People demonstrate outside the main campus of the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention on April 1, 2025 in Atlanta, Georgia. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. laid off thousands of employees across multiple agencies on April 1, as part of an overhaul announced in March. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images)
A coalition of Democratic state officials sued the Trump administration Tuesday over plans to cut more than $11 billion in grants by the Department of Health and Human Services, on the same day thousands of HHS workers reportedly found they’d been swept up in a mass layoff.
In Washington, the Republican chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee wrote HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asking him to appear before the panel and discuss his plans for the massive agency.
The federal suit, signed by 22 attorneys general and two Democratic governors, alleges Kennedy revoked, without warning, billions in grant funding appropriated by Congress during the COVID-19 pandemic, starting last week. That led to states scrambling to adjust plans for vaccination efforts, infectious disease prevention, mental health programs and more.
The sudden and chaotic rollout of the grant cuts foreshadowed a scene at HHS offices, including at big campuses in Maryland, on Tuesday morning. Termination notices to laid-off workers were reportedly emailed early Tuesday, but many workers did not see them before arriving at the office and finding out they’d lost their jobs when their key cards did not work.
Few specifics
Both the mass layoffs and the grant funding cuts challenged in the lawsuit stem from Kennedy’s March 27 announcement that the department would be “realigning,” by shuttering several offices and cutting 10,000 workers.
It was unclear Tuesday exactly what offices or employees were affected.
None provided a detailed breakdown but laid out plans to eliminate 3,500 full-time positions at the Food and Drug Administration, 2,400 employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1,200 staff at the National Institutes of Health and 300 workers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up inquiry requesting more details of the positions eliminated and other clarifications.
Efficiency doubted
In a written statement, Andrés Arguello, a policy fellow at Groundwork Collective, a think tank focused on economic equity, said the cuts would have “the exact opposite” effect of the administration’s stated goal of government efficiency.
“Gutting 10,000 public servants means higher costs, longer wait times, and fewer services for families already struggling with the rising cost of living,” Arguello, an HHS deputy secretary under former President Joe Biden, wrote. “Entire offices that support child care, energy assistance, and mental health treatment are being dismantled, leaving working families with fewer options and bigger bills. This isn’t streamlining—it’s abandonment, and the price will be paid by the sick, the vulnerable, and the poor.”
The lack of communication led to confusion among advocates and state and local health workers about the impacts of the staff cuts and cast doubt about the administration’s goals, speakers on a Tuesday press call said.
“There are so many more questions than answers right now,” Sharon Gilmartin, the executive director of Safe States Alliance, an anti-violence advocacy group, said. “They clearly are eliminating whole divisions and branches, which doesn’t speak to bureaucratic streamlining. It speaks to moving forward an agenda, which has not been elucidated for the public health community, it’s not been elucidated for the public.”
While specific consequences of the cuts were not yet known, Gilmartin and others said they would be felt at the state and local level.
“I think what we do know is that … when we’re cutting these positions at the federal level, we are cutting work in states and communities,” Gilmartin said.
Pain in the states
The lawsuit from Democratic officials is full of details about the impacts of the loss of federal funding on state programs.
The suit was brought in Rhode Island federal court by the attorneys general of Colorado, Rhode Island, California, Minnesota, Washington, Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Wisconsin and Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania.
HHS revoked “more than half a billion dollars” of grants from Pennsylvania, the Democratic officials said, affecting more than 150 state employees and contracted staff. The grants funded work “to respond to and mitigate the spread of infectious disease across the Commonwealth” and mental health and substance abuse programs.
In Nevada, “HHS abruptly terminated at least six grants” that had funded epidemiology and lab capacity, immunization access and mental health services, according to the suit.
“These terminations led Nevada to immediately terminate 48 state employees and to order contractors working under these awards to immediately cease all activity,” the complaint reads. “The loss of funding will have substantial impacts on public health in Nevada.”
The cutoff of $13 million in unobligated grants for local communities in Minnesota will mean the shuttering of clinics to provide vaccines for COVID-19, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza and other diseases, the suit said.
“One local public health agency reported that it held 21 childhood vaccination clinics and provided approximately 1,400 vaccinations to children in 2024,” a paragraph in the complaint about Minnesota local vaccine clinics said. “It also held 87 general vaccination clinics in 2024. As a result of the termination of the … funds, it has immediately ceased all vaccination clinics for 2025.”
The grant terminations also affected state plans already in the works.
Rhode Island had received an extension from HHS for a grant with $13 million unspent, but that money was revoked last week.
“Accordingly, the state public health department developed a workplan for its immunization program that included an April 2025 vaccination clinic for seniors, provided salaries for highly trained technicians to ensure that vaccine doses are stored and refrigerated correctly to prevent waste of vaccines purchased with other tax-payer dollars, planned computer system upgrades, and covered printing costs for communications about vaccine campaigns,” the suit said.
Senators want RFK Jr. on the Hill
Democrats on Capitol Hill issued a slew of statements opposing the cuts and warning of their effects.
Republicans were more deferential to the administration, asking for patience as details of the cuts are revealed.
But the letter from the top members of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee also brought both sides together to write Kennedy asking him to testify before the committee to make those explanations plain.
“The hearing will discuss your proposed reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services,” the letter from Louisiana Republican Bill Cassidy and Vermont independent Bernie Sanders said.
In a written statement, Cassidy said the hearing would be an opportunity for Kennedy to inform the public about the reorganization.
“The news coverage on the HHS reorg is being set by anonymous sources and opponents are setting the perceptions,” Cassidy said in a written statement. “In the confirmation process, RFK committed to coming before the committee on a quarterly basis. This will be a good opportunity for him to set the record straight and speak to the goals, structure and benefits of the proposed reorganization.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Jan. 29, 2025, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration announced a sweeping plan Thursday to restructure the Department of Health and Human Services by cutting an additional 10,000 workers and closing down half of its 10 regional offices.
The overhaul will affect many of the agencies that make up HHS, including the Food and Drug Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. HHS overall will be downsized from a full-time workforce of 82,000 to 62,000, including those who took early retirement or a buyout offer.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. released a written statement along with the announcement, saying the changes would benefit Americans.
“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” Kennedy said. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”
The U.S. Senate voted to confirm Kennedy as the nation’s top public health official in mid-February.
Democrats immediately reacted with deep concern.
Senate Appropriations Committee ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said that she was “stunned at the lack of thought about what they are doing to the American public and their health.”
Murray said the committee, which controls about one-third of all federal spending, “absolutely” has an oversight role to play in tracking HHS actions.
Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin, the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that funds HHS, said she believes HHS has overstepped its authority and expects the panel will look into its actions.
“These individuals who are going to be terminated under this plan play vital roles in the health of Wisconsinites and people nationally,” Baldwin said. “And I believe that they do not have the authority, the Trump administration does not have the authority to do this wholesale reorganization without working with Congress.”
Maryland Democratic Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, whose constituents in suburban Washington likely hold many of the jobs in question, wrote in a statement the HHS’ restructuring plans are “dangerous and deadly.”
“I warned America that confirming RFK Jr. would be a mistake,” Alsobrooks wrote. “His blatant distrust of science and disregard for research and advancement makes him completely unqualified.”
Cuts across department
The announcement says reorganizing HHS will cut its $1.7 trillion annual budget by about $1.8 billion, in part, by lowering overall staff levels.
