States will soon have to pay millions of dollars more for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program under the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
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“To write about women that are desperate for money is certainly and feel like they’re being pushed out of the place they once were is really interesting.” — Megan Abbott […]
The post Megan Abbott’s ‘El Dorado Drive’ explores a women-led pyramid scheme and the decline of the auto industry. appeared first on WPR.
Recently, Amazon Prime has rekindled interest in "Northern Exposure" by making all six seasons available for streaming.
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Early fundraising numbers in Wisconsin's competitive 3rd Congressional District show Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden and second-time Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke are virtually tied.
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Pittsburgh writer Damon Young joined us a few years back to talk about his debut memoir, “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays.” It won the Thurber […]
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A few hundred people gathered at the Wisconsin Capitol on Thursday as part of the latest nationwide protest against President Donald Trump’s administration.
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SC Johnson plans to move jobs from its Chicago office to a facility in Racine County.
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A scathing report describes the problem as "profound failure" and said former City Clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl showed an "astonishing" lack of urgency in trying to correct or report it.
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Last month, same-sex marriage was both celebrated and condemned on a national scale. Pastors from Madison and Manitowoc County shared their personal stories and reaction to recent news.
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In the latest chapter of layoffs in the video game industry, about 20 of Middleton’s Raven Software staff are among the hundreds of people laid off by Microsoft this month. Tens of thousands of workers in the video game industry have been laid off since 2023.
The post Wisconsin video game developer hit with layoffs amid larger Microsoft cuts appeared first on WPR.
No Kings Day protest march viewed from the Wisconsin State Capitol | Photo by Gregory Conniff for Wisconsin Examiner
Early campaign reports this week goosed speculation that Gov. Tony Evers might not run for a third term. Evers, who hasn’t declared his intentions, has only raised $757,214 this year and has $2 million in the bank, compared with the $5 million he raised during the same period in 2021, before his successful bid for a second term.
Some progressives, most vocally Dan Shafer, creator of The Recombubulation Area blog, have been calling on Evers to step aside. Traumatized by former President Joe Biden’s fumbling 2024 campaign, Shafer says Evers, who is 73 (a decade younger than Biden) should not make the mistake of hanging around too long and instead should “pass the torch.”
“This is not ultimately an argument about ideological differences or policy disagreements,” Shafer writes. For him, it’s about age. It’s about the Biden trauma. And it’s about the problem Democrats at both the state and national level seem to have nurturing the next generation of leaders.
For some progressives, it’s also about ideology and policy disagreements. Advocates for child care, public schools, criminal justice reform and protecting health care access were furious that Evers didn’t drive a harder bargain with Republicans in the recently completed state budget deal.
Still, if Evers announces his retirement, a large, non-MAGA portion of Wisconsin will experience a moment of fear. In our closely divided purple state, there is a real possibility a Republican could win the governor’s office, just as new, fairer maps are finally giving Democrats a chance to compete for power in the state Legislature. The Republicans who have declared so far are wrapping themselves in the MAGA flag. Evers is popular across the state and has shown he can win.
Devin Remiker, the state Democratic party chair, has said he is “praying” Evers will run again. U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, former chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters recently that he couldn’t think of a better governor for Wisconsin than Evers.
If Evers doesn’t run, Attorney General Josh Kaul, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski are all likely Democratic candidates.
“There’s plenty of people on the bench who would love to be governor,” Pocan said. “… that’s not a concern. It’s really, I want the best person to be governor, and I think the best person who could be governor on the Democratic side is Tony Evers.”
Pocan calls Evers a “responsible adult” in contrast to Republicans who are following President Donald Trump off a cliff, slashing health care and food aid and driving up prices and deficits, making life a lot worse for a lot of people, including a projected 276,000 in Wisconsin who will lose health insurance and 49,000 who will lose food assistance under the federal mega bill.
There is an argument that Evers — “the most quintessentially Wisconsin politician I’ve ever seen,” as Pocan put it — accomplished what most Wisconsin voters wanted him to do in the budget process, put politics aside and get the best deal he could for state residents. Working across the aisle to achieve shared goals with the other party — including a last-minute maneuver that mitigates the disastrous Medicaid cuts Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through, drawing down $1 billion per year in federal funds for Wisconsin, was, as Evers himself pointed out, “significantly different” from the dynamic in Washington.
“How about that, compromise?” Evers said Wisconsin voters told him, happily, when they heard about the deal.
If the definition of compromise is a bargain that makes everyone unhappy, Democrats and progressives are clearly the more unhappy parties to this bargain.
Despite the glow of productive bipartisanship when the deal was struck, the details — and how the deal was done — are beginning to grate on some of Evers’ biggest former backers.
Big majorities of Republican legislators voted for the deal in both chambers. Five out of 15 Senate Democrats joined them, and there were only seven yes votes out of 45 Democrats in the state Assembly, where Speaker Robin Vos, who helped craft the budget, made it clear he didn’t need or want Democratic votes.
Arguably, the Democrats who gave impassioned floor speeches denouncing the budget have been in the minority in the Legislature for so long they never have to think about making the kinds of compromises involved in governing a divided state. If you look at it that way, it seems unfair of them to react angrily to Evers, a decent man who shares their goals and has worked diligently to accomplish what he can in the face of nasty opposition. Apart from Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, who joined the budget negotiations behind closed doors after it became clear Republicans were going to need some Democratic votes in the Senate, Democrats were largely shut out of the whole process.
And that’s the real problem with the way Evers governs, according to Robert Kraig of Citizen Action. By not involving legislative Democrats from the beginning, he disempowered not just those individual legislators but their constituents, giving up the pressure he could have brought to bear on Republicans if he leveraged citizen outrage and demands for action on broadly popular priorities — funding public schools, expanding Medicaid, keeping child care centers open, and the whole list of progressive policies in Evers’ original budget proposal.
Instead, Evers was the kind of adult in the room who sends everyone else out when it’s time to make a decision.
This governing style, Kraig argues, is badly out of step with the political moment. As an increasingly dangerous, destructive administration sends masked agents to grab people off the street and throw them in detention centers or deport them without due process, liquidates safety net programs and deliberately destroys civil society, it’s going to take a massive, popular movement to fight back.
Maybe Shafer is right that a younger, dynamic Democratic candidate could emerge as a leader of that movement. Maybe the Democratic Party needs to stop praying for likeable, bipartisan father figures to deliver victory and instead open the doors to the somewhat chaotic, populist backlash that is brewing against the oligarchic, authoritarian kleptocracy led by Trump.
It’s a big risk. But we are in very risky times. Democrats, and the public at large, have not yet figured out how to defend against the unprecedented maliciousness of our current federal government and the MAGAfied Republican party. The whole idea of bipartisanship seems outdated in a world where one side is seeking to tear up the social contract, the Constitution, due process, the justice system, fair elections, and the most basic, longstanding protections against poverty, hunger and disease.
These are the same conditions that gave rise to the Progressive Era. Fighting Bob LaFollette fought the leaders of his own party and founded a nationwide movement to wrest control of government from the wealthy timber barons and railroad monopolies who, through corrupt, captive politicians, fought to control all the resources of our state and nation.
