Mitchell Berman is seeking the 2026 Democratic nomination to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District. (Berman for Congress photo)

Mitchell Berman, a Racine County nurse, announced Tuesday he will seek the Democratic nod to run for Congress in Wisconsin’s 1st District against fourth-term incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville).

Berman is the most recent candidate to officially announce he is entering the Democratic primary race for the seat. Randy Bryce, who lost to Steil in 2018 in one of the nation’s most closely watched congressional contests, announced May 20 that he would try again. Gage Stills, a third Democratic hopeful for the seat, launched a campaign in mid-July. 

Berman introduced his candidacy Tuesday with a video shot on a mobile phone that stresses his working class background and rural Wisconsin upbringing.

“I’m running for Congress because Bryan Steil isn’t looking out for families like mine,” Berman says in the video. “We deserve a government that works for us, not the elite.”

Berman worked as a nurse at the Milwaukee VA hospital for 10 years and in the video highlights his service to military veterans.

He told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday that he left the job when he decided to run for Congress because the federal Hatch Act bars federal employees from running for partisan  office.

The father of two and a 15-year resident of the 1st Congressional District, Berman said concern for his daughters “about whether or not they have the ability to make their own health care decisions” motivated his run for the seat.

“Seeing the cuts to the VA and just the overall gutting of Medicaid in general has also prompted me to get into this race,” he said. Cuts to Medicaid and the SNAP federal nutrition aid program were part of the Republican budget reconciliation bill that Steil voted for and President Donald Trump signed on July 4.

“These things were made for tax cuts for billionaires,” Berman said, adding that in the process, Congress added $3.5 trillion to the federal budget deficit instead of  reducing it.

“I think the No. 1  issue that we need to focus on is affordability,” Berman said. “And I think that umbrella covers many different issues … decreasing the cost of child care, decreasing the cost of health care, decreasing the cost at the grocery store.”

As of July 30, the Cook Political Report rated the 1st District a likely Republican win in 2026 with a 2-point edge for the incumbent, Steil. Cook defines seats rated “likely” for one or the other party as “not considered competitive at this point” but adds that they “have the potential to become engaged.”

Berman said he believes his life experiences will attract voters.

“I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck. I had to work three jobs in college,” Berman said. “I was a first-generation college student. I graduated with student loan debt. My wife and I, we struggled with fertility issues and our children are a blessing of IVF [in vitro fertilization]. So a lot of these kitchen table concerns for people, a lot of these things that people care about close to home, are things that I’ve experienced.”

Berman said he followed news accounts of Steil’s July 31 public event in Elkhorn, where the congressman was met with an angry, noisy crowd and questioners who loudly pushed back on many of his comments.

“I think that’s a good representation of people’s dismay and how upset they are in how Bryan Steil … his lack of representation for the district.”

A first-time political candidate, Berman said he’s been active in local politics as a volunteer, including filing a successful lawsuit that charged the Town of Raymond School District violated the state open meetings law in holding a school board retreat in 2022. The suit was settled in December 2024.

The school district was also embroiled in a dispute among parents over its  social-emotional learning curriculum and the firing of a popular principal. Berman was a leader in a campaign to recall two board members who opposed the curriculum. One of the board members resigned before the recall vote was held, while the other survived the recall election.

“Everyone in my community, everyone I’ve talked to about this opportunity, has been very encouraging,” Berman said.

A reliably Democratic seat in the 1970s and ‘80s, the 1st District has remained in GOP hands since 1994, despite recurring attempts by Democrats to unseat Republican incumbents. The seat was held for two decades by former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Janesville), who rose to become U.S. House speaker before leaving office at the end of 2018.

Steil, a corporate lawyer who previously worked as Ryan’s aide, won his first term against Bryce with more than 54% of the vote to Bryce’s 42%. He won his two most recent races by similar margins. He beat former state Department of Revenue Secretary Peter Barca 54-44 in 2024 and Ann Roe, now a Wisconsin state representative from Janesville, 54-45 in 2022.

This report was updated 8/18/2025 to clarify that Berman, originally identified here as the “second Democrat” in the race, was preceded by another candidate, Gage Stills. 

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., is pictured on Sunday, June 29, 2025, as the reconciliation package was under debate. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — A majority of Americans believe Republicans’ “big, beautiful” law will either hurt them or not make much of a difference, according to a poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan health research organization KFF.

