Republican candidate Michael Alfonso has said he would support a voucher style system for healthcare, including Medicare, in the U.S., according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report Friday.

Alfonso, the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is running against former Democratic state lawmaker Fred Clark to represent Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District. The district, which encompasses a large swath of northern Wisconsin, is currently represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor.

Alfonso was at a campaign event in River Falls when he was asked about school choice programs that direct public money to cover private school tuition for some students  in Wisconsin, and whether a similar approach might be applied to healthcare. 

Alfons said that the concept is his “entire approach” to healthcare, adding that the current system is a “nightmare.”

“If you look at it like school choice, instead of giving the money to the system or to the marketplace, give it to the people and they can choose their coverage,” Alfonso said.

According to KFF, the policy, also known as a premium support system, would provide a payment to Medicare beneficiaries to help them purchase a health insurance plan, either a private plan, Medicare Advantage plan or traditional Medicare. 

The approach has been supported by representatives in Congress before including former House Speaker and Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan. In 2012, analysts said the approach could leave beneficiaries with higher costs, less coverage or both.

The Medicare Rights Center, a national nonprofit, recently wrote about the issue saying that “under this type of system there would be no standard benefit package and no guarantee that the coverage a person buys with their voucher would cover essential health services.” Medicare beneficiaries currently receive a guaranteed standard of health coverage. 

“As much as I want to get the government out, you can’t do it overnight,” Alfonso said. “The first step is giving the money to you, and you can pick your coverage. If you want a high deductible and save some money, great. If you want a low deductible because you’re someone that’s going to meet that deductible real quick, then awesome. I don’t think the government knows what’s best for you. I think you know what’s best for you.”

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway announced Friday that she will not run for a third term in office, canceling her reelection bid citing threats to herself, city council members, staff and her family

Rhodes-Conway had initially announced her reelection campaign in July 2026. She was first elected in 2019 and won reelection in 2023 by an 11-point margin. In her statement, she said that she was “confident that voters would judge my record favorably and grant me another term,” but that the “price of serving has become too high.” 

“This was not an easy decision, but it is the right decision for me and my family, our personal safety, mental health and wellbeing,” Rhodes-Conway said. 

Over the summer, Rhodes-Conway and the city faced significant criticism following the killing of 38-year-old Corey Ruiz at the hands of a Madison police officer. A protest encampment on the east side of Madison, near the site of the shooting, was eventually cleared by the city, triggering more controversy. 

This week, the interim independent police monitor who had been investigating the Ruiz shooting was fired in a 14-6 vote by the city’s common council. Local activists, who testified against the firing, protested the council’s vote and shouted “shame” as council members were escorted out of the building by police.

Aeiramique Glass, the independent monitor, had drawn criticism for getting into an altercation with police officers while they worked to clear the protest encampment at the site of the Corey Ruiz shooting. A dispute also emerged within city government over her authority to subpoena materials related to the incident from the police department and the Wisconsin Department of Justice. 

Rhodes-Conway did not directly mention the issue in her statement. 

“Madison has long been home to impassioned and spirited debate. But it is not hyperbole to say local democracy is at risk, not just from MAGA and right-wing extremists in the federal and state governments, but from a toxic political culture that is transcending partisanship and ideology,” Rhodes-Conway said. 

Rhodes-Conway said she wants people to take a “hard look at our local political ecosystem” during the remainder of her term. She said over her time in office she has seen “the balance has shifted from productive discussion to increasingly vitriolic, personal attacks from people who seem not to care about actually understanding and debating an issue.”

“How can any leader govern responsibly when personal attacks and baseless conspiracies carry more weight than facts? How can any mayor be effective when a difference of opinion is cast as unforgivable betrayal that justifies threats of violence?” Rhodes-Conway said. “When I ran for mayor, I expected to make sacrifices – but I did not expect the level of threats to myself, Council members, my staff, and my family. I did not expect our civic discourse to deteriorate so severely. And I did not expect the levels of implicit and explicit sexism to which I have been subjected to from the very beginning of my first campaign.”

Dane County Executive Melissa Agard thanked Rhodes-Conway for her service and said in a statement that she was troubled by the role threats and harassment played in Rhodes-Conway’s decision.

“No one who steps forward to serve their community should have to fear for their safety or the safety of their loved ones. We must do better to ensure that public service remains something people can pursue without intimidation,” Agard said. 

The mayor’s departure creates an open race for the leader of Wisconsin’s capital city. Eight candidates had already announced they would challenge Rhodes-Conway. They include One City Schools founder Kaleem Caire, former Madison Common Council President Syed Abbas, Brian Benford, April Kigeya, Marcus Robert Johnson, Natalia Hacerola and Larry Williams. 

“We need leaders who are more interested in making the government function well than in performing for social media,” Rhodes-Conway said in the statement announcing her departure.  “We need leaders who want to continuously improve, but won’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We need leaders who are able to listen to and balance a wide range of voices. Above all, we need leaders who put the needs of Madison before their popularity or political futures, and we need to elect leaders who understand the job they are running for.”

Rhodes-Conway said she is proud that during her time in office she has been able to steer the city though the COVID-19 pandemic, dealt with lawmakers who wanted to take “away our funding and powers,” helped build new housing and invest in new infrastructure as well as launch the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

A complaint has been filed with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission against U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden over his use of artificial intelligence to generate images of his Democratic opponent Rebecca Cooke that were posted to his and his campaign’s online accounts. 

Ahead of the Oct. 20 debate between the two candidates, a Van Orden campaign account posted an advertisement for the event that included what Cooke’s campaign says is a computer generated deepfake image of her. 

Van Orden has spent much of the campaign cycle posting AI photos and videos to social media. Late last month, Cooke’s campaign sent a cease and desist letter to Van Orden seeking to stop him from posting fake material about Cooke, including a video in which she is made to look as if she’s saying she’s running to “take advantage of as much corruption as possible, and give every illegal immigrant free healthcare.”

After the debate advertisement was posted, Eau Claire resident Cassandra Butzler filed a complaint against Van Orden with the state ethics commission, alleging he has broken a 2024 law which requires that any political ad that contains AI must be clearly labeled as such. So far, Van Orden’s posts have not been subject to the law because they don’t qualify as advertisements. 

“Derrick Van Orden continues to spend his time posting AI-generated deepfakes instead of offering real solutions for the working families of our district,” Cooke said in a media release. “He has now gone so far as to violate Wisconsin’s ethics rules, but voters won’t be fooled, Van Orden has never put his constituents first, and he never will.”

Van Orden has previously dismissed the complaints about his AI use as a stunt. Grace Kim, his spokesperson, similarly told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that the ethics complaint is a “cheap publicity stunt.”

The U.S. Department of Justice is stepping up its legal campaign over the midterm elections, suing Alaska over its U.S. Senate election and appealing a lawsuit against suspected noncitizen voters in California.

Election law experts have cast doubt on the strength of the cases, criticizing them as performative.

The Justice Department sued Alaska election officials late Thursday in a preemptive attempt to stop the state from certifying the results of its Senate election if, under the state’s ranked-choice voting method, the Republican incumbent loses by a smaller margin than the votes earned by another candidate of the same name. 

Separately, the Justice Department appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals a lawsuit seeking to prevent California election officials from counting the ballots of approximately 20,000 voters it says are likely noncitizens unless they can prove their citizenship. The DOJ had demanded a district court decision by Thursday.

Collectively, the Justice Department’s actions signal an expanding legal effort to assert authority over voting as Election Day approaches. President Donald Trump faces political peril in the midterms, with Democrats all but certain to launch investigations into his administration if they retake the House or Senate.

The Trump administration’s past attempts to influence how states run elections largely failed, with the U.S. Supreme Court blocking proposed restrictions on mail ballots and federal judges dismissing DOJ lawsuits to obtain states’ sensitive voter data. But in the waning days before the midterm elections, federal officials are again ramping up election-related activity.

“I’m the one that said do it,” Trump, speaking to reporters on Friday, said of the Alaska lawsuit.

Another Dan Sullivan suit

The Alaska lawsuit came hours after U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out efforts to block states from certifying their elections. Speaking to reporters after an unrelated event in Virginia, Blanche said it wasn’t the DOJ’s intention to “improperly interfere” with election certifications even as he left room for his department to act.

“I mean, is there any scenario? Yes, of course there’s scenarios that we could all come up with, hypothetically, you know, some doomsday scenario, for example, right?” Blanche said.

The Alaska Division of Elections and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the Alaska Senate race, Republican Sen. Dan S. Sullivan and his supporters have cast Dan J. Sullivan, also a Republican, as a spoiler in a competitive race against Democrat Mary Peltola. 

State officials initially kept Dan J. Sullivan off the August primary ballot but the Alaska Supreme Court overturned the decision. He finished third, with 2.5% of the vote, qualifying for the four-way general election.

Trump had previewed a possible lawsuit earlier in the week. On Truth Social, the president on Wednesday called the Senate race in Alaska “totally confusing” and slammed Dan J. Sullivan’s presence.

“We are looking at powerful legal options to remove the fraudulent Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. from the Ballot, and holding the Democrats accountable for their Election Interference, in the pursuit of Justice and Fairness,” Trump wrote.

Experts skeptical

Early expert reaction to the Justice Department’s complaint has been sharply critical. The complaint cites the preamble of the National Voter Registration Act, which says one of its purposes is “to protect the integrity of the electoral process.” 

Writing in Election Law Blog, Derek Muller, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame focused on elections, called the legal argument “one of the worst ones I’ve ever seen.”

“Some, in a panic, might react that the Department is trying to deny certification of an election in a state. Of course that’s what the Department is trying to do. But the legal claim is so absurdly thin, there’s essentially no likelihood of success,” Muller wrote.

California noncitizen case appealed

In California, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Hamill filed a notice of appeal in the Justice Department’s lawsuit over alleged noncitizen voters just three days after the the DOJ requested a temporary restraining order to halt ballot counting for individuals on the list of 20,000. 

Hamill wrote that the DOJ was interpreting U.S. District Court Judge David Carter’s silence as a denial of its request. 

Carter, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, had only taken on the case a day earlier and had set a hearing for Oct. 27. Earlier this year, he became the first federal judge in the country to rule against the Justice Department’s lawsuits attempting to force states to turn over sensitive voter data.

On Friday, the Justice Department filed a new motion asking Carter to block the ballot counting and requested a ruling by noon Pacific time. 

In that filing, Hamill wrote that “every minute” of ballot processing that occurs without setting aside ballots of suspected noncitizens dilutes the votes of U.S. citizens.

Case ‘exceedingly weak,’ critics say

Critics of the Justice Department’s actions argue the time crunch is largely of its own making. 

David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation & Research, noted during a press call Thursday that the DOJ didn’t file its lawsuit until more than a week after California began mailing ballots — and then several more days to seek a temporary restraining order.

“I think this case is exceedingly weak,” said Becker, who worked as a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Voting Section during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Attorneys for California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, a Democrat, and Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan have both asked Carter to dismiss the lawsuit. 

Logan’s legal team on Wednesday wrote that Los Angeles County hasn’t changed how it conducts elections. What’s changed, they wrote, was the federal government’s posture.

“Weeks before Election Day, the United States asks this Court to intrude on the administration of an election,” Logan’s lawyers wrote.

As Election Day approaches, top Democrats on the intelligence committees in Congress are preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump will allege foreign interference to discredit unfavorable results.

And they want leading U.S. intelligence officials to be immediately reachable if he does.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, outlined the scenario — one of among 50 they say they’ve considered — with reporters on Wednesday, less than two weeks before voting ends in the midterm elections.

“So when the president makes that announcement, you answer your cellphone to give us information about what’s happening,” Himes said the Democrats have told Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has ramped up efforts targeting noncitizen voters, with arrests across the country, and is attempting to block suspected noncitizen voters from having their ballots counted in California. Democrats and voting rights advocates have warned for months that Trump could try to interfere in voting in the midterms.

All of it comes as Trump stares down the possibility that voters will place Democrats in control of Congress — an outcome that could doom his legislative agenda and mire him in investigations.

“We’re making the assumption that the president is not going to accept the results of what looks to be a very challenging election for him and his party,” Himes said.