Now those same powerful interests are fighting to claw back everything, to destroy the reforms of the early 20th century protecting workers, the environment, and the public sphere. They are smashing public institutions and flouting legal constraints.
Democrats need to make the case to the public that they will fight back. And they need the public to rise up behind them to help them do it.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Michael Haas, Madison city attorney and acting city clerk, addresses the Wisconsin Elections Commission on Thursday. (Screenshot/WisEye)
The city of Madison has three weeks to review an order on how to prevent election officials from repeating a mistake they made in the November 2024 election, when they failed to count nearly 200 ballots.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission voted Thursday to hold off on the order after the Madison city attorney and acting city clerk, Michael Haas, urged the commissioners to first give the city a chance to negotiate its details.
“We have concerns about the approach that would require Madison and Madison alone to implement specific new procedures without the opportunity for our staff to consider their impact and practicality and to provide feedback” to the elections commission, Haas told the commissioners during the public comment period at the start of the meeting.
The city alerted the commission on Dec. 20, 2024, that 193 absentee ballots from three wards were never processed — 68 from two wards that were found on Nov. 12 and 125 from another ward found on Dec. 3.
“The failure to count the 193 ballots in Madison was a result of a confluence of errors,” wrote commission members Ann Jacobs and Don Millis, in their report on their joint investigation. Jacobs, a Democrat, is the current commission chair; Millis, a Republican, is the former chair.
The report found “a complete lack of leadership” by Madison’s city clerk at the time, Maribeth Witzel-Behl, after the uncounted ballots were discovered. Witzel-Behl resigned in April.
“These ballots were treated as unimportant and a reconciliation nuisance, rather than as the essential part of our democracy they represent,” Jacobs and Millis wrote.
“The buck didn’t stop anywhere,” Jacobs told the commissioners.
While the report found violations of state election law, it stipulated that those weren’t crimes and that there was no recommendation for criminal referrals.
“This is not a criminal investigation,” Jacobs said. “The focus of this investigation has been discovering what happened and making sure it doesn’t ever happen again in Madison and throughout the state.”
The report’s proposed order requires the Madison city clerk to produce a plan for which employees handle each task in running an election; to print pollbooks that record absentee ballots no earlier than the Thursday before the election; and to watermark ballots that arrive after that date.
Pollbooks printed three weeks before the Nov. 5 election and ballots that were marked with a highlighter, but not watermarked, when they arrived after the books were printed were among the anomalies the report found in the Madison case.
The proposed order also includes requirements for the city clerk’s office and election officials who handle and process absentee ballots on Election Day.
Haas said “wholesale personnel management changes” in the order could be costly and that it didn’t account for changes the city has already made in its procedures.
Commission member Mark Thomsen urged the body to separate the report from the order, postponing the order so the city clerk’s office could respond.
“We have oversight but clerks run the elections, and it seems to me that we should at least defer to the city and the clerk on the specifics of an order,” said Thomsen, a Democrat.
Republican commissioner Bob Spindell agreed. “I’d like to see this cool off a bit and give Mike [Haas] the chance to come back as he’s requested,” he said.
The commission approved the report, minus the order, on a 5-1 vote, with Spindell the lone dissenter, saying that the former clerk “should not be crucified” over the incident.
A motion to approve the order failed on a tie vote. Commissioners then voted unanimously to defer it, giving the city until Aug. 7 to offer comments and setting a follow-up meeting for Aug. 15.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
Emil Bove, President Donald Trump's nominee to be a judge for the 3rd Circuit, testifies during his Senate Judiciary Committee nomination hearing on June 25, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Despite a walkout from Democrats, Senate Republicans tasked with vetting nominees to the federal bench on Thursday claimed to advance President Donald Trump’s former criminal defense attorney, Emil Bove, one step closer to a spot on the U.S. Appeals Court that handles cases in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
A spokesperson for Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who chairs the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, told States Newsroom the panel approved Bove’s nomination in a 12-0 vote — that is, despite panel rules that state “at least two members of the minority” must be present to transact committee business. The Iowa Republican’s office did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about committee rules.
In a show of opposition, all Democratic members of the panel, with the exception of Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, stood up and left as Republicans on the panel cast “aye” votes to push Bove’s nomination to the full Senate.
Booker, of New Jersey, refused to stop speaking as Grassley called the vote.
“You are a decent man. Why are you doing this?” Booker protested.
In a post on social media following the meeting, Josh Sorbe, press secretary for the committee’s minority, wrote: “Shameful day in Senate Judiciary. Republicans broke numerous committee rules, ignored privileged motions, denied debate, and rushed through judicial nominees without real vetting. Sen. BOOKER admonished them for it, and Democrats denied quorum and walked out.”
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, later issued a statement acknowledging the vote took place, but maintained Senate Republicans broke committee rules by ignoring Booker’s request for further debate and moving ahead with the vote.
“Chairman Grassley claimed that he was following Committee precedent. This is simply untrue,” Durbin said.
Senate Democrats, former judges and advocates opposed Bove’s nomination over what they describe as unethical behavior, including questions about his role as a top Department of Justice official in the dismissal of federal bribery charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and in the firing of prosecutors who worked on cases probing the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Critics also pointed to recent whistleblower accusations that Bove suggested ignoring a federal court order limiting Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Bove represented Trump in his multiple federal criminal cases in 2023 and 2024, as well as in a New York state trial that ended in Trump’s conviction on 34 felonies for falsifying business records.
Trump appointed Bove as acting attorney general on his first day in office, and Bove shifted to principal associate deputy upon Attorney General Pam Bondi’s confirmation.
Bove’s nomination to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit has been overshadowed by a whistleblower’s account alleging Bove told subordinates to consider defying a federal court order halting Trump’s deportation flights to El Salvador in March.
Both Bove and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, another of Trump’s former criminal defense attorneys, deny the allegations.
Grassley said Thursday prior to the vote that allegations against Bove “frankly crossed the line.”
“What we’re witnessing has all the hallmarks of a political hit job,” Grassley said.
Illinois’ Sen. Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, said in his opening statement Thursday that Bove “should not be seriously considered by the Senate for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.”
“He led this administration’s embarrassing efforts to strike a corrupt bargain with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and he has been trailed by a history of complaints, long predating his affiliation with President Trump, about his temperament, his poor judgment and lack of candor before the court,” Durbin said.
Durbin and fellow minority committee members requested the panel hear testimony from Erez Reuveni, a former senior DOJ official who filed a whistleblower complaint in which he alleged he was fired for refusing to follow department orders to undermine the courts in Trump’s deportation cases.
In the complaint submitted to the DOJ inspector general and Congress, Reuveni, who spent 15 years with the department, outlined “a pattern of deliberate defiance of federal court rulings related to immigration enforcement,” according to a summary from the Government Accountability Project and Gilbert Employment Law P.C., which filed the complaint on Reuveni’s behalf.
