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Wisconsin doesn’t have more registered voters than the adult population.

The claim, recently recirculated by President Donald Trump, combines two voter lists to misrepresent the number of active, eligible voters in Wisconsin.     

Wisconsin’s adult population is around 4.8 million, according to Jan. 1 estimates from the state Demographic Services Center.

On Feb. 1, Wisconsin had around 3.6 million active, registered voters, according to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. 

The state has 4.6 million inactive voters on a separate list. Voters move to the inactive list if they die, move to a new state or are convicted of a felony, for example.

Adding those two numbers produces a total of 8.2 million, more than the state’s total population.

State law requires an inactive list for record-keeping purposes. Plus, it helps clerks prevent fraud by catching someone registering under a dead person’s name, for example.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Wisconsin Elections Commission: February 1, 2026 Voter Registration Statistics
• Wisconsin Elections Commission: FAQs
• Wisconsin Demographic Services Center: Official Final Estimates, 1/1/2025

Does Wisconsin have more registered voters than adults? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump repeated his hardline stance on immigration during his record-long State of the Union on Tuesday, previewing a potential midterm campaign message as his party faces an uphill battle to keep a majority in the House.

“The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” Trump said.

His nearly two-hour speech before Congress came on the 11th day of a partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security. He called on Democrats to immediately fund the agency. 

Democrats have refused to approve new funding for DHS unless changes are made to enforcement tactics following the deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis at the hands of federal immigration officers. 

Another vote to move forward on approving funding for DHS failed, 50-45, Tuesday mere hours before the president’s address to Congress.

Immigration enforcement has continued during the shutdown because the department has a separate funding stream Congress provided last year through the massive tax cuts and spending package. 

Rhetoric remains

Despite the controversy the months-long immigration operation in Minneapolis has created, Trump defended the operation and his views on immigration more generally, possibly signalling he does not plan to tone down his rhetoric in an election year.

He made racist remarks about the Somali refugee population in Minneapolis, referring to them as “Somali pirates” and accusing them of widespread fraud. 

He blamed the Biden administration for “importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders.” 

“We will take care of this problem,” he said.  

Trump also made another racist remark that immigrants “don’t speak English,” and called on Congress to pass legislation to bar immigrants in the country without legal authorization from obtaining commercial drivers licenses.

He also called for Congress to end so-called sanctuary cities, local jurisdictions that have policies to bar cooperation with the federal government’s immigration enforcement. 

Trump also called for Congress to pass a national voter ID requirement law to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. 

The president did give a passing endorsement of legal immigration, saying early in the speech he would “always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country.”

Many of the groups he has targeted as president, though, including Minnesota’s Somali population, have legal authorization to be in the country.

Padilla blasts Trump approach

Democrats have seized on the unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, where residential areas have experienced masked immigration agents and roving patrols. 

In a rebuke to Trump’s Speech, California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Democratic response that aired across Spanish networks. 

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Last summer, federal law enforcement officials forcibly removed and handcuffed Padilla at a press conference by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in Los Angeles during protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the city.

The incident represented a stark escalation of tensions between Democrats and the Trump administration after the president ordered 4,000 National Guard troops and 700 Marines to quell the protests in Los Angeles. 

After Padilla, California’s first Latino senator, was released, he gave an emotional speech on the Senate floor that accused the president of using his home state as a testing ground for deploying the U.S. military domestically. 

In his response Tuesday, he addressed the incident at the Noem press conference.   

“They may have knocked me down for a moment, but I got right back up,” Padilla said. “As our parents taught us, if you fall seven times, get up eight. I am still here. Standing. Still fighting. And I know you are still standing and still fighting too.”

WASHINGTON — Some congressional Democrats boycotted President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, opting to attend counter-programming to protest the administration’s actions.

Lawmakers took to alternative stages in Washington, D.C., in rebukes of what they see as Trump’s lack of regard for constitutional norms, immigration enforcement tactics and response to the affordability crisis hitting American families.  

“Our democracy is wilting under ceaseless attack from a president who wants to be a despot,” said Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut at the “People’s State of the Union” rally on the National Mall.

“Millions of Americans are losing their health care because the president has chosen corruption to pad the pockets of his billionaire friends instead of helping average Americans,” said Murphy, who serves as the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee. 

The rally, hosted by progressive media company MeidasTouch and progressive advocacy group MoveOn, countered the president’s address to Congress. Lawmakers brought their own guests to the event, who rebuffed ongoing actions by the administration. 

Tuesday night also featured the “State of the Swamp” at the National Press Club, hosted by DEFIANCE.org, a resistance effort against Trump; the Portland Frog Brigade, a coalition of “artist-activists” and COURIER, an advocacy media network. 

The “State of the Swamp” event brought in several Democratic lawmakers, former Trump administration officials, current and former Democratic state leaders, as well as leading voices against the administration. 

‘A lawless president’

Sen. Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat, described the State of the Union as a “state of denial” during the event on the National Mall. 

“What’s going to happen under that Capitol is a bunch of lies — lies that Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to tell us about how great this country is doing right now,” he said. “But what is true, what is happening right now, is that Donald Trump and the Republicans have made this country sicker, poorer and less secure.”

Democratic lawmakers continued to blast the administration’s immigration enforcement tactics.

Those criticisms grew even louder after federal agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens last month in Minneapolis. 

The Department of Homeland Security is shut down as Congress and the administration try to iron out a solution to Democrats’ demands for additional restraints on immigration enforcement following the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“Now we know the state of our union,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat. “We know it is under attack from a lawless president who is shredding our Constitution and who is attacking our democracy — a president whose private (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) army executes Americans and then calls the victims domestic terrorists.” 

Epstein files

Democrats also lambasted the administration’s handling of the files related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which faced criticism for its piecemeal rollout of the files and heavy redactions. 

Several Democratic lawmakers invited survivors of Epstein as their guests to Trump’s State of the Union address. 

“We should be crystal clear about right now what is happening in our country,” said Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, during the rally on the National Mall. 

“We have a president who is leading the single largest government cover-up in modern history — we have the single largest sex trafficking ring in modern history right now being covered up by Donald Trump and (Attorney General) Pam Bondi in the Department of Justice,” Garcia said. 

Trump, who has appeared in several of the files, had a well-documented friendship with Epstein, but has maintained he had a falling-out with the disgraced financier and was never involved in any alleged crimes.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address Tuesday to lambaste Democrats and the Biden administration, while pitching the Republican Party to voters ahead of this year’s crucial midterm elections. 

“Tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before,” Trump said. “A turnaround for the ages. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages.”

The nearly two-hour speech included considerable back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans in the chamber, especially when Trump brought up his immigration enforcement activities or GOP efforts to require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

Trump’s disdain for Democrats was on full display throughout the speech, when he alleged they wanted to “cheat” in elections and said Democrats pressing for lower costs and affordability was a “dirty, rotten lie.” 

“Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them,” he said. “We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting down.”

But there were several moments of bipartisanship, including when Trump recognized U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and his parents as well as the parents of the late U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, both of the West Virginia National Guard.

Beckstrom and Wolfe were shot just blocks from the White House the day before Thanksgiving while on duty in the District of Columbia. Beckstrom died as a result of her injuries the next day and Wolfe was badly injured. Both Beckstrom and Wolfe were awarded the Purple Heart by Major General James D. Seward, Adjutant General of the state of West Virginia, to the applause of lawmakers.

The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team was also able to briefly unite Republicans and Democrats when players appeared in the gallery overlooking the chamber, wearing their gold medals. 

Members of both political parties gave the group a standing ovation and chanted “USA, USA, USA!” before the players left after a few minutes. They had met with Trump at the White House earlier in the day.

Sign held by Rep. Al Green

But there were reminders of deep divisions throughout the speech of historic length — the previous record for a State of the Union speech that was recorded was held by former President Bill Clinton.

Texas Democratic Rep. Al Green held up a sign at the beginning of Trump’s remarks that read “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES!” in reference to a racist meme in a video Trump shared on social media that depicted former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as primates.

A Sergeant at Arms employee escorted Green from the chamber a few minutes later as Republicans again chanted “USA!” Green last year was removed from the chamber during Trump’s joint address to Congress.

Trump didn’t just criticize Democrats during his speech, but also the Supreme Court justices who have ruled against his actions, most recently deciding that he overstepped by using the International Economic Emergency Powers Act to implement tariffs. Four of the nine justices were seated in the chamber: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump said the tariffs decision was “unfortunate” and that the six justices who ruled against him “got it really wrong.”

Trump reiterated he would use other powers he believes he holds to keep the tariffs in place, arguing he thinks they are “saving the country.”

“They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better, leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before,” he said. “Congressional action will not be necessary.”

Trump claimed that if tariffs remain they could replace income taxes, though Congress would need to approve legislation to eliminate that part of the tax code. 

Homeland Security shutdown

Trump spoke at length about immigration and border security during his speech before calling on Congress to end the shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security, which began on Feb. 14 when stopgap funding expired. Democrats have insisted on immigration enforcement reforms.

“Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, homeland security of the United States,” he said.

Trump told lawmakers in the chamber to stand if they believed “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

Republicans stood and cheered loudly while Democrats stayed seated, with several of their members calling out their opposition to that part of the speech as well as Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement and deportation. 

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar said repeatedly “you have killed Americans” as Trump spoke about the DHS shutdown.

Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib yelled “Alex wasn’t a criminal,” referring to Alex Pretti, who was shot and killed by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January, just weeks after federal immigration officers shot and killed Renee Nicole Good.

Tlaib later called out that Trump should release all of the Epstein files, referring to documents within the Department of Justice about the criminal investigation into child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

SAVE Act

Trump also called on Congress to pass legislation that would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections.

He said that Americans should only be able to vote by mail if they are ill, disabled, in the military or traveling, though that provision isn’t included in the SAVE Act. 

“Congress should unite and enact this common sense, country-saving legislation right now,” he said. “And it should be before anything else happens.”

The House voted mostly along party lines earlier this month to send the bill to the Senate, where it is unlikely to get the Democratic support needed to move past that chamber’s 60-vote legislative filibuster. 

Trump alleged the only reason Democrats won’t help Republicans approve the legislation is because “they want to cheat.”

Boycotts of the speech

Some Democrats opted to attend other events or skip Trump’s speech entirely, citing the president’s immigration enforcement tactics, disregard for constitutional norms and record of false and misleading claims. 

Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, ranking member on the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, said he decided not to go because Trump has “made a mockery of the State of the Union.”

“I have no obligation to be a backdrop to a partisan speech full of lies and vitriol,” Murphy said. “I’m heartbroken that I’m not going to be there. But he’s turned his speech into a joke.”

Many of those boycotting will attend counter-programming.