The survey shows 46% of people expect the new tax and spending cuts law will generally hurt them or their family, while 28% said it likely won’t make much difference and 26% said it will help them.

Those beliefs were skewed by political parties, with 54% of Republicans saying the law will help them or their family, compared to 19% of independents and 7% of Democrats.

People enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal health program for lower income individuals and people with disabilities, have significant concerns about how changes to the program will impact them.

Sixty-five percent of Medicaid patients under the age of 65 said they expect the law to hurt them or their family. Another 17% said it won’t make much of a difference for them and 18% expect the policy changes to help.

The law makes more than a dozen changes to how Medicaid is run, resulting in a $1.058 trillion spending cut to the program during the next decade, according to an analysis released earlier this week by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The report projects that 10 million people will lose access to health insurance before 2034.

The law made permanent the 2017 tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term and provided billions to carry out his plans of mass deportations, an immigration crackdown and increased defense spending.

Some know little about new law

KFF’s survey shows most Americans know at least something about the new law, though 9% of those polled said they know nothing at all and 23% said they know just a little.

Democrats had the highest percent of respondents who said they knew either a lot, 35%, or some, 45%, about the law. Twenty-two percent of Republicans said they knew a lot about their party’s top legislative achievement this year, with 44% saying they knew something, 27% saying they knew a little and 7% saying they knew nothing.

Social media

The vast majority of those polled, 78%, said they saw information about Republicans’ new law on social media during the last month.

Facebook and YouTube were the more popular social media platforms for people to see information about the tax and spending cuts law, followed by Instagram, TikTok, X and Reddit.

Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said the content they saw on social media opposed the policy changes included in the law, while 41% said it was mixed and 11% said it supported the GOP’s work.

Republicans said 26% of what they viewed on social media was in support of the law, with 53% mixed and 21% opposed. Democrats polled said 76% of what they saw was opposed, 21% mixed and 3% was supportive.

Most of those surveyed said the social media content helped them understand what the new law actually does. Sixteen percent said it was very helpful, 46% said it was somewhat helpful, 27% said it was not too helpful and 11% said it wasn’t helpful at all. 

Emma Widmar, shown with her dog Zander, has relied on Medicaid while managing complex health problems that she has had since she was 12. (Photo courtesy of Emma Widmar)

At the age of 26, Emma Widmar has been chronically ill for more than half her lifetime.

Widmar was 12 when her symptoms first showed up — severe allergies to food, hormones and her environment. At the age of 18 she qualified for Social Security disability payments as well as for Medicaid. The combined federal-state health insurance program pays for her ongoing medical care, frequent emergency room visits and necessary home care.

“I equate Medicaid to a lifeline,” Widmar says. “Some people might think that’s an exaggeration, but it isn’t. It ensures all my needs are met.”

With the enactment on July 4 of the mega-bill extending the tax cuts passed during President Donald Trump’s first term along with deep cuts in Medicaid and other safety net programs, Widmar is uncertain how her life might change.

After she graduated from Gateway Technical College, Widmar worked for four years for the Racine County Eye, an online journalism outlet. A case of respiratory syncytial virus — RSV — in January 2024 brought on severe neuropathy and hampered her breathing, forcing her to give up a job she had loved.

“I lost my ability to walk,” Widmar says. “It really wreaked havoc on my body and I couldn’t keep up.”

As complex as her health problems are, they’ve also become deeply familiar to her. 

 “It has been my life, and I simply can’t ignore it,” Widmar says. “It’s just the way that it is.”

While she and her family along with many others hope that science will one day unlock treatments for intractable illnesses such as hers, “these are chronic, lifelong conditions that right now there’s no cure for,” she says. For now, “it’s about finding the best quality of life for myself.”

Widmar lives with her parents in Mount Pleasant. Her mother is a primary caregiver.

Wisconsin’s home- and community-based care Medicaid waiver covers the cost of medications “that allow me to function,” she says.

 It also makes it possible for her to have additional home and personal caregivers. With Medicaid “those caretakers can be compensated,” Widmar says. “It ensures that I always have eyes on me and that I’m getting what I need.”

Her chronic food allergies require a special diet, with food that is more expensive than the typical grocery store purchase. Widmar’s disability has qualified her for benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — SNAP, known as FoodShare in Wisconsin.

“Health care and food assistance are not just line items in a budget — they are a matter of life and death for American families,” said Sondra Goldschein, executive director of Family Friendly Economy, which campaigned against the mega-bill and shared the stories of people affected by it, including Widmar.

