generated public outcry over potential cuts to programs including Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps.

Trump has recommended eliminating funding for the employment program, but ultimately its fate lies in the hands of Congress.

The U.S. House is scheduled to take up the appropriations bill that provides funding for these programs the week of July 20. The Senate’s plans are less certain, as its members remain focused on Trump’s reconciliation bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And it’s conceivable, Phillips said, that Congress may instead pass a continuing resolution, a temporary measure that keeps the government funded at current levels.

For his part, Leslie would like to travel to Washington to testify before Congress. If anyone understands the needs of older Americans, he figures, it’s them.

“Society looks at older people as not useful, but if you look at the people in Congress, they’re old folks too,” Leslie said. “If you’re old, why would you not want another older person to have something, to learn something?”

Future possibilities

Leslie is studying to earn his license as a private investigator. It’s a job he’s always wanted, and now he feels like he has the skills he needs to chase that dream.

He’s also trying to organize a workshop this fall to be held at his church, Beaver Dam Primitive Baptist, where he hopes he and some of his TARCOG co-workers can share about services and programs available to help older adults.

“We’ve got 26 churches in our association, so we’ve reached out to all of them, saying there’s these things you need to know about,” Leslie said. “If I had known about some of this stuff when my dad was living, he may have had a better quality of life.”

He doesn’t know if his own program will be one of those still available by then, but he’s hopeful.

He believes the biggest reward has been less tangible than the modest paycheck and newfound computer skills, but more profound: The sense that his life has opened back up, full of possibilities.

“Senior citizens have a purpose in this world, and we can’t think that because they’re old we can just throw them away,” Leslie said. “They’ve still got knowledge. I think we should give them every chance to succeed.”

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

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, on April 14, 2012, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA).

WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Democrats have succeeded in eliminating more than a dozen policy changes from Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill” after successfully arguing before the chamber’s parliamentarian that the elements didn’t comply with the strict rules that go along with writing a budget reconciliation bill.

Removed is language that would have transferred some of the cost of running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to state governments, potentially leaving states on the hook for billions in added spending on the food aid program for lower-income people.

Democrats also fended off a proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which fields complaints on banking and other financial institutions, and another that sought to bar federal district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. 

Among the contested items that remained, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley announced in a social media post that his years-long effort to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Fund, or RECA, passed what’s known on Capitol Hill as the “Byrd bath” test.

“Terrific news for Missouri, radiation survivors, and MAHA: RECA has passed the ‘Byrd bath’ – Democrats did not strip it – and will be in the final bill,” Hawley wrote, referring to the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again slogan. “Huge step forward #MAHA.”

Democrats to continue challenges

Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., has cheered many of the parliamentarian’s rulings, though Republican committee chairs say they’ll look for ways to rewrite the various proposals.

“Today, we were advised by the Senate Parliamentarian that several more provisions in this Big Beautiful Betrayal of a bill will be subject to the Byrd Rule — and Democrats plan to challenge every part of this bill that hurts working families and violates this process,” Merkley wrote in a statement released Saturday night. “Republicans’ relentless attack on middle class families in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires is a slap in the face to working families everywhere, and Democrats are fighting back.”  

The changes could create several issues for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and eventually for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who need nearly every GOP lawmaker in Congress to vote for the sweeping tax and spending cuts package in order for it to become law.

The House voted 215-214 to approve its version of the bill in May, but since the Senate is making substantial changes, the House will have to vote on the measure again before it can go to President Donald Trump for his signature. GOP leaders hope to complete all that before the Fourth of July.

Republicans are using reconciliation, instead of moving the bill through the regular legislative process, to avoid needing Democratic votes to get past the Senate’s 60-vote legislative filibuster.

But the lower threshold for passing a reconciliation bill comes with several requirements, including that all of the proposals in the package have an impact on spending or revenues that’s not “merely incidental.”

The Senate parliamentarian, the chamber’s official scorekeeper who holds a detailed understanding of the rules and procedures, examines each of those policies and hears from both Republicans and Democrats before issuing the rulings.

The Byrd bath began last week behind closed doors and will continue for at least several more days. Once it concludes, Senate GOP leaders can move the bill to the floor, where members of both parties can call for votes on as many amendments as they want.

SNAP program

Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., released a written statement defending his committee’s bill after the parliamentarian ruled several provisions must go to comply with the rules.

“To rein in federal spending and protect taxpayer dollars the committee is pursuing meaningful reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to improve efficiency, accountability and integrity,” Boozman wrote. “We are continuing to examine options that comply with Senate rules to achieve savings through budget reconciliation to ensure SNAP serves those who truly need it while being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

The parliamentarian ruled the committee erred in including language that would have shifted some of the cost of the SNAP program to state governments if they didn’t meet an efficiency benchmark before 2028.

A proposal to eliminate SNAP eligibility for “immigrants who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents, with certain exceptions,” was also determined not to comply with the rules, according to a press release from Merkley.

Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar, ranking member on the committee, wrote the parliamentarian’s ruling “made clear that Senate Republicans cannot use their partisan budget to shift major nutrition assistance costs to the states that would have inevitably led to major cuts.

“While Republicans’ proposed cuts to SNAP will still be devastating to families, farmers, and independent grocers across the country, we will keep fighting to protect families in need. Instead of a rushed partisan process, Republicans should work with us to lower costs for Americans and pass a bipartisan Farm Bill that works for all farmers and rural America.”

Consumer financial agency victory for Dems

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee’s proposal to eliminate funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Congress established in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, also doesn’t comply with the rules, under the parliamentarian’s ruling.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, ranking member on the panel, wrote in a statement that the GOP’s proposal for the CFPB represented “a reckless, dangerous attack on consumers and would lead to more Americans being tricked and trapped by giant financial institutions and put the stability of our entire financial system at risk–all to hand out tax breaks to billionaires.”

But committee Chairman Tim Scott, R-S.C., wrote in a separate statement that he remains “committed to advancing legislation that cuts waste and duplication in our federal government and saves taxpayer dollars.”

Scott listed provisions that he said will remain.

“As it stands now, the Banking Committee’s reconciliation provisions will delay the implementation of Section 1071 of Dodd-Frank, which reduces CFPB spending and protects the privacy and data of small business owners; rescind unused funds earmarked for green initiatives to give HUD discretion in funding critical housing programs; and save taxpayer dollars by eliminating an unnecessary reserve fund at the SEC,” Scott wrote. “My colleagues and I remain committed to cutting wasteful spending at the CFPB and will continue working with the Senate parliamentarian on the Committee’s provisions.”