“The American people already know what the state of our union is,” said Indiana Democratic Rep. André Carson. “It is marked by frustration, rising costs, and deep exhaustion. Families are stretched thin by higher prices. Communities are disturbed by fatal immigration enforcement tactics. And working people are watching the wealthiest Americans benefit while the middle class is left behind.” 

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger gave the Democratic response following Trump’s remarks, asking three questions in her 12-minute speech.

“Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no,” she said.

California Sen. Alex Padilla gave the Spanish-language response.

“This country has always been shaped by people who were told they did not belong, but who persevered and kept moving forward,” he said in Spanish.

Shauneen Miranda and Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report. 

U.S. Sen Maria Cantwell, a Washington state Democrat, will register a protest of President Donald Trump’s attempt to exert more control over election infrastructure by bringing her state’s secretary of state, Steve Hobbs, as her guest to the State of Union Tuesday evening.

Trump has pressured senators to approve a House-passed bill that would require the public to produce a passport or birth certificate to register to vote, involve the federal Department of Homeland Security in elections and disallow universal vote-by-mail that is popular in Washington, Oregon and other states.

Members of Congress often bring guests to the State of the Union to spotlight particular issues and Democrats this year are raising a host of objections to the president’s tariffs program and his immigration crackdown — including a weekslong operation in Minneapolis that resulted in two U.S. citizens’ deaths at the hands of immigration agents — and other issues.

Cantwell told States Newsroom in a phone interview hours before Trump’s address was set to begin that changing election infrastructure could have more long term effects on U.S. democracy than other Trump policies.

“I’m not saying that the tariff issue didn’t have an impact,” Cantwell said. “I’m not saying it’s not horrific that you killed two American citizens who were just trying to express their rights to free speech. But you could upend a lot by changing our election system overnight. I don’t know how you recover from that immediately.”

The Republican bill would amount to nationalizing elections, a contradiction of the Constitution’s provision that states administer elections, Cantwell and Hobbs said.

The framers of the Constitution gave that power to states to protect against the executive branch overreaching, Hobbs said.

The bill would violate that idea, Cantwell said.

“We would be basically saying, ‘It’s okay for a federal leader … and their agency, Homeland Security, to mess around and determine who’s eligible to vote,” Cantwell said. “The reason the separation of powers exist is … so that you didn’t have that federal control, so that people did have faith that they weren’t being manipulated by the federal power.”

The GOP’s championing of the bill follows President Donald Trump’s comments advocating to nationalize elections, a mid-decade campaign to redraw state congressional districts in Republicans’ favor and more than two dozen Department of Justice lawsuits demanding Democratic-led states turn over unredacted voter rolls to the Department of Homeland Security.

Senate rules at risk?

Cantwell’s worries about the bill, known as the SAVE Act, have grown after seeing Trump’s pressure campaign on Republicans, as well as a recent sign of support for the bill from moderate Republican Susan Collins of Maine and comments from the bill’s Senate sponsor, Mike Lee of Utah, about adjusting the chamber’s rules to ensure the bill’s passage.

And Cantwell said she expects Trump to mention the issue during Tuesday’s address.

Under Senate rules and tradition, 60 of the 100 senators must approve a procedural vote to move to final passage of nearly all legislation. With Republicans holding 53 seats, that means bills must have bipartisan support to pass the chamber. 

Lee has said he wanted to tweak Senate rules so that opponents of a bill would have to continuously speak on the floor to block consideration of a bill that would otherwise have the support to pass.

Cantwell said she and Hobbs would seek out opportunities Tuesday evening to bring Republicans to their side of the issue.

“He and I got a busy night tonight,” she said. “We gotta go buttonhole a bunch of Republican senators.”

Noncitizens and voting

Republican supporters of the bill say it will enhance election security and ensure that noncitizens do not vote in U.S. elections.

But noncitizens are already barred from federal elections and instances of voter fraud are exceedingly rare, even in studies by conservative groups.

And the bill presents several provisions that could reduce voter participation, Cantwell and Hobbs said. 

Many Americans do not have a passport or easy access to their birth certificate. Nearly 70 million married women have changed their names, creating an additional barrier to voter registration.

“I don’t think they’re thinking about these things,” Hobbs said.

The bill would also imperil Washington’s universal vote-by-mail system in which every voter is sent a ballot that can be returned through the mail. 

Vote by mail “has nothing to do with partisanship,” Hobbs said. “It’s about convenience of the voter to be able to take the time to choose the people they want to choose. It’s about security, it’s about transparency, it’s not partisanship.”

The system, which for years was popular among Republicans and Democrats for its convenience, became a partisan issue when Trump partially blamed his 2020 election loss on the mail-in voting increase put in place during that COVID-era election.

“We’re here to evangelize that this system has enfranchised people to vote more and have a higher turnout, which is what our goal should be,” Cantwell said Tuesday. “That’s why the League of Women Voters are on our side in this debate and against the SAVE Act, because the whole goal is to have a more participatory government and vote by mail is delivering that.”

After years of states pushing legislation to accelerate the development of data centers and the electric grid to support them, some legislators want to limit or repeal state and local incentives that paved their way.

President Donald Trump also has changed his tone. Last year he issued an executive order and other federal initiatives meant to support accelerated data center development. Then last month, he cited rising electricity bills in saying technology companies that build data centers must “pay their own way,” in a post on Truth Social.

As the momentum shifts, lawmakers in several states have introduced or passed legislation that aims to rein in data center development by repealing tax exemptions, adding conditions to certain incentives or placing moratoriums on data center projects. Virginia lawmakers, for example, are considering ending a data center tax break that costs the state about $1.6 billion a year.

“Who is actually benefiting from these massive data centers that, in many cases, are the size of one or two shopping malls combined?” asked Michigan Democratic state Rep. Erin Byrnes, who introduced a proposal to repeal the state’s data center tax exemptions. “They have a large footprint in terms of land and energy usage. And by and large, it’s not going to be the average resident who lives near a data center who’s going to benefit.”

Over the past few years, more data centers have been built in an effort to meet the demand for digital processing power, which has rapidly increased as more artificial intelligence systems come online. Data centers house thousands of servers that are responsible for storing and transmitting data required for internet services to work.

But as local communities voice growing outrage over rising electricity prices and environmental concerns brought by data centers, such as water and energy use, lawmakers in several states are hoping to slow data center development. By limiting incentives or placing moratoriums on new projects, state legislators are hoping to give themselves more time to determine whether the massive facilities are worth losing millions or more in tax revenue each year.

Some experts also say that developers and tech companies have exaggerated some of the benefits they bring to local communities. While the promise of new jobs sounds attractive, local leaders may face other concerns, such as the effects of diverting construction resources away from other purposes and higher energy costs caused by AI, said Michael Hicks, an economics professor at Ball State University in Indiana.

“A lot of households — and the people that are elected by households — and local governments are becoming more unnerved by the public pushback to data centers,” Hicks said.

Tech developers and data center operators are concerned, however, that the changes could hurt the rapidly growing industry. And most states and localities already require developers using incentives to follow certain requirements, said Dan Diorio, the vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, a lobbying group for the data center industry.

State lawmakers have to consider how changes to incentive programs could upend years of construction, which has long-term business impacts, Diorio said.

“I think data centers are very much the backbone of the 21st-century economy,” he said. “We’re generating economic activity in states, contributing to state-level GDP, contributing significantly to labor income and state and local tax revenue, and creating significant amounts of jobs. I mean, we’re just jumping into something preemptively here.”

Incentives granted

At least 37 states offer incentives that are available to data centers, including sales tax exemptions and property tax abatements, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Sales tax exemptions, the most common incentive, allow data center developers to buy computers and other equipment at a much lower cost.

“I think these are one of many factors that the data centers are looking at, along with the cost of electricity, the cost of construction, land and things like that,” said Nicholas Miller, a policy associate at NCSL. “These incentives are one way that states are trying to pitch themselves as competitive to this industry.”

In 2020, Maryland implemented a program that exempts data centers from sales and use taxes if they provide at least five jobs within three years of applying to the program and invest at least $2 million in data center personal property. The first four years of the program cost the state $22 million — but $11 million of that came in 2024 alone, as the costs grew, Democratic state Del. Julie Palakovich Carr said.

Concerned about this and the impact of data centers on residents’ electricity bills, Palakovich Carr introduced legislation this year that would repeal the state’s sales and use tax exemptions for personal property used at data centers. The measure, which is under consideration in the House, would also restrict localities in the state from eliminating or reducing assessments for personal property used in data centers, which drew opposition from the Maryland Association of Counties.

The amount of money states are forfeiting to provide tax breaks for data centers is increasingly concerning, Palakovich Carr said.

“Unfortunately, that’s the turn we’re seeing across many other states,” she said. “The price starts out maybe in line with what we think it’s going to be. But over time it just costs more and more.”

Similar bills that would repeal or halt state incentives for data centers have been filed in Arizona and Georgia.

“When we look at potential subsidies for businesses, I’m really looking at it from a frame of incentivizing new behavior rather than just giving away money for things that the companies were going to already do anyways,” Palakovich Carr said. “I think it’s really important that once these things get put in place, we look at the data and see what’s happening on the ground.”

In 2024, Michigan enacted sales and use tax exemptions on certain data centers through at least 2050.

Now, with developers looking at more than a dozen sites for potential data centers, public sentiment has soured, said Byrnes, who had voted against the measure. Communities across the state began organizing in an effort to stop data centers from coming to their neighborhoods because of environmental concerns and energy costs, she said.

The outcry prompted Byrnes to co-sponsor a bipartisan package of three bills that would repeal the 2024 law.

“We’re taking a stand with this legislation to say that we don’t believe data centers should be offered these exemptions,” she said. “I believe it aligns with public sentiment.”

Lawmakers in a handful of states — including New York, Oklahoma and Vermont — have filed bills that would place a temporary moratorium on all data center projects and require studies of their impacts.

Georgia Democratic state Rep. Ruwa Romman introduced a measure this session that would put a moratorium on new data center projects until March 2027. The proposal would give the legislature time to study the impact of data centers on the state’s natural resources, environment and other areas.

“We have such a beautiful state and it would be a damn shame to completely and utterly wreck it and its landscape for short-term gain,” Romman said. “These data centers aren’t bringing jobs. They’re saying they’re bringing the revenue, but there’s a ton of fine print on the revenue that’s coming in. So, I’ve been urging my colleagues from every side of the political spectrum to just take a beat.”

In 2021, the Oklahoma legislature approved a measure from current Republican House Speaker Kyle Hilbert that excludes new data centers from qualifying for an exemption program that allows certain manufacturers not to pay property taxes for their first five years in business. Any data centers that qualified for the program in the five years prior to the law, however, can continue to apply for exemptions.

This year, as more project proposals were made, Hilbert introduced legislation to ensure no data centers could “slip through the cracks.”

