Sen. Cory Booker started his speech on Monday at 7 p.m. and said he would continue as long as he is "physically able." (Photo by John Partipilo)

This story was updated at 7:16 CST

U.S. Sen. Cory Booker broke the record for longest floor speech in the history of the Senate on Tuesday, surpassing the 24-hour and 18-minute record set in 1957 when South Carolina’s Strom Thurmond attempted to prevent passage of the Civil Rights Act.

Booker, a Democrat who began his remarks Monday at 7 p.m. saying he wanted to highlight President Donald Trump’s “complete disregard for the rule of law,” by Tuesday at 7:20 p.m. was raspy-voiced, occasionally teary-eyed, and wearing what he called a “ripe” shirt.

It was New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s Democratic leader, who interrupted Booker to say he had broken Thurmond’s record.

“Do you know how proud this caucus is of you? Do you know how proud America is of you?” Schumer said to applause and a standing ovation from his fellow Democrats and visitors.

Booker noted that Thurmond with his 1957 filibuster “tried to stop the rights upon which I stand.”

“I’m not here, though, because of his speech. I’m here despite his speech. I’m here because, as powerful as he was, the people were more powerful,” Booker said.

Wyoming Sen. Cynthia Lummis was one of just two Republican lawmakers in the chamber at the time. Lummis joined Democrats in celebrating Booker’s accomplishment by standing and clapping.

Guests and staff are normally barred from any displays of support or disapproval while sitting in the gallery, but Utah Sen. John Curtis, a Republican who was presiding over the chamber, allowed it.

Booker finally yielded the floor a few minutes after 8 p.m. Tuesday.

Booker’s record-breaking speech comes as the Democratic Party faces criticism from voters who say the party’s leaders are not doing enough to stand up to Trump’s actions, especially those that experts say fly in the face of legal precedent.

“These are not normal times in our nation, and they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate,” said Booker, 55. “The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”

Booker, a Democrat first elected to the Senate in 2013, on Monday said he’d continue speaking as long as he is “physically able.” After his speech surpassed 20 hours, he looked exhausted, joked about his shirt being “ripe,” and took occasional breaks by yielding the floor for questions from his Democratic colleagues, who praised the former college football player for his endurance.

His speech comes as the Democratic Party faces criticism from voters who say the party’s leaders are not doing enough to stand up to Trump’s actions, especially those that experts say fly in the face of legal precedent.

“This is not right or left. It is right or wrong. This is not a partisan moment. It is a moral moment,” Booker said early Tuesday afternoon. “Where do you stand?”

Booker’s speech is one of the longest ever given on the Senate floor. The record was previously held by Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina Republican who held the floor for 24 hours and 18 minutes in 1957 in protest of the Civil Rights Act.

The senator covered a breadth of topics: health care, Social Security, Medicaid, grocery prices, free speech, veterans, public education, world leaders, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, and national security concerns. He read letters and comments from constituents and he quoted speeches from the late Rep. John Lewis — invoking Lewis’ famous call to action to “get in good trouble” — and the late Sen. John McCain.

Booker, a former mayor of Newark, also assailed Trump’s policies on immigration. He said the Trump administration is doing “outrageous things like disappearing people off of American streets, violating fundamental principles of this document” — here he held up a copy of the U.S. Constitution — “invoking the Alien Enemies Act from the 1700s that was last used to put Japanese Americans into internment camps.”

“Do we see what’s happening?” Booker asked.

He spent about a half-hour reading the account of Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian citizen who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for 12 days in March. He also noted that the Trump administration conceded Monday that it deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Maryland man with protected legal status, to an El Salvador prison because of an “administrative error.”

“The government can’t walk up to a human being and grab them off the street and put them on a plane and send them to one of the most notorious prisons in the world, and just say, as one of our authorities did, ‘Oopsie,’” Booker said.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who asked about the impact of potential Medicaid cuts and tariffs about 15 hours into Booker’s speech, told Booker he has the support of the entire party.

“Your strength, your fortitude, your clarity has just been nothing short of amazing. All of America is paying attention to what you’re saying. All of America needs to know there’s so many problems — the disastrous actions of this administration in terms of how they’re helping only the billionaires and hurting average families — you have brought this forth with such clarity,” he said.

New Jersey Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Jersey Monitor maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Terrence T. McDonald for questions: info@newjerseymonitor.com.

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French wine on display in a District of Columbia shop on March 13, 2025, the day President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on European wine and French Champagne. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — American business owners and consumers are bracing as President Donald Trump teases, with few details, the announcement of sweeping tariffs expected Wednesday afternoon.

Trump has dubbed April 2 “Liberation Day,” his self-imposed deadline to fulfill his campaign promise of taxing imported products from around the globe.

The White House confirmed Tuesday that Trump had made a decision on tariff levels but would not provide further details.

“He’s with his trade and tariff team right now perfecting it to make sure this is a perfect deal for the American people and the American worker, and you will all find out in about 24 hours from now,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday afternoon at the daily briefing.

The new tariffs come as Trump already imposed 25% duties on imported steel and aluminum, as well as 25% levies on foreign cars and vehicle parts set to begin Thursday.

But the anticipation of more tariffs on numerous imported goods has stopped business owners in their tracks as uncertainty about costs and consumer reaction clouds day-to-day decisions.

Stockpiling coffee cups

Gabe Hagen, owner of Brick Road Coffee in Tempe, Arizona, said small business owners are feeling “whiplash.”

“Are we going to have a tariff? Are we not? It’s not easy for me to change my prices overnight. But at the same time, if all of the sudden I have my cost of goods going up, it’ll put me into a loss territory.”

Most disposable beverage cups are produced in China, so Hagen made the decision last year to purchase and store $26,000 worth of coffee cups in anticipation of tariffs.

He also had to pull back $50,000 in capital for development on a second shop location, he said.

“The main thing we’re asking for is stability,” said Hagen, who also sits on the Small Business for America’s Future advisory council.

Walt Rowen, owner and president of Susquehanna Glass Company in Columbia, Pennsylvania, said “there’s no clarity at this point at all.”

“Everybody is in a holding pattern. We’re stuck wondering what is going to happen,” Rowen said. “We can sort of know that we’re gonna have to increase prices if the tariffs come into effect. But what we don’t know is if we increase prices, how much does that affect demand?”

Rowen’s historic 1925 three-story production facility right in the middle of the southeastern Pennsylvania town employs anywhere from 35 to 65 workers, depending on the season.

Through a variety of decorating techniques, his employees engrave or imprint screened paint logos, names and other messages on wine glasses he sources from a manufacturer in Italy and mugs made in Vietnam.

Rowen’s production rooms buzz, especially in the months leading up to the holidays, when his employees laser engrave and hand paint personalized ornaments sourced from China for the Lenox Corporation.

“My Christmas ornament business is huge for us in the fourth quarter, and I would normally be planning to bring in 20 to 30 people to work in that category of business. But if those prices increase by 30, 40, 50%, I don’t know how many we’re going to sell this year. So I can’t even plan production. It’s frightening,” he said.

States to feel economic pain

Economists are warning the rollercoaster tariff policy coming from the Oval Office is undermining economic growth and trust in the U.S. as a stable trading partner.

Trump told reporters as recently as Sunday that he was planning to slap tariffs on “all countries.”

His administration’s mid-March levies on aluminum and steel imports sparked retaliation from the European Union and Canada, which beginning in mid-April will enforce taxes on hundreds of American products crossing their borders, including iconic Kentucky bourbon, Tennessee whiskey and Harley-Davidson motorcycles.