Judges and injunctions

The parliamentarian told lawmakers that various elements of the Judiciary Committee’s bill don’t comply with the rules, including an attempt to block federal district court judges from issuing nationwide preliminary injunctions or temporary restraining orders.

The issue has become a thorn in Trump’s side during the past few months as he’s watched the courts block several of his executive orders and other unilateral administration actions.

The Judiciary Committee’s reconciliation bill cannot block the Department of Justice from awarding Byrne JAG and COPS grants to “sanctuary cities.” The bill also can’t send funding to local and state governments for the purpose of “apprehending aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, did not respond to a request for comment, but a committee spokesperson wrote in an email to States Newsroom that “Democrats are clinging to their radical open borders legacy by fighting to keep criminal migrants in the United States.

“Republicans are committed to enforcing the rule of law, and will continue using all available avenues to secure our borders, clean up the mess left by the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous policies and ensure courts operate according to lawful and constitutional standards.”

Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, ranking member on the committee, issued a statement calling the bill’s policies “an attempted power grab by our Republican colleagues that we would not stand for.”

“Here’s what Senate Republicans attempted to sneak into their so-called Big, Beautiful Bill: a provision intended to limit the ability of individuals and organizations to challenge lawless Trump Administration executive actions by putting those potential plaintiffs on the hook for millions of dollars; and a provision conditioning grant eligibility on a state or locality’s compliance with federal immigration policies,” Durbin wrote.

Artificial intelligence and states

The parliamentarian didn’t, however, remove all of the proposals contested by Democrats.

Language that would prevent local and state governments from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade if those jurisdictions want to receive money from a $500 million fund does meet the reconciliation requirements and can remain in the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation’s bill.

But that doesn’t mean the provision will stay in the bill moving forward, since several GOP lawmakers have expressed concern about potentially tying the hands of local and state governments when it comes to AI.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a social media post after she voted for the House’s bill that she had no idea about the AI provision. That chamber’s package barred state and local AI regulation for a decade without tying it to any funding stream.

“We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years and giving it free rein and tying states hands is potentially dangerous,” Greene wrote. “This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.

“When the OBBB comes back to the House for approval after Senate changes, I will not vote for it with this in it.”

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks during a press conference inside the Capitol building on Wednesday, June 18, 2025. Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden is at right. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The next hurdle for Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate and the “big, beautiful bill”: Democrats — and possibly a few of their own members — in a marathon voting session will make last-ditch attempts to change the tax and spending cut measure.

The vote-a-rama, as it’s known, is expected to begin sometime during the last full week of June as Congress heads toward the Fourth of July recess. It will likely begin in the afternoon and  last overnight into the next morning. Senators will debate and vote on dozens of amendments attempting to revise the massive legislation that could have an effect on nearly every American.

Democrats, who have 47 votes in the Senate compared to 53 for Republicans, plan to zero in on Medicaid, taxes, corruption, policies that could raise energy costs and proposals that would increase the deficit, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and the committee chairs tasked with drafting pieces of the package have spent weeks combing through the House-passed bill to figure out what needs to be altered to avoid divisive floor votes. 

They’ve rewritten numerous policy proposals to comply with the strict rules that go along with the complex reconciliation process and are now trying to work out disagreements among GOP senators that could doom or complicate a final deal.

The goal is to avoid a protracted debate over core GOP provisions in full public view once the vote-a-rama begins, though some senators are already predicting votes on GOP amendments.

‘A potentially messy process’

Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, who has raised concerns about the bill’s impact on rural hospitals, said he hopes GOP leaders reach a consensus before vote-a-rama but didn’t rule out offering his own amendments if they don’t settle their disputes.

“Amending it on the floor, that’s a potentially messy process,” Hawley said. “I would hope that we could get to a good place before that. But we have to fix the rural hospital issue.”

Alabama Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he will likely propose amendments during floor debate, though he declined to say what specific policies he’d seek to change or eliminate from the package.

“Yeah, we’ll have some,” Tuberville said. “And we’ve got them all, we just haven’t turned them in yet.”

Thune said he and other negotiators are making “headway” toward consensus on the more significant provisions in the package, which in many respects is far from its final form.

“The meetings right now are on the major provisions in tax and health. We have sort of pre-litigated a lot of that,” Thune said. “But there are a lot of the other provisions in the bill, chapters in the bill that are still subject to going through the Byrd bath, and we’re in the process of doing that. But hopefully that’ll be done by early next week.”

Republicans are using the reconciliation process to pass their sweeping tax and spending cuts package through the Senate with just a simple majority vote, requiring them to comply with the Byrd rules.

That includes the Byrd bath — going before the Senate parliamentarian to explain how each provision has an impact on federal revenue or spending that is not “merely incidental.” Democrats then usually debate before the parliamentarian the various changes that don’t meet that threshold. The process is named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat.

Once the parliamentarian rules what elements comply and which need to be removed, the bill can go to the floor and senators can trudge through vote-a-rama. Eventually, all 100 lawmakers will vote to approve or disapprove of the legislation.

GOP senators passing their version of the package would send it back to the House, which passed its version on a slim 215-214 vote earlier this year — and could make yet more changes in the Senate bill.

Democrats develop strategy

Democrats are hoping to highlight policy divisions among Republicans during the vote-a-rama. And even if they don’t succeed in getting any of their amendments adopted, several votes could serve as fodder for campaign ads during next year’s midterm elections.

Schumer said Wednesday during a press conference it would be “difficult” for Democrats to peel off at least four GOP senators from the rest of the party in order to get an amendment adopted, but said he’s hopeful Republicans will “vote with us on some things they’ve all said they’ve agreed with.”

Democratic senators, he said, have created a task force to reach out to Republicans on major issues in the package, including how it would impact rural hospitals.

“Many of these hospital administrators and employees are Republican,” Schumer, a New York Democrat, said. “In many of the rural hospitals, they are the largest employer in the county, and in most they’re the only supplier of health care. It infuriates the rural counties, and they tend to be Republican.”

‘It’s just a show, it’s a charade’

West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she’s not concerned about having to vote on dozens of amendments. 