Lawmakers who viewed the complaint said Reuveni recounted witnessing Bove suggesting the DOJ might need to tell the courts “f— you” in relation to any order blocking the administration from sending planes full of deported migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Mr. Reuveni has made credible allegations against Mr. Bove, which, if true, clearly disqualify him for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. Thus, it is imperative that the Committee hear from Mr. Reuveni, under oath, before we vote on Mr. Bove’s nomination,” according to a letter Monday led by Durbin.
Grassley shut down the request Tuesday, writing in a response that documents provided by the minority to support the claim do not “substantiate any misconduct by Mr. Bove.”
“I respect whistleblowers and the whistleblowing process and have taken this matter seriously. I note that the available documents and the public record are inconsistent with some of the whistleblower’s assertions, which have been reviewed in good faith,” Grassley wrote.
More than 80 former federal and state judges described Bove’s nomination as a “disservice to the constitution, to law enforcement and to the rule of law” in a letter to Grassley and Durbin Tuesday.
The judges, including former 4th Circuit Judge Michael Luttig, a George H. W. Bush appointee who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris last year, slammed Bove’s “egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself,” adding that the allegations disqualify him for the position.
The letter cited Bove’s alleged role in firing Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and DOJ officials who prosecuted those involved in storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump pardoned all of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants on the first night of his second term, including the most violent convicted felons.
The former judges also called Trump’s nomination of his personal defense attorney to a federal judgeship “deeply inappropriate.”
“In fact, when President Trump nominated Bove, he posted on social media that Bove would ‘do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.’ That statement underscores the peril of confirming a nominee whose principal qualification appears to be personal loyalty to the president,” the former judges wrote.
Lena Zwarensteyn, senior director of the fair courts program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said the list of concerns over Bove’s nomination “goes on and on and on.”
“I think when it comes down to it, you know, in a lifetime position that requires good judgment, wise discretion, good temperament and the dedication to the rights of all, Mr. Bove fails on every single one of those accounts,” Zwarensteyn told States Newsroom in an interview Wednesday.
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who announced his retirement after breaking ranks earlier this month on Trump’s budget reconciliation package, said Thursday he found nothing to prove Bove expressed support for Jan. 6 defendants — something that would have been a “red line,” he said.
“The fact of the matter is, I can’t find one piece of evidence where he said that the violent act against police officers were okay or condoned. If you find it, let me know,” Tillis said.
Bove, of Seneca Falls, New York, graduated from Georgetown University Law in Washington, D.C., in 2008. He clerked for Judge Richard J. Sullivan of the Southern District of New York, and Judge Richard C. Wesley, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
Bove, 44, worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, and in 2023 became a partner at Blanche Law, the private firm of Todd Blanche.
Democratic senators, and in some cases Republicans, peppered Bove with questions and concerns about the numerous misconduct allegations during the Judiciary Committee’s June 25 confirmation hearing.
Booker said he remained worried about a “pattern of behavior” first reported by Politico in February regarding complaints about Bove’s temper from former colleagues in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.
“The allegations align with reports about your abuse of power now at the DOJ,” Booker said.
Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, pressed Bove on why the DOJ dismissed the federal corruption case against the New York mayor, who was charged with accepting illegal campaign contributions and luxury travel in exchange for favors.
The Trump administration moved to dismiss the Adams case in February, arguing the case interfered with the mayor’s ability to carry out immigration enforcement in the city. The administration requested a dismissal without prejudice — meaning Adams could be prosecuted again — but a federal judge ultimately dismissed the case in April with prejudice, citing concerns the White House would have leverage over Adams’ policy decisions.
“Do you believe in a higher being?” Kennedy asked Bove.
“It’s a very personal question, Senator, but I do,” Bove responded.
“I want you to look me in the eye and swear to your higher being when you answer this question, did you make a deal, a political deal, and dismiss the charges against Mayor Adams?” Kennedy said.
“Absolutely not,” Bove answered.
A voter casts an early ballot at a polling station in Milwaukee in 2023. Wisconsin is among at least nine states that have received requests from the U.S. Department of Justice for voter information, raising concerns among election officials about how the Trump administration will use the data. (Photo by Morry Gash/The Associated Press)
The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking the voter registration lists of several states — representing data on millions of Americans — and other election information ahead of the 2026 midterms, raising fears about how the Trump administration plans to use the information.
The DOJ is also demanding Colorado turn over all records related to the 2024 election, a massive trove of documents that could include ballots and even voting equipment. The Colorado inquiry, the most sweeping publicly known request, underscores the extent of the administration’s attention on state election activities.
At least nine states have received requests for information over the past three months, according to letters from the DOJ obtained by Stateline. Some states also received emails from a DOJ official last week asking for meetings to discuss information-sharing agreements.
The department’s focus on elections comes after President Donald Trump directed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi in March to seek information about suspected election crimes from state election officials and empowered her to potentially withhold grants and other funds from uncooperative states.
For years, Trump has advanced false claims about elections, including the idea that the 2020 election that he lost was stolen. Now back in power, his administration is taking a new level of interest in how states — and even local authorities — administer elections.
Last week, a political operative approached several Republican county clerks in Colorado to enlist them in election integrity efforts in light of Trump’s sweeping March executive order overhauling elections administration. One clerk told Stateline the operative claimed to represent the White House.
“Whatever the Trump administration tries to pull is very unlikely to be successful,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said in an interview, calling Colorado elections very secure. “With that said, do I think they are trying to undermine our elections at large in this country? Absolutely.”
DOJ has sent letters to Alaska, Arizona, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, in addition to the request to Colorado.
The letters have typically asked election officials to describe how they register voters and work to identify duplicate registrations and individuals not eligible to vote, such as people with felony convictions and those who have died. The Washington Post earlier Wednesday reported on the letters; Votebeat and NPR previously reported on some of the letters as well.
Most letters also ask about each state’s process for flagging noncitizen applicants. Noncitizen voting is against federal law and incredibly rare, but Trump and his allies have promoted false claims about its prevalence. The Trump administration is also conducting a general crackdown on illegal immigration.
The letters call on election officials to turn over voter registration lists, which in some instances contain data on millions of residents in their states. This request has raised the most concerns, with some experts saying it’s unclear exactly why the DOJ wants the information.
“They don’t make much sense as law enforcement investigations. That makes me think that there’s some other purpose,” said Justin Levitt, who served as senior policy adviser for democracy and voting rights in the Biden White House and is now a law professor at Loyola Marymount University.
Trump’s proof of citizenship elections order blocked for now in federal court
While many states make their voter registration lists available to the public, Levitt emphasized the data could still be largely off-limits to the federal government. Federal privacy law sometimes restricts how the government can use data that’s publicly obtainable. The DOJ may need voter information in some individual circumstances, but “that’s not blanket permission to go vacuuming up data.”
The DOJ didn’t respond to questions for this story.
Federal laws restrict the federal government’s ability to centralize information on Americans, said David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research. Even if states provide voter registration information to the public, they often redact sensitive information.