Unless Trump carves out exceptions on certain products, more states can expect to feel economic pain, said Mary Lovely, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

“For example, a state like Washington state is very export dependent, not just obviously aircraft, but also apples and a wide variety of other manufacturing and agricultural (products). That state will be really hard hit if there are retaliatory tariffs, both from Canada, which is a market, but also from Asia,” Lovely said.

Trump’s tariffs on products from Canada, China and Mexico could cost the typical American family at least an extra $1,200 annually in price increases, according to a report Lovely co-authored. The dollar amount increases when calculating for universal tariffs on all imported goods, and when accounting for retaliation from other countries.

European Union President Ursula von der Leyen already made clear in a speech Monday that the bloc wants to negotiate with Trump but will apply more levies on American products given no other choice.

“Europe has not started this confrontation. We do not necessarily want to retaliate, but we have a strong plan to retaliate if necessary,” she said.

Tariffs on Canada

On Capitol Hill, Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced a resolution to block the president’s tariffs on Canada, which he triggered under his emergency powers.

Trump’s use of the International Emergency Economic Power Act to slap 25% tariffs on products out of Canada and Mexico marked the first time a president had ever done so.  

“We think that the economic chaos that’s being caused and markets being roiled and consumer confidence dropping, and some predicting recession, together with a bipartisan vote might convince the White House — ‘Hey, look, there’s a better way to treat American citizens and customers,’” Kaine told reporters outside the U.S. Capitol Tuesday.

Kaine said his message to Republicans is “stand up for your constituents and say no tax increase on them.”

The Senate is expected to vote on the legislation late Tuesday or Wednesday.

Bill Butcher, founder of Port City Brewing in Alexandria, Virginia, spoke alongside the senators Tuesday, expressing concern about the price of Canadian Pilsner malt that he’s used for 14 years.

“It’s a very specific strain of high quality barley that grows in the cold climate of Canada, and there’s not a suitable U.S. substitute that we can get at the same quality to make our beer,” he said. “If there’s a 25% tariff on this basic ingredient, it’s going to slow our business down.

“By the time it goes from us to our distributor to the retailer to the consumer, this $12.99 six-pack of beer is going to end up at $18.99. How many people are still going to want to buy a six-pack of great-tasting beer but at $18.99? People are going to start looking for a different substitute,” Butcher said.

White House defends tariffs

In an emailed statement Tuesday to States Newsroom, White House spokesperson Kush Desai said Trump used tariffs “to deliver historic job, wage, and economic growth with no inflation in his first term, and he’s set to restore American Greatness in his second term.”

“Fearmongering by the media and Democrats about President Trump’s America First economic agenda isn’t going to change the fact that industry leaders have already made trillions in investment commitments to make in America, and that countries ranging from Vietnam to India to the UK have already begun to offer up trade concessions that would help level the playing field for American industries and workers,” Desai said.

Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor on trade, told “Fox News Sunday with Shannon Bream” Trump’s new tariffs will raise $600 billion a year for the U.S., plus another $100 billion from the 25% duty on foreign cars that will launch this week.

The government would gain that revenue from U.S. businesses who will need to pay the duty rates to get their purchased goods through the U.S. border.

Erica York with the Tax Foundation, a center-right think tank that advocates for lower taxes, said Tuesday that number is “very, very wrong” because Navarro is basing the math on the current level of imports.

“If we put a 20% tax on imports, people are not going to buy as many imports, so that reduces how much revenue you get,” York said. “Also, mechanically, if firms are making all of these tariff payments, that reduces their revenue. They don’t have as much to pay workers (and) to return to shareholders.”

U.S. stocks showed their biggest losses since 2022, according to Monday’s report on the first quarter of 2025.

Both Moody’s Analytics and Goldman Sachs warned on Monday that they’ve raised their forecasts for an economic recession to 35%.

Legislation introduced in the U.S. Senate would order the U.S. Department of Agriculture to resume frozen payments to farmers on contracts that have already been signed. (Photo by Gregory Conniff for the Wisconsin Examiner)

A group of U.S. Senate Democrats introduced legislation Monday that would order the agriculture department to resume paying farmers on contracts already signed.

“Donald Trump and Elon Musk are stiffing our farmers and processors — taking away resources these folks were guaranteed, threatening small businesses’ ability to stay open and people’s livelihoods,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), one of 17 cosponsors.

In addition to 15 Democrats, two independent senators who caucus with them, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine, signed on to the bill.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has stopped reimbursing farmers and farm organizations for money they’ve spent, despite contracts they have already signed with the agency. The contracts call for farmers to be reimbursed for expenses they incur under the contracts.

Honor Farmer Contracts Act, introduced by Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), would require USDA “to release illegally withheld funding for all contracts and agreements previously entered into by the U.S. Department of Agriculture,” Baldwin’s office said in a statement announcing the legislation.

Under President Donald Trump, “USDA has refused to make reimbursement payments to fulfill signed contracts, without any indication of when or whether farmers will be paid the money they paid out and are owed,” Baldwin’s office said.

Farmers and organizations serving them contract with the USDA for various programs to connect with local markets and improve their productivity. The department then pays farmers back for the expenses they incur under those contracts. The department’s failure to pay strains finances both for the individual farmers and for the organizations that work with them under the programs, Baldwin’s office said.

The legislation would require USDA to unfreeze all signed agreements and make all past due payments as quickly as possible. It would also bar the department from canceling agreements or contracts unless there has been a failure to comply with their terms and conditions.

The bill would prohibit the department from closing county offices, field offices or centers of the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service or the Rural Development Service without notification at least 60 days in advance and justifying the closing to Congress.

On March 7, Baldwin said the USDA had resumed another previously stalled stream of funding, $6.5 million in grants for dairy businesses to diversify and market their products.

Baldwin has also demanded the Trump administration to reverse its cancellation in March of a program connecting farmers to local food banks.

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A Social Security Administration sign on a field office building in San Jose, California, in 2020. (Photo by Michael Vi/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Democrats warned Monday about President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s plans to pare down the Social Security Administration, an agency that pays out benefits to tens of millions of Americans.

Lawmakers, a Social Security recipient and a former commissioner cried foul over the U.S. DOGE Service and administration’s agenda to cut jobs, terminate office leases and change how Americans can contact the agency.

Trump and his top reelection campaign donor are “attacking Social Security through the back door by making it harder and harder for people to collect the benefits they are legally entitled to,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren said during a virtual press briefing hosted by the Democratic National Committee.

“The world’s richest man may not understand what it means to worry about not getting a monthly Social Security check, but tens of millions of Americans know that fear deep down in their guts,” said Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Development.

Just over 73 million Americans received retirement and disability benefits last month, according to the Social Security Administration.

The agency will distribute approximately $1.6 trillion in benefits this year, according to its own data. The program accounts for roughly one-fifth of federal spending.

Musk has a recent history of publicly attacking the agency. He told podcast host Joe Rogan in February that Social Security is “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” Weeks later on Fox Business, Musk said to host Larry Kudlow that Social Security is “the big one to eliminate” when it comes to fraud and spending.

Job cuts, office closures

In early March, Musk’s DOGE announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs from Social Security and close numerous regional offices, according to media reports.

Despite potential office closures, the administration also plans a policy change that will require recipients to show up in person to verify certain changes to their accounts.

A federal judge Thursday temporarily restrained the Social Security Administration from sharing access to any sensitive files with DOGE.