“These aren’t the days of being able to build a data center, cut deals with NDAs, then start turning dirt before the constituents even know what’s happened,” Hilbert said. “Those days are over, and data centers need to be proactive in their messaging and talking to people about their concerns.”

Costs vs. benefits

Last year, Virginia, home to the most data centers in the country, gave up $1.6 billion in sales and use tax revenues from data centers, state data shows. That’s a 118% increase from the previous year, according to a report from Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that focuses on economic development incentives. Another report from the group said Georgia is expected to lose at least $2.5 billion to data center sales tax exemptions this year, 664% higher than the state’s previous estimate.

Virginia state lawmakers are considering legislation that would require data centers to achieve high energy efficiency standards and decrease their use of diesel backup generators in order to be eligible for the state’s sales and use tax exemption. The measure, which passed the House, is now moving through the Senate.

Before the end of his term, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, suggested a provision in his proposed state budget that would extend the data center tax incentive from 2035 to 2050. The Senate’s budget bill, however, would end the incentive altogether on Jan. 1, 2027. It’s not clear if state leaders, including current Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger, support the measure.

While states can put a specific number on the tax losses, it’s much more difficult to determine how much data centers contribute to local communities and the state, Miller said.

Virginia brings in a significant amount of revenue from the property taxes for each facility. Local construction firms, restaurants and other small businesses also benefit from ongoing projects, he said.

“This is the big question,” Miller said. “With all economic development projects, it’s generally a lot easier to measure the cost of the incentive directly versus the benefits.”

The changing incentive landscape may cause instability within the data center industry, said Diorio, of the Data Center Coalition. Data center projects are large-scale capital investments that play out for several years, but changing policies could upend that progress.

“When states look at these policies or consider abrupt ends to programs, that creates significant market uncertainty,” Diorio said. “It will have a significant long-term impact on the viability of that market for data center development. Industries are very responsive to market signals, and any kind of uncertainty will bring up a red flag because you’re looking to invest for the long haul.”

Stateline reporter Madyson Fitzgerald can be reached at mfitzgerald@stateline.org.

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Republican lawmakers have heard farmers’ concerns about President Donald Trump’s tariff agenda. Their response? Short-term pain, long-term gain.

Farmers faced a shrunken export market and operating costs after Trump enforced steep tariffs on key trading partners and farm materials last year. In response, the Trump administration will begin disbursing a $12 billion bailout to farmers due to “unfair market disruptions” at the end of this month.

Republican lawmakers from Wisconsin, a major agricultural producer, acknowledge the 2025 to 2026 crop season challenges, which resulted in an estimated $34.6 billion in losses for the industry, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But they’re arguing that the success of specialty crops and rosier-than-expected economic indicators are evidence farmers can withstand any turmoil the tariffs have caused.

“Our farmers understand that we have to level the playing field. And how do you do that? You do that with these tariffs,” U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden said. “In order to get to the long term, you have to get through the short term, and that’s the reason that this money’s going back to people in the agriculture industry.”

A bipartisan group of agricultural experts said the Trump administration’s policies have “significantly damaged” the American farm economy in a letter to Senate Agriculture Committee leadership this month, as first reported by The New York Times.

“It is clear that the current Administration’s actions, along with Congressional inaction, have increased costs for farm inputs, disrupted overseas and domestic markets, denied agriculture its reliable labor pool, and defunded critical ag research and staffing,” they wrote.

Wisconsin agriculture experts told NOTUS the administration’s bailout is undesirable and insufficient to cover many farmers’ lost revenue this year.

“They don’t solve the long-run problem of higher input costs and low prices; they are a Band-Aid to get us through this short-term problem,” said Paul Mitchell, the director of the Renk Agribusiness Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Agriculture professor and economist Steven Deller, also of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, had a similar view.

“We’re hemorrhaging thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars, and they’re giving us pennies,” Deller said, adding that farmers want “fair markets” and a “level playing field.”

Republicans in the state, however, are standing behind the president’s agenda, pointing to the administration’s stated goal to boost the manufacturing industry through baseline tariff rates for all countries, reciprocal tariffs and tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico.

“Wisconsin, at the end of the day, is going to benefit as we bring manufacturing back to the state,” said U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the likely GOP nominee for governor.

He blamed the North American Free Trade Agreement for sending manufacturing companies packing for cheaper operations in China. Trump replaced NAFTA during his first term in office with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement — a deal Tiffany applauded.

Trump administration officials have defended tariffs in cable television appearances and in congressional hearings as key to transforming the American economy, even as some agricultural industries languish. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing earlier this month, Democratic Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota pressed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on whether instability in the agricultural markets is a result of Trump’s tariff policies.

“It has nothing to do with the tariffs,” Bessent said.

Still, there are some signs the administration could be responsive to the backlash. The Trump administration is planning to roll back tariffs on some steel and aluminum goods due to concerns the tariffs are hurting consumers, the Financial Times reported.

The soybean industry is one of the hardest hit by tariffs, which temporarily cost farmers the U.S.’ largest soybean trading partner, China. Although China fulfilled its initial purchase agreement last month and has agreed to purchase tens of millions more metric tons over the next few years, American soybean producers withstood an unprecedented five consecutive months without purchases by China.

This story was produced and originally published by Wisconsin Watch and NOTUS, a publication from the nonprofit, nonpartisan Allbritton Journalism Institute.

Republicans are looking past the short-term pain of Trump’s tariffs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

OTTAWA, Kan. — When Kansas began requiring residents to prove their U.S. citizenship before voting more than a decade ago, Steven Wayne Fish tried and failed.

A first-time father in his 30s at the time, he wanted a say in debates over public school funding despite having never voted before. But Fish, who was born on a since-decommissioned Air Force base in Illinois, couldn’t find his birth certificate, leaving him unable to register for the 2014 general election.

A federal court eventually blocked the Kansas law following a lawsuit in which Fish was the namesake plaintiff. For years, the Fish legal case served as a warning to politicians who wanted voters to produce documents proving their citizenship.

That’s changing, as President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress try to impose a similar proof-of-citizenship voter registration requirement nationwide through a long-shot proposal called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act or SAVE America Act.

Blue states would have a major tool to push back. Whether they would use it is less clear.

States have the power to set separate rules for state and local elections and to apply federal restrictions only on residents voting in federal races, according to interviews with more than a dozen election experts, officials and lawmakers. Operating two distinct election systems, a process called bifurcation, would give states more freedom over who can vote in races for governor, state legislature and other down-ballot contests.

Bifurcation would ensure that individuals like Fish could still cast a ballot in some contests, even if they couldn’t vote for members of Congress or president.

“It’s very strange and surreal,” Fish told Stateline about a potential national requirement during an interview on Tuesday in Ottawa, Kansas, where he works at a warehouse. Those looking back at his state, he said, will see “it did not work at all.”

Under the U.S. Constitution, states regulate the times, places and manner of federal elections, though Congress has the authority to override them. But Congress has far less authority over state and local elections.

Brandon Fincher, managing editor of the Journal of Election Administration Research & Practice, said a national proof-of-citizenship requirement would likely generate interest in bifurcation. “I think it absolutely would,” said Fincher, who wrote a dissertation that found states are likely to adopt dual systems when their voter registration rules are threatened by federal mandates or court orders.

Bifurcation wouldn’t restrain Congress from imposing voting restrictions on federal elections. It also wouldn’t stop any changes Trump has threatened to make through executive order, but those would almost certainly face immediate challenges in federal courts. The president has no unilateral authority under the U.S. Constitution to direct how states run elections.

In the past 30 years, only a handful of states have tried a two-tier system, according to Fincher’s research. Costs and administrative barriers tend to discourage states from pursuing a dual system, election experts and officials said.

Kansas briefly had one more than a decade ago. It came amid legal fights over the state’s 2011 proof-of-citizenship law and allowed voters who signed a sworn statement that they were citizens, but didn’t provide documentation, to cast ballots for federal races but not in state and local elections.

Arizona is the only state that currently operates a two-tier system — requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in state and local races, but not in federal.

Still, the country is littered with current smaller-scale efforts and past examples where states operated multiple election systems.

More than 20 cities allow some form of noncitizen voting in local races, for example, even though only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, according to Immigrant Voting Rights, a site that tracks legal noncitizen voting. Before the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, which guaranteed universal suffrage to women, some states allowed women to vote in some contests but not all. And Maryland lawmakers are currently weighing a plan to bifurcate its elections for some absentee ballots.

Wren Orey, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Elections Project, said more proposals to bifurcate state and federal elections could follow any congressional action.

“We’re always going to see that any time there are major federal policy changes being considered that some states are going to consider, at the very least, a system where state and local elections don’t meet those requirements,” Orey said.

Maryland weighs ‘insurance policy’

In Maryland, state lawmakers are weighing bifurcating a small portion of their absentee ballots depending on the outcome of a looming U.S. Supreme Court case involving mail ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia offer so-called grace periods for ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day but arrive afterward, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The Trump administration argues these ballots cannot be counted. A ruling in that case, expected later this year, will affect millions of Americans.

If the White House wins, twin bills being considered in Maryland’s House and Senate would direct election officials to tabulate all votes on those ballots except for federal offices.

Maryland state Sen. Cheryl Kagan, a Democrat sponsoring one of the bills, called the legislation an “insurance policy.”

The sponsor of the Maryland House bill, Democratic state Del. Kris Fair, said lawmakers would have to wait and see on federal actions before deciding whether the bifurcation could be expanded to cover additional restrictions on voting, but he didn’t rule it out.

Fair said additional bifurcation would be a “complicated conversation.” But he added that Maryland legislators would always seek to reduce as many barriers to voting as possible while keeping elections safe and secure.

“Every time the federal government is acting, seeking to restrict access and seeking to disenfranchise voters, we are going to immediately look at the books and see how we can bring enfranchisement back to the largest number of Maryland voters that we can,” Fair said.

A national battle

Republicans face tremendous pressure from Trump, who has called for “nationalizing” elections, to act ahead of the midterms in November to decide control of Congress.

They say new nationwide election standards are needed to guard against voter fraud, though instances of fraud are very rare. Trump has long pushed the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen, and his administration has taken steps to keep attention focused on that race, including an FBI seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, last month.

The SAVE America Act narrowly passed the U.S. House last week and has majority support in the Senate, but faces a likely filibuster that would take 60 votes to overcome — which it does not have. The measure would require the public to produce a U.S. passport or birth certificate in most cases to register to vote. It would take effect immediately if signed into law.

The Trump administration has cast anyone opposed to the legislation as motivated by a desire to cheat.

“They want illegal people and aliens in this country to be able to vote for them and to rob the United States citizens of their vote,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said at a news conference in Arizona last week.

US House approves bill mandating proof of citizenship for voting in federal elections

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement to Stateline that Trump is “committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls free of errors and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters.”