In Orange County, California, the DOJ sued local election officials in June, seeking unredacted voter registration information, such as Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, as part of an investigation into noncitizen voting.
More than 350 election officials from some 33 states participated in a conference call about federal actions on Monday hosted by Becker, who was previously an attorney in the DOJ Voting Rights Section during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. He said the interest in the call shows the level of uncertainty and anxiety over the current “federal imposition” on election administrators.
“The DOJ seems dead set on acquiring personal information on voters, including driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth — records that are highly protected under federal law and under state law and which state election officials are sworn to protect,” Becker said.
In Colorado, the amount of data the DOJ wants is enormous. On May 12, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant U.S. attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, sent a letter to Griswold, the secretary of state, asking for access to “all records” related to the 2024 election.
Federal law requires state election officials to preserve records related to elections for 22 months. Typically, the rule ensures records are preserved in case any lawsuits are filed over an election. In the letter, Dhillon referred to a complaint against Griswold’s office alleging noncompliance with records retention laws, but provided no details.
The DOJ seems dead set on acquiring personal information on voters, including driver’s license numbers, Social Security numbers and dates of birth — records that are highly protected under federal law and under state law and which state election officials are sworn to protect.
– David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research
Experts on election administration who spoke to Stateline expressed shock at the scope of the demand to Colorado. The request encompasses a vast trove of material, potentially including ballots.
“The amount of records being requested from a place like Colorado … it’s really, really significant in terms of the volume of materials that are required to be retained,” said Neal Ubriani, a former voting rights litigator at the DOJ during the Obama and first Trump administrations and the current policy and research director at the nonpartisan Institute for Responsive Government.
Colorado elections have previously drawn Trump’s attention. Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, a staunch Trump supporter, is serving a nine-year prison sentence after a conviction in state court for allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment in 2021.
On May 5 of this year — a week before the Dhillon letter to Griswold — Trump posted on social media that Peters should be released, calling her a “political prisoner.” Griswold noted the timing.
“I think the bigger picture is Donald Trump is continuing to try and rewrite the 2020 election and destabilize the ’26 and ’28 elections,” Griswold told Stateline.
Trump signs broad elections order requiring proof of citizenship
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office responded to the DOJ by providing copies of the state’s master voter file and voter history file. All of the information provided is also available to the public.
Some Colorado Republican county clerks in recent days have also been approached by Jeff Small, a political operative who worked at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration. Stateline and Colorado Newsline spoke to three GOP clerks who said they had spoken to Small last week.
Steve Schleiker, clerk of El Paso County, which includes Colorado Springs and is the most populous county in the state, said that on July 9 he received a text and call from Small, who introduced himself in a voicemail as someone who “works for the White House.”
Schleiker said that when he called back, Small said he wanted to build relationships with clerks because the Trump administration was unhappy with progress on the president’s elections executive order. He later connected Schleiker with a Homeland Security official who wanted to test the security of El Paso County’s election systems, said Schleiker, who added that he opposed the request.
Weld County Clerk Carly Koppes said she also heard from Small, but that Small told her he wasn’t under contract or being paid for the calls. Small indicated he was making the calls on behalf of former colleagues, Koppes said.
Small, a former Capitol Hill chief of staff who now works for a Colorado-based government affairs firm, didn’t return a call to his office on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the agency works with local partners to ensure elections remain safe.
“We don’t disclose every single conversation we have with them,” an unidentified DHS spokesperson wrote in an email.
Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said he was aware of 10 clerks approached by Small. He noted that every clerk approached by Small hails from a county that uses Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems.
While Dominion is widely used in Colorado, it’s also been the subject of election conspiracy theories. A former candidate for county sheriff in southwest Colorado was arrested in June, accused of firebombing a clerk’s office. Colorado Public Radio reported the suspect, according to law enforcement, had spoken publicly about trying to get rid of the county’s Dominion machines.
“I think the really important thing to say here is that it was Republican clerks who stood up to a Republican administration and said, ‘No, we’re going to follow the law,’” Crane said.
The intent of the efforts by Small and the federal government “has been muddied up it seems,” Montrose County Clerk Tressa Guynes said. Based on her conversations with other clerks, she said, it appeared Small represented one thing to other clerks and then “represented maybe a watered-down version by the time it got to me.”
Guynes said Small wanted to discuss Trump’s elections executive order. She said Small asked whether she would be willing to support a federal task force’s efforts in an advisory role.
“I said absolutely I will advise,” Guynes said. “I said I’m frankly glad that they’re finally reaching out to the boots on the ground, the people who actually conduct the elections, instead of listening to those who have never conducted a Colorado election.”
As Colorado grapples with the most far-reaching request, other states are choosing how to respond. In Wisconsin, the state election commission responded to a DOJ request for the voter registration list with instructions on how to request public voter data.
Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, responded on June 2 — after DOJ in a May 20 letter told the state to ensure voter registration applicants provided a driver’s license number, if they have one, instead of a partial Social Security number. The DOJ also wanted Arizona to check voters against a state database to look for noncitizens.
Fontes replied that Arizona complies with federal law and conducts checks using a state motor vehicle division database.
“We are focused on dealing with DOJ in a good faith manner while ensuring we are following the letter of federal and state laws,” Fontes spokesperson JP Martin wrote in an email to Stateline.
More recently, Arizona received a letter July 10 from DOJ about implementation of Trump’s elections executive order. Rhode Island Democratic Secretary of State Gregg Amore also received an email about the order the same day, according to a copy provided to the Rhode Island Current.
In the email, Scott Laragy, principal deputy director in the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, asks for a call to discuss a possible information-sharing agreement to provide DOJ with information on individuals who have registered to vote or have voted despite being ineligible, or those who have committed other forms of election fraud.
The email echoes the language in Trump’s elections executive order, which calls for DOJ to reach information-sharing agreements with states. While much of the order, which focused on proof of citizenship in elections, has been struck down in federal court, provisions related to information sharing remain.
The executive order directs Bondi, the U.S. attorney general, to prioritize enforcement of federal “election integrity laws” in uncooperative states. It also requires her to review grants and other DOJ funds that could be withheld from states that resist.
Some states have already struck deals with the Trump administration. Indiana Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales announced an agreement last week with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allowing the state to access a database to verify the citizenship of registered voters. Alabama Republican Secretary of State Wes Allen has signed a similar agreement.
“With your cooperation, we plan to use this information to enforce Federal election laws and protect the integrity of Federal elections,” Laragy wrote to Rhode Island.
Janine Weisman of the Rhode Island Current and Lindsey Toomer of Colorado Newsline contributed to this report. Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@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.
The National Public Radio headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, May 27, 2025. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate agreed to legislation early Thursday that will cancel $9 billion in previously approved funding for public broadcasting and various foreign aid accounts, another victory for the Trump administration.
The 51-48 mostly party-line vote at about 2:30 a.m. sends the bill back to the House, where GOP lawmakers in that chamber would have to clear the final version for President Donald Trump’s signature before a Friday deadline.
Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski were the only Republicans to vote against passing the measure, which was opposed by all Democrats present and voting.
Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota was absent, and her staff said on social media that after she began to feel unwell Wednesday and saw the Capitol physician, she went to George Washington University Hospital, where “out of an abundance of caution, they are keeping her overnight.”
Murkowski voiced concerns with the legislation during a floor speech, saying the White House’s request lacked detail and could have negative repercussions around the world.
“We’ve got big, broad categories, but I haven’t been given the comfort, if you will, that we’re not impacting maternal and child health; that we’re not impacting HIV/AIDS; that we’re not impacting nutrition programs and programs related to tuberculosis, malaria, polio, neglected tropical disease, pandemic prevention, family planning,” Murkwoski said.
“I think that we are entitled to have that level of detail when these funds that we have authorized, that we have appropriated to are now being clawed back. I don’t think that that is too much to ask,” she said.
Murkowski said the right approach to addressing some conservatives’ perception of left-leaning bias at National Public Radio shouldn’t be to completely eliminate funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds both public radio and television.
The impact on local communities in rural areas, she said, could be significant, given that many people rely on their stations for emergency alerts related to tsunamis and other forms of extreme weather as well as educational programs.
Missouri Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, who managed the bill, said the cancellations were intended to “restore some fiscal sanity” that’s needed after “bureaucrats have betrayed the trust of the American people” by spending foreign aid dollars on programs he described as “offensive.”
“What this bill is about is to test the will of this chamber — if we can actually move forward on what the American people sent us here to do, which is to find waste, to find fraud and find abuse,” Schmitt said. “And also to realign the taxpayer dollars that go out the door with actual American interests.”
The win in the Senate for the GOP and Trump followed approval on July 1 of a massive tax and spending cut package he had advocated.
The rescissions bill will claw back $1.1 billion in previously approved spending for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which contributes funding to NPR, the Public Broadcasting Service and hundreds of local stations throughout the country. That money was slated to cover the fiscal year set to begin Oct. 1 and the following year.
The legislation also cancels about $8 billion in foreign aid spending that Congress had appropriated for dozens of programs, including global health initiatives.
Senate Republicans opted to preserve full funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR.
South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds secured a handshake deal with White House budget director Russ Vought to transfer $9.4 million from an undisclosed account within the Interior Department to Native American radio stations. But that wasn’t included in the actual bill.
Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota and Wisconsin all hold public broadcasting stations that will receive a piece of that funding, according to Rounds’ office.
North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis used floor debate to caution the White House budget office against going too far with the rescissions included in the bill and scolded the administration for not giving Congress more detail about what it wants to cut.
“The only time that we’ve had a successful rescissions package in modern history was 1992,” Tillis said, adding that request was approved, in part, because it was sent to Congress with “very detailed lists of specific programs that were going to be cut.”
The request this year, Tillis said, doesn’t include nearly that level of information. But he said he’s willing to vote for it anyway, giving the president and the Office of Management and Budget “the benefit of the doubt that they’re going to be responsible cuts.”
Tillis said he was assured the rescissions wouldn’t affect a $200 million account that provides non-miliary aid to Ukraine or foreign aid accounts like the one funding maternal and child health programs at a Sudanese refugee camp he visited earlier this year.
“However, if we find out that some of these programs that we’ve communicated should be out of bounds, that advisers to the president decide that they’re going to cut anyway, then there will be a reckoning for that,” Tillis said.
Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, warned Republicans that unilaterally cutting funding approved through bipartisan bills could upend the annual government funding process.
“It did not have to be this way and it still does not have to be this way,” Murray said. “In fact if Republicans come to their senses and vote this down, we can still go a different route. We can do what we have always done and consider bipartisan rescissions as part of our annual appropriations process.”
Congress must pass some sort of bipartisan funding bill before the start of the new fiscal year on Oct. 1, otherwise there will be a partial government shutdown.
Murray also said that “cutting these investments is just downright wrong.”
“We should not be voting to let children starve or die from preventable diseases. We should not be voting to go back on our word to the world,” Murray said. “Saving a couple pennies is not worth losing our credibility or causing millions of needless deaths across the globe. It is not even close.”
Democrats introduced a series of amendments to change portions of the bill related to public broadcasting funding and foreign aid, but did not succeed.
The reworked bill now goes back to the House, where GOP leaders in that chamber need nearly all their members to support the changes made in the Senate.
If the House cannot meet the Friday deadline, the White House budget office would be required to spend the funding it included in its original rescissions request, which it released in early June.
The House voted 214-212 earlier this year to send the original bill to the Senate, where GOP lawmakers raised concerns about various elements, including how reducing foreign aid spending would impact America’s leadership among adversarial countries like China and global health initiatives.
The Senate didn’t make many changes to the legislation, but did remove the proposed rescission for PEPFAR. The initiative, launched by former President George W. Bush, has saved more than 26 million lives.
The change decreased the total amount of funding that will be canceled from $9.4 billion to about $9 billion.
Both figures are miniscule compared to the $6.8 trillion the federal government spends each year, though this bill is meant to be the first of many the Trump administration hopes Republicans approve in the months and years ahead.
Advocates, Gov. Tony Evers and Republican lawmakers have conflicting views about the Department of Corrections funding in the 2025-27 state budget. (Photo by Caspar Benson/Getty Images)
For criminal justice advocates in Wisconsin, the new state budget leaves much to be desired. Although the $111 billion two-year budget signed by Gov. Tony Evers earlier this month will help eventually close the beleaguered Lincoln Hills juvenile prison, some feel that it missed opportunities to reform the state’s justice system.
“Wisconsin’s elected officials, including Gov. Evers and state legislators, have once again failed to take meaningful action to overhaul the state’s broken and inhumane carceral system,” Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM’s Transformative Justice Campaign, wrote in a statement released July 11. “The recently passed state budget ignores the deep harm caused by mass incarceration and falls far short of what is needed to address the humanitarian crisis unfolding inside Wisconsin’s prisons.”
Evers’ original budget proposal released in February contained a number of proposals that were removed or reduced by the Legislature’s Republican-led Joint Finance Committee, including $8.9 million to support alternatives to revocation. Another pitch by Evers for $4 million to fund community reentry centers was cut in half by Joint Finance. His proposed $3.19 million in supportive housing service beds for people under DOC supervision was removed. Over $1 million in funding for six positions on the DOC’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance team was also removed by JFC.
Evers proposed a total increase of $519 million to the Department of Corrections budget over the next two years. The final budget deal instead increased the DOC budget by $461 million over the two-year period.
The budget’s capital projects plan, passed by the Legislature and signed by Evers, allocated $225 million to the Department of Corrections (DOC), as well as another $15 million towards construction planning for facilities, with the goal of closing the Green Bay Correctional Institution by 2029.
Evers used his partial veto to strike the 2029 deadline for closing Green Bay. “We need more compromise on that,” said Evers, who added that he supports closing the prison, one of Wisconsin’s oldest, but called the timeline unrealistic: “Saying we’re going to do Green Bay by ‘29 doesn’t mean a damn thing.” In his veto message, Evers said that he objected to the Legislature “assigning a date” to close the Green Bay prison “while providing virtually no real, meaningful, or concrete plan to do so.”