The bill passed despite widespread popular opposition. Widmar says she wants to encourage people “to continue voicing their opinions to policymakers, lawmakers and politicians,” not give up in resignation. “We are the ones that employ the government,” she says. “They work for us and we have to remind them of that.”

Widmar suspects most people wouldn’t consider her a typical Medicaid recipient — younger, coming from a middle-class upbringing and with a family that is able to support her. But that’s really the point: Medicaid, she observes, has helped people from all different backgrounds, regardless of class, race, ethnicity or education.

She also expects the spending cuts will ripple far beyond the Medicaid population.

“We’re altering health care as a whole, which will have an impact on everyone,” Widmar says.

For several years, the Affordable Care Act has helped drive down the number of people without health insurance. The mega-bill’s changes not just to Medicaid but also the ACA have been forecast to reverse that trend, increasing the uninsured population by 17 million over the next decade.

One Medicaid change, scheduled to take effect in 2027, will be the imposition of work requirements for some recipients. Nationally, two-thirds of Medicaid recipients already work full- or part-time, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research, polling and news organization, and researchers have found that some people who qualify are excluded due to paperwork problems.

Widmar has already experienced a work requirement as part of her SNAP enrollment. When her illness made work impossible, the requirement was waived.

With the extent of her current disabilities, she hopes that she would qualify for an exemption from the coming Medicaid work requirement.

She might not know for sure until late 2026, however. Wisconsin won’t be able to draw up the details of how it implements the work requirement until the publication of the federal rules, which aren’t due until next June.

In her previous experience with SNAP, Widmar said work requirements didn’t always match the realities for people with disabilities.

“Unfortunately we don’t make it easier for people who are disabled to have a job and contribute,” she says. “It’s not a system that says, ‘We have a work requirement — do what you’re able to do…’”

When she was able to work, “I loved my job,” Widmar says. Her employer was understanding and accommodated her disabilities.

That was no small matter. Because of her condition, Widmar says, she can’t be alone: Her low blood pressure can cause her to faint unpredictably. Her hours also had to be flexible to match her erratic energy levels.

“It’s difficult to work and have a disability and be on these programs,” Widmar says. “It’s like an agility course you have to go through.”

While Widmar is concerned about what lies ahead for her when the changes to Medicaid take effect, her foremost worry is for people whose lives are more difficult.

“I have a support system to help me get through it. But there’s people that don’t know where to turn for help. And it’s really unfortunate for them,” she says.

For people living at or near poverty, she sees life on the verge of becoming more harsh.

“We’re already at bare bones,” Widmar says, “and now we’re taking away more from the most vulnerable populations.”

Donald Trump signs the tax- and spending-cut meg-abill on July 4. A new Democratic Party website uses key talking points from Donald Trump's 2024 campaign against the president and his policies. (Photo by Alex Brandon - Pool/Getty Images)

Aiming to use President Donald Trump’s signature policies against him, Democrats unveiled a website Wednesday that depicts their purported costs to taxpayers in each state.

The TrumpTax.com website draws on projections from the Congressional Budget Office and other sources as it advances the argument that the mega-bill passed by Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate and signed into law by Trump on July 4 “takes money out of working people’s pockets to give handouts to the rich.”

The campaign combines the impact of Trump’s on-again, off-again tariff declarations with the mega-bill to derive a so-called “Trump Tax,” generating state-by-state calculations for the data.

“The Trump Tax will explode the deficit by $3.3 trillion — leading to higher inflation, higher energy bills, and higher grocery and prescription drug costs,” the website states — pinpointing specific messages about consumer pocketbook issues that were key talking points during Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

The site lists all 50 U.S. states with a drop-down list of bullet points for each.

In Wisconsin, the campaign projects 276,000 people will lose health insurance over the next decade. The number is calculated from changes to the Medicaid program that have been projected to cut some recipients off from the state-federal health insurance plan for the poor, along with the end of premium subsidies for low or moderate income households that purchase health insurance from the Affordable Care Act online marketplace.

It projects 49,000 Wisconsinites could lose food assistance through SNAP, the federal nutrition program and pegs the cost to Wisconsin businesses to date of Trump administration tariff policies at more than $900 million, citing calculations published in Axios.

“The Trump Tax is the largest redistribution of wealth and the largest cut to health care in Wisconsin history,” Democratic National Committee Chair Kenneth Martin said in a statement with the unveiling of the website.