“We’re here to vote,” Capito said. “As a creature of the House, we voted all the time on everything, so this doesn’t bother me. And, you know, just let the body work its will. If some changes are made, those will have to be dealt with. But I’m not worried about that.”

Arkansas Republican Sen. John Boozman said he expects the vote-a-rama will be “a very late night” and that he’s not planning to offer any of his own amendments.

As chairman of the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee, Boozman expects to spend a considerable amount of time during vote-a-rama arguing against amendments seeking to change those provisions — including controversial cuts in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food aid for lower-income families.

Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson said he plans to spend much of the vote-a-rama “going back and forth from my hideaway,” the ceremonial office that every senator holds in the Capitol building.

But Johnson cast doubt on actually being able to amend the package during that process, saying changes to the various bills that Senate committees have released need to be agreed to before then.

“You’ve got to get this before it ever goes to the floor. I mean, you’re not going to change things substantially or significantly with amendments. I know people have some idealized version that happens. It doesn’t,” Johnson said. “You’ve got to get these things in the base bill. Amendments; it’s just a show, it’s a charade.”

Vote-a-rama after vote-a-rama

The Senate has held two vote-a-ramas so far this year, and both demonstrated how difficult it is to change a piece of legislation.

The first all-nighter in February went along with Senate debate on its budget resolution and included votes on 25 amendments, with lawmakers adopting just two — one from Alaska Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan and one from Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

The second vote-a-rama took place in April just before the Senate voted to approve the budget resolution that ultimately cleared the way for Congress to use the budget reconciliation process to advance the “big, beautiful bill.” Senators debated 28 amendments, voting to adopt one change from Sullivan.

Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, ranking member on the Finance Committee, said he and staff on the panel will continue to parse through details of the panel’s bill, which Republicans just released Monday.

Wyden said he plans to hold several town hall meetings in GOP areas of his state over the weekend to gauge how residents there view the policy revisions Republican senators have put forward.

“We’ve had this bill for basically 36 hours. The first time I had it, I stayed up all night, so last night I got a little sleep,” Wyden said on Wednesday. “But on the plane, I’ll be working through it. And I expect to be working through it all through the next few days, except when I’m having these town hall meetings where I’ll have a number of questions.”

Rep. Tony Kurtz testifies on his proposed legislation to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

Organizations representing wildlife, land conservation and local governments testified Wednesday at a public hearing to push for the passage of a Republican bill to reauthorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program while advocating for a number of amendments to the bill’s text. 

The proposal’s authors, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point), say the current version of the bill is a starting point for negotiations. Without a deal, the 35-year-old program will lapse despite its popularity among voters. 

The challenge for legislators is that despite overwhelming public support for land conservation, a subset of the Republican members of the Legislature have grown opposed to the grant program. In their view, the grant program allows land to be taken off the local property tax roll and blocks  commercial development. 

That opposition has grown stronger since the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee’s authority to place anonymous holds on stewardship grant projects is unconstitutional. 

Kurtz has said that without returning some level of legislative oversight, the Republican opposition to the program won’t get on board with reauthorizing it. But the bill also needs to be palatable to Democratic Gov. Tony Evers so that he will sign it and any Republican opposition to the bill could make the votes of Democratic legislators more important. 

In an effort to recruit  Republican holdouts, the bill includes a provision that requires the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to submit a list to the Legislature each January of any major land acquisitions costing more than $1 million the department plans to purchase with stewardship funds that year. The Legislature would then need to approve each proposed project in a piece of legislation and provide the required appropriation. 

To gain the support of environmental groups, the bill allows stewardship dollars to be used for the first time to fund habitat restoration projects. 

Following a recent trend of Republican-authored legislation, the bill separates the policy changes to the program from the budget appropriation to fund it in an attempt to sidestep Evers’ partial veto pen. 

Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, said in his testimony at the hearing Wednesday that the bill’s authors had to “try and thread a challenging political path towards reauthorization.” 

At the hearing, testifying members of the public mainly highlighted two areas for improvement on the bill — clarifying how the DNR should prioritize habitat restoration, facility upkeep and land acquisition in award grants and more clearly laying out how the legislative approval process for major land acquisitions will work. 

As currently written, the bill would require the DNR to prioritize property development over land acquisition projects. 

Brian Vigue, freshwater policy director for Audubon Great Lakes, said those types of grants are so different that they should be considered separately. 

“Because habitat management projects are so different from land acquisition projects, it really will make it difficult for the DNR to determine which of the two types of grant applications would have priority over the other,” he said. “It’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison to make so I think a practical solution to this challenge is to create a separate appropriation for wildlife habitat grants.” 

A number of organizations testifying called for more direct language outlining how the legislative oversight process will work, such as binding timelines for when the Legislature must consider the projects on the DNR list, clear guidelines for how projects will be evaluated and quickly held votes on project approval. 

Representatives of organizations that work to purchase private land and conserve it through conservation easements or deals with the state said that the opportunities to purchase a piece of land and save it for future enjoyment by the broader public come rarely and that those real estate transactions can often be complicated and take a long time. If a deal is largely in place except for the required legislative approval — which could potentially take years or never even come up for a vote — landowners might be unwilling to participate in the process. 

“Opportunities to provide such access sometimes only come once in a generation,” said Tony Abate, conservation director at Groundswell Conservancy, a non-profit aimed at conserving land in south central Wisconsin. “We are concerned with the funding threshold and the logistics of the proposed major land acquisition program. Real estate near population centers is expensive, and we often compete with non-conservation buyers to secure farmland or recreational lands.”

Abate said that of the conservancy’s 16 current projects, four would surpass the $1 million threshold and require legislative approval. He suggested raising the threshold to $5 million.

Carlin, with Gathering Waters, said the provision as currently written could indefinitely delay projects. 

“We appreciate legislators’ concerns with oversight, and we welcome discussion about how to provide effective and efficient oversight,” he said. “Unfortunately, the current proposal lacks defined timelines, transparent evaluation processes or mechanisms to require timely votes. Without these elements, worthy conservation projects could languish indefinitely. So we would ask that any review process include binding timelines, transparent project evaluation and timely votes to ensure strong oversight while maintaining predictability for applicants.”

At the hearing, members of the committee asked few questions of the testifying groups and members of the public. Democrats on the committee pushed more than once to make sure they see the partner bill providing the money for the program before voting on the policy changes. 