Staffing cuts will be spread out over HHS and several of the agencies it oversees. The restructuring plans to eliminate 3,500 full-time workers at the FDA, 2,400 employees at the CDC, 1,200 staff at the NIH and 300 workers at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
The Hubert H. Humphrey Building, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., as seen on Nov. 23, 2023. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
“The consolidation and cuts are designed not only to save money, but to make the organization more efficient and more responsive to Americans’ needs, and to implement the Make America Healthy Again goal of ending the chronic disease epidemic,” according to a fact sheet.
Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, or HELP, Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., wrote in a statement that he looks “forward to hearing how this reorganization furthers these goals.”
“I am interested in HHS working better, such as lifesaving drug approval more rapidly, and Medicare service improved,” Cassidy wrote.
Regional offices, divisions affected
HHS did not immediately respond to a request from States Newsroom about which five of its 10 regional offices would shutter or when those closures would take effect.
Its website shows the offices are located in Boston; New York City; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Chicago; Dallas; Kansas City, Missouri; Denver; San Francisco; and Seattle.
HHS plans to reduce its divisions from 28 to 15 while also establishing the Administration for a Healthy America, or AHA.
That new entity will combine the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, Health Resources and Services Administration, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.
That change will “improve coordination of health resources for low-income Americans and will focus on areas including, Primary Care, Maternal and Child Health, Mental Health, Environmental Health, HIV/AIDS, and Workforce development. Transferring SAMHSA to AHA will increase operational efficiency and assure programs are carried out because it will break down artificial divisions between similar programs,” according to the announcement.
HHS will roll the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response into the CDC.
The department plans to create a new assistant secretary for enforcement, who will be responsible for work within the Departmental Appeals Board, Office of Medicare Hearings and Appeals and Office for Civil Rights.
House speaker says HHS is ‘bloated’
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., posted on social media that he fully backed the changes in store for HHS.
”HHS is one of the most bureaucratic and bloated government agencies,” Johnson wrote. “@SecKennedy is bringing new, much-needed ideas to the department by returning HHS to its core mission while maintaining the critical programs it provides Americans.”
Advocates shared Democrats’ concern about the staff cutbacks.
Stella Dantas, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, released a statement saying the organization was “alarmed by the sudden termination of thousands of dedicated HHS employees, whose absence compounds the loss of thousands of fellow employees who have already been forced to leave U.S. health agencies.”
“Thanks to collaboration with HHS, ACOG has been able to contribute to advances in the provision of maternal health care, broadened coverage of critical preventive care, increased adoption of vaccines, raised awareness of fetal alcohol syndrome, strengthened STI prevention efforts, and more,” Dantas wrote. “This attack on public health—and HHS’ ability to advance it—will hurt people across the United States every single day.”
A woman receives a flu vaccination at a recent clinic in Cambridge, Mass., conducted by health care providers from the Cambridge Health Alliance. Flu-related deaths are at a seven-year high as vaccination levels fall, according to a Stateline analysis. (Courtesy of the City of Cambridge)
As vaccine skepticism gains a greater foothold in the Trump administration and some statehouses, some Americans may already be paying the price, with deaths from influenza on the rise.
Flu-related deaths hit a seven-year high in January and February, the two months that usually account for the height of flu season, according to a Stateline analysis of preliminary federal statistics. There were about 9,800 deaths across the country, up from 5,000 in the same period last year and the most since 2018, when there were about 10,800.
Despite that, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has canceled or postponed meetings to prepare for next fall’s flu vaccine, when experts talk about what influenza strains they expect they’ll be battling.
The cancellations raised protests from medical professionals and state and federal officials. U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a New York Democrat, said in a statement that her state is having its worst flu season in at least 15 years, with more deaths from flu and other causes as the state’s health care system struggles under the strain of flu patients.
Some experts say putting off vaccine planning will only feed false narratives that discourage lifesaving vaccinations.
“These delays not only weaken pandemic preparedness but also undermine public confidence in vaccination efforts,” said Dr. Akram Khan, an Oregon pulmonologist and associate professor at Oregon Health & Science University who has studied attitudes toward vaccines.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. has expressed doubt about the need for vaccines, including flu vaccines, despite evidence that they reduce deaths and hospitalizations.
Deaths fluctuate naturally from year to year depending on the severity of current flu strains and the effectiveness of that year’s vaccines. But some see a hesitancy to use any vaccine, fed by misinformation and political mistrust of government, already taking a toll on lives.
“It’s been a bad winter for viral respiratory infections, not just in the United States but across the Northern Hemisphere,” said Mark Doherty, a vaccine scholar and former manager for GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, a vaccine manufacturer.
“The U.S. does appear to be hit a bit harder, and it’s possible lower vaccination coverage is contributing to that,” Doherty said.
Flu vaccine distribution in the United States has been declining in recent years, and as of the first week of 2025 was down 16% from 2022, according to federal statistics.
The flu was a factor in 9,800 deaths in January and February, according to the analysis, using provisional data collected by states and compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The highest death rates were in Oklahoma, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota and Kentucky, all at about four deaths per 100,000 population so far this year. Some counties in Florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as Oklahoma and Kentucky, were even higher — at about six deaths per 100,000.
The highest rates have been among older people. Statistics show the deaths hit white people and American Indians especially hard.
Tragedies are happening across the country to people of all ages and races, however. A 43-year-old Indiana father died after a brief bout of the flu, according to family members. After two 10-year-olds died in Prince George’s County, Maryland, area schools drew crowds to vaccine clinics.
Doug Sides, a pastor at Yulee Baptist Church in northern Florida, has held funerals for three congregation members who died from flu — all within one month, all of them over 70 years old. That compares with only one victim of COVID-19 from his congregation during the pandemic, he said.
“Flu death is a reality,” Sides told Stateline on a phone call from a Jacksonville hospital, where he was visiting another 84-year-old congregation member who was rescued from her home with severe pneumonia from an unknown cause.
“I encourage my church members to keep their hands clean, use hand sanitizer and to stay home if they’re feeling sick,” he said. He said he hasn’t personally gotten a flu vaccine recently because he gets conflicting advice about it — some doctors tell him to avoid them because he and some family members have cancer, while another “rides me all the time about getting a flu shot.”
“We’re all getting conflicting advice. We’re living in strange-o times,” he said. (The American Cancer Society says vaccination for people with cancer may or may not be recommended depending on individual circumstances.)
Many states are relaxing vaccine requirements as public skepticism rises. But many are taking action to warn residents and reassure them that vaccinations are safe and can help prevent deaths, despite misinformation to the contrary.
Burlington County, New Jersey, has had the highest flu-associated death rate of any county this year, according to the analysis, with 31 deaths among fewer than 500,000 people. The county held 30 free vaccine clinics from September to January, then extended them into February because of the severity of the flu season, said Dave Levinsky, a spokesperson for the county health department.
In Oklahoma, death rates are highest in the eastern part of the state where the Cherokee Nation is centered. A state publicity campaign stresses that flu shots are safe, effective and free at many community health centers. However, vaccination rates in the state are low compared with other states as of December, according to federal statistics: Only about 16% of Oklahoma residents had gotten flu vaccinations by then. Rates were even lower in Louisiana (just under 16%), Mississippi (12%) and Texas (10%).
States with the highest flu vaccination rates by December were Maine (37%), Connecticut and Vermont (33%), and Wisconsin and Minnesota (31%). But even those were down since 2022.
People have become less likely to get vaccinated in recent years, a phenomenon researchers call “vaccine hesitancy.”
Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy is deeply entangled with misinformation, political rhetoric and public distrust.