But amid the highly publicized campaign against noncitizen voting, Democrats have kept an eye on the possibility that Trump could instead invoke a foreign threat to justify an attempt to assert control over elections or undermine the results, even as the Trump administration has cut federal support for election security.

China ‘election meddling’?

When Trump delivered a primetime address on election security in July, he spent a significant portion of the speech describing what he called China’s “sinister election meddling.” He said China had acquired 220 million voter files and the White House released declassified intelligence reports on the vulnerability of voting machines to foreign hacking.

Trump floated the possibility that vote totals could be electronically manipulated or that voting machines could change results. He suggested that election websites, poll books and voter registration databases could be vulnerable to exploitation by foreign adversaries.

“This evidence shows that the election system we have dangerously exposes and really exposes, like levels never thought possible, to hacking, exploitation, and foreign interference,” Trump said in the July speech.

The speech was met with sharp criticism from election security experts, who noted that the United States maintains a decentralized election system that makes any attempt at widespread interference extremely difficult. 

For instance, every state except Louisiana uses paper ballots or generates some form of paper record for each ballot cast, according to data compiled by Verified Voting.

“Can we pre-bunk the notion that he may come up with a fabricated or single piece of intelligence that could be used as a reason to take illegal action?” Warner said, describing the Democrats’ thinking.

As a hypothetical, Himes outlined a scenario in which Trump announces at noon on Election Day that Iran has kicked off an operation to interfere in the election. Himes said he would go on TV and say he has received no briefings and no information, giving him no reason to believe the president’s comments are accurate.

“Now, does that end the crisis? No, but that’s the first step,” Himes said.

Doubts about interference

Warner and Himes belong to the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of high-ranking lawmakers who receive classified briefings on matters of intelligence and national security.

The pair drew a sharp distinction between foreign interference — which includes things like messing with voter rolls and attempting to alter results — and foreign efforts to influence elections, such as social media bots spreading certain messages. 

Himes said that, as of now, “we are not seeing either the capability or the intent to interfere.”

He also said lawmakers haven’t received pre-election reports about the election threat landscape required by law. 

In July, Himes, along with Democratic Reps. André Carson of Indiana, Joaquin Castro of Texas and Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois, wrote in a letter to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, that the intelligence community had missed a report on election security vulnerabilities and foreign intelligence threats to federal elections that was due on May 7.

The ODNI didn’t respond to questions from States Newsroom on Thursday.

White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in a statement that Trump had done more than other previous president to ensure free and fair elections. She said the president is making clear that anyone who votes illegally “will be held accountable.”

“While extreme Democrats and the media continue to dismiss concerns about voter fraud, the Trump Administration is taking decisive action to protect our elections including prosecuting election crimes, strengthening election infrastructure security, and protecting vulnerable voters from fraud and coercion,” Bis said.

Reductions in workforce

The Democrats’ planning for a claim of foreign interference comes as the Trump administration has reduced cybersecurity resources for state and local election officials. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which typically plays a large role in election security efforts, has lost roughly a third of its workforce since Trump began his second term.

Trump has attacked CISA — a component of the Department of Homeland Security — under the leadership of previous director Chris Krebs, who worked to debunk misinformation after the 2020 election. Trump fired Krebs less than a month after the election. DHS has previously proposed eliminating CISA’s election security program, a $39 million initiative. 

Jennifer Morrell, CEO and co-founder of The Elections Group, a nonpartisan organization that provides trainings and other resources to election officials, said the Trump administration “essentially decimated” CISA. Morrell said she had been a contractor for the agency.

“We lost years of work building our cyber and physical security infrastructure,” Morrell said Thursday during a University of Pittsburgh panel discussion on election integrity.

In September, Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, and Rep. Joseph Morelle, a New York Democrat, wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and CISA Acting Director Nicholas Andersen that CISA hadn’t provided any funding to its Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, despite instructions from Congress to continue funding the program.

Padilla and Morelle noted that the center had for years provided security services to local election offices at no cost before funding was abruptly cut in early 2025. While the center continues to provide some services through a paid membership model, they wrote that it lacks its former reach.

Briefing urged

On Wednesday, Himes and Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, urged Mullin to brief lawmakers on election security efforts. In a letter, they wrote that state and local election officials “are under tremendous pressure this election cycle.”

Homeland Security didn’t answer questions from States Newsroom on Thursday.

In some of the country’s largest jurisdictions, the consequences of the federal pullback have been muted. Big counties, with hundreds of thousands or even millions of residents, often have their own sophisticated cybersecurity programs.

Monica Gordon, the clerk of Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago, praised her information technology team. In a call with reporters, the Democratic official said her office was fortunate to have the latest innovations to protect voters’ information.

“We’ve been very fortunate but I am concerned about some of our smaller counties that have less resources,” Gordon said.

Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at Election Center, an organization overseen by the National Association of Election Officials, said on the same call that states this year are leaning on their own resources because of the changes at CISA. Election officials have also relied more on help from nonprofit groups, she said.

State and local officials have done a great job of finding needed funding to replace some of those services and ensure sensitive systems are protected, said Morrell.

“But state officials and local officials cannot gather intelligence about threats from foreign nation states,” Morrell said, adding that “we’ve lost sort of the ability to be quickly alerted to that type of intelligence.”

For years, billionaire Republican donors Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein have given a lot of money to right-wing causes and Republican politicians. The Washington Post recently reported they rank second only to Elon Musk among the biggest donors in the current election cycle. While they live across the border in Lake Forest, Illinois, they take a special interest in Wisconsin. Yet the millions of dollars in donations they’ve given to the Wisconsin Republican Party look like chump change compared to the massive amount of money they’ve showered on the state since Tom Tiffany announced his run for governor.

The Uihliens upped their contributions to the state party from $20,000 in 2014 to $500,000 in 2017 and more than $1 million in 2018, according to campaign finance data published on the Wisconsin Ethics Commission’s Sunshine website.  Altogether, they gave about $3.6 million to the party between 2016 and 2024. But in 2025 and 2026, as Tiffany launched his campaign for governor, the Uihleins gave exponentially more —  about $34.8 million. 

Thanks to a loophole created under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, donors can sidestep limits on their contributions to particular candidates by giving unlimited money to political parties, which can then pass the money directly to the candidates. And the Republican Party of Wisconsin has funneled the Uihleins’ money directly to Tiffany. Almost all of the money Tiffany raised in the most recent reporting period came from the Uihleins and one other billionaire, Diane Hendricks.

The Uihleins support a lot of Republican candidates and causes, and would likely have supported the Republican no matter who was running for governor this year. But they have a special relationship with Tiffany. 

Back when he was serving in the Wisconsin state Senate, Tiffany’s district included Manitowish Waters, the small town where the Uihleins opened a resort, restaurant, spa, condominium complex and other businesses, turning the sleepy, lakeside community into a fancy tourist destination. 

Tiffany, who lived 30 miles away in Hazelhurst, was very helpful to the Uihleins when some local residents and environmentalists asked the DNR to study the damage caused by a dam on Rest Lake in Manitowish Waters. The dam kept water levels low in the fall so lakeshore property owners didn’t have to take in their piers and high in the spring, just in time for them to take out their boats. According to the River Alliance of Wisconsin, partially closing the dam’s gates in the spring, “to raise the levels back up in time for boating season” meant ”starving the Manitowish River of water at a time when fish spawn. Downstream river property owners would find mud flats where water had been the day before.”

A 2015 article, “Requiem for a River,” posted by the River Alliance, describes how Tiffany slipped a few sentences into the 2015-17 state budget undercutting regulation of the dam and pronouncing a “death sentence” for the Manitowish River, essentially turning Rest Lake, where the Uihliens owned a condominium complex, into a private lake. 

The tiny provision Tiffany added to the budget (#49 in a long list of last-minute budget tweaks), is titled “Dam Water Level Orders” and specifies that the Legislature must approve changes to a dam in Vilas County. With that deft maneuver, Tiffany killed a years-long effort by citizens to save the Manitowish River and rendered moot an environmental study by the DNR.

“What happened to the Manitowish River is a case study of how far we have fallen in resource conservation,” the River Alliance article concludes. “The Manitowish River now has upstream winners – well-connected and wealthy people who know how to use their influence to get what they want – and downstream losers without the same clout. Tiffany’s bill practically makes the Rest Lake chain a private waterway, in a state that prides itself on managing water in the public interest.”

“My constituents elected me to get results,” Tiffany said by way of explanation, in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report on his budget maneuver.

Tiffany’s constituents, of course, included the Uihleins.

His intervention in the matter of the Rest Lake dam was no small favor to the most well-connected and wealthy of all the constituents in his northern Wisconsin district. For the Uihleins, the transformation of Manitowish Waters was a special, personal cause.

Elizabeth Uihlein’s intense focus on funding improvements and reshaping even tiny aesthetic details of Manitowish Waters to her liking divided residents, according to a 2015 article in the Journal Sentinel. Some people appreciated the big investment in the community. Others did not like being left out of decisions about public spaces and objected to how their community was forced to conform to one wealthy woman’s tastes. 

Elizabeth Uihlein herself told the Journal Sentinel, “It’s like a little Aspen. It’s beautiful, but it’s dying.” She suggested that local residents should be grateful for her generosity in providing for them, since they would never make it on their own. “The whole thing is dying up there,” she said. “The money had to come from elsewhere.”

The Uilheins, founders of the packing supply company Uline, are among the richest people in the U.S. They were also some of former Gov. Walker’s biggest donors, a fact that was mentioned in news coverage of the sweetheart deal they got on a swath of lakefront property in Manitowish Waters in 2016. Walker’s DNR gave the Uihleins a stretch of Rest Lake shoreline in exchange for a parcel of state forest land the couple owned in a different part of the state. DNR officials came up with the land swap, the AP reported, after critics objected to the state’s proposal to sell the lakeshore property to Elizabeth Uihlein for more than $100,000 less than its appraised value. 

Long before the deal went through, the Uihleins started making unauthorized improvements on the public land they planned to buy. Some local officials were shocked to discover the extensive paths along the shoreline. Elizabeth Uihlein waved away their concerns. Later, with Walker’s help, she was able to claim the property as her own.

The section of Rest Lake shoreline the Uihleins received from the state gave lake access to their condominium complex. Tiffany’s deft tweak to the state budget ensured that boating conditions remained perfect in the spring, and in the fall the Uihleins and residents of their condo complex never had to go through the hassle of taking in their docks. 

It’s worth asking what kind of return on investment the Uihleins expect to receive from their hyperscale donations to Wisconsin Republicans this year.

“The Uihleins wanted to take over a city. Tom Tiffany gave them their law change,” says Democratic analyst Scot Ross. “A decade later the Uihleins give his campaign $35 million. The dam man wouldn’t have a damn campaign without the Uihleins’ millions.”

In addition to the $34.8 million they funneled to Tiffany through the state party, The Uihleins have also given millions of dollars this cycle to try to elect Republican majorities in the state Legislature. In some cases, they’ve provided almost all of the campaign cash those Republican candidates have raised. 

As the progressive group A Better Wisconsin Together put it in a statement on the politicians who received those donations, “it certainly raises questions about who they’re really looking out for.”

PORTLAND, Ore. — The latest cosponsor of a U.S. House bill to provide single-payer health insurance defeated a Republican incumbent in a suburban and rural Oregon district by fewer than 10,000 votes two years ago.

U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, a Democrat now seeking her second term, doesn’t have the far-left profile of past Medicare-for-All champions whose mission failed in Congress.

But the policy is popular in her purple district that stretches from central Oregon to the edges of Portland, and aligns with her values as a lawmaker, she said at an October event with the bill’s lead sponsor, Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal.

“If you ask me anything about my politics, I’ll tell you it’s about agency and freedom,” Bynum told a crowd at Portland Community College. 

“There’s a lot of Americans that have paid into a system, meaning going to work every day, trying to live the American dream, trying to just be good people, and yet this country can’t promise that you can go to the hospital or go to your doctor and not be bankrupted.”

Bynum and Jayapal argued support for single-payer healthcare, long sought by the party’s most progressive members, is growing. And it is one demonstration that voters are in an anti-establishment mood, spurring a possible Democratic takeover of Congress after next month’s elections.