“I support closing Green Bay Correctional Institution,” Evers wrote. “Indeed, my administration spent years working on a comprehensive corrections reform plan to be able to close Green Bay Correctional Institution quickly, safely, and cost efficiently, which was included in the biennial budget I introduced months ago. I proposed a ‘domino’ series of facility changes, improvements, and modernization efforts across Wisconsin’s correctional institutions while improving public safety by expanding workforce training opportunities to reduce the likelihood that people might reoffend after they are released. Under that plan, Green Bay Correctional Institution would be closed in 2029. Instead, the Legislature sent this budget with the same deadline and no plan of which to speak.”
Lincoln Hills, Wisconsin’s notoriously troubled juvenile prison, which still houses 79 boys according to the DOC’s most recent population report, blew years past its own closure deadline. Now, the budget provides $130.7 million to build a new Type 1 juvenile facility in Dane County to help facilitate the closure of Lincoln Hills. Plans for a second Type 1 facility in Milwaukee County ran into roadblocks from local resistance and political disagreements in the Capitol, though the facility’s completion is still planned.
Green Bay’s prison was originally built in 1898. Plaques embedded in its outer wall commemorate that the wall was “erected by inmates” in 1921. Over 1,100 people are incarcerated in the prison, which is designed to hold only 749, according to the DOC’s most recent weekly population report. In late June, prison reform advocates from JOSHUA, a local affiliate of WISDOM, held a monthly vigil and prayer service outside the prison, where people are held in “disciplinary separation” for the longest periods in any of DOC’s adult facilities. Protesters included people whose loved ones have died inside the prison, some by suicide due to a lack of mental health support. In late August, 19-year-old Michah Laureano died in the prison after he was attacked by his cell mate.
Although the budget aims to close Green Bay, how that will be accomplished remains hazy. Rice wrote that the budget “includes no plan” to close the prison, “despite overwhelming evidence that the facility is beyond repair.” Instead, Rice wrote in a statement that “some legislators continue to push for more studies and planning tactics that will only delay justice while people continue to suffer and die behind bars. This is unacceptable.”
That sentiment was echoed by the Ladies of SCI, an advocacy group formed by women with loved ones at the Stanley Correctional Institution. Although the group appreciated that closing Green Bay was part of the budget discussion, “we also agree that does not mean much without funding an actual plan,” the group wrote in an email to Wisconsin Examiner. “The [Joint Finance Committee] committed that the plan presented by [DOC] Secretary [Jared] Hoy’s team in the Governor’s initial budget was ‘just an idea’ and yet, the JFC also just put an ‘idea’ in the budget. Yes, they put in dollars for a plan to be developed, but this has already been done several times over.”
Studies for closing Green Bay, Waupun, and other old and blighted facilities have been recommended as far back as 1965, Ladies of SCI wrote in the statement. “Here we are, 60 years later, STILL discussing it. The most recent study was done in 2020 and called out almost $1 billion in projects to increase capacity across our facilities to just handle that population level…We are well above that population level today.”
The group asks, “Is $15 million actually enough to finally get tangible actions to deal with our Corrections crisis? We’d like to know what the magic combination of dollars and opinions are needed to finally address issues that have been identified over and over.” Ladies of SCI said “setting aside money for yet another study and plan development is rinse and repeat of history…The bottom line is our state’s prison population is too big for what we currently have.”
Rice concurred, writing in his own statement that prisons like Green Bay, Waupun (the state’s oldest prison where multiple deaths have occurred in recent years), and the Milwaukee Secure Detention Facility (MSDF) “are notorious for inhumane conditions and should have been shut down years ago.” Rice added that “there is no justification for continuing to pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into maintaining or expanding a failed prison system.”
Instead, he believes that the state should commit to reducing the prison population by expanding treatment alternatives to incarceration, commuting “excessive and unjust sentences,” granting “fair access to parole and early release,” and stopping the practice of locking people up for “technical or convictionless revocations.”
When Evers wrote his message vetoing the deadline for closing Green Bay, there were 362 people working at the prison and more than 1,100 incarcerated adults. “As of this writing, Wisconsin has the capacity to house 17,638 individuals at its correctional institutions but there are 23,275 people living in [DOC] institutions across Wisconsin;” Evers wrote, “the Legislature provides no steps whatsoever to stabilize the state’s skyrocketing prison population.”
Referring to the saga of Lincoln Hills, Evers added, “Wisconsin already has about a decade’s worth of painful experience learning how well it works in practice to set unrealistic, artificial timelines and due dates for closing prison facilities without a complete and thorough plan for implementation. It would be foolish and dangerous to attempt to take a similar approach with a maximum-security institution like Green Bay Correctional Institution.”
Just over one-third of the 2,727 new prison admissions statewide between January and April were people sent back to prison for issues like violating the rules of community supervision, and without a new crime committed or sentence issued, according to the DOC’s dashboard. Over the same period of time, there were more than 63,435 people on community supervision, probation, or parole.
Sean Wilson, senior director of organizing and partnerships at Dream.org, criticized the cuts to proposals to expand alternatives to incarceration, “clean-slate” legislation and expungement reforms that were left out of the final budget deal. “I think that there continues to be a lack of re-entry investments, which should be pretty high on the list,” Wilson told Wisconsin Examiner. For years, criminal justice advocates have pushed for support for housing, access to mental health care and jobs, “those things were not included in the budget.”
With less than 3,000 people housed between Green Bay, Waupun, and MSDF, Rice feels that “these prisons could be emptied and closed within months” and that “doing so would not only alleviate human suffering but it would also free up critical resources” which “must be reinvested in the communities most harmed by incarceration.” From providing living-wage jobs and stable housing to creating educational opportunities and violence prevention, Rice wrote in his statement, “that is how we build true public safety.”
The path forward is clear: Care, not cages. Communities, not prisons.
– Mark Rice, statewide coordinator for WISDOM’s Transformative Justice Campaign
Wilson declared that “the biggest elephant in the room” was that “there’s no real movement on closing outdated prisons or reducing the DOC’s footprint.” He stressed that “we are beyond design capacity…with 5,000 additional bodies [beyond the number] this system was designed for.” Without a concrete roadmap and deadline, he says the budget commitment to closing the Green Bay prison doesn’t mean much.
Over 20 years ago, Wilson spent time in the Green Bay prison, which he remembers as “a dilapidated hellhole…It was a trauma pressure cooker in my opinion.”
“But the fact that they’re talking about just studying it, that really made me livid as someone who spent time in that facility, and is currently in communication with many individuals who are still housed there today,” he added.
Wilson said he doesn’t see focused funding to reduce racial disparities in incarceration, nor is there funding to support people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system and are trying to lead a reform effort. “I think if you look at the movement at large for the last 20 years, it’s been led by directly impacted leadership,” said Wilson. “Because we believe in the words of Glenn Martin that those closest to the problem are closest to the solution.” People with personal experience need to be brought to the table to offer both critiques and solutions, he said.