– Dr. Akram Khan, pulmonologist
A report published last year in the medical journal Cureus found three-quarters of patients in a rural New York state community refused flu vaccine with comments such as “I do not trust vaccines” or “I do not believe in vaccines.” The most common reasons cited were that earlier vaccinations made them feel sick, that they got the flu anyway, or that they thought they shouldn’t need a new shot every year. (Doctors recommend flu vaccinations annually and note that even vaccinated patients who get the flu usually face less severe forms.)
And in a paper published in February in the journal Vaccine, researchers found that people refuse flu vaccinations for many of the same reasons they refused COVID-19 shots: a feeling of “social vulnerability” that leads to distrust of government and medical guidance. One hopeful sign, the report noted, is that vaccine recommendations from trusted health care professionals can turn around such attitudes.
“Unfortunately, vaccine hesitancy is deeply entangled with misinformation, political rhetoric and public distrust,” said Khan, the Oregon pulmonologist and the study’s author. “Scientific data alone may not be enough to shift public perceptions, as many vaccine decisions are driven by gut feelings and external influences rather than evidence.”
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.
A nurse administers a measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to a patient in Utah. More states are loosening vaccine mandates, scaling back vaccine promotion efforts and taking other steps that likely will lower vaccination rates. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images)
More states are loosening vaccine mandates, scaling back vaccine promotion efforts and taking other steps likely to lower vaccination rates — even as a major measles outbreak spreads in Texas.
Meanwhile, public health experts worry that the confirmation of vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services could add fuel to such efforts, leading to the resurgence of long-tamed infectious diseases. Kennedy has made numerous baseless or false claims about vaccines, including linking them to autism and cancer and saying there is “poison” in the coronavirus vaccine.
Already, vaccination rates are lower than they were before the pandemic. The COVID-19 vaccines saved millions of lives, but many Americans bristled at vaccine mandates, and disinformation and rapidly evolving public health advice undermined many people’s trust in scientific authorities.
Public health will always, to some extent, involve politics, because it requires resources. … But it doesn't have to be partisan.
– Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Changing attitudes have had an impact: Vaccination rates among children born in 2020 and 2021 declined by between 1.3 and 7.8 percentage points for recommended shots, compared with children born in 2018 and 2019, according to a September report by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The anti-vaccination trend is “the antithesis of public health,” Dr. Scott Rivkees, a pediatric endocrinologist who served as Florida’s surgeon general and health secretary from 2019 to 2021, told Stateline.
“The role of people in departments of health and the role of people in health care and medicine is to promote health and make sure the public is safe,” Rivkees told Stateline. “There’s such a rich history of legal precedent, such a rich history of public health precedent, saying that society benefits by having individuals vaccinated.”
In all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, children must receive certain vaccines to attend school. Every state offers an exemption for children who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. Thirty states plus the district allow families to skip the vaccinations for religious reasons, 13 states grant exemptions for religious or personal reasons, and two states — Louisiana and Minnesota — don’t require people to specify whether their objection is religious or personal.
Five states — California, Connecticut, Maine, New York and West Virginia — don’t allow nonmedical exemptions.
Republican officials in more than a dozen states have introduced legislation to loosen vaccine rules or otherwise reduce their use.
Legislation in Arizona would make it easier to claim a school exemption, while GOP-sponsored bills in Connecticut, Minnesota, New York and Oregon would limit or prohibit vaccine mandates for adults.
In Idaho, a Senate panel last week debated a bill that would ban mRNA vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, for a decade. Montana and Mississippi lawmakers considered but defeated similar proposals. And in West Virginia — one of the five states that currently does not allow nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine requirements — lawmakers are advancing a bill that would allow religious and philosophical objections.
“Public health will always, to some extent, involve politics, because it requires resources,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Offit serves on the FDA panel that was supposed to discuss next year’s flu vaccines.
“But it doesn’t have to be partisan, which is what has happened.”
A shift in Louisiana
Earlier this month, Dr. Ralph Abraham, Louisiana’s first-ever surgeon general, sent a memo to staff at the Louisiana Department of Health saying they should no longer recommend that Louisianans get “any and all vaccines.” The memo also said the agency will “no longer promote mass vaccination.” Instead, Abraham said, health workers should encourage residents to discuss the risks and benefits of vaccines with their doctors.
The memo puts an end to the Louisiana health department’s robust history of promoting vaccinations through local public health departments, community health fairs and media campaigns.
“Vaccines should be treated with nuance, recognizing differences between seasonal vaccines and childhood immunizations, which are an important part of providing immunity to our children. … Getting vaccinated, like any other health procedure, is an individual’s personal choice,” the memo states.
The agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and phone call. But in a letter posted to the department’s website earlier this month, Abraham wrote that the state had made several missteps during the pandemic, including: promoting “inaccurate and inconsistent guidance on masking, poor decisions to close schools, unjustifiable mandates on civil liberties, and false claims regarding natural immunity.”
Abraham wrote that vaccinations can be good for some, but can be harmful for others, and that for decades public health has been driven by an ideology that “the sacrifice of a few is acceptable and necessary for the ‘greater good.’”
“We should reject this utilitarian approach and restore medical decision-making to its proper place: between doctors and patients,” he wrote.
Louisiana Republican lawmakers have embraced this sentiment, saying that after the COVID-19 pandemic, they want to see less government involvement in vaccinations.
“I’m pleased that Dr. Abraham has taken this approach,” said Republican state Rep. Kathy Edmonston, who last year authored laws prohibiting Louisiana schools from requiring COVID-19 vaccinations and mandating that they provide exemption information to parents. “I’m not against vaccinations. He’s not against vaccinations. I’m for people being able to make up their own mind.”
Jill Hines, co-director of Health Freedom Louisiana, a group that opposes vaccine mandates, dismissed the significance of ending mass vaccination campaigns, because “everybody should have a primary care physician if they want one, and nobody is really denied access to a vaccine.”
But Kimberly Hood, former assistant secretary of the Louisiana Office of Public Health, noted that the state is largely rural, and many residents don’t have easy access to a health care provider.
“Failing to promote vaccination may not sound like a huge deal, but it actually invalidates what we in public health have seen and learned for many, many years, which is that you have to make it easy, affordable, accessible,” Hood told Stateline.
“It’s not just stepping away from vaccination; we’re stepping away from our kind of obligation together, what it means to live together in a society.”
Staying the course in Mississippi
But in neighboring Mississippi, which is also Republican-dominated, GOP leaders are staying the course — at least so far. More than two dozen anti-vaccine bills have died in the Mississippi legislature in the past two years, including this year’s proposed ban on mRNA vaccines.
The state struggled with COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic, and in 2022 Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law a measure banning COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
But for years, Mississippi maintained one of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the nation. The state slipped from first to third between 2023 and 2024, after a federal judge ruled that the state must allow religious exemptions. Its current childhood vaccination rate is 97.5%, well above the 91% national average but lower than the 99.3% rate it had in 2019.
“Our law is still in effect, and if you don’t have a medical or religious exemption, then you must be fully vaccinated to attend school or go to day care in Mississippi,” said Dr. Daniel Edney, Mississippi’s state health officer. “The science is clear and in Mississippi we stand on the science.”
Edney said he hasn’t faced any political pressure to reverse course. Unlike in Louisiana, where Republican Gov. Jeff Landry tapped Abraham — a former three-term Republican congressman who co-chaired his transition committee — as surgeon general, Edney was selected by the 11-member Mississippi State Board of Health. The governor chooses the members of that panel, but they serve staggered four-year terms.