Just a handful of years ago, some Republican legislators considered bifurcation in response to Democratic proposals during the Biden administration that sparked fears of a nationalized election system.

When a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022 tried to pass sweeping election legislation that included automatic voter registration, a conservative backlash led to the introduction of bills in some statehouses that sought to assert greater state authority over elections.

In 2023, the Bipartisan Policy Center found that since 2020, legislation had been offered in five states — Alaska, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Texas — that would have separated state and federal elections. One 2021 Alaska measure would have directed state officials to stop holding elections for president and Congress if new federal law created a significant conflict with Alaska regulations. No state moved forward with separating its elections.

“If the Federal Government nationalizes the election system, undermining the long tradition of mutual cooperation, or worse, the sovereign rights of a state to manage its internal election affairs, then Alaska should simply tell the federal government to run their own election, bifurcating the election process,” Mike Shower, a then-state GOP senator who sponsored the measure, wrote in a statement at the time.

Shower, now a candidate for lieutenant governor, didn’t respond to an interview request sent to his campaign.

Election officials predict complications

Whatever the motivation behind considering bifurcation, election officials and experts say the burden of running a dual system is high.

Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel at Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights organization, called the scenario a “nightmare” for election administrators because they would have to implement state and federal requirements while paying for it all.

Jamie Shew, clerk of Douglas County, Kansas, an area that includes the sprawling University of Kansas campus, said an upcoming primary election there has about 113 ballot styles — variations of ballots that voters receive depending on where they live and what party they belong to. A bifurcated system would only increase that.

“It just adds this layer of administration and complication,” said Shew, a Democrat. “It’s one of those things that as an election administration keeps you awake, because do we have it right?”

Even setting aside bifurcation, enforcing a proof-of-citizenship requirement could be costly for election officials. Bob Page, the nonpartisan registrar of voters in Orange County, California — an area with about 3.2 million residents — estimates the additional cost in his jurisdiction could exceed $6 million a year.

Page told Stateline in an email that assuming each voter could be served in 10 minutes, his office would need 59 additional staff members. He emphasized that he takes no position on legislation and will implement any changes in the law.

In Douglas County, Shew said that as Congress has debated a proof-of-citizenship requirement, he’s heard from election officials around the country who want to know about Kansas’ experience. When the state law was in effect, Shew said, he hired two additional temporary staff members to help process voter registrations.

Despite serving a university community, Shew said many of the issues his office encountered involved older voters who couldn’t locate a birth certificate or had certificates with incorrect information. In one instance, a birth certificate for someone born at a house decades ago listed when a doctor showed up, but not the date of birth. In other cases, birth certificates spelled names incorrectly.

“There’s a lot of stuff we’re going to have to record,” Shew said of the proposed SAVE America Act requirements. “If you get 100 [voter] registrations in a day, I’m going to have to go back to bringing in temporary staff just to handle that amount of extra paperwork.”

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican running for governor, didn’t directly answer Stateline’s questions about whether he supports the SAVE America Act or has any concerns about the ability of election officials in the state to implement the measure if it becomes law. Schwab told The Associated Press in 2024 that Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship requirement “didn’t work out so well.”

In a short written statement to Stateline this week, Schwab noted only that Kansas has had a voter ID requirement — which is different from a proof-of-citizenship requirement — for more than a decade and that all states with one benefit.

Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican who championed the state’s proof-of-citizenship law while he was state secretary of state and personally defended it in court, didn’t answer questions from Stateline.

Fish, the Kansas resident who tried unsuccessfully to register to vote in 2014, said he eventually found his birth certificate in the back of a baby book, but not before it was too late for that election. A resident of Garnett, a city of about 3,200 people, Fish said he’s learned not to bring up the legal challenge often.

Many people don’t understand how it could happen to an average person, he said, adding they believe there must be a reason the person trying to register was at fault.

“It’s not really something you can change their minds on if they’re on that side,” Fish said.

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

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editor’s note: This is a static version of the interactive story found at this link.

Part 1: A struggling regional carrier

The legacy network

Air Wisconsin Airlines has not been spared by the nationwide decline of regional air service. The 60-year-old carrier laid off hundreds of employees in Appleton and Milwaukee last year after terminating a contract to provide aircraft, crews and services to American Airlines in January 2025. The airline’s planned pivot to charter service and federally subsidized connections to underserved airports didn’t pan out, prompting another round of layoffs by the spring.

But the company’s troubles didn’t entirely ground its fleet. Flight tracking data indicate that Air Wisconsin continued to provide regional air service through the end of 2025, primarily connecting its Wisconsin hubs to mid-sized Midwestern airports as it had for decades.

The sale

In January, Harbor Diversified Inc., the Appleton-based parent company of Air Wisconsin, sold the company’s operations and 13 of its jets to CSI Aviation, a New Mexico-based air charter company and longtime federal contractor owned by former New Mexico Republican Party chair Allen Weh.

Air Wisconsin sent recall notices to the company’s furloughed flight attendants after the sale to CSI Aviation, and the Association of Flight Attendants — the union representing the furloughed workers — negotiated an immediate raise for returning members. In a January press release announcing the recall notices, the union noted that only a third of the furloughed flight attendants opted to return.

Neither CSI nor Harbor Diversified responded to requests for comment.

CSI is central to the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown.

It has provided charter services for ICE since 2024, transporting detainees and deportees both directly and through subcontractors.

The company entered its current $1.5 billion contract with the Department of Homeland Security in November of last year.

Demand for private charters surged after 2010, when the Obama administration moved away from relying solely on the U.S. Marshals Service.

Air Wisconsin isn’t alone. Avelo Airlines began deportation flights last spring, but backed out last month following intense public backlash.

A transformed network

CSI’s acquisition of Air Wisconsin transformed the airline’s flight patterns within a matter of weeks. The airline’s website no longer lists passenger routes, but flight data collected between Jan. 9 and mid-February indicates that the airline has largely ceded its role as a Midwestern regional carrier.

Instead, the airline increasingly looks south: Destinations in Louisiana and Texas replaced the mid-sized Midwestern airports that were, until recently, the airline’s most frequent destinations.

Flight data indicates Air Wisconsin planes made at least 125 trips in January 2026, up from roughly 60 in December 2025. Thicker lines on the map indicate more frequent routes.

Part 2: Air ICE

Many of Air Wisconsin’s new destinations are within easy reach of ICE detention facilities in Texas and Louisiana, including some of the agency’s largest.

The Minnesota operation

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport is among the busiest in the country, but Air Wisconsin rarely provided service to the Twin Cities in the final months of 2025.

That changed in January, just weeks after the Trump administration dispatched thousands of federal agents to Minnesota for an immigration enforcement offensive dubbed Operation Metro Surge.

Hundreds of immigrants detained in the operation have since departed the airport in shackles, loaded onto charter flights bound for ICE detention facilities farther south.

Alexandria

The modest airport in Alexandria, Louisiana, is now the epicenter of ICE’s deportation flight operations. Air Wisconsin has flown to or from Alexandria at least 30 times since the airline’s acquisition by CSI, on par with the airline’s service to Madison and outpacing service to Appleton, home to the airline’s corporate headquarters.

The GEO Group, an international private prison operator, runs an ICE detention facility on the airport’s tarmac. A dozen other ICE facilities sit within easy reach. Among them is the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, Mississippi, where Delvin Francisco Rodriguez, a 39-year-old Nicaraguan national, died in custody on Dec. 14, 2025. ICE acknowledged the incident in a press release four days later, though the agency did not specify the cause of Rodriguez’s death.

El Paso

Camp East Montana, ICE’s largest detention facility, sits just east of El Paso International Airport. Air Wisconsin flights took off from or landed in El Paso at least 32 times in January and early February, second only to Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport.

The camp drew national attention in early January after Geraldo Lunas Campos, a 55-year-old Cuban national, died by asphyxiation after guards pinned him to the floor of a cell. The El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office later ruled the death a homicide.

Lunas Campos’ death came a month after Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a 48-year-old from Guatemala and detained at Camp East Montana, died in an El Paso hospital; ICE attributed Gaspar-Andres’ death to liver and kidney failure.

Another detainee, 36-year-old Victor Manuel Diaz of Nicaragua, died at the camp on Jan. 14 in what ICE described as a “presumed suicide” — an explanation his family questions. ICE agents detained Diaz in Minneapolis only days before his death.

Back at home

Air Wisconsin hasn’t entirely withdrawn from its home state hubs. Many of the airline’s remaining pilots, flight attendants and ground crew are still Wisconsin-based, and Milwaukee remains the airline’s primary hub.

The airline is now hiring for more than a dozen Wisconsin-based positions — including legal counsel.

About the data

Wisconsin Watch used FlightAware AeroAPI data (Sept 2025 – Feb 2026) to reconstruct patterns before and after the Jan. 9 sale to CSI Aviation.

Hubs on these maps represent the 10 airports most frequently used. While the routes align with ICE operations, the data does not confirm if specific flights carried detainees.

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE (static version) is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: < 1 minute

Air Wisconsin turns to ICE is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump told governors Friday during a meeting at the White House he has no plans to surge federal immigration operations in states where it’s not wanted. 

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul said during an afternoon press conference with several other governors that Trump was asked during the closed-door meeting about what lessons he learned from immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, where federal officers killed two U.S. citizens. 

“The president said, ‘We’ll only go where we’re wanted.’ And said, for example, ‘I won’t go to New York unless Kathy calls and says she wants me to come to New York,’” she said. “I took that as a very positive outcome from this meeting. And I would want to hold him and the administration to that statement.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, vice chair of the National Governors Association, said Democratic governors were able to express “how problematic” actions by immigration enforcement officials have been, especially after Republicans in Congress drastically increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection in their signature tax and spending cuts law.  

“We were actually encouraged to hear the president say that one of the takeaways from Minnesota was that he only wants to go places that he is welcomed. So we were very glad to hear that,” he said. “I want to be very clear that until we can have an accountable agency, the type of surge that we saw in Minnesota is not welcome in the state of Maryland.”

Louisiana Republican Gov. Jeff Landry said during the press conference at the NGA’s winter conference there have been “no problems” with federal immigration enforcement actions in his state. 

“Why? Because it was a completely integrated operation under which local, state and federal partners worked together,” he said. “We did not allow people to break our laws and get in the way and impede law enforcement in doing their lawful duty.” 

Landry said Trump “made it very clear, if you don’t want our help, we won’t give you any help.”

Tariffs ruling interrupts meeting

Governors from throughout the country traveled to Washington, D.C., this week to attend their annual winter conference and meet with Trump at the White House, though that meeting was diverted somewhat after the Supreme Court ruled on tariffs. 

Trump is scheduled to host a black tie dinner for some of the governors this weekend, though he decided not to invite certain Democrats to that event, provoking controversy throughout the lead-up to the governors’ meeting. 

Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt, chairman of the National Governor’s Association, said during the afternoon press conference the morning meeting with Trump included 12 GOP and 10 Democratic governors. 

“It was overall a really productive meeting and a great show of ‘Hey, here is how the governors can come before the president and bring up issues that affect all of us,’” he said. 

Moore said the White House meeting was “productive” and “a chance for us to be able to share our thoughts and our perspectives and our ideas with the Cabinet secretaries and the agency heads and with the president himself.”

“We had a chance to talk about the things that matter to the people of our states. We had a chance to speak with Cabinet secretaries about energy prices and how we have to have a singular focus to bring energy prices down,” he said. “We had a chance to speak with the Transportation secretary about transportation issues. In the case of Maryland, it was the American Legion Bridge and the Francis Scott Key Bridge.”

Moore added the meeting was an important opportunity to “speak truth to power” and show that bipartisanship still exists on certain issues.

Sewage spill, Gateway Tunnel 

Moore said he didn’t bring up Trump blaming him for a sewage spill that began with a discharge into the Potomac River in the District of Columbia, opting instead to use the meeting to focus on talking with Cabinet secretaries on infrastructure, natural disaster relief and housing. 

“I am here to focus on helping the people of my state,” he said. “I am not going to spend a second talking about a petty attack that the president of the United States had.”

Hochul said she appreciated the Cabinet secretaries were at the meeting and that governors were able to talk with them about several issues. 

“I was able to talk about the Gateway Tunnel and keeping the funding on for the largest infrastructure project in America today,” she said, referring to a project to build new rail track between New York and New Jersey under the Hudson River. “We’d like to keep our offshore wind on and not have to go to court constantly to get that turned back on.”

North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein said he was able to speak directly with Trump about the state’s ongoing recovery needs from Hurricane Helene.

“We’ve got to rebuild houses. We’ve got to rebuild roads and bridges. We’ve got to rebuild businesses. And we cannot do that in North Carolina without the partnership of the federal government,” he said. “We have a $13.5 billion request with (the Office of Management and Budget) and with the Congress. And I asked the president and he said that they are eager to talk about that. 

“So I came away very encouraged that he will bring renewed focus from this administration to help western North Carolina recover from Hurricane Helene.”

Landry said the Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs, which was released during the meeting, “completely overshadowed, which, in my opinion, was getting ready to be a very productive meeting with the president.”

“It was unfortunate that the Supreme Court came out with a bad ruling at that time because I think we were going to have a great meeting,” he said. 

Trump vowed to keep the tariffs in place under other authorities he believes he holds during an afternoon press conference at the White House, where he also rebuked the six Supreme Court justices who wrote “that (the International Economic Emergency Powers Act) does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

Hochul disagreed with the assertion the Supreme Court’s decision wasn’t the right one. 

“I think the Supreme Court, many of whom are appointees by the president, sided with supporting the Constitution and doing what’s right,” she said. “So we support this decision and hope that we can continue to find ways to work together to drive down costs, not do the opposite as we saw tariffs do in our states.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Friday he plans to keep tariffs in place using different authorities after the Supreme Court ruled he exceeded his power under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act. 

During the afternoon press conference in the White House briefing room, Trump repeatedly criticized the six justices who wrote “that IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs.” 

“The Supreme Court’s ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing and I’m ashamed of certain members of the Court, absolutely ashamed, for not having the courage to do what’s right for our country,” he said. 

Trump’s disdain of Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor did not stop there. 

He said the justices’ opposition to his tariff policies meant they were a “disgrace to our nation” as well as “unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh wrote dissenting opinions. Justice Samuel Alito and Thomas joined Kavanaugh’s dissent.

Trump appointed Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh during his first term.

But, Trump said, the ruling would not change the tariffs he has implemented under IEEPA since he planned to institute the same tax on goods coming into the country under different laws. 

“The good news is that there are methods, practices, statutes and authorities as recognized by the entire Court in this terrible decision, and also as recognized by Congress, which they refer to, that are even stronger than the IEEPA tariffs available to me as president of the United States,” he said. 

Trump said he would sign an order later in the day to “impose a 10% global tariff under Section 122, over and above our normal tariffs already being charged.”

Trump didn’t commit to returning the tens of billions of dollars the U.S. government has collected from IEEPA tariffs, saying the ruling didn’t address that issue. 

“They take months and months to write an opinion, and they don’t even discuss that point,” Trump said. “I guess it has to get litigated for the next two years.”

Trump said he didn’t plan to ask Congress to pass any new laws or give the president broader tariff authority. 

“I don’t have to. I have the right to do tariffs. And I’ve always had the right to do tariffs. It has all been approved by Congress, so there’s no reason to do it,” he said. “All we’re doing is we’re going through a little bit more complicated process, not complicated very much, but a little more complicated than what we had. And we’ll be able to take in more tariffs.” 

Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress, which will likely be attended by many, if not all, of the Supreme Court justices, on Tuesday night. 

Trump said he “couldn’t care less” whether the justices attend the speech, which is held in the House chamber. He said they are “barely” still invited, even though the president, who leads the executive branch, doesn’t hold the authority to exclude guests from either chamber of Congress, which makes up the separate but equal legislative branch.  

Justices can, however, choose not to attend. 

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Robin Vos, who has led the Republican charge in Wisconsin during his record-long stint as state Assembly speaker and blocked much of the Democratic governor’s agenda, announced Thursday that he will retire at the end of the year.

Vos, who also drew President Donald Trump’s ire for not aggressively challenging Trump’s loss in the battleground state in 2020, made the announcement from the floor of the Assembly. Vos is in his 22nd year in the Assembly and 14th year as speaker.

Vos has served during a tumultuous time in Wisconsin politics, in which the swing state became a national leader in curbing union powers, was a key battleground in presidential elections and was at the center of redistricting fights over Republican-friendly maps championed by Vos.

To his political opponents, Vos has been a shadow governor who shrewdly used his legislative majority to create a dysfunctional state government focused on advancing the conservative agenda and denying Democrats any victories they could tout.

To his supporters, Vos has been a shrewd tactician who outmaneuvered his political foes, sometimes within his own party, to become one of the state’s most influential Republicans in a generation.

Vos told The Associated Press that he suspects Democrats will be “happy that I’m gone.” But he had a message for his conservative detractors: “You’re going to miss me.”

Vos worked to curb union power, fight Democrats

Vos was a close ally of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker and helped pass key parts of his agenda, including the 2011 law known as Act 10 that effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers. Vos also led the fight to pass several tax cuts, a “ right to work ” law and a voter ID requirement — legislation strongly opposed by Democrats.

When Democrat Tony Evers defeated Walker in 2018, and after the top Republican in the Senate won election to Congress two years later, Vos emerged as the leader of Republicans in state government and the top target for those on the left.

Vos successfully thwarted much of Evers’ policy agenda the past seven years. He kneecapped Evers even before Evers took office in 2019 by passing a series of bills in a lame duck session that weakened the governor’s powers.

“I’ve been tenacious and I’ve fought for what our caucus wants,” Vos said.

Vos and fellow Republicans ignored special sessions Evers called and successfully fought to limit his powers during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Vos led the lawsuit to overturn Evers’ stay-at-home order, resulting in Wisconsin becoming the first state where a court invalidated a governor’s coronavirus restrictions.

Vos angered some fellow Republicans

Vos angered some within his own party, most notably Trump, who criticized him for not doing enough to investigate his 2020 loss in Wisconsin. Vos eventually hired a former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice to look into the election, but later fired him amid bipartisan criticism over his effort that put forward discounted conspiracy theories and found no evidence of widespread fraud or abuse.

The episode amounted to a rare misstep for Vos, who is now advocating for revoking the former justice’s law license. Vos has repeatedly said that hiring Gableman was the biggest mistake he ever made.

Trump endorsed Vos’ primary challenger in 2022, and his supporters mounted multiple unsuccessful efforts to recall Vos from office. Vos decried those targeting him as “whack jobs and morons,” and he held on to extend his run as Wisconsin’s longest-serving speaker, eclipsing Democrat Tom Loftus, who held the position from 1983 to 1991.

Democrats eyeing a majority

Vos grew the GOP majority under Republican-drawn legislative maps before the state Supreme Court ordered new ones in 2023, resulting in Democratic gains in the last election. The Republicans held as many as 64 seats under Vos, but that dropped to 54 in what will be Vos’s final year.

Democrats are optimistic they can take the majority this year, while Vos said he remains confident that Republicans will remain in control even without him as speaker.

Vos, 57, was first elected to the Assembly in 2004 and was chosen by his colleagues as speaker in 2013. He became Wisconsin’s longest-serving speaker in 2021.

Vos said he had a mild heart attack in November that he didn’t reveal publicly until Thursday, but that’s not why he’s leaving.

“It was the tap on the shoulder that I needed to make sure that my decision is right,” he said.

Vos said it was “unlikely” he would run for office again, but he didn’t rule it out.

Vos was college roommates with Reince Priebus, who was chair of the Republican National Committee in 2016 and served as Trump’s first White House chief of staff.

End of an era

The governor, who had a sometimes contentious relationship with Vos, said his retirement “marks the end of an era in Wisconsin politics.”

“Although we’ve disagreed more often than we didn’t, I respect his candor, his ability to navigate complex policies and conversations, and his unrivaled passion for politics,” Evers said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who served with Vos in the Legislature and remained friends with him even though they’re political opposites, called him a “formidable opponent” and “probably the most intelligent and strategic Assembly speaker I have seen.”

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

Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos leaving office at end of the year is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Trump administration is using a law Congress passed in the 1990s after a wave of deadly violence at abortion clinics to prosecute demonstrators and reporters who were at a immigration-related church protest in Minneapolis last month. 

Independent journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort, along with several activists, are accused of violating a 1994 law that made physically obstructing access to reproductive health clinics and places of worship a federal crime. Lemon pleaded not guilty Friday, while Fort is set to be arraigned next week and has denied any wrongdoing. Other plaintiffs have vowed to fight the charges — they’re also accused of conspiring against churchgoers’ right to worship — and maintained they were exercising their First Amendment rights. 

Some abortion opponents say the law should be repealed entirely, even though the statute also protects access to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Reproductive rights advocates say getting rid of the law altogether could spur more attacks on clinics and providers, which already increased in recent years. 

“It would give an even stronger signal to the zealots who would wish to shut us down to intimidate and harm our clinic folks and patients,” said Julie Burkhart, who owns clinics in Wyoming and Illinois. 

The Minnesota indictment is only the second time that the Department of Justice has brought charges under the religious provision tucked in the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. In September, the federal government filed a civil complaint against pro-Palestinian groups and demonstrators, accusing them of violating the FACE Act after they protested outside a New Jersey synagogue in 2024.

During a news conference announcing the charges, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division, said the New Jersey case was the “first time in history” the FACE Act was used to “prosecute an attack civilly on a house of worship.”  