All of the testimony at the hearing Wednesday was either to provide information only to the legislators or in favor of the bill. The committee received one written comment against the bill’s passage, from the Wisconsin Bear Hunters’ Association.

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Republicans on the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee rejected a funding request from the City of Ashland to build a new boat launch at Kreher Park. (City of Ashland)

A pair of Republican lawmakers has introduced legislation that would re-authorize the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program, a popular program that allows the state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to fund the purchase of public land and the upkeep of recreational areas. 

The decades-old program is set to expire next year and despite its bipartisan support among the state’s voters, a subset of Republicans in the Legislature — largely from the northern part of the state — have become increasingly opposed to the program due to concerns that it stops land from being developed for commercial activities. 

Until a 6-1 decision by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last summer, members of the Legislature’s powerful Joint Finance Committee had the ability to place anonymous holds on proposed grants through the program, which resulted in many projects being delayed or prevented altogether. Without that ability, Republicans who were already wary of the program became more opposed because of what they characterize as a lack of legislative oversight. Proponents of the program say the Legislature exercises oversight through the budget writing process when it allocates funding for the program. 

In recent years, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program has received $33 million annually in the state budget. In his budget request this year, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed re-authorizing the program with a $100 million annual budget. Republicans stripped that provision out of the budget along with most of Evers’ other proposals. 

Last week, Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) introduced a bill that would keep the program alive with $28 million in annual funding. The bill would also create a major land acquisitions program for stewardship grant awards which would require the DNR to annually submit a list of all its proposed land acquisitions costing more than $1 million for that year. 

Those acquisitions would need to be approved by votes of the full Legislature. 

Additionally, the bill would create a sub-program to use stewardship grant funds for habitat restoration projects, require the DNR to prioritize projects that develop already existing public lands over new land acquisition, require local governments to match 20% of the state funding, get rid of the current 10-acre minimum size requirement and limit the state’s contribution to 40% of the total cost if the sale of a piece of land is already closed when stewardship funds are applied for. 

In a co-sponsorship memo, Kurtz and Testin, who did not respond to requests for an interview about the bill, said the initial proposal is meant to be the start of negotiations, not the final version of the bill. 

“It’s important to note what we’re proposing is not an agreed upon deal,” the memo states. “It’s a first offer to provide a starting place for negotiations on this important program. It’s very likely the bill will continue to change during the legislative process, but it’s important to put something forward to allow feedback, have open-minded conversations and ultimately find a good place to ensure the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program’s legacy continues.” 

At a meeting with the Wisconsin chapter of the Audubon Society in April, Kurtz said the program was on “life support” and he was trying to save it from dying but any bill would need to put some oversight on the DNR in order to receive enough Republican support. 

The opposition to the stewardship program from a subset of the Republican caucus in both chambers means the bill might require Democratic votes to pass the Legislature and reach Evers’ desk. 

Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) has spent months pushing for the program’s reauthorization – often pointing to a stewardship grant project in her district that was subjected to an anonymous hold, the Cedar Gorge Clay Bluffs on Lake Michigan. She said the hold on that project angered a lot of her constituents of both parties. 

“That really got people upset,” she told the Wisconsin Examiner. “People would not at all want to see a reenactment in any fashion of that anonymous objection process.” 

Habush Sinykin said that she’s closely watching the bill to make sure it protects a program that enjoys wide support outside of the Capitol building and will stir up significant opposition if it’s allowed to die. 

“Once people understand that this program is at risk, they are coming forward to express their opposition to any permanent damage to the program,” she said. “And so what we are engaged in right now is this process to keep it going forward, and there is going to be ongoing negotiation, because the devil is in the details. We need to make sure that what is one step forward will not ultimately be two steps backward.” 

Charles Carlin, director of strategic initiatives for Gathering Waters, a non-profit aimed at land conservation across Wisconsin, said that Kurtz and Testin should be credited for working to get the conversation started and provisions in the bill like the habitat restoration program. But he added that there are still a lot of questions about how provisions such as the requirement for legislative approval will work. 

“I think part of what they are trying to balance here is a recognition that this is an incredibly popular program with voters, while trying to balance that against the fact that there are a handful of legislators who are deeply skeptical of the DNR and deeply skeptical of additional investments in conservation,” he said. “So I see that major land acquisitions component as a way for them to try and balance those competing interests. The way that that major land acquisitions program is currently described in the bill just leaves a lot of question marks.”  

The bill is set to receive a public hearing in the Assembly Committee on Forestry, Parks and Outdoor Recreation Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Lucy always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown at the last minute, and that dynamic has been echoed by Ram and their electric pickups. When one of them seems close to being launched, it inevitably gets delayed.

The Ram 1500 REV was unveiled at the 2023 New York Auto Show and was slated to be launched in the fourth quarter of 2024. A few months later, in November of 2023, the brand introduced the 1500 Ramcharger, which promised to solve electric truck woes by adding a 3.6-liter V6 engine into the mix.

First Look: The 2025 Ram 1500 REV Is A Classy, Conservative, 500 Mile Electric Juggernaut

Fast forward to today and neither model is available at dealerships. Ram announced a delay and a product switch in late 2024, which would see the Ramcharger be the first out of the gate in 2025. The fully electric 1500 REV would then follow in 2026.

However, the latest reports suggest the trucks have been delayed again as the Ramcharger could arrive early next year. The 1500 REV, on the other hand, might finally reach dealerships in the summer of 2027.

A Long Wait, But A Lucky Break

Michael Gauthier

If that time table pans out, more than four years will have passed between the debut and launch of the 1500 REV. That’s a staggering delay, but Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis said their electric trucks are still coming.

Also: Ram Screwed Up Dumping The V8 So They Brought It Back For 2026

As he explained during a recent media briefing, electrification is still happening despite the Hemi’s return. While the current administration isn’t nearly as gung-ho on EVs, a number of regulations and efficiency standards remain in place, so Ram needs models like the Ramcharger and REV.

However, Ram has the ‘luxury of timing’ and the benefit of being late to the game. Ford, General Motors, and Tesla all launched electric trucks and they’re about as hot as a snow cone.

Michael Gauthier

In the first quarter, GM sold 3,479 Hummers (SUVs and pickups), 2,383 Silverado EVs, and 1,249 Sierra EVs. That’s a grand total of 7,111 units, which compares to the 78,199 regular Silverado pickups sold in the same period.

Over in Dearborn, Ford sold 7,187 F-150 Lightnings in Q1. The Cybertruck, on the other hand, has fallen well short of projections.