Dissatisfaction with high prices, made worse by President Donald Trump’s unpopular war in Iran, along with aggressive tactics on immigration, have Democrats in a favorable position less than two weeks from Election Day, polling shows.

After a sometimes-bitter primary season, shared policy goals on affordability for Americans and accountability for the Trump administration have bonded the party’s left wing and its establishment factions, analysts say.

But as Democrats eye a likely House majority, and possible U.S. Senate control, they will soon face decision points about the rest of their legislative agenda — and which wing of the party it favors.

Class of 2026

On successive Tuesdays in June, four House Democrats running for reelection, three in New York and Colorado’s Diana Degette, lost primaries to challengers backed by the far-left Democratic Socialists of America. 

Observers and campaigners, including Republican leaders, were quick to describe the ascendancy of far-left views in the Democratic Party.

But that narrative is somewhat out of step with a qualitative analysis, according to an August study from the nonpartisan Brookings Institution.

Of 64 DSA-backed members running in Democratic congressional primaries this year, 19 won, according to Brookings. Only one, Will Lawrence in Michigan, is seeking to represent a competitive district. 

The ideological makeup of the caucus next year will be “about the same,” the study’s author, Elaine Kamarck, said in an interview. 

Kamarck, the director of Brookings’ Center for Effective Public Management, has worked for the Democratic National Committee and presidential campaigns.

While the rhetoric of the House Democratic Caucus might be more progressive in tone next year, many members of the incoming class from blue districts are replacing progressive lawmakers, Rodell Mollineau, a Democratic campaign operative, said.

Practically, progressive House newcomers are likely to accept incremental wins rather than hold out for a future product, he said.

“Is that DSA member, if there’s a piece of legislation on the floor that is going to strengthen healthcare, and might not be everything that that member wants, are they gonna vote it down?”  he said.

To Trump they are ‘lunatics’ 

Republicans have used the media attention on the often young, progressive primary winners to criticize the entire party.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, sought to make the primary winners, all of whom are almost certain to join Congress next year, the face of the entire party.

“The barbarians are inside the gate,” he said at a July 14 press conference. “We’re fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic or we’re going to trade that in, dismantle the foundations and go down this dark road of death to communism. That is the question on the ballot this fall.”

Republicans continue to campaign nationwide against progressives in general, especially Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Democrat who defeated establishment candidates to become the nominee for the state’s open U.S. seat.

“From Chuck Schumer to AOC, moderate Democrats no longer exist,” RNC press secretary Natalie Baldassarre wrote in a Thursday email, referring to the Senate Democratic leader and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both of New York. 

Trump has also falsely painted El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim elected to the Senate, as a terrorist sympathizer. The attack appears based only on El-Sayed’s race and religion. He was born in the United States to parents from Egypt. 

Republicans, including Trump, have sought to tie even centrist candidates to El-Sayed and far-left ideology.

In a speech in Kansas in late October, Trump criticized Adam Hamilton, a preacher who is the Democratic nominee challenging Republican U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall, as “pretending to be a moderate.”

“In 15 days, we’re going to reelect Roger Marshall,” he said in a late October speech in Kansas, referring to the state’s incumbent U.S. senator. “We’re going to defeat the communists, the jihadists, and the corrupt anti-American lunatics once and for all.”

Size of majority 

But Democrats and experts say the establishment Democrats, especially on the House side, will retain control in the caucus, even if their numbers are bolstered by new left-wing members.

Election analysts predict Democrats will pick up between 10 and 20 seats in the House next month, which would give them a majority of 13 to 29. The party is projected to pick up two to six Senate seats, leaving party control a toss-up.

A larger cushion in the House would give Democratic leaders more room to maneuver in the majority, Mollineau, a former Senate staffer, said. Internal division is more likely with a smaller majority, where any single member could be a deciding vote, he added.

But even with a smaller majority, the disparate wings of the party agree on enough of an agenda to keep the chamber busy, he said.

“There’s a lot of shared interests that you will see in this caucus they can pursue and move the ball forward, without getting into fights every single day on ideology,” Mollineau said.

That will likely continue as long as Trump is in the White House, Kamarck said. Divisions would emerge, she said, if Democrats take both chambers and the presidency in 2028.

“As long as defeating Trump and his folks are on the agenda, Democrats are going to be pretty united,” she said. “You will only see the depth of these issues when we get the trifecta.”

The overall mood of the electorate minimizes any problems Democrats may have, Lee Hannah, a political science professor at Wright State University in Ohio, said.

“I think it was an ideal year to have some of these challenges” in primaries, he said.

Lawrence, the former DSA member running in a swing Michigan House district, is an example of someone who may not have succeeded under different circumstances, David Dulio, a political science professor at Oakland University in Michigan, said.

That is a sign the party is changing, with an expanding progressive wing, he said.

“I think the messages that those candidates are taking to the Democratic base are being noticed,” he said. “And people are thinking, ‘Yeah, that sounds pretty good.’”

Mood for change

The primary-season distinction was less between progressive and centrist Democrats and more between establishment and anti-establishment candidates, Mollineau said.

El-Sayed’s campaign has targeted Trump voters in northern Michigan with “a similar anti-establishment” message, Dulio said.

Jay Ward, a Medicare recipient at the Bynum-Jayapal event, said growing frustration with the healthcare system has increased the attractiveness of a single-payer model.

“I think different members had different solutions,” he said of past Democrats. “And I think times have changed.”

Jayapal made a similar point in an interview before the event, predicting that more swing district Democrats would support the measure.

“I’m really thrilled that we have people like Rep. Bynum, like Rep. Shomani Figures in Alabama, these are folks that represent really tough districts,” Jayapal said. 

“It’s unfortunate that this cruelty that American families are dealing with right now has gotten us here, but I do think there’s an opportunity here,” she said. “I think that we’re going to see more and more folks in the Democratic Caucus signing on that are not just in blue districts, that are in tough districts, that are even in red districts.”

She said the bill would receive a committee markup in a Democratic House next year.

Hannah Winchester, a political and community organizer with the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Practitioners, said following the event that her organization does not have an official position on Jayapal’s bill, but does seek to endorse candidates whose goal is universal high-quality healthcare.

“I think we all know something needs to change,” she said. 

A record number of women are running for state legislative seats this November, more than two-thirds of whom are Democrats. 

Across the 46 states with legislative seats on the ballot, a total of 3,824 women are running — up from 2022’s previous record of 3,621 women candidates, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Women make up 35.5% of all state legislative candidates this cycle.

Currently, women hold about one-third of state legislative seats across the country — a record level of representation but nowhere near parity. 

While some election cycles have seen spikes in the numbers of women running, the long-term trend has been defined by incremental progress, said Debbie Walsh, director of the research center.

“It is a step towards change, but it’s not going to happen in any one cycle,” she said. “Our system is set up in many ways for this kind of slow, steady progress.”

And she noted that Republicans still lag significantly. Of the women nominated this cycle, 68% are Democrats. Currently, about 64% of the women in state legislatures are Democrats.

“If the goal is for there to be gender equity in these legislatures, it’s not going to happen by only electing Democratic women. The Republican Party has to do more,” she said. “For women to be exercising political power, they need to be there on both sides of the aisle.” 

No major gains projected for count of women in Congress after midterms

Across the political spectrum, research shows lower levels of political ambition among women. Women tend to underestimate their own qualifications, are more averse to competition and receive less recruitment and encouragement to run for office. Many women work full-time and are primary caregivers — adding more complexity in the majority of states with part-time legislatures. 

But Republicans face unique challenges: Experts say playing political defense this year, a lack of organizational support for GOP women and a rejection of identity-politics has hampered efforts to recruit conservative women. 

Still, the number of women serving in legislatures has increased nearly 40% over the past decade, according to government relations firm MultiState. But representation varies wildly: Women hold more than half of seats in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, but fewer than 15% of seats in West Virginia, South Carolina and Mississippi.

In many ways, this cycle resembles the 2018 elections — when a wave of women ran for state and federal offices during President Donald Trump’s first midterm election. Like that year, the political climate again has soured for Republicans, who could lose control of Congress and hundreds of state legislative seats. 

‘Women are just really sick and tired’

Midterm elections typically favor the party that doesn’t control the White House. And the current focus on affordability offers an extra boost for women candidates, said Republican pollster and consultant Amanda Iovino. 

Polling has shown men tend to think of the economy in terms of income — wages, jobs growth and investment performance, she said. Women, though, have long framed discussions in terms of costs focusing on household budgets and grocery expenses.

“When cost of living is the top issue, and not the economy more broadly, it’s going to favor the people who instinctively talk to the cost side of the equation,” she said. “Of course, you can teach male candidates how to talk that way. I think it just comes a little bit more naturally to the women candidates.”

Former teacher Stefanie Bord, who is running for the Texas state House, said women are able to speak to those issues more credibly than many other politicians.

“Women are sort of like on the front lines of managing their homes and their families, and like the regular everyday life that needs to get done,” she said. “And they see firsthand the problems that happen because of laws that are passed without women involved.”

A Democrat, Bord found her way into politics after volunteering with the gun control group Moms Demand Action. 

She said women have become even more interested in running for office since the Supreme Court’s 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade that had guaranteed the federal right to abortion. 

“I think women are just really sick and tired,” she said, “especially in Texas, where you know my two daughters have less rights than I had.”

Bord is running in a predominantly conservative district in the Houston area. She faces Stan Stanart, the previous Harris County Clerk who enjoys support from GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. 

Though it’s an uphill battle, she said the district could flip this cycle. 

Her campaign is being supported by The First Ask, a political action committee working to elect pro-choice Democratic women to statehouses across the country. That group supports first-time candidates by investing early in campaign organization and staffing support.

Executive Director Caroline Welles said she wants to help build lasting political infrastructure to identify and support a pipeline of women running for office every cycle — not just spikes during times of political upheaval. 

She pointed to Nevada, which made history in 2018 by becoming the first state to elect women to a majority of legislative seats. Women have maintained a majority since, now holding about 62% of seats.

“What we’re hoping to do is make this something like a Nevada where women keep winning,” she said. 

She said women are more likely to get legislation passed, compromise with opponents and focus policymaking that benefits families. While her organization is solely focused on the left, she said she welcomes more Republican women running for legislatures, too.

“I wouldn’t see it as a loss if a large number of Republican women were encouraged to run, encouraged to to take up leadership roles. I would see that ultimately as a good thing because I do think they prioritize better legislation than their male counterparts.”

Republicans say they are investing in recruiting women.

In 2021, the Republican State Leadership Committee, which works to elect conservatives to state legislatures, redoubled a longstanding effort to recruit and train women candidates. This year, its Right Leaders Network included a class of 67 women running for legislatures in a dozen states.

Officials with that organization were unavailable for an interview.

Iovino, the Republican pollster, said this year’s tough political climate has likely hampered Republican recruitment efforts.

“If they’re sitting here defending a supermajority, then they’re not necessarily going out and recruiting a new batch of women and minority and veteran candidates,” she said. 

But she believes Republican organizations will redouble efforts to recruit women in upcoming election cycles. 

In 2020, a record number of Republican women ran for Congress and 2022 set a record for Republican women serving in state legislatures.

“I look back to our trends in 2020 and 2022, and look forward to that next batch of women, especially in state legislatures and kind of refilling that pipeline,” Iovino said. 

What women bring to public office

This year, women in Georgia are more politically engaged than during Trump’s first term, said Melita Easters, executive director of Georgia WIN List, a political action committee working to elect pro-choice women to the legislature.

A record 127 women are running for legislative seats in Georgia. The organization has endorsed 76 of those candidates. Plenty of those races are considered long shots, but Easters said getting women onto the legislative ballot can be an accomplishment in its own right — especially in the South, where representation lags other parts of the country. 

“When you have a woman who is running against a Republican incumbent for the first time in a decade, and that Republican hasn’t had a Democrat run against him in more than 10 years, then she attracts some attention,” Easter said. “She attracts some voters who had given up on having a candidate they could vote for, and so that rising tide lifts the rest of the ticket, too.”

Aside from increasing levels of representation, Easters said women bring a different perspective to politics. While many men run to gain power or financial advantage, she pointed to research showing women tend to run with more altruistic motivations focused on public service.

“Women bring a different skill set to holding public office, a skill set that is more collaborative,” she said. “And last but not least, women have generations of experience in cleaning up men’s messes, and the current political landscape is a very messy place.”

Research consistently shows lower political ambition among women. Experts say that means many women only launch a campaign after being specifically recruited.

“It took three asks for me to raise my hand and say, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’” said Democrat Michelle Schreiner, who is running for the Georgia House. “I had, frankly, some terms and conditions and that is really needing support early and often.”

Schreiner, a psychologist and researcher, is challenging Republican Rep. Sharon Cooper, who has represented suburban Atlanta in the state House for 29 years. Cooper did not respond to Stateline requests for comment.

To run was “a sobering decision,” Schreiner said. It has meant working on her birthday, missing her daughter’s soccer games and her son’s baseball games.

“It has a real impact on families,” she said. “My decision to run is not merely to challenge the incumbent. My decision to run is fundamentally an act of gratitude and appreciation for my community, and saying I’m willing to step up to do the work if you’re wanting a choice.”

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

The percentage of working-age adults without health insurance has increased in the past two years, largely because many people can no longer afford Obamacare coverage after Congress allowed federal subsidies to expire at the end of last year.

The uninsured rate for adults ages 19-64 rose to 11.2% this year, up from 8.9% in 2024, according to a new analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, a health policy and philanthropic nonprofit.

Nearly half of the 7,362 working-age adults who participated in the group’s biennial health insurance survey said they were uninsured, underinsured, or experienced a gap in coverage this year. Half said they delayed or avoided getting medical care because of the cost, compared with 46% in 2022.

The subsidies significantly lowered the cost of Obamacare coverage — making it free or nearly free for some people with low incomes. But the aid was designed as a temporary pandemic-era measure, and Congress allowed it to expire at the end of last year.

As a result, the percentage of working-age adults with health insurance from the marketplaces created under Obamacare, officially known as the Affordable Care Act, declined to 6% this year, from 8% in 2024.

The percentage of working-age adults enrolled in Medicaid also declined, to 13% this year from 16% in 2022, as many states removed people from the rolls at the conclusion of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increase in the uninsured rate almost certainly will accelerate in January, when the Republican tax and spending law known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act takes effect. That law will require many Medicaid recipients to prove they are working or engaging in approved community service activities for at least 80 hours a month.

The law also mandates that states verify enrollees’ Medicaid eligibility every six months.

Another factor in the growing percentage of people without coverage is the rising cost of healthcare, which is pushing up premiums for private insurance.

“It’s affecting people’s ability to pay off bills right away, and it’s having an effect on health plans,” said Sara Collins, a senior scholar at the Commonwealth Fund and the lead author of the report.

Almost a third of the survey respondents, whether insured and uninsured, said they currently had medical or dental bills or were paying off medical debt. And more than 70% of uninsured adults said they had cost-related problems getting care.

“I think it’s very concerning,” Collins said. “We know from our survey data that not going to get care isn’t and just generally is not good for people’s health over the long run.”

The rise in the uninsured rate comes after a long period of progress: Between 2010 and 2025, the overall uninsured rate in the United States fell by half, to 8% from nearly 16%, largely because of the Affordable Care Act.

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

The current Trump administration claims its mass deportation efforts have expelled nearly a million people through July of this year, but those include both voluntary returns and people turned around at the border, according to a new analysis by the former chief statistician for the Department of Homeland Security.

The level of deportations is sharply higher than during the Biden and first Trump administrations but well below the level of the 2000s. Deportations peaked at about 1.9 million in fiscal year 2000 as border enforcement ramped up under a sweeping immigration enforcement law in 1996.

Former DHS official Marc Rosenblum did the analysis, using only public records, for the Migration Policy Institute, a non-partisan think tank for immigration research. Rosenblum resigned in protest in July against what he called the Trump administration’s “war on immigrants.” He had been with DHS since 2016 and executive director of the statistics office since 2023. 

Rosenblum emphasized in his analysis how many non-criminals have been either forcibly deported or pressured to leave voluntarily. Only 20% overall — and 28% of those in the U.S. for at least two years — have a criminal conviction.

“These data here do not suggest the administration is deporting the worst of the worst,” Rosenblum said.  

Even among convicted criminals, he added, the records were more likely to be immigration or traffic infractions rather than violent or other more serious crimes. 

DHS officials have maintained that living in the country illegally is enough reason to be deported. Tom Homan, the administration’s so-called border czar, told a Florida audience Oct. 1 that deportations have ramped up this fall and will be even higher in 2027. He was speaking to a Hispanic leadership event near Miami sponsored by the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Mass deportation is happening,” Homan said. “I think September’s going to be the highest deportations of any month in the history of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). Right now we’ve arrested more people than in the history of this nation.” 

He added later, “Wait until you see what we do next year.”

Rosenblum tallied 980,000 deportations, including arrangements to leave voluntarily after arrest, during the second Trump administration through July 31, about 18 months. About 300,000 had been arrested inside the United States, but most deportations were from the U.S. border with Mexico. There, 680,000 people were either turned around at the border or arrested at the border and deported after processing. 

The number of people leaving the country without being arrested is disputed — DHS earlier this year claimed more than 2.2 million “self-deportations,” apparently based on a decline in immigrant population in surveys. Others dispute that number, saying it’s more likely immigrants are avoiding government surveys. 

In his analysis, Rosenblum estimated the number of immigrants leaving of their own accord — not including people who had formal agreements to leave voluntarily — at between 310,000 and 1.5 million for immigrants who had been here at least a year. The departures include legal immigrants and those who had been living here illegally. 

Rosenblum’s estimate of departures, other than deportation, is imprecise, relying on Mexican census data on its returning citizens to estimate a “plausible level of departures” for other nationalities. 

The numbers in his analysis include people making arrangements to leave voluntarily rather than continue their court cases or contest a return at the border, about 170,000.  It may not include some people who came forward voluntarily to claim financial assistance to leave from the Project Homecoming program. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Republican U.S. Rep. Tony Wied and his Democratic challenger, former Green Bay school board member and U.S. Army veteran Rick Crosson, met Thursday afternoon for a debate as the two compete for the Green Bay area’s 8th Congressional District seat. 

The 8th CD has been under Republican control since 2011 and this year the district is getting less attention and investment than the races for the 1st and 3rd Districts, which are seen as more competitive. Two years ago, the seat was open after Rep. Mike Gallagher’s departure from Congress and Democrats put significant resources into the campaign of Dr. Kristin Lyerly — who lost her race to Wied by 15 points. 

With Democrats gaining momentum in Republican-dominated districts across the country, surprises could be coming on Nov. 3, but Crosson’s challenge is still seen as a longshot. 

In the debate on Thursday Crosson sought to cast himself as a problem solver and Wied as someone who isn’t up for the job and who has “acquiesced” to the “erratic whims of the current occupant of the White House” while avoiding accountability to his constituents and using the position to personally enrich himself. 

Wied, the former owner of gas stations in the Green Bay area, worked to present himself as a good-tempered representative who has worked to improve the lives of people in northeast Wisconsin through his constituent services, while defending many of President Donald Trump’s actions that he has supported. 

Hosted by WFRV’s Tom Zalaski and Stacy Engebretson, the debate focused on the economy, the political environment, agricultural consolidation, data centers, healthcare, election integrity and the war in Iran. 

Economy

On the economy, Wied acknowledged that gas and diesel prices have risen because Trump started the war in Iran, but said that “decisive action” in Iran is what was needed. 

“Gas and diesel prices are too high, and we know that that comes from the president’s actions, and he took decisive action with a threat that we have in Iran,” Wied said. The threat posed by Iran is “something that every president has dealt with my entire lifetime, and through his intelligence briefings, he felt that there was an immediate threat with a nuclear weapon, and he took decisive action,” Weid said of Trump.  

“I think as soon as this conflict is over, and it has moved from kinetic warfare over to economic warfare, we’ll see those prices come down,” he added. “During the Biden administration, prices were extremely high as well. Gas and diesel prices were very high during the administration.”

When pressed about his votes to continue the war in Iran, Wied said he wouldn’t support a vote by Congress to end the war, calling it a “symbolic gesture.” 

Crosson responded that the people who create a mess don’t then get credit for cleaning it up. 

“You caused the instability. Congress acquiesced to the president, to the whims of the president, in kicking off this illegal and unwarranted war,” Crosson said. “This is one where you can’t blame sleepy Joe Biden for this situation and circumstance. We’ve got to end this war.” 

Polarization

The two men were also asked about the level of political polarization and tension in the country as voters are inundated with negative campaign advertising. 

Crosson said that if elected, he’d focus on “affordability, accountability and quantifiable results.” He argued that Wied, who hasn’t held any in-person town halls during his nearly two years in office, has ducked his responsibility to face his constituents. Wied argued that the telephone town halls he’s held help him reach more people across the district. 

“To me, a tele-town hall already communicates the message that there is a reluctance and there’s a fear of standing in front of people,” Crosson said. “Look, I’ve stood before heads of state, four-star military commanders, ambassadors, 3,000 irate, agitated truck drivers. I know what it means to be held accountable in person. There is nothing that substitutes an in-person exchange of information of concern. And yes, they can get spirited, but we should be leaning into that. That’s the nature of this role. If we don’t have the intestinal fortitude to go into that sort of thing, then we shouldn’t be in this role.” 

Wied said he’s met with more than 300 groups from the district, done news interviews and sends out a weekly email newsletter. He also said that holding town halls in person brings out a “left-wing mob.” 

“I’ve met with over 300 groups here just this year alone. The thing with an in-person town hall is you have this left-wing mob. You have people that work at the Brown County Democrat Party that threatened to kill me,” Wied said, referencing an incident last year in which an unpaid volunteer from the county Democratic party was investigated for making threatening phone calls to Wied’s D.C. office. “They come into these and they scream and they holler and they agitate, and you can’t even get a question. I have no problem meeting with people, and I do. I’ve met with, again, over 300 different groups in this area. I am in the community every single day. I’m the last one to leave to get to D.C. I’m the first one to come home, and we get in the car and we go to all 11 counties every single week. And I will answer any question from anyone.” 

Agriculture

Northeast Wisconsin is home to some of the state’s largest factory farms. As consolidation has pushed farmers to expand their operations while squeezing out smaller family farms, neither candidate offered many specifics on how Congress can help reverse that trend. 

Wied, who sits on the House Agriculture committee, pointed to his work to get schools serving whole milk again and the passage of a 2026 farm bill by the House of Representatives as actions that he’s taken to help area farmers. A full farm bill has not been enacted since the 2018 version of the law expired in 2023. 

“I’ll continue to meet with all of our farmers of all sizes and continue to do everything I can to help them succeed,” Wied said. “What I’m seeing, though, is a very big interest in the next generation to get into farming. There’s issues for sure, but I’m right there to help them, and I will continue to be an advocate and fight for them in Washington.” 

Crosson pointed to the tariffs that the Trump administration has imposed on imports from Canada and other major trade partners. He said he’d spoken with an area dairy farmer who can no longer afford to buy Canadian dairy cattle. 

“Congress has the responsibility for the imposition of tariffs, and if there is an imbalance of trade, then we look at it rationally,” Crosson said. “We don’t do it irrationally at the whims of the occupant of the White House. Here again is one of the things that Congress again has acquiesced in its mission and responsibility to be that watchdog, that check and balance on the excesses of the presidency, that’s one of the things that we have to do to get ourselves back in place.” 

Data centers

As local opposition to data centers has roiled campaigns across the country, the candidates both advocated for local control over the massive developments. 

Wied qualified his statement, adding  that the U.S. has to keep up in the race to develop artificial intelligence and data center deals can be beneficial to communities. 

“Well, I think this is an emerging technology that we need to be the leader in the world in, and there are other countries like China that are really growing in the artificial intelligence, or super intelligence as it’s now being called,” he said, referencing the term that Trump decreed should be used to describe the technology at a White House event late last month. “Some areas around the country are negotiating very good deals. You’re seeing data centers go in and teachers being rewarded with higher pay. There can be a deal, but it cannot be without the approval of the people here locally.” 

Wied went on to blame Gov. Tony Evers for forcing communities to construct “big solar farms.” 

Crosson said he doesn’t trust the big tech companies building the data centers to have the interests of communities at heart. 

“There has to be some level of state and federal laws, policies, procedures that protect our local communities,” he said. “We definitely have to have local control. We need to have the people involved in the decision-making process along the way.” 

Healthcare

Republicans across the country are running for reelection after voting to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut billions in federal healthcare spending. Wied argued that the Affordable Care Act is responsible for pushing up medical costs and that he and other Republicans fought to bring federal money to rural hospitals. 

Some money did get sent to fund Wisconsin’s rural hospitals, but it’s far less than the shortfall they will face because of  the broader cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. 

“Ultimately, we need to have a system where people can go directly to the doctor and not have to deal with these insurance companies,” Wied said. “As it relates to Medicaid, we had some of the most transformational reform, but here’s what it did: It basically says that you have to work if you are able-bodied and you do not have a dependent. The Affordable Care Act put people on the sidelines. If you’re a 29-year-old gamer sitting in mom’s basement, you’re going to have to work 20 hours a week, volunteer, or be going to school. That was significant savings, but what it’s going to do is put people onto payrolls and get them off the couch and actually to work.” 

Crosson noted that the OBBBA is set to kick millions of Americans off their health insurance and argued that healthcare should be a human right. 

“They keep saying that what was called Obamacare was not something that they wanted,” Crosson said. “They tried multiple times to nullify it, but there still hasn’t been anything that replaces this. I start with the premise that healthcare should be a fundamental human right, unequivocally. Once we do that, that’s the vision. We backward plan to where we are, and we move towards that objective. There’s enough dollars to do this. Everybody stops the conversation by saying how we’re going to afford it. There’s money there. We just have to have the national will to do that.” 

Election Integrity

Green Bay has been a hotbed of election conspiracy theories since the 2020 presidential election. When asked about trust in elections, Wied said that people have sincere concerns about the validity of the country’s elections — pointing to grant money Green Bay received from a Mark Zuckerberg-aligned non-profit to help fund the added cost of administering an election during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

He said that Congress should have passed the Save America Act, which would have instituted a strict national voter ID requirement, because states such as Illinois and Minnesota don’t require a photo ID to vote and therefore they  allow undocumented immigrants to cast ballots. 

It is illegal for non-citizens to vote in federal elections, and there’s no evidence that it happens in significant numbers. 

“One of the biggest issues that I hear as I continue to travel around all of our great 11 counties here in northeastern Wisconsin is that people are concerned with election integrity,” Wied said. “That’s why I proposed and we passed in the House the Save America Act. What that says is, look, you have to be a citizen and show ID in order to vote in federal elections. We have elections all across our country with states like Minnesota and Illinois that don’t do that. They don’t require you to show an ID or be a citizen, and that’s not OK. We need to ensure the integrity in our elections.”

Crosson said the federal government should have no say in how Wisconsin’s elections are run and that fearmongering about these issues only discourages people from voting. 

“This is a state requirement, a state responsibility, and we don’t need federal intervention that has the effect of disenfranchising voters,” Crosson said. “This is about making people afraid to come to vote because they know that we outnumber the crazy.” 

‘Communism’ and stock trading

Toward the end of the debate, the two candidates were allowed to ask each other one question. 

Crosson asked Wied about the large number of trades he’s made while in office. Wied’s net worth has increased by more than $3 million since he was elected and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel previously reported that Wied has bought and sold stock in a number of companies that have business before the committees on which he serves. Wied has said all of these trades were made by his independent financial adviser. 

Wied said that the stock purchases happened because he and his wife had some savings to invest after selling their business. Then he pivoted to attacking prominent Democrats. 

“We sold our business in 2022, and we had some savings. We hired a financial advisor. My wife nor I have ever asked them to buy or sell anything, nor would we,” he said. “But let’s be real. I think the real issue is people don’t trust Congress. You have people like Ilhan Omar that all of a sudden made $30 million out of nowhere. You have career politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden that are worth millions, and they’ve never had a real job. That’s why we need to have term limits. We cannot allow people to enrich themselves in Congress.”

Wied highlighted Crosson’s campaign appearances with “known Communist” Francesca Hong, the state representative and former Democratic candidate for governor, and asked if Crosson wants to abolish the police. 

Crosson said he “comes at everything from a law and order perspective” and noted his military career included postings in Europe during the Cold War and working with the Mexican government to prevent drug trafficking over the country’s southern border. 

“Whether or not Francesca Hong is a ‘communist’ is something that you and her would have to talk about,” Crosson said. “I fought communism in my 20 years of service. I fought against totalitarianism.” 

“Of course, I’m for law and order,” he continued. “This is more exploitative conversation to inflame the folks who are inclined to not dig deeper into the facts. So of course I’m for law and order. Who isn’t? But what I don’t want to see happen are people taking advantage of their power and authority and imposing that on our population. That’s not law and order. That’s terrorism, and I’m going to fight that hard.”

WASHINGTON — The price health insurance companies charge for employer-sponsored plans increased again this year, as did the deductible many people must pay before those plans begin covering most healthcare costs, according to a survey released Thursday by the nonpartisan health organization KFF.

The cost of individual health insurance plans rose to $9,804 on average, while family coverage reached $28,303. Both represented a 5% increase over the last year.

Employees paid about $1,672 for individual coverage, while employers contributed $8,132. People with health insurance for a family of four paid $7,471, with employers providing $20,833.

The amount of money an employee pays toward an individual health insurance plan rose by $232, or 16%, from 2025 to 2026. The price an employee pays for a family health insurance policy increased by $621, or 9%, according to the survey. 

“We have been hearing a lot about Affordable Care Act and Medicaid cuts,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said in a statement. “Now add a 9% increase in what workers with employer coverage paid toward family premiums in 2026 to the reasons voters are so concerned about their health care costs.”

The national survey looked at the health insurance costs of more than 1,900 employers throughout the country who have at least 10 workers.

The cost of employer-sponsored health insurance plans has steadily gone up for the last 15 years, according to KFF’s data. In 2011, the cost of an individual plan totaled just under $5,500 and family plans cost $15,220 annually. 

The average deductible reached $1,995 for single coverage this year, meaning even with health insurance, most employees had to pay a couple thousand dollars out of pocket before their policies kicked in. That’s more than doubled since 2011 when the average annual deductible was $955.

The KFF survey found that 88% of workers with individual coverage had a deductible in 2026. 

What types of healthcare coverage people get with the various employer-sponsored health insurance plans varied considerably, sometimes based on the size of their company. 

Twenty-seven percent of employers with more than 200 employees, called large firms in the KFF survey, covered the costs of in vitro fertilization, or IVF. 

But that fluctuated, with 24% of companies between 200 and 999 workers covering IVF, 38% of companies between 1,000 and 4,999 employees providing coverage and 47% of companies with more than 5,000 workers offering a health insurance plan that covers IVF. 

Access to GLP-1 drugs, which can help people manage Type 2 diabetes and lower their weight, also varied based on the size of someone’s employer. Eighteen percent of large firms covered those drugs during 2026, though that was slightly lower than the 19% that covered it during 2025. 

The KFF survey showed that 40% of companies require people on GLP-1 drugs for weight loss to “meet with a dietitian, case manager, or therapist, or participate in a lifestyle program in order for the drug to be covered.”

Democratic Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley and Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany met at Marquette University Wednesday evening for the only scheduled debate in Wisconsin’s race for governor. 

Throughout the hourlong debate, hosted by WISN and moderated by Matt Smith and Gerron Jordan, Crowley worked to paint Tiffany as a yes-man for his billionaire donors and President Donald Trump, while Tiffany worked to cast Crowley as an extreme liberal focused only on raising taxes and distracted by his dislike of Trump. 

As Democrats hope that Trump’s record-low unpopularity can create a wave of support for them in races up and down the ticket across the country, polling has shown that Wisconsin’s gubernatorial race remains close, with Crowley so far maintaining a slight lead. 

If Crowley wins, he’d be the first Black man to be elected governor of Wisconsin and will represent an extension of Gov. Tony Evers’ eight years in office — especially if Democrats are able to fulfill their ambition to win majority control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time in more than 15 years. 

A Tiffany victory would represent a return to the Gov. Scott Walker era of politics in the state, focused on deregulation and tax cuts and would mean Republicans gain control of a key swing state ahead of the 2028 presidential election. 

Taxes and the economy

The debate opened with an extended discussion about the economy, taxes and the state budget as affordability has become one of the main issues of concern to voters in this year’s midterm elections. 

Tiffany has built his campaign on the promise of massive tax cuts. He’s said he’ll cut property and income taxes while maintaining funding for government services. Since the early days of his campaign, Tiffany has argued that he can deliver massive tax cuts without significant cuts. 

“We are going to have sufficient money in this budget to be able to fund the things that are important to Wisconsinites: education, transportation, and infrastructure, healthcare, we’re going to have money there, and here’s why,” he said. “When you look at the last budget that was passed a year ago, it went up $15 billion, went from $99 billion to $114 billion, a 15% increase, the largest increase ever in a state budget. There is plenty of money in Madison to be able to provide more shared revenue, to give increased aid to our schools, there is enough money in Madison to be able to backfill those things that we need to.” 

The most recent state budget, passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed by Evers, cut $1.3 billion in taxes while increasing funding for the University of Wisconsin system, childcare providers and special education. 

During a conversation about transportation funding, Crowley questioned how Tiffany will pay for his tax plans. 

“Congressman Tom Tiffany doesn’t have any plans,” Crowley said. “Congressman Tiffany literally just said that he would cut billionaire taxes to 0%. And how we’re going to fund transportation? He has no clue. How are you going to get the revenues when you continuously cut the amount of revenues coming into government? This is the reason why cities, towns, villages, and our school districts all across the state are struggling today, and that’s because he doesn’t work for the people. He’s working for the billionaires. He’s going to do anything and everything that they tell him to do because that’s who he’s been in the pockets of.”

Throughout the campaign, Tiffany has criticized Crowley for rising property taxes in Milwaukee County and the increase in the county sales tax included in a bipartisan 2023 deal to inject more money into local government budgets. 

The total property tax levy collected by Milwaukee County each year has increased, but the property tax rate actually paid by individual homeowners has increased less than the rate of inflation. The sales tax increase was included in the shared revenue bill passed by Republicans and has been seen as a policy move that helped stave off massive cuts to county services. 

Crowley said his record on taxes has been misrepresented by the Tiffany campaign and added that he wants to increase taxes on the state’s wealthiest people, take a holistic look at the total tax picture to find where people can get relief and better work with local governments. 

He also argued that Tiffany’s tax plans will only benefit his wealthy donors. Tiffany’s campaign has been largely funded by three billionaires, Beloit resident Diane Hendricks and Illinois residents Richard and Liz Uihlein. 

“He wants to do exactly what they did in Washington D.C.,” Crowley said. “They literally gave $80 billion in tax breaks to billionaires throughout the entire country on the backs of hardworking Wisconsinites who are losing their healthcare — 270,000 folks. Look, we cannot afford Congressman Tiffany as the next governor if we’re literally going to be balancing tax breaks for billionaires on the backs of hardworking Wisconsin family members. What we need to be focusing on is how do we make sure that we can get them access to better-paying jobs? How we can actually make sure that they can actually afford food on the table?.”

Billionaires and Donald Trump

Crowley repeatedly returned to the refrain that Tiffany will only serve the interests of Trump and his billionaire donors. 

“So while my opponent, you can see early on in the debate, is consistently focused on being against Donald Trump, I’m for Wisconsin,” Tiffany countered. “And rather than creating a bunch more programs that are going to end up taxing the people of Wisconsin more, I want to put more money in the taxpayers’ pockets.” 

Later in the evening, Tiffany said that Crowley is “ranting constantly” about billionaires.

“Have I ever said we’re going to cut taxes to zero? I have not,” he said. “He’s misrepresenting our positions, and he’s over there ranting constantly about billionaires. We need a governor that’s going to be focused on people here in Wisconsin to do what’s best for Wisconsin. Not worrying about others, not announcing what you are against, but telling people what you’re for.” 

Education

On education, Tiffany said he wants to provide more funding for public education while raising standards and accountability for struggling districts. He also said he would consider raising income limits on Wisconsin’s statewide private school voucher program through which families receive a tuition subsidy from the state government. 

“I just think people should have whatever choice that they make,” Tiffany said. “We made the choice of public schools, regardless of income. And if a child is trapped in a failing school, they should be able to choose the school that they want to go to.” 

Crowley responded by arguing that this position is the one held by the wealthy supporters of the voucher program. 

“This is a prime example of exactly who the congressman works for,” Crowley said. “I mean, when this program was started, it was to make sure that low-income students all across the state of Wisconsin got access to some type of option. At the end, and what ended up happening, they kept lifting the cap. And what they do next, they lifted the income limits. Those who were actually paying for private education then started utilizing public dollars to pay for their child’s education. I mean, Congressman Tom Tiffany, it doesn’t sound like you want to work for the small guys. Sounds like you want to work for those who have the money and have the means to continue to pay their way.”

Data centers

This year, public opposition to data centers has played a large role in campaigns across the country. In this race, both candidates have sent mixed signals on the issue while trying to cast the other as the pro-data center choice. 

Tiffany pointed to comments Crowley has made in which he celebrated the potential financial benefits data centers could have for local government budgets. As he’s said on the campaign trail, he tied his opposition to data centers with his opposition to solar and wind power developments and said he supports local control over development and would get rid of the sales tax exemptions for data centers currently in state law. 

“I’ve been against these subsidies,” Tiffany said. “Why would the wealthiest, some of the wealthiest companies in the world need subsidies from the taxpayers of Wisconsin? I’m opposed to them.” 

Crowley pointed to the $80 billion in tax breaks for data center developers Tiffany voted for in the One Big Beautiful Bill that was passed by Republicans last summer and said he’s going to do whatever he can to support local decisions around data centers. 

“We need to make sure we’re protecting our environment, protecting our land, protecting our farmland, protecting our waterways,” Crowley said. “But communities need to have a seat because if they don’t want a data center, they shouldn’t be forced to have a data center. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about that. I’ve always sided with communities and the people when it comes down to data centers, Congressman Tom Tiffany, he’s done something different. I mean, he provided the tax breaks to the big tech companies who are steamrolling our communities today with these data centers.” 

In 2017, when Republicans in the Legislature, then-Gov. Walker and Trump were working to attract Foxconn to Wisconsin to build a manufacturing plant in Mount Pleasant, Tiffany voted in committee and the full Senate in favor of the $3 billion tax break the state gave the company. After Foxconn’s plans failed to fully materialize, Microsoft took over the site, where it is now building a data center campus. 

Elections

A chunk of the debate focused on questions about Tiffany’s vote to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, abortion and the tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — three areas in which Democrats have sought to tie Tiffany as closely as possible with Trump and the right flank of the Republican party. 

When asked why, after he voted to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, he said he would also have voted to overturn Wisconsin’s 2020 election of Biden, potentially nullifying the votes of hundreds of thousands of people, Tiffany said he did so because he had concerns about “Zuckerbucks” — the moniker Republicans gave to grant money given to municipal governments through a charity run by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to help them pay for the increased costs of administering an election during a pandemic. 

He also said he had concerns about the Madison city clerk posting online that voters concerned about going to the polls because of COVID-19 could use the state’s indefinitely confined voter provision. That comment was made in March 2020 ahead of the state’s April election that year and the state Supreme Court quickly issued an order blocking that guidance, so it had no bearing on how people voted seven months later. 

“Because of what happened there, when there was money coming in privately that should not have been, and the voters said that that should not be that way,” Tiffany said. “I mean, I can give you one other example of what happened there. There was the Dane County Clerk who declared that people who are indefinitely confined, they could just declare themselves to be indefinitely confined during the election. That clerk did not have the authority to do that. That requires an action by the state Senate and the governor to change that law. So there are a couple things like that that I thought should be addressed.”

Tiffany later said he would consider getting rid of the Wisconsin Elections Commission and changing how the state manages its elections. Tiffany and legislative Republicans voted to break up the state’s previous election agency, the Government Accountability Board, after it investigated allegations of campaign finance violations by Walker. 

“I think we need to sit down and have that discussion about do we make changes to the Wisconsin Elections Commission. I mean, I’m one of the people that voted for it a decade ago,” he said. “We thought that we hit on the answer to be able to have an effective body, but we need to make sure that there’s accountability by the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and they’re carrying out their job.” 

He continued, saying “there should be a simple principle in regards to our elections. It should be easy to vote and hard to cheat. We need to make sure that the Wisconsin Elections Commission is going to carry out that mandate for the voters of Wisconsin, because they’ve proven over the last number of years they want election integrity. Voters have voted consistently for election integrity.”

Crowley said that Tiffany’s election comments show he’ll sell out Wisconsinites for Trump, including in 2028 when the next governor will be responsible for certifying the results of the presidential race. 

Abortion

In this race, abortion has not been one of the campaign’s main issues, but Tiffany has a history of anti-abortion actions in the state Legislature and in Congress and has been endorsed by anti-abortion groups. He said that in the Legislature he voted for the state’s current ban on abortions after 20 weeks and that’s where he would continue to draw the line. 

“When I talked to my constituents, they said, ‘We want you to find a middle ground on this. We want you to compromise,’ and that’s exactly what we did,” he said. “I stand by that vote of a decade ago, and I will uphold it as the governor of Wisconsin.”

Crowley pointed out that while in Congress, Tiffany supported a bill that would have enacted a total federal abortion ban with no exceptions for rape, incest or the health of the mother. 

Tiffany said his position on the issue has “been consistent ever since I announced for governor,” while trying to cast Crowley as a pro-abortion extremist who would allow abortions for the full duration of a pregnancy. Crowley said that abortions after 20 weeks are nearly always serious situations that involve life-threatening medical questions and the decision should be made between a patient and her doctor. 

Crowley has argued on the campaign trail for an amendment to the state Constitution enshrining the right to have an abortion and he also said he didn’t believe the Legislature would pass a bill lifting all restrictions on abortion. 

In their closing statements, both candidates reiterated the arguments they’d been making all night. 

Crowley again argued that Wisconsinites can’t trust Tiffany to choose regular citizens over billionaires and Trump. Tiffany discussed the plane crash he was in while campaigning earlier this summer and the “best of Wisconsin” he saw from first responders — saying he wanted everyone in the state to see that, too. 

The Wisconsin Examiner previously reported that the pilot of that plane was a frequent Republican donor and an election denier who associates with some of the state’s most prominent election conspiracy theorists. On Wednesday, MeidasTouch reported that Tiffany’s campaign spent $70,000 on private flights in the past two months. 

After the debate, Republicans said that Tiffany “laid out his vision.” 

“Tom Tiffany laid out a vision to lower taxes and put Wisconsin families first, while David Crowley could not defend his failed record in Milwaukee County,” Republican Governors Association spokesperson Kollin Crompton said. “Crowley’s higher taxes and soft-on-crime policies are a warning, not a blueprint for Wisconsin. Tiffany knows Wisconsin, understands its people, and is running to put them first.”

Democrats and Crowley claimed a debate victory. 

“There was only one governor on stage tonight, and it wasn’t the guy who went to Washington to vote with Donald Trump 100% of the time,” Crowley campaign manager Garren Randolph said. “Congressman Tom Tiffany spent an hour offering Wisconsinites excuse after excuse for the role he played in jacking up costs on families across the state. Gas prices, healthcare premiums, and utility bills are all up because of Congressman Tom Tiffany’s loyalty to Donald Trump over the people of Wisconsin. On the other side of the stage, David Crowley showed Wisconsinites a leader who will actually work for them if elected governor. David laid out how he’ll lower taxes for working families instead of billionaires and lower the cost of gas, groceries, housing, and healthcare.”

A federal judge on Wednesday night blocked the Department of Homeland Security from conducting election-related field operations that could sweep up U.S. citizens in nine states.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, an appointee of President Joe Biden in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California, issued a preliminary injunction after voting rights advocates alleged that Homeland Security was sending armed agents to homes to question residents about their voter status. 

The injunction bars operations in California, Connecticut, Georgia, Missouri, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin until polls close on Election Day, though the administration may appeal in the coming days.

The decision marks a legal setback to the Trump administration’s intensifying campaign this fall against noncitizen voting ahead of Election Day. It comes as the Department of Justice is suing California to force state and local election officials to not count the ballots of some 20,000 voters the federal government says it suspects are noncitizens.

President Donald Trump has long decried the threat of noncitizen voting, which studies have shown rarely occurs. He now faces political peril, as Democrats appear increasingly likely to retake the U.S. House and possibly the Senate in the midterm elections.

Martínez-Olguín found that the importance of the public voting free of intimidation outweighed the Trump administration’s interest in rooting out noncitizen voting. But she paused her order until Friday, presumably to give the Trump administration time to appeal.

The evidence in the case, she wrote, leads to an “objectively reasonable fear of law enforcement entanglements that intimidates citizens from urging or aiding others in exercising their right to vote.”

The lawsuit was filed by San Francisco, Santa Clara, the California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation. 

“Today, the courts affirmed a vital principle of our democracy: Voting is a fundamental right that citizens – whether born here or naturalized – should be able to exercise without armed government agents harassing them,” Beau Tremitiere, a lawyer at the legal advocacy group Protect Democracy, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Martínez-Olguín wrote that the “ongoing intimidation that CNA/NNU members experience and the direct impediment it plays in their effort to engage voter outreach, education, and engagement efforts, are irreparable harms that are appropriately addressed by preliminary injunctive relief.”

A Homeland Security Investigations internal memo dated Aug. 31 describes a “surge initiative” beginning Sept. 1 that includes conducting field interviews. The memo, which was filed in court, identifies California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin as targets of the surge during September. Additional locations are redacted in the document.

Homeland Security said in a statement Thursday that it has “no plans to question or investigate people we believe to be U.S. citizens.”

In a previous court filing, Department of Justice lawyers representing DHS have argued that the federal government has the authority to investigate potential voting by noncitizens. 

“Enjoining the government from even investigating such criminal violations would damage the public interest, not serve it,” they wrote.

Democratic groups and top Democrats in Congress filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block Trump intimidating election officials.

Healthcare and small business advocates crossed Wisconsin Wednesday to call on the federal government to reverse policies they said were thwarting healthcare access and support Democrats running for Congress and other offices in the Nov. 3 election.

Protect Our Care is sending a bus across Wisconsin and other Midwestern states to call attention to the importance of healthcare in this year’s election, said Joe Zepecki, Wisconsin director for the advocacy group. Main Street Action, representing small business owners, has joined the campaign. In Wisconsin it includes stops to highlight Democratic congressional candidates in the 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts.

At a stop in Madison, several speakers criticized Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, who is running for governor, particularly for his vote in favor of the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that included cuts estimated at nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years while making tax cuts that heavily favored the wealthy.

While that law was enacted, Congressional Republicans several times rejected attempts to extend enhanced subsidies for health insurance purchased at the federal healthcare marketplace under the Affordable Care Act.

Zepecki said advocates have three demands: restoring the enhanced ACA premium subsidies to lower the cost of health insurance; reversing the Medicaid cuts in the 2025 law; and passing legislation that would expand the authorization for Medicare to negotiate prices with drug companies.

Kyle LaFond, the owner of a manufacturing company and a member of Main Street Alliance, said his ACA coverage now costs him $2,600 more per year. But for other families who include people with disabilities or who are otherwise vulnerable, “these costs are devastating,” LaFond said.

“We can’t be complacent,” he said. “None of this should be considered normal. Healthcare is a fundamental human right.”

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, who is running for reelection this year, recalled that when he ran for office in 2018, Wisconsin was among a group of states that joined a lawsuit to overturn the 2011 Affordable Care Act. Kaul’s predecessor as attorney general, Republican Brad Schimel, had signed on to the lawsuit on behalf of the state.

“One of the issues in our race was whether Wisconsin should be part of that suit,” said Kaul, a Democrat. After Kaul was elected, he withdrew Wisconsin from the lawsuit, which subsequently lost at the U.S. Supreme Court.

While that attack on affordable health insurance coverage failed, in the current administration of President Donald Trump “access to affordable healthcare remains under attack,” Kaul said.

The 2025 bill that cut Medicaid is just one example, he said. “But beyond that, the Trump administration has acted on its own without Congress to unilaterally make cuts designed to undermine access to affordable health insurance coverage or to make access to quality care less available,” Kaul added — citing the administration’s retreat from an evidence-based childhood vaccine schedule, cuts in funding for school mental health and public health and cuts to medical research.

Joining attorneys general in other states — all Democrats — Wisconsin has sued to block such actions and have won “significant victories,” he said, including the preservation of $200 million in public health funding for Wisconsin that had been threatened.

National Democrats are suing President Donald Trump, accusing his administration of intimidating election officials and asking a federal court to block him from interfering in the midterm elections.

The lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in Washington, D.C., comes as the Trump administration mounts a highly public offensive against voter fraud in California just two weeks before Election Day and as federal agents face allegations they are questioning people at their homes about their voter status.

The Department of Justice has sued state and local officials, demanding they not count the ballots of roughly 20,000 California voters that the DOJ alleges are noncitizens and suggesting they will face prosecution if they do. The Trump administration is currently scrutinizing an additional 17,000 California voters, according to a court filing.

Jeffries, Schumer sign on 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who’s in line to become speaker if his party retakes the House, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with other Democratic groups and a California voter, allege in their lawsuit that the Trump administration has engaged in a pattern of intimidation intended to frighten officials into complying with unlawful demands to thwart voting.

The executive branch has no authority to assert authority over states’ maintenance of their own voter rolls and determinations of who is qualified to vote, they say. The U.S. Constitution assigns states the responsibility of administering elections.

“Thwarted in Congress and the courts, the administration has now simply disregarded the tools Congress provided it and fashioned its own cudgels instead,” lawyers for the Democrats write in their legal complaint.

The lawsuit names Trump, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and the leaders of both agencies as defendants.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Justice Department said in a statement that it enforces federal election law and that election integrity is a top priority. Every action the DOJ has taken related to this year’s elections, the statement said, “is grounded in law and being litigated in open court.”

Homeland Security called the lawsuit a “political stunt.”

Dozens of states unsuccessfully sued by DOJ

Noncitizen voting is a rare phenomenon, studies have consistently found. The Justice Department this week charged 38 noncitizens in California with election crimes, an infinitesimal percentage of registered voters. 

Even if all 20,000 individuals on the DOJ list are noncitizens, it would represent only about 0.08% of the nearly 23.2 million registered voters in California. 

For more than a year, the Trump administration has attempted to influence how states run elections. The Justice Department sued dozens of states — all unsuccessfully — to force them to hand over sensitive data on voters. Homeland Security refashioned a powerful computer program called SAVE into a tool that can verify citizenship, though critics say it falsely flags U.S. citizens.

Trump pushed Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, which would have required voters nationwide to prove their citizenship. The legislation passed the House but encountered bipartisan opposition in the Senate, where a handful of Republicans and Democrats prevented it from advancing.

Trump also attempted to use the U.S. Postal Service to impose national restrictions on voting by mail. The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the Postal Service rules from taking effect ahead of the midterms.

The broad effort has played out as Trump’s political fortunes appear to be dimming. Just 36% of likely voters approve of Trump’s performance, according to a New York Times-Siena University poll released Wednesday. If Democrats retake the House or Senate, they will likely initiate a myriad of investigations into Trump and his administration that could consume the final two years of his term.

New blitz in California

Against that backdrop, the Trump administration has in recent days launched a new voter fraud blitz targeting California, a blue state that mails ballots to all voters. 

Last week the Justice Department provided state and local officials with 20,000 names that it said Homeland Security had identified as likely noncitizens. After giving state officials just 48 hours to act on the list, the DOJ sued. 

On Monday, DOJ attorneys asked for a temporary restraining order that would immediately force California to comply with their demands that these individuals not be provided mail ballots and that their ballots not count unless they offer proof of citizenship. It also suggested in a court filing that Homeland Security could accuse more California voters of being noncitizens.

Nicolas Bartell, associate director of the Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a sub-agency of Homeland Security, said in a declaration filed in court on Tuesday that USCIS “has identified a separate batch of more than 17,000 voting records potentially tied to noncitizens after an initial review of voter rolls.”

But Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan is casting doubt on the reliability of Homeland Security’s review — and arguing complying with the DOJ’s demands would severely disrupt the election locally.

Logan’s office analyzed a sample of 200 names of the 20,000 provided by the Justice Department. In a court filing, lawyers for Logan wrote that his office found that 25.8% of the sample recorded a U.S. birthplace, a guarantee of citizenship except in extremely limited circumstances. About 71% had never voted.

Monica Flores, the assistant registrar-recorder for the Candidate and Voter Services Bureau, wrote in a court declaration that if forced to comply with the Justice Department’s demands, “it would be virtually impossible to timely certify the election results in compliance with state law.”

‘Fearmongering and intimidation’

California state Sen. Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat, at a news conference on Tuesday called the Trump administration’s efforts an attempt to silence voters. She urged voters not to be afraid.

“This is a federal administration that operates through fearmongering and intimidation,” Gonzalez said.

San Francisco, Santa Clara and several advocacy groups sued Homeland Security in September in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging that DHS has authorized broad election-related field operations. Armed agents have been sent to homes to interrogate residents about their voter eligibility, the lawsuit says.

The California Nurses Association, National Nurses United and the Voto Latino Foundation joined the local governments in suing.

A Homeland Security Investigations internal memo dated Aug. 31 describes a “surge initiative” beginning Sept. 1 that includes conducting field interviews. The memo, which was filed in court, identifies California, Georgia, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin as targets of the surge during September. Additional locations are redacted in the document.

“DHS’ stated intention of questioning Americans at their homes weeks before an election is voter intimidation, and protections against this form of harassment extend beyond the polling place,” Hayden Johnson, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a legal advocacy group representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement when the lawsuit was filed.

Justice Department lawyers have responded in court filings that the plaintiffs haven’t identified a single affected voter. The allegations of intimidation also lack specifics, the DOJ says.

The federal government has statutory authority to investigate potential voting by noncitizens,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a filing. “Enjoining the government from even investigating such criminal violations would damage the public interest, not serve it.”

A hearing on a preliminary injunction in the case was held Monday. No decision was immediately issued.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday denied the Trump administration’s emergency request to implement a rule that would terminate gender-affirming care for transgender people incarcerated in federal prisons. 

It means a lower court order that blocked the policy from going into effect will remain in place for now, and gender-affirming healthcare for transgender inmates will continue. 

“This is a critical ruling for our clients and all transgender people in Bureau of Prisons custody,” Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in a statement. “The denial of medically necessary health care, including gender-affirming health care, to people in prison is a violation of their fundamental constitutional rights.”  

The order did not give an explanation. But conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas noted that they would have sided with the Trump administration’s request to stop treatments by lifting a lower court’s injunction. 

The block has been in place since June 2025 by the District Court for the District of Columbia.

The suit stems from President Donald Trump’s executive order that prevented the Bureau of Prisons from providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union sued, representing roughly 1,000 transgender inmates who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which is treated with gender-affirming care such as hormone therapy and other care. 

The class action lawsuit was filed first by two transgender men and one transgender woman at federal prisons in Florida, Minnesota and New Jersey.

The suit argued that the policy violated the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. 

In a brief to the Supreme Court, the Trump administration argued that it rejects recommendations from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, previously followed by the Bureau of Prisons. The Department of Justice contended the recommendations “did not reflect the latest scientific information,” and that the prior policy “raised security and prison-administration concerns that outweighed whatever limited benefits they had.”

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s midterm travel blitz will continue in the coming days, with Election Day on Nov. 3 now less than two weeks out, headlining rallies in several states hosting hard-fought Senate contests seen as toss-ups.  

Trump began his October campaign road trip in GOP-friendly states, but has begun venturing into territory that’s deemed to have become perilous for Republicans.

The GOP is itching to maintain its narrow majority in the U.S. House and Senate, though elections forecasters are offering a far less optimistic outlook for Republicans, as Democrats remain favored to take back the House and more Senate races shift in the party’s favor. 

Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics on Tuesday moved nearly 30 House races toward Democrats.

The Cook Political Report with Amy Walter shifted Senate races in Mississippi and South Carolina toward Democrats on Tuesday. But the elections forecaster also moved a Senate race in Minnesota toward Republicans. 

In the Palmetto State, where South Carolina GOP Sen. Darline Graham faces Democrat Annie Andrews, the Cook Political Report changed its race rating from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” 

Trump was scheduled to rally in Clemson, South Carolina, on Wednesday for Graham, who was appointed in July to serve out the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s term. 

Rush to early voting

More than 16 million Americans have already voted early in the midterm elections as of Wednesday afternoon, according to a tracker from the University of Florida Election Lab. 

Meanwhile, Trump continues to see dismal approval ratings amid the costly war in Iran and its impact at the gas pump. According to AAA, the national average price for a gallon of regular gas stood at $4.26, as of Oct. 21. One year ago, that price stood at about $3.05. 

New polling from The New York Times and CNN offers a snapshot of just how bleak Trump’s approval ratings are with less than two weeks to go until the midterms — hitting record lows in the pair of polls.

In a Times/Siena University national poll, only 36% of likely voters approved of Trump’s performance. Similarly, a CNN/SSRS poll found a 32% approval rating for the president.  

Trump road show

Here’s a closer look at Trump’s travel in the coming days, after recent stops in Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina: 

• The president will head to Sioux City, Iowa, for a rally on Thursday. The Hawkeye State features an open Senate race between Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson and Democrat Josh Turek that the Cook Political Report has listed as a toss-up.
• Trump will then rally in Fort Myers, Florida, on Friday, where the Sunshine State’s Senate race is described as “solid Republican” by the Cook Political Report. Florida GOP Sen. Ashley Moody faces Democrat Angie Nixon. 
• Trump travels to Perry, Georgia, on Saturday for a rally. The Senate race in Georgia is listed as “likely Democrat” by the Cook Political Report. Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is vying for another term against Georgia GOP Rep. Mike Collins. 
• The president will then head north to rally Sunday in Port Huron, Michigan. Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed are battling it out in an open Senate race the Cook Political Report has dubbed a toss-up. 
• On Monday, Trump will rally in Corinth, Mississippi. In the ruby red state, Mississippi GOP Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is competing for another term against Democrat Scott Colom in a race that the Cook Political Report moved from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.”
• On Tuesday, Oct. 27, Trump is set to hold rallies in both Waco and Lubbock, Texas. The Lone Star State features a pivotal Senate race between Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico that the Cook Political Report declares a toss-up. 
• Trump will then travel to Chillicothe, Ohio, on Wednesday, Oct. 28, for a rally. The Buckeye State is also home to another toss-up Senate race listed by the Cook Political Report between Ohio GOP Sen. Jon Husted and Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown.  

Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District incumbent U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Janesville) and his Democratic party challenger, Mitchell Berman, parried for an hour Tuesday in their only face-to-face encounter scheduled before the Nov. 3 election.

The debate took place in the studio of Janesville radio station WCLO and was moderated by Tim Bremel, who hosts the station’s daily morning talk program.

Steil is a corporate lawyer who has represented the 1st District since 2019. Berman is an emergency room nurse who won the Democratic nomination in August. The two took contrasting approaches during the hourlong exchange.

Berman has focused his campaign on rising costs, including for healthcare, and Tuesday he returned several times to the 2025 massive tax and spending bill — the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — that Steil voted for. The Republican-authored legislation cut taxes for the wealthy while cutting funding for Medicaid and other safety-net programs over the next decade.

“Our healthcare has been gutted and has become unaffordable, and we’re seeing politicians in Washington enriching themselves and working at the behest of their corporate donors and special interests,” Berman said in his opening remarks. “That’s why I got into this race, and we need to change and make Washington work for working people again.”

Steil defended his vote and said he has been working “to clean up Washington.” He accused Berman, and Democrats in general, of lying about the 2025 bill’s impact and also appeared to accuse Berman of positions that the challenger never took.

Bremel’s first question cited a poll that put inflation and the cost of living at the top of voters’ concerns. He asked the candidates to identify “one specific federal policy you would prioritize to improve household finances for the residents of the First District.”

Berman called for repealing “blanket tariffs” levied by the Trump administration. “We know that tariffs are a tax on the American people, and everyone knows we’re paying more for everything at the store right now because of that,” Berman said. Steil “has voted to continue these blanket tariffs eight times, and that, to me, I think is unconscionable.”

When it was his turn, Steil praised the Trump administration’s embrace of fossil fuels to “unleash American energy.”

Steil highlighted provisions in the 2025 tax law that cut taxes on overtime pay and tips, a new $6,000 tax deduction for people 65 or older, and another measure that makes changes to the federal child tax credit, expanding it for some families.

“My opponent opposes that tax relief,” Steil said of Berman in a follow-up comment. Berman took exception to that charge.

“Those components of tax relief that my opponent just talked about, I don’t oppose,” Berman said. He asked Steil, however, why those four provisions “for regular working class people” are set to expire after 2028 while the bill’s “tax relief for billionaires was made permanent.”

Steil ignored the direct question. “We just have a firm disagreement,” he told Bremel. “I’m working to reduce taxes for people here in South Central and Southeastern Wisconsin,” he added, and reiterated Berman’s opposition to the 2025 bill without answering the question Berman had posed.

Healthcare costs

Bremel’s next question, focusing on public concerns about healthcare costs, asked the two for their first priority in making “changes to the federal healthcare system,” including how it would be paid for.

Steil again defended his vote on the 2025 bill, accusing Berman of putting out “false information” about the Medicaid provisions. The Republican congressman said the bill “results in an increase in $1 billion in federal money coming to the state of Wisconsin for Medicaid.”

The $1 billion refers to additional Medicaid matching funds to the state under a provision in the 2025-27 Wisconsin budget. That boost resulted from a deal reached between Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican leaders in the state Legislature. State lawmakers and the governor rushed the budget to be signed before the federal provision took effect, which would have cut Wisconsin off from the additional money without the state budget change.

Berman didn’t address that issue, but countered that in contrast to the $1 billion Steil touted, the federal bill cut “a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next 10 years.” He also cited projections that 270,000 Wisconsinites could lose insurance coverage after the expiration of enhanced subsidies to lower the cost of Affordable Care Act marketplace health policies.

“I know what that looks like when people are showing up to the hospital underinsured and uninsured, and that cost gets shifted to folks who have insurance,” Berman said.

Steil said the bill’s Medicaid work requirements on “able-bodied, childless adults of working age” would strengthen the program. He also credited the federal bill for “removing illegal immigrants from receiving free taxpayer-funded healthcare.

According to the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, undocumented immigrants and many immigrants with legal status were already prevented from getting Medicaid coverage.

“This legislation creates red tape, which makes it more difficult for people who qualify for those benefits to obtain them, and so they lose their benefits,” Berman responded.

Berman said nothing about Medicaid and immigrants, but Steil replied, “My opponent is arguing to use your taxpayer dollars for illegal aliens. That was very clear right there.”

Replied Berman, “I don’t believe that’s what I said.”

Campaign finance

In response to another question, about campaign finance and congressional ethics, Berman cited his endorsement by the campaign finance reform group End Citizens United.

“We are a grassroots-funded campaign, and we don’t take any corporate PAC money,” Berman said.

Steil contended that Berman’s claim was a lie because an ad in which the Democrat said he doesn’t take corporate PAC money was paid for by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “What do they take? Corporate PAC money,” Steil charged.

“If you look at my FEC reports, there is no corporate PAC money,” Berman said, referring to his campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission.

Steil’s most recent filings show his campaign has $1.6 million in corporate PAC donations, 31% of the $5.3 million he raised in 2025-26, according to Open Secrets, an independent group that tracks money in politics analyzing FEC data.

On Social Security and Medicare, Steil said the programs should be protected by “rooting out wasteful spending.”

Berman responded by observing that Steil had voted against 2022 legislation authorizing Medicare to negotiate prices on select drugs with pharmaceutical companies, and that the Trump administration had cut jobs from the Social Security Administration, making it more difficult for people to navigate the system.

“Our current administration pardoned multiple people who committed egregious Medicaid and Medicare fraud,” Berman added, “and I was wondering if my opponent would denounce that.”

In response, Steil referred to “significant, record-breaking arrests and convictions in Milwaukee County” relating to Medicaid fraud, but added that “there’s a lot more work to do to root out the waste, fraud, abuse in these federal programs.”

On immigration, Berman called for “transparency and accountability” in the federal agencies responsible for immigration enforcement, “making sure these organizations are following the law and getting the most heinous criminals off of our streets and focused on those folks.”

Steil said immigration policies should be linked to “workforce needs” in the U.S. “I don’t support amnesty,” said Steil. “It sounds like my opponent does.”

For decades, manufactured home builders have been working to shed the old image of boxy trailer homes reserved for the outskirts of cities and suburbia. Now, a small change in federal regulations could open the door for architecture welcomed in more neighborhoods.

This summer’s sweeping housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, removed a 1974 mandate that required every manufactured home to be built on a nonremovable steel frame, known as a chassis. Experts and home producers think the change could help unlock thousands more affordable housing options around the country.

But first, experts say, states have to examine outdated regulations that are blocking the manufactured home industry’s potential. The Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing initiative estimates that 30 states might need to change their regulations to align with the new federal law.

Unlocking manufactured homes from chassis will allow manufactured homes to become multi-family developments, said Stephanie Hawke, associate research director of land use and supply at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

They’ll be cheaper for builders, she noted, and they’ll be easier to stack into two-story and multi-family homes.

“First of all, you were putting a very heavy, expensive thing on the bottom of these homes that is not needed and it is not used, and it’s made out of steel,” Hawke said. “If you’ve got this heavy piece of steel on the bottom of a home, stacking it becomes more difficult.”

Manufactured homes are built entirely in a factory, regulated by U.S. Housing and Urban Development codes, and then trucked to a home site. 

They cost 50% less per square foot than homes built on a site, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute, an industry group. And experts say dropping the chassis could drive down costs by $5,000 to $10,000 per home.

“There’s really the opportunity to stack these manufactured homes to make multi-family developments,” Hawke said. “So it’s unlocking this thing which was primarily used for single-family and it’s making it much more accessible for a multi-family developer, which is great because manufactured housing is far and away the least expensive non-subsidized housing supply in the United States.” 

In a 2026 earnings call, UMH Properties, a publicly traded real estate company that owns and develops manufactured-home communities, said the chassis rule change will allow it to put two-story manufactured homes on existing lots. The company also is considering designs that could combine two stories with duplex units, allowing for smaller, more affordable apartment rentals. 

“You build 2,000 square feet of homes instead of 1,000 square feet on the same piece of land. It’s a very, very important development,” said Eugene Landy, founder and chairman of UMH Properties, on the earnings call. “This is a change that’s gonna help every manufactured home community out in the country.”

Another benefit to removing the chassis, according to Mark Brunner, president of the Manufactured & Modular Home Association of Minnesota, is that manufactured homes can blend more seamlessly into subdivisions because they won’t look too different from other homes.

Under the new law, states are required to certify before July 11, 2027 — or 2028 if their legislatures meet biennially — that they will treat all manufactured homes the same regardless of whether the homes have a chassis or not. So far, at least three states — North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — have modernized the definition of a manufactured home to align automatically with code updates from HUD.

“If you are not essentially in compliance with this new regulatory framework, then you’re really limited both in using manufactured homes and making them, which is obviously an economic driver for a state,” Hawke said. “North Carolina did an incorporation by reference, essentially saying, ‘We are just going to define this like HUD defines it. Go see HUD’s definition.’ It’s a lot simpler.” 

From temporary housing to mobile home parks

Rachel Siegel, a researcher and policy expert for Pew’s housing initiative, said her research has found that more than 30 states are going to need to update their definition of manufactured housing to remove language about a required chassis.

HUD certification now requires equal treatment of homes with and without chassis, and changes to state laws may not be as easy as striking a few words, she said. References to permanent chassis can appear throughout state statutes in various manufactured home policies.

“States vary completely across the country on how they treat manufactured housing,” Siegel said. “This requirement of permanent chassis is really pervasive.”

A Stateline review found use of the “permanent chassis” language currently written on manufactured housing laws include Virginia, Maine, New York, Missouri, South Carolina, Washington, Nevada and Maryland.

Following World War II, a shift in how mobile homes were being used began forming. No longer reserved as temporary housing, mobile homes were designed to be increasingly more permanent. Mobile home communities sprang up, though many were zoned into rural or suburban areas on a city’s edge.

For decades, manufactured homes — called mobile homes until the early 1970s — have been built in factories and trucked to their new locale. Many were unloaded into mobile home communities, specialized zoning districts where residents own their house but rent the land underneath. 

They are far cheaper than site-built houses: The average sales price of a new manufactured home rose from $81,900 in 2019 to $127,200 in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufactured Housing Survey. 

Those factory-built sales have slowed since a late 1990s boom as fewer manufactured home communities have been built since 2000, a trend largely attributed to restrictive zoning and rising land costs. Still, an estimated 20 million people live in one, most of them on acreage owned by a landlord. 

In the past, a home attached to a trailer or visibly hoisted a few feet off the ground were tells of manufactured housing when they first popped up in neighborhoods. But many modern ones are virtually unrecognizable from site-built homes.

“They have the same walls, ceiling, sheetrock, windows and shingles,” said Dustin Brakemeier, who owns and operates manufactured home communities in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. “One’s built in a factory, one’s built outside. They’re the same.’” 

Changing zoning, mortgage rules

Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Dan Moul, who owns a manufactured home park in Oxford Township in Adams County, recalled in an interview that zoning restrictions kept him from expanding the community into an adjoining parcel a few years ago. The township said the land was zoned exclusively for detached single-family residential housing. 

“The bottom line is they look at mobile home communities as that’s where the poor riffraff lives, and we don’t want any more riffraff,” Moul said. 

One of the big domino effects from the removal of the chassis requirement could be state banning or overriding restrictive local zoning policies that targeted manufactured homes. 

In an analysis of over 6,700 zoning districts in Texas, the National Zoning Atlas found 33% of localities have explicit restrictions on manufactured housing and 11% allowed them via special hearing or permit, but not by-right. 

Last year, Kentucky and Texas banned local ordinances that would unreasonably restrict where manufactured homes could be placed. Kentucky also insisted that local governments cannot impose design standards for manufactured homes that are  higher than those for non-manufactured homes. 

Alex Rodino, a real estate agent in Savannah, Georgia, who sells manufactured homes, said the stigma isn’t just among local governments and stodgy neighborhood groups. Some buyers, he said, are confusing modern manufactured housing with the image of older mobile homes.

“I think (that perception) is slowly changing as construction quality improves and traditional housing becomes less affordable,” said Rodino.

Siegel, of Pew, said that because states must align their manufactured housing laws with HUD’s definition by 2027 – there’s an opportunity for states to take a holistic look at their regulations, including whether states can make it easier to define manufactured homes as “real estate.”

Siegel said states also should revisit laws that classify manufactured homes as personal property — like cars. 

“If you own property that’s personal property instead of real estate, you’re not eligible to get a mortgage,” Siegel said. “That’s not about a person’s financial status or financial credibility, and it’s not even about the quality of the home. It’s just this titling component.”

A Pew analysis touting the potential for manufactured homes shows that a typical $100,000 mortgage for a manufactured home would save a borrower roughly $49,000 over the life of the loan when compared with “home-only” or personal property loans, which are the only options now. 

Some states already are taking action: Laws in Georgia, Maine and New York have made it easier for some manufactured homeowners to convert their homes to real property and gain access to mortgage financing.

“If we’re going to title manufactured homes without a chassis the same way as we’re titling manufactured homes with a chassis, let’s make sure that that process is as streamlined and makes the most sense for what these modern homes are today,” Siegel said.

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