While the Trump administration has started to use the FACE Act in religion-related cases, it has also relaxed enforcement of the law against people who interfere with access to abortion clinics. 

Republican President Donald Trump pardoned 23 anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the law within weeks of taking office in January 2025, and the DOJ released a memo that stated abortion-related cases should only be pursued in “extraordinary circumstances,” such as death, serious bodily harm or severe property damage. 

“This sent a very clear signal to anti-abortion extremists that this administration was OK and even encouraged anti-abortion violence, and we’ve seen the same people that were pardoned within Trump’s first week in office go right back out and start harassing abortion providers and their patients, whether that is putting together blockades or clinic invasions,” National Abortion Federation President and CEO Brittany Fonteno told States Newsroom. 

FACE Act followed murder of abortion provider, clinic sieges 

Tactics by the anti-abortion movement were starting to reach a fever pitch in the U.S. before the FACE Act’s passage. In 1988, hundreds of protesters were arrested in Georgia during the “Siege of Atlanta,” where abortion opponents staged routine clinic blockades over a three-month period. In 1991, thousands of anti-abortion protesters were arrested by local officials for invading abortion clinics in Kansas during the “Summer of Mercy.” 

“We were literally unable to do our jobs,” said Burkhart, who worked in Wichita that summer with Dr. George Tiller, a provider who was later killed by an anti-abortion extremist. 

In 1993, Dr. David Gunn was murdered by an anti-abortion protester outside a Florida clinic, and six months later, Tiller was shot outside his Kansas clinic. Tiller survived that attack, but he was assassinated at his church in 2009.  

Sen. Ted Kennedy and then-Rep. Chuck Schumer, both Democrats, introduced the FACE Act in Congress alongside former Republican Rep. Connie Morella, and President Bill Clinton signed the legislation the following year. 

Legal experts said the religious part of the reproductive health law was added to broaden legislative support for the bill. 

The law protects reproductive health clinics and places of worship from being physically obstructed or damaged, and makes it a federal crime to intentionally injure, intimidate or interfere with access to those places. Violators face up to a year in prison or a $10,000 fine, and up to six months in prison for nonviolent obstruction. A defendant could face 10 years if they inflicted bodily harm or life behind bars if someone is killed.  

Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said the measure was modeled on other civil rights laws, which typically include protections for religious institutions. She said Congress already had a Democratic majority at the time, but the religious part of the law could have been added to avoid accusations of viewpoint discrimination. 

“Even people who saw themselves as pro-life were disturbed by some of the violence,” Ziegler said. 

After the law took effect, violence against abortion clinics declined by 30%, according to the National Abortion Federation. 

The power of anti-abortion groups like Operation Rescue, known for orchestrating mass clinic blockades, waned. 

“The FACE Act was created to suppress civil disobedience at abortion centers, so it’s had a massively negative impact on the anti-abortion movement,” said Terrisa Bukovinac, the founder of Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. 

Bukovinac’s group along with Students for Life of America and Alliance Defending Freedom have called for the law’s demise since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the federal right to an abortion in June 2022. 

Trump reconfigures enforcement while abortion opponents call for repeal

Violence against abortion clinics increased after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. From 2021 to 2022, clinics saw a 100% increase in arsons, a 25% increase in invasions and a 20% increase in death threats or threats of harm, according to the National Abortion Federation. 

The Biden administration pursued enforcement of the FACE Act by prosecuting people convicted of blocking access to abortion clinics in Michigan, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. 

Trump pardoned all of those defendants. But for some abortion opponents, the Republican administration’s narrow use of the FACE Act does not go far enough. 

“It should be repealed because it’s a draconian law,” Bukovinac said. “There are local laws that address trespass, disorderly conduct, disruptions of churches, and various other violations of statutes, but the FACE law adds the full weight of the federal government in these situations.” 

Ziegler said the law isn’t a trespassing statute, it’s about conduct and obstruction. No legal challenges against the law have held up in court before or after Dobbs, she said. 

“If you’re shooting someone in the head because they’re trying to go to a synagogue or they’re trying to go into an abortion clinic — or you’re threatening to kill them or you’re physically blocking all the entrances — that’s not speech protected by the First Amendment,” Ziegler said. 

Matthew Cavedon, a criminal justice and religious liberty expert at the libertarian CATO Institute, has written that the law may be unconstitutional. He said the federal government has typically defended the FACE Act’s constitutionality based on the Commerce Clause and the 14th Amendment.

“Pro-lifers have made the point that in order to defend the FACE Act under the 14th Amendment, you have to have some sort of federal constitutional right to have an abortion,” Cavedon said. “Back in 1994 when the act passed, the Supreme Court said that you did have that right. It doesn’t anymore. That’s been reversed. So I think that’s a very strong argument.” 

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, introduced a bill last year that would repeal the law. The House Judiciary Committee advanced the measure in June, States Newsroom reported. 

Roy did not respond to requests for comment, but during a hearing for the bill, he said he has been criticized by Trump administration officials who wanted to use the law to defend churches. 

“That’s not what my goal is,” he said. “My goal is to alleviate the politicization in the first place.”

Renee Chelian, the founder and CEO of Northland Family Planning Centers in Michigan, testified before the committee about the importance of the FACE Act and the invasion of one of her clinics during the first Trump administration. 

“Once the law went into effect, the violent blockades immediately stopped. This all ended when President Trump took office for his first term, emboldening extremists to resume their attacks,” she said. 

In August 2020, a group of protesters blocked the entrance to Chelian’s Sterling Heights clinics, preventing patients and staff from entering the clinic. 

“Patients were stuck in their cars, including three women who were coming in for abortions following the detection of fatal fetal anomalies,” Chelian said. One of those patients was losing amniotic fluid and needed to get to her appointment for the second day of her procedure, but protesters surrounded her car and chanted at her, her mother and her husband, according to the DOJ. 

Trump’s decision to pardon seven people who invaded her clinic “left us reliving our trauma and feeling abandoned by the government that is supposed to protect us,” Chelian told lawmakers. 

Last month, the Center for Reproductive Rights sued the Trump administration after the government did not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about “selective enforcement” of the FACE Act and Trump’s pardons of 23 anti-abortion protesters convicted under the law. 

“This is straight out of the anti-abortion movement’s playbook,” said Sara Outterson, the center’s chief federal legislative counsel. “They know they can’t ban abortion outright in a number of states, so they’ll try everything they can to restrict access to care, including allowing criminals to harass people as they try to go in to get care.” 

The Trump administration has found a new way to hamper electric vehicles as Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is eyeing an expanded “Buy America public interest waiver” for electric vehicle chargers. The proposal would increase the required domestic content from 55 percent to 100 percent.

Needless to say, that’s a tall order and would likely require significant changes to supply chains. The move would also likely drive up costs, while limiting options.

More: Trump Administration Rolls Out Updated EV Charger Program

While there are obvious drawbacks, the government pointed to several benefits as they suggested the change would “strengthen domestic manufacturing, generate new American jobs, make U.S. businesses more competitive, and address potential national security concerns.”

They went on to say the administration believes manufacturers have the capacity to produce chargers in America with high domestic content.

Security Concerns In Focus

The Federal Highway Administration added the change would “protect Americans from foreign-made EV charger components that use technology with cybersecurity vulnerabilities.” Speaking of which, there have been growing concerns about vulnerabilities in American infrastructure.

Last year, the FHA warned everything from traffic signs to cameras and weather stations could be equipped with hidden cellular radios installed in batteries or inverters. The fear is these could be used for surveillance or conducting a targeted outage during the outbreak of hostilities.

What Happens Next?

The proposal hasn’t been finalized and the requirement would only apply to federally funded EV charger projects. For now, it appears there will be a comment period before the government makes its final determination.

In a statement, Secretary Duffy said “We’re ensuring that if Congress wants to see these chargers built, we put America First. Doing so will unleash American manufacturing, protect our national security, and prevent taxpayer dollars from subsidizing our foreign adversaries.”

WASHINGTON — The top leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee showed a play-by-play video leading up to the fatal shooting in Minneapolis of Alex Pretti by Customs and Border Protection officers, as they grilled the heads of two federal immigration agencies about the incident during an oversight hearing Thursday.

Chairman Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, said there needs to be accountability following the deaths of Pretti, an intensive care unit nurse and Renee Good, a mother of three and poet, in January at the hands of immigration agents.

“The thousands of people in the streets in Minneapolis and in Minnesota and the millions of viewers who witnessed the recent deaths, it’s clearly evident that the public trust has been lost,” Paul said. “To restore trust in (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Border Patrol, they must admit their mistakes, be honest and forthright with their rules of engagement and pledge to reform.”

Paul and Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the top Democrat on the panel, questioned ICE acting Director Todd Lyons and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott about immigration officers’ use of force tactics and whether the agents followed de-escalation procedures. 

“You have to look at what your rules are for drawing weapons, because it appears to me they’re not using the same standards as the police,” Paul said of immigration agents.

It was the second congressional oversight hearing for Scott and Lyons this week. Democrats and Republicans are at a stalemate over funding for the agency for fiscal year 2026, with Democrats demanding changes in immigration enforcement tactics after the deadly encounters in Minneapolis.

The shutdown will not stop President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, however. Even if an agreement to fund DHS is not reached by Friday and the agency is closed, ICE still has $75 billion in funding from the tax and spending package from last year.

Minutes into Thursday’s hearing, border czar Tom Homan announced that immigration enforcement operations would end in Minneapolis after two months. 

Pretti pepper sprayed, held down

Paul and Peters showed the leaders of CBP and ICE a New York Times video analysis leading up to the shooting of Pretti, who was pepper sprayed and tackled to the ground by multiple immigration officers. He was held down and at least 10 shots can be heard on video.

Lyons and Scott declined to comment on the clips shown, saying there are multiple ongoing investigations. Scott said the FBI, CBP and ICE were conducting their own investigations.

Paul expressed his frustration with that answer and pointed to the lead-up to Pretti’s encounters with federal officers. The video shows a woman yelling at a federal immigration officer. She is shoved to the ground and Pretti goes to help her up.

“No one in America believes shoving that woman’s head, in the face, in the snow, was de-escalation,” Paul said. 

Paul asked if an appropriate response to someone yelling is to shove them to the ground. 

Scott said it was not, but that he couldn’t comment on the specific video. 

Paul said that in the video it’s clear that Pretti is using his hand to protect his face from pepper spray.

“He is retreating at every moment,” Paul said. “He’s trying to get away, and he’s being sprayed in the face. I don’t think that’s de-escalatory. That’s an escalatory thing.”

Paul said an investigation needs to be done quickly. 

Scott said there is body camera footage from the officers involved in Pretti’s shooting that will be released to the public.

“I don’t think this should take months and months and years and years,” Paul said. “There needs to be a conclusion.”