Ram Saw The Writing On The Wall

Ram was paying attention and counting their lucky stars. Being late to the game enabled them to see the lack of demand, so Kuniskis said they decided to delay the models. He said this was strictly a business decision and it’s hard to argue with that as electric vehicle adoption has been slower than many companies anticipated.

Kuniskis also said Ram messed up originally as they should have planned on launching the range-extended Ramcharger first. He’s particularly excited about it and believes other brands will “chase it.”

Michael Gauthier

This already seems to be the case as Ford CEO Jim Farley has come out praising range-extended EVs. It’s not hard to see why as the 1500 Ramcharger is slated to have a 91.8 kWh battery pack as well as a dual-motor all-wheel drive system producing 647 hp (482 kW / 656 PS) and 610 lb-ft (826 Nm) of torque.

However, the real star is a 3.6-liter V6 engine that acts as a generator and could enable the truck to have a range of up to 690 miles (1,110 km). The Ramcharger also promises to be a ‘real’ truck thanks to a towing capacity of up to 14,000 lbs (6,350 kg) and a payload capacity of 2,625 lbs (1,191 kg).

In effect, Ram addresses the key pain points of purely electric trucks while also providing traditional gas truck benefits. That sounds like a winning combination, but only time will tell.

Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) looks at the root beer float made by Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) during the Assembly Public Benefit Reform Committee. Clancy made it as he was arguing the definitions in the bill were arbitrary and unclear. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)

Republican lawmakers are seeking to implement a pair of bills that would prevent low-income Wisconsinites from buying “junk” food and ban certain ingredients in school meals, taking inspiration from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie), the lead author on both of the bills, has said he wants to help ensure the food children and others are eating is healthy. 

AB 180 would bar participants in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — or, as it’s known in Wisconsin, FoodShare — from purchasing soda and candy with their benefits. Under the bill, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) would need to submit a waiver to the federal government for approval to make the change to the program.

Kennedy wants a similar policy implemented nationwide, and so far several states, including Arkansas and Indiana, have asked the Trump administration for a waiver that would remove soda and candy from SNAP eligibility.

Moses said at a hearing on the proposal earlier this month that by allowing people to purchase those items with FoodShare, Wisconsin is “facilitating consumption of harmful, additive-filled foods” and that “instead, we should be supporting healthy, sustainable food choices for [people’s] overall health of individuals, the health of our society as a whole.”

Moses argued the restrictions wouldn’t be a novel idea, since people already can’t use their SNAP benefits to purchase alcohol, pet food and other items. SNAP currently also can’t be used for hot foods (such as a meal at a restaurant), supplements and vitamins and nonfood items. 

He also compared it to the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) program, the assistance program that provides free healthy foods, breastfeeding support, nutrition education and referrals to other services to income-eligible pregnant and postpartum women, breastfeeding moms and children under 5.

“Most government money has strings attached to what that money can be used for,” Moses told the Assembly Public Benefits Reform Committee. “Adding this provision is no different than the special supplemental nutrition program for the WIC program… WIC basically includes a list of good items or essentials that people can buy that does not include any of this other stuff.”

Expert: SNAP, WIC have different goals

UW-Madison food insecurity expert Judith Bartfeld says, however, that the programs are fundamentally different. WIC serves as a narrowly targeted nutrition program that provides specific foods for a defined group of nutritionally at-risk people. 

The SNAP program, meanwhile, is designed to serve as a “supplement to existing income” and “to fill the gap between a USDA estimate of what is needed to meet a household’s food needs and the amount a given household is assumed to be able to spend on food out of current income,” Bartfeld wrote in an email to the Examiner.

She said periodic state and federal attempts to restrict SNAP have been unsuccessful in the past, in part because of a “reluctance to upset the balance for a program that is a backbone of the safety net.” 

According to DHS, the SNAP program helps nearly 700,000 Wisconsinites put food on their tables annually. A USDA study from 2016, the most recent year, found that “there were no major differences in the expenditure patterns of SNAP and non-SNAP households, no matter how the data were categorized,” and that similar to other families, SNAP recipients spend about 20 cents of every dollar on sweetened drinks, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar. 

“It’s intended to provide extra resources to support buying food at the store — and its effectiveness in reducing food insecurity is well documented,” Bartfeld said. “There have long been concerns that restricting how benefits can be used would make things more complicated for retailers, more stigmatizing for participants, unlikely to translate into meaningful health improvements, and would risk reducing participation and jeopardizing the well-documented benefits of SNAP on food security.”

In addition, she said, “identifying specific foods that are healthy or unhealthy is much more complicated in practice than it sounds.” 

Bartfeld said SNAP combats food insecurity because it provides additional resources to low income people and has become “less stigmatizing and easier to use.” Restrictions, she said, could end up having a negative effect.  

“If putting restrictions on SNAP ends up making it stigmatizing for participants, more complicated for retailers or opens the door to an increasingly constrained program, there are real concerns it may become less effective as an anti-hunger program — which of course would have negative health outcomes; this is why the anti-hunger community has long opposed bans such as this, and considered food bans as a line better not crossed,” Bartfeld said.

FoodShare cuts would cost Wisconsin $314 million a year, state health department reports

Bartfeld said it’s also unclear if a ban would improve health. Despite attempts to model health effects of a SNAP soda ban, she said, there is no empirical evidence proposed bans would meaningfully change diets or improve health outcomes.

“In contrast, there is real-world evidence that incentivizing healthy food purchases can modestly impact food choices,” Bartfeld said. “And SNAP has a nutrition education program (SNAP-Ed, which goes by FoodWise in Wisconsin), that appears to increase healthy eating — even as, ironically, that funding is currently at risk.”

The GOP-bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday included “some of the largest cuts in the program’s history” the SNAP program, according to CNBC. 

The bill would expand work requirements to qualify for benefits, likely leading to reduced participation, cut federal funding and leave it up to states to fill in the gaps and it would entirely eliminate funding for the education program. According to Wisconsin DHS, the cuts would cost the state approximately $314 million every year and would put 90,000 people at risk of losing benefits. The bill now goes to the Senate.

Punishing low-income Wisconsinites?

Bartfeld said this is one of the challenges with some of the recent “health-focused” SNAP proposals across the county as the other proposed cuts and restrictions to the program are unrelated or “often run counter to health.” 