“I have zero pressure from the governor or legislative leadership regarding our approach to vaccines,” Edney told Stateline. “We’re not focused on politics. We don’t blow in the wind based on what administration is in power.”
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
The Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety. Seated at the table are Detective Joseph Mensah (left) and Wisconsin Fraternal Order of Police President Ryan Windorff (right) (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A Republican bill aiming to shield police officers from investigations after fatal shootings spurred committee debate and a deadlock vote Tuesday morning. The Senate’s Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety held an executive session to vote on the bill, which would prevent the use of John Doe hearings to review cases where officers are involved in fatal shootings of civilians. The hearing ended in a deadlocked 4-4 vote on advancing the bill.
The bill was reported out of committee “without recommendation.” This means that the committee “has not recommended either approval or rejection of the bill,” Eric Barbour, the Senate committee clerk explained. It will next go to the Committee on Senate Organization, where it can then be scheduled for a vote by the full Senate.
Republican Sens. Rob Hutton (R-Brookfield), the bill’s author, committee chairman Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), Sen. Jesse James (R-Altoona), and Sen. Andre Jacque (R-De Pere) voted in favor of the bill. Democratic Sens. Kelda Roys (D-Madison), Dora Drake (D-Milwaukee) and LaTonya Johnson (D-Milwaukee) were joined by Republican Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) in voting against the bill.
Wimberger also voted against the bill last year, when it was first introduced by Hutton and Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonee). The bill’s original version was criticized for potentially preventing crime victims from having cases reviewed after a prosecutor declined to issue charges. Its latest version makes a specific carve-out for police officers involved in fatal shootings. Were it to pass, judges would be unable to hold hearings under Wisconsin’s John Doe law in cases where prosecutors have declined to issue charges. Instead, new or unused evidence would be required before a John Doe hearing could be considered.
During a committee hearing earlier this month, Hutton said that the John Doe bill is archaic, and is increasingly being used to harass police officers. He and the law enforcement officers who testified pointed to two instances of the law being used in recent years. One John Doe hearing held in 2021 reviewed the 2016 shooting of Jay Anderson Jr. by then-Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah. The other hearing was held in 2023, and reviewed the shooting of Tony Robinson by Madison Police officer Matthew Kenney. Both hearings were unsuccessful, with a judge dropping Robinson’s case and special prosecutors declining to pursue charges after Anderson’s hearing.
Mensah spoke to the Senate committee when Hutton re-introduced the bill this year. During public testimony, Mensah described going through multiple investigations into his shooting of Anderson. Over a five-year career as a Wauwatosa officer, Mensah was involved in three fatal shootings. No charges were issued by the district attorney’s office in any of these cases. Anderson’s was the only one of Mensah’s shootings to get a John Doe hearing.
Hutton has said that although he’s talked extensively with law enforcement about the bill, he has not engaged with any of the families of people killed by police.
During Tuesday’s executive session, Sen. Roys expressed concern that the bill would create a new class protection for police officers. Roys highlighted recent findings regarding the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT), which investigates police shootings and deaths in the Milwaukee area. Roys noted that the team’s policies afford officers numerous protections and privileges including the ability to refuse to give a recorded statement and the ability to make additional statements after viewing video evidence.
James, who has had a career in law enforcement, responded that officers get to view video evidence because the incidents themselves happen so quickly, that they may forget certain details. “I don’t think there’s a real understanding of the complete process,” said James, who described Mensah as a victim because the shootings he was involved in were reviewed multiple times.
Sen. Drake said that while officers deserve support, changing the John Doe law would take away an avenue of recourse from victims of police shootings and their families.
Recent peer-reviewed studies connect water fluoridation with less dental decay in children.
A Feb. 4 post on a Wisconsin section of Reddit raised the issue.
The post alludedto a pediatrician’s 2019 statement that dental infections increased significantly after Calgary, Alberta, ended fluoridation in 2011.
Calgary aims to reintroduce fluoridation by March 2025.
In a 2021 study Canadian researchers found that seven years after Calgary ended fluoridation, 65% of Calgary second grade children had cavities, versus 55% in Edmonton, Alberta, which fluoridated.
Canadian researchers in 2024 reported more occurrences of general anesthesia dental treatments among children in non-fluoridated communities.
Israeli researchers in 2024 found treatment of dental problems among children doubled after Israel stopped fluoridation.
The American Dental Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control supportfluoridation.
U.S. Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. hasadvocated for ending fluoridation.
About 84% of Wisconsinites had fluoridated water in 2024, down from 87% in 2022, as more communities stopped fluoridating water systems.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Images of the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT) emblem, Taleavia Cole (the sister of Alvin Cole), protesters, riot police, and surveillance vehicles from the 2020 George Floyd-inspired protests. (Photos by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner. Graphic by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
This story was produced in partnership with Type Investigations, where Isiah Holmes was an Ida B. Wells fellow.
The last time Tracy Cole remembered speaking to her 17-year-old son Alvin, he was at the mall. After she told him to be safe and that she loved him, he asked what’s for dinner. Alvin told his mother, “when I get home from the mall, I want a big plate like my dad,” Tracy recalled of that early February night in 2020.
Minutes after she spoke with Alvin, Tracy said her phone was flooded with worried calls. She recalled breaking news reporting that police had killed someone with a gun at the mall. Tracy couldn’t reach Alvin, so his family started searching for him. Since Alvin wasn’t at the Wauwatosa Police Department, nor the hospital, they tried the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s office.
Tracy Cole, the mother of Alvin Cole, speaks during the listening session in Wauwatosa. (Photo by Isiah Holmes)
When the medical examiner invited her inside, Tracy’s whole body went limp. This can’t be happening. That’s not my baby, she thought. Her husband of nearly three decades identified their son, and then wept.
Not long after, two Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) detectives stepped in and asked whether Alvin carried a gun. “None of ‘em ever say ‘my deepest condolence,’” said his mother, who later used her experience as a former funeral home worker to clean and dress her son for the last time.
Although from Milwaukee PD, the detectives actually represented an entity known as the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT). In Wisconsin, investigations into deaths of civilians involving police officers are led by an uninvolved agency to help promote public trust. Since MAIT’s formation about a decade ago, the team has grown to include nearly two dozen neighboring law enforcement agencies which routinely investigate one another. MAIT’s investigations are reviewed by prosecutors who then decide whether officers will face charges for citizen deaths.
Wisconsin Examiner, in partnership with Type Investigations, has found that MAIT’s protocols grant officers certain privileges not afforded to the general public. In a typical civilian death investigation, police interrogate suspects to try to elicit an incriminating response. Officers being investigated by MAIT for civilian deaths, on the other hand:
Are only interviewed as witnesses or victims, unless directed by a supervisor, rather than as suspects, usually without a Miranda warning and in the presence of a union representative or lawyer. In Wisconsin, crime victims are provided specific legal protections in terms of privacy and interactions with investigators — protections that are extended to police officers because of their official victim status after an officer-involved shooting.
Officers may refuse to allow their statements to be recorded, despite MAIT protocols stating it is “accepted best practice” to record all interviews;
Wisconsin Examiner/Type reviewed 17 investigations conducted by MAIT from 2019-2022, including the one that involved Cole. No officers were charged after any of these incidents. MAIT’s investigations rarely result in criminal charges against officers for citizen deaths.
Taleavia Cole in a protest crowd at Wauwatosa’s Cheesecake Factory restaurant in 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Meanwhile, seven families interviewed by Wisconsin Examiner/Type, including the Coles, describe experiencing suspicion, hostility, stonewalling, or emotional disregard from police investigators. Some agencies have also monitored families of people killed by officers, even years after their loved one’s death.