Ladies of SCI called the building plans in the budget “just one of the steps our lawmakers must take to address things,” and pointed to separate legislation introduced by Republican Senator Andre Jacque (R-DePere) and Rep. Paul Tittl (R-Manitowoc), which the group believed would have put needed investments into rehabilitation “instead of warehousing people in our crumbling facilities.”
Evers said the budget was an exercise of compromise and cooperation. “We need to work together,” he said after signing the budget less than an hour after the Assembly passed it. “Compare that to what’s going on in Washington, D.C., and it’s significantly different, so I’m very proud to sign it,” Evers said of the bipartisan compromise. In order to retain $1 billion per year in federal Medicaid matching funds, legislators on both sides of the aisle worked to finalize the bill before the federal reconciliation bill was signed by President Donald Trump.
Another one of Evers’ partial vetoes stirred discussion around juvenile incarceration. The Senate version of the budget specified that state juvenile correctional facilities would operate at a rate of $912,000 in 2025-26 per kid, per year, before increasing to over $1 million per kid per year for 2026-27. Evers’ partial vetoes lowered the rates to $182,865 per kid in 2025-26, and $275,670 per kid in the following years.
Over the last decade the cost of housing for each young person in youth corrections in Wisconsin has quadrupled from $303 per day in 2014 to $1,268 per day in 2024, largely due to a lower population of incarcerated youth and higher staffing needs. In his veto message, Evers objected to the Legislature’s plan to continue expanding the costs of the existing youth incarceration system during a time of “uncertainty,” and delays in closing youth prisons.
Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine) criticized Evers for using a veto to cut housing expenditures for juvenile offenders. “Evers’ veto of this provision is unsustainable and he knows it,” said Wanggaard. “The statutory daily rate is not a number that we come up with out of thin air. It’s simple math – the total cost to operate our juvenile facilities divided by the average population.”
Wanggaard added that “up until now, a county sending a juvenile to a state facility paid for those costs…Governor Evers just decided unilaterally to turn it on its head and have the state pick up the vast majority of costs. It flips the entire funding of juvenile corrections without debate or discussion. It’s irresponsible.” Wanggaard also said that Evers’ refusal to utilize the expansion of the Mendota Juvenile Treatment Center to house more youth offenders is driving costs higher. Children can only be placed in Mendota when it’s clinically appropriate, however. The facility was never intended to replace Lincoln Hills, or augment bed space for incarcerated kids.
In his veto message, Evers explained why he shifted the cost burden from local communities to the state, writing that he objected “to establishing a daily rate that is unaffordable to counties.” He continued that, “I have heard loud and clear from counties that the current daily rate is burdensome and will detrimentally impact public safety. Unbelievably, despite that clear message from the counties, the Legislature has chosen to increase that rate by over $1,000 per day. This increase and funding model is untenable, and counties have expressed that this unaffordable increase will have serious and detrimental effects on other county services.” Evers urged the Legislature to “revisit this issue in separate legislation and appropriate those additional GPR funds to the department.”
Criminal justice advocates around the state say viable solutions must go beyond incarceration. Lincoln Hills continues to be under a court-ordered monitor due to a successful lawsuit that brought attention to the harms done to both incarcerated youth and reports of abuse within the facility. Waupun’s prison has yet to recover from a string of deaths which ultimately led to charges against the prison’s warden and several staff. Green Bay is also notorious for inhumane conditions and deaths behind bars.
“We don’t need more studies, we need action,” said Wilson.
When he was incarcerated at Green Bay between the years 2000 and 2005, he added, “I watched people get battered by each other. I saw individuals get beaten by staff. I see the paint peeling, the walls are sweating. The prison cells are outdated. You’re talking about a facility that was built in the 1800’s…And you’re putting people in this facility in 2025 and you are expecting them to come home sane. You are expecting them to navigate this space in a rational way. You expect them to interact with one another in a humane way when you are housing them, or caging them, as if they were animals. Wisconsin should stop wasting taxpayer money by keeping people in cages that should’ve been shuttered decades ago!”
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Gov. Tony Evers and Veterans Affairs Sec. James Bond spoke an event for veterans in the state Capitol on April 22, 2025. (Photo via Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs Facebook page)
Two Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs programs that provide support to struggling veterans, including those experiencing homelessness, are on track to close locations and shrink in size due to a lack of funding in the new state budget.
The state budget was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers in early July following months of negotiations. While Evers and lawmakers hailed the agreement as a bipartisan accomplishment, they are now blaming each other for the anticipated closure of two facilities, one in Chippewa Falls and one in Green Bay, that serve veterans struggling with homelessness this year due to insufficient funding available. Another program that provides support for veterans dealing with mental health and substance use issues will also face cuts due to the budget.
The Veterans Housing and Recovery Program (VHRP), which currently has three physical sites, serves veterans who are on the verge of or experiencing homelessness, including those who have experienced incarceration, unemployment or underemployment, physical and mental health problems. The program lasts a maximum of 24 months, but the average length of stay is six to 10 months.
The VHRP locations in Chippewa Falls, which has 48 beds, and Green Bay, which has 17, will close by September 30 of this year. The Union Grove location, which has a capacity of 40 beds, will remain open.
“We make a promise to our veterans that when they return home to their civilian life, we will support and serve them just as they have supported and served us. Our veterans should not have to worry about being able to afford to keep a roof over their heads. Period,” Evers said in a statement Monday.
Randy Nelson, 63, has resided at Klein Hall in Chippewa Falls for about three months. He told the Wisconsin Examiner in a phone interview that it has been the “perfect place for me to come and figure some things out,” especially since his daughter lives nearby. Before he moved in, he had been experiencing homelessness and navigating substance use issues.
Nelson served in the military for three years starting in 1979 and spent much of his time working on aircraft repairs. He said he has been lucky to receive some of the veterans’ services that he has.
Nelson said the VHRP program has given him an array of resources, including access to recovery and anger management programming, and it has also been a safe place for him to look for housing.
“I just lucked out in getting a housing voucher this quick, otherwise I’d have no place to go,” Nelson said.
Nelson said he is confident in his sobriety now and “more hopeful about my remaining years,” but is “truly worried” about his fellow veterans, given the recent news. He said some residents are considering leaving the state to try to find a new place with similar services, even though they want to remain in the area.
“They’re scared of getting kicked out and being homeless,” Nelson said. He said residents are still considered homeless to some degree, since they lack a permanent address, but the closure could mean some would “actually be out on the streets again.”
“There’s people that are working and saving up money here, and they don’t know what to do because they’re not making enough money to get into a place yet,” Nelson said.
The Legislature, Nelson said, is “taking away valuable resources for veterans” with the cuts to the program.
The program was created by Wisconsin lawmakers in the 1993-95 state budget and was initially supported from Wisconsin’s veterans trust fund. It was expanded in the following years and is currently funded from a combination of trust fund payments, payments made by program participants and per diem payments, which are made to the agency by the federal government at a current rate of about $71 per resident per day. Participants can be charged up to 30% of their monthly income in rent when using transitional housing.