Peters pointed to how immigration officers are seen beating Pretti with a pepper spray canister. He asked Scott if that was an appropriate response. 

“What I’m seeing is a subject that’s also not complying, he’s not following any guidance. He’s fighting back nonstop,” Scott said, adding that he couldn’t answer Peters’ question because the investigation was ongoing.

Peters then questioned Scott and Lyons on why DHS Secretary Kristi Noem quickly labeled Good and Pretti as “domestic terrorists.” He asked the men if they had given her any briefing or additional information for her to have drawn that conclusion.

Both said they had not. 

Michigan Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin also told Lyons that she was concerned about statements made by Trump about sending immigration agents to polling locations ahead of the midterm elections. 

“There’s no reason for us to deploy to a polling facility,” he said. 

Minnesota withdrawal

Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford informed the first panel, which brought Minnesota leaders to the nation’s capital, of Homan’s announcement that the surge would be ending in Minneapolis.

The first panel included GOP Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota; Minnesota House Republican Floor Leader Harry Niska; Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat; and the commissioner of the Department of Corrections for the state of Minnesota, Paul Schnell.  

Lankford said there needs to be better coordination between local and federal law enforcement, such as 287(g) agreements. In those partnerships, which are voluntary, local law enforcement will notify ICE if they arrest someone who is in the country unlawfully and hold that person until federal immigration officers can arrive.

“So the position that my office has taken is that, if you are a sheriff who wants to pursue 287(g), you must have the support of your county board,” Ellison said, adding that seven counties have such agreements.  

One Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, blamed the deaths of Pretti and Good not on the immigration agents who killed them. He said they occurred because Ellison urged Minnesotans to exercise their First Amendment rights.

“Two people are dead because you encouraged them to put themselves into harm’s way,” Johnson said to Ellison. “And now you are exploiting those two martyrs. You ought to feel damn guilty about it.”

In response, Ellison said, “It was a nice theatrical performance but it was all lies.”

‘Occupied by the federal government’

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim noted that the number of ICE agents, about 3,000, initially sent to Minneapolis, significantly dwarfed the local police, which is roughly under 600. He asked Ellison how it felt in Minneapolis to have that many federal immigration agents in the city. 

“It felt like we were being occupied by the federal government,” Ellison said. 

During the second panel, Kim asked Lyons if ICE is planning to conduct a similar operation in other cities.   

Lyons said the agency would, and said he learned lessons from the deportation drive in Minneapolis. 

“We look at lessons learned,” Lyons said. “The problem, I believe, is the … agitators and the coordination on the protest side. People can go out there and protest, but why are we going to encourage individuals to go out there and impede and put themselves in harm’s way? I think that’s the lesson learned from this.”

WASHINGTON — A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Thursday, blocking the Department of Defense from downgrading Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly’s rank as a retired Navy captain for appearing in a video where he and other lawmakers reminded members of the military they aren’t required to follow illegal orders. 

Senior Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia District Court wrote in the 29-page ruling that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others named in the lawsuit have “trampled on Senator Kelly’s First Amendment freedoms and threatened the constitutional liberties of millions of military retirees.”

In his scathing opinion loaded with emphasis and exclamation points, Leon wrote, “After all, as Bob Dylan famously said, ‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.’ To say the least, our retired veterans deserve more respect from their Government, and our Constitution demands they receive it!” 

The senior judge ruled that Kelly is likely to succeed on the merits of his case. The preliminary injunction will block Pentagon action while the case proceeds through the courts.

 

 

Leon conceded that while active military personnel are subject to “well-established doctrine” limiting First Amendment rights, “(u)fortunately for Secretary Hegseth, no court has ever extended those principles to retired servicemembers, much less a retired servicemember serving in Congress and exercising oversight responsibility over the military.” 

“This Court will not be the first to do so!”

Leon was nominated by former President George W. Bush.

Leon concluded the ruling with a biting passage suggesting that “Rather than trying to shrink the First Amendment liberties of retired servicemembers, Secretary Hegseth and his fellow Defendants might reflect and be grateful for the wisdom and expertise that retired servicemembers have brought to public discussions and debate on military matters in our Nation over the past 250 years.” 

“If so, they will more fully appreciate why the Founding Fathers made free speech the first Amendment in the Bill of Rights! Hopefully this injunction will in some small way help bring about a course correction in the Defense Department’s approach to these issues,” Leon wrote.

‘This case was never just about me’

Kelly said in a lengthy statement following the ruling that the federal court “made clear that Pete Hegseth violated the constitution when he tried to punish me for something I said.” 

“But this case was never just about me. This administration was sending a message to millions of retired veterans that they too can be censured or demoted just for speaking out. That’s why I couldn’t let it stand,” Kelly said.

Kelly said the nation is at a “critical moment” to defend free speech.

“The First Amendment is a foundation of our democracy. It’s how we demand better of presidents like Donald Trump – whether they are jacking up the cost of groceries with tariffs or sending masked immigration agents to intimidate American communities.  

  “But Donald Trump and his administration don’t like accountability. They don’t like when journalists report on the consequences of their policies. They don’t like when retired veterans question them. And they don’t like when millions of everyday Americans peacefully protest. That’s why they are cracking down on our rights and trying to make examples out of anyone they can.”

The Department of Defense pointed to Hegseth’s X account as official comment on the matter.

The secretary wrote about the case: “This will be immediately appealed. Sedition is sedition, ‘Captain.’”

DOD investigation

Kelly, Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, Pennsylvania Reps. Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan and New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander, all Democrats with backgrounds in the military or national security, posted the video on Nov. 18

President Donald Trump reacted on social media a few days later, falsely claiming the video represented “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

The Defense Department announced on Nov. 24 that it had opened an investigation into “serious allegations of misconduct” against Kelly. Officials wrote the senator could face “recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures.” 

Hegseth wrote in a social media post on Jan. 5 that he had started the process to downgrade Kelly’s retirement rank as a Navy captain and his pay. 

Hegseth wrote Kelly’s “status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action.”

Kelly filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense and Hegseth on Jan. 12, asking a federal judge to declare the effort “unlawful and unconstitutional.”

“Pete Hegseth is coming after what I earned through my twenty-five years of military service, in violation of my rights as an American, as a retired veteran, and as a United States Senator whose job is to hold him—and this or any administration—accountable,” Kelly wrote in a statement at the time. “His unconstitutional crusade against me sends a chilling message to every retired member of the military: if you speak out and say something that the President or Secretary of Defense doesn’t like, you will be censured, threatened with demotion, or even prosecuted.”

Court hearing

Leon held a hearing on Kelly’s request for a preliminary injunction on Feb. 3, where he asked the attorney representing the Department of Defense how any retired member of the military who is later elected as a member of Congress, especially one that sits on the Armed Services Committee, like Kelly does, could challenge any actions taken by the Defense Department. 

John Bailey, the Justice Department attorney, contended that Congress has determined that certain retired military members are still subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. 

Benjamin Mizer, one of the lawyers on Kelly’s team, told the judge the Defense Department’s actions represented a “clear First Amendment violation.” 

Grand jury non-indictment

The other Democratic lawmakers in the video aren’t subject to the military’s judicial system but rebuked the Justice Department Wednesday for seeking a grand jury indictment against them for publishing the video, where they told Americans in the military and intelligence communities they “can” and “must refuse illegal orders.”

“No one has to carry out orders that violate the law or our Constitution. We know this is hard and that it’s a difficult time to be a public servant,” they said. “But whether you’re serving in the CIA, in the Army, or Navy, or the Air Force, your vigilance is critical.”

Slotkin, a former CIA officer, posted a video on Feb. 5, saying she had informed U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro that she wouldn’t be sitting for an interview. 

Slotkin said her letter to Bondi and Pirro also told them “to retain their records on this case in case I decide to sue for infringement of my constitutional rights.”

“To be honest, many lawyers told me to just be quiet, keep my head down and hopefully this will all just go away. But that’s exactly what the Trump administration and Jeanine Pirro want,” Slotkin said. “They are purposely using physical and legal intimidation to get me to shut up. But more importantly they’re using that intimidation to deter others from speaking out against their administration.

“The intimidation is the point and I’m not going to go along with that.”

House members 

Houlahan released her own video the same day saying she would not sit for an FBI interview and that the Democrats’ video “told the truth, it stated facts, it reiterated the law and it exercised speech explicitly protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.” 

“Free speech is not a favor that the government can revoke,” Houlahan said. “It is a right and I will not surrender it, for myself or for anyone else.” 

Deluzio wrote in a social media post the following day that he would “not be intimidated by any harassment campaign” and does “not intend to sit down for a voluntary interview with DOJ or FBI officials sent to interfere with the important work I’m doing for my constituents.”

Goodlander wrote in a statement that the “Justice Department is targeting us for doing our jobs, and the aim here is clear: to intimidate, coerce, and silence us. It will not work. I will not bend the knee in the face of lawless threats and rank weaponization — I will keep doing my job and upholding my oath to our Constitution.”

Crow told CNN’s Pamela Brown last week that he was treating the FBI’s investigation as “an attempt to try to threaten, harass and intimidate political opponents.”

“(Trump’s) trying to make an example out of me and Mark Kelly and others because if he can make an example out of a member of Congress or a senator then why would everyday Americans stand up and protest and dissent? But he has chosen the wrong people.”

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday rebuked ongoing efforts from President Donald Trump’s administration to dismantle the Department of Education, including moves to shift some of its core functions to other agencies. 

Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia — who hosted a spotlight forum alongside several colleagues — said “over and over again, the administration has circumvented the law to hamstring the future of public education without the consent of Congress or the American people.” 

Scott, the top Democrat on the House Committee on Education and Workforce, brought in education advocates and legal voices pushing back against the administration’s ongoing attempts to axe the agency. 

The lawmakers and witnesses expressed particular alarm over the administration’s six interagency agreements, or IAAs, announced with four other departments in November 2025 that transfer several of its responsibilities to those Cabinet-level agencies.

‘Illegal’ transfers 

Ashley Harrington, senior policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, said that “while these agencies all provide important services for our nation, none of them are adequately prepared to take on the massive portfolio of programs that these interagency agreements strip from (the Education Department).” 

Harrington, who previously served as a senior adviser at the department, pointed to a “lack” of institutional knowledge at the four departments compared with career employees at the Education Department who have gained expertise from spending decades running the affected programs. 

Rachel Homer, director of Democracy 2025 and senior attorney at Democracy Forward, the legal advocacy group that is leading the ongoing case challenging the department’s dismantling efforts in federal court, pointed out that Congress creates and decides which agencies exist. 

“Congress charges those agencies with performing certain functions, Congress determines the mission of those agencies, and the executive branch’s obligation is to carry that out, is to implement those laws faithfully,” said Homer, who previously served as chief of staff of the Office of the General Counsel at the department. 