MAIT’s commander, Greenfield Police Assistant Chief Eric Lindstrom, declined to comment for this story, as did a committee that oversees the team. But several of the member agencies responsible for shootings and investigations reviewed in our analysis disputed the idea that MAIT favors officers.
Wauwatosa PD’s spokesperson said in a statement that the department “has full confidence in the impartiality and transparency of MAIT investigations, ensuring accountability to the families involved, the officers, and the public.” A West Allis PD spokesperson said West Allis MAIT investigators “conduct thorough, fair, and impartial investigations which enable a District Attorney to make a finding regarding an incident.”
Cole’s shooting was the first of 10 MAIT investigations in 2020. He was also the third person killed by the same Wauwatosa officer in a five-year period.
Shapeshifting Narratives
Alvin’s older sister Taleavia Cole was still at Jackson State University in Mississippi when she learned her little brother was dead. “It’s been difficult without him,” she told Wisconsin Examiner/Type, four years after her brother’s killing. “Although he was the little brother, he was definitely the big brother…He was a protector. He’s not about to play about his sisters and his mama.”
Taleavia gradually pieced together what happened to her brother by talking to family and friends, and by looking at local news reports. Alvin allegedly flashed a handgun during an argument and fled mall security with his friends as police arrived. Wauwatosa officer Joseph Mensah was one of several responding officers. Mensah chased after Cole and, as they ran, a single gunshot rang out in the darkened parking lot.
Mensah later told MAIT investigators that he neither saw a muzzle flash nor knew who had fired. The radio broadcasted “shots fired,” and Cole fell to his hands and knees. “Don’t move,” some officers yelled while others demanded he “drop the gun” or “throw it.” Then five more shots boomed with dash footage capturing a voice yelling, “stop, stop!”
A Wauwatosa police squad car. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Both Mensah and fellow Wauwatosa officer Evan Olson told MAIT that Cole pointed a gun after he fell. But four years later, a judge determined the officers gave “conflicting testimony.” Mensah said Cole pointed a gun directly at him and did not see it being pointed at anyone else. Olson, who was standing apart from Mensah, said the gun was pointed “westbound” toward Olson.
Meanwhile, Wauwatosa officer David Shamsi didn’t mention seeing the gun raised at all. Squad video that February night captured Shamsi telling an unknown individual, “I didn’t see him have the gun in his hand, it was on the ground.” In July 2020, when he spoke with the district attorney’s office, it appears that Shamsi changed his story, saying he saw Cole “raise his firearm,” according to a Wauwatosa PD administrative review of the shooting.
Shamsi later resigned from Wauwatosa PD while on military deployment. He was later hired by the FBI. In a 2024 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman wrote that Shamsi testified in a deposition that “he [Shamsi] had sight of the gun at all times, and that the gun did not move at any time before Mensah shot Cole.”
Mensah, Olson, and Shamsi all declined to comment for this story via representatives.
Activists hold a candle-light vigil for Roberto Zielinski, who was killed by a Milwaukee PD officer in late May, 2021. This case was investigated by Waukesha PD as part of the Milwaukee Area Investigative Team (MAIT). As in the Alvin Cole case, after Zielinksi’s shooting an officer change his story. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
It wasn’t the only time an officer’s story changed during an investigation of police who killed a citizen. After a 2021 Milwaukee PD shooting, an officer who’d contradicted his partner by telling MAIT that a gun hadn’t been pointed at them later changed his story when talking to the district attorney.
Mensah was the only officer to shoot Cole. As the teen struggled to breathe, officers handcuffed Cole and assessed his wounds. Police and medics soon arrived, and West Allis police officers started a log documenting everyone entering and leaving the crime scene while other officers combed the area for witnesses.
Slipping around MAIT’s protocols
It didn’t take long for the investigation into Cole’s death to diverge from the official procedure. MAIT’s protocols direct supervisors to “ensure that the involved officer is separated from other witnesses and removed from unnecessary contact with other officers.” This is intended to prevent the contamination of officer statements.
Yet at some point that night, Olson became Mensah’s “support officer,” keeping Mensah company and comforting him, even though Olson had both witnessed the shooting and aimed his own weapon at Cole. Support officers are generally tasked with helping fellow police personnel cope with the stress of the job.
After the shooting, according to MAIT investigative reports, Wauwatosa officer Maria Albiter was told by a supervisor to sit with Mensah. Unlike Olson, Albiter had not witnessed the shooting. Albiter told investigators, however, that Olson then came by and said he’d sit with Mensah instead.
MAIT’s interviews with Olson and Mensah neither mention Albiter, nor that Olson and Mensah had been alone together.
Cole’s death investigation doesn’t address this apparent violation of MAIT’s protocols. An internal review of the shooting by Wauwatosa PD denied that there was any evidence of statement contamination due to Olson and Mensah not being separated.
This instance of officers not being separated also wasn’t an anomaly. In six of the 17 MAIT investigations reviewed by Wisconsin Examiner/Type, officers were not separated after a civilian death, and some were captured on camera talking with each other about the incident.
Protesters march in the summer of 2020 in Wauwatosa, one carries a sign with an image of Alvin Cole. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
There were other indications of potential bias related to the Cole investigation. In February 2020, two detectives from nearby Greenfield PD joined the investigative team. One of them was Det. Aaron Busche, then vice president and now president of the Greenfield Police Association. Later that year, as protests mounted against Mensah for his role in multiple shootings of civilians – but before a charging decision in Cole’s shooting had been made – the Greenfield Police Association donated $500 to Mensah’s GoFundMe page, which raised money to cover his legal expenses, despite Busche’s prior involvement in the Cole investigation. Busche did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Officers may refuse to be recorded when interviewed by investigators, making it harder to track inconsistencies or confirm details in their stories.Like every other investigation reviewed for this story, Cole’s file suggests MAIT investigators did not record most of the officers’ statements. Only two officer interviews specify that they were recorded.
MAIT routinely conducted unrecorded interviews with officers. After one September 2021 shooting, every officer who fired a weapon refused to be recorded. In another 2021 case, 80% of all interviewed officers refused to be recorded by MAIT detectives.
Nearly two-thirds of MAIT’s investigations reviewed by Wisconsin Examiner/Type document such refusals. By contrast, MAIT’s protocols state that all civilian witness interviews must “at least be audio recorded” and that investigators “will be equipped with portable audio recorders for this purpose.” While they acknowledge citizens may “refuse to be tape recorded or videotaped,” in practice, civilian witness interviews seem to be recorded far more often than officers.
Both the Waukesha and Wauwatosa police departments confirmed with Wisconsin Examiner/Type that their MAIT investigators did not record officer statements for investigations reviewed for this story. A spokesperson from Milwaukee PD referenced protocols from the Milwaukee County Law Enforcement Executives Association, which state “the officer cannot be forced to give a recorded statement.” Although recorded interviews cannot be forced, West Allis PD stressed that they have obtained voluntary statements from officers “in almost 100% of the cases.”
A West Allis Police Department squad car on the scene of an officer-involved shooting in Wauwatosa in December 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Civilians subjected to police questioning face far more pressure. After Cole’s shooting, one 14-year-old boy who was with Cole’s group of friends was questioned by MAIT for over an hour, under Miranda warning and without his parents or a lawyer.