Growing staffing and maintenance costs at the facilities led to Evers and the agency requesting nearly $2 million in additional state funding during the budget process, but it wasn’t included in the final bill.
“The bottom line is that there will now be fewer options for homeless veterans as a result of the Legislature’s irresponsible decision to reject the investments,” Evers said, adding that he would be urging the Legislature to provide additional support for veterans in the fall.
Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Jeff Smith (D-Brunswick), Jamie Wall (D-Green Bay) and Reps. Jodi Emerson, Ryan Spaude, Christian Phelps, Christine Sinicki, Brienne Brown, Amaad Rivera-Wagner, Maureen McCarville and Angelito Tenori, quickly introduced legislation Wednesday that would provide the necessary funding.
“Republicans withheld critical funds for over a year while our region struggled with hospital closures. Now homeless veterans are the victims of the Republicans’ callous inaction,” Smith said in a statement. “These men and women served our country. We have a moral obligation to ensure they have a roof over their heads.”
Emerson called the closures “extremely alarming” in a statement, noting that the facilities are scheduled to close just as the weather in Wisconsin turns cold.
The co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee Rep. Mark Born and Sen. Howard Marklein pushed back on Evers in a statement, saying his comments were “simply disingenuous.”
“The Legislature made significant investments to support veterans in our state including in this program,” the lawmakers said, noting the budget included $5 million to support Wisconsin veterans homes, $2.5 million to support the Veterans Community Project which provides housing and support services for veterans and a slight increase in the Veterans Housing and Recovery Program.
“Legislative leaders negotiated for weeks with Governor Evers and he did not bring this topic up once,” Born and Marklein said. “Evers is looking for a scapegoat to blame for his administration’s failure to adequately manage the changes to the program volume and demands.”
WDVA Assistant Deputy Secretary Joey Hoey told the Wisconsin Examiner, however, that it is “disingenuous” to blame Evers when lawmakers made the decision to exclude the funding from the budget.
“They can try and paint it however they want,” Hoey said. “If they wanted to fund it, they could have put it in the budget.”
The agency worked with lawmakers on the Joint Finance Committee during the budget cycle, agreeing to eliminate over 200 positions that were unfilled. Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) thanked the head of the agency for working with them during the committee’s June 12 meeting.
Hoey said the agency had hoped the budget would reflect that collaboration and would include funding for the Veterans Housing and Recovery program (VHRP) or the Veterans Outreach and Recovery program (VORP). Ultimately, it did not.
The VHRP program’s base funding was about $2.1 million, including $1.3 million in federal funding, $677,500 from the veterans trust fund and $115,500 from rent payments.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) laid out the stakes for the program in a memo to lawmakers as they were writing the state budget.
“Without additional funding, the Department would not have sufficient resources to maintain the program’s three sites,” the memo stated.
One of the funding issues outlined by LFB was the rising cost of staffing. According to the memo, about two-thirds of VHRP costs went towards Lutheran Social Services, the organization providing management and supportive services at each location. Lutheran Social Services has incurred higher staffing costs in recent years. Evers dedicated $500,000 in ARPA funds to those increased costs in 2023-24, but that funding has run out.
The facilities were also proving a problem, Hoey said. Evers had requested $24 million in his capital budget to build new facilities in Green Bay and Chippewa Falls, but lawmakers declined to fund them.
“The physical upkeep was also above what we had calculated or budgeted,” Hoey said, noting that the Chippewa Falls building had roof leaks and the HVAC system was old. “We were paying people to repair it and Band-Aid it. In Green Bay, we had problems, and every time you have a problem and you can’t have a resident in a room… you’re not getting that $73 per day from the federal government. It’s a double whammy, and that’s why we thought new facilities would fix that for Green Bay and Chippewa Falls.”
Evers had proposed providing $1.95 million across the biennium for the program.
Lawmakers provided an adjustment to the program of $100,000, which they are touting as a 15% increase. Hoey said in an email, however, that the funding is an adjustment that reflects what the agency has already been spending and still falls “well short” of the funding the LFB identified as necessary to keep the sites open.
Hoey also noted another program administered by the WDVA will face cuts under the new state budget.
The Veterans Outreach and Recovery Program (VORP), which serves veterans dealing with mental health and substance use issues and aims to reduce the suicide rate among veterans, is set to lose seven employees. Evers had asked for seven positions and more than $1.1 million to help support the program.
The program launched in 2015 with the help of a federal mental health grant, and has since become state funded. ARPA funds were used in 2023 to expand the reach of the program, but with those funds running out the agency sought state funds to continue its current size. The positions expire in October 2025.
“We had expanded to 16 regions where there was somebody who was living in that part of the state, and now we’re having to go back to 11 regions,” Hoey said. “They wouldn’t fund that.”
Those positions had helped the agency reach more veterans, provide support in a more timely manner and give veterans more time, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The program provided services to 2,222 people in 2023-24 — nearly 70% more contacts than in 2021-22 when the program served 1,329 people.
“It was really very disappointing, because these are two programs that have incredible track records of really helping veterans who need it,” Hoey said. “It was really disappointing being in Joint Finance when that vote came up. My heart was breaking, sitting there thinking ‘Oh, my God, all these people who won’t get served.’”
Hoey shared an anecdote of a former program participant who recently returned to the Chippewa Falls site to give people an update on where he was, to illustrate the effectiveness of the programs. The VHRP, Hoey explained, is a monthslong process to help struggling veterans get to “the point where they can return to society in a stable, functioning way.”
“He came in and wanted to tell everyone that, you know, five years ago, he was homeless, and now he’s married with a kid, and he had just bought his first house and was so proud because he had paid his first property tax bill,” Hoey said. “That’s the kind of result these programs have… Between the two programs you’re looking for $4 million and we couldn’t find that.”
Wisconsin DVA Secretary James Bond said in a statement that the agency remains committed to assisting veterans.
“We have a duty to support veterans, especially in their darkest times,” Bond said. “VHRP has been integral in helping veterans find stability and succeed in their communities, and along with our partners on the ground, we intend to still carry out that mission to the best of our ability.”
Veterans who are currently residing at the two facilities will be offered alternative placement options and will continue to receive assistance through supportive services.
Hoey said even as the Department of Veterans Affairs continues its work, the cuts and closures will likely mean fewer veterans will be served and it could be more difficult to reach veterans across the state. He said wait times could also become more of an obstacle for veterans seeking services.
“Most of these veterans, they want to go to a program that’s somewhat near their community so they can count on whatever support systems they have, so… it’s unlikely we’ll be able to serve as many veterans in the majority of the state, since the home that’s existing is near Milwaukee.”
Hoey said the agency decided to retain the Union Grove site, located just south of Milwaukee, because upgrades and repairs that were funded with state and federal funds were recently completed.
“The VORP team, instead of referring someone to Chippewa Falls, now they have to refer them to a program in Minneapolis, so we’re going to still try and get people the help they need,” Hoey said. “It’s just going to be harder.”
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