The advocacy group is representing a broad coalition in a legal challenge against the administration’s attempts to gut the agency. 

That challenge, consolidated with a similar suit brought by Democratic attorneys general, was expanded in November in the wake of the interagency agreement announcement to include objections to those restructuring efforts. 

“These transfers through the IAAs, they’re illegal,” Homer added. “That’s not what Congress has set up — that’s not how Congress has instructed the agencies to function.” 

Mass layoffs, downsizing 

Meanwhile, the administration’s attempts to wind down the department have also included mass layoffs initiated in March 2025 and a plan to dramatically downsize the agency ordered that same month. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily greenlit these efforts in July.

Trump has sought to end the 46-year-old agency as part of his quest to send education “back to the states.” This effort comes while much of the oversight and funding of schools already occurs at the state and local levels. 

“I know I don’t just speak for myself when I say I can’t believe we’re here having to actually defend the existence of the Department of Education,” said Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education.

“As Education committee members, we came here to work on improving education and opening doors of opportunity and addressing the civil rights disparities, but here we are having to defend the actual existence of the Department of Education,” the Oregon Democrat said. 

Civil rights in the spotlight 

Employees at the Office for Civil Rights — tasked with investigating civil rights complaints from students and families — were targeted in March as part of a broader Reduction in Force, or RIF, effort and put on paid administrative leave while legal challenges against the administration unfolded. 

Though the agency moved to rescind the RIF against the OCR employees in early January while legal challenges proceeded, a Government Accountability Office report released earlier in February found that the Education Department spent between roughly $28.5 million and $38 million on the salaries and benefits of the hundreds of OCR employees who were not working between March and December 2025. 

The government watchdog also found that despite the department resolving more than 7,000 of the over 9,000 discrimination complaints it received between March and September, roughly 90% of the resolved complaints were due to the department dismissing the complaint. 

“We’re extremely concerned of what this means for OCR to actually uphold its statutorily defined duty of protecting the civil rights of students in schools, including the rights of Black students, other students of color, girls, women, students with disabilities and members that identify with the LGBTQI+ communities,” said Ray Li, a policy counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.

Li, who previously served as an attorney for OCR, called on Congress to ensure that the unit “remains in a functioning Department of Education” and not transferred to the Department of Justice or another agency. 

He also urged Congress to provide “adequate funding for OCR” and to “play an important role in transparency, sending oversight request letters to get information on the quantity of complaints that are being received, the types of discrimination that they allege, how OCR is processing those complaints and what the basis of dismissals are.”

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump decided to exclude Democratic governors from a traditional annual meeting at the White House and to disinvite several others from a black-tie dinner, according to the White House, the governors and the National Governors Association.

The National Governors Association organizes the bipartisan winter gathering that usually includes a working meeting with the U.S. president and a major dinner at the White House. Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, serves as current chair of the association, and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat, is vice chair.

The governors’ visit to the nation’s capital comes amid rising tensions over Trump’s deployment of the National Guard and surge of federal immigration border patrol agents into Democratic-led states, including California, Illinois, Minnesota and Oregon.

Moore: ‘blatant disrespect’

Moore issued a statement Sunday that he was “uninvited” from the dinner, adding that the decision was “especially confounding” given that he was among a bipartisan group of governors at the White House in recent weeks to discuss lower energy costs.

“My peers, both Democrats and Republicans, selected me to serve as the Vice Chair of the NGA, another reason why it’s hard not to see this decision as another example of blatant disrespect and a snub to the spirit of bipartisan federal-state partnership,” Moore said. “As the nation’s only Black governor, I can’t ignore that being singled out for exclusion from this bipartisan tradition carries an added weight — whether that was the intent or not.”

Moore’s exclusion also comes on the heels of Trump’s posting of a racist video Friday depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. Trump deleted the post following loud disapproval that included criticism from his own party but has declined to apologize.

The offices of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did not immediately respond for comment. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek decided “some time ago” not to attend the event so that she could be in her state during the legislative session, according to spokesperson Elisabeth Shepard.

Moore added: “As Governor of Maryland and Vice Chair of the NGA, my approach will never change: I’m ready to work with the administration anywhere we can deliver results. Yet, I promised the people of my state I will work with anybody but will bow down to nobody. And I guess the President doesn’t like that.”

The office of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, learned Friday about the exclusion of Democratic governors and similarly issued a statement of concern.

“Gov. Polis has always been willing to work with anyone across the political spectrum who wants to help work on the hardest problems facing Colorado and America, regardless of party or who occupies the White House. This is a disappointing decision for a traditionally bipartisan event between governors and whomever occupies the White House,” according to a statement from his office emailed to States Newsroom. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office confirmed Monday he had also been uninvited.

‘Many Democrats’ invited, but not all

A White House official on Monday confirmed Trump’s exclusion of some Democratic governors from the annual dinner.

“Many Democrats were invited to dinner at the White House, and others were not. These are White House events and the President reserves the right to invite whomever he wants,” the official told States Newsroom in an emailed statement.

Brandon Tatum, the National Governors Association’s acting executive director and CEO, said, “The bipartisan White House governors meeting is an important tradition, and we are disappointed in the administration’s decision to make it a partisan occasion this year.”

“To disinvite individual governors to the White House sessions undermines an important opportunity for federal-state collaboration. At this moment in our nation’s history, it is critical that institutions continue to stand for unity, dignity, and constructive engagement. NGA will remain focused on serving all governors as they deliver solutions and model leadership for the American people. Traditionally the White House has played a role in fostering these moments during NGA’s annual meeting. This year, they will not,” Tatum said in a statement.

This year’s meeting follows a tense exchange during the 2025 gathering between Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, and Trump, who threatened to withhold all federal funding from the state unless Mills complied with the president’s executive order to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.

The association’s 2026 meeting is scheduled for Feb. 19-21. The gathering will include “special guests and national experts for solutions-driven conversations on pressing national issues including education, energy, economic growth, artificial intelligence and more,” according to the association website.

Julia Shumway contributed to this report.

Democrats hoping to end GOP control of the state Legislature and Congress are stepping up their argument that the administration of President Donald Trump along with Republican majorities in both the U.S. and Wisconsin capitols have driven up costs for average members of the public.

On Monday, an advocacy group that opposes the Trump administration released a six-page document that focuses on Wisconsin examples of higher costs across the board, from groceries to utilities to health care. The report, from Defend America Action, draws on news reports, government data and polling to argue that federal policies “are ripping away Wisconsinites’ economic security.”

The opening page of the document — signed by five state Senate Democrats and Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski — declares, “Between his massive cuts to government spending, the Trump-GOP Big, Ugly Bill, and his disastrous tariff regime, Trump’s agenda is hurting the local economy in all areas, stoking a dire affordability crisis as food prices, energy bills, health care costs, and housing costs spike.”

“What I am hearing in the district every day is that ‘Everything is getting more expensive. I am working more and I am getting less in return,’” state Sen. Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee), one of the signers, told the Wisconsin Examiner via email.

“The common theme here is who is looking out for them,” Drake said. “Trump and the Republican Party are praising higher stocks, but that investment is not trickling down to working families, and they are paying the price.”

Combining the answers of people who are “very concerned” and “somewhat concerned,” the report cites the finding that 89% of people who answered a Marquette Law School poll released Oct. 29, 2025, were worried about the state of the economy. The poll also found 95% of those surveyed were concerned about inflation.

The same poll found that 80% of Wisconsin voters surveyed were concerned about housing affordability, including 53% who answered that they were “very concerned.”

The October poll was the most recent from Marquette Law School focusing on Wisconsin’s 2026 elections and voter issues. (Two subsequent Marquette poll reports, in early November and late January, surveyed national samples on national issues, focusing on the U.S. Supreme Court.)

The report marshals data from across nearly all sectors of the economy. It cites the persistence of higher grocery prices and increases in health insurance premiums, particularly for people who buy their own coverage through the HealthCare.gov marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act.

Enhanced subsidies to lower the cost of those premiums expired at the end of 2025. A bill to extend them for another three years has passed the U.S. House but has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

Sen. Brad Pfaff (D-Onalaska), who also signed the report, said in an interview that he recently heard from a farmer in his district whose insurance through the marketplace, which used to cost $50 per month last year, is now $500 per month due to the loss of the subsidies.

“It went from $600 a year, I guess, to $6,000,” Pfaff said. Referring to the federal government’s decision to end enhanced subsidies, he added, “When we are telling the self-employed and those at small businesses that purchase their health insurance though the marketplace that, you know what, we’re not going to do that anymore because of partisan politics, that causes real consternation.”

The report also cites recent data showing a cooling job market and cuts to clean energy projects that had been initiated under President Joe Biden. It blames agricultural economic turmoil on see-sawing tariffs as well as, in some sectors, the Trump administration’s focus on deporting immigrants.

Farmers “are being squeezed on both ends,” Pfaff said, with the rising costs for seed, fertilizer, machinery repairs and other inputs.

“When farmers need certainty, you add on top of that the fact that they continue to struggle to move their crop commodities in the marketplace because of this ping pong that’s being played at the national level by the White House when it comes to trade policy,” Pfaff said. “When you have a situation in which grocery prices are rising, but yet farmers struggle in order to put a crop in the ground, there’s something wrong.”

The Defend America Action report pins responsibility for other impending cost increases on the 2025 federal tax- and spending-cut bill that Republicans in Congress passed and Trump signed in July. The bill rolled back clean energy tax credits enacted in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and also made changes to Medicaid and to the federal Supplemental Food Assistance Program (SNAP).

A clean energy advocacy organization has estimated that canceling clean energy tax credits will raise utility costs for Wisconsin consumers by 13% to 22%. Gov  Tony Evers has projected Medicaid changes could cost Wisconsin $284 million.

A separate report Feb. 3 from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that overall the megabill — referred to by Trump and Republican authors as  the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — “will redistribute trillions of dollars upward over the next decade, making it harder for families with modest incomes to meet their basic needs while helping those at the top accumulate more wealth.”

The bill cuts taxes by $4.5 trillion, primarily benefiting the wealthiest households, the CBBP reported. The bottom 20% of households by income “will lose more from the cuts in health coverage, food assistance, and other programs than they will gain in tax cuts,” the CBPP said, citing Congressional Budget Office data. 

For the bottom 10% of earners, average household incomes will fall by $1,200, or 3.1%, the report said, and the top 10% of earners  will see their household incomes rise by $13,600 on average, or 2.7%.

Drake told the Wisconsin Examiner that she believes the Trump administration’s actions attacking democracy and targeting immigrants are aimed at distracting people from policies that redistribute wealth upwards.

“Affordability is the underlying issue affecting everyone regardless of who you are,” said Drake. “Instead of helping people and holding those with the most power accountable, he wants Americans to blame our neighbors and communities of different backgrounds for the reasoning behind their struggles.” 

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