“That interest in benefit cuts is happening in tandem with increasing attention to food choices does mean that food programs are at the center of the action, and it can make it challenging to differentiate proposals that are really about health from those that are more fundamentally about regulating the low income [population] and paring back assistance,” Bartfeld said. 

Moses during his testimony described the proposal as part of a “national movement basically to really make our food supply healthier.” He said it shouldn’t be partisan and noted former First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to improve school meals. 

“I expect to receive full support from not just the Legislature but the governor as well,” Moses said. 

Democrats on the committee didn’t appear on board with the legislation. Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee) expressed concerns about the legislation focusing on low-income Wisconsinites and including unclear, arbitrary definitions.

Clancy asked Moses about low-income families using benefits to celebrate Halloween and special occasions. Moses replied that “if their kids really want candy, they can go into the neighbor’s house then they could trick or treat, and they’d probably get all the candy they want, but the benefit would be that the taxpayers wouldn’t be paying for it.”

“People that are on SNAP… they are taxpayers as well,” Clancy said, “so I don’t want to categorize folks who are experiencing, hopefully, temporary poverty from being taxpayers. They’re chipping in for, you know, health care benefits and everything else.” He added, “We’re, I think, just targeting low-income people with this.” 

Clancy demonstrated his point by pulling out a bottle of Snickers-flavored iced coffee, a seltzer water and, at one point, a cup of ice cream and a bottle of root beer. He poured the root beer into the ice cream, saying the milk in it would make it acceptable to purchase under the definitions in the bill. The definition for “soft drink” is “a beverage that contains less than 0.5 percent of alcohol and that contains natural or artificial sweeteners” and “does not include a beverage that contains milk or milk products; soy, rice, or similar milk substitutes; or more than 50 percent vegetable or fruit juice by volume.” 

“A root beer float is totally fine right? By taking this sugary thing, adding it to another sugary thing, this is now legal for somebody to use their FoodShare benefits,” Clancy said. 

Committee Chair Rep. Dan Knodl (R-Germantown) told Clancy to stop, saying that the hearing “isn’t a cooking show.” 

Banning additives in school meals

Another bill — AB 226 — would target “ultraprocessed” foods in schools by banning certain ingredients from meals, “Ultraprocessed foods” were one of the top concerns recently outlined by Kennedy and a report the Trump administration commissioned, and Kennedy has expressed interest in banning other additives as well.

Among the additives the bill identifies are brominated vegetable oil, potassium bromate, propylparaben, azodicarbonamide and red dye No. 3, which can be found in candy, fruit juices, cookies and other products.

Moses told lawmakers on the Assembly Education Committee that additives named in the bill are either in the process of being banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or have been subject of peer-reviewed studies that found links to adverse side effects if consumed in significant enough amounts. For example, Red No. 3 and brominated vegetable oil are both no longer approved for use in food by the FDA. 

“Our school lunches should not be filled with substances that negatively affect our students’ health, even including their mental health,” Moses told the committee.

Moses said the bill would “bypass the need for federal action while not forcing schools to risk loss of federal funds to pay for existing school lunch programs.” He also noted that other states, including California, are also working to ban the ingredients.

The bill would go into effect on July 1, 2027.

An earlier version of the bill only included free- and reduced-price meals, but it was amended after concerns from the Department of Public Instruction and the School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin. Both now support the bill. 

The Department of Public Instruction said the legislation aligns with positive trends in nutrition. 

“With an increased focus on farm-to-school programs and the use of local food, school nutrition programs are helping to improve the nutritional value of meals,” Kim Vercauteren, policy initiatives advisor for the DPI Division for Finance and Management, said in testimony. “Many schools and school nutrition vendors are already committed to providing meals that utilize unprocessed foods, which can be enjoyed without harmful, nutritionally useless additives. These programs not only encourage the use of healthy food, but educate students on healthy lifelong choices.” 

Targeted additives not common in schools

Members of the Healthy School Meals For All Coalition told the Wisconsin Examiner that they support the proposal, but also they hope it isn’t the only thing that lawmakers do to help improve school meals. The coalition of school food stakeholders has been advocating for free school meals for all Wisconsin students and for improving the quality of food served to students.

“We appreciate the fact that they’re looking out for the well-being of our students and see the work that we do,” School Nutrition Association of Wisconsin President Kaitlin Tauriainen said in an interview. “We’re hoping that some of these steps will allow us to build more of a bridge so we can understand each other’s point of view — whether that means taking steps to grant more access to food for kids or jumping right into the full meals for all free meals for all, which is something you know we certainly want.”

Tauriainen said that school nutrition professionals are focused on feeding students the healthiest food possible, although the ingredients listed in the bill already aren’t common in school meals. 

“I would say the majority of our manufacturers that we’ve talked to don’t have those additives in their food,” Tauriainen, who is the child nutrition coordinator for the Ashwaubenon School District, said. “So it’s really kind of a non-issue.”

Allison Pfaff Harris, farm to school director with REAP Food Group, a Madison-based nonprofit, said she appreciates that the bill is trying to address the school food “supply side.” She said, however, that school nutrition programs need support in moving away from other processed ingredients not mentioned in the bill. 

Operating on limited budgets, school nutrition programs “turn to those quicker ingredients, which are going to be more processed foods,” Pfaff Harris said, adding that “not all processed foods have those food additive ingredients.”

Pfaff Harris suggested pairing Moses’ bill with other improvements. She said the “big ask” for the coalition is no-cost school meals, but smaller steps would also be significant. Guaranteeing that the breakfast reimbursement for schools is 15 cents per meal could improve the supply chain and nutrition programs, she said. DPI prorates payments because it lacks funding to pay the full cost; Pfaff Harris said the current reimbursement rate is about 7 cents. 

“This is one piece of the puzzle, but it’s a small piece in the giant puzzle,” Pfaff Harris said. 

Pfaff Harris said the discussion about healthy meals is also challenging because there have been recent federal decisions cutting resources that help schools serve fresh ingredients. Wisconsin was set to receive $11 million in funding for “Local Food for Schools” programs, but it was cut by the Trump administration. 

“You’re having these bills introduced, which is a good thing, but … from my perspective, if we really wanted to make a difference in school nutrition programs and help them to be able to do more scratch cooking and semi-scratch and fresh ingredients, it’s getting that funding back,”  Pfaff Harris said.

Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison) asked Moses about free school meals and other proposals, saying it could improve his bill. 

Moses said her suggestions seemed like a completely different bill altogether.

“It doesn’t matter to me if it’s reduced or people are paying for it. I want [the meals] to be safe …” Moses said. “Essentially, it’s not the intent of this bill.”

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Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before Congress on Tuesday that a major report due out later this week from his agency will not disparage farmers or a commonly used pesticide.

Kennedy, who has long been critical of certain aspects of modern agriculture and processed food, at a U.S. Senate hearing urged lawmakers to read the widely anticipated “Make America Healthy Again” report once it’s published Thursday, but didn’t go into details about any possible recommendations.

“Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy said. “And there’s nobody that has a greater commitment to the American farmer than we do. The MAHA movement collapses if we can’t partner with the American farmer in producing a safe, robust and abundant food supply.”

His comments followed stern questioning from Mississippi Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who said she had read news reports from “reliable sources” that the MAHA Commission’s initial assessment “may unfairly target American agriculture, modern farming practices and the crop protection tools that roughly 2% of our population relies on to help feed the remaining 98%.”

“If Americans lose confidence in the safety and integrity of our food supply due to the unfounded claims that mislead consumers, public health will be at risk,” Hyde-Smith said. “I’ve said this before, and it’s worth saying again, countries have gone to war over many things — politics, religion, race, trade, natural resources, oil, pride, you name it — but threaten a nation’s food supply and allow people to go hungry. Let’s see what happens then.”

Hyde-Smith, who was her home state’s commissioner of agriculture and commerce from 2012 to 2018, probed Kennedy about his past work in environmental law and whether he might be inserting “confirmation bias” into the forthcoming report.

She asked Kennedy if he would try to change the current approval for glyphosate, a commonly used herbicide, that she referred to as “one of the most thoroughly studied products of its kind.”

“We’re talking about more than 1,500 studies and 50-plus years of review by the EPA and other leading global health authorities that have affirmed its safety when used as directed,” Hyde-Smith said. “Have you been able to review thousands of studies and decades of scientific review in a matter of months?”

Kennedy responded that her “information about the report is just simply wrong.”

“The drafts that I’ve seen, there is not a single word in them that should worry the American farmer,” Kennedy said.

Hyde-Smith continued her questioning and told Kennedy that it would be “a shame if the MAHA commission issues reports suggesting, without substantial facts and evidence, that our government got things terribly wrong when it reviewed a number of crop protection tools and deemed them to be safe.”

Home energy program in Maine

Several other Republicans on the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee raised concerns during the two-hour hearing about how Kennedy has run HHS since they confirmed him in February.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the full Appropriations Committee, brought up the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, which the Trump administration has called on Congress to eliminate.

“The LIHEAP program, which we’ve talked about, is absolutely vital for thousands of older Mainers and low-income families,” Collins said. “It helps them avoid the constant worry of having to choose between keeping warm, buying essential foods and medications and other basic necessities.”

Kennedy sought to distance himself from the president’s budget request, saying that he understands “the critical, historical importance of this program.”

“President (Donald) Trump’s rationale and (the Office of Management and Budget’s) rationale is that President Trump’s energy policies are going to lower the cost of energy … so that everybody will get lower cost heating oil,” Kennedy said.

NIH indirect costs

Subcommittee Chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., brought up several issues with Kennedy, including efforts to change how much the National Institutes of Health provides to medical schools and research universities for Facilities and Administrative fees, often called indirect costs.

NIH sought to set that amount at 15% across the board for any institution that receives a research grant from the agency, a significantly lower amount than many of the organizations had negotiated over the years, bringing about strong objections from institutions of higher education.

That NIH policy has not taken effect as several lawsuits work their way through the federal court system.

Kennedy indicated NIH has figured out a way to help medical schools and research universities pay for items like gloves, test tubes and mass spectrometers, particularly at state schools.

“In the public universities, we are very much aware that those universities are using the money well, that it is absolutely necessary for them. And we’re looking at a series of different ways that we can fund those costs through them,” Kennedy said. “But not through the independent, indirect cost structure, which loses all control, which deprives us of all control of how that money is spent.”

Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran, a Republican, brought up the measles outbreak and pressed Kennedy on whether HHS needed additional resources to help his home state and others get the virus under control.

Kennedy testified the “best way to prevent the spread of measles is through vaccination” and that HHS has been urging “people to get their MMR vaccines.”

South Dakota grant on mine safety

South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds called on Kennedy to continue fixing issues created earlier this year when HHS fired people working on mine safety issues at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

“My office has learned that staff at NIOSH’s Spokane mining research division have been laid off. This office focuses on the unique challenges of Western mining operations that are often more geologically complex and exposed to harsher conditions,” Rounds said. “This division provides critical technical support for institutions like the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, which recently received a $1.25 million grant to improve underground mining safety. However, the grant has now been canceled due to loss of oversight from the Spokane office.

“This is not just a missed opportunity, it undermines our ability to meet national security goals tied to mineral independence and supply chain resilience.”

Kennedy testified that he’s been able to bring back 238 workers at the agency and said he would work with Rounds to address ongoing issues.

Pledge to fund Head Start, but no dollar amount

Alabama Sen. Katie Britt, a Republican, asked Kennedy about news reports earlier this year that HHS would ask Congress to zero out funding for Head Start, one of numerous programs left out of the administration’s skinny budget request. Head Start provides early learning, health, family and development programs for free for children from low-income families.

Kennedy testified that eliminating Head Start would likely not be in the full budget request, which is set to be released later this year, though the White House budget office has not said when. He said it would ask Congress to fully fund the program, but didn’t share a dollar amount.

“There’s 800,000 of the poorest kids in this country who are served by this program. It not only teaches the kids preschool skills — reading, writing and arithmetic — before they get to prepare them for school. But it also teaches the parents and teaches them how to be good parents.”

Kennedy said there are challenges faced by the Head Start program that he hopes to change during the next four years, including the quality of the food.

“The food they’re serving at Head Start is terrible. You need to change that,” Kennedy said. “We’re poisoning the poorest kids from their youngest years, and we’re going to change that.”

We’ve got some bad news for Ram fans who were hoping to jump into one of the automaker’s two new electrified trucks. Both have been delayed again, their production debuts having already been pushed back at least once.