In the interrogation video, detectives asked, “Right before he got shot, what did he do?” The boy replied, “I don’t know…I was worried about me. I was trying to get away…I’m looking back and running at the same time.” Later, the detectives encouraged the boy to “think real hard, and just focus on it,” and said, “you have nothing to owe this guy,” referring to the deceased Cole.
Both detectives repeatedly stressed the importance of honesty. More than an hour and 10 minutes into the interview, after the detectives again asked what happened, the boy replied,
“I’m telling you what I remember. I can’t really tell y’all something I don’t know, because then if I tell y’all something that’s a lie then I’m going to get in trouble.”
– A 14-year-old boy who was interrogated by West Allis detectives during the MAIT investigation into Alvin Cole's death.
When asked about this interrogation, the West Allis spokesperson said the department “follows all laws pertaining to juvenile interviews, including during MAIT investigations.”
The state law that later led to MAIT’s creation aimed to make investigations independent so that a police force is not investigating itself for potential wrongdoing. But Wisconsin Examiner/Type found that in 82% of the cases reviewed for this story, the agency involved in the death also participated in parts of the investigation.
After one Waukesha PD shooting, officers transported weapons they’d fired back to their department before they could be located by MAIT investigators. (A Waukesha PD spokesperson told Wisconsin Examiner/Type that this was accidental, and that officers contacted MAIT once they realized the weapons had been used in the shooting.)
In another shooting by Wauwatosa PD, a wounded woman who’d been shot by officers called detectives, asking why Wauwatosa officers guarded her hospital room and wouldn’t allow her family to visit.
Police block off the scene of where Tinesha Jarrett was shot and wounded by a Wauwatosa officer in December 2020. Jarrett would later call investigators to ask why Wauwatosa officers guarded her hospital room and wouldn’t allow family visits. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
In 2019 after a Milwaukee PD shooting, a Milwaukee detective helped MAIT interrogate the victim’s girlfriend. In another 2021 case Milwaukee PD provided medical assistance to someone fatally shot by Greenfield PD, and then served as the lead MAIT investigating agency, even interviewing its own officers. In other cases law enforcement from involved agencies drafted and executed search warrants for the homes of people killed by police.
None of these activities are strictly against the law, even if they raise questions about the neutrality of the investigators. A Milwaukee PD spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that in the 2021 Greenfield shooting, its officers were not directly involved in the shooting as defined by Wisconsin statute. Likewise, a Wauwatosa PD spokesperson said that “each situation and investigation conducted by MAIT is unique” and that MAIT works closely with the involved agency to “determine the best approach”, which may include the involved agency “potentially conducting or assisting in the investigation.”
Cole was Mensah’s third fatal shooting over a five-year period. The district attorney’s office declined to charge Mensah in all three shootings, stating that his use of deadly force was reasonable, justified, or privileged. A civil lawsuit filed over Cole’s death in 2022, however, raised questions about the shooting.
After hearing arguments in 2024, Judge Adelman ruled that the lawsuit could go to trial. Explaining his ruling, Adelman wrote, “Based on the conflict between the testimony of Olsen and Shamsi, on the one hand, and Mensah, on the other, it is impossible to know what happened and whether Mensah’s use of deadly force was reasonable.”
Trying to cover something
For families of people killed by police, trust is often broken as soon as detectives walk through the door.
When MAIT investigators came to the Anderson family’s home back in 2016, the Andersons did not yet know that their son, Jay Anderson Jr., was dead.
Around 3 a.m., Mensah had noticed Anderson’s car sitting alone in a park. Anderson’s family says that he’d been out celebrating his birthday a few days early, and was sleeping off the intoxication. MAIT reports state that after waking Anderson in his car, Mensah noticed a handgun beside the 25-year-old.
Less than 30 seconds of mute dash footage captured Mensah pointing his weapon at Anderson, who was sitting in the driver seat with his hands raised. Mensah shot Anderson six times after his hands lowered.
Jay Anderson Sr. and Linda Anderson speak with press in 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Jay Sr. recalled that Milwaukee PD detectives presented a picture of his son “with a big Glock 40 hole in his jaw” so he could identify him. His wife Linda said the detectives never expressed sympathy. Instead, she recalled, they started interrogating the family. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh we’re sorry this happened to your son,’” she said. “It was: ‘Do he smoke? Do he sell pot?’ It was them trying to build a case, from the minute that they killed my son.”
An MPD spokesperson said that it “takes complaints seriously” and encourages anyone concerned about the behavior of MPD officers or detectives to file a formal complaint through the civilian-led Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.
“It wasn’t, ‘Oh we’re sorry this happened to your son... It was them trying to build a case, from the minute that they killed my son.”
– Linda Anderson, the mother of Jay Anderson Jr.
Years later, a different mother also came away feeling suspicious after her interaction with MAIT detectives. Markeisha Evans who, like the Coles and Andersons, lives in Milwaukee, recalled an unexpected visit by Waukesha detectives. When they arrived on a February night in 2022, the detectives first asked whether her son, Keishon Thomas, lived there. The 20-year-old had gone out that night and she was waiting for him to return. Evans said that the detectives then suddenly asked, “Was he sick?”
Evans said that Thomas was healthy. “After them asking me a number of questions — and this about 15 or 20 minutes in — they tell me my son ‘didn’t make it’” … and that “he passed,” Evans told Wisconsin Examiner/Type.
Milwaukee officers had arrested her son earlier that night on drug charges. Thomas was later found unresponsive in his cell at a district station. Milwaukee PD said that Thomas consumed and overdosed on drugs he’d allegedly managed to hide from the officers who handcuffed, searched, and booked him. Two Milwaukee officers were later convicted on charges related to falsifying cell check reports and neglecting to get Thomas medical attention after he’d ingested drugs. One officer paid a $5,000 fine, avoiding prison time and probation, while the other received probation.
The way the detectives opened their questioning without first saying Thomas was dead lingers in his mother’s mind. “I thought that it was inappropriate,” said Evans. “Almost like they were trying to cover something.”
A spokesperson for the Waukesha PD apologized that detectives made Evans feel this way, but said that detectives must develop foundational information with interviewees, and denied that detectives were looking for a way to excuse Thomas’ death.
Targeting families
Some MAIT agencies have also closely monitored family members who join protests after their loved ones are killed by police.
Taleavia Cole became a regular speaker at protest rallies after her brother’s killing. “She was out there and she was good at it,” Linda Anderson told Wisconsin Examiner/Type. Wauwatosa PD noticed as well.
“She’s a leader or informal leader, and people follow leaders,” Wauwatosa PD Capt. Luke Vetter said during a civil deposition in a lawsuit against the city for their handling of protests.
Taleavia Cole at a protest in Wauwatosa during the summer of 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Cole family’s attorney pressed Vetter to explain how a family member who spoke out about her relative being killed by police became a suspicious person to police in her own right.
“We recognize that people will listen to her, and will follow her, and if she has a plan in mind or an event in mind, that she will garner support. And that is something that we have to just be careful of, and watch, and monitor,” Vetter said in the deposition. When asked why Taleavia was considered a threat Vetter described her as “passionate about her position” and that “sometimes she is more adversarial than she should be and I think sometimes groups will follow that.”
Like her mother, sisters, attorneys, and dozens of others including this story’s author who reported on the protests, Taleavia was placed on a “target list,” as Wauwatosa police called it in an email, naming protesters and their allies in 2020. Some MAIT member agencies have also monitored the Coles, the Andersons, and other family members of people shot by police using an internal database that compiles confidential personal information ranging from car registrations to home addresses, criminal histories and more. The Milwaukee PD, which frequently searched the names of Keishon Thomas’ loved ones in this database, said that this is often done to identify contact information and next of kin. The department acknowledged that in at least one instance, a database search was done to identify a loved one of Thomas after “a social media post was discovered.”
Police block a road during the October Wauwatosa curfew in 2020, just after having fired rubber bullets and tear gas. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
On Oct. 7, 2020, the Milwaukee County district attorney announced Mensah would not be charged for shooting Cole. Wauwatosa declared a curfew, anticipating protests over the decision. That night, some in the protest crowd broke windows, and looted a gas station. The following night members of Cole’s family were arrested for violating curfew as they rode in a protest caravan. Police depositions conceded that they were unable to develop probable cause linking the Coles to any destructive behavior.
Taleavia was briefly jailed in Waukesha County and her phone was confiscated by Wauwatosa PD for 22 days. During that time, according to a motion to return seized property filed in the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, “her Facebook and Instagram has disappeared,” and her iCloud account with attorney-client information had been “tampered with.”
Wisconsin national guard during the October 2020 curfew in Wauwatosa. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Wauwatosa Special Operations Group Detective Joseph Lewandowski, who was both a MAIT detective and peer support officer and considered Mensah a friend, also identified Wauwatosa’s mayor as one of four “higher value” targets in 2020, due to his perceived support of protests. Interrogating a protester through a balaclava mask emblazoned with a thin blue line logo in 2020, Lewandowski said of Cole and others killed by Mensah, “he chose that. Just like the other ones. They all chose that.”
Lewandowski apologized for his behavior during a civil deposition, and added that “they [Mensah’s shooting victims] still have families and those families are victims as well. And I believe there was a chance that that sight picture was lost.” He also said that police deserve “a baseline of support” and answered in the affirmative when an attorney asked whether public officials should “blindly support the police.” The Wauwatosa PD declined to comment further on Vetter and Lewandowski’s deposition testimony.
Later in 2021, members of the public who were entering court hearings on Mensah’s 2016 shooting of Anderson were monitored by Milwaukee County Sheriff’s drones. Special prosecutors also later said that they declined requests from Milwaukee PD to keep Wauwatosa PD apprised of meetings with the Andersons, so that Wauwatosa could position squad cars nearby. The hearings, initiated under Wisconsin’s John Doe law allowing a judge to review a case where prosecutors already declined to file charges, found probable cause to charge Mensah with homicide by negligent use of a dangerous weapon.
Jay Anderson Jr. (Photo provided by the Anderson Family)
In his ruling, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Glenn Yamahiro blasted the Anderson MAIT investigation. Wauwatosa detectives including Lewandowski interviewed witnesses and attended Anderson’s autopsy. Anderson’s gun and body were also moved from his car before Milwaukee PD arrived to investigate.
“If the goal is to maximize objectivity and minimize bias, it will require a legislative alternative to having local law enforcement agencies investigate each other in officer-involved deaths,” said Yamahiro. “It is unreasonable to ask them [local law enforcement] to turn around and investigate each other in matters as serious as these, and for them to suddenly set those relationships aside.”
MAIT was born in an attempt to improve upon the previous status quo. Stephen Rushin, a law professor and dean at Chicago’s Loyola University, called Wisconsin’s law mandating independent investigations “unique” and “not representative of how most places across the country do it.” Rushin said that other police departments in the U.S. tend to investigate themselves after civilians die in custody or are killed by police in shootings.
But as Judge Yamahiro noted, outsourcing investigations to neighboring police forces doesn’t fix the problem of conflict of interest. Ricky Burems, a retired Milwaukee PD homicide detective, argues that police are indoctrinated to always protect one another. “The issue is police culture in general,” said Burems, who investigated police shootings and deaths during his career. Burems compares the relationship among police officers to the instinctive loyalty between siblings. “It’s truly a brotherhood…We are trained to protect each other.”
Linda Anderson, the mother of Jay Anderson Jr, and attorney Kimberley Motley address media after special prosecutors decline to charge Joseph Mensah. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Burems fears that investigators fail to humanize a victim’s family. “If the lives of the victims were valued as human beings, this could not happen,” said Burems, who testified as an expert witness in Jay Anderson’s John Doe hearings. “If they valued Jay Anderson’s life, Mensah would not have been able to kill Alvin Cole.”
When asked about this characterization, an MPD spokesperson wrote in an email that “we continuously strive to serve our community professionally and respectfully. We also recognize the need for additional resources for victims of crimes, which is why we created two new Victim Specialist positions within our Criminal Investigations Bureau, and hope to fill these in 2025.”
A West Allis Police spokesperson also objected that “the claim that MAIT actively works to protect fellow officers is categorically false, without merit, and without a factual basis. Reckless statements such as this erode trust in the criminal justice system and adversely impacts individuals who heavily rely upon the criminal justice system.”
Oversight and accountability
MAIT’s protocols state that a police agency’s reputation and credibility with the community “are largely dependent upon the degree of professionalism and impartiality that the agency can bring to such investigations,” and that “instances where citizens are wounded or killed can have a devastating impact on the professional integrity and credibility of the entire law enforcement agency.”
Yet the team lacks transparency. MAIT is overseen by a committee made up of eight local police chiefs and members of the Milwaukee County Law Enforcement Executive Association Board. Team members communicate through encrypted chats while the committee holds votes in non-public committee meetings to choose committee leaders, set policy, and decide the team’s future.
Releasing death investigations after a prosecutor’s decision is supposed to offer public transparency. Nevertheless, open records practices across MAIT’s member agencies are inconsistent. The Waukesha PD, for example, has a web page dedicated to its MAIT releases declaring that, “the documents below are posted in the interest of transparency.” Below that line the page is blank.
When asked about the empty web page, a Waukesha PD spokesperson said that it was due to human error when the city’s website was rebuilt and that they are working to re-post the case files.
Leon Todd, executive director of Milwaukee’s civilian-led Fire and Police Commission, said that since MAIT is made up of multiple agencies, “there is no single entity that has oversight over MAIT.”
Families are left with little recourse other than the courts. Yet criminal charges against officers are rare, as are victories in civil court.
“It’s important to not overlook the fact that these suits can often be the only way that people can get any measure of justice in these cases,” said UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz, author of the book “Shielded, How The Police Became Untouchable.” Discipline or prosecution of officers is “exceedingly rare,” said Schwartz, making civil suits “the only avenue, and they’re certainly the only avenue by which a person could be compensated for that wrongdoing. In addition, these suits often are critically important ways of unearthing information about department practices.”
Detective Joseph Mensah testifying in 2025 before the Senate Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety in favor of protecting police officers from John Doe hearings. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
After the protests, Vetter briefly served as Wauwatosa’s acting chief before Chief James MacGillis was hired in 2021. Olson resigned from Wauwatosa PD in good standing in December 2023. He now works at West Allis PD, and serves as the treasurer for the West Allis Professional Police Association. Lewandowski was promoted to patrol sergeant at Wauwatosa PD after being disciplined for the higher value target controversy, and was moved out of both the Special Operations Group and MAIT. The Milwaukee PD has repeatedly denied allegations that it surveils the families of people killed by police.
Declining to comment on the Cole family or surveillance they may have experienced, a Wauwatosa PD spokesperson said in a statement that “our focus is on the future” and that the department is “committed to our mission of providing dedicated service and protection to all.”
Taleavia Cole, the older sister of Alvin Cole, addresses a group of protesters crowd alongside Jay Anderson Jr.’s parents in 2020. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Teleavia Cole still has questions about the decisions officers, investigators and prosecutors made in her brother Alvin’s case. A federal jury trial in her family’s civil case is set for March 17, 2025.
Losing Alvin was difficult for the Cole family, yet it also brought them closer. “It was difficult for my parents, but with us being a close family, and with me just being who I am, I’m going to make sure we figure things out,” Taleavia Cole told Wisconsin Examiner/Type. “We want to do more for him,” she added. “We want to tell his story.”
Joe Calhoun, photographed at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, needs no reminders of the 1968 sanitation workers strike. He lived it. (Photo by John Partipilo for the Tennessee Lookout)
MEMPHIS — At the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis one September day, tourists pause solemnly before a group of life-size statues, some crafted in Tennessee National Guard uniforms, others with red and white signs draped around their necks that proclaim, “I Am a Man.”
The visitors are of all ages. Some of the older people doubtless remember the genesis of the “I Am a Man” slogan — the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike in which workers wore the signs to point out their humanity in the face of hazardous working conditions.
One man stands apart from the whispering guests. Joe Calhoun needs no videos or displays to remind him of the strike depicted in the museum exhibit.
He lived it.
Calhoun, now 75, assembled the strikers’ signs as a teen during the three-week period he worked adjacent to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights icon’s final visit to Memphis before he was assassinated on April 4, 1968.
“I didn’t understand the scope”
Calhoun moved with his family to Memphis in 1967. His father was a U.S. Air Force officer and was stationed overseas until Calhoun was 15. Life in Memphis was a culture shock.
“I lived in Memphis towards the end of the Jim Crow laws, but the treatment was still the same,” Calhoun said. “There was segregation in stores. Black people could buy clothes but you couldn’t try them on.”
“It was completely foreign to anything I had experienced,” he said. “I came from a very protected and multicultural environment in the military and living out of the country. My background didn’t give me what I needed to arm myself.”
Just months before graduating from Melrose High School in Orange Mound, a Black neighborhood on the south side of Memphis, two trash collectors — Echol Cole and Robert Walker — were crushed as they loaded garbage into a malfunctioning truck. The February 1968 incident wasn’t the first time workers had been killed in a similarly gruesome fashion, but Memphis officials still refused to replace the faulty equipment.
The deaths of Cole and Walker were the last straw for their fellow workers, most of whom were Black and worked for low pay in filthy and dangerous conditions, treated more like animals than humans, they would say while on strike.
When a call went out for volunteers to assist with the strike, Calhoun saw an opportunity to get involved, assembling the iconic signs with the phrase on them chosen as a statement of the workers’ humanity.
“The whole civil rights thing was new to me, and I just thought that what was going on was wrong,” Calhoun said. “So when a call went out for high school and college students to help with the strike, I saw an opportunity.”
Calhoun said his parents were concerned about him traveling from their home to the staging site of the strike at the Clayborn Temple near Beale Street in the heart of downtown Memphis. The city was tense, a curfew was imposed and the National Guard deployed to keep order.
For three weeks, Calhoun lived in the church attic, listening as King and other national civil rights leaders, like Bayard Rustin, James Bevel, Rev. James Lawson and Stokely Carmichael, planned how to get better conditions and higher pay for the sanitation workers.
“I was in a meeting with them. I got coffee and cigarettes for Rev. King and others. I was a runner for them,” Calhoun said. “But I didn’t understand the scope of what was happening. You know when you are young, and your teacher tells you to do something, you do it without thinking about the long-term ramifications of what you are doing.”
Calhoun, left, marched in 1969’s Walk Against Fear with Memphis Invaders leader Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson. (Photo by Ernest Withers, courtesy of Joe Calhoun)
The 1968 strike wasn’t the first time workers had tried to gain concessions from Memphis. They had been granted a charter for a local union from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in 1964 and also went on strike in 1966 but failed. King’s presence in 1968 drew national attention to the workers’ plight, and it was in Memphis the day before his assassination that he gave his last speech, known as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop.”.
Organizers with AFSCME negotiated a deal with Memphis officials to recognize a sanitation workers union, bringing the strike to a close on April 16.
Feet in the movement
King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel. Just as the Civil Rights Movement didn’t die with him, neither did Calhoun cease his activity.
Shortly after King’s murder, Calhoun traveled to Washington, D.C., to help fulfill King’s plan for a Poor People’s Campaign, living in Resurrection City, the 42-day tent encampment on the National Mall.
In 1969, as a member of the Memphis Invaders, a group that fused the organizing strategies of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the more militant Black Panthers, Calhoun participated in 1969’s Walk Against Fear from Memphis to Little Rock, Arkansas.
Calhoun had met Invaders leader Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson — he later changed his name to Suhkara A. Yahweh — during the sanitation strike. By the time Watson staged the Walk Against Fear, Calhoun was working for VISTA, a federal anti-poverty program, in Forest City, Arkansas, Watson’s staging point for the march.
During the 135-mile walk, Calhoun and other members of the group faced daily threats of violence from white Arkansans, including, he recalled, from members of the University of Arkansas football team packed into a flatbed truck in Hazen.
Taking a break and finding a new mission
Around 1970, the Invaders disbanded. Calhoun married in 1974, had children and devoted himself to them and his career as a historian.
His children grew up and moved away.
“After they moved to California, I woke up and thought: now what?” Calhoun said. “Over the last 10 or 12 years, I’ve gotten reinvolved.”
Joe Calhoun lived in the attic of the Clayborn Temple in Memphis for three weeks in 1968 while working on the sanitation workers strike. The strike is commemorated with the I Am a Man Plaza at the now vacant church. (Photo by John Partipilo for the Tennessee Lookout)
In 2020, after police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, Calhoun joined a Memphis Black Lives Matters march in protest. He carried a sign that read: “I marched in ‘68. Marching in 2020.” Now, he said, he’s updated the sign.
“I changed 2020 to 2021, then 2022, and now I’m changing it to 2025.
“People ask me what is different about marches today and in the ’60s. Seventy percent of the marchers in Black Lives Matter marches were not of color,” Calhoun said. “Marchers were seeing how people in other parts of the country were treated.”
He has mentored Tennessee state Rep. Justin Jones, the Memphis Democrat who made national news as one of the Tennessee Three when the Republican-dominated Tennessee House expelled Pearson for leading a gun safety rally on the House floor in 2023.
These days, Calhoun serves as operations manager for The Withers Collection, a museum just around the corner from the Lorraine Motel that houses the work of Black photojournalist Ernest Withers. He documented the Civil Rights Movement, and the museum features photos of the significant figures in the movement — including Calhoun.
“Everything I do is for my grandchildren,” he said. “It may be selfish, but I want them to live in a better world.”
Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com.
The sale of raw or unpasteurized milk generally is illegal in Wisconsin, although “incidental sales” are legal.
An incidental sale is when a dairy farm sells raw milk directly to a consumer at the farm.
But those sales are illegal “if done as a regular business, or if they involve advertising of any kind.”
Robert Kennedy Jr., President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, has indicated he would promote raw milk.
Public health authorities consider raw milk a health danger because it hasn’t been pasteurized — heated enough to kill illness-causing bacteria such as E. coli. But 13 states allow raw milk sales in stores. Advocates say it’s more nutritious, though experts say there isn’t enough evidence to prove that.
A Wisconsin Senate bill introduced in December 2023 would have created licensing for farms that want to sell raw milk. It failed to pass the Senate.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Login