“I can tell you that democracy is waking up to this very, very real threat that they are coming for Social Security,” former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley said during the briefing.

O’Malley, also a former governor of Maryland, accused the Trump administration of allowing wait times for the agency’s 1-800 number to skyrocket after he and former President Joe Biden worked to improve the hotline.

“Make no mistake about it, in order to rob Social Security, the co-presidency of Musk and Trump must sour enough Americans against the agency, undermine trust in the agency, and they do that by breaking and debilitating the agency’s ability to provide a high level of customer service,” O’Malley said.

Darlene Jones, a Social Security recipient from Arizona who had to retire early and still cares for an adult child with disabilities, told reporters on the call, “We worked our entire lives to own what we have. President Trump and shadow president Musk have to be stopped before they harm seniors, especially those in rural America.”

DNC Chair Ken Martin said Trump and Musk “sure as hell don’t know how much it costs to make dinner for a week, buy a bag of pet food or catch the bus every day.”

Social Security data shows that among beneficiaries 65 and older, roughly 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security checks for 90% of their total income.

White House says intent to identify waste, fraud

In an emailed statement provided to States Newsroom, the White House brushed off the attacks.

“Any American receiving Social Security benefits will continue to receive them. The sole mission of DOGE is to identify waste, fraud, and abuse only,” according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Acting Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudek said in a press release Monday that the agency “is taking several important steps to increase transparency and accountability in order to help others understand our agency’s work and the complexities we navigate.”

Nearly 3,000 employees have either been placed on administrative leave or accepted offers to leave the agency in exchange for a one-time payment of up to $25,000, according to data linked in the press release.

Additionally, the agency plans to terminate 64 leases, saving roughly $4 million in annual rent.

Musk took to his social media platform X to defend the new policy change requiring in-person office visits as a way to avoid fraud.

Confirmation hearing

Trump’s pick to lead the agency, Frank Bisignano of New Jersey, president and CEO of Fiserv, will appear before the Senate Committee on Finance Tuesday.

Warren said she and Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, top Democrat on the Finance Committee, co-wrote a letter to Bisignano this weekend to put him “on notice.”

“These new developments leave us deeply concerned that DOGE and the Trump Administration are setting up the SSA for failure — a failure that could cut off Social Security benefits for millions of Americans — and that will then be used to justify a ‘private sector fix,’” Warren and Wyden wrote.

A 2011 photo shows an exhibit at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum that commemorated the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act in August 2010. (FDR Presidential Library & Museum/via Flickr)

The Social Security Administration has summarily closed a federally funded consortium of research centers, including one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, that studied demographic trends and the impacts of policy on the federal retirement system.

Terminating the program has sharply limited the program’s research sources at a time when the Social Security Administration is poised to cut 7,000 workers, close field offices across the country and cancel the ability for people to file for benefits by telephone.

“It’s very, very frightening,” said Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works. “I’ve been working on this issue for 50 years and I think this is the most destabilized I’ve ever seen the administration of Social Security.”

The UW center was one of six members of the Social Security Administration Retirement and Disability Research Consortium. The consortium was established in its current form in 2019, a successor to retirement research centers established in 1998.

The Trump administration announced Feb. 21 that the consortium was being dissolved in keeping with an executive order President Donald Trump signed Jan. 22 gutting diversity activities across the federal government.

Shutting down the consortium canceled 19 research projects that were underway at the UW’s Social Security research center, said its director, J. Michael Collins. Collins, a specialist in family economics at UW-Madison. Collins holds positions at the university’s School of Human Ecology, The La Follette School of Public Affairs and several other university offices.

Research by the center and its consortium partners in collaboration with Social Security represented an important collaboration that has helped shape policy for the 90-year-old Social Security program, Collins said. Studies on the income and expenses of older Americans, for example, have helped guide the formulas that the Social Administration uses to develop its annual cost of living adjustments.

“It really is a collaboration, and that is hard to build,” Collins said — and may be difficult to recreate.

Along with canceling the consortium agreements, the Social Security Administration has relocated its own research operations while also cutting staff.

“They’ve greatly reduced their ability to conduct research internally,” Collins said. “Why would they want to eliminate their research capacity to that degree?”

Established during the Great Depression to lift seniors out of poverty, the Social Security program is primarily funded by payroll taxes. As each generation retires, its members’ benefits are paid by the generation of workers behind them.

Social Security provides retirement benefits as well as income for people with disabilities. About 73 million people in the U.S. receive benefits from the system, according to the Social Security Administration. Three out of four are 65 or older. Another 15% are people with disabilities under the age of 65.

One project underway at the UW center when the research consortium was canceled was looking at the impact of state mandates requiring employers to provide sick leave for employees — a law on the books in about a half-dozen states. (Wisconsin is not one of them.)

That study could have provided evidence whether or not mandated sick leave policies reduce the need for future permanent disability claims. “Either way, that’s an important question for Social Security” to understand, Collins said.

Another project cut off was a study of Long Covid — the lingering collection of health-hampering symptoms reported by millions of COVID-19 patients. Understanding how the condition affects trends in work, health and disability could inform the projections Social Security actuaries must make as they look at the program’s prospects 75 years into the future, Collins said.

The UW center was also contributing research to help structure Wisconsin’s ABLE account — a savings account for people with disabilities that the state is in the process of establishing.

The UW center was launched with a five-year grant for $12 million. The grant was renewed in 2024 with another five-year grant that was supposed to be for $15 million. About $2.3 million of that has been spent, but with the termination there will be no reports or final studies, Collins said.

Altman of Social Security Works said research has been integral to the Social Security system from when it was established in the Great Depression, spearheaded in part by people with ties to UW-Madison.

“They’ve always done research to determine how the program should be structured, what the needs of the American people are, how economic security can be improved and what other countries are doing,” Altman said. “You have to be informed to have legislation that will work and have administration that will work.”

The Feb. 21 Social Security Administration press release announcing the termination of the research consortium said the research center agreements “included a focus on research addressing DEI in Social Security, retirement, and disability policy” and that ending them was in line with ending “fraudulent and wasteful” initiatives.

“The reality is that Social Security is gender neutral, racially neutral,” Altman said. Nevertheless, she said, various social differences are important in understanding how disparate impacts might affect the long-term operation of the program. For example, an accurate projection for the program’s resources and ability to pay benefits in the future requires considering the differing labor force participation rates of men and women.

Altman said contrary to the claims of the Trump administration, its actions with the Social Security Administration are “the opposite of rooting out waste, because it’s creating it.”

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Vivent Health conducts tests for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. Federal funds that cover the cost of those tests and other HIV prevention services are being considered for drastic reductions. (Photo courtesy of Vivent Health)

Wisconsin stands to lose at least $1.2 million a year to help prevent the spread of HIV if the federal government follows through on reported plans to drastically cut HIV prevention.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the administration of President Donald Trump was planning sharp reductions at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Division of HIV Prevention housed there.

The U.S. spends about $1.3 billion annually on HIV prevention. That includes just over $1.2 million that goes to the Wisconsin division of Vivent Health, a multistate nonprofit specializing in care for people who have HIV or are at risk of being infected.

Vivent Health’s federal HIV prevention grant comes through the Wisconsin Department of Health Services. A department spokesperson said the agency could not provide the total it receives each year in federal HIV prevention funds by the end of the day Thursday.

At Vivent, the money has helped reach tens of thousands of people across the state to help them avoid infection with the human immunodeficiency virus, said Bill Keeton, Vivent’s vice president and chief advocacy officer.

The funds are used for outreach to people who are vulnerable for HIV, he said. They cover the costs of testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections. They also cover services to help people who are candidates for medication that can prevent HIV infection as well as medication after being exposed to the virus.

“We do thousands of tests a year throughout the state,” said Keeton. Vivent has 10 clinics around in Wisconsin and additional mobile clinics for outreach to people who use drugs. Drug use can heighten the risk of transmitting HIV, he said.

In addition, HIV prevention funds cover condom distribution and other methods of  harm reduction, Keeton said, along with education to help people learn how to use condoms properly and other ways to protect themselves from HIV infection.

“These are services and programs that are designed to reach out and provide education, testing and resources  designed to prevent HIV from occurring,” Keeton said. “These dollars that we get from the federal government comprise the lion’s share of the resources we get to do this work.”

In 2024, Vivent in Wisconsin provided 2,200 HIV tests, about half that number for Hepatitis C and nearly 1,900 for other primary sexually transmitted infections. The organization distributed 300,000 condoms and 2.7 million clean syringes for drug users. 

Vivent assisted 369 people with navigating the decision to use pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, daily medication to ward off the HIV virus in a person who is not already infected. Vivent has 678 patients in Wisconsin using PrEP.

The CDC has reported HIV infections have fallen by 12% nationally, from 36,300 in 2018 to 31,800 in 2022. Cutting off prevention funds could reverse that trend, Keeton said, and would be a setback to efforts to end HIV — an objective that has been embraced by the last three presidential administrations, including Trump’s in his first term.

“New diagnoses will increase,” Keeton said. “New transmissions will occur — unfortunately, that means people will take on $500,000 in lifetime health care costs managing their HIV.”

People will get sick, deaths will increase along with the difficulty of managing chronic illness that would otherwise be avoidable, he said, along with increasing health costs.  

“American taxpayers and health care consumers will bear the brunt of these shortsighted policy changes,” Keeton said.

With continued support, however, those outcomes can be avoided. “We have the tools, we have the science, we have the interventions that can work to end HIV,” he said. “What we lack is the resources.”

Keeton told the Wisconsin Examiner that Vivent and other providers of HIV-related care started getting word earlier this week that the HIV prevention division was “getting a lot of attention” in the White House.

He acknowledged that replacing the federal money would be a challenge given the $1 billion price tag it would carry nationally. Other organizations involved in HIV health care and advocacy are looking at mounting a court challenge if the Trump administration follows through on the proposal to cut the prevention programs.

For now, however, Vivent’s focus is on heading off the potential cuts. Keeton said the organization is advocating with members of Congress and encouraging them to “weigh in with the administration” to keep prevention programs funded. 

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As Congress considers cuts to Medicaid, advocates warn that proposals will hike state costs or reduce services for people with no other resources. (Getty Images)

Of the laundry list of proposed Medicaid cuts circulating on Capitol Hill, policy watchers say some stand out as the most likely to be implemented because they’ve either been tried before, frequently embraced, or both.

Advocates argue that none of the ideas will actually help the program do a better job of its central mission: make it possible for poor and low-income people to get either primary or long-term health care. Instead, they contend, the outcome would be to transfer the costs to states unwilling to cut services or kick people off the rolls who have no other health care resources.

Broad outlines of the proposed Medicaid wish list for Congressional Republicans were outlined in a U.S. House memo that Politico published in mid-January, along with 50 pages of details. The memo is the basis for a summary of those proposed cuts from policy analysts and advocates at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.

Among the proposals that have garnered the most attention and concern are:

• Instituting work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
• Capping the current federal contribution to a state’s Medicaid budget, also known as turning Medicaid funds into a state block grant.
• Lowering the federal government’s minimum share of the cost of Medicaid, currently 50%.
• Ending the increased federal government match for states that have adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

Additional proposals would make other changes to how the federal matching rate is calculated or applied and reverse several Biden administration rules that made Medicaid enrollment easier and broadened access to benefits, according to the Georgetown summary.

Medicaid is funded by a combination of federal and state money. Proposals that lower the federal share would require states to pick up a larger share of the cost to avoid reducing coverage.

“The scale of the cuts Congress is contemplating is so large it really will cause fiscal peril for the state,” says Tamara Jackson of the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities.

Medicaid work requirements

The congressional proposals include imposing work requirements for “able-bodied” people as a condition of receiving Medicaid.

The congressional memo specifies that work requirements would not include “pregnant women, primary caregivers of dependents, individuals with disabilities or health-related barriers to employment, and full-time students.” It pegs the savings from a work requirement at $100 billion over 10 years.

According to KFF, a nonpartisan, nonprofit health policy research organization, however, more than two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are working, and those who aren’t would largely fall into the groups the memo says would be exempt.

The first Trump administration approved state Medicaid program waivers that included work requirements, while the Biden administration withdrew its approval. Among them was a requirement in Wisconsin dating from the administration of former Gov. Scott Walker.

The GOP majority in the Wisconsin Legislature passed a bill in 2022 that included a Medicaid work-requirement variation, but it was vetoed by Gov. Tony Evers.

According to KFF, a Congressional Budget Office analysis of a 2023 U.S. House proposal to institute Medicaid work requirements found that while it would save the federal government $109 billion, it would also increase the number of uninsured people by 600,000 without increasing employment. An Arkansas work requirement instituted in 2018 but later found unlawful by a federal court led 18,000 people to lose coverage.

“What we know is, even though people are working or would be technically subject to exemptions, there are very significant administrative burdens on enrollees to prove that or be found ineligible,” says Richelle Andrae, associate director of government relations for the Wisconsin Primary Health Care Association. The organization represents federally qualified health centers that serve low-income patients, including those on BadgerCare Plus and those who are uninsured.

“More time-sensitive paperwork and steps that are hard for people to understand or do and lots of people trying to complete administrative tasks at the same time are a recipe for mistakes, by individuals and government agencies that must do the work,” says Jackson. “That is how policies like work requirements and more frequent eligibility checks save money. Eligible people lose coverage or struggle to get in.”

Block grants

Currently Medicaid pays states at least 50% of all Medicaid costs, with states paying the balance.

In President Donald Trump’s first term, his administration attempted to replace that long-standing guarantee with a block grant — a fixed amount of money per Medicaid beneficiary in the state, regardless of the actual cost.

That per-patient cap on federal funds “would instead radically restructure Medicaid financing,” according to the Georgetown summary.

The cost would be felt across the board, from long-term care in nursing homes or in the community home care to primary health care through BadgerCare Plus, health care providers say, to the detriment of patients.

“Whatever the proposals are that are at the federal level — changing the formula, [per-patient] caps, at the end of the day they they’re all aimed at reducing funding for the Medicaid program, and it really is a vital lifeline for long-term care services and support,” says Lisa Davison, executive director of LeadingAge Wisconsin. The organization represents nursing homes and assisted living providers in the nonprofit, publicly owned and for profit sectors.

Reducing support would send some patients who now have Medicaid coverage back into the pool of uninsured people, says Patricia Sarvela, chief development officer for Partnership Community Health Center, a federally qualified health center in the Fox Valley that serves uninsured people as well as BadgerCare recipients.

Lacking health insurance, people are likely to put off addressing symptoms until their condition worsens enough for them to go to the emergency room, Sarvela says.

Directly or indirectly, taxpayers will likely wind up having to cover the cost of that care, however. “There might be short-term federal savings but ultimately at the end of the day it’s going to cost the taxpayers a lot more because patients will then not have health insurance,” Sarvela says.

Changes to federal match

Several proposed changes relate to the amount of the federal Medicaid match or how it’s calculated.

A proposal published by the Paragon Institute in July 2024 calls for reducing the federal match below 50% of the costs. The Paragon Institute has close ties to the Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025, the 900-page document that, although disavowed by Trump last year, has been echoed in numerous actions since he took office.

In 10 states the federal match is at the minimum and would likely be lowered, the Georgetown summary says, adding: “These states would likely have to make deep cuts to their Medicaid programs in response.”

The states are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Washington and Wyoming.

Other states receive a higher federal match; Wisconsin gets 60% of its costs covered. It’s not clear whether those states’ matches would also be reduced under the proposal or other Medicaid reduction proposals.

Medicaid expansion

Another likely cut would be to reduce the additional federal match for Medicaid recipients whose incomes are between 100% and 138% of the federal poverty line.

The additional match was included in the Affordable Care Act, enacted in 2010. Originally Medicaid expansion was mandatory under the act, but a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the ACA made Medicaid expansion voluntary.

States that have accepted the expansion got a 90% federal match for the added beneficiaries. The Congressional memo proposes ending the higher match, and some states that have expanded are already considering ending expansion if that happens.

Wisconsin never accepted Medicaid expansion, however, so that change would not directly affect the state. Although Evers first ran in 2018 on a vow to accept Medicaid expansion after Walker rejected it, he’s been blocked from doing so by the GOP majority in the Legislature.

As he has with every budget he’s proposed since taking office, Evers has included accepting Medicaid expansion in his 2025-27 budget proposal.

In an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner last month after a visit with constituents in Port Washington to promote his budget, Evers said he didn’t consider leaving out Medicaid expansion, despite predictions that it would be pulled back by Republicans.

“First of all, we don’t know if it’s going to go away,” Evers said. Under the current 90% match, he said, Wisconsin would get about $2 billion in additional federal money every two years and the additional people covered in the state “would get better health insurance, so it’s a win-win-win.”

Evers acknowledged that in the current Congress, there’s a risk for sharp reductions in Medicaid.

If that happens, “it would be disastrous,” Evers said. “We have lots of people on Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin.”

Among states, Wisconsin’s Medicaid profile is “pretty average,” he added.

“There are places in the country where Medicaid is a huge, huge player, and if they would get rid of Medicaid, our health care system would implode. There’s just no question about that. That’s the thing that concerns me.”

This story is Part Three in a series.

Read Part One: Wisconsin patients, families are wary as Congress prepares for Medicaid surgery

Read Part Two: How Medicaid fuels an economic engine for caregivers, family members and patients

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Billionaire Elon Musk, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump, arrives for a meeting with Senate Republicans at the U.S. Capitol on March 5, 2025. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — With thousands of federal workers already laid off, President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants his Cabinet members to “keep good people” and does not want to “see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut.”

Trump, in meeting with his Cabinet members and other officials earlier in the day, also informed them that billionaire Elon Musk could guide departments on what to do but would not make staffing or policy decisions for the agencies, according to reporting by POLITICO.

Trump and Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service have taken on massive efforts to try to reduce federal government spending — leading to dizzying cuts across wide swaths of the federal workforce.

Those mass firings have prompted a slew of lawsuits filed in federal court and questions about the extent of Musk’s authority within the executive branch.

The president, speaking to reporters Thursday afternoon, said the Cabinet meeting focused on those massive reductions within the federal government.

Asked what Trump told Cabinet members Thursday regarding Musk and his authority to carry out actions, the president said they had “a great meeting” and clarified that “the people that aren’t doing a good job, that are unreliable, don’t show up to work, etcetera — those people can be cut.”

Musk’s role 

Musk also, according to POLITICO, has reportedly admitted that DOGE has made some mistakes.

Trump, who told the press several times Thursday that he wants the Cabinet members to “keep good people,” said “we’re going to be watching them, and Elon and the group are going to be watching them, and if they can cut, it’s better, and if they don’t cut, then Elon will do the cutting.”

The president also said he thinks Musk and the DOGE service have done “an amazing job.”

DOGE stands for Department of Government Efficiency, although the entity is not a Cabinet department and is temporary under a Trump executive order.

“We want to get rid of the people that aren’t working, that aren’t showing up and have a lot of problems, and so they’re working together with Elon, and I think we’re doing a really great job. We’re cutting it down. We have to, for the sake of our country,” Trump said.

William Rutter, USDA plant pathologist and nematologist, examines sprouting plants for research on managing Meloidogyne enterolobii and other root-knot nematodes. This photo was taken at the U.S. Vegetable Laboratory in Charleston, South Carolina, on Jan. 28, 2021. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA.)

Mass terminations at the U.S. Department of Agriculture are “crippling” the agency, upending federal workers’ lives and leaving farmers and rural communities without needed support, according to interviews with 15 recently fired employees stationed across the U.S.

Since taking power Jan. 20, the Trump administration has quickly frozen funding and fired federal workers en masse. USDA terminations started Feb. 13, the day Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was sworn in. Rollins welcomed the quasi-governmental Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, to find parts of the USDA budget to cut.

Terminated employees helped farmers build irrigation systems, battled invasive diseases that could “completely decimate” crops that form whole industries and assisted low-income seniors in rural areas in fixing leaky roofs. That work will now be significantly delayed — perhaps indefinitely — as remaining employees’ workloads grow, the employees said.

“It’s really crippling the agency,” said Bryan Mathis, a former USDA employee based in New Mexico.

Caught up in the terminations are single parents and new moms, recent hires and longtime employees, and military veterans. Some had uprooted their lives months ago to start their new career. Justin Butt, also based in New Mexico, said that without the health insurance and parental leave offered by his federal job, he and his wife may hold off on having a child.

Many of the USDA employees were on probationary status, meaning they had worked less than a year (or three years, in some instances) in the civil service. However, several had put in years working for the government and had been permanent employees at other federal departments.

The terminations have left employees distrustful and leery of returning to public service. “I don’t feel safe,” said Latisha Caldwell-Bullis, who served in the Army for 21 years before joining a USDA office in Oklahoma. “The whole reason I got back into the federal system was because it has job security.”

The USDA did not return a request for comment. In an interview with Brownfield Ag News on Tuesday, Rollins said her department has done “significant reinstatements” but added new job cuts might be coming. “I do think that moving forward, it will be more intentional,” she said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, which represents farmers and rural communities across the country, said cuts at USDA should be “strategic.” The farm bureau has supported the Trump administration.

“Reports are still coming in about staffing decisions at USDA, which are causing concern in rural communities and beyond,” Sam Kieffer, the farm bureau’s vice president of public policy, said in a statement to Investigate Midwest. “USDA plays a vital role in ensuring a safe and abundant food supply, from loan officers and disaster recovery experts to food inspectors, animal disease specialists and more.

“We support the goal of responsibly spending taxpayer dollars,” the statement continued, “but we urge the administration to empower the Secretary to make strategic staffing decisions, knowing the key roles USDA staff play in the nation’s food supply.”

Leading up to the terminations, a feeling of unease pervaded USDA offices, said a former employee based in the Midwest who requested anonymity to protect job prospects. The employee’s agency within the USDA used to have regular town halls, but they were canceled after the “fork in the road” email — which promised federal workers a buyout — hit inboxes in late January. “Then, basically, it was crickets from our leadership,” the employee said.

As news of mass firings at other agencies circulated, USDA staffers wondered if they were next. Some cried in offices. Others coped by telling jokes.

The firings were haphazard.

Many received the same email late at night on Feb. 13 saying they were terminated immediately. Jacob Zortman, who sold his house in Kansas in January to move to Nevada, received his work phone on Friday, Feb. 14, only to be fired the following Tuesday, he said.

Another employee said his job title was listed incorrectly on the termination letter. One said they had received an award days before their termination. Several employees said their supervisors had no idea they were fired.

Mathis, who worked for the Forest Service, received a phone call on Monday, Feb. 17, a federal holiday, from a higher-up, who told him he was fired, he said. His direct supervisor was instructed to terminate him but refused.

“It kind of went up the chain,” he said.

Doug Berry, who worked for the USDA’s Rural Development agency in Texas, said, when he attempted to get a copy of his performance review last week, it was “mysteriously blank.” He then asked his supervisor to write him a recommendation but was rebuffed. The supervisor mentioned an interview Berry gave to USA TODAY, in which he said his agency “helps the towns that voted for Trump every day.”

“I don’t know who’s watching what, but as soon as they saw my comments, any good will evaporated,” he said.

Another former USDA employee, who requested anonymity to protect job prospects, said the terminations will result in a leadership void. The job cuts affected training intended to give the new generation of leaders a holistic view of the agency.

“It’s just going to create a lot of chaos,” the employee said.

DOGE claims cuts are for efficiency

DOGE’s stated goal is to improve efficiency across the government, but former employees said they were already working on improving government service efficiencies.

When one former employee joined the department six months ago, they faced a five-year backlog. They had worked through three years when they were terminated, said the employee, who is based in a Western state and requested anonymity to protect future job prospects. Now, other workers will “have to pick up the slack,” meaning delays for projects that farmers and ranchers want done.

Stephanie Gaspar worked for a USDA agency that helped prevent plant, animal and insect diseases from entering the nation’s food supply. Her job was to decrease IT costs. “I and my team had already reduced tens of thousands of dollars of the budget,” she said. “It’s going to cost more in the long run because there’s not enough people to do this work.”

Gaspar, based in Florida, said she had worked hard to get her position. “This ultimately was going to be a career that would pull me out of poverty,” she said. “I’m not some rich federal worker. I’m a working mom.”

Rural development workers axed

One of the USDA’s many responsibilities is providing financial assistance to rural, low-income communities. For example, a small town in central West Virginia requested USDA’s help to find funding for a new police cruiser.

Rural Development was also coordinating a plan to help impoverished families access transportation to medical care, said Carrie Decker, a single mom of four children who worked in the West Virginia office. “You have three generations sharing one vehicle, and people have to work and get to school, so finding time to go to a dentist appointment is not high on the priority list,” she said. The project now lacks USDA support, which could delay it.

After the Trump administration took over, she and her coworkers were instructed not to perform community outreach, which was “90% of what we do,” Decker said. Decker worries the lack of investment in rural areas — which Trump largely won in his reelection bid — will have long-lasting consequences.

“We’re going to see less funding into these critical access places that really, really need to have it and have needed it for decades,” she said. “I think what’s going to happen is these rural places across the nation are going to continue to decline instead of see the growth and opportunity that we were hopeful for.”

Two primary goals of rural development are to provide affordable housing or to help maintain low-income seniors’ homes.

One former USDA employee in the South, who requested anonymity to protect future job prospects, said they were hired to help expedite environmental compliance reviews, which were required before any funding was dispersed. Before they started, the employee said, another employee performed these duties on top of a full-time job.

The situation delayed help to seniors, the employee said. “Their roof is being covered up by a tarp because it’s been blown off by a storm, and they can’t get their grant money to get their roof fixed until compliance reviews are done,” they said. Former coworkers would “basically hound the guy to get it done. It wasn’t efficient.”

Risks of possible crop disease outbreaks

The USDA also invests heavily in preventing diseases among plants and animals essential to the food supply.

But the department fired employees working to address the bird flu that’s contributing to skyrocketing egg prices, according to NBC News. The USDA said it was trying to rehire them.

Matthew Moscou worked at a lab in Minnesota, where he helped monitor diseases that could wipe out wheat production in the U.S., he said. He spent the past two-and-a-half years learning from a long-tenured employee so institutional knowledge could be passed on, but it’s unlikely that information is retained now, he said.

“They’ve destroyed the institution,” he said.

Without labs like this, crop diseases, such as wheat-killing stem rust, could flourish, he said.

“Either we’re going to have to rethink how we’re doing this whole thing, or we’re going to have a significant collapse in the long run,” Moscou said. “This current push has really cut us off at the knees.”

Editor’s note: Since Investigate Midwest interviewed Moscou, he has been reinstated, at least temporarily, according to his LinkedIn profile.

This article first appeared on Investigate Midwest and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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A Philadelphia poll worker demonstrates security steps for handling ballots before November’s presidential election. States have relied on federal partners to boost election security. (Photo by Matthew Hatcher/Getty Images)

The Trump administration has begun dismantling the nation’s defenses against foreign interference in voting, a sweeping retreat that has alarmed state and local election officials.

The administration is shuttering the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and last week cut more than 100 positions at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. President Donald Trump signed the law creating the agency in 2018. Among its goals is helping state and local officials protect voting systems.

Secretaries of state and municipal clerks fear those moves could expose voter registration databases and other critical election systems to hacking — and put the lives of election officials at risk.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said states need federal help to safeguard elections from foreign and domestic bad actors.

“It is foolish and inefficient to think that states should each pursue this on their own,” he told Stateline. “The adversaries that we might encounter in Pennsylvania are very likely the same ones they’ll encounter in Michigan and Georgia and Arizona.”

Officials from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, known as CISA, and other federal agencies were notably absent from the National Association of Secretaries of State winter meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. Those same federal partners have for the past seven years provided hacking testing of election systems, evaluated the physical security of election offices, and conducted exercises to prepare local officials for Election Day crises, among other services for states that wanted them.

But the Trump administration thinks those services have gone too far.

In a Feb. 5 memo, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the administration is dismantling the FBI’s task force “to free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.” The task force was launched in 2017 by then-FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump nominee.

In her confirmation hearing last month, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said CISA has “gotten far off-mission.” She added, “They’re using their resources in ways that was never intended.” While the agency should protect the nation’s critical infrastructure, its work combating disinformation was a step too far, she said.

This echoes the language from the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document, which has driven much of the Trump administration’s policies. “The Left has weaponized [CISA] to censor speech and affect elections at the expense of securing the cyber domain and critical infrastructure,” it says.

But there is a direct correlation between pervasive election disinformation and political violence, election officials warn.

Federal officials led the investigations into the roughly 20 death threats that Colorado Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold has received over the past 18 months, Griswold said. Federal and Colorado officials also collaborated on social media disinformation and mass phishing scams.

“Trump is making it easier for foreign adversaries to attack our elections and our democracy,” Griswold said in an interview. “He incites all this violence, he has attacked our election system, and now he is using the federal government to weaken us.”

Colorado could turn to private vendors to, for example, probe systems to look for weaknesses, she said. But the state would be hard-pressed to duplicate the training, testing and intelligence of its federal partners.

Some election leaders aren’t worried, however.

“Kentucky has no scheduled elections in 2025, and we have no immediate concerns pending reorganization of this agency,” Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams told Stateline in an email.

Elections under attack

Since the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential campaign, the federal government has recognized that it overlooked security risks in the election system, said Derek Tisler, a counsel in the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center, a left-leaning pro-democracy institute.

Further, he said, the feds realized that election officials working in 10,000 local offices could not be frontline national security experts. On their own, local officials are incapable of addressing bigger security risks or spotting a coordinated attack across several states, Tisler said.

Much of the federal expertise and training came through CISA, Tisler said.

“Foreign interferers are not generally looking to interfere in Illinois’ elections or in Texas’ elections; they are looking to interfere in American elections,” he said. “A threat anywhere impacts all states. It’s important that information is not confined to state lines.”

During November’s presidential election, polling places in several states received bomb threats that were traced back to Russia. Ballot drop boxes in Oregon and Washington were lit on fire, and videos falsely depicting election workers destroying ballots circulated widely.

The fact that these attacks have not had a meaningful impact on the outcomes of elections may be due to the amount of preparation and training that came from federal assistance in recent years, said Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat.

Indeed, the right-leaning Foundation for Defense of Democracies praised the collaboration between federal and state and local partners on election security for dampening the impact of foreign interference in the presidential election, finding that adversaries did not “significantly” influence the results.

When Bellows took office in 2021, federal national security officials led state officials in emergency response training. After Bellows completed the training, she insisted that her state’s clerks, local emergency responders and law enforcement officers participate as well.

In addition, Maine coordinated with the FBI to provide de-escalation training to local clerks, to teach them how to prevent situations, such as a disruption from a belligerent voter, from getting out of hand. In 2022, CISA officials traveled to towns and cities across the state to assess the physical security of polling places and clerks’ offices.

Bellows said she’s most grateful for the federal help she got last year when she received a deluge of death threats, members of her family were doxed, and her home was swatted.

“I am deeply concerned that what is happening is actually gutting the election security infrastructure that exists and a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise in the name of this political fight,” she told Stateline.

In Ingham County, Michigan, Clerk Barb Byrum last year invited two federal officials to come to her courthouse office southeast of Lansing to assess its physical security. Byrum got county funding to make improvements, including adding security cameras and a ballistic film on the windows of her office.

“The federal support is going to be missed,” she said. “It seems as though the Trump administration is doing everything it can to encourage foreign interference in our elections. We must remain vigilant.”

Scott McDonell, clerk for Dane County, Wisconsin, used to talk to Department of Homeland Security officials frequently to identify cybersecurity threats, including vulnerabilities in certain software or alerts about other attacks throughout the country. Losing that support could incentivize more interference, he said.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” he said. “How can you expect someone like me, here in Dane County, to be able to deal with something like that?”

States fill the gap

Local election officials are nervous and uncertain about the federal election security cuts, said Pamela Smith, president and CEO of Verified Voting, a nonprofit that works with state and local election officials to keep voting systems secure.

The threat landscape for elections is “extreme,” she said. And even though it’s not a major election year, quieter times are when election offices can prepare and perfect their practices, she said.

“It is a retreat and it’s a really ill-advised one,” she said. “It’s a little bit like saying the bank has a slow day on Tuesday, we’re going to let our security guards go home.”

With a federal exodus, there will be a real need for states to offer these sorts of programs and assistance, said Tammy Patrick, chief programs officer at the National Association of Election Officials, which trains and supports local officials.

“There’s going to be a big gap there for the states to try and fill,” she said. “Some of them might be sophisticated enough to be able to do some of it, but I think there’s going to be some real disparate application across the country of who’s going to be able to fill in those gaps.”

Bill Ekblad, Minnesota’s election security navigator, has leaned on the feds to learn the ropes of election security and potential threats, help him assist local election offices with better cyber practices and keep officials throughout the state updated with the latest phishing attempts.

He finds it disheartening to see the federal government stepping back, and worries that he won’t have access to intelligence about foreign threats. But after five years of working with the federal government, he is hopeful that his state has built resiliency.

“We have come a long way,” he said. “We will be able to move forward with or without the partnerships we’ve enjoyed in the past.”

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

Protesters rally Wednesday outside the Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison. (Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner)

Julie Mankowski was alarmed from the day Donald Trump took the oath of office on Jan. 20 and followed it with a flurry of executive orders and other actions: He erased U.S. policy references to gender diversity, withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate accords, pardoned people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection.

“I knew it was going to accelerate,” Mankowski told the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday, “and I did not want them to keep their foot on that gas.”

That is why she was out on the steps of the Wisconsin state Capitol Wednesday, holding a sign declaring “Forward!” — one of hundreds who showed up to protest the actions that Trump and his associates have taken in the first two and a half weeks of his administration.

People at the rally brandished home-made signs with no shortage of issues on which to call out the 47th president of the United States. 

Signs supported the rights of LGBTQ+ people, especially those who are trans and gender-nonconforming. Signs promoted reproductive rights. Signs decried fascism and equated Trump with Nazis.

Signs attacked Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation document that Trump denied any connection to during his campaign but has been widely seen as foretelling much of the president’s actions since he took office, including the freezing of federal funds.

Signs defended immigrants — targeted by tough new deportation orders and Trump’s attempt, blocked by a federal judge on Wednesday, to undo the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

 And many signs attacked Elon Musk, the billionaire to whom Trump has given access to an increasingly large chunk of the government, most notably the federal payments system. One called for deporting the South African-born Musk.

A peaceful and raucous demonstration

The event was both peaceful and raucous. There were no organized counter demonstrators evident, although one or two arguments erupted with lone Trump supporters who worked their way into the crowd.

A small collection of speakers addressed the gathering crowd on the west steps of the Capitol facing Madison’s iconic State Street.

One led the crowd in a brief round of singing John Lennon’s anthem, “Give Peace a Chance.” Several reminded the crowd of upcoming spring elections — a primary election Feb. 18 and a general election for the next state Supreme Court justice on April 1.

That prompted a brief chant of the name of Susan Crawford, the Dane County judge endorsed by the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (in what’s officially a nonpartisan race) and viewed as the bulwark against returning the Court’s majority from four liberals to four conservatives.

Mankowski was the last speaker of the group, alternating between an uncooperative public address system microphone and a bullhorn.

“We are here because we are facing a threat to our collective existence,” she said. “We are facing a threat to our democracy and to our freedom.”

She spoke of the hundreds who were there, and countless more who didn’t show up.

“Every single person here is in pain. They’re afraid, they’re angry,” Mankowski said. “There are people who are not here, who are so afraid they couldn’t bring themselves to come.”

The crowd cheered her on, but she sought as well to break through to those whose cheers masked their anxiety and whose anxiety paralyzed their will. Everyone should feel welcome at a protest such as this one, she told them. Everyone should feel permission to raise their voice.

“Every single thing that you can possibly do, you do,” Mankowski said. “It doesn’t matter how small it is. It doesn’t matter how little of an impact you think it will have. It will have an impact. We all — we all must be — we all must be grains of sand in the gears of tyranny.”

The eyes of the world are on the United States, she said.

“There are so many people in the world right now who are watching us. They’re watching America. Because if it gets a hold here, where are they going now? I do not want a legacy of fascism to be a legacy of our country,” Mankowski said.

Parade around the Capitol

A parade around the Capitol followed, with a crowd large enough to stretch more than five blocks — three sides of Capitol Square that surrounds the building.

Afterward, while a portion of the group continued part way down State Street, Mankowski stayed back and talked about her decision to join Wednesday’s protest. 

An optician in Madison, Mankowski is accustomed to social activism. She took a role in putting together a July 4 demonstration that followed the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade.

“I’m not shy about what I believe in and I think that being quiet about what we believe in is how we start to get separated from one another,” she said.

She joined an impromptu protest outside the Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 29, and returned over the weekend. By then she’d heard about the protest planned for Wednesday — a loosely organized collection of events that were supposed to take place at noon in all 50 states.

Across the country in the days leading up to Wednesday, word spread on social media about the day of protests. Skepticism spread as well, as people questioned the absence of endorsements from high-profile organizations.

The fact-checking site Snopes.com posted an article Tuesday quoting a subreddit moderator who said the protests were “completely decentralized” in planning and execution. In Madison, some standing activist groups made plans to join, then backed away, uncertain about the event’s credibility or safety.

By the time noon arrived on Capitol Square, however, hundreds of people had packed onto the concrete staircase and spilled over onto the grass-covered hillside in front of the building.

Mankowski said she understood why some people had been wary of Wednesday’s demonstration, considering the current climate in the country. 

She pointed especially to the Trump administration’s actions on immigration and birthright citizenship, plans to send deported immigrants to Guantanamo or to prisons in El Salvador, and the use of pictures from deportation actions “as functionally propaganda images.”

“Those are pictures of human beings,” she said. “It’s not numbers and stacks, that’s people that they are using as a tool to make more people afraid: ‘If we did it to them, it could happen to you.’”

“People are tense and they are on edge,” she said. “And when things like a protest announcement starts to happen, people don’t just think of what it could be for — they think about how it could be used against them, because they’re seeing many aspects of their lives being turned against them right now.”

People have lost trust in institutions, she said, and they aren’t even sure about their neighbors. “They feel unmoored.”

Mankowski sees voters as increasingly detached from politics and political news, a consequence, she says, of feeling disenfranchised. “In their mind their vote doesn’t count,” she said. “And realistically, people who want our democracy to fail want you to think your vote doesn’t count.”

The road away from that apathy, she believes, starts with authenticity and connection.

“Being real with people is the best way to reach people, because people are real,” Mankowski said. “Like, our lives are real, the things we’re experiencing are real, and showing them that you, too, are real and that you have real things in your life, things that you care about, that you care about them, that you care about the fact that they are in pain and that they are unhappy and that they are feeling detached from reality.”

She pointed to her poster, which celebrated “The Wisconsin Idea,” a historic vision of the state’s university system that expressed its role as serving everyone in the state. Wednesday’s demonstration, with all its informality and diversity, demonstrated that sense of inclusion, she suggested.

“This is supposed to be, we, the people of Wisconsin,” Mankowski said. “It is not actually an organization. It is the people of Wisconsin — whoever showed up on that day, you know, to do their work.”

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Children outside with a child care teacher at The Playing Field, a Madison child care center that participates in the federal Head Start program. (Courtesy of The Playing Field)

More than half a dozen child care centers that serve low-income families through the federal Head Start program have been waiting for more than a week to be repaid for expenses they’ve already incurred for payroll, supplies and food for the children in their care.

Head Start and Early Head Start are federally funded programs that provide early education and child care to children from low-income families. Wisconsin has 39 Head Start child care providers serving 16,000 children across the state and employing about 4,500 staff, said Jenny Mauer, executive director of the Wisconsin Head Start Association.

“The chaos and uncertainty have been deeply earth-shattering,” Mauer told the Wisconsin Examiner on Tuesday.

Mauer said providers across the state who receive federal grant payments for Head Start have seen delays in receiving their payments. She has been in touch with all 39 and, as of Tuesday, there were seven providers serving about 3,000 children that haven’t been paid by the federal government for at least a week, she said.

“This is going to get really serious if this doesn’t get resolved soon,” Mauer said. “We’re not getting much in the way of answers. We’re not getting good explanations about anything. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

The Head Start payments stopped at the same time that a Trump administration memo announced a week ago that a broad array of federal grant and loan payments would be suspended. Two federal judges have ordered the White House to halt the suspension in payments, but there have been widespread reports of funds that have still not been released.

“People think the freeze is over,” said Rep. Andrew Hysell (D-Sun Prairie), whose district includes a child care provider affected and who posted a Facebook video decrying the federal action. “Yet these [federal] agencies are not providing the funds.”

The National Head Start Association, a membership organization for Head Start child care providers, has reported similar problems across the country.

“We’re definitely not alone, that’s for sure,” Mauer said.

Reach Dane, a Madison child care agency that provides child care for about 1,000 children in Dane and Green counties, is waiting on $600,000 that the nonprofit is due from Head Start, said Jen Bailey, Reach Dane’s executive director. The organization had to tap into its bank line of credit after payments failed to come through in the last week.

The funds are needed to make payroll for Reach Dane’s staff of 250, including child care teachers, people in food service and bus drivers who pick up and drop off children in the program.

“We’re kind of flying blind in a chaos storm, trying to figure out what is happening and why,” said Bailey, who is also president of the Wisconsin Head Start Association board.

Federal payments to Head Start programs are reimbursements for expenses providers have already incurred. Providers are accustomed to logging into a federal portal, submitting the expense information and receiving a reimbursement in about 24 hours.

Reach Dane typically submits its requests for payment once a week or so, Bailey said. A week ago Monday, Reach Dane was unable to log in to the portal at all, however.

Late Tuesday, Jan. 28, the portal was once again accessible, and Reach Dane submitted a payment request. A second payment request was submitted on Friday, Jan. 31.

“We have not received either of those,” Bailey said Tuesday. “As of right now both still show as pending in the system.”

In addition to serving Head Start children through its own child care centers, Reach Dane also works with private child care providers who enroll children from low-income families.

One private partner is The Playing Field, a nonprofit that operates two child care centers in Madison, one of them on the city’s West Side where the enrollment includes Head Start children. Reach Dane pays The Playing Field monthly to cover its Head Start kids.

Participating in Head Start is part of The Playing Field’s mission, said Abbi Kruse, who founded The Playing Field a decade ago with the goal of creating “an early childhood education program that any family would choose for their child.” From the start the organization’s model was to enroll children “from really different socio-economic and racial backgrounds,” she said, overcoming segregation in all its forms.

At the West Side location, enrollment is about one-third children on scholarship, one-third children whose parents can afford the full cost, and one-third who are covered under Head Start or Early Head Start. “Without that funding, they could not attend our program,” Kruse said. “Without that funding, we definitely could not sustain our model.”

Providers, families spread the word in the Capitol for Evers’ child care investment

Kruse said that Reach Dane sends a Head Start payment once a month to The Playing Field, which received the February payment on Monday. But if Reach Dane can’t resume receiving its federal funds, “obviously that’s not sustainable for them to continue doing that,” she said.

Some of the children served by her organization are from families living in shelters, sleeping in cars or hotels for the unhoused, for example, Kruse said. They may rely on The Playing Field not just for child care but for meals and other support, such as parenting classes.

“There’s a lot of support for families in our model, and to rip that away from people is just cruel,” Kruse said.

Mauer said that providers unable to collect the federal funds they’re due are scrambling to meet the shortfall.

The federal government requires that recipients must disburse the money they get within three days after collecting it. “They’re not sitting on a set of federal reserves to pay people,” Mauer said. “This is money for service already rendered.”

Providers who are on the hook for funds “are doing everything they can to keep their doors open,” she said. “They’re talking to creditors, they’ve opened up lines of credit, they’re talking to community partners and moving things around.”

If Head Start providers don’t survive, the impact on employers could be severe.

“The majority of folks that come to Head Start are working families,” Mauer said. Without child care, “that would mean those parents would have to make tough choices. It’s a terrible situation.”

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