The all-electric 1500 REV and hybrid Ramcharger both had their global reveals back in 2023 and were originally slated to enter production in late 2024. That date was then pushed back to 2025, but now truck fans face an additional wait of up to two years to get their hands on one of the hi-tech pickups.

Related: A Secret Ram EV Truck You Never Heard Of Just Sparked A Multi-Million Lawsuit

Stellantis has delayed the Ramcharger’s introduction to the first quarter of 2026 and the REV won’t now land in dealerships until the summer of 2027 as a 28MY truck. The delay was first reported by Crain’s Detroit Business, which discovered two different reasons for the hold-ups.

The Ramcharger delay is due to Ram “extending the quality validation period” to get a handle on some quality niggles, a Stellantis spokesperson told CDB via email. Though the rep didn’t expand on what kinks needed straightening, the powertrain – an electric motor and battery setup charged by a massive combustion V6 – is an entirely new one for the automaker.

Stellantis makes no suggestion that the delay of the 1500 REV is related to quality issues with its fully-electric powertrain. Instead, the spokesperson places the blame squarely on market forces, specifically a “slowing consumer demand” for half-ton BEV pickups.

With technology and customer expectations evolving so quickly these days, let’s just hope the trucks still feel fresh and exciting when they finally start rolling off the line in Sterling Heights, Michigan – several years later than originally planned.

While the delays are disappointing, at least the trucks haven’t been canned altogether like the heavy-duty electric pickup Ram scrapped last year. And there is still plenty of good news coming out of Ram right now. We reported a few weeks back that the brand promised to announce 25 new products over the next 18 months, and the first one is scheduled for June 8.

One of those new models is a smaller truck, though it’s still unclear whether it will go into battle with midsize pickups like the Ford Ranger, or take aim at the small Maverick.

A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire on Jan. 8, 2025 in Altadena, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress from both political parties are calling on the Trump administration to unfreeze funding for a grant program that helps local communities better prepare for natural disasters.

The letter from more than 80 lawmakers urges the Federal Emergency Management Agency to begin spending money already approved by Congress for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program.

“The BRIC program was established by Congress in the 2018 Disaster Recovery Reform Act and signed into law by President (Donald) Trump with bipartisan support,” the two-page letter states. “In the years since, this program has catalyzed community investments in resilient infrastructure, saving federal funds by investing in community preparedness before a disaster strikes.”

The lawmakers wrote that BRIC grant funds go to a variety of projects and that the program has played “an essential role in helping Tribal Nations and rural communities strengthen their defenses against natural disasters and safeguard critical infrastructure.”

“Through BRIC, Tribes and rural communities can access dedicated funding to strengthen community resilience by investing in hazard mitigation projects—such as flood protection, fire prevention, and infrastructure hardening—that are otherwise difficult to finance in rural or remote settings,” the lawmakers wrote.

While the program “has room for improvement,” the lawmakers wrote that FEMA and Congress should work together “to improve the application review and funding distribution process to more effectively reduce the costs disasters pose to our communities, economies, and livelihoods.”

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen, North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, Washington state Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski led drafting the letter in their chamber.

Reps. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C.; Sylvia Garcia, D-Texas; Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.; and Ed Case, D-Hawaii, spearheaded efforts in the House. 

‘Beyond reckless’

FEMA announced in early April that it would unilaterally cancel all BRIC funding approved from fiscal years 2020 through 2023, calling the program “wasteful and ineffective” in a statement.

“Approximately $882 million of funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will be returned to the U.S. Treasury or reapportioned by Congress in the next fiscal year,” a FEMA spokesperson wrote in the statement. “The 2021 law made $1 billion available for BRIC over five years, $133 million to date has been provided for about 450 applications. FEMA estimates more than $3.6 billion will remain in the Disaster Relief Fund to assist with disaster response and recovery for communities and survivors.”

The National Association of Counties wrote in a post about the cancellation that community leaders may “need to halt work or seek new funding sources” and “delay or scale back infrastructure investments.”

“Without access to BRIC’s federal match, counties may find it more difficult to pursue large-scale mitigation projects,” the NaCo post stated.

Association of State Floodplain Managers Executive Director Chad Berginnis wrote that dismantling the country’s “largest pre-disaster mitigation program is beyond reckless.”

“Cutting funding from projects already underway will leave states and communities scrambling, increasing disaster risk to families and businesses instead of reducing it,” Berginnis wrote. “The impact of this decision will be felt for decades to come.”

A Cybertruck driver recently found himself in a terrifying situation after what he claims was an aggressive move by another motorist on a California highway ended with his truck upside down. The incident occurred in broad daylight near Ukiah, and the entire event was captured by the Tesla’s onboard cameras.

The footage, later shared on YouTube by the Wham Baam Teslacam channel, shows how the crash unfolded. A black Ram 1500 overtakes the Cybertruck, then abruptly cuts into the right lane just ahead of it. Moments later, the Ram driver taps the brakes, prompting the Cybertruck driver to move left in an attempt to pass. That’s when things take a turn – literally.

More: BMW M4 Took A Wrong Turn Into The Mountain

The Ram swerves into the Tesla’s path, pulling off what appears to be an unintentional PIT maneuver that forces the Cybertruck off the highway. As it veers off the road, the slad-sided electric truck slams sideways into a ditch, causing it to roll over. While the truck lay upside down, its sensors detected the crash and automatically alerted emergency services. Fortunately, the driver wasn’t seriously injured, though he was taken to the hospital by ambulance after reporting back pain.

Copart

According to the Tesla owner, he had no prior interaction with the Ram driver, something he says is backed up by the footage he shared with police. After reviewing the video, the California Highway Patrol has reportedly charged the Ram driver with vehicular assault, though official confirmation from authorities has not been released publicly.

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The aftermath wasn’t kind to the Tesla. The truck sustained heavy damage to its roof, wheels, suspension, and body panels. It later appeared on Copart, looking far worse for wear. Some parts may be salvageable, but the cost of repairing such a heavily damaged vehicle likely outweighs any benefit. The driver is presumably seeking reimbursement through his insurance provider.

As for motive, nothing has been officially confirmed. However, the incident brings to mind other recent reports of road rage or hostility directed at Tesla drivers. Unlike the usual vandalism or minor clashes, though, this sort of encounter could have ended far more dangerously. With any luck, the Ram driver, if found responsible, will think twice before acting on impulse behind the wheel.

Screenshot Wham Baam Teslacam/